by Jean Haner
Mileposts
In our conversations for this book, Louise and I sat down to talk about time—the different phases of her life and what each year and decade brought. It was fascinating to see how the mileposts of her life fit into the themes of the years. The major turning point for her work was 1988, the year she appeared on both Oprah Winfrey’s and Phil Donahue’s talk shows within the same week. (Interestingly, both Oprah and Phil are also Twos!) That was a Four year for Louise, a time when a person of influence is likely to show up to open doors in some way. Louise attributes her interview with Oprah as being the point in her career where things just exploded, as so many more people were introduced to her work.
Interestingly, the next time Louise was on Oprah’s show, in 2008, it was no longer a time when she was so focused on trying to reach more people. Instead, she was honored as a woman of power who’d helped so many and accomplished so much. And again the energy of that event aligned with the pattern of the year. Instead of it being a year when someone influential would lend a hand, 2008 was a Six year for Louise, a period that’s about getting respect and recognition for all that she’d achieved!
As we talked about the different cycles of time, I wondered if Louise had set an intention for what she wanted to accomplish in each phase of her life. But she said that’s not how she lived. There was no intention set for any particular stage, or any goal in mind as she traveled on her remarkable journey.
She explained, “No, it’s not about intention. I do what Life presents to me. I’ve learned to trust what comes to me. If it’s a challenging lesson, okay, what do I need to do? If it’s a door opening, wonderful! I can do it. Whatever challenge or opportunity is given to me, the wherewithal just unfolds. I allow my life to happen.”
Well, be still my heart! This was music to my ears because this is the core principle that Chinese medicine and philosophy teaches about how to live: action without effort. Rather than trying to make things happen, Louise allowed. She was able to surrender to the process and go with the flow of the time. This is especially impressive when we look at her third number. Anyone with a Three in this position will have a tendency to push—to try to force things or think they have to take charge and figure it all out. Usually the last thing they’d do is let go and trust, but this is exactly what Louise did. Many times I’ve heard her say this about how her work grew over the years: “I just did what was in front of me.”
This way of being is a reflection of the profound inner work Louise has done to always bring greater levels of balance and health to her life, and it’s yet another validation of her work by Chinese medicine.
Just as each of her affirmations fits perfectly with these universal principles from ancient times, her personal work in her own life has used the same paradigm to help achieve her greatest potential. Louise became whole by transcending the worry and lack of confidence of the Two nature to claim her compassionate power, the uncertainty and self-doubt of the Four to move forward anyway, and the urgency and drive of the Three to just do what needed to be done—and in the process, change the world!
In the next chapter, I’ll share with you some ways you can accomplish the same in your own life, by aligning with your nature and allowing your life to unfold effortlessly.
CHAPTER 14
FIND YOUR WUWEI
In Chinese, there’s a term to convey the concept of action without effort: wuwei (pronounced “woo-way”). Very simply, here is what it means: A tree doesn’t try to grow; it just grows. When you live in accordance with your nature, you don’t have to try to reach some goal, to figure out what to do to get what you want. In fact, your goals—those things you think you want—are most likely just symptoms of your current imbalance and aren’t always to be trusted!
Most of us spend our days lost in our heads, trying to come up with the answer to what to do and when and how to do it, in order to get out of this place we don’t want to be so that we can finally find happiness. Yet it’s not about figuring out what to do; it’s about what to be.
If we’re aligned with nature, we can just be, and our actions effortlessly ride the ebb and flow of life. But we can’t do this if we are unable to relax in the truth of who we are. Most of us go through life almost blaming ourselves for our nature, which creates resistance in the system and stops the flow.
We can’t actively pursue wuwei. We live with wuwei when we allow our feelings without being swept away by them and our thoughts without believing every one of them. Unfortunately, most of us are caught up in the constant commentary going on in our heads that only keeps us locked into certain belief patterns, and doing rather than being.
Self-Judgment
I recently gave a presentation about Chinese face reading at an exclusive retreat to a standing-room-only group full of highly spiritual women, most of whom had been doing serious personal work for decades. The previous day, many had shared stories about the amazing progress they’d made in their lives after years of work. They’d healed traumas or illnesses or found a way to pursue what they truly loved.
After my talk, however, nearly everyone who stepped up to speak with me said with a fierce charge in her voice, “I hate this wrinkle!” or “I can’t stand my nose!” The energy behind each statement was palpable—I could feel how intense that emotion was and how toxic to the speaker on so many levels. It was hard to believe that these were the same women who’d conquered illness, recovered from abuse, and learned to be powerful healers for others, for they were carrying such a negative charge about some small aspect of their face they judged as bad.
We all have a tendency to view ourselves this harshly, seemingly hardwired to look for what’s wrong with us and focus on the negative, and this is due to a great extent upon our conditioning from birth. We live in a culture where we’re taught to view everything as “either/or”: It’s either good or bad, right or wrong. We categorize everything this way, and it leads us into the trap of thinking that if only we could get rid of the “bad,” then everything would be all right.
If I asked you to make a list of everything wonderful about yourself and then a list of anything about yourself that needs to be changed, I hope that you’d first come up with a list full of things you love. But it’s likely that your second list of what’s “wrong” with you would be longer, and you’d be cringing and grimacing in self-judgment as you wrote it. And as they viewed their two lists, most people would conclude that if only they could eliminate all of their “bad” qualities, this would leave all the good ones, and they’d finally be happy.
This way of thinking is a part of the reason why the Western mind hasn’t been as easily able to understand the interconnectedness of all life as the Eastern mind does. In Asian culture, there’s a more holistic or global view of things, rather than judging them as one thing or the other. There have even been scientific studies that show this, finding that when a Westerner looks at a painting, they immediately focus on one individual object in the image—the tree in the foreground or a person standing in the scene. Then they look for another single object and move on from there.
When an Asian person views the same painting, they look at both foreground and background at the same time, taking in the whole picture instead of choosing any one detail. So there’s no “either/or”; instead, there’s a perception of the symmetrical whole. It’s a global way of thinking. To understand this, it can help to visualize the Earth: It has a North Pole and a South Pole. It can’t possibly have a North Pole or a South Pole. It always has both.
When it comes to looking at our personal characteristics, using this Asian way of perceiving things can really help us break free of our restrictive Western viewpoint. Instead of thinking we have to eradicate the “bad” parts of ourselves, we see that they’re actually one aspect of the whole. We can think of it as everything having a front and a back. If we look on the other side of any weakness we think we have, we discover a corresponding strength. They’re interconnected, so if we got rid of the weakness,
we’d also lose the strength.
Any one part of your nature that’s proving to be a challenge for you needs to be understood within the context of the whole. When you look at something about yourself that you think is negative, can you discover what positive quality might be its partner? If you’re a Four, can you see how your indecisiveness has another side that reveals your adaptability and gentle way with people? As a Three, does the frequency of your frustration match your level of drive—how goal oriented and hardworking you are? Could it be possible that there’s nothing you need to get rid of at all, but can instead look at bringing the two sides into balance?
Acupuncture for the Spirit
Chinese medicine teaches that your body is very wise; if it’s in balance, it can heal itself. The goal of the acupuncturist is not to figure out how to fix whatever’s wrong with you but instead to bring your system back into balance so that it will naturally heal itself.
We all have cancer cells in our bodies all the time. So why do some of us get sick and others don’t? Chinese medicine believes that if our system is in balance, it eliminates the malignant cells naturally. But if we get too stressed and too far out of balance, the body is not able to clear them effectively.
My work is often called “acupuncture for the spirit” because it applies that understanding to your life on a spirit level. If any part of you is in self-judgment, or if you hold a charge around some aspect of your past, it puts stress in the system and over time will throw it out of balance. This may or may not eventually cause illness in the body, but it can definitely keep you stuck in life, locked into creating your future based on your past. Those toxic thoughts and feelings flood your mind and heart, and in that state, is it possible to be wuwei? No way!
So how can you rebalance? How can you move beyond the self-judgment you hold and all the ways you don’t love yourself? One elegantly simple way is to use the powerful affirmations in this book that Louise created for your personal numbers, because their words support you to embrace your unique nature so that you can move toward it in strength and love. Another is to use what you’ve learned about yourself in this book to come home to yourself, to relax into a new understanding and acceptance of who you really are.
When I teach professional trainings for people to coach and consult using this work, I do in-depth demonstrations of readings for a variety of volunteers while the students observe. A few years ago, one of the subjects was David, a 1.5.1 musician with exotic tattoos and piercings. He was a highly creative but deeply emotional man who was carrying a lot of painful judgment about himself. He couldn’t understand what was the matter with him. Why did he crave so much time alone and feel things so deeply when others let things just roll off their backs?
David’s girlfriend complained that he didn’t talk to her, but he was overwhelmed when she wanted to download everything that passed through her consciousness onto him. And while he had found success as a musician, it was more important to him to have freedom in how he lived his life and did his work rather than chase money to get a big house and fancy car. Yet now he wondered if he was wrong not to feel driven like his younger brother was.
As I did the reading and explained the One nature to him, David listened intently. When I was done, there was a long silence. He just sat there, looking in my eyes for what felt like forever, and then finally said, “You mean, I’ll always be this way?”
I took a breath and had a bit of an Uh-oh! moment in my mind. Was he viewing this as a prison he’d never escape? But an instant later, he let out an enormous sigh and flashed a big smile, exclaiming, “That is such a relief! You mean I’m supposed to be like this!”
He got it. This was his nature; he was designed to be exactly this way. There was nothing wrong with him—or rather, the only thing wrong with him was that he thought there was something wrong! Like all of us, through a lifetime of accumulated negative self-judgment, there was enormous tension in this young man’s system that kept him from loving and accepting himself.
David’s patterns of thought, emotion, and behavior weren’t his fault and they weren’t a problem. In fact, it was his resistance to them that was causing the problem. Like all of us, he was born with his inner design shining brightly in full joy, ready to begin the journey. But also like all of us, nearly from the moment he was born, he was receiving messages from the outside world that began to diminish his spirit.
Stepping Out of Your Story
As much as your parents truly love and adore you, they have unconsciously projected certain expectations onto you from the beginning, and they can feel stressed and confused when you don’t conform to that image. Add to this your experience with the rest of your family, teachers, peers, and community—as well as what our society defines as acceptable and valued—and you’re soon immersed in an environment of subtle and not-so-subtle judgments about who you’re supposed to be. To one degree or another, the implicit message that you receive is, You’ll be loved if you’re like that, not this. Well, of course you want to be loved, so you try to be more like that, and thus begins the journey away from original nature. By the end of childhood, you have a negative talk-radio station playing in your head, telling you all the ways you’re wrong; and because of that, you make choices that lead you to navigate farther and farther off course.
The parts of yourself you judge as wrong are the ones you try to run away from, while you cling to the few parts that you see as right. In fact, that just amplifies the problem. You’re a global being with your own North Pole and South Pole—both part of the whole, neither wrong nor right. When you can see the entire picture, you can discover how to navigate your thoughts and feelings in a more successful way.
One of the beautiful gifts of discovering your hidden symmetry is the realization that there’s a design to all of your various parts and pieces, that you are part of nature. You were intended to be exactly this, just as the oak tree was designed to grow acorns. The oak tree has no angst about the acorns that sprout among its leaves. It doesn’t cringe about the girth of its trunk, and it doesn’t strive to be more like the eucalyptus next door. It is fully, vitally, joyfully oak. When you understand that you are one of nature’s designs just like every living thing on this planet, and that your patterns have a purpose, it takes you out of your story—that background commentary that’s been looping through your mind for decades about what’s wrong with you and how you should change.
When Pulitzer Prize–winning poet Philip Schultz was interviewed about his struggle with dyslexia as a child, he talked about how liberating it was to finally discover that it was not his fault, that it was due to an issue in his brain. It was this realization that empowered him to finally be able to learn to read. He said, “When someone gives you the opportunity to step outside of your current reality, it changes the story you’ve been telling yourself. It can change the entire course of your life.”
Everything has a front and a back, a symmetry to it. It may well be that this poet’s dyslexia is one side of the same quality that makes him such a creative soul, his nonlinear artistic mind much more likely to have letters and words shimmy in unconventional ways inside his brain. It’s fascinating that after he discovered that this wasn’t his personal failing, he was finally able to learn to read by imagining himself as a separate little ten-year-old boy who could read, and then—he could! He’d been so lost and stressed by his story that it had prevented him from being able to learn. By letting go of that, he was free to become the boy who could read.
Whatever story it is that you’re telling yourself, it’s made up of an intricate and coherent pattern of repeating thoughts and feelings, many of which you were never taught to recognize and honor but instead to judge and resist. Nine Star Ki reveals the subtle details of your unique journey, but it also gives you an important gift: You were meant to be this way. You will always be this way.
Every thought or feeling that passes through your consciousness is just a tiny reflection of your total inner design, and t
here’s nothing the matter with any of it. You’re part of nature and that’s never wrong. The only thing that’s out of place is how you’ve been unable to relax and love all of it. When you realize that none of this is something you personally caused or need to fix, when you recognize it as your intended design, then you no longer judge; you just allow and observe.
We don’t worry when the sun rises so early in the summer or panic when the leaves fall off the trees in autumn. These are part of the symmetry of nature, and so are all of your qualities as well. Rather than getting swept away by your feelings and then having to find your way back to center, just watch them soar through your consciousness like birds fluttering by, and you’ll find you’re still standing, grounded and in balance. As you are more and more able to do this, the difficulties you used to struggle with disappear from your life.
Author Steven Hayes, Ph.D., originator of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), compares this behavior to the way you might struggle with a toy called a Chinese finger trap. When you put your fingers into it, the woven bamboo tube constricts around them; the more you try to pull to get your fingers out, the more firmly it holds them. The only solution is actually to push them deeper into the tube, which makes it relax its grip. Fighting against who you are keeps you locked in battle, confused and stuck. Only by moving fully into yourself can you find freedom. The work is not to change or fix your thoughts and feelings but to change your relationship to them and how you react.
In My Stroke of Insight, neuroscientist Jill Bolte Taylor explains how to accomplish this by sharing the startling discovery that it really only takes 90 seconds for your system to process an emotion. The moment you have an emotion, chemicals are released by your brain and surge through your body to cause physiological changes. But 90 seconds after that sequence is triggered, the chemicals have completely passed out of your bloodstream.