RED BLOOD CLAN
Posted by iqiyou on June 24, 2008
Photo reproduced by permission of Giovaux Communication/Phototake NYC
Red Blood Clan might be well defined as the next stage of progress, as something that springs forth into the universe is further refined. The raw does not always lend itself to usage, and though Yellow Fire is enamored of the raw, and will make very little adjustment to it on personal preference, Red Blood is both capable of receiving and working with the raw and interested in making it more palatable. Red Blood Clan is driven by the desire to refine and make things palatable. Whereas it might have been appropriate to think of Yellow Fire dynamics as 75 percent newness, and 25 percent emptiness, Red Blood dynamics is better considered to be 75 percent status quo, and 25 percent assimilation.
Red Blood Clan is most suited to understanding what we said about the inherent potential of emptiness. Red Blood doesn’t consider it emptiness. Rather Red Blood understands that there is a place for everything that has already been created. Red Blood is reverent about the past and well-suited to appreciation and adoration. Red Blood are those that create religions, establish monasteries or build families. Red Blood may or may not be painters, but they will likely love art galleries, owning art or encouraging and supporting artists. Assimilation isn’t limited to functions of beauty, however. Certain natural science habits of identifying and assimilating unknown species of life or little understood forms are appropriate to Red Blood. One shouldn’t become hampered by what we will present as the White Truth Clan tendency to be scientific or explore chaotic terrains as making science their exclusive province. Red Blood Clan exhibits the dynamic of weaving things together into harmonic structures that are strong and supportive. Nor should one think that Red Blood’s appreciation for what is and what has been inures them to the glory of the new. Red Blood sees the potential of the new fully assimilated and is happy. Teeming potential contained in that which already exists is the province of Red Blood.
As soon as possible, Red Blood will try to assimilate the new, so that it limits any disruption to the beauty of what is. Despite their sensitivity to the status quo, Red Blood is so supported by it that it can and often does receive the brunt of the force of the new, and buffer the rest from its destructive power. Red Blood Clan often finds itself at the center of struggles and more often than not suffering at the expense of someone else’s fight. Nonetheless, Red Blood will heal more quickly than most from this type of injury, be it to the heart or the body, and be more ready to make peace with everyone and amongst them.
There is, however, injury from which Red Blood does not easily heal. It is in the concentrated and intended destruction of supportive frames that Red Blood is mortally wounded. When Red Blood has occasion to meet with destructiveness that is either so total that the status quo can’t be recovered, or so insidious that current beauty and elegance of things drains away from things, leaving dead husks, then Red Blood must flee or die with it. Despite Red Blood’s power to receive and make a home for the force and power of Yellow Fire in general, Red Blood is critically weak in that it can only maintain support structures that have already gained harmony and balance, or fix parts of a largely whole structure. Red Blood must take part in a vital life force, or find itself dying of thirst. To Red Blood, chaos is the opposite dynamic—a lack of supportive order, love and beauty—as emptiness was to Yellow Fire. Unlike Yellow Fire, though, which could react to emptiness in a productive way, Red Blood is eaten, dissipated, or dried up by chaos.
The following section is repeated for every individual Clan blog entry. It is meant to draw together meanings from all four Clans, and understand one in relation to the others.
Of the 4 Clans, Blue Sky and Yellow Fire represent the most destructive and simultaneously most creative capacities, whereas Red Blood and White Truth represent the most constructive, and receptive.
With Yellow Fire, we explored the notion of emptiness before the newness came into being. Blue Sky is more at home in this emptiness and doesn’t try to change it. Thus, Yellow Fire which creates the new and Blue Sky have the potential to be at odds. Red Blood understands that emptiness is actually full of something; specifically, all that has ever been or ever will be. Blue Sky also understands that emptiness is full of something; specifically of infinite possibility. Thus, Red Blood and Blue Sky have the potential of being quiet harmonious with each other. However, Blue Sky appreciates the comparative cataclysm that is the new as an expression of infinite potential, while Red Blood prefers things to become quiescent and stable. Since Yellow Fire represents such possible cataclysmic newness, Blue Sky and Yellow Fire are just as likely to be natural allies as competitors, and Blue Sky and Red Blood are as likely to be at odds.
At this point, it is useful to consider the newness of Yellow Fire in more detail. It’s important not to over-define this, since newness must represent infinite potential, but Yellow Fire’s distinctness can be better understood if we relate the new to our metaphors. We have thus far introduced, in addition to newness, the ideas of emptiness, familiar patterns, chaos and potential. We’ve essentially defined emptiness as a cross-over point between the familiar patters, chaos and potential, so emptiness is only another term for reality used to help describe Yellow Fire. The reality as cross-over point should also not be considered to subsume chaos. Chaos, from the point of view of Blue Sky, is merely that which exists but which is not yet known or understood. Thus, there must be pattern in it, and its chaotic state is only a relative judgment from the standpoint of the familiar. We’re left with reality as an expression of what is (what is already understood) and what can be (what may already be but isn’t yet understood. If we fold time over and consider all this reality rumbling to be not only past events but future ones as well, then the concept of something springing into being is negated. It already existed in one way or another and has, at best changed forms.
Yellow Fire and White Truth represent the dynamics of reality changing forms. Yellow Fire transforms the low rumble of possibility that is natural to all reality into something identifiable, observable and dynamic. However, its dynamic is new, in that it still hasn’t been assimilated into harmonic structures. Its dynamic is singular, individual, and to some degree self-sustaining. It has to be, because it hasn’t yet been plugged in to sustaining structures. From the perspective of Red Blood and White Truth, then, Yellow Fire is raw and untamed. It is an active dynamic that lacks specificity and interrelations. It lacks the complexity necessary to interact harmoniously. It is change that moves and eats the old, like Pacman eats all the dots it encounters. White Truth also transforms the low rumble of possibility that is natural to all reality into something identifiable and observable, but not dynamic. White Truth adjusts the fabric of the known to make place for the unknown, adding complexity and flexibility. Its dynamic is multitudinous, universal, but also self-sustaining. It has to be, because it swims in the waters of chaos. White Truth is Yellow Fire in microcosm, and the raw power of Yellow Fire can disrupt White Truth. The tools and complexities of White Truth can only create harmony for Yellow Fire with a certain amount of distance and time; a buffer zone created by Red Blood and Blue Sky.
To White Truth, then Blue Sky and Yellow Fire have certain similarities. Blue Sky represents peaceful chaos, which White Truth seeks to disrupt by assimilation. Yellow Fire represents raw, untamed influx of identity, which White Truth seeks to distill by assimilation. White Truth is better suited to assimilating Blue Sky’s reality, and thus looks to hold its distance from Yellow Fire through Red Blood. But, in a way, White Truth seeks to eat away at both of these dynamics, Blue Sky and Yellow Fire. What White Truth excretes goes to Red Blood.
To Red Blood, White Truth and Yellow Fire are similar in that they both excrete toward it. Red Blood receives the vast new from Yellow Fire and the minutiae of truth from White Truth. This makes Red Blood naturally receptive—reality flows into Red Blood like rivers into the ocean—but causes its dynamic to also be resistive, to control the influx—Red Blood builds damns, canals and irrigation to keep from flooding. Blue Sky, contrarily is eaten away at by both White Truth and Yellow Fire; White Truth transforms its homey chaos into truth and Yellow Fire manifests its infinite potential into something more static. Blue Sky is therefore naturally expansive—reality flows out from Blue Sky like rain from clouds, pushing outward into White Truth and Yellow Fire. It is this dynamic that emphasizes how Blue Sky represents potential, the bubbling of reality into something new, rather than down into history (which would be the antithetical Red Blood dynamic). Blue Sky is not passively in love with chaos, it is actively pushing things into new being—chaos as an intermediary step to evolution.
At the center of the galaxy is an area that is so massive that nothing appears to emit from it; all movement is into its center. The stars that make up the obvious form in the galaxy contrarily are almost entirely radiative, pushing themselves outward into the void. In between, in what is generally termed “interstellar space” is a region with much activity that is mostly deemed to be a subtle balance of the two dynamics, involution and expression. The galactic message is thus writ large and small, and human dynamism is a microcosm of these possibilities. Interpreting the Clans usefully will involve assigning life situations and issues in terms of these metaphors.
If you were, let’s say, a human Yellow Fire Clan member, then it would be useful to consider how what you perceive and deal with in your life seems to be relatively empty of whatever you value or delight in, and how particularly well suited you are to bring some of these things into that emptiness. It’s of little use to decry the emptiness when you, yourself are intended to be its solution. So, if you’re a Yellow Fire and you’re depressed over what isn’t the way you want it to be, it should be helpful to receive the Yellow Fire advice that potential exists all around you and wants only your power to ignite into something new. In relationships with others, it’s important to know that not everyone will be comfortable with the changes, and that social responsibility demands that you find accord in place and company before setting fire to things. In particular, understand and respect the safe distance that members of the White Truth Clan may need to keep from you for their own comfort. Additionally, if you can stomach helping your Red Blood acquaintances get used to your new ideas and projects, and allow for plenty of versatility for your Blue Sky acquaintances, you may find that there is much support and even assistance available to you.
With Red Blood, we explored the differentiation between the bubbling that is the baseline of reality, and represents everything known, understood and comforting, versus the bubbling that is the baseline of reality that is unknown, unrelated and comparatively chaotic. As Yellow Fire was to Blue Sky when reality was emptiness or form, White Truth is to Blue Sky when reality is chaos and the familiar. While Blue Sky appreciates the chaos unaltered, White Truth is moved to make of it that which can be understood and used. It would be appropriate to suppose that White Truth is the spontaneous generation of truth and pattern from chaos, the Yellow Fire of chaos.
Red Blood appreciates the ripples on the pond that have resulted from a past event, but shies away from turbulence of unknown origin or intent, and is awakened to action when the ripples of the past begin to subside or disappear, creating augmented reminiscence. White Truth, contrarily, appreciates pattern and synchronicity, shies away from undifferentiated wholeness (Yellow Fire), is awakened to interest and action by the unknown, and creates as a result of its action, that which can be known. Blue Sky appreciates all the ripples just as they are, without requiring understanding of them, but avoids the sedentary and static. Blue Sky unlike the other three Clans isn’t called into action by anything, but rather represents a default state of action, a kind of always boiling, a mixture of stasis and change. It’s avoidance of static structures, however, make it appear to be called toward undeclared, undifferentiated, unmanifest areas. When something eats away at it, like White Truth or Yellow Fire, it glides away like oil on water.
Your friend in the Tao,
Lihai Sherman, CMQ
Qigong Instructor
I Qi You
© Copyright I Qi You, June, 2008. All rights reserved.
