The Liver: Gateway to Empathy and Collaboration
The liver’s emotional function is to manage the motivation behind our drive to act.
If the liver is out of balance or sick it will tend to create the perception that “I am alone, the world is against me” and “I am the only one who can do this”. It generates the feeling of isolation, the root of so many contemporary and past problems.
In its extreme this is the drive behind anyone who wants to be an authoritarian ruler, like the dictators of our history past and present.
In the more domestic version this leads to authoritarian parenting which sets into place a whole pallet of traumas inflicted upon our young.
The liver activates the energy of anger that stems out of a deep sense of frustration about feeling isolated.
People with PTSD or those who experienced childhood trauma experience outbursts of anger. These outbursts can be internal like when you grumble about something that is not going your way. Or they can be expressed externally like in road rage or when you see homeless people who talk to themselves angrily with a loud voice as if someone is near them. You can bet that their liver is seriously out of balance.
Unresolved emotional, psychological, and spiritual issues like these can lead to serious and chronic illnesses of the liver.
If the liver is healthy and balanced it will guide us to take actions that are collaborative and born out of empathy. Consequently we will act in harmony with people and our environment.
People who likely had very healthy livers are the people who create good in everyday life throughout history. They are the famous spiritual leaders of humanity. The Buddha, the Dalai Lama, Theresa of Avila, Mahatma Gandhi
In this group are those who choose compassionate parenting styles that emphasize the unfolding of the children’s highest potential and ability to collaborate with others. They propagate the ideals of peace and harmony with life to their children.
A healthy liver is going to generate a feeling that there is enough for everyone and that there will always be enough. In other words a healthy liver generates the feeling of trust.
Question:
Where between the two extremes do you experience yourself in?
Why do you think or intuit that you are that way?