The Art of Channeling

Posted on April 30, 2011 by William

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The Well of Wisdom and the Well of Art spring from the same Source

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I did not know that when I was being trained as a diviner, I was being trained as a writer.

My teacher at the time was not only an accomplished I Ching diviner with 35 years of practice—he was also an accomplished actor, author, and inventor.  From him I learned the single most valuable lesson of approaching the Oracle:  the One Mind is Itself the Storehouse of the Unknown.  The whole of the Great Mystery, everything that is Not-Yet, already exists fully-developed within the timeless and eternal Act of Creation that is the living engine of Universal Communion.

From this perspective, there is no difference between seeking foreknowledge from the Oracle and seeking inspiration for a creative endeavor:  it is all an act of channeling the One Mind.  After 40 years of practice all I can say is this:  I do not speak, I echo—I do not write, I transcribe.

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Creativity is in truth Receptivity

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If you are anything like me, then you can sincerely say that, on the most fundamental and personal level, you do not know anything at all.  This is not a matter of modesty—or even false modesty—but, rather, an essential honesty that recognizes the limitations of subjective experience in the face of the unfathomable mystery of objective reality.  Ultimately, of course, I do not even know for sure what I am, let alone where I am, what the full range of my choices are, or what I ought to be trying to accomplish.  It is this issue of certainty, I think you might agree, that defines our not-knowing:  because I cannot be absolutely certain of the most basic questions about either the nature of reality or my own nature, any other form of knowledge would be like placing frozen water atop ice—it would just be more personal opinions built on subjective experience.

My ordinary consciousness, in other words, is at the mercy of senses adapted to the human form within the cultural and natural environment as they exist in the historical era in which I am born.  Unless I am fortunate enough to be born into a family and culture that encourage me from the very beginning to allow the One Mind to express Itself through me without any of the social conditioning that covers over my true nature, I  develop a social identity that comes to replace the unconditioned awareness making up the true self of all.  It is this day-to-day conscious personality that must face its lack of certainty about its own existence and the nature of existence in general—or else I run the real risk of mistaking the conditioned self for my true nature and my subjective experience for real knowledge.

On a practical level, then, the personality alone is adequate neither to the task of interpreting the perennial truth for the historical epoch nor to the task of expressing the eternal Act of Creation in a new artistic form.  If we wish to speak for the Oracle, then we must set aside our own ideas and attune ourselves to the Oracle’s all-at-once view.  If we wish to create art, then we must set aside our own intentions and attune ourselves to the seasons of the Mind Flower.

This is called Clearing a lodging place for the One.  It means that we empty our attention of all the habit thoughts, feelings, and memories that make up the conditioned mind so that the original mind has a place to stay.

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Make of Yourself a Nest for the Phoenix

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There are, of course, many different techniques—most of them involving some form of meditation—for emptying our attention of the habit mind, so I will avoid describing any specific technique.  My concern here is not so much the how of emptying but, rather, the underlying process of experiencing that state—

It is said by the ancients:  Everything we know about spirit we learn by analog from nature.  This is because it is held axiomatic that nature is the visible half of spirit, signifying that we can discern the ways of spirit by observing the symbolic behavior of nature.  This practice produces analogs such as the following—

  • Nature abhors a vacuum:  clear out an empty place in nature and life will rush in to fill it.
  • Spirit abhors a vacuum:  clear out an empty place in awareness and spirit will rush in to fill it.

This means that our personal consciousness must voluntarily step aside and allow a state of absolute openness to replace it.  While some might describe this as an altered state of consciousness, it can only be thought of like that from the point of view of ordinary consciousness.  It is, in reality, a return to our original nature, as pointed at in the ancient question:  What is your original nature before your mother and father met?

This original mind is not of the linear word-by-word thinking that fills our ordinary consciousness.  Nor is it a somnambulistic state devoid of all awareness.  Rather, it is a wide-awake state of spatial awareness in which we are thinking without words.  It is wide-awake in the sense that it is fully aware.  It is spatial in the sense that it abides-in-place.  It thinks without words in the sense that original thought comes as images whose meaning arrives full-blown, spontaneously revealing their emotional and symbolic content all-at-once instead of in linear language.  This what is meant by the ancient saying, Enliven the mind without producing a single thought.

  • Stop thinking in words—Make a place for the One Mind to rush in!
  • Stop imagining what original nature is—What is it that wants to be spoken?
  • Stop identifying with the familiar—Is this the limit of awareness?
  • Stop dreaming in dualities—Individuals differ only in their sensitivity to the One Mind!

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We Are I Am

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What I have been taught is that hearing the One Mind speaking is a matter of regenerating a sense organ that has atrophied from disuse.  This can also be thought of in esoteric terms as the lizard regrowing its tail.  Our ability to hear the One Mind, in other words, is one we are born with—and one that becomes covered over by the conscious mind that makes up the sum of the body’s experiences.  Regenerating our innate sensitivity to the One depends, then, simply on breaking the personality’s habit thoughts, emotions and memories.  Even the briefest interruption in the habit-mind reopens the channel of communion.  This can be most effectively achieved by concentrating on silently repeating the word Enough! all the time that our attention is not actively engaged in external activities.  Keeping to this exercise for a month or two—instead of reinforcing the same old internal monologue—extinguishes the habit-mind and allows the original mind to commune with the One Mind.  This can also be thought of in esoteric terms as mental fasting.

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Wonder and Listen

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Once the habit-mind is quieted, The Art Of Channeling consists of maintaining a particular kind of curiosity.  This feels like a very gentle, unfocused wondering, a gentle receptivity to a barely-perceived line of thought, a wide-open interest, that evokes a response from the One.  This subtle communion grows stronger and easier to sustain with practice but in the beginning can be difficult to perceive and fraught with paradox.  Foremost among its contradictions is this:  we need to step back into an awareness-without-words in order to translate the One Mind’s thoughts into words.

I believe it is advantageous to think of the One Mind as the source of all Ideas.  And to think of each creation as the manifestation of one of its Ideas.  And, to be more explicit, to think of ourselves as Ideas of the One Mind.  In this sense, channeling the thoughts of the One Mind depends on experiencing our self as one such Idea and then following our own nature back to its source.  Returning to the One in our quintessential aspect of Idea establishes an umbilical relationship through which thought flows.  This can also be thought of in esoteric terms as a lightning bolt, which is formed when two potential poles—one on land and one in the sky—connect.

The One Mind is Itself the Storehouse of the Unknown:  Whether we approach it as the well of wisdom or the well of art, we approach with the kind of reverence due the source of inspiration.  Whether we are interpreting the Oracle’s landmarks mapping the inner landscape or giving new forms of expression to the creative thought of the One, we engage the Source of all Ideas as a timeless manifestation of one of those Ideas returning home.  From this perspective, The Art Of Channeling consists of keeping watch at the Gate of Coming and Going Ideas.


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I am deeply gratified that “The Toltec I Ching” has been selected a Silver Winner of the 2010 Nautilus Book Awards. My deepest gratitude extends to my co-author, Martha Ramirez-Oropeza and our enlightened publishers, Larson Publications.

“The Toltec I Ching,” by Martha Ramirez-Oropeza and William Douglas Horden has 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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I also have two new books published that present the short course in self-realization, expanding on many of the themes above:  The Five Emanations and The Spiritual Basis of Good Fortune.  Please take a look at them if you think they might be of interest.

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Posted in Mysticism | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 6 Comments

The Tao of Enlightenment

Posted on April 5, 2011 by William

Within the mind there is yet another mind.

~Nei-yeh, trans. Harold D. Roth

The concept of the Tao (the Way) has profoundly impacted world culture, most notably through the many translations of the Tao Te Ching and the Chuang Tzu. Its impact on ancient China was foundational, in the sense that it gave rise to Taoist religion, spirituality, cosmology, theory of statecraft and war, social relationships, painting, poetry, medicine, and alchemy. Moreover, Taoism became interwoven with Buddhism from India, giving birth to Chan Buddhism (later known as Zen when transplanted to Japan). It is also closely associated with the I Ching (Book of Changes).

What has most fascinated me about Taoist thought, though, are its roots in mysticism and efforts to establish a protocol whereby practitioners might experience the personal awakening often referred to as enlightenment. This is a tradition that can be traced back to Taoism’s earliest written text, the Nei-yeh (Inward Training), which was produced well before the more famous Tao Te Ching and Chuang Tzu.

The Tao, as the Way, may be best conceived of as the Way of Nature. Practitioners are encouraged to increase their sensitivity to the more subtle forces both within their environment and themselves (for example, through feng shui and t’ai chi, respectively). This recognition of the similarity of forces at work externally and internally proves instrumental in providing a first-hand experience of the unity of subject and object, which forms the very basis of the mystical experience.

This particularly shows up in the Taoist appreciation of naturalness. When turned outward, this appreciation produced some of the most sublime art and poetry based on a spontaneous identification with the places and seasons of nature. When turned inward, on the other hand, naturalness was used to make practitioners aware of their own original nature that exists prior to any familial or cultural conditioning. This inward training forms the basis of Taoist mind-body-spirit exercises aimed at returning the practitioner to the natural state of enlightenment.

If you are able to cast off sorrow, happiness, joy, anger, desire, and profit-seeking,
Your mind will just revert to equanimity.
The true condition of the mind
Is that it finds calmness beneficial and, by it, attains repose.
Do not disturb it, do not disrupt it
And harmony will naturally develop.

~Nei-yeh, trans. Harold D. Roth

The true condition of the mind is something we already possess–all that is needed is to empty ourselves of the conditioned reflexes we’ve acquired being raised in the historical era in which we are born. This emptying process is undertaken in a meditative state in which all the various objects of thought are progressively withdrawn from attention, until we arrive at an open awareness that is not clouded by habitual thoughts, emotions, and memories. This is not conceived of as something necessarily difficult–the mind and body naturally tend toward this empty state when all the external stimuli are withdrawn.

There is a numinous [mind] naturally residing within; One moment it goes, the next it comes,
And no one is able to conceive of it.
If you lose it you are inevitably disordered;
If you attain it you are inevitably well-ordered.
Diligently clean out its lodging place
And its vital essence will naturally arrive.
Still your attempts to reflect on it and control it.
Be reverent and diligent
And its vital essence will naturally stabilize.
Grasp it and don’t let go
Then the eyes and ears won’t overflow
And the mind will have nothing else to seek.

~Nei-yeh, trans. Harold D. Roth

This “cleaning out its lodging place” is the emptying out process, a stilling of the conditioned mind so that the original mind might be fully experienced. As the above text demonstrates, it is not just our habit thoughts that need to be stilled but even our own imaginings of what the enlightened state is.

The Way fills the entire world.
It is everywhere that people are,
But people are unable to understand this.
When you are released by this one word:
You reach up to the heavens above;
You stretch down to the earth below;
You pervade the nine regions.
What does it mean to be released by it?
The answer resides in the calmness of your mind.
When your mind is well-ordered, your senses are well-ordered.
When your mind is calm, your senses are calmed.
What makes them well-ordered is the mind;
What makes them calm is the mind.
By means of the mind you store the mind:
Within the mind there is yet another mind.
That mind within the mind: it is an awareness that precedes words.

~Nei-yeh, trans. Harold D. Roth

Here we encounter what may be the original protocol for awakening upon which later Taoist practices were based. First, we are encouraged to make ourselves sensitive to the Way that fills the entire world. This leads us to the experience of being released from our strictly human perceptions by identifying with this one word, the Way, so that our own awareness suddenly fills up the entire world along with the Way. This release into a higher awareness is established through a profound calmness of mind that is mirrored in the body’s calm. By reverting to this natural state of tranquility and then cultivating it through repetition, we experience the deeper awareness beneath the ordinary consciousness that we have come to think of as “mind”.

It is at this point that the really remarkable insight emerges to point us toward the awakened state: the original mind is an awareness that exists before language. Now we see that the early Taoists concentrated on experiencing the all-at-once kind of spatial awareness that exists prior to the linear thinking-in-words, timebound, consciousness of daily life. Nearly a thousand years after the Nei-yeh was written, the Sixth Patriarch of Chan, Huineng, would be spontaneously enlightened upon hearing a similar teaching from the later Diamond Sutra: “Enliven your mind without producing a single thought”. More than five hundred years later, the great Zen teacher, Dogen, would further this teaching: “Think not-thinking”.

Taoism is, for all its esoteric roots, a practical philosophy of life, one in which enlightenment is not seen as an end unto itself but, rather, a naturally occurring state of profound harmony with all things that manifests as the purest form of participation in life.

Those who can transform even a single thing, call them “numinous”; Those who can alter ever a single situation, call them “wise”.
But to transform without expending vital energy; to alter without expending wisdom:
Only exemplary persons who hold fast to the One are able to do this.
Hold fast to the One; do not lose it,
And you will be able to master the myriad things.
Exemplary persons act upon things,
And are not acted upon by them,
Because they grasp the guiding principle of the One.

~Nei-yeh, trans. Harold D. Roth

Having awakened to the enlightened state, the sage is one who returns to daily life while maintaining contact with that transcendent awareness. By holding fast to the one Way that fills the entire world, sages are spontaneously and un-self-consciously participating in life as instruments of the Way: like the Tao, they act upon things and are not acted upon by things. They are able to change things for the better without clinging to concepts like “being spiritual” or “being wise”. They have grasped the Way of the One and returned to the natural state of uncontrived and unpremeditated benevolence.

As I hinted at in the beginning of this post, Taoism is a wide-ranging tradition with different forms of expression that have multiplied over the millennia. The material presented here is intended to point back to the original teachings of the Tao, in particular its practices of awakening individuals to their full potential. There is no better entry into those original teachings that Harold D. Roth’s highly esteemed translation and exposition of the Nei-yeh in his book, Original Tao: Inward Training and the Foundations of Taoist Mysticism.

I had the very great pleasure of interviewing Dr. Roth on my radio show a while back. That file can be downloaded here.

Brief as this overview of the Way of Enlightenment is, it is my hope that it echoes the essential teachings in a way that both those familiar and unfamiliar with the Tao find useful.

***

I am deeply gratified that “The Toltec I Ching” has been selected a Silver Winner of the 2010 Nautilus Book Awards. My deepest gratitude extends to my co-author, Martha Ramirez-Oropeza and our enlightened publishers, Larson Publications.

“The Toltec I Ching,” by Martha Ramirez-Oropeza and William Douglas Horden has 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.

Posted in Mysticism | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

The Yin and Yang of the Culture War

Posted on March 3, 2011 by William

Those who want war are instruments of ill omen.
—Tao Te Ching, trans. Thomas Cleary

I went to the Cirque du Soleil’s “Love” performance of The Beatles’ music last week and was struck by the sheer fun of it all.

The costumes and acrobatics are as stunning as you’d expect, of course. But what defies expectations is the feeling of the show itself, which reflects back to us a time when the Left took the Right utterly by surprise and, for a short while, ran rampant like tiny nimble mammals between the hulking legs of slow-witted dinosaurs.

It is a celebration, in other words, of a time when the pendulum of the Culture War swung in the other direction. The audience, spectacularly multi-cultural, loved the show — as much for reminding them that reality doesn’t have to be oppressive, I suspect, as for the skill and art of the entertainers.

Since I am old enough to remember those days half a century past, I hope I am old enough to have gained some perspective on the whole matter of culture, history and the future.

My worldview is grounded in ideas that sprouted in ancient China at least 4,000 years ago, particularly those pertaining to the way that change occurs. Based on their observations of nature — and the way human beings internalize nature to make it part of their collective psyche — the ancient Taoists conceived of the world as created and maintained by the interaction of two complementary forces, Yin and Yang. Like the two poles of a magnet, or like the shaded and sunny sides of a mountain, they were not conceived as independent or mutually exclusive. Yin and Yang, when not disturbed, sought a harmonious balance that benefited the whole.

And because these twin forces were observed at work in human nature as much as nature itself, they became the primary way to describe how individuals and societies change over time. In this sense, Yin was associated with the moon and Yang with the sun, and then, through further associations, Yin came to symbolize the feminine half of the world and Yang the masculine half. This kind of symbolization proved astute, since it carried down to the individual level, where each person, regardless of gender, was seen to possess a feminine half and a masculine half to their psyche. Somewhere between the great cosmological Yin and Yang making up the whole of the universe and the unique Yin and Yang making up the whole of each individual, there lies civilization itself — a unified whole whose social changes are driven by the relationship between its Yin and Yang halves.

The closer I look at our nation here in North America at the beginning of the 21st century, the more I am struck by the polarization taking root and threatening to tear us apart. The feminine and masculine halves of our society are settling into antagonistic mindsets that could take generations to reconcile. It is resulting in a culture war that is spilling over our borders and impacting the rest of civilization.

When one half attempts to dominate the other, polarization sets in, the natural balance between necessary alternatives is disrupted and the will to turn back from a downward spiral of self-destruction becomes harder and harder to sustain.

The Yin half of our society today is found in the Left, whose concerns for the collective welfare manifest in the Progressive agenda advocating social change in the arenas of health care reform, a social services safety net for the poor and disenfranchised, environmental protection and equal rights for all citizens, to name a few. In this sense, Progressives represent the feminine half of our culture, whose priorities are justice and humaneness.

The Yang half of our society today is found on the Right, whose concerns for the collective welfare manifest in the Conservative agenda advocating social restoration of cultural stability, national homogeneity, global supremacy and governance by Judeo-Christian values, to name a few. In this sense, Conservatives represent the masculine half of our culture, whose priorities are national sovereignty and wealth preservation.

It is easy for Progressives to view the Right as paranoid warmongers who side with dictators and multi-national corporations to maintain an obsolete world of national borders, when the thrust of history and technology is rushing us toward a single world of social and environmental harmony. It is just as easy for Conservatives to view the Left as deluded idealists willing to destroy the soul of America with socialism and abdicate the destiny of America to lead the world into an era of universal progress.

This kind of stereotyping has led to a deep divide of distrust and disdain that cannot be bridged without mutual respect based on a widespread recognition of equal importance.

One yin and one yang make a tao.
—I Ching, or Book of Changes

Tao is the union of Yin and Yang. It is the Way of wholeness and the well-being of the whole. It defies definition or description because its unchanging principal is constant change. It is an underlying harmony that, like water, simply benefits everything it touches. It is translated as The Way, implying the single road all of creation travels together from a common origin toward a common destination.

Right and Left are going to have to recognize the importance of the role each plays in the well-being of the whole. If we do not accept one another and join in conversation where multiple points of view are respected and given due consideration, then we are doomed to a disastrous culture war that both sides will inevitably lose because they couldn’t stop trying to win every minor battle.

This is more than simply a matter of compromise. If the Right doesn’t recognize the value in social diversity and authentic compassion, then it risks becoming a police state occupying its own nation. If the Left doesn’t recognize the value in consolidating power in a time of historical transition, then it risks falling into the kind of social anarchy and rampant criminality that have recently befallen other nations.

Knowing the Male,
But staying with the Female,
One becomes the humble Valley of the World.
— Tao Te Ching, trans. Chang Chung-Yuan

For the ancient Taoists, the Valley is the symbol of abundance shared by all; it is where rivers run and food grows and cities flourish. The above quote implies that by holding the strength of the Yang masculine half in reserve while enacting the universal goodwill of the Yin feminine half, we can make of ourselves a benevolent nation devoid of high-handed arrogance.

It will take more than simply tolerating one another, however. We are going to have to appreciate one another, recognizing that resources have to be channeled according to circumstances, not ideology. And we are going to have to filter out the divisive rantings of extremists on both sides, keeping in mind that we all share the common goal of national well-being. To paraphrase the Tao Te Ching, “Those who want culture war are instruments of ill omen.”

Something more profound than a truce will have to be declared between Yin and Yang in the culture war, for this is not, after all, a real war in which there can ever be a victor — it is a marriage from which there can be no divorce.

We are going to have to see each other as having the best of motives with complementary priorities. We are going to have to quite thinking in issues and stands and begin trusting one another to fulfill our respective roles. We are going to have to stop blaming one another for past betrayals and begin moving forward together. We are going to have to stop listening to the vicious in-laws in politics, commerce, religion and the media sniping from the sidelines to keep this power struggle alive. And we are going to have to shake off this mood of oppression and make this nation fun again.

We are, in a word, going to have to fall in love with one another all over again.

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This article first appeared in the Huffington Post on Feb. 25th, 2011.

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The Toltec I Ching, by Martha Ramirez-Oropeza and William Douglas Horden has just received a Silver Award in the 2010 Nautilus Awards.  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.

~

Posted in Inner Activism | Tagged , , , , | 3 Comments

2012: The Beginning Times

Posted on December 21, 2010 by William

Across the imaginary distance of culture and borders, I honor your contribution to the Beginning Times.

~

A dying oak tree, its trunk split and branches breaking, does not in any way resemble an acorn.

The new beginning—despite growing directly out of the remains of the old—does not resemble what it replaces.

While it is imperative to recognize endings before they arrive, it is self-defeating to dwell on them:  Endings serve to direct our attention to the new beginning already starting to unfold.  The Book of Changes is not simply about the art of avoiding misfortune—its deeper intent is to instruct us in the art of arriving ahead of time at the meeting place of good fortune.

An acorn, bright and gleaming in the palm of a hand, does not in any way resemble the giant oak tree dominating the forest clearing hundreds of years later.  And this is a critical lesson of the I Ching—one of context and chance and perseverance.  For, the same acorn that falls in a level fertile field and grows to great height and prominence will grow stunted and gnarled should it fall among rocks on the crags of a cliff face.  The same acorn.

Everyone recognizes that the old is ending.  Everyone.  Worldwide.  The question of concern is, What kind of ground are we preparing for this seed of the new?

The ancients had an accurate sense of the length of time that the pendulum of change takes to swing out to its extreme and reverse the passions of human nature.  Across numerous cultures, the ancients accurately foresaw that this time, the historical epoch in which we are living, would be the turning point for civilization to realize the dream of a Golden Age of peace and prospering for all.

That these are The Beginning Times.

Among those prophesies is the Mayan calendar, whose 5,000-year Long Count of 13 baktuns comes to an end on the Winter Solstice of 2012.  Because the Mesoamerican calendar itself was not in use 5,000 years ago (it is perhaps 3,000 years old, imaginably 4,000 years old), it means that the Maya chose a symbolic starting date for their calendar that would end on a specific date.

A specific symbolic date. 

A date that would get our attention.

This accomplishment of the ancients, to accurately set their calendar to end on the Winter Solstice several thousand years in the future, is a testament to their care and concern for the future.  It is like a message in a bottle washing up on the shore of our island of the present, reminding us of the dreams that our common ancestors carried in their hearts for the coming generations.

It is a symbolic date, not one to be taken literally.  As the old saying goes, Don’t look at the finger pointing at the moon—look at the moon.  It is meant to get our attention, not to become the object of our attention.  As I have noted previously, the actual turning point began to first show itself in 1998.  The reversal of direction that the Mayan calendar points to is this space of time, wherein the old regime of conflict and competition withers and falls, collapsing under its own weight, no longer supported by the beliefs or actions of those it subjugates.  This reversal of direction is predictable because the seasons of human nature are knowable—it is not the direction of outer conditions that the 2012 date points to but, rather, the reversal of beliefs and values within human nature.  When the collective conscience of humanity can no longer be cowed into accepting the desecration of its own nature, then what emerges from the ashes of its old beliefs and values is a united humanity bent on no longer desecrating its relationship with nature and spirit.

Those who cannot believe that sudden and rapid change can, nearly overnight, reverse the course of whole nations simply do not understand the unconscious longings of the human heart.  The longer that people’s true desires are repressed by force and intimidation, the more sudden and more profound the reversal of beliefs and actions.  The dying giant is split and cracking—but what we need to focus on is finding the common ground within which to plant and nurture civilization’s new beginning.

2012 Metamorphosis

As I write here on my little hilltop in Southern Oregon, the Winter Solstice of 2010 has arrived.  It is an auspicious event because it is the first Winter Solstice in centuries to coincide with a lunar eclipse.  For those who have been trained to sense the Qi of the world, the extreme of yin is sinking to its utmost depths, just on the cusp of the turning point back toward yang.  At the apogee of the eclipse, the earth’s shadow moves on and the full moon’s light begins to wax again.  At the height of Winter’s cold and dark, Spring’s warmth and light is born.

A full season ago, on the Autumnal Equinox, I consulted the Oracle, asking this question:  What can humanity expect with the approach of 2012? In the Oracle’s answer, the events around the 2012 turning point predict a time of growing authoritarianism that, once transcended, will usher in a prolonged period of global reconciliation.

More specifically, it points to a crisis that we, as humanity, have confronted before and failed to resolve in a beneficial way for all.  With the approach of 2012, we have the opportunity to face that collective dilemma again.  Although the official reaction will reflexively try to repeat the same mistake as before, a groundswell of enlightened goodwill that transcends borders will unite people everywhere in a positive and constructive response—one that overrides the authoritarianism of religions and governments and sets in motion those metamorphic forces of nonviolence and noninterference that give rise to the harmonious and creative civilization our collective ancestors dreamed for us.

In my ongoing effort to expand on this message and present its ramifications as transparently as possible, I have executed the classic transformation of the reading’s hexagrams into their nuclear hexagrams.  This transformation produces a new pair of hexagrams that represent the underlying forces at work beneath the surface of events.  The hidden motivations, the unconscious currents, the dreams demanding expression.

The primary hexagram of the 2012 reading is #54 Repeating Test.  Its nuclear hexagram is #63 Awakening Self-Sufficiency.

This is interesting because this same hexagram appeared as the future outcome in my June 2009 reading as the answer to my question, At what crossroads does our global civilization stand now—and in what direction does good fortune lie?

For those not yet familiar with the Toltec spirit warrior, it is defined as a woman or man who trains to defeat their own enemy-within (which is in turn defined as their self-defeating habits of thought, emotion and memory).  We can see that there is a growing movement of individuals worldwide who have taken up such training—which appears under different names—in order to restore humaneness to our collective life.  It is this metamorphosis of individuals that is striking the spark to the kindling-nest so that the phoenix might arise more glorious from its ashes.

As a nuclear hexagram, #63 speaks to the unconscious desire to free ourselves from those baser instincts that divide us as a people from ourselves, nature and the sacred.  As its text illustrates, this hexagram seeks autonomy from that which trivializes human nature by seeking to restore its full creative power.  It is a nuclear hexagram that overcomes outer conflict by understanding that the instincts dividing us are universal to all people and, so, constitute the very source of our inevitable unity.

Image:  A great feathered serpent hatches out of the earth as if from an egg.  Its feathers are adorned with conch shells and it senses its surroundings with its bifurcated tongue.

Interpretation:  This hexagram represents the great forces released by the accumulated efforts of spirit warriors over the ages.  The feathered serpent symbolizes the collective intent and vision shared by spirit warriors in every time and every place.  That it hatches from the earth as if from an egg means that the community of spirit incubating within the material world emerges as a living, dynamic force of creation.  The conches adorning its feathers symbolize the call for all to join the community of spirit.  Its bifurcated tongue symbolizes the duality that is one.  That it uses its bifurcated tongue to sense its surroundings means that you are attuned to the universal presence of the masculine and feminine creative forces.  Taken together, these symbols mean that you align yourself with those whose only need is to bring benefit to their surroundings.

Action:  The spirit warrior reverses the flow of power, channeling it inside instead of outside:  by storing up power internally rather than expending it externally, we are able to both free ourselves of habits and gain control over our actions.  This inner autonomy also extricates us from social influences that strive to mold us into obedient marionettes even as it allows us to be more tolerant of the deeper motives of those social influences.  From the spirit warrior’s perspective, the original intent of religion is to awaken the higher soul to its potential freedom while purifying the lower soul of fear, greed, envy, and hate—just as the original intent of government is to awaken the higher soul to its responsibility to others while instilling in the lower soul the capacity for self-control.  From this perspective, the fact that religion and government acquire ulterior motives over time and begin to act in their own self-interest merely demonstrates that they are managed by human beings and must be viewed accordingly.  Similarly, the fact that all religions and governments strive to awaken the higher soul and purify the lower soul—even when they have forgotten how and why—simply demonstrates that the quest for metamorphosis is a universal and irresistible force.  Just as our inner autonomy releases us from the trap of depending on social influences for our sense of self, in other words, it also releases us from the trap of not seeing how those social influences contribute, however unintentionally, to the gradual unification of humanity.  Reversing the flow of power, we gain inner autonomy and, paradoxically, become one with the universal civilizing force.

Intent:  The wise become independent even from what they revere.  Like children who are grown up and independent of the parents they love and admire, spirit warriors take their place among the community of spiritual equals.  Because you use this lifetime to bring the most benefit to others, you incubate the higher soul that is preparing to hatch from the lower soul:  joining in the collective labor shared by spirit warriors in every time and every place, you contribute directly to both the fulfillment of humanity’s destiny and the creator’s vision.  Becoming part of the universal civilizing spirit, you contribute directly to the founding of a free and harmonious world of equals right here within this world.

Summary:  Only the body marks the passage of time—for the soul, there is only this everlasting moment of growing.  Let five rivers of energy come in through the senses, let them run together into a sea of growing power.  Do not expend it on petty thoughts, moods, or goals.  Send forth your rain clouds only to water the valuable.  Condense intent into actions that foster peace and prosperity for all.  Your success is inevitable.

The derived hexagram that appears in the 2012 reading is #2 Sensing Creation.  Its nuclear hexagram is #39 Reviving Tradition.  As the future outcome, #2 Sensing Creation is profoundly inspirational.  It presages a time of worldwide reconciliation and heartfelt collaboration towards an emerging vision of what civilization might become.

As its nuclear hexagram, #39 Reviving Tradition reminds us that our common ancestors lived closer to the time of creation than we do.  It shows that the underlying forces of #2 Sensing Creation are part of the emerging reversion to values and beliefs grounded in a more traditional—and meaningful—lifeway.  This could have evolved into a time in which the reversion to traditional values and beliefs led to greater conflict and confrontation, but the movement into #2 assures us that the mistakes we have made in the past will no longer be repeated.  This is because the general amnesty and forgiveness of past wrongs is based not upon the surface differences between traditions but, rather, upon their shared foundation in the sacredness of everything.

Image:  The ancient spirit of fire takes the form of a male warrior, who is made part of the land by the roots growing like veins through his body and the earth.  His arm is raised, greeting the long line of people in shadow that approach him.  Another line of people, their torches rekindled, depart in light.

Interpretation:  This hexagram depicts the ancestors’ inheritance passing from individual to individual and from generation to generation.  The ancient spirit of fire symbolizes the universal tradition of fire-making, whose timeless ritual unites all people in a common heritage.  The male warrior symbolizes the self-discipline and training needed to stand against greed, ambition, and materialism.  That he is made part of the land means that you find your spiritual home in the site of your own lifetime.  The long line of people in shadow is a symbol of those seeking to find their way back to a balanced and harmonious way of life.  The line of people departing with torches rekindled is a symbol of those who find the light of the ancestors inside their own hearts and carry it through the darkness of their own time.  Taken together, these symbols mean that you resist spiritual erosion the way a mountain of righteousness stands against the wind of corruption and the rain of meaninglessness.

Action:  The masculine half of the spirit warrior views everything as a buried treasure left behind by the spiritual ancestors for their descendants.  It is a time for holding fast to what lasts rather than getting distracted by the novel or overwhelmed by the fleeting.  Avoid participating in the fads and fashions of the day, seeking instead to uphold the values and world view of a more spiritual time.  This means, first and foremost, respecting and honoring all that is not human:  when matter is seen as devoid of spirit, then nature can be desecrated without a second thought; when one form of nature is seen as devoid of spirit, then all forms of life can be desecrated without a second thought; when one form of life is seen as devoid of spirit, then human beings can desecrate one another without a second thought.  For this reason, the spirit warrior sees the world as the divine homeland shared by the living and the dead and those not yet born.  Recognizing that meaningfulness is hidden from those who attack it, you look into the secret heart of things and see the One Spirit of creation everywhere you look.  Recognizing that meaningfulness is an open secret to all but the greedy, ambitious, and materialistic, you bury the treasure again in your own turn so that your descendants will find their secret heart.

Intent:  Even though you feel out of step with the wounded spirit of the time, you are actively involved in healing it:  recognizing that its illness is meaninglessness, you feed it the medicine of meaningfulness day and night throughout your life.  Just as the fire of light and warmth must be fed wood and air to continue burning, the spirit of the time must be fed the joy and insights born of meaningfulness if it is to continue living:  without the tradition of meaningful consecration to feed it, the spirit of the time will eventually die and be replaced by that of meaningless desecration.  For this reason, the spirit warrior keeps alive the ancient tradition of training every thought and feeling to reflect the hidden sacredness of every moment.

Summary:  The more you put the world view of the ancients into practice, the more you have to offer others.  Be generous with what you have learned but do not stop learning:  just as people depend on a well for their water, the well depends on the invisible river below ground for its water.  Assume that you will understand matters better in the future and act with a corresponding degree of humility.

The 2012 reading, with all its associated meanings, reminds us to reject utterly the paranoiac heart-mind of this wounded age that would have us dwell in the irrational belief that unseen forces are conspiring to do us ill.  Rather, it reminds us to keep in mind the definition of the word Pronoia:  the irrational belief that unseen forces are conspiring to do us good.  It is irrational only in the sense that spirit warriors do not confine their efforts to the rational world.

It is two years exactly now until the Winter Solstice of 2012 arrives.  Priest-diviners everywhere are focusing the generative energy of their intent on plowing the field of the World Soul to receive the rain of spirit seeds already falling and taking root in the open heart of human nature.

~

Across the imaginary distance of culture and borders, I honor your contribution to the Beginning Times.

~

The Toltec I Ching, by Martha Ramirez-Oropeza and William Douglas Horden has just received a Silver Award in the 2010 Nautilus Awards.  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.

~

Posted in 2012, The Toltec I Ching | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 6 Comments

Constructing Nuclear Hexagrams

Posted on December 17, 2010 by William

I was unable to find a simple chart of how to construct nuclear hexagrams, so here’s the unadorned mechanics—

Of a given hexagram, take its 2nd, 3rd, and 4th lines to make the lower trigram of its nuclear hexagram.  Then take its 3rd, 4th, and 5th lines to make the upper trigram of its nuclear hexagram.

Here’s a simple example:

~

Posted in The Toltec I Ching | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Near Death Experience: Journey of Two Souls

Posted on December 6, 2010 by William

I was fully awake when my heart stopped beating and my last breath passed my lips.

In the Spring of 2003, a genetic time bomb went off and my body’s time came to an end.  The moment of death was upon me at age fifty-three and I found it a curious thing indeed.  People around me grew quite excited but an untroubled calm came over me, carrying me further and further away from the scene, as if moving me to an invisible but familiar place just sideways to where my body lay.  The sirens of the ambulance were soft and melodic, the questions of the emergency room doctors sounded like a different language.

Minutes after they placed me on the emergency room table and fit an oxygen mask over my face, I felt my heart stop beating and I sighed my last breath.  There was the briefest pause while my personality puzzled that I did not gasp for breath nor seem concerned that my body had just died—and then it was suddenly cradled in my higher soul and I was catapulted, for that is the only word for it, catapulted, wide awake, out of my body and into the Sphere of Universal Communion.

My whole life, it turned out, had been practice for the moment of dying:  my higher soul stepped forward, speaking reassuringly about how it had been through this so many times before.  While my lower soul, this lifetime’s personality, went mute in the face of the vast Unknown, my higher soul catapulted into It with one last sigh of joy and gratitude, What a glorious Creation!

I was fully awake when I entered the Sphere of Universal Communion.

How do I know that is it’s true name?  I don’t.  I’m not even sure it’s possible for it to have a single true name.  But the Sphere of Universal Communion is what I saw and what I felt and it’s the only true name I can imagine, the only one I can use to describe it at all.

It appeared to me as a sphere of light, but light that is aware.  Light that is awareness.  Not something so much seen—since we have no physical eyes without a body—as sensed.  Something like the warmth of sunlight even when your eyes are squeezed shut.  But with the additional sense of someone present, close by, their attention resting on the edges of your awareness gently.  An aware light that is both the substance and the medium of communion within its own spherical spatiality.  An aware light that creates and sustains the possibility of shared awareness on a universal basis.  Within its infinite spatiality.

I was fully awake when I realized I was myself a sphere of communion.

A sphere of aware light.

Surrounded by an infinite number of other spheres of aware light.

So, as I experienced it, the Sphere of Universal Communion is an infinite space of aware light that is occupied by all the individual spheres of aware light that ever have or ever will exist.  As if it were the One Mind, occupied by all the individual Ideas it ever has or ever will conceive.  Or the timeless, dimensionless, Oversoul, occupied by all the individual souls that ever have or ever will enter the realm of time, space, and personality.  As I said, I do not pretend to know what it’s true name is, but the relation between the Whole and its parts—and between parts and parts—this I know and can still see with diamond clarity.

What can I still see of that bodiless state?

Each of us, as an individual sphere of communion is the embodiment of two complementary halves:  Understanding and Memory.  While Understanding is the principal characteristic of the higher soul, Memory is the principal characteristic of the lower soul.  Understanding is our individual portion of the limitless Knowledge of the One Soul, the evolving insight we possess into the Way of the One, our individual spark of immortality.  Memory, on the other hand, is the accumulated impressions of all the lifetimes we recall, the sum of all the personalities we have yoked to our soul, our enduring storehouse of mortal treasures.

Each of us, as an individual sphere of aware light, then, dwells in the Sphere of Universal Communion, a unique fusion of soul and personality, Understanding and Memory.  After the death of the body, the higher soul catapults back to the Sphere of Universal Communion.  If it is not yoked to the lower soul at that time, then it returns without any memory of that lifetime.  It has Understanding, perhaps greatly evolved by its experiences of that lifetime, but no direct Memory.  The personality, likewise, must be yoked to the soul at the moment of dying if its Memory is to accompany it to the Sphere of Universal Communion.  Otherwise, it wanders without Understanding, lost and confused among all the other disembodied personalities, unaware that they no longer have a body and are only reliving the Memory of their past lifetime.

It is for this reason that it is so important to unite the higher soul and lower soul during this lifetime, before the moment of dying arrives.

I was fully awake when I realized that whenever another sphere of aware light came into contact with me, there was an immediate and spontaneous exchange between us of our respective Memory and Understanding.  This is why I say we are individual spheres of communion within the Universal Sphere of Communion.  Because when we come into contact there, all that we know and all that we are passes uninhibited between us in a natural and open communion of shared being.  Spheres of aware light touch and so exchange the totality of their experience and assimilate one another’s experience into their own.

So I have come to believe from those experiences that all the individual spheres of communion are reflective of one another.

I was fully awake when all the individual spheres of communion came into contact with one another at the same time, breaking through every dam of individuality and flooding us all in the totality of our shared being.  This is why I suspect its name is the Sphere of Universal Communion—because when all the individual spheres of aware light periodically come into contact at the same time, every individual awareness that ever has or ever will exist is spontaneously and immediately At-One with the One.  I cannot say what it is that periodically draws all of us together at the same time but, cause aside, its effect is the complete and overwhelming experience of every drop of awareness in the ocean suddenly merging into the single sea of awareness.

So I have come to believe from those experiences that all the individual spheres of communion are relative to the Sphere of Universal Communion.

How have I come to believe these lessons?

Through my first-hand communion with other individual spheres of communion—and my first-hand communion with the Sphere of Universal Communion.

My body was dead for two minutes but for me, the time passed as if it were many years.

Other individual spheres of aware light, many of great depth of Understanding with the Memory of thousands of lifetimes, generously taught me lessons to bring back and place into the stream of time.  Such is the work of the great-souled ones, who care mightily that this era of transformation is one of metamorphosis and not one of atrophy.

There is one last thing I have come to believe since returning to this realm of the body and its five senses—

Although it is much more difficult to perceive here than in the Sphere of Universal Communion, we are no less individual spheres of communion here than we are there.  Once I had experienced what it feels like to recognize myself as a sphere of aware light in the bodiless state, I found I had become sensitive enough to perceive myself as that same sphere of communion here with a body.  And sensitive enough to recognize that everyone else is a similar sphere of aware light, as well.

Moreover, although it is more difficult to perceive the spontaneous and immediate exchange of Understanding and Memory that occurs when we individual spheres of communion come into contact here, it occurs nonetheless, even if not in our conscious awareness.

I have, in other words, been a wayfarer with a body and been a wayfarer without a body and have not ever found any essential difference.

So what I have come to believe moving from birth to death to rebirth is this:  just as learning to live is actually preparing to die, it is clear that preparing to die is actually learning to live.

It’s been nearly seven years since I died and I have been reticent to speak about it too soon, for fear of coloring my account with the profound emotions of the experience.  I have, of course, dedicated the remainder of this lifetime to giving expression to the lessons I learned in the Sphere of Universal Communion.

The Toltec I Ching is the first published work of that project.

~

The Toltec I Ching, by Martha Ramirez-Oropeza and William Douglas Horden has just received a Silver Award in the 2010 Nautilus Awards.  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.

~

Posted in Revenants | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 16 Comments

A 2012 Training Manual

Posted on October 3, 2010 by William

The Beginning Times

There are two overarching lessons of the I Ching.

The first is this:  Every Ending Begets A New Beginning.

Change is not conceived as an endless string of cause-and-effect events but, rather, as a cycle of repeating seasons that influence the cause-and-effect events within them.  Human actions and endeavors, in other words, are not viewed as independent of the time but, rather, are viewed in context of the season in which they occur.  In this sense, the linear progression of change is always set against the unchanging principle of cyclic change that underlies the unfolding of time.  For this reason, each of the hexagrams of the I Ching is experienced as a spatial expanse no less immediate and encompassing as Spring, let us say.  Or Autumn for that matter.

In the previous post, I published an oracle cast on the recent Autumnal Equinox.  In it the events around the 2012 turning point are presented as resulting in a growing authoritarianism that, once transcended, will usher in a time of global reconciliation.  More specifically, it points to a crisis that we, as humanity, have confronted before and failed to resolve in the most beneficial way for all.  With the approach of 2012, we have the opportunity to face our collective dilemma again and, although the official reaction will reflexively repeat the same mistake as before, a groundswell of enlightened goodwill that transcends borders will unite people everywhere in a positive and constructive response—one that overrides the authoritarianism of church and state and sets in motion those metamorphic forces of nonviolence and noninterference that give rise to the harmonious and creative civilization our collective ancestors dreamed for us.

Far from confronting the end times, in other words, we are on the cusp of entering the beginning times.

~

A Training Manual for the Road Ahead

The Toltec I Ching is, first and foremost, an Oracle, continuing the age-old practice of rendering the voice of the One intelligible to the contemporary mind.  By echoing the living words of the Spirit that continuously recreates the world, the Oracle manifests the universal civilizing influence caring for the entirety of creation, including humanity.  Because our thoughts and lives are part of the One, the Oracle enables us to anticipate each crossroads as it approaches and keep our feet firmly on the path of freedom.  To open our hearts to the hopes and dreams placed in us by all that has come before us is to sense the loving-kindness and  communion in the Oracle’s answers.

But, as its subtitle, 64 Keys to Inspired Action in the New World, implies, The Toltec I Ching is also a training manual of ethical strategies embodying the ideals and values of the emerging world culture.  The vision it presents is of a living universe in which everything is invested with spirit and, just like human beings, has a level of awareness that is constantly undergoing a process of metamorphosis.  Our transforming human nature is envisioned as the spirit warrior, defined as a woman or man who trains diligently to defeat her or his self-defeating habits of thought, emotion, and memory.  The Duality of the great creative forces that manifest the intent of the One in the form of the macrocosm, furthermore, are mirrored in the masculine and feminine halves making up the microcosm of every human being.

As said since ancient times, the metamorphosis of the whole is initiated by the metamorphosis of the individual—and it is the work of each spirit warrior that builds an ever-widening community of humaneness.  The 64 Keys to Inspired Action in the New World are embodied, of course, in the 64 hexagrams of the I Ching, each of which incorporates the core lessons of attaining good fortune, both individually and collectively.  This individual striving to benefit the whole is seen as the open secret of personal and collective good fortune:  by letting go self-interest, the spirit warrior metamorphoses into a well of benefit that allies her or him with others likewise making positive use of the law of spiritual cause-and-effect.  Like all truly proactive measures, these lessons do not merely help us avoid coming difficulties, but establish new attitudes and behaviors that actually help shape the emerging future.

The actual means of metamorphosis is the work of harmonizing the masculine and feminine halves inherent within each individual—and inherent, therefore, in every social institution.  Understanding that our feminine and masculine halves are microcosmic reflections of the macrocosmic creative forces empowers us to marshal our energies toward constructive actions and ennoble our intentions toward ever-widening circles of harmonious unity.  In the arena of social institutions, for example, the conservative tendencies within a nation that seeks to defend itself with military strength can be thought of as its masculine half, while its progressive tendencies to channel resources into social service programs and international diplomacy can be thought of as its feminine half.  How well these two halves reach a harmonious balance of power determines the longevity of the nation and the well-being of its people.

The step-by-step training of the spirit warrior is just this exercising of the masculine and feminine halves in response to the archetypal situations making up human experience.  Specifically, it is the blending and balancing of the our feminine and masculine halves as they alternate in our outer actions and inner intentions that is formulated in the hexagram-by-hexagram progress through the sequence of 64 hexagrams.  Each of the hexagrams has it own proportion of the feminine and masculine generative energy—or, in more traditional language, its own specific mixture of yin and yang qi—and the hexagrams are arranged in a sequence that activates and harmonizes the sacred duality within us.  Working our way through the sequence of hexagrams, in other words, cultivates the creative forces within us, setting our intentions and actions on a course of self-transformation that leads to ever-widening spheres of good fortune.

~

The Storm Before The Calm

Returning to the recent 2012 oracle provides us with the opportunity to see how the lessons embodied in the hexagrams provide us with ethical strategies and ennobling values during a time of profound social transformation.  Of the numerous hexagrams relevant to this situation, we will cite just two examples—

Concerning the first part of the Oracle’s answer, in which a rising tide of reactionary authoritarianism will need to be overcome, we can look to Hexagram #41 Feigning Compliance for inspiration:

Image:  A shadowy male warrior stands upon the coils of a great serpent, forcing it to submit to his will at spear point.  He has, however, mistaken the snake’s tail for its head, which rises above and behind him, ready to strike.

Interpretation:  The shadowy male warrior symbolizes those who seek to dominate others.  The point of the spear symbolizes force, whether in the form of aggression, threat, intimidation, or subversion.  The great serpent symbolizes the energy and power of those who resist domination.  Its coils symbolize the convolutions and intricacies of the strategy of invisible defiance.  That the serpent’s tail is shaped to look like its head means that you are able to disguise your true intent behind a mask of conformity.  That the serpent’s head is poised to strike means that you remain vigilant, neither missing any real opportunity for resistance nor getting lulled into a false sense of security.  Taken together, these symbols mean that you lull your captor into a false sense of security while awaiting the right moment to reclaim your freedom.

Action:  There is no true victory in force because those overcome eventually use the moral high ground to achieve their independence.  Such a turn of events is made inevitable by the fact that the spirit of those who oppress is progressively sickened by their past actions at just the time that the spirit of those oppressed is made progressively stronger and finer by the hardship they have endured.  Force corrupts those who use it and ennobles those who endure it.  For this reason, those who use force fail because they are brutish and short-sighted while those whose spirit cannot be dominated succeed because they are humane and wise.  When those who are stronger seek to dominate and control us then we must develop a strategy that ensures we defeat our oppressors without repeating their mistakes.  In this sense, it is necessary that we commit beforehand to making no attempt to exact revenge from those who have wronged us.  In order to emerge unscathed from domination we have to recognize the indomitable nature we have inherited from our ancestors and then ally ourselves with others committed to preserving inner independence until outer independence can be openly celebrated.  Because you take the time to gather inner strength without arousing any suspicion, you succeed in freeing yourself without harming another.  Because your humaneness shines on your oppressors, you succeed in freeing them without harming yourself.

Intent:  The spirit warrior refrains from attempting to dominate anyone in any way, for fear of the inevitable and justifiable backlash it would produce.  Others are not necessarily so farsighted, however:  at a time when force and intimidation are openly used to control our actions and shape our attitudes, it is imperative that we train ourselves to resist every tendency to succumb to mental or spiritual tyranny.  By adopting a demeanor of naive complacency while making our true thoughts and feelings unreadable, we make it possible to live with oppression without being conquered by it:  using visible compliance to mask invisible defiance, we maintain our reverence toward all things so that we never wrong others the way we were wronged.

Summary:  When those who are more powerful demand you submit to their will, do not just pretend to go along with them—make a show of agreeing with them and working for their goals as if they were your own.  Keep your true feelings to yourself, work to find kindred spirits who can be trusted, and gather your strength until the moment to reclaim your independence and freedom arrives.

~

Concerning the second part of the Oracle’s answer, in which a time of widespread reconciliation will lead to a new world culture, we can look to Hexagram #16 Renewing Devotion for inspiration.  Once we have surmounted our self-destructive tendencies, we need to hold fast to our new vision of harmonious unity:

Image:  On the platform of a pyramid, a group of male and female warriors greet the dawn with ceremonial fire, drum, and song.  Out among the surrounding vegetation, a bird greets the dawn with two speech glyphs, one of which represents a flower and the other a song.

Interpretation:  The pyramid is a symbol of the sacred mountain at the center of all things and means that you are part of the collective work striving to mirror the handiwork of nature and the divine.  The dawn is a symbol of the daily renewal of creation and greeting it with companions means that you have others with whom you share the song of your beliefs, the drumbeat of your passions, and the fire of your creativity.  The surrounding vegetation is a symbol of the natural order and means that you are in harmony with the spirit of the world.  The singing bird represents the winged, transcendent, essence of nature and means that you are free to spontaneously give voice to the pure joy of life.  The flower and song glyphs represent the spirit warrior’s philosophy of life and mean that you have the courage to confront the eventual passing of everything beautiful, as well as the dignity to honor each passing both before and after it occurs.  Taken together, these symbols mean that your sincerity, trustworthiness and persistence will bring you success, vindication, and contentment.

Action:  The feminine and masculine halves of the spirit warrior unite to carry out past decisions.  This is not the time for questioning the correctness of inner decisions such as your commitments to your beliefs, values, and viewpoints—nor is it the time for second guessing the wisdom of outer decisions such as your commitments to your duties, goals, and loved ones.  It is, rather, the time for honoring your sense of honor—the time for renewing your devotion to the higher purpose guiding your life.  Sometimes it is not a question of what we have faith in, but that our faith is strong and unshakable.  Likewise, it is not always a question of who or what we are faithful to, but that our faithfulness is pure and unbreakable.  Your future circumstances are created out of today’s actions, so set aside all thoughts of changing direction. Your future character is created out of today’s motives, so set aside all self-doubt.  You have taken a stand:  do not permit the opinions or actions of others to move you off center.  Keep in mind that your decisions each have a symbolic value and represent part of your relationship with the whole of creation—by daily renewing your heartfelt devotion to acting with integrity, you will achieve the kind of consistency, firmness, and clarity that brings the highest benefit into your life and the lives of those around you.

Intent:  If we look for reasons to doubt the perfection of all creation, we will find them.  Because the perfect nature with which we are born is overwhelmed by the collective self-doubt produced by human history, we come to doubt our own vision and are increasingly influenced by the prevailing viewpoint of the world as inhumane and, therefore, imperfect.  It is this social indoctrination that creates an artificial viewpoint which obscures our original vision and, much like a mask covers the real face, creates in us an artificial sense of an imperfect nature.  When we become aware that our true birthright is usurped when we are too young to defend the perfect nature we bring into the world, then we come to understand the old stories about the royal child who is hidden away until it comes of age and can reclaim its rightful place in the world:  once we recognize our true self as that part which was hidden in order to protect it until was strong enough to fend for itself, then we view the world through the eyes of our innate perfect nature and no longer remain blind to the perfection of all creation.  Renewing their devotion to perfection every day, spirit warriors are tireless in their effort to remain aware that nature is spirit—and unfaltering in their decision to rejoice in the fact that they are a vital part of that perfect unity.

Summary:  Work to continually renew your heart-felt dedication to fulfilling the first ancestor’s vision of the human spirit, especially when surrounded by others who lack the awareness and sensitivity to appreciate the presence of spirit everywhere.  Stay true to your road and destination.  At this time, influencing others is more proper than allowing them to influence you.

~

Introducing these two hexagrams into the 2012 reading allows us to derive additional information by comparing them to the original ones cast on the Autumnal Equinox .

Comparing the two hexagrams relating to the “storm” portion of the oracle, we find that there is just one line change—in the fifth place—between Hexagram #54 Repeating Test and Hexagram #41 Feigning Compliance.  The fifth line change of Hexagram #54 Repeating Test seems particularly relevant:

The situation is auspicious—you are at the vanguard of sweeping changes that will benefit all but those you replace.  The principal task for now is to brighten the emotional atmosphere and give everyone hope.  Slow down—actually implementing the new will take a long time.

Likewise, comparing the two hexagrams relating to the “calm” portion of the oracle, we find that there is just one line change—in the sixth place—between Hexagram #2 Sensing Creation and Hexagram #16 Renewing Devotion.  The sixth line change of hexagram #16 Renewing Devotion seems especially useful:

Look back at the period just passed and study it diligently, gleaning all the lessons you can from it.  Do you feel more empowered or less empowered than before?  What do you want to have continue, what do you want to have change?

Expanding a reading by consciously introducing hexagrams that amplify the meaning and intent of the Oracle’s answer like this allows us to combine the two facets of the I Ching—the Oracle and the book of wisdom—into a more comprehensive and illuminating forecast.  In this way, we can encompass more of the mood and decision points of the divination by opening up the intuitive aspect of the reading to more in-depth analysis.

~

Summary:  The Master Key to Inspired Action

The second overarching lesson of the I Ching is this:  Sooner Or Later, Everything Changes Into Its Opposite.

Nothing can maintain its status quo forever. The action of trying to maintain its status quo is the very thing that triggers its own backlash.

In point of fact, the stronger its action, the more wide-spread its action, the longer its action continues, and the stronger its resistance to change, the more profound and complete and rapid its reversal.

As the old adage goes:  No one is easier to topple than one standing on tiptoes.  When things reach their peak, they decline.  When the natural process of expansion and contraction is thwarted by unnatural means, such as force and oppression, then the decline does not follow its natural timetable but is accelerated by the pent-up energies locked within a self-destructive equilibrium.

Perhaps a universal change of heart seems unlikely to some.  Perhaps they view the politics of the moment as in control of our collective destiny.  Perhaps they are afraid to hope again.

But these are irrelevancies in the grand cycle of change, the forces of which work from the inside and outside simultaneously.  The cathartic moment arrives unbidden by conscious calling:  it answers the unconscious desperation and despair welling up from within both the personal and collective unconscious.  Just as the chick’s call from the inside the egg is answered by the hen’s pecking the shell from the outside, the anguish of the personal unconscious calls forth a complete and immediate reversal of conventional beliefs and values from humanity’s collective unconscious.

This 2012 Oracle states unequivocally that we are on the cusp of a metamorphosed civilization, one in which personal ethics are mirrored in our collective ethics and in which individual self-transformation ripples outward, contributing directly to the transformation of the Whole.

The Master Key to Inspired Action, then, is Inspired Intention—it is the diligently cultivated heart-mind that can, moment-to-moment, shift its attention to a world in which there are not only enough resources for all to live, but one in which there is enough time for all to live blissfully.

The Golden Age of Humanity is within our reach.

What shall we build together?

~

The Toltec I Ching, by Martha Ramirez-Oropeza and William Douglas Horden has just received a Silver Award in the 2010 Nautilus Awards.  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.

~

Posted in 2012, The Toltec I Ching | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on A 2012 Training Manual

2012: The Storm Before The Calm

Posted on September 30, 2010 by William

The Autumnal Equinox arrives, accompanied by fog and mist and rain and clouds of every shade of gray.  The world’s qi shifts from boundless movement toward boundless stillness.  We leave behind the excessive yang of summer and move into the newborn yin of fall.  The time of outward action gives way to the time of inward action.  The turning of the season carries us back from the branches into the roots.

The cycle of change carries matter, energy, and spirit along its course of natural unfolding.  Time is spatial:  autumn follows summer just as a time of consolidation follows a time of expansion.  The Current, the Way, the Tao, is organic in the way it develops, moving the individual and civilization both according to the seasons of generative energy.

The Seasons of Generative Energy

The Oracle can speak to the way present trends are developing into future situations because it gives voice to the principles underlying all change.  The seeds of winter are sown at the Summer Solstice, just as the seeds of summer are planted at the Winter solstice.  Because they are seeds of generative energy, however, and not phenomena directly perceptible to our senses, their sowing and fruition generally occur long before—or sometimes after—we imagine.

The structure of the hexagram’s six lines is traditionally divided into three levels, of old called, Heaven, Man, and Earth.

Three Dimensions of the Hexagram

The top two lines represent heaven, or spirit.  The lower two lines represent earth, or matter.  The middle two lines represent mankind, or human awareness.  Humankind, embodying so perfectly the conjunction of spirit and matter, is thought of as the bridge connecting the sacred and the mundane, the invisible and the visible, the formless and form.

The Oracle is able to communicate with us because we bring human awareness into the divinatory moment, bridging the physical mechanism of divination (such as coins, yarrow stalks, cards, dice, random number generator) and the oracular awareness permeating time and space.  The Oracle gives voice to the One based on the relationship it has sustained with human beings for many thousands of years now.  The divinatory moment, then, is the very embodiment of the ancient saying:  Just as there is only One Mind, so is there only One Body.

Three Dimensions of the Divinatory Moment

Is this not the same Oracle that takes different forms in ancient cultures throughout the world?  Will we continue to hold ourselves apart from nature and spirit by relying on a crippling kind of reason that does not recognize its own limitations, even as the Great Mystery stares it in the face every moment?  Will we continue to believe, against all evidence to the contrary, that materialistic reason and religious zealotry are the only two poles of human participation in the world?  Will we dare to return to the ancients’ worldview of everyday unity with the Living Whole?  Can we abandon our histories of wrongs and establish a time of amnesty in which we might address our common problems?  Will we find our way back to a lifeway of nature mysticism that bequeaths to our descendants a civilization in harmony with itself and nature and the sacred?

With the above in mind, I take up the coins this morning of the seasons’ pivot and throw my question into the Beyond—

~

What Can Humanity Expect with the Approach of 2012?

The divinations I have cast on the subject of 2012 have been unanimously positive in the long run but have hinted at obstacles to be overcome in the short run.  The Oracle I received on the Autumnal Equinox 2010, regarding the events swirling around the turning point of the Winter Solstice of 2012, is the most detailed yet about the storm we will have to pass through before we achieve the calm of the New Dynasty of peace and prospering for all.

The first hexagram, representing the near-term events, is called Repeating Test.  Following is its illustration and interpretation—

Image:  A male warrior wearing the emblem of the smoking mirror pauses in his tracks.  The true road runs straight ahead but the warrior’s footprints show that he has doubled back on himself, circling around a pool of water.  The day sky overhead is filled with sunlight but the pool reflects the full moon in the night sky, indicating that the warrior made that past part of his journey in the dark of night.  As he prepares to undertake this leg of his journey for the second time, the warrior must face the additional danger of a jaguar who now crouches beside the pool.

Interpretation:  This hexagram depicts someone facing a dilemma for the second time.  The male warrior symbolizes the challenges and self-discipline that make us stronger and more adaptable than we imagined.  The smoking mirror symbolizes the penetrating insight, introspection, and self-knowledge required if we are to achieve a vision of the true self.  That he pauses in his tracks means that you take the opportunity to slow down your decisions in order to consider your circumstances carefully and discern how they resemble a past experience you have long wished to rectify.  That he has stepped off the true road to circle around the pool means that your true destiny must wait while you return to a previous stage in order to complete its task.  That it is light now but the pool reflects the night sky means that you are more aware and capable now than you were when you first encountered this test.  That this part of the journey is complicated by the additional danger of a jaguar lying in wait means that you clearly perceive this to be a new situation even as you use it to change your spiritual history.  Taken together, these symbols mean that you heal wounds left from a past stage of development.

Action:  The masculine half of the spirit warrior gazes into the smoking mirror of the true self without blinking.  It is a time for exhibiting the character traits you believe you should have exhibited when facing a similar dilemma in the past:  because you take advantage of this second chance to prove yourself to yourself, you erase past regrets and reveal your true self to the unseen forces.  By turning our perception upon ourselves, we are able to sense the lessons we have learned from past mistakes.  Until we have had the opportunity to act on those lessons and put them into effect, however, part of us remains frozen at that stage of our development.  For that reason, there are few more fortuitous times than those in which we can prove we are stronger and wiser than in the past:  by discerning our own patterns of behavior that run consistently beneath the surface of appearances, we are able to stop repeating past mistakes and emerge victorious over our own self-defeating attitudes and behaviors.  Because you intuitively know that turning points periodically return until they are finally resolved, you are fully prepared to act when the time comes:  because you wait vigilantly for the opportunity to revisit a period of darkness, you do not fail to use the present turning point to extend the continuity of your light further back into the past.

Intent:  Now is the time to strengthen the ladder of your evolution by descending it in order to repair a lower rung.  Actions and decisions that have haunted us must be laid to rest if we are to advance further toward our rightful destiny.  Within the inner landscape of our soul there are hurdles we failed to clear, pitfalls we failed to avoid, on our first encounter—where we first reacted with weakness we can now react with strength, where we first acted naively we can now act wisely, where we first reacted with fear we can now react with confidence, where we first acted selfishly we can now act lovingly.  Because you do not allow this opportunity to correct the past to slip through your hands, you break the chains holding you and your allies back from ascending to the next rung of success.

Summary:  Don’t make the same mistake again.  Some fears are false fears, some hopes are false hopes:  stop and consider how you are reverting to a way of thinking, feeling, and acting that did not work before.  You are stronger and wiser now—act as you wish you had acted the first time.  Seize this opportunity to heal the past and you will create the future you long for.

The Oracle appears to be saying that we—humanity—are going to have to pass through a crisis with all the dynamics of one we mismanaged the first time.  The exact nature of this crisis remains veiled by time, of course, but the transformation of our collective response is mapped out in the lines of change.

In other words, the specific transition points between the short-term and long-term are marked out by the line changes that produce a second hexagram out of the first.  In the present case, it is the first, second, and sixth lines that change.

Line Changes—

1st:  Many are in denial of the growing trend toward oppression—all you can do is join with those of like mind and prepare for what lies ahead.  Avoid controversial positions and don’t call attention to your efforts.  Make yourselves useful but anonymous.

2nd:  Many cannot get past the first hurdle—all you can do is appreciate the cunning of those above and go along with it for now.  There will be time to fight for principles later but the priority now must be just surviving this time.  Do not provoke envy or resentment by flaunting your little success.

6th:  The dam breaks—the last vestiges of oppression dissolve, the will of its leadership broken, and the waters of free-thinking and creativity rush forward again.  Celebrate with those around you.  Spend your time training the next generation, for without continuity of principles it will all happen again.

From the above we can surmise that our collective response to the first crisis was a knee-jerk reaction toward the use of force and intimidation—and that our first tendency in the second crisis is to revert to our previous response.

The first line change points out the insidious nature of fear that is generated by shock:  it is easy to convince people that the worst has only begun and that they must protect themselves by taking up a defensive posture that makes life more miserable everywhere.  This kind of lashing out against enemies real and imagined, internal and external, can be masked as necessary for only so long—eventually, there is a growing recognition that no amount of rationalization or justification changes the fact that irrational oppression is irrational oppression.

The second line change points out that there are many who remain fixed in a fear and aggression specifically propagated by those in power.  This is the most difficult time, when the fever is at it pitch.  It can be a dangerous time for those who dissent, one in which it is necessary to avoid attracting the attention of those with the power to crush dissent in the name of the greater good.  At the same time, this line change reminds those who manage to thrive during this time not to distance themselves from those less fortunate.

And finally, in the sixth line change, we see that the fever has broken.  The mass delusion passes like a nightmare evaporating with the dawn.  Even those perpetuating the self-destruction lose the will to go on.  People of good will and innovative solutions to the crisis come to the fore.  It is a time of widespread celebration and an overwhelming sense of relief.  Most of all, however, it is a time of establishing the new worldview for the next generations, because the forces of self-destruction are forever like a seed ready to sprout even in the loveliest garden.

~

The second hexagram, which grows out of the first by virtue of these three line changes, represents the long-term repercussions of the events associated with 2012.  Titled Sensing Creation, its image and interpretation follows—

Image:  A female warrior is naked, immersed in water and surrounded by flowers.  A wellspring of water rises from between her hands.  The water drops are drawn as beads of jade in order to portray the precious nature of that which sustains life.

Interpretation:  This hexagram represents the great courage essential to creating a meaningful life.  The female warrior symbolizes the way of nurturing and encouraging human nature that increases its sensitivity and loving-kindness.  Being naked means that nothing stands between you and the world.  Being immersed in water means that you plunge whole-heartedly into the spirit of that which nurtures all.  Being surrounded by flowers means that you perceive the perfection of the world as it truly is:  each moment blossoms perfect and whole, then passes like a fading flower—each perfection born into the world must die.  The wellspring of water symbolizes the inexhaustible source of courage that allows you to use your awareness of mortality to more profoundly experience the joy and sorrow inherent within every encounter.  In this sense, the flowers and the water signify not only the wisdom attained through experience, but the aesthetic sensibilities to be moved by a beauty and truth not always apparent to others.  Taken together, these symbols mean that you open your spirit to the overwhelming perfection of the world and share your vision with all you touch.

Action:  The feminine half of the spirit warrior collects the movement and energy of the unseen forces, calming them and bringing them together in harmony, making a place for them to gather strength and then making that source of benefit open and available to all.  Where past injustices and resentments survive to poison the well of benefit, true need goes unmet and people suffer unnecessarily:  the spirit warrior fosters a climate of forgiveness and reconciliation, reuniting those whose hearts have become estranged and dissolving the tensions and insecurities that have prevented people from coexisting in harmony and mutual understanding.  Before action, the passions breeding distrust and discord appear too strong and too deeply entrenched to be overcome.  After action, the benefit you help cultivate results in a greater union of good will, hope, and creativity.  You succeed where others fail because you rely on the warrior’s refined sensibilities to guide you rather than past experiences.  You succeed where others fail because you reflect generosity in every thought, word, and deed rather than demanding that others first prove their worth.  You succeed where others fail because you cleanse yourself of all ill will rather than harboring any spiritual intent that might poison the well of benefit that you are become.

Intent:  Whether the struggle is internal or external, work to increase your sensitivity to the realms of nature, human nature, and spirit.  Because people differ only in the degree of their sensitivity to the One Spirit, continue to open your perceptions to more and more sublime thoughts, feelings, memories, and sensations.  By recognizing that you are filled with the source of nurturance, you can calmly let all your adaptations arise from it.  By giving form to the source of nurturance, you can respond to things with dignity, patience, joy, and appreciation.  Because your sensitivity to the world is your strength, you can find the way to restore harmony and progress where others find only opposition and antagonism.  Make the well-being of others your goal right now and you can build a coalition of allies to undertake even greater endeavors in the future.  Avoid taking sides, work to bring them together.  Cultivate trust in the early stages of discord, rely on your lack of self-interest in its later stages.  You succeed because you bring future benefit to those separated by the past.

Summary:  The beauty and loving-kindness you seek are within your reach.  Let go of obsolete opinions and dogma handed down to you from others.  Find that which allows you to share happiness with others and you will achieve greater freedom and creativity.  Focus on the healing of old wounds, promote the forgiving of old wrongs.  Set aside personal ambition, act for the common good.

Surely one of the most beautiful and promising of times, Sensing Creation is the opening up of forgiveness and reconciliation.  It is a time of universal trust and mutual goodwill.  Past differences dissolve in an atmosphere of shared hope and a collective vision of a greater future for all.

With this, the Oracle appears to reiterate its prognosis for the era beginning with the changes surrounding the 2012 landmark:  following a period in which the self-destructive forces in humanity start to reassert their authority, a new wave of humaneness emerges to guide us into the Golden Age of Humanity.

The Oracle sees, in sum, a tempestuous storm before the long calm.

What shall we build together?

~

The Toltec I Ching, by Martha Ramirez-Oropeza and William Douglas Horden has just received a Silver Award in the 2010 Nautilus Awards.  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.

~

Posted in 2012, The Toltec I Ching | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Reading the Map of Fate

Posted on September 16, 2010 by William

What my teachers have taught me has been born out by my 40-some years of study:  the I Ching is a system of 64 living symbols that perennially outgrows whatever interpretation as been affixed to it.  Why would the snake carry its shed skin around with it?  To be attached to the outmoded vision of a patriarchal past simply because we have gained some proficiency with its inner workings is to betray the very core value of change upon which the Oracle is based.  Why would the butterfly carry its chrysalis around with it?

The Oracle can speak to our lives from its timeless dwelling place because the timebound changes we encounter in the historical present follow certain invariable cyclic processes.  The Oracle and its body, the 64 hexagrams, do not change.  But the world of nature and civilization does, dragged into the black hole of ever-greater disorder by the gravity of entropy.  The Oracle speaks to us from outside time because it is the voice of the generative energy that continues to sustain the on-going creation of the universe around us—it speaks to us about the way to escape the trap of Fate because it is the voice of the loving-kindness of the one spirit nurturing the on-going birth of all creation.  It speaks to us because the one spirit taking form in all matter strives to awaken in matter, to continue its own limitless growth by calling us to join it at the further end of the road of Freedom.

It speaks to us, in other words, because it is calling itself home.

The Oracle and its body, the 64 hexagrams, do not change.  But its clothing does.  More than that—its clothing must change.  Because the Oracle must speak coherently to each Age, the interpretation of the hexagrams and their lines must change periodically in order to adapt to the evolving worldview of civilization.  The reasons for a new interpretation of the I Ching have all been laid out in the previous three posts and I point to those articles rather than repeating them here.

The received version of the I Ching is the King Wen version, which was originally called the Chou I, or Changes of Chou, as it was specifically identified with the emerging Chou Dynasty of the time.  Its order of the 64 hexagrams is attributed to the titular founder of that dynasty, who is said to have arranged the hexagrams in a progression of 32 pairs.  Although each pair is linked by a discernible relationship—generally that of the second being the inverted form of the first—the reasoning behind the sequence of the pairs remains a mystery.

Regardless of the actual origin of the hexagrams or the originator of the received sequence, what we do know is that this sequence cannot be divorced from the oracular nature of the I Ching.  Its more rational use as a book of wisdom, in other words, does little to disguise the mystery lying at the core of its use as an Oracle.  Lest anyone enter thinking that the art of divination is a rational affair, they ought be assured that it is, instead, a matter of engaging the numinous, the sacred, the supranatural, aspect of reality and so is essentially an act of mystical union with the One.

Of course, we draw an imaginary line here between matter and spirit in order to work with concepts existing only in our minds.  The non-dual nature of reality means that matter and form Itself are the numinous, sacred, supranatural Itself.  It is this absolute identification of matter and awareness that establishes the oracular communication:  our question, the coins, and the Oracle’s answer are all drops of water in the same sea of thinking matter.  How could there be any boundary between thought-drops and matter-drops in the single sea of spirit-matter?  It is this absolute merging of our awareness with all of creation that reflects the embodiment of spirit in all matter.  And it is this merging of self and world that allows us to dissolve the subject-object barrier between ourselves and the Oracle.

Comparing the New and Traditional  Sequences

Looking at the King Wen Sequence from a distance, we see an overall pattern of 32 pairs of hexagrams divided into two uneven parts.  Part One consists of 30 hexagrams that begins with the pair #1 The Creative (Heaven 0ver Heaven) and #2 The Receptive (Earth over Earth) and ends with the pair #29 The Abysmal (Water over Water) and #30 The Clinging (Fire over Fire).  Part Two consists of 34 hexagrams that begins with the pair #31 Influence (Lake over Mountain) and #32 Duration (Thunder over Wind) and ends with the pair #63 After Completion (Water over Fire) and #64 Before Completion (Fire over Water).

We know that the trigrams Fire and Water are delegates for Heaven and Earth, since they often represent the Sun and Moon, respectively.  So ending Part One with the doubling of the Water and Fire trigrams as a response to the doubling of the Heaven and Earth trigrams at the beginning of Part One makes good sense.  As does the final pair of hexagrams in Part Two (Water over Fire and Fire over Water), since this is the intermarrying of the two opposing trigrams rather than their doubling.  If the goal had been absolute consistency in this regard, then Part Two would have started with the symbolic counterparts to #1 The Creative and #2 The Receptive, namely #12 Standstill (Heaven over Earth) and #11 Peace (Earth over Heaven).  But such is not the case.  Part Two begins instead with a pair of hexagrams that use the intermarrying of the remaining four trigrams (Lake over Mountain and Thunder over Wind).  So where the beginning and end of Part One and the end of part Two are all marked by hexagrams comprised of the trigrams Heaven and Earth and Fire and Water, the beginning of Part Two is marked by hexagrams comprised of the other four trigrams:  #31 Influence is made up of the youngest daughter and youngest son (Lake over Mountain) and #32 Duration is made up of the eldest son and eldest daughter (Thunder over Wind).

There is a kind of symbolic structure to the traditional Sequence, in other words, that depends on the doubling and/or intermarrying of [1] trigrams specifically related to the first two (Heaven and Earth, thence their delegates, Fire and Water) and [2] trigrams expressing the familial relationships among the eight trigrams (Lake and Mountain, Thunder and Wind).  As has been often noted, Part One appears as the Upper Half of the hexagrams, representing cosmological forces at work, whereas Part Two appears as the Lower Half, representing the social and cultural forces at work.  Indeed, the traditional interpretation of #31 Influence (Lake over Mountain) and #32 Duration (Thunder over Wind) is that they represent the institutions of courtship and marriage, respectively.  The text of these two hexagrams not only refers to the “superior man” but the traditional interpretation, such as that found in the standard Wilhelm-Baynes translation, contains such parochial material as:  “During courtship the young man subordinates himself to the girl, but in marriage, which is represented by the coming together of the eldest son and the eldest daughter, the husband is the directing and moving force outside, while the wife, inside, is gentle and submissive.”

This emphasis on the well-known familial relationships between trigrams lies at the very heart of the King Wen Sequence.

Diagram 1: Family Relationships Among Trigrams

In other words, the first two hexagrams of the traditional King Wen Sequence are those symbolizing the father and the mother, which are considered the parents of the following 62 hexagrams.  This representation is due in large part to the fact that the father/heaven hexagram is comprised of six solid lines and the mother/earth hexagram of six broken lines, whereas the remaining 62 hexagrams are all made up of combinations of solid and broken lines.  The father/heaven and mother/earth hexagrams are the only two that exist as pure yang and pure yin forces, while the remaining 62 hexagrams exist as combinations of yang and yin energies.

This dependence on a paternalistic model of creation and change goes hand-in-hand with the top-down model of rulership to which the traditional I Ching has long contributed.  As part of the wisdom tradition of ancient China, the I Ching played a role in the instruction of rulers in the ongoing effort to create enlightened rulers, whose adherence to the Way would lead the nation into a time of peace and harmony and prosperity.  As the Oracle, moreover, the I Ching played a role in advising rulers in their decisions of statecraft.

As discussed in the previous three posts, this faith in the education of rulers has worldwide proven a disastrous failure and any continuing alliance between the I Ching and the ruling elite is unethical in the extreme.

We are a world of peers and neither governments nor churches are our parents.  No fellow human being stands above us to mediate between us and the infinite.  We are not children to be led.  We are, in fact, those most in touch with reality, possessing worldly wisdom and capable of determining our own destiny, whereas those pretending to rulership live in a shared hallucination of power far removed from the needs and dreams of those they would govern.

The old dynasty of rulers has come to an end and the new dynasty of peers has begun.  The Toltec I Ching reunites the ancient worldviews of the indigenous peoples of China and Mesoamerica by fusing the symbology of the Toltec culture to the I Ching of China, thereby reuniting the Eastern and Western Hemispheres of global consciousness.  The Toltec I Ching marries visual and written imagery to each  hexagram, thereby reuniting the Left and Right Hemispheres of the individual consciousness.  The Toltec I Ching, both in its role as a repository of wisdom and as the Oracle, allies itself with the emerging Dynasty and legitimizes it by reflecting its universal equality in a new Sequence and interpretation of the hexagrams.  The mechanics of this new Sequence are discussed here, which produces the following arrangement with its corresponding hexagrams in the King Wen Sequence—

Diagram 2: Toltec I Ching and King Wen Sequences

Viewing The Toltec I Ching Sequence from a distance, we can make our several principle features.  First of all, we note the beginning and ending pairs of the 64 hexagrams.  #1 Provoking Change (Thunder over Thunder) is paired with #2 Sensing Creation (Lake over Lake).

Here we see that the initiating force is something that has triggered or activated a change.  Its attribute is Shock or Surprise that motivates and inspires us to take up the challenge of transformation.  To quote from the text:

Image:  A male warrior dances with the storm, holding a lightning bolt in one hand and a feather in the other.  Where the lightning bolt forks, it takes the form of a serpent of fire, light, and energy.  The rattles around his ankles make thunder every time his feet strike the ground and his eyes are fixed on the sky above.

Interpretation:  This hexagram represents the great forces essential to creating a new beginning.  The male warrior symbolizes the way of testing and training human nature that increases its versatility and fortitude.  The lightning bolt symbolizes the focused application of action and intent that provokes dramatic change.  That it takes the form of a serpent of fire, light, and energy means that your vision is part of a living creative force whose movement shatters all that is cold, dark, and stagnant.  The dance symbolizes a personal ritual that connects you to creation’s underlying rhythm of movement and resistance.  Dancing with the sky, the storm, the lightning, means that you can sense the rhythmic force of love surrounding you as the feminine and masculine creative forces continue to create and sustain the spark of life within the night of matter.  Making thunder in the sky, making earthquakes in the land means that your actions trigger a great explosion of potential which, although it cannot be seen, sets in motion ramifications great enough to change what has come before.  Holding the feather means that you are rightly connected to the higher, celestial, forces of the sky, while holding the serpent means that you are rightly connected to the lower, terrestrial, forces of the earth.  Taken together, these symbols mean that your actions break up the inertia of the old and set in motion events that cannot yet be envisioned.

Action:  The masculine half of the spirit warrior guides the movement and energy of the unseen forces, stirring them up and then setting them in motion, calling them forth and then directing them against places where benefit is dammed up and unable to follow its natural course……

~

Its paired hexagram, Sensing Creation, accompanies it as a profound immersion in and heartfelt appreciation of the wonder of existence.  Its attribute is Joy or Appreciation that sensitizes us to the underlying perfection of creation.

To quote from the text:

Image:  A female warrior is naked, immersed in water and surrounded by flowers.  A wellspring of water rises from between her hands.  The water drops are drawn as beads of jade in order to portray the precious nature of that which sustains life.

Interpretation:  This hexagram represents the great courage essential to creating a meaningful life.  The female warrior symbolizes the way of nurturing and encouraging human nature that increases its sensitivity and loving-kindness.  Being naked means that nothing stands between you and the world.  Being immersed in water means that you plunge whole-heartedly into the spirit of that which nurtures all.  Being surrounded by flowers means that you perceive the perfection of the world as it truly is:  each moment blossoms perfect and whole, then passes like a fading flower—each perfection born into the world must die.  The wellspring of water symbolizes the inexhaustible source of courage that allows you to use your awareness of mortality to more profoundly experience the joy and sorrow inherent within every encounter.  In this sense, the flowers and the water signify not only the wisdom attained through experience, but the aesthetic sensibilities to be moved by a beauty and truth not always apparent to others.  Taken together, these symbols mean that you open your spirit to the overwhelming perfection of the world and share your vision with all you touch.

Action:  The feminine half of the spirit warrior collects the movement and energy of the unseen forces, calming them and bringing them together in harmony, making a place for them to gather strength and then making that source of benefit open and available to all……

From the very beginning of the Sequence, then, we see that the parent-child relationship of the King Wen Sequence has been replaced not by another creator-couple but, rather, by the archetypal human responses to times of new beginnings.  Something has triggered a time of crisis and #1 Provoking Change responds by trying to increase the potential for all concerned to benefit, to which #2 Sensing Creation responds by establishing an atmosphere of widespread relief and reconciliation.

Similarly, there is not any talk of the “superior man”.  Every man, woman and child is considered a spirit warrior to be honored and respected for their facing the inevitability of death.  That both male warriors and female warriors have within them a masculine and feminine half is likewise considered self-evident and a key element in each individual’s process of self-realization.

~

Turning to the last two hexagrams in the Sequence, we find #63 Self-Sufficiency (Wind over Mountain) and #64 Safeguarding Life (Mountain over Wind).  Rather than the artificial structure of the King Wen Sequence with its final pair intermarrying the Fire and Water trigrams, we find ourselves approaching the end of an organic sequence in which social forces (#63) finally coalesce to achieve a harmonious self-sufficiency that (#64) ultimately cannot be sustained and threatens to extinguish the very lifeway that is most treasured.

The attribute of #63 is Peaceful Adaptation.  To quote from the text:

Image:  A great feathered serpent hatches out of the earth as if from an egg.  Its feathers are adorned with conch shells and it senses its surroundings with its bifurcated tongue.

Interpretation:  This hexagram represents the great forces released by the accumulated efforts of spirit warriors over the ages.  The feathered serpent symbolizes the collective intent and vision shared by spirit warriors in every time and every place.  That it hatches from the earth as if from an egg means that the community of spirit incubating within the material world emerges as a living, dynamic force of creation.  The conches adorning its feathers symbolize the call for all to join the community of spirit.  Its bifurcated tongue symbolizes the duality that is one.  That it uses its bifurcated tongue to sense its surroundings means that you are attuned to the universal presence of the masculine and feminine creative forces.  Taken together, these symbols mean that you align yourself with those whose only need is to bring benefit to their surroundings.

Action:  The spirit warrior reverses the flow of power, channeling it inside instead of outside:  by storing up power internally rather than expending it externally, we are able to both free ourselves of habits and gain control over our actions……

~

The attribute of #64 is Obstructed Adaptation.  To quote from the text:

Image:  A male warrior holds the funeral bundle of his child, preparing to place it in its burial site.  His face reflects the shock, anguish, and horror that fills his heart.

Interpretation:  This hexagram depicts the inevitable result of carelessness and irreverence.  The male warrior symbolizes the versatility and fortitude that are at the core of outer nurturing.  That he prepares to place the funeral bundle of his child in its burial site means that strength cannot accomplish afterwards what nurturing can accomplish beforehand.  That his face and heart are filled with shock, anguish, and horror means that he is in the grips of the most terrible truth:  that which we most cherish cannot be replaced.  Taken together, these symbols mean that you avoid causing suffering by honoring and nurturing all that your spirit touches.

Action:  The masculine half of the spirit warrior draws back from the brink before it is too late.  It is not a time for pursuing desires and ambitions:  those who cannot temper their strength run the risk of losing a source of that strength……

~

No Conclusion

As with all organic processes, every ending begets a new beginning, so it comes as no surprise that #64 Safe-Guarding Life is itself the crisis that sets in motion #1 Provoking Change and, thereby, another round of the Cycle of Fate.

When the Oracle answers our questions with a hexagram that includes one or more lines changing to a new hexagram, it is providing us with a way to leap out of the Cycle of Fate and create our lives outside the entropic law of increasing disorder and disintegration.  When we receive an answer without any line changes, however, then it means that we are temporarily held fast in the Cycle of Fate and should see ourselves as eventually moving into the next hexagram in the Sequence.

Of old, it has been said that if we quiet our heart-mind then we will transform it into a lodging-place for the One.

As the speaking of the One, the Oracle rushes in to fill the vacuum created by our question.

Standing at the border of the known and the unknown, we step out of our familiar worldview of self-and-other duality and into the longed-for unitary experience of the eternal return.

May we all transcend the Law of Fate and create the Golden Age of Humanity in the nearest possible present time.

~

The Toltec I Ching, by Martha Ramirez-Oropeza and William Douglas Horden has just received a Silver Award in the 2010 Nautilus Awards.  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.

~

Posted in A New I Ching, The Toltec I Ching | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

The Oracle and the War Against Fate

Posted on August 23, 2010 by William

Overview

The Unity of all things dwells in an undifferentiated state of living potential.  Neither awake nor asleep nor dreaming, it is the shining awareness everywhere present, the fount of time and eternity.  It is still and silent, utterly at peace and filled with harmony.

The Unity of all things produces a secondary world of birth and death when its living potential is activated by the intention of its parts.  This is unavoidable, since the harmony of the Whole could not be perfect if it denied in any way the natural creative impulse of its parts.  The unitary nature of the living potential produces a single field of intentions, so that no intention exists in isolation but, rather, enters the universe of intentions, where it becomes part of the vast interconnectedness of cause-and-effect.

The living potential bifurcates its generative energy along a line of further-dividing dualities:  the 1 becomes 2, the 2 become 4, the 4 become 8, and so on.  These numbers represent the ways in which generative energy distributes intention throughout the phenomenal world.  They are entities in the sense that they are comprised of intentional parts and comprise an intention of their own as a part of a larger whole:  the 8 trigrams is an entity that both contains all 8 of its trigrams and extends the intention of the 4 bigrams. The 4 bigrams double the original duality of solid and broken lines, producing two pairs of dualities.  The 8 trigrams double the duality of the 4 bigrams, producing four pairs of dualities.  This process continues until the 64 hexagrams produce 32 pairs of dualities. None of these entities, however, actually precedes another:  they all exist simultaneously and symbolize the multiple points of view required of human perception to appreciate its environment and respond to it successfully.

Diagram 1: Emanations of Duality Arising from the Process of Doubling

This cosmological process is perceptual in nature because it cannot be divorced from human perception—it represents the identification of human nature with the whole of the universe.  Because our perception arises from the same process as the rest of creation, we perceive the unfolding of the cosmos by perceiving the unfolding of our own perception.  That unfolding comes in a series of emanations coincident with the vast undifferentiated One.  Awareness stirs within the stillness of the Unity of all things, its creative urge producing a division in the unity.  Now there are two.  Thus is born Number.  Which produces Symbol:  in the case of Two, it is the Duality of complementary feeling-tones of Autonomy and Love, for the movement out of the unity requires independence of spirit even as it establishes the relationship with the Whole.  From Symbol comes Name:  in this case, yang and yin, masculine and feminine, heaven and earth, creative and receptive, movement and stillness, and so on.  With names, things enter into the universe of all other names and the ensuing relationships they form produce an intricate web of Meaning that explores all the possible distributions of generative energy within civilization.

The cosmological process whereby the material universe gives body to the spiritual Unity of all things, in other words, is mirrored in the process whereby civilization gives body to the original undifferentiated perception of human nature.  In both cases, it is the cosmological unfolding of ever-dividing dualities that creates a relational order and structure to the world of phenomena and experience—an order and structure resulting in the natural tendency of all things toward increased disorder and decay.

The unfolding of the Many out of the One, then, is the Way of Fate, where all things and relations between things forever spontaneously changes in the direction of greater disintegration.

And it is the return of the Many into the One that is the Way of Freedom.

~

Reversing the Course of Fate

The return of the Many into the One is an ancient formula symbolizing the spiritual transformation we undergo when we cultivate our present self to the point where we spontaneously re-experience our original undamaged nature.  This return to our true self as it exists before and after social conditioning is likewise called uniting heaven and earth.  It comes about because we train ourselves to stop viewing the inner and outer world as pairs of dualities (like good and bad, right and wrong, self and other) and develop greater sensitivity to the Unity of all things.  This is commonly referred to as the mystical experience arising from the reunion of subject and object:  it points at the profound metamorphosis we undergo when there is no longer any distance between us and the universe nor is there any boundary between our individual mind and the one mind.  This is called reversing the outflow of generative energy and has long been associated with the real person, or sage, whose enlightened nature has been reclaimed.

As noted in the previous two posts, the Way of Fate is the entropic process carrying all things and the relationships between things ever further into disorder.  From the perceptual cosmology, this is the result of the initial division of the Unity of all things and its subsequent doublings into further dualities.

The Way of Fate is the realm of birth and death.  Everything that enters this realm must progressively deteriorate and die.  This is the first and greatest of the perceptual dualities.  From it arise all the other dualities comprising the law of Fate governing the lives of so many.

Running counter to the Way of Fate is the circulation of generative energy.  This is the flow of the subliminal force that gives life to life.  From the perspective of spirit, generative energy is matter.  From the perspective of matter, generative energy is spirit.  From the perspective of entropy, generative energy is information.  From the perspective of life, generative energy is mind.  It circulates among all things, entering all the dualities in order to hold them together in the Unity of all things.  It is the subliminal force that can postpone the arrival of Fate indefinitely.

The true person, the sage, the enlightened person, have long been those who cultivated this generative energy of the universal return within themselves and others.

~

The Oracle of Freedom

Uniting heaven and earth is an act that happens within the human being.  It occurs within us in the present mind-moment when we stand at the center of the compass and open our heart-mind to the ever-present Unity of all things.  We bring the one spirit of heaven and the one body of earth back together within ourselves every time we re-experience the nonduality of reality.  Reuniting the one spirit and the one body in a conscious act is an act of conception that gives birth to a timeless intention—fueled by the generative energy of the return of the Many into the One, it reverses the course of Fate by spontaneously and immediately returning to the Act of Creation.  Such experiences not only benefit those who undergo them but spill out into the world of intentions, contributing to the metamorphosis of civilization itself.

There are many traditions of self-transformation whose goal is the mystical experience of nonduality.  Our complete metamorphosis into a true person that constantly stands at the center of the compass takes many years of genuine insights and sincere cultivation.  Standing at the center point of nonduality, voluntarily collapsing the distinction between subject and object, voluntarily letting go of all boundaries between my self and the One—this is the method and the goal of self-realization practices.  It is not a practice undertaken lightly nor attained effortlessly.  It is the Path of Freedom in every sense and those who keep it underfoot their whole life are still too few.

But it is not the only way of uniting heaven and earth.

There are many, equally old, traditions of divination whose goal is to make the voice of the one spirit accessible to the one body.  Across cultures and the millennia, the tradition of priest-diviners has arisen to give voice to the ancient Oracle guiding humanity away from the cliff edge of self-destruction and back toward the Living Monument of self-creation.  It is a tradition based on the recognition that our self-awareness works according to the same laws as the rest of creation:  our spirit speaks most directly and powerfully to our body in our dreams, just as the one spirit speaks most directly and powerfully to the one body in its symbols.  Long considered the first language, symbols speak with a directness and power that words cannot—laden with complex layers of meaning and emotional associations, they appear all-at-once, spatially, rather than in the linear, temporal, string of words of conscious language.

Divination, then, is the art of translating the symbols of the Oracle.  It is the human awareness breaking through the barrier of subject and object, voluntarily merging self with the one spirit, re-coupling the primal duality of spirit and matter.  It is the spontaneous and immediate act of uniting heaven and earth.  It is not necessary for the diviner to consciously strive to effect such a union—the act of divination collapses the subject-object duality by its very nature.

Engaging the Oracle automatically entails stepping back into the Unity of all things.  We cannot seek an answer from the Oracle and hold ourselves separate from the one spirit, we cannot receive the Oracle’s answer and hold ourselves separate from the one body.  To open ourselves to the invisible realm of unity underlying this world of the senses is to lose the ego-self and step into the oceanic dreamtime of nonduality:  this is called becoming the site of the return of the Many into the One.  As has long been said of the I Ching, inquiring of the Oracle is not a matter of any special knowledge or skill— the divinatory act activates a mysterious conjunction of dualities solely by the power of the questioner’s sincerity.

The Oracle is the speaking of the generative energy that circulates between the beginning and end of time, between the Act of Creation and the Act of Completion.  It circulates in the same way that the ocean’s water evaporates, forms clouds that are carried by the wind to the land where it falls as rain that accumulates in streams and rivers in order to flow back into the sea.  It is an all-at-once-ness circulation that is spatial and not a linear progression of time.  It is the flow of the unchanging life-that-gives-life behind the flow of perceptible change.  To life, generative energy is the unborn mind that moves at will backward and forward between the beginning and the end of time:  it is unborn because it does not ever enter the realm of birth and death and so stands forever outside the realm of Fate—it can move at will between end and beginning because it is the circulation itself.

The 64 hexagrams constitute the map of Fate.  They show the 64 possible mixtures of yang and yin generative energy that produce the world of phenomena.  They show the pitfalls and traps everything and everyone faces in the realm of birth and death.  They show the vast archetypal landscape of entropic change driving all changing phenomena.

Engaging the Oracle activates the creative intent of the living moment, revealing the way to transcend Fate and create a lifetime of good fortune.  Circulating among the lines of the hexagrams, the generative energy calls us to follow the way of freedom in every sense.

Diagram 2: Clockwise Circulation of the Four Bigrams

The Oracle speaks to us by selecting from the 64 possible hexagrams just those that represent the present situation we face and how it is developing into the coming situation.  In doing so, it points out the choices we have if we are to keep the path of freedom beneath our feet.

The Toltec I Ching is the newest iteration of the Oracle’s speaking.  By recasting the I Ching in the symbology of the Native Americans of ancient Mexico, its interpretative material gives a new voice to the emerging Dynasty of the Open Secret.  By marrying the two great cosmovisions of the indigenous civilizations of China and Mexico, it unites the East and West hemispheres for today’s global civilization.  By interpreting each hexagram with both original illustrations and written material, it unites the right and left hemispheres of the brain for today’s global consciousness.

I cannot distance myself from the I Ching anymore than you.  Those who haven’t yet internalized the I Ching may think the above considerations to be mere abstractions but those who know that the 8 trigrams are their own sense organs have already discovered that the 4 bigrams are the opening and closing of the Gate of Good Fortune.  May benefit pour out of you to cover heaven and earth.

~

Next:  Reading the Map of Fate

~

The Toltec I Ching, by Martha Ramirez-Oropeza and William Douglas Horden has just received a Silver Award in the 2010 Nautilus Awards.  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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