How many gifts of life can we receive without feeling indebted or in control?

~ From the diary of an energy healer ~

When I was writing about the liver, its fundamental question for me was: where would you go if you no longer had to stop?

When it comes to the pancreas, I feel a completely different story. The pancreas doesn't primarily ask me where I'm going. It asks something else.

How much can I receive? How much do I need? How much can I use? How much should I save? And do I believe there will be enough again afterward?

It is an organ of incredibly precise measurement. The pancreas is, in energetic terms, an organ of abundance, because abundance isn't the ability to have more constantly coming to us, but the capacity for what comes to us and what we need to circulate healthily through us.

Physiologically, the pancreas performs two seemingly different functions. It produces enzymes that help break down carbohydrates, fats, and proteins, and through hormones like insulin and glucagon, it helps keep glucose within a narrow range.

One part says that we need to break down what has come. The other determines what to do with the energy we have received.

It belongs to the solar energy center, which also has the function of receiving and giving. While the heart center speaks of receiving and giving love, the solar center speaks of receiving and giving energy, metabolizing energy to make it our own and then releasing it into the world. It gathers energy toward the center with the help of the air element, balances it, and assimilates it. The solar center is like the Sun, and it radiates. For something to be able to radiate, there must be a core that concentrates, organizes, and distributes the energy.

Do we give without receiving? Do we receive but hold without further distribution? Do we receive but cannot hold?

And that's precisely where the pancreas becomes psychologically and energetically fascinating to me.

Because there are people who know how to get something out of life, but they don't know how to receive it.

They get love, and immediately look for the catch. They get money, and already think about what could go wrong. They get free time and rest, and feel guilty. Someone helps them, and they immediately feel they owe something. Something nice happens, and instead of enjoying it, the thought that it won't last comes to mind.

That's why, in energy work, I don't map the pancreas solely to „the sweetness of life.“.

I would map it to the organism's ability to receive, measure, and distribute life.

The pancreas is an organ of measure, not an organ of extremes. Neither too much nor too little, but exactly what I need. It's a psychological ability that many people have never developed.

Their internal system only knows all or nothing. Work until exhaustion or do nothing at all. Give everything or shut down completely. They either merge into the relationship or run away from it. Extreme discipline or loss of control. Extreme frugality or hedonistic spending. They love without personal boundaries or they let no one close.

Therefore, archetypically, the pancreas is not for me an organ of abundance, but an organ of true instinctive, spontaneous measure.

Insulin and Glucagon: Administration and Release

This is where it gets even more interesting. Insulin and glucagon act as key opposing regulators of glucose availability: insulin handles uptake and storage, while glucagon, when glucose is low, signals the liver to increase its availability.

In the realm of energy, these are two completely different life imperatives. Take what comes and reach for what is already within you.

Can I trust my own capacities? Because a person who doesn't believe they can rely on themselves, that they have enough within, must constantly get something from the outside. Affirmation, attention, money, security, a plan. The inner sense of sufficiency is never stable.

If the solar plexus is overactive, the pancreas in the red zone influences the psyche, which will be activated in the mode “I have to take now; later it won't be enough.” This is often the basis of someone's greed.

The pancreas therefore also contains the psychology of scarcity.

Scarcity is not the same as not having. We can have a lot and live in scarcity. We can have money and constantly fear it will run out. We can have a partner who loves us and constantly check if they still love us. We can have a full fridge and eat as if it's our last supper. We can have a free weekend and frantically fill it with activities.

Scarcity is a state in which the present is never enough for the nervous system to conclude, „I'm safe. I have enough.“

That's why a person doesn't enjoy what they have. They secure what they might lose.

And it is precisely here, in energy work, that I look in the pancreas for the issue not in a „lack of sweetness,“ but in the inability to hold the experience of "having" long enough as sufficient.

The element of earth and the processing of experience: what I receive must become a part of me.

The earth receives the seed. It doesn't keep it forever as a seed. It transforms and activates it. The same holds true energetically for experience.

It's not enough for someone to love me. I have to be able to accept that love. It's not enough for someone to praise me; I have to allow that praise to become part of the image I have of myself. It's not enough to succeed; I have to be able to integrate success without immediately negating it with “I was lucky” or “I could have done better.”.

Thus, people spend their entire lives receiving food that they never truly digest mentally. Love comes to them, but it doesn't nourish them.

Pancreas and overthinking

Energy disharmony of the pancreas is associated with worry and overthinking. To me, it's a perfect parallel with digestion.

Because what is overthinking but mental food we never finished digesting?.

The same situation runs through your mind twenty times. Why did someone say something? What did they mean by it? Did I do the right thing? What if this or that happens?

It's not about finding a solution or processing information. It's about surviving the same thing over and over in a circle. Rumination.

A person thinks they're trying to find a solution.

That's why, when there's a pancreatic imbalance on an energetic level, I see that people aren't troubled by not being able to understand something, but by not allowing themselves to stop trying to understand. An obsession arises, and they're unable to complete the psychological processing.

Pancreas and pleasure

Here I'm referring to the usual „sweetness of life,“ but in a slightly different way. With an underactive or overactive pancreas, the problem isn't just allowing yourself pleasure and sweetness.

A much more serious pancreatic topic is allowing yourself pleasure without any need to earn it. There are people who handle effort excellently but cope very poorly with ease. While they're solving a problem, they're stable. When the problem disappears, they become restless. As long as someone needs their help, they know who they are. When no one needs them, they feel empty.

While they're fighting for something, they're full of energy. Once they finally get it, their interest disappears.

They win over the opposite sex, but once they've won them over, they get bored with them.

Why?

Because their system isn't organized around satisfaction. It's organized around need, and need provides structure. Contentment demands something else: the ability to exist when nothing is lacking. When everything is good and nothing is missing, that structure disappears and restlessness or emptiness arises. That's why contentment is more demanding for them than struggle: it requires the ability to be calm and alive even when there's no problem to solve.

The deepest theme of the pancreas may not be sugar, but reception.

In my therapeutic work, I constantly encounter people who know how to give—whether it's their time, energy, understanding, or money. They give attention. They give.  and the second, the third, and the fifth chance.

But when someone gives them something, they feel uncomfortable and indebted when it's time to accept it.

It may appear to be modesty, but often it isn't. More often than not, it's an inability to receive without feeling indebted. An overactive principle of giving without limits, an unconscious principle of receiving.  Because if receiving automatically creates debt, then a gift is no longer a pleasure but an obligation. Such a person can be surrounded by love and still remain emotionally starved, because everything they receive they feel compelled to repay; it creates stress and tension.

Nothing can simply remain in it.

The pancreas and the child who learned to be reasonable too soon

This is perhaps the most energetically interesting layer for me. The earth symbolically has something maternal: nourishment, sustenance, security, a center.

But what happens to a child who very early on realizes they mustn't have too many needs? Mom is tired. Dad has his own problems. There isn't enough money. Not now. Be good. Don't make a fuss.

The child then never stops having needs.

He starts to ration them. Before asking for anything, he checks the environment. Before crying, he gauges his parents' mood. Before wanting anything, he assesses how much his wish will burden someone.

And so you end up with a person who, as an adult, knows perfectly well how much others can handle, but has no idea how much and what she herself wants. I would call that the energetics of internal dosing.

How much can I wish without being a burden to anyone?

Pancreas and control of the future

If the liver is connected to the direction of the future, I would symbolically link the pancreas to something else, to the question of whether there will be enough for the future. Will there be enough money, food, time, love, health, people, me?.

Control is often misinterpreted as a need for power, but for many people control has nothing to do with power. It's an attempt to create predictability when we don't trust that life will feed us tomorrow. And can we, in the meantime, rely on ourselves and/or community?

If I believe it will be enough, I can let go of some control. If I deeply expect scarcity, I have to calculate, predict. I have to have a backup plan. I have to know, hold, control.

Then man no longer lives on what exists; the system unconsciously prepares itself for what may not exist. That is a life of aggression toward the future.

The most beautiful paradox of the pancreas

Physiologically, the pancreas is not just an organ that responds to abundance. It also plays a role in responding to scarcity. When more energy arrives, the body needs to know what to do with it.

The pancreas, in an energetically healthy state, therefore expresses itself like this: when there is, I accept it with pleasure. When there isn't, I trust my personal reserves and potentials. That is psychological maturity.

I can accept love when it's there without clinging to it. I can be alone when it's not there without falling apart. I can have money without fearing to touch it. I can lack money without losing my sense of self-worth and my ability to earn.

I work when I need to, and I stop when I've had enough. I eat when I'm hungry, and I spontaneously stop when I'm full. I don't overeat out of a sense of scarcity.

I can enjoy without needing the pleasure to last forever.

Security doesn't come from the belief “I will always have.” It's “I know I can stay centered both when I have and when I don't.“

The ability to joyfully receive whatever comes to us, to digest it, allow it to become part of us, and enjoy it for no reason at all creates an energetic flow that brings us everything we need—whether it's inspiration, action, a meeting, or the opening of any door we require. It is the opposite of scarcity.

In the end, the pancreas needs to know that we can rely on ourselves and on our community, without “standing guard” over life.

~W