Individuating Through the 7 Life Processes

Life is a continual series of encounters between ourselves and the world. The extent to which we can learn from and be nourished by them, and then also give back or keep out what is not needed, determines our overall health and longevity. These processes of encounter lead to inner transformation and creative development as individuals. They can be described as seven discrete activities: The first three involve ways in which we take in the world around us and make it our own. They primarily include processes of breakdown and transformation. The last three relate to our inner creative activities- how we renew and regenerate ourselves. And the middle process integrates and harmonizes between these two polarities.  

Our first act as a separate individual in the world is breathing. Before this, we are nurtured and suspended in a world of connection and Oneness- everything needed is brought to us and then washed away in an ebb and flow of fluid exchange within the enveloping womb. When we take our first breath, we experience the separateness of our being- something from outside is brought in across the boundary of our physical form. Out of this separateness emerges the possibility for observation. We can now experience a distinction between “outside” and “inside”. We no longer feel ourselves at one with our surroundings- we breathe in, taking in the outside world with its substance and sensations, and we breathe out, releasing what we no longer need or cannot utilize.  With this crucial act of breathing, we develop the capacity to observe the world and study it. This experience of separateness leads to capacities for contemplation and memory. It is a first step in becoming an individual.

At the moment the first breath takes place, something else magical happens. Our breath sparks fire. Imagine the wonder of this moment! Before this, all nourishment and dissolved gases, especially oxygen, were prepared and carried to us through the maternal placenta. We had never felt the rawness and intensity of ignition in our blood, and never before created it for ourselves. With each breath we fan the flame of our inner warmth, spreading it throughout our body and igniting the inner workings of our physiology. It is as if the lights are suddenly turned on and our inner being is awakened from slumber. With this step of warming, we create an inner unity and cohesion within our separateness. This warmth organization guides and coordinates our internal processes with wisdom.

The stirring of our metabolism immediately brings us to a new activity, one of transformation and nourishment. Metabolism is the process of transforming substance into energy and also into new substance through the power provided by breathing and warming. This involves incredible work and activity, both for breaking down and for building up. We call these two processes catabolism and anabolism, respectively. This third step of encounter with the world is primarily destructive; foreign substance has to be met and overcome. This is a vital function for nutrition and immune function, distinguishing self from non-self. Foreign substance has to be broken down and stripped of its former nature in order to be freely utilized by the individual. This metabolic and digestive activity utilizes energy but also releases energy back that can be used and harnessed for body processes. It also creates waste products that can either be transformed into new substance or excreted as waste. Through the process of nourishing, the body transforms itself.

Now the individual must move all this energy, transformed substance, and waste products to be properly utilized or excreted! How does it do this? This involves an intricate process of sorting and secreting. Secretion is the transport of material from one part of the body to another. This process involves incredible precision and cohesion, harmonizing all the body systems as an integrated whole. We can think about the intricacies of our glandular system, for example. The endocrine glands regulate hormone production in the brain and other organs throughout the body in order to modulate metabolism, energy level, mood, reproduction, growth and development, and responses to injury and stress. What an amazing symphony! This activity of secreting is central to our physiology and is coordinated by the heart and circulatory system. Like a sun radiating out in all directions, it supports all other life processes through rhythms of expansion and contraction, building up and breaking down, taking in and letting go, and through alternating rest with activity.

With the process of secreting, we enter a turning point. The first 3 stages of breathing, warming, and nourishing all involve substances and activities that exist outside us and which we bring into our interior. Here, in our interior, we meet, transform and integrate these external forces into our inner being. 

These initial steps lead us to the next stages of encounter, where we actually build up our substance and consciousness through our own inner activity. The destruction necessary for transformation and nourishment has a countermovement which is constructive. In nature, these processes cannot be truly separated- every process of buildup involves a corresponding process of break down; they are mutually dependent and interactive. Let’s give an example. We breathe in air and light and various sensations through our lungs, eyes, skin and other sensory organs. This input makes an impression on us- like pressing a stamp into sealing wax, the outer world impresses itself upon us and changes us by setting off a cascade of reactions that ripple throughout our body. These reactions involve oxygenation, metabolism, nerve impulses and neurotransmitter production, among other things, all of which actually break down our cells and tissues. Sensing and breathing consume and degrade vital substances in our body that then need to be regenerated. 

So this next stage of activity can be called maintaining. Here, we rebuild what has been destroyed. We decide what substances need to be resorbed or regenerated and what can be let go. The activity of maintaining has both qualities of receiving and releasing. Some of what has been destroyed can be reused as building blocks, while the rest may need to be released and excreted. An example of this can be found in the kidney, where the blood is carefully analyzed and filtered, and then most of it is resorbed back into circulation. Only a small portion is excreted as urine. This is an extraordinary process of discernment- what can be brought back in as a new source of nourishment and support, and what really needs to be let go? This delicate process involves not only our bodily health but also our mental and emotional well-being. How well do we maintain ourselves? What life experiences nourish us and serve our development? What is stagnant or toxic that needs to be let go? This is an ongoing activity of continual refinement.

Once the body, soul and spirit have found a kind of steady state, they become free and available for development. When children can roll over, they can begin to crawl. Once they can stand, they can run! So now the forces of growing and developing can really unfold. This activity does not only involve gathering more substance or more experiences, but, rather, it involves integrating them into a cohesive whole. All the prior processes of breathing, warming, nourishing, secreting and maintaining must continue during our growing phases, otherwise we would have dis-coordinated growth or even tumor formation. Healthy growth and development must maintain balance within the whole organism. We can see the awkwardness of a puppy or a young teen when they are all feet and limbs, flopping and crashing about. It takes some time for all the life processes to catch up to rapid growth spurts and recover equilibrium. The processes of growth are also the processes of healing. Skin “grows” or regenerates itself, bones and organs are renewed and rebuilt. The body is growing and healing continually. This is especially true during sleep, when the breakdown processes of thinking and sensing finally cease and the body can regenerate.

Now we come to a culmination point, a zenith that is both end and beginning. We come to the seventh life process of creation and reproduction. In this stage, the living organism does not merely copy itself. In nature, this is not possible. New life emerges from new forces- the mature organism has gathered all its experiences into itself, has woven its physiologic tapestry out of the outer impressions it has gathered and inner responses it has generated. The activity of reproducing arises out of a natural sequence of beingness. Processes of growth and development lead to new capacities and activities that naturally shape and influence the world around us. Just as we are breathing the world, the world is breathing us. We too are gathered up into its purpose. Through the process of reproducing, we become whole again with the world. We become reborn in the other.

So the in-breath that begins our journey as a separating out from the world, a process of individualization, culminates in a kind of out-breath, the expression and release of our creative forces back into the world. Our life begins with the gift of life and ends with gifting it back again. 

The Sycamore by Wendell Berry

In the place that is my own place, whose earth
I am shaped in and must bear, there is an old tree growing,|
a great sycamore that is a wondrous healer of itself.
Fences have been tied to it, nails driven into it,
hacks and whittles cut in it, the lightning has burned it.
There is no year it has flourished in
that has not harmed it. There is a hollow in it
that is its death, though its living brims whitely
at the lip of the darkness and flows outward.
Over all its scars has come the seamless white
of the bark. It bears the gnarls of its history
healed over. It has risen to a strange perfection
in the warp and bending of its long growth.
It has gathered all accidents into its purpose.
It has become the intention and radiance of its dark fate.
It is a fact, sublime, mystical and unassailable.
In all the country there is no other like it.
I recognize in it a principle, an indwelling
the same as itself, and greater, that I would be ruled by.
I see that it stands in its place and feeds upon it,
and is fed upon, and is native, and maker.