The Fourth Element of a Fulfilling Life
WATER
The purpose of life is self-mastery, self-realization and spiritual empowerment. Different societies have different ways of expressing this truth, but the general insight is consistent across time and geography and tradition. In this series of articles, we are approaching this truth of life’s purpose through the lens of the Four Elements framework. Like any model, it is just a framework and must not be confused with the experience of this truth or held onto for too long or taken too seriously. But models like this are how we communicate ideas and can be very useful for guiding you along the path to a better life, so let’s use it.
As we saw in the first three parts to this series (Earth, Air, and Fire), life is the place of initiation, the place where you have the opportunity to experience not only the good things in life but also fear, pain, boredom and unsatisfactory experiences of every kind. Thanks to this manifestation of unsatisfactoriness, it is also the place where you can learn to leave the suffering associated with these experiences behind. If they weren’t present in the first place, if life was already just continuous bliss, there would be nothing motivating us to advance, and nothing to learn how to let go of. As we saw with the Fire Element, the presence of suffering is an indication of where you are on your path to self-mastery and your best possible life.
The Four Elements can be summarized by saying that this life of ours in a solid body made of matter is represented by the Earth and the Air Elements (with Earth and Air respectively representing form and idea, or body and mind). Once you have Earth and Air (i.e. once you are embodied as a human), you are in a position to experience the trials that life offers you and through the Fire of these challenges you have the opportunity to be transformed. This arrival is a kind of baptism, and, like a real baptism involving the cleansing of water, is symbolized by the Water Element.
Think of the moments of greatest pain or tragedy in your own life and the tears that were shed in those moments. Though the sense of loss or hurt won’t have disappeared, the waters and convulsions of the weeping will have begun the cleansing and healing of your suffering, affording you a physical release and emotional relief. It is the same way in life on a grander scale: when you have made it through the Fire Element, you will have been cleansed and reborn into the still waters and loving calm of self-mastery. What is the experience of this post-Fire, Watery life? Into what sensibilities are you initiated into? On this point, virtually every tradition is consistent. The master experiences unity, imperturbability, grace, and, above all, love. Total and complete and universal love. This love then unlocks the gates to heaven-like sensibilities of abundance, joy, compassion, generosity, peace and safety.
A human life is an extraordinary opportunity. Given a form and the ability to think, you have the raw materials needed to pass through the fires of this initiation. Through these crucibles of learning you can discover what true peace and harmony look like and how to navigate to these inviting shores. By figuring out how to align yourself with the love and peace of the universe, you can discover how to return to ‘unity’, how to shift your identification from the self and experience Oneness with All Power; or some might call it Union with the Divine or receiving God’s grace. Others have described this process as a journey of authentic empowerment or opening oneself to the gifts of the Holy Spirit. The fundamental or foundational force of the universe, the source of all power and movement and form is Love. And Love, therefore, is the force that drives all within it. Conveniently, Water, as the symbol of our intuition, and intuition as our bridge to love, extinguishes the fire of initiation and symbolizes arrival at self-mastery.
As surprising as this may sound, it is this force of love that drives fiery, painful moments of initiation. What we normally think of as bad turns of events or tragedy are in fact the universe providing us with the potential for change and the push for us to evolve towards higher stages of self-mastery. It is in these moments of initiation where we experience hurt and suffering and therefore where we have the opportunity to learn the lessons embedded in this pain. This is not a celebration of suffering or an invitation to more of it in your life. To the contrary, less suffering is better and is the goal. But that doesn’t mean you avoid it or resist it or judge it when it does arise.
Viewing pain and suffering through the lens of the Four Element model opens the possibility for a profound shift in the way the suffering is experienced. Ancient spiritual masters from Zarathustra to Jesus saw that the flow of the universe was towards love. You have the power through your free will to disrupt this flow and choose to move in a different direction or to let go of your self-focused notions of which direction is best. You can just to go with it or not. Making the choice to go against the grain sparks the Fire Element and invites more suffering into your life. The suffering will be modulated so that it is strong enough to drive change in your choices. The Fire element’s nature is to redirect you back to the path of love. If you don’t heed its direction, the volume of suffering will be turned up and the ways it manifests in your life or your body or emotional state will grow until you either change direction or come to the end of this life.
So, we can think of mastering the Four Elements as a process of learning the lessons life has to teach us and being guided to love. We begin with our physical form as symbolized by Earth, acquire knowledge as symbolized by Air, pass through the initiations of suffering or dissatisfaction, as symbolized by Fire, and have the fire extinguished by Water, which is the symbol for intuition and love. That is the Four Elements model in a nutshell. It is relatively straightforward but there are a couple of points that are easy to become confused about.
One question is whether self-mastery means that all suffering ends at some point. In fact, passing through the Earth, Air and Fire Elements and successfully arriving at the self-mastery symbolized by the Water Element is a circular process. Each day and each new experience present opportunities to deepen and extend your mastery. Achieving self-mastery doesn’t mean that tragedy or pain will no longer appear in your life. It is more that terms like these are no longer attached to the experiences. Coming to understand how this works is part of the Fire initiation so it may not make sense right away. Even Masters, who tradition tells us, have achieved total alignment with “God’s will” or the flow of the universe (Jesus or Buddha, say) still saw their bodies die. Even fully enlightened individuals who have evidenced mastery to the max in every dimension are not God. They and their loved ones will still be struck by tragedy, misfortune, loss and death. Change and duality are the nature of the world of form and the greatest masters will allow this change to unfold. But for a master there will be far fewer ‘bad’ experiences. Their non-resistance to the flow means that the tragedy or pain either doesn’t appear in the first place or, more often, when it does arise it is transformed, re-understood, overcome, re-framed or learned from.
There is nothing personal about pain in your life. You are like a drop of water in a river. The obstacles that you encounter are simply directing your course downstream. Unlike the water droplet, however, you have the ability to (pretend to) resist the flow and judge whether you like where it is taking you or not. Mastery means you begin to view these turbulent, apparently not so nice sections of the river from the perspective of the river rather than the water droplet. For example, you have probably experienced what you thought were tragedies or pointless suffering only to discover, with the benefit of hindsight, that these were the very things that led to a new career or meeting a new love or opening a fertile new chapter in life.
Another part of this story that is easy to become tangled in is the idea that the stages of mastery are progressive and a one-shot deal. We tend to think that evolution is like being in an elevator where you go from one floor to the next and once you’re on the next floor the lower floor is not physically present with you any longer. Mastering the Four Elements isn’t like that at all. As you advance from one Element or stage to the next, you don’t leave the prior one behind. Again, it’s more like a circle.
That is why we keep returning to the language of mastery. These various stations along the way to self-realization and spiritual empowerment are better thought of as areas to be mastered. And mastery requires repetition and practice. Lots and lots of practice. The idea is to combine mastery of all the Four Elements at once as a lived experience. Your goal is to experience your self and your life fully across every dimension of self-realization. You want to intentionally combine them into an embodied soul that is fully awake and, by virtue of being awake is guided by your higher self or the greater whole.
The process is as much about subduing and controlling various parts of yourself, as it is about self-discovery. And here’s the interesting thing: ultimately what is being discovered in this search is unconditional love. The master that our lower self ultimately subjugates itself to is Love. It’s that simple. Great master after great master, from Buddha (with the Metta Bhavana practice) to Krishna (with his teaching of Bhakti Yoga) has shared this same truth with us: the truth that with spiritual progress comes wisdom and with wisdom comes love or compassion. The bridge from wisdom to love is traditionally via our intuition or our heart. Customarily, intuition is symbolized by the Water Element and where the circle is completed (insofar as a circle can have an end-point).
The Water Element brings us to one of the most important and powerful insights about the nature of human experience: When you can connect to your intuitive self, life is actually very simple. There is Love, which is the truth, or ground state of genuine reality. And there is Fear, in which case you are ignoring or not believing in the truth. Without faith in the loving foundation upon which the universe rests, Fear will dominate more often than not. The point of self-mastery is ultimately to create harmony and balance within yourself. Mastering and balancing the Four Elements allows you to realize your complete and loving connection with others and the world around you. Through doing that, you restore unity within yourself, and you reconnect with the source. And in the process, you help the universe heal and improve and enliven and awaken. Amazingly, a journey that begins with a focus on self and personal progress ends with service and selflessness.
The Water Element symbolizes that each and every one of us is born with a gift. Some call this gift intuition. Others describe it as a light in your heart. If you are religious, you might call it the Holy Spirit. This light or Spirit represents your ability to connect with your higher self and become its agent in the world. The light in your heart is your capacity for self-knowledge or the ability to come to understand truth. And truth is found by seeking out, bearing witness to and becoming an agent for beauty and harmony and light and love. Reaching enlightenment or mastery, or whatever term is used, is the point of why we are in this human body, on this earth, in this school we call life. And through this process you become a light unto the world, enabling others to awaken as well.
In this series we have looked at each of the Four Elements as stages in the progression towards a life built on love:
- INTRODUCTION
2. EARTH
3. AIR
4. FIRE
5. WATER (This Article)
You can also listen to a couple of podcasts I recorded covering similar material.
For an entirely different (and quite esoteric!) take on the Four Elements based on the teachings of the Hindu classic, The Bhagavad Gita, you can listen to the reading of Rudolf Steiner’s 1905 lecture on the subject:
For more information you can visit the Happy Mind website.
ZR.
