From Turkey Tail to Transformation
Every day I get readers from across the USA - mostly through your recent surge of searches for information on Turkey Tail / Yun Zhi mushroom! I have more info to share with you about Turkey Tail, too, and love that people are searching for solutions, for health, for a positive, proactive way in the world right now.
But instead of posting on that tonight, on this day of such unrest in Washington, I hope to provide you with a different kind of support during this epically, increasingly challenging time. In the midst of this hard day, this darkness, I am brought back to the concept of Bianhua. Of transformation through the destruction of the old.
I shared about it earlier this year, at another time when everything seemed to be falling apart - following George Floyd’s killing and the Black Lives Matter protests.
As I wrote previously,
I took an exceptional course recently, with Dr. Edward Neal. He is a Medical Doctor, a Chinese Medicine doctor, a scholar of Classical Chinese Medicine, a teacher, and a consultant to the World Health Organization on traditional medicines (including now, during COVID-19). During this course he spoke on the Huangdi Neijing (our 2000 year old primary text on the theoretical foundations of Chinese Medicine) and illuminated for us the information on the cycles that were described (2000 years ago) to be active at this time (in 2020). And by “illuminated”, I mean Light Bulb Going Off. I mean Ah-HA! I mean, unfortunately, Oh S#*T. Because it is not cheery, but I do believe it to be true, and ultimately positive.
Bianhua is a Chinese word combination that can be translated as “transformation” or “metamorphosis”. It is not a single concept though, it’s composed of two. Bian is more of a regulated change, the kind that occurs between weather systems, seasons, or day and night, for instance. Something relatively gentle, predictable, reversible, balanced. Hua, on the other hand, is the complete destruction of the old and its transformation into something wholly new.
We are in a Hua cycle of transformation.
We all love that universal metaphor of the butterfly. It is astounding. We all know how the caterpillar cocoons up and then emerges as the butterfly. What we don’t really know is what goes on in that chrysalis. But the caterpillar is destroyed.
So what needs to be transformed - before we can get there? To the butterfly?
So, so much.
And in all the darkness, we need to find the light.
You can be a point of light.
The Yin Yang symbol representation, with the “fish” swirled together, represent the balance and transformation between yin and yang. Yin and yang are just relative descriptions of things. There is nothing that IS “Yin” or IS “Yang”, it’s a measure of comparison. Yang is light, active, upwards, masculine, energy. Yin is dark, quiet, downwards, feminine, form. A human is more yang and a plant more yin, relative to one another. But relative to a rock, a plant is yang - the rock is yin.
Within the symbol, there is always the “eye” of the “fish”, symbolizing the fact that something can never be entirely one or the other. There is always a hint of the opposite, an opposing force, a balancing bit, even within the most extreme presence of the other.
We are all connected in so, so, SO many ways. Sometimes they are obvious, sometimes they are hidden, sometimes they are hidden and then become obvious in hindsight or when some new piece of the puzzle fits it all together.
May we look for those pieces of the puzzle. May we find those connections with one another. May we find the points of light, and be those points of light.
