Heart/Spirit/Reason and its place.

“As the king governs by his executive, so Reason in man must rule the mere appetites by means of the ’spirited element.’”

- C. S. Lewis

“Yi Yi Yin Qi- The mind leads and the energy follows”
-Taijiquan saying

“The heart is the master of the body and the emperor of the organ networks. There is the structural heart made from blood and flesh: it has the shape of a closed lotus flower and is situated underneath the lung and above the liver. And there is the luminous heart of spirit-shen-which generates qi and blood and thus is the root of life. It is the source of all our bodily parts and functions, yet it does not manifest in obvious signs and colors. Just when you want to define it and say ‘here it is,’ it is gone; whenever you forget about it, however, it comes closer to you than ever. This is why it is called the ‘vacuous spirit.’ Despite its elusive nature, shen commands our body’s every action and every part. Material form and luminous shen must therefore be looked upon as an interdependent pair, and we have to understand that diseases of the structural heart are always caused by unbalanced emotions such as depression, anxiety, obsession, or sadness, which open up a pathway through which noxious pathogens can enter.”

-Li Ting, A Primer of Medicine (Yixue Rumen)

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