What is the reductive cycle? I read up on it in another book but didn’t quite get it.
The reductive cycle is a cycle that got edited out of my book Move Your Stuff, Change Your Life (those darned editors!) It is the cycle where you can “reduce” an element without totally destroying it. (Now, this upcoming is an answer meant for someone who pretty much knows the other two cycles – so if you don’t, you might want to pick up a copy of my book first!)
Let’s say, for example that you have a totally white room with a lot of metal furnishings. It is also in the creativity/children gua. As much as you love your totally creative life, you can’t sleep for all the great ideas coming your way. You find yourself dragging around life from a type of “creative exhaustion.” You certainly don’t want to destroy your creativity, but you would like to bring in the reins a bit. With the reductive cycle, you would add water element to that metal space.
Basically the reductive cycle uses the element ahead of it in the creative cycle (see page 37 of my book.) If you want to reduce metal, use water. If you want to reduce water, use wood. If you want to reduce wood, use fire. If you want to reduce fire, use earth. If you want to reduce earth, use metal. It’s like the metal in that creativity gua above is saying “I’m growing, I’m growing, I’m growing, oops, now I have to use some of myself to create water.” It can’t become so powerful because it has a job to do. It has to “feed” the water element. (I’m trying with the visual here, I hope it is working!)
Again, if you area trying to reduce wood element somewhere, you would add fire. Then, the wood is “saying,” “I’m growing, I’m growing, I’m growing, feed the fire.” So it has to take the time to feed the fire and therefore not become “out-of-control wood.” (Wow, I hope this is getting clear to all of you out there!)
Hope that helps!
