How is your battery (精, jeong) doing?

When your phone battery drops to 5%, you anxiously look for a charger. You dim the screen and close the apps you aren’t using. But when the machine that is your body sends a low-battery warning, what do you do? You pour in a stimulant called coffee and force the screen even brighter.

The Principles of Cosmic Change, a work of Eastern cosmology, explains this as the depletion of jeong (精) and the excess of sin (神).

• Jeong (精) is the body’s battery capacity, the raw fuel (oil) of life.
• Sin (神) is the light that burns that fuel: the activity of consciousness.

A healthy spirit is like a flame (神) burning gently on an ample supply of oil (精). But we keep making only the flame bigger, with thoughts, worries and stress. The oil runs low while the fire burns hotter, so the wick scorches and smokes. This is how Eastern cosmology explains the unexplained anxiety and lingering fatigue we feel.

RE:SONANCE is a place to set down your fading flame for a while and refill your drained battery: a time to bring the heat that has rushed to your head back down (suseung hwagang) and replenish the depleted essence of life. That is where true healing begins.