The Toltec I Ching Blog

There is One Mind and each of us is one of Its Ideas.

Such is the script inscribed on the memory stone of my dying.

Some six years ago, I was fortunate enough to die, fully conscious, for the two or three minutes it took the emergency room staff to revive me.  And, as validated in The Tibetan Book of the Dead, I experienced those few moments in the after-life state as a much longer period of time.  As it happened to me, I catapulted out of my body into a sphere of conscious light, a single radiant presence within which everything that exists, had existed, or ever will exist, was present at the same time.  Each of us was likewise a sphere of conscious light, a microcosm of the greater sphere of which we were a part.

Each of us was, in fact, an Idea within the One Mind.  This constituted our true self or essential identity, our meaning as established in relation to all the other Ideas in reality.  We were constantly coming into contact with other Ideas in both intentional and accidental ways.  And “contact” there was of a very specific kind, for the act of one sphere touching another meant that all that those Ideas held instantaneously passed between them without friction or resistance.  I learned much more in that brief stay there than I could in many lifetimes here.

I mention my personal experience to make it clear that I am not constructing a mental framework for intellectual amusement.  What happened to me went straight to my heart, only later to be sorted out and given words.  Which has made me realize that we Ideas are not cold fragments of rationality and reason but, rather, warm reflections of passion and compassion.

It is this profoundly moving emotional aspect of the nature of Ideas that has most greatly impacted me in the time since I returned to my body.

I understand One Mind to mean that everything, material and immaterial, is of one substance, is of one unitary indivisible nature.  One Being.  One Presence, Alive and Aware throughout all Creation.

Likewise, I understand Idea to refer to each and every thing, material or immaterial, animate or inanimate, as an elemental and intrinsic Thought in the Living Awareness of the One Mind.  Each stone.  Each star.  Each molecule.  Each electron.  Each plant.  Each animal.  Each person.

Which is why the ancient indigenous lifeways feel so natural to me.  And why I choose the lifeway of an animist.

It is that singular word Spirit that combines the twin concepts of heart and mind—of profound emotion and identifying thought—into a single harmonious symbol.  It is in the ancient lifeways that we find an un-self-conscious participation in the natural world based on the sense of self-knowing:  Since everything is Spirit, then everything shares a common way of being.  And since I am half form and half formless—which is to say, half body and half spirit—then other things are likewise half form and half formless.

Every other thing in creation, in other words,  is likewise alive and aware, just as I am, each of us sacred vessels of the One Spirit.

Every other thing in creation, therefore, is likewise a person, whether a human being or not, and is to be treated with all the respect and purity of intent with which one would address the One Spirit itself.

Such a lifeway arises from a deep-seated love of Nature.  A constant sense of awe in the face of Creation.  A sincere appreciation of the sacredness of everything.

And it leads to spontaneous and natural intimacy between Ideas.  Immediate communion between the individual and the One.  Universal loving-kindness among all Creation.

Everything arises from the same font of Spirit.  Form Itself is Spirit.  There is no other from which we must protect ourselves or which we ought to fear.  The material universe and all its stones and rivers and trees and animals and people arise from the same origin.  Belong to the same family.  Deserve the same peace and prospering.  When we treat nature and humanity and all our creations as The Sacred, as the living awareness of the One Mind, all the walls around us crumble, our hearts open in gratitude, and our every thought, word, and deed manifests good will.

I repeat here what I learned there when I came into contact with other spheres of conscious light:  This road—the road of treating everything as a sacred person, including other people and including ourselves—this road is the shortcut to peace of mind, bliss, and self-liberation.  It is a straight-forward discipline that trains us to see through the surface of appearances and into the living meaning of whatever has engaged our attention.  It is a wide open gateway to awakening here in this lifetime to our own individual and timeless Idea.  It is the well-worn path of freedom in every sense.

It is, in a word, the path of the spirit warrior, of men and women who sincerely undertake the task of defeating their enemy-within by moving away from self-defeating thoughts, feelings, and memories and towards a self-liberating presence within the ongoing universal Act of Creation.

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Great strength inevitably becomes great weakness.

This is because of our tendency to over-rely on what makes us feel powerful, effective, and respected—a tendency that unintentionally transforms our attitude of justifiable pride and self-respect into one of arrogance and superiority.  A tendency, moreover, that holds as true for organizations, corporations, and governments as it does for individuals.

Because people equate success with winning, they strive to use their strength to take advantage of the weakness they perceive in others.  And if no weakness exists other than a trusting nature, this can be turned to advantage by convincing the other that their natural state contains some innate flaw that actually constitutes a weakness.  Or, contrariwise, if the other has no weakness but distrust, this, too, can be turned to advantage by constantly feinting and bluffing until the other is provoked into wasting resources and energy reacting to an illusory threat.

We come to feel strong, in other words, when we can make others feel weak.

Even if such behavior could be justified ethically, it would still prove to be short-sighted and self-defeating:  clearly those who dominate others are dependent on those who submit to them—and as time goes on, those who submit can only grow stronger while those who dominate can only grow weaker.  As the conscience of the victors evolves, their guilt and remorse diminishes them within, even as the determination of the defeated empowers and ennobles them within.  The way in which time turns the table on the strong by giving the weak a moral victory is the basis of all the great failures of history, whether they be in the lives of nations, groups, or individuals.

To exercise strength against others, therefore, is to plant the seeds of our own misfortune.

To exercise strength without diminishing others, however, is to plant the seeds of our own good fortune.

It is not just force, though, that makes us weak.  The strength of intellect and reason likewise becomes a great weakness when relied upon too much—without a sense of loving-kindness and compassion, reason becomes sterile and, ultimately, mere justification for acting in bad faith.  No less can be said for the emotions and passions, of course, which begin as authentic motives for positive actions—but which, when over-used, end up transformed into reflex reactions striving for control over uncontrollable circumstances.  The memory, too, develops from a positive tool providing continuity and adaptability into a mechanism that fossilizes the past, creating thereby the false sense of self that eclipses the living presence of the true self.

So it is for all the attributes we hold as empowering—faith becomes dogma, intimacy becomes intolerance, love becomes possessiveness, trust becomes revenge, patriotism becomes antagonism, intuition becomes worry, planning becomes routine, nostalgia becomes isolation, sincerity becomes pomposity, light-heartedness becomes triviality, frugality becomes avarice, generosity becomes coercion, and so on and so forth.

To open the front door to what makes us stronger is to let what makes us weaker slip in the back.

So if the very strengths we depend on to achieve success and contentment actually contain the seeds of future failure and disappointment, then how do we free ourselves from all the dependencies keeping us from reaching our true potential?

Why, in the midst of so much opportunity for advancement, do we find ourselves blocked at every turn?

How do we make our way along the path of good fortune without becoming inhumane and opportunistic?

Such are the questions the Lesson Of Autonomy answers.

This is the I Ching trigram for Heaven.  It symbolizes creative power and the right to change things for the better.  The basis of its power is not its own strength, however, but its spontaneous and uncontrived expression of the underlying harmony of the world.  It speaks of our need to recognize the omnipresent source at work in the on-going creation of the world and then to align ourselves with it.  By sensing the unconstrained nature of Heaven within, we train ourselves to achieve inner Autonomy.

The heart of Autonomy lies in self-control.  Without self-control, our demeanor gives away our innermost thoughts and feelings, making it impossible to have an independent interior life.  Without self-control, our emotions and thoughts are driven by our instincts into actions that are too defensive, offensive, or self-gratifying.  Without self-control, our ambition causes us to over-reach, bringing others and ourselves unnecessary grief.  Without self-control, our imaginations run wild, creating a world of false hopes and fears.  Without self-control, our desire to be appreciated and accepted trips us up, causing us to blunder through our relationships.  Without self-control, our desire to see ourselves in the best possible light deludes us, causing us to project our worst qualities onto others even as we imagine ourselves to possess qualities and motives above reproach.

Without self-control, in other words, our inner world leaks out into the outer world, causing us to intrude on the independence of others.  And without self-control, the outer world leaks into our inner world, intruding on our own independence.

What is this personal independence that each of us possesses—and why is it important that its integrity be maintained?  An intrinsic aspect of the wisdom teachings affirms that everything, and particularly everything living, has at its core an essence that is identical to the essence in every other living thing.  This essence is not an abstract or inconsequential part of each thing, moreover, but the fundamental and quintessential element making up the very awareness of each living being itself.  So fundamental is it, in fact, that this universal essence can go unobserved for an entire lifetime if we fail to turn our attention to its living presence.  While it is known by many names, it answers to none of them:  because it is, in fact, the underlying awareness that names everything, it cannot itself be named.

Let us follow the precedent set by many others and call it the true self.

It is here that we stand on the threshold of The Great Mystery:  how is it that the One divides into the Many without ever forfeiting its wholeness?  how is it that the Many unite in the One in such a way that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts?  how is it, in other words, that our individual awareness is simultaneously part of the one awareness and yet experiences itself as cut off and separate from all other individual awarenesses—and how do we not interfere with our individual awareness’ effort to reunite with the one awareness?  It is The Great Mystery because every true self must pass through this gate of individual awareness to rediscover the hidden path back to the One Self.  For millennia, the source of profound awe and wonder has resided in contemplation of how the timeless and immortal One enters the temporal and mortal Many.

Crossing the threshold of The Great Mystery brings us to the Third Paradox Of Wisdom:  by fully experiencing the individual life, we remember the universal life—by participating fully in the relative realm, we return to the absolute realm. While the full meaning of this paradox can only be experienced first-hand, one of its principal implications is that the absolute realm of the One is not different than, nor separate from, the relative realm of the Many.  The first-hand experience of this paradox has long been called awakening, while those who are not yet aware that awareness is matter are often seen as still sleepwalking through the relative realm.

Persons who approach wisdom by relying too much on the strength of their intellect run the risk of reading the above as if it were addressed to the head rather than the heart.  What is meant by first-hand experience is that the intellectual meaning is translated into an emotional meaning, the depth of which can be measured by the physical response we experience in our body.  While there is no precise description of the physical sensations that accompany this emotional understanding, it is certain that experiences unaccompanied by such bodily sensations have failed to fully incorporate the meaning of The Great Mystery.  Awe and wonder must strike us to the bone, sink into the marrow, and permeate the very atoms of awareness:  unless first-hand experience is fully integrated throughout our material and immaterial bodies, the relative self and the true self are not consciously united in a single identity.

The true self, then, is the immaterial body that stands at the end of eternity, perfected and at one with the One—and has so stood since before eternity began.  The relative self is the sum of all the material body’s experiences.  Awakening occurs when the relative self remembers the true self.

~

The above is an excerpt from The Spiritual Basis of Good Fortune by William Douglas Horden.

If you’d like to learn more, visit the website:  http://spiritualbasisofgoodfortune.com/

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The Toltec I Ching, by Martha Ramirez-Oropeza and William Douglas Horden has just been released by Larson Publications.  It recasts the I Ching in the symbology of the Native Americans of ancient Mexico and includes original illustrations interpreting each of the hexagrams.  Its subtitle, 64 Keys to Inspired Action in the New World hints at its focus on the ethics of the emerging world culture.

Click here to go to the main site to see sample chapters, reviews and the link to Larson Publications for ordering the book.

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(Following up on Part One of Finding Resilience from the previous post)—

And it is this experience that leads us to the Second Paradox Of Wisdom:  when we stop clinging to the illusory importance of things past, we are freed from the illusion of our own present self-importance.  And it is this insight that leads us to harmonize with the underlying harmony of the world.  And it is this confluence of our own stream of attention with the single river of life’s attention that leads us to meaningful success.

Water seems soft and pliable, so when we say its nature is Resiliency, this seems to imply a kind of weakness or yielding quality—as if we were saying that attention should follow the line of least resistance because it is too weak to endure hardship and suffering.  Nothing, however, could be further from the truth.  One look at the Grand Canyon, for instance, should dispel any such misconception:  stone itself must give way before the unrelenting onslaught of flowing water.

The nature of Water is enduring patience, just as the nature of attention is infinite fortitude.  Water follows the line of least resistance, using gravity to penetrate every gap and to wear down every obstacle—just as attention follows the line of least resistance, using the force of will to perceive every opportunity and outlast every obstruction.

But when traumatic events occur in our lives, they seem to change us forever.

This is like a great oak that has grown into an unnatural and contorted shape because a small rock lay atop it when it first emerged from its acorn centuries ago.  Never mind that the rock was an obstacle not much bigger than the acorns that the oak now puts forth every year.  Never mind that the shape the oak has taken possesses an air of majesty and strength perceptible to all.  What we want to keep in mind instead is that the oak has flowed around the rock like slow-motion water, turning an obstacle into grace, dignity, and originality.

Is it the rock that made all this possible?  Or is it the earth itself, its soil, its rain, and its life-giving light that daily falls from the sun?  How quickly we turn to hardship as the defining element in our development, ignoring the millions of positive events occurring before and after our negative experiences.

The effects of negative experiences seem to last a lifetime, in other words, while the effects of positive experiences seem to evaporate in a matter of days, weeks, and months.

Yet we all know of someone who has had true suffering in their life but rebounded from it in a way that exceeded our expectations and defied our explanations.  While they themselves may not be able to fully explain their own Resiliency, they often speak of rising to the challenge that life presented them.  Not in the sense, we should keep in mind, of ignoring or denying their own suffering, but of having passed through it authentically and having defeated their own willingness to feel defeated.  A large part of wisdom, it seems, is the power of an indomitable spirit to defeat its own willingness to feel bad.  For such people, obstacles are always on the inside, challenging their innate right to thrive despite any hardship.

For others, however, who shrink beneath the weight of past adversity, the risk of future pain, loss, or defeat presents an insurmountable obstacle to further advancement.  Rather than responding to difficulty with grace, dignity, and originality, they close down psychologically, fail to perceive opportunities when they arise, and simply try to protect themselves from the vicissitudes of life.  Rather than moving like a ball on flowing water, they allow themselves to become trapped behind the dam of dead memories:  holding back from the living moment of attention, they cannot find their way back to the path of good fortune.

Because suffering is relative, we can respond to it by putting it in perspective, keeping our tendency to exaggerate it in check.  Keeping in mind that the suffering of others is far worse than our own allows us to let go of any specialness we might otherwise attribute to our personal traumas.  And by not fixating on any one heartbeat of the past, we free our attention to keep pace with the never-pausing pulse of life.

Exercise One—Visualize yourself as a ball carried along on a swiftly-moving stream.  As you sense yourself flowing along on the surface of the rushing water, repeat to yourself the catch-phrase, Keep Moving.  As any particular thoughts, emotions, or memories arise, visualize each as a rock or branch sticking out of the water that you bump into and then flow around.  With some practice, visualize yourself flowing around them before even reaching them.  With more practice, hold on to this sensation and carry it around with you in your everyday activities, keeping your attention moving with the present moment.  Whenever something threatens to capture your attention and hold it back, return to the sense of it being an obstacle in the stream that you are flowing around as you repeat the catch-phrase, Keep Moving.

Exercise Two—Feel your pulse.  Sense this unbroken string of heartbeats as the stream upon which you are riding.  Lean forward psychologically into the next heartbeat, not allowing your attention to linger on the one just passing.  Bring your attention to the living moment and it will eventually stop returning to revisit the dead memories of individual heartbeats long passed.  As you cut the anchor holding you in place against the current of your own ever-flowing awareness, repeat to yourself the catch-phrase, Next…….Next……Next……

Please keep in mind that freeing the attention from fixation is not the goal of this training—it is just the second step on the path of inner transformation.  Enter into this training regimen with patience, keeping in mind how diligently musicians and athletes train in order to achieve peak performance.  And study your attention closely, keeping in mind that its dwelling on things already past is, on a moment-to-moment basis, the principal obstacle keeping you from fully experiencing the spontaneous, adaptable, and confident sense of self that you came into the world with.

~

The above is an excerpt from The Spiritual Basis of Good Fortune by William Douglas Horden.

If you’d like to learn more, visit the website:  http://spiritualbasisofgoodfortune.com/

~

The Toltec I Ching, by Martha Ramirez-Oropeza and William Douglas Horden has just been released by Larson Publications.  It recasts the I Ching in the symbology of the Native Americans of ancient Mexico and includes original illustrations interpreting each of the hexagrams.  Its subtitle, 64 Keys to Inspired Action in the New World hints at its focus on the ethics of the emerging world culture.

Click here to go to the main site to see sample chapters, reviews and the link to Larson Publications for ordering the book.

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