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This article was first published in The Magic Happens Journal (December 2016)

Holon
A holon is a unit a whole­ness that at the same time is a part of a big­ger whole, a big­ger holon.
A holon is a part and a whole at the same time.

Cells are holons, or­gans are holons and or­gan­isms are holons.
A hu­man be­ing is a holon, con­sist­ing of or­gans that are holons, con­sist­ing of cells that are holons. We can per­ceive liv­ing na­ture as a hi­er­ar­chy of holons, a ho­l­archy.

A hu­man be­ings big­ger holon can be the fam­ily, the col­legium at work, peers in a class, mem­bers in an or­ga­ni­za­tion, cit­i­zen­ship in a coun­try, one of hu­mankind, a mam­mal and many more.

As a hu­man be­ing you both re­late to holons that are big­ger than you, where you are a part, and holons that are smaller that are con­tained in you like or­gans and cells.

Is there a re­la­tion in how we hu­mans re­late up­wards to the big­ger holon or down­wards to the smaller holon?
Is there a re­la­tion be­tween our or­gans and the way we re­late to oth­ers? Let us ex­plore!

Hu­man re­la­tions
Re­la­tions to oth­ers are mainly a ques­tion of feel­ings. We have peo­ple we re­late to with no at­tach­ment, al­most like strangers. It could be our baker that we do not say hi to, the barista in the cof­fee shop, a per­son stand­ing at the same bus stop every morn­ing, or the per­son liv­ing in the flat above or be­low you. You also have re­la­tions that are mainly pro­fes­sional with a teacher, a lawyer, your boss, em­ploy­ees, clients etc. These re­la­tion­ships can be with­out much emo­tion they are more prac­ti­cal, func­tional and part of the daily rou­tine.

But some re­la­tion­ships mean much more to you they are emo­tional. They can be based on dif­fer­ent good feel­ings of joy, love, care and at­trac­tion or more trou­ble­some like those char­ac­ter­ized by fear, dis­gust, anger or re­sent­ment.

These re­la­tions are the ones work­ing on us on the way to mas­tery. A good ques­tion you can ask your­self, is which feel­ings are dom­i­nat­ing your re­la­tions? Why do you end up in sim­i­lar re­la­tions again and again? And do these feel­ings re­flect spe­cific or­gans in your sys­tem?

Tra­di­tional Chi­nese Med­i­cine, TCM
Al­ready in the old Chi­nese med­i­cine this was ex­plored. Each of the five fun­da­men­tal or­gans were re­lated to a main feel­ing (see il­lus­tra­tion)

The Liver was re­lated to anger and ir­ri­tabil­ity, the heart to joy and in­spi­ra­tion, the spleen to worry or pen­sive­ness, the lungs to grief or sad­ness and the kid­ney to fear and shock.

This was not based on re­search, but on ex­pe­ri­ence and in­ner-re­al­iza­tion or in­ter-re­al­iza­tion would even be a bet­ter word. We have a source of knowl­edge within that we seem to have for­got­ten in this time in his­tory. We seem to think that re­search in the ex­ter­nal world is the most re­li­able source. De­spite the fact that many of the choices we do are based on this in­ner knowl­edge.

Let us look closer at this Chi­nese knowl­edge used by ori­en­tal doc­tors, acupunc­tur­ist, tai chi, mar­tial art and qi gong prac­ti­tion­ers and many oth­ers.

A bal­anced in­ner life will re­flect a bal­anced outer life. Each of these feel­ings can be un­der­stood in re­la­tion to the con­nected or­gan in Chi­nese med­i­cine. We will ex­plore one of the five in the fol­low­ing is­sues of The Magic Hap­pens mag­a­zine. We will start with the first, or start­ing el­e­ment which is wood and its or­gans liver and gall­blad­der.

Liver and gall­blad­der – The wood el­e­ment
The liver is con­nected to the gall­blad­der and we will ex­plore the re­la­tion closer.

The liver is de­scribed as the big plan­ner and is re­lated to your overview or per­spec­tive on life. The gall­blad­der rep­re­sents the ex­ec­u­tive func­tion of ac­tion, and self-as­sertive­ness. To­gether they be­long to the el­e­ment of wood, which rep­re­sents the be­gin­ning or start of any process be it spring, early morn­ing or the first months in life.

On one side the liver is the planer, hav­ing the overview, while the gall­blad­der is de­ci­sive, ex­e­cu­tion, mo­tion and ac­tion. You need both func­tions when you start a process and go into ac­tion or when you move out into the world. You need to see the sit­u­a­tion and you need to act into it.

If the liver is like the court the gall­blad­der is like the po­lice. The liver is in­clud­ing all the as­pect in the whole pic­ture, the gall­blad­der is ex­clud­ing and elim­i­nat­ing.

Also in the body the liver has a tremen­dous amount of func­tions while the gall­blad­der ba­si­cally stores and con­cen­trates bile. The liver has more than 500 func­tions and is hence re­lated to func­tions in many other or­gans while the gall­blad­der with its bile is like a knife that cuts the fatty parts of food into smaller pieces.

You could say that the un­con­di­tional pos­i­tive re­gard of Roger­ian psy­chother­apy re­flects the liver while be­hav­iouris­tic ther­apy re­flects the gall­blad­der. One is in­clud­ing ac­cept­ing and non-judg­ing the other is con­di­tional and based on pun­ish­ment, re­in­force­ment or mod­el­ling. The liver is yin and go­ing within, the gall­blad­der is yang and go­ing out­wards.

Let us see how these func­tions in the or­gans can rep­re­sent sim­i­lar func­tions in your re­la­tions.

Let us say you have a fam­ily mem­ber or friend that has stolen some­thing, in­jured or even killed some­one. How do you judge, how do you re­late?

The liver dri­ven per­son would try to see the big­ger pic­ture and think that in the same con­di­tions with the same abil­i­ties they might have done the same. The gall­blad­der would take on them­selves to be a part of the re­ac­tions, a judge and then act. They would say; he or she need this to ad­just his or her be­hav­iour. I will not in­vite him or her to the Christ­mas party this year, so she/​he can un­der­stand I dis­ap­prove of his con­duct.

Two re­lated or­gans with op­po­site re­ac­tions. The liver and gall­blad­der rep­re­sent a po­lar­ity of yin and yang, of go­ing in­wards or out­wards, mov­ing to­wards a big­ger or smaller holon. The Liver is the per­son that is ex­pand­ing and tak­ing the big­ger per­spec­tive found within, tak­ing the whole group or com­mu­nity into con­sid­er­a­tion. The gall­blad­der is more lim­ited, elim­i­nates and ex­e­cutes.

Mov­ing down a holon could also be that the in­ci­dence is not re­acted on in a con­scious way but dis­torts the con­di­tions for or­gans to work op­ti­mally. If they just get an­gry with­out any re­sponse it might in­jure the gall­blad­der even giv­ing gall­stones.

Mov­ing up a holon would be to per­ceive and feel con­fi­dent that in the higher pic­ture this is part of a wise and lov­ing des­tiny or plan. That there is a un­con­di­tional pos­i­tive re­gard that is wise and lov­ing for all the per­sons in­volved. The same could be said for the laws of karma or ac­tion and re­ac­tion, that they are not a ques­tion of pun­ish­ment but cul­ti­va­tion and evo­lu­tion. With the higher holon as the ba­sis of per­cep­tion the per­son would ask what does my in­volve­ment im­ply, I got in­vol­un­tar­ily in­volved as an ob­server, but what is the les­son for me since I re­act to it? How can I take part in the heal­ing of the big­ger whole, or big­ger holon? The more evolved per­son would not even re­act, but ac­cept and per­ceive from the big­ger per­spec­tive.

The yin or­gans are the ba­sic or­gans in Chi­nese med­i­cine and are writ­ten on top in the il­lus­tra­tion, the func­tions of these or­gans tend to bring you closer to the in­ner core and the big­ger pic­ture.
The yang or­gans are or­gans of re­duc­tion, sep­a­ra­tion, elim­i­na­tion and break­ing things down.

You can learn a lot from the re­la­tion be­tween the two or­gans within the same el­e­ment. And you can un­der­stand much by see­ing what they have in com­mon. The liver is like a per­son med­i­tat­ing and per­ceiv­ing the whole world from within, the gall­blad­der is like a man on his sports car, try­ing to see the whole world by dri­ving around like crazy. One has a in­ner peace­ful per­spec­tive the other is out­ward and ag­gres­sive.

In Chi­nese med­i­cine they would say the real or­gan is the liver, the gall­blad­der is just an as­pect of the liver, or wood el­e­ment.

Every or­gan is con­nected with one of the five senses and the liver is open­ing into the eyes and hence re­lated to vi­sion. We can un­der­stand the re­la­tion to the eyes with them be­ing the most im­por­tant sense to get the overview, to see, have a per­spec­tive and to move about in the world. Non of the senses can com­pete with the eyes if you want to move from one lo­ca­tion to an­other.

From my stud­ies of both Chi­nese med­i­cine and ar­che­typ­i­cal sys­tems I have come to re­al­ize that the main les­son or gift from the liver ap­proach in life is the cul­ti­va­tion of truth. As you ex­plore the dif­fer­ent chal­lenges from a liver per­spec­tive your higher per­spec­tive and broader vi­sion is bring­ing you closer and closer to truth.

We will ex­plore the other or­gans in the fol­low­ing ar­ti­cles.

The Liver & Gall­blad­der and anger

The Heart & Small in­tes­tine and joy

The Spleen & Stom­ach and worry

The Lungs, large in­tes­tine, grief and sep­a­ra­tion

Re­lated ar­ti­cles
Holonis­tic ther­apy and guid­ance – about the in­ner dri­ver and con­nec­tor – the two prin­ci­ples of heal­ing.

Holonity – Heal­ing from within

Holonity – Heal­ing from above down­wards

Mas­tery of Life

Crop Cir­cles what are they

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