The Toltec I Ching Blog

With this chapter, the bulk of our course comes to an end.  Our overall goal—to apply the spiritual principles of good fortune in such a way that we do not bring harm to the Whole—is nearly met.  We have done the transformative work that allows us to identify with the higher self, which in turn allows us to more effectively influence people and events around us.  But in doing so, we enter the arena of all those seeking to influence people and events.  This is not merely an arena in the sense of a common ground of shared activity, however.  It is also—and primarily—an arena in the sense of a highly charged and competitive environment.  And because many in this environment are motivated by nothing more than self-interest, our ability to act for the benefit of all is put to the test.

As competition intensifies, it becomes more and more difficult to capture the attention of those you seek to influence.  Since everyone else is having the same difficulty, even the competition for attention intensifies.  There are numerous ways to capture attention but the one people fall back on when they are hardest pressed is shock.

Shock gets attention.  Because it works, it is used whenever people demand attention.  Whether it is a matter of shocking claims against another or shocking images or shocking lyrics or shocking news or shocking volume or shocking humor or shocking stories or shocking games or shocking appearance or shocking behavior or shocking violence, shock is used whenever people will not be denied attention.  This raises two problems.

The first is merely technical.  Few of those who know how to get attention using shock have anything worthwhile to offer that will hold the attention once it has been captured.  They can get people’s attention but cannot hold it long enough to influence their attitudes or behavior.

The second has far-reaching ramifications.  Shock is like a drug:  the more it is used, the more of it is needed to get the same effect—and the more widely it is used, the more the social fabric is frayed and torn.  When people are bombarded from all sides with shock they get unnerved.  The general equilibrium of their lives becomes so disrupted that they begin to expect that more shock might be right around the corner.  And because shock is only shocking if it is more shocking than the last shock, the next shock—the one that is possible, the anticipated one, the one most feared, the one that may happen at any moment—is truly unnerving in its looming potential.  Those seeking attention in such an environment feel they must continue to increase the shock value of their message, which has a paradoxical effect on those they seek to influence:  on the conscious level, it makes them calloused to the tactic of shock, while on the unconscious level, it makes them habitually nervous and uneasy.

When this kind of assault on the senses is routine and wide-spread, people have difficulty even recognizing the degree to which they are being affected.  But so much over-stimulation does take its toll on people.  They no longer relax as they should.  They experience chronic stress, which adversely affects their mental, emotional, and physical health.  They always feel rushed and never have enough time.  They cannot stand being bored—they need constant stimulation, distraction, and entertainment.  They no longer appreciate silence or their own company, preferring other people’s music, words, or images to their own.  They lack patience, concentration, and true self-confidence.  They are chronically worried, nervous, anxious, fearful, and distrustful.  They become intolerant, feeling like they cannot take one more assault on their dignity.  They grow increasingly polarized in their reactions, some becoming irrationally emotional, aggressive, and explosive, with others becoming passive, withdrawn, and victimized.

Whether shock is used for profit or ideology, for oneself or one’s group, the long-term result is the same.

It is a tragedy when an individual suffers like this.

It is a disaster in the making when a society suffers like this.

Seeking my own personal success by adding to the suffering of the Whole is the very opposite of the path of good fortune.

The reason shock works is that people’s adverse reactions to it are relatively predictable.  This kind of influence is called guiding by backlash and refers to the practice of directing people’s attitudes and behaviors by provoking them to react against well-timed shocks.  In its more overt aspects, it is little different than using a cattle prod—the electric shock, when applied to the right place at the right time, drives the herd in the desired direction.  In its more subtle aspects, it is analogous to pruning—making a cut at the right angle above the right bud channels new growth into the desired direction.  While not an infallible tactic, using shock to create the desired backlash produces more predictable reactions than other tactics.

Whether it is a government defining an internal or external threat, a religion describing eternal punishments for wrong-doing, an advertisement announcing a new way to avoid becoming a social pariah, or a hungry infant crying upon waking, the tactic of using shock to elicit the desired backlash produces relatively predictable reactions.

Contrived or natural, however, shock cannot be overused or misused without producing unwanted backlashes:  the government that cries wolf too often loses credibility, the religion that proscribes all joy of life is abandoned, the advertisement that promises to fix a nonexistent problem becomes a parody of itself, and the infant that cries incessantly finds that some of its real needs go ignored.

As it turns out, all use is overuse.

And any use is misuse.

This is the I Ching trigram for Thunder.  It symbolizes the shock that follows an unexpected lightning bolt.  As such, it represents the power to initiate change by acting in such a way that others feel compelled to react.  It speaks of our need to defy expectations, timing our actions to maximize the impact of our influence.  By sensing the startling suddenness of Thunder within, we train ourselves to embody inner Surprise.

Inner Surprise is the culmination of the previous seven stages of this course.  It is the art of combining the skills we acquired in those stages and applying them in the least expected ways to the ever-changing circumstances we encounter.  It is the art of waiting until the crucial moment to act, in much the same way as the rain cloud must build up to the cloudburst.  It is the art of influencing people and events by echoing their inner state.  It is to shock what the butterfly is to the caterpillar.

There is nothing so surprising as finding ourselves in sudden resonance with something new and unexpected.  This experience of startling familiarity with the unfamiliar never fails to astonish us, for it reawakens us to the unfathomable mystery of the world even as it reassures us that we are a vital part of it.  How is it that something new and unfamiliar can strike us so immediately as intimate and familiar?  And how can that same thing strike others close to us as strange and inconsequential?  Because, for reasons beyond our scope of vision, we and not someone else are attuned to the same invisible essence as that which we find physically unfamiliar but spiritually familiar.

What the five senses of my lower self may not recognize as dear and valuable, the essential sense of my higher self may recognize immediately as a perfect match to some part of its intrinsic nature.  Such experiences demonstrate to me that I share certain motivations with people and events beyond myself—motivations that I may not even know I have until I experience firsthand their reflection in others.  Something touches me, in other words, and in so doing, influences me.  Something moves me, and in so doing, changes my attitudes and behaviors.  When this happens to me, I am influenced by the inner power of others.  When I am able to evoke such a response from others, they are influenced by my inner power.

But the inner power expressed by individuals does not arise from within the individual.

It is a manifestation of the chain of spiritual cause-and-effect that arises from within the Current.

~

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

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

~

The Toltec I Ching, by Martha Ramirez-Oropeza and William Douglas Horden has just 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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There are different kinds of impasses.

There is the true impasse, from which we can only turn back and withdraw.

There is the false impasse, which, when seen accurately, is actually an obstacle that can be circumvented.

There is the receding impasse, at which we become trapped because we do not believe we have actually come to an impasse.

There is the sticky impasse, to which we keep returning despite being turned back every time.

There is the hard impasse, which can only be broken through by using sharp, abrupt force.

And there is the soft impasse, which can only be broken through by using slow, gentle pressure.

Each of these impasses can, in turn, exist externally or internally.

Come to recognize true impasses quickly and accurately.  Don’t waste energy testing them.  Turn around and return to your last decision—reconsider it in light of what you now know and make whatever course correction you need to.  True wisdom does not waste a single moment on true impasses.

Come to recognize false impasses quickly and accurately.  Repeatedly test their resistance to your advance, looking for the motives behind the obstacles.  Review your recent decisions and actions, considering whether the present obstacles are a backlash to your own doings.  Clarify your own motives, both to yourself and others.  Just because it is not a true impasse does not mean you are heading in the right direction:  make sure your true path lies on the other side of such obstacles before trying to overcome them.

Come to recognize receding impasses quickly and accurately.  These impasses are like the horizon—they constantly recede as we advance, giving the illusion of unimpeded freedom of movement.  And like the horizon, they also follow us when we retreat, always keeping the same distance from us, for it is their seeming remoteness that creates the bounds and limits of our opportunities.  Don’t blindly accept others’ claims about the quality of your freedom or the absence of better alternatives.  Think for yourself.  Judge for yourself.  The largest cage is still a cage.

Come to recognize sticky impasses quickly and accurately.  These impasses are like gravity—they exert a constant pull on us, so that no matter how often we appear to escape their influence, we feel compelled to return to them time and time again.  Here the wish to change something is just as profound as our inability to do so.  This in turn creates a situation in which we simply cannot let go of something we know we should.  Keep reminding yourself that you have gone over this same ground many times and each time realized that the problem cannot be solved nor the hope fulfilled as things stand now.  Promise yourself that you will return to it again if things ever change.  Every time it comes to mind and you are tempted to revisit it, push yourself away just as you would from the dining table when you are too full to eat another bite.  Pull your attention back to the present moment and don’t allow it to be pulled away into the past or future.

Come to recognize hard impasses quickly and accurately.  Such impasses appear formidable but they have a brittle nature.  Because its presence is so imposing and intimidating, the hard impasse is unaccustomed to any reaction but acquiescence and compliance.  This makes it susceptible to unexpected and forceful reactions that upset its equilibrium—especially reactions that shock its rigid and often hypocritical sense of propriety, dignity, or morality.  It is the weight of authority and established precedents that gives the hard impasse its sense of indomitability—but these very strengths can be confused and overcome by the truly novel and incongruous response.  Do not test its strength beforehand—feign compliance until the moment comes to strike.  Then forego all timidity and act with absolute confidence and certainty of purpose.  Strike like a thunderbolt at its blind spot and the hard impasse will splinter and collapse.  Of all the kinds of impasses there are, this is the rarest.

Come to recognize soft impasses quickly and accurately.  Such impasses are impenetrable in the short run but can eventually be breached by stubbornly patient encouragement.  This kind of impasse is built of weakness:  it has been attacked, betrayed, undermined, and ignored to the point that its defenses are the only part of it that show.  Distrust and hardship have made it strong:  nothing can enter without its explicit permission and that permission is long in coming.  Take the long view and adopt a demeanor of polite respect and disinterested concern.  Like the wind working against the soft places in stone until it erodes a hole right through, gradually prove your trustworthiness through consistently beneficial actions.  And just as the wind does not react to the stone but, rather, acts upon the stone, don’t react to the ingrained defenses thrown up by this impasse but, rather, exert a uniformly encouraging influence on its protected heart.  It is by gradual influence upon the heart of the soft impasse alone that we are granted permission to pass and advance on our way.  Of all the kinds of impasses there are, this is the most common.

This is the I Ching trigram for Wind.  It symbolizes the ability to gain entry everywhere by means of steady, gentle effort.  As such, it represents spiritual penetration and the gradual unfolding of understanding that leads to wisdom.  It speaks of our need to dedicate ourselves to the lifelong perfecting of character whereby our blinders of opinion fall away, freeing us to perceive the world as it truly is.  By sensing the patient influence of Wind within, we train ourselves to embody inner Insight.

~

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

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

~

The Toltec I Ching, by Martha Ramirez-Oropeza and William Douglas Horden has just 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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This is the I Ching trigram for Fire.  It symbolizes both the power and the vulnerability of knowledge, for although fire illumines the dark, it is utterly dependent on the wood that fuels it.  As such, it represents the conscious mind’s desire to know, which leads us to great wisdom and great folly, both.  It speaks of our need to be conscious of our conscious mind, honoring it as our first tool even as we recognize that we are still learning how to wield it honorably.  By sensing the spiritual longing of Fire within, we train ourselves to embody inner Curiosity.

Absolute openness of awareness draws us back into seeing the world with new eyes.  By developing passive attention, our minds relax and do not seize upon images and impressions as soon as they appear.  This way, we stop leaping from the present moment to others we associate with the past or future.

The governing of attention does not, however, mean we remain in passive attention all the time—rather, it means we train ourselves to remain in passive attention longer than we are accustomed to.  This allows us to store up creative energy that, once it has gained enough momentum, is discharged in creative acts forged in the fire of active attention.

The governing of attention, therefore, means that we train ourselves to shift back and forth between active and passive attention as the moment requires.  Few of us nowadays, though, can sustain the undirected and unfocused knowing that precedes meaningful action.  Indeed, it is our very thirst for meaning that pulls us out of the undifferentiated source of creativity and back into the conscious differentiation of mental categories and personal associations.

This kind of thirst for meaning is inauthentic because it stems from our discomfort with the oceanic experience of the one awareness that is the source of creativity, insight, problem-solving, and belonging.  Rather than taking joy in temporarily dissolving the limitations of the conscious self by communing with the Universal Self, we fear the loss of our individual identity and pull back from the brink of awe before we are transformed.

By not staying in awe long enough, we lose our sense of wonder and no longer look at each moment as utterly new and full of unimaginable potential.  By not staying in awe long enough, in other words, we no longer see things as they really are.  And so we stop advancing easily and naturally along a course infinitely more rewarding than any we could have plotted for ourselves.

This inauthentic thirst for meaning arises from our belief that the highest expression of free will lies in exercising control over the circumstances in our lives by making decisions consistent with our values and goals.  Honing our intent to serve our own self-interest like this means that all our actions are predetermined and predictable—the very opposite of the free will we had sought.

The more predictably we act out of short-sighted self-interest like this, the more we react to large-scale circumstances in the same way as everyone around us.  While such lemming-like behavior allows us to be accepted by those around us, this kind of conformity breaks our spirit, deadens our creativity, and trivializes our life.

Instead of finding meaning, we create meaninglessness.  This is so because something acquires meaning only when we can place it within a larger context—when everything relates to my own self-interest, however, I lack the larger context within which to place my life.  Without anything greater than myself against which to situate my actions, I am left with a profound sense of loss, alienation, and meaninglessness.

Keep in mind here that we all claim to have something higher we believe in and to which we dedicate our lives.  But we are trying to speak honestly here and to reason through our common obstacles, so let us not indulge in self-deception or dissembling.  For the moment, set aside what you say, set aside what you want others to think of you, set aside what you want to think of yourself—when it comes to actions, you are a rare and exceptional individual if you place the interests of others ahead of your own.

Yet all this goes against the wisdom teachings of the elders, who make it abundantly clear that the ultimate expression of free will lies in surrendering to the higher will of the universal source.

What then does such surrender feel like?  What is the inner experience like?

It feels like drifting on the great ocean without rudder or sail.  It is the recognition that, although I know how to navigate by the stars, I have no concept of my destination.  I voluntarily give up my efforts to direct my own course—and quite naturally allow the breeze to carry off any maps drawn by others.  I trust the soundness of my raft, fashioned from the timbers of passive attention and lashed together with the cord of active attention.  I move with the vast serpentine currents of the great sea, carried where it goes.  No longer embroiled in a journey with a goal and destination, I embark on the primordial journey of exploration.

The inner experience of such surrender is your sudden recognition in a moment of calm that the journey of exploration is itself the destination and that, without striving for it, you have entered the ecstatic life.

There is an absent-minded pirate who wanders aimlessly, wondering aloud, Now where did I bury that treasure?

The problem is that we ourselves have grown so absent-minded that we would not recognize our part in the story even if we had an eye patch, a peg leg, and a parrot on our shoulder constantly repeating in our own voice, Now where did I bury that treasure?

We have forgotten, in other words, that we ourselves hid our priceless treasure in just that place we would be sure to look once we were prepared to use it wisely.

Even worse—we have forgotten to keep looking.

The wisdom teachings are replete with such stories.

A widow fell ill, for instance, and lost all her belongings except the priceless jewel she had inherited.  Fearing creditors would try to steal it, she sewed the jewel into the coat of her only child so that he might never want for anything.  But her illness worsened suddenly and she died before telling her son about the jewel sewn into his coat.  The young man fell on hard times.  Impoverished and homeless, he wandered the land, suffering gravely in his loneliness and misfortune.  One day, as he was performing another menial task for another bowl of thin broth, his threadbare coat caught on a nail and tore open.  To the young man’s amazement, out toppled the priceless heirloom, changing his life forever.

Or, similarly, a desert saint taught the people of his village by one day riding his donkey through the crowded marketplace, whipping it into a frenzy, upsetting carts and scattering the busy barterers, all the while shouting accusingly at everyone he passed, Who stole my donkey?  Who stole my donkey?

And so on.

We possess immeasurable wealth without knowing it.

The very thing we are seeking has been carrying us through life all along.

And the treasure is buried right before our eyes.

~

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

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

~

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

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

The Lesson Of Autonomy revolves around the practical application of these wisdom teachings.  While they may appear somewhat abstract at first glance, their principles demand of us concrete changes in our behavior and attitudes.  This is perhaps most evident in the way we think of ourselves:  if I look through the eyes of the relative self, all I see is loss and death—but if I look through the eyes of the true self, all I see is communion and immortality.

In order to exercise the right to change things for the better, we must first allow ourselves to be changed for the better.  This means allowing the relative self to be changed by the true self.  Voluntarily submitting to the higher self’s purpose like this allows the relative self to awaken to the life within its life, to remember the life beyond its life—by becoming more than just the sum of our body’s experiences, we let go of the personal history that has conditioned our reactions and we begin acting without being constrained by precedents and preconceptions.  Rather than acting only on our own interests, we become devoted to making things better for the people, animals, and nature around us.  When we allow ourselves to be changed by the true self, in other words, we are no longer concerned with how circumstances affect us—what concerns us is how we affect the circumstances around us.

Undergoing this self-transformation leads us to the Fourth Paradox Of Wisdom:  it is only by voluntarily submitting to the will of the true self that the relative self achieves Autonomy—it is only by recognizing its dependence on the true self that the relative self achieves real independence. But the will, ambition, and impatience of the relative self are not easily tamed and it requires sincere dedication to the true self’s purpose if we are to master the kind of self-control that carries us along the path of wisdom.

We may be devoted to changing things for the better, for example, but the interconnectedness of everything means our actions become part of a web of causes that is interwoven in increasingly complex ways, making it impossible to ever predict the ultimate effects of any single action.  This is why one of the principal symptoms of wisdom is humility:  we can act in good faith that our motive will guide our action to its intended effect, but we must not harbor the pretense of knowing its final outcome.  To exercise creative power and the right to change things for the better without a firm grasp of the governing principles is the precise opposite of wisdom.

Humility, then, is the practical face of Autonomy:  we can be devoted to changing things for the better, but we cannot be attached to the results of our efforts.  Rather than imagining we can control all the potential ways our actions might interact with all other actions over time, we must free ourselves from the relative self’s perspective and adopt that of the true self:  the successful fulfillment of the true self’s purpose cannot be understood as spanning a single lifetime but, rather, must be viewed as a long-term enterprise spanning many lifetimes.

Freedom, therefore, is the ideal face of Autonomy—the freedom to act and react without being unduly influenced by externals, the freedom to act and react without being controlled by past experiences, the freedom to act and react without being inhibited by fears and expectations of the future.

The freedom, in other words, of the untroubled spirit.

And herein lies the difference between freedom and imprisonment—for the untroubled spirit is untroubled no matter how difficult things get, whereas the troubled spirit is troubled no matter how good things get.

If we are to exercise the freedom of the untroubled spirit, we need to relinquish control of events and take control of the troubled spirit—yet because this is the precise opposite of how most people conduct themselves, we come across few people after whom we can model our behavior.  Even though this makes finding our way in life more difficult, it does force us to find our own way.  There was, of course, a first enlightened person.  A first healer.  A first shaman.  A first artist.  A first poet.  A first storyteller.  Autonomy forces us to live as if we were each the first person to see the world and respond to it in a wholly unpremeditated and original way.

Freedom is what happens when the relative self and the absolute self act as one.

Autonomy must not become just another kind of strength to be relied upon in our effort to overcome others in the competition for social resources.  It needs to be the center from which we act and feel and remember.  It needs to replace the sense of identity that has been unintentionally patched together by the relative self through its reactions to the body’s experiences.  Just as the vulnerable caddis worm crawls along the streambed picking up bits of debris it passes and then attaching them to its body to make a protective shell, the relative self builds up a reassuring sense of identity by piecing together a personal history out of the random events to which the body has been exposed.  Autonomy needs to become the sense of self from which all our actions and reactions arise without any ulterior motives.  Once our only motive is the creation of constructive change, the only obstacle to success is our desire to succeed:  by detaching our attention from any sense of success and failure, we have already succeeded in shifting our sense of personal purpose away from what is created and toward the act of creating.

Herein lies the short path to Autonomy.  By experiencing the act of creating first-hand, we are led to recognize that all of creation stems from a single source.  And by withdrawing our attention from the creation itself, we are subsequently led to experience the inexpressible purpose driving the act of creating itself.  After that experience, it is no longer possible to create anything counter to the underlying purpose to the whole of creation:  from that point on, our personal purpose is wholly aligned with the single purpose of the universal source.  Taking an active part in the universal act of creating, in other words, leads us to discover our own personal purpose in the grand scheme of things and, thereby, the unique sense of identity that transcends our individual lifetimes.  The short path to Autonomy runs straight through the quagmire of cultural conditioning without ever diverging into the quicksand of self-importance.

With this background in mind, let us turn to our training exercises and receive, in the experiences they engender, the answers that the Lesson Of Autonomy gives to our most stubborn questions.

Exercise One—Sit quietly with eyes closed, silently repeating to yourself, My Heart Is Another Sun.  Concentrate your attention on the center of your chest, visualizing a grapefruit-sized sun there radiating light and warmth out into the world.  Allow the visualization to sink into your emotions, so that the sun-heart within your chest emits unconditional loving-kindness and goodwill out into the world.  After these first steps are accomplished, allow the emotional feelings to sink deeper yet into your material body, producing physical sensations of a corporeal sun from which emanate life-sustaining rays of golden light.  After this stage of the training is mastered, carry the exercise out during all your daily activities until it becomes second nature.  Keep in mind that no shadow can ever fall upon the sun as you silently repeat the catch-phrase, My Heart Is Another Sun.

Exercise Two—Sit quietly with eyes closed, visualizing a spider web upon whose every knot there gleams a dewdrop.  Visualize further that each of these many dewdrops is reflecting every other dewdrop and, indeed, that each dewdrop is reflecting the whole of all the dewdrops together.  Once you can sustain this image, place yourself in the visualization as one of the dewdrops and then place everyone and everything you know as the other dewdrops on the web.  Allow yourself to feel how you are reflected in each of those dewdrops.  Allow yourself to feel how everyone and everything you know is reflected in you.  As you stabilize this image, allowing yourself to feel both how each dewdrop is reflected in the whole and the whole is reflected in each dewdrop, silently repeat the catch-phrase, All In One, One In All. When this stage of the exercise is mastered, extend the spider web to infinity and eternity, allowing everything in all places and in all times to become a dewdrop similarly fixed on the living web of creation, radiating All In One, One In All.

Ultimately Autonomy means to sense the omnipresent Act Of Creating and then aligning ourselves with it rather than going along with those who are not aware they are being motivated in large part by a mass hypnosis that has, over the generations, settled upon human nature.  Strive to see the world the way it really is rather than allowing yourself to be unduly influenced by the received wisdom of civilization, since that world view is the one that has created the history of suffering we are trying to change.  True Autonomy allows us to exercise freedom of perception and judgment, even as it draws us into a more passionate and compassionate involvement with the times in which we live.  Similarly, true strength allows us to defeat the self-defeating habits of thought, feeling, and memory that make us confuse weakness for strength, failure for success, and folly for wisdom.

Of all the exercises in this training regimen, the Lesson Of Autonomy is the most trying, for it demands the most of us, prodding us on to climb heights we never imagined attempting.  So take your time, re-read the background material regularly, and practice the exercises by steeping yourself in the feelings they evoke.  Move from the abstract to the bodily, making your experiences ever more concrete.  What we are searching for is not something that happens to us—it is something that we ourselves produce.

~

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

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

~

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

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

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

At the end of the last Age, the gods gathered at Teotihuacan to create this Age that we live in now.  It became clear that a great sacrifice would be needed to start the world over, and so they agreed that they would all, without exception, leap in to a giant bonfire so that their deaths could begin this, the Fifth Sun.  And although they all agreed, the god of twins, Xolotl, did not wish to sacrifice himself and so he fled and hid, transforming himself into a two-stalked maguey plant.  But the other gods knew the sacrifice would not work unless they all leaped into the fire, so they chased Xolotl and recognized him as the maguey.  Before they could catch him, though, Xolotl ran away again and hid, transforming himself into a two-stalked corn plant.  Again, the gods chased him and recognized him.  This third time, Xolotl ran and jumped into the water, transforming himself into the axolotl.  Now the other gods caught up with him and took him back to the bonfire, completing the self-sacrifice that made this world possible.

The axolotl is the larval form of the tiger salamander, native to two lakes in the Central Mexican Plateau.  It is famous as one of the highest lifeforms to exhibit the biological trait called neoteny, which refers to the ability of certain species to retain all their juvenile characteristics and reach sexual maturity despite never metamorphosing.  In the case of the axolotl, this means that it never drops it gills to leave the water and live on land like the adult salamander—instead, it lives its whole life in its immature phase, yet displaying the adult characteristic of sexual reproduction.

The word axolotl is a Nahuatl word constructed of two morphemes:  a-xolotl, from atl (water) and xolotl (the god of twins).

From all this we can say that the axolotl is a symbol of great creative power and independent action—a symbol of a being that integrates the positive characteristics of childhood and adulthood by not taking on the negative characteristics of adulthood.  It can produce the next generation without having to transform into the previous generation.  It is the symbol of the Ancient Child.

Its symbolic meaning correlates well with Hexagram 49, Staying Open, of The Toltec I Ching—

Image:  An infant beholds the many diverse items in its surroundings, each of which is calling to the child.  The speech glyphs representing each article’s voice are of different colors in order to show that the child’s natural curiosity leads it to be fascinated by a wide array of interests.

Interpretation:  This hexagram depicts the openness of heart and mind and spirit of those who are adapting to the future.  The infant symbolizes the living potential dwelling within every individual.  The diverse objects around the child represent all the possible paths, both external and internal, lying before every individual at every turn.  That the infant’s attention is drawn to each of the interests means that you look at everything as an opportunity to develop yourself further.  Taken together, these symbols mean that you are not adapted to one particular environment but, rather, to any environment.

The Way of Axolotl is the path of the generalist.  It is the path of retaining the child’s sense of wonder and curiosity throughout a lifetime.  It is the tao of the breaking wave, the path of those who keep moving forward with change rather than settling into one particular vocation, lifestyle, or identity.  It is, in this sense, the path of paths:  it does not strive to reach some arbitrary goal but, rather, seeks to explore all the interesting paths it can find.  To the extent that it encourages specialization in us, it is always in the sense of the wayfarer who stops for a while to become intimately familiar with a particularly intriguing area before moving on to the next.

Intent:  The ideal society is just like the ideal family, existing to afford every member the opportunity to develop their full potential:  in times of darkness, on the other hand, authoritarianism restricts the creation of new opportunities and channels people into meaningless activities that benefit only those in authority.  Likewise, societies change just like families, transforming their goals and relationships with the passing of each generation:  whereas those who thrive in times of darkness cannot conceive a time of light, those who thrive in times of light can all too readily envision a return to darkness.  Whether it is the individual, family, society, or humanity as a whole, the cycles of the pendulum’s swings between the closing down and opening up of meaningful opportunities establishes the fundamental circumstances against which all actions take place and all decisions are made.  The best way to contribute to the lives of others is to nurture and encourage their efforts to further develop their own potential.  In this way, you materially assist others and help transform the fundamental circumstances within which all live.

Fortune favors those who are adapted ahead of time.  The Way of Axolotl goes against the current of culture and family, which generally seeks to channel people into pigeonholes where their lives become highly routinized, seeking instead to keep open the individual’s possibilities to realize his or her potential.  Rather than seeking to merely cobble people together in a haphazard way to make society limp along without real meaning, the Way of Axolotl seeks to create a meaningful society by affording individuals the opportunity to create meaningful lives for themselves.  The fact that cultures differ so wildly from one continent to another means that no culture is inevitable or unchangeable.

Summary:  Cultivate as wide a range of interests and relationships as possible.  Avoid the tendency to focus on one specific thing or person at this time.  Cultivate breadth, not depth.  It is a time of exploration, so follow your curiosity.  Do not jump at the first opportunity or commit yourself to a single course of action now.  Keep all your options open while you prepare for future opportunities.

The Tao of Axolotl is based on the symbol of the Ancient Child.  The fact that the axolotl retains its gills and does not leave the water like the adult salamander symbolizes the experience of those who retain the open-hearted and open-minded spirit of childhood, refusing to metamorphose into the unnatural state of critical, cynical, and domesticated adults.  The fact that the axolotl reaches sexual maturity and can produce offspring symbolizes the experience of those who are creatively productive, fashioning new norms and new opportunities for others simply by pursuing their own sense of wonder.

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

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The word psyche means both soul and butterfly.

The concept of a world soul arose among ancient philosophers and endures in the heart-mind of many modern people. It was expounded by Plato for one, and can be found in many other belief systems throughout history, up to the present where it appears as the Gaia principle.

In this sense, the physical world is perceived to have a soul or spirit no less than we human beings have.  In the same way, moreover, that “the world” is actually all the things within it, including human beings, “the world soul” is actually all the individual souls within it, including human beings.  But where does this concept come from—and what does it have to do with a world butterfly?

As to the first point:  The world soul does not originate as a thought but, rather, as a sensation.  It is the inevitable result of nature mysticism, of lives so thoroughly immersed in the natural world that they can sense the one soul of which they are a part and experience their unity with it consciously.  This unifying experience of the underlying reality is what gives rise to the spiritual perceptions and practices known as animism and shamanism.

In The Toltec I Ching, Martha Ramirez-Oropeza and I make the point that people differ only in the degree of their sensitivity to the one soul.  Here is an excerpt from Hexagram 2, Sensing Creation—

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.

Keeping in mind that every individual is a spirit warrior with a feminine and masculine half, the formula for increasing our sensitivity to the unseen world soul can be phrased like this:  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.

This calming of the spirit in order to make a place, much like a womb, for the world soul to gestate in stillness and then be born in acts of benefit is an age-old formula by which men and women across cultures have attained states of profound bliss and meaningful success.

As to the second point:  The world psyche, like the individual human psyche, grows and evolves without limit.  Its only constant is one of change, always seeking further refinement and a higher order of universal benevolence.  Its only unchanging law is that of unending metamorphosis—what better symbol of our collective spiritual metamorphosis than the world butterfly?

~

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

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I am part of a Living Whole that wants the best for me and all others at the same time.

Inspired action flows spontaneously from an inspired mind.

When we replace trivial and undignified thoughts with substantial and ennobling ones, we are focused ahead of time on perceiving and interpreting events in the best possible light.  In this way, we take the energy we previously devoted to the pursuit of self-interest and channel it into acts that benefit all.

I am part of a Living Whole that wants the best for me and all others at the same time.

An inspired mind flows spontaneously from an inspired heart.

When we replace selfish and self-important feelings with generous and all-embracing ones, we are positioning ourselves ahead of time to respond to events with loving-kindness and goodwill toward all.  In this way, we take the energy we previously devoted to self-defeating attitudes and channel it into creative acts that benefit all.

I am part of a Living Whole that wants the best for me and all others at the same time.

An inspired heart flows spontaneously from being attuned to this single wish of the Living Whole:  that all benefit as one.

But how are we to give up our separate sense of self-importance and open our heart to this living wish when so many around us are acting out of greed, superstition and fear?  How are we to refine our thoughts and emotions when we are bombarded from every quarter with ever more sophisticated attempts to capture our attention?

It is one of the oldest lessons:  If your intention is clear of ulterior motives, then even distractions and confusion are The Way.

Self-defeating thoughts and emotions, from this point of view, are viewed as the enemy-within, the constellation of habit attitudes and habit behaviors that constantly throw up stumbling blocks to the spirit warrior’s progress.  Indeed, the spirit warrior is best defined as a woman or man who clarifies their intention by consciously training to (1) recognize Spirit within all matter and, (2) defeat the self-defeating habits of the enemy-within.

Freeing our intention of ulterior motives by focusing on these two goals, we find that confronting the distractions and confusion thrown up by the enemy-within becomes more like practicing with a sparring partner than an out-and-out battle.  More and more, the enemy-within is experienced as an artificial sense of self that was formed by the conditioning it received from family and culture.  As we get to know it better, it seems most like a recurring dream opponent trying to awaken us to our true potential.

For example, even if we were born to the same parents on the same day, it is obvious that were we then raised in a completely different culture, say the Mbuti of central Africa or the Inuit of the Arctic tundra, we would have a completely different personality, a completely different sense of self in relationship to the world-at-large.  Once the hollowness of this illusory, conditioned, self is fully experienced—like recognizing that the distorted image in a funhouse mirror is not our true reflection—we stop reacting automatically to events around us.  Our actions become more creative, more spontaneous, and meet with greater success.

In this sense, inspired action, an inspired mind, an inspired heart, and attunement to the wish of the Living Whole all spring from living each moment with an intention free of ulterior motives.

I am part of a Living Whole that wants the best for me and all others at the same time.

Spirit, like nature, abhors a vacuum.

When we clear our intention of ulterior motives, we are no longer beleaguered by our inner talk—Spirit rushes in to fill the clearing we have made for it.  Our heart-mind becomes its nest.

And of what is this nest constructed?

Lessons:  the accrued wisdom of the ancients, who first learned to stop their inner talk and then recorded what Spirit whispered to them in that shining silence.

By taking Spirit’s voice to heart, we, like the ancients, replace unworthy and self-destructive thoughts and emotions with ennobling and beneficial ones.

An Oracle is the voice of Spirit, speaking to us across the ages in the language of lessons.

Lessons are wisdom teachings, a body of ethical principles that can be adapted to the ever-changing circumstances of life.  As in sailing, you don’t set your sails to go with the wind in the same way you do to tack against the wind—nor do you drop anchor in the open sea just because it works when you are in port.  Lessons and their ethics guide our responses to change. Lessons make us better adapted to events, more competent, more improvisational, less predictable, and more creative.  Their ethics make us more generous, more compassionate, less competitive, more collaborative, and more successful.

The Toltec I Ching incorporates the lessons and ethics of the Oracles of two of the world’s great civilizations.  From ancient Mesoamerica, comes the Oracle of the Tonalpoalli, or Sacred Calendar, with its lessons inspired by the great civilizing spirit of the Toltec sages.  From ancient China, comes the Oracle of the I Ching, or Book of Change, with its lessons inspired by the great civilizing spirit of the Taoist sages.  We invite you to explore further your own inner path—and to carry the timeless wisdom of the ancients back into these troubled times.

This article appeared originally in Volume 8, Number 4 of Evolve! magazine.

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

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The questions we face today are no different than those faced by our predecessors:  How do I live authentically?  How do I achieve peace of mind without turning my back on those in need?  How do I attune myself to the world around me?

For the ancient Toltecs and the civilizations they inspired, the highest expression of their lifeway was embodied in the mystical philosophy of Flower-and-Song.

Flower-and-Song is a difrasismo, a common form of expression in the Nahuatl language that uses two words to form a metaphor for a third, more expansive, concept.  It is often translated as “poetry” but its meaning is more comprehensive than that, indicating that its practitioners strive to live a “poetic life”.  Examining the difrasismo a little makes this clear.

Flower in this context involves a three-stage engagement with the world.  The first stage involves seeing each moment—and whatever that moment holds—as perfect as a blossoming flower.  The second stage involves seeing each moment—and whatever that moment holds—as already fading and passing into death.  The final stage involves bearing these two visions simultaneously in the heart, engaging the moment and what it holds with the full emotional realization that it is perfect and dying.

Far from an intellectual exercise, this practice demands the greatest courage, for to face these two soul-shattering emotions at the same time requires us to open ourselves to the profoundest joy and grief all at once.  Without flinching from the perfection before us, we are filled with awe at the impossibility of spirit taking form in matter.  Without flinching from the inevitable death of everything we know and love, we cannot help but burst apart with grief and empathy.

This is a lifeway, in other words, of spirit warriors, those who exert constant effort to defeat their self-defeating attitudes and behaviors.  It is the lifeway of those who use death to awaken authentic gratitude for being alive and sharing this shape-shifting perfection with others.  When we experience it fully, Flower evokes a kind of spiritual nostalgia for the present moment that ennobles us and all our lives touch.

Song in this context means that the most authentic act we can perform is to give expression to the dual realization attained in Flower.  This is the reason that the difrasismo is generally translated as “poetry”.  But the deeper implication of this mystical philosophy of life means that Song involves treating every moment as an opportunity to express the truth of Flower.  It involves treating this entire lifetime as a single act of expressing the continuous vision of Flower.  It means using every thought, word and deed to embody the lifeway of Flower-and-Song.

Treating all things as miracles that pass away too soon, our thoughts, speech and actions take on a new caliber and timbre.  We concentrate on what is present instead of what is absent and we discover new depths of patience and tolerance.  Our lives take on greater meaning and our contributions meet with greater success.  We treat everything and everyone more nobly and we are enriched immeasurably.

As a spiritual practice, Flower-and-Song enters each moment asking two questions:  What is in front of me?  How am I treating it?

What is in front of me? opens us to the ultimately unknowable nature of the world.  By questioning the absolute nature of our perceptions, we come to accept the extraordinary mystery everywhere veiled by ordinary appearances.  It is a question that, once taken seriously, forces to us to look closer at the world:  Is this merely what I have become accustomed to seeing through daily contact—or is it the sea of spirit in all its manifest forms?

How am I treating what is in front of me? demands that we watch our inner actions—our thoughts and intentions, our wishes aimed at things outside ourselves—as well as our outer demeanor and reactions.  Am I acting nobly or mean-spiritedly?  Am I ennobling my life or trivializing it?  Am I rising above pettiness or descending into it?  Am I treating others like superiors and inferiors, all in pursuit of my self-interest—or as peers bravely facing their own death as well as they can?  Am I spreading ill will, discord and sorrow wherever I go—or compassion, collaboration and joy?

In our book, The Toltec I Ching, Martha Ramirez-Oropeza and I discuss the deeper implications of such a spiritual practice—

…..the spirit warrior breaks through the barrier separating matter and spirit.  Such a barrier is erected in our minds by the constant training we receive from those who find advantage in promoting the separation of people from nature, from each other, and from their own true self.  If people everywhere perceived matter and spirit to be the same thing, after all, the ignorance, cruelty, and suffering that make up much of human history would end.  If we were all to experience the material form of nature as spirit, we would stop harming it by diminishing it faster than we help it replenish itself.  If we were all to experience the material form of people everywhere as spirit, we would stop harming one another by acting as if our own rights and desires were superior to their own.  If we were all to experience the material form of our own individual bodies as spirit, we would stop harming ourselves by doubting that every thought, feeling, and action plays a pivotal role in eternity.  Breaking through such a mental barrier is a matter of constant training, as well.  If we do not use every thought, feeling, and action to intensify our experience of matter as spirit, we continue to desecrate the temple of nature, the temple of civilization, and the temple of individuality.

Those following the lifeway of Flower-and-Song find that it reveals the wellspring of rejoicing forever bubbling just beneath the surface of appearances.  It engages the world as a vast mystery of unimaginable potentials and aims to participate in its ongoing creation in ways that benefit the most.  It is not so much something we do on our own as much as it is music we hear and feel and long to play, a dance we cannot wait to join.  It arises from our depths to transform the ordinary into the extraordinary.

Holding to such a practice for extended periods of time has certain foreseeable consequences.  By forcing us to focus complete attention on appreciating the perfection of everything as well as mourning its inevitable passing, it trains us to attend fully to the moment, drop off inner talk, participate in life authentically, and honor everything as an equal knowing it must die.

But it has certain unforeseeable consequences, as well.  By blurring the imaginary boundary between self and world, it opens new senses and allows us to perceive the spirit within all matter.  By blurring the imaginary line between flawed and flawless, it opens our hearts to the sacredness of all form.  By blurring the imaginary boundary between animate and inanimate, it opens our eyes to the formless awareness forever transcending the very form it inhabits.  By blurring the imaginary line between time and space, it opens our minds to the unchanging presence through which all changing forms move.

The Lifeway of Flower-and-Song, then, is a spiritual practice of Inner Activism—it sensitizes us to our tendencies toward self-interest and alienation, replacing self-defeating habits with those of spontaneity, creativity, and good will.  It shifts our focus away from personal success toward a heartfelt longing for peace and prospering for all.

And it constantly reminds us that the Golden Age of Humanity is within our reach if we but dare hold out our hand.

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

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The great Chinese sage Chuang Tzu calls our attention to a strange tree beside the road.  Its bark is so tough that no ax can penetrate it, its wood is so twisted that it cannot be split or used for carpentry.  We can imagine this ancient tree, growing in the most dramatic and inspiring way, its leaves no good for tea, its fruit no good for medicine.  Of what value is this Useless Tree?

As Chuang Tzu points out, perhaps we ought to simply seek out its shade and be grateful for a place to rest or even admire the uniqueness of its form and beauty—perhaps we ought, in other words, to seek its true usefulness instead of pressing our own wants on it.

He goes further, however, to point out that the tree is ancient—and indeed, will continue to go on as it is—precisely because it cannot be exploited.  It remains true to its nature, so its life is not cut short by the whims of others.  Because it cannot be exploited, it lives on to fulfill its destiny of inspiring all who value the sublimely useless.

Objects of inspiration capture our attention because they defy our attempts to categorize them or domesticate them or explain them away.  They are troublesome in the sense that they speak to an older part of us, one that longs for symbolic communication, authenticating our own symbolic self.  And they can be particularly troublesome when their symbolic utterances precede actual events, as if there exists an underlying order to the world that synchronizes its happenings in a way that is completely invisible to our human senses.

Like the Useless Tree, they root alongside the road, offering us a place to rest and seek inspiration but oblivious to all who pass oblivious to their antiquity.  Such objects of inspiration are sublimely useless, beyond the exploitation of our own wants, precisely because they themselves are inspired.  Emerging out of the mists of prehistory, like great pyramids suddenly revealed by evaporating fog, they speak the language of our common ancestors.  They speak the language of our common soul.

The I Ching of ancient China is one such monument.  The Mayan Calendar of ancient Mesoamerica is another.  Both are divinatory systems that have survived now for more than three thousand years.  Both will still be standing, offering respite and inspiration, three thousand years from now.  They will outlive us as they have outlived all those other generations.

Troublesome indeed.  They beg so many questions.  Like the great pyramids, we wonder at how they were built in the first place, who conceived of their form and symmetry, what was the original source of their own inspiration.  But unlike pyramids that are built stone-by-stone, the I Ching had to emerge full-blown as a flower blooming overnight—what mind grasped the whole of its system all at once?  And unlike pyramids that are built stone-by-stone, the Sacred Calendar had to emerge full-blown as a flower blooming overnight—what mind grasped the whole of its system all at once?  Troublesome indeed.

Particularly now.  Because it is now that the Mayan Calendar completes its 5,128-year cycle.

On December 21st, 2012, the Winter Solstice, the Long Count of the ancient Mayans will arrive at the last day of its journey through the 13 Baktuns that comprise the Grand Cycle of 1,872,000 days.  Yes, that is correct:  the Mayan Calendar, originating among some of the world’s greatest astronomers and mathematicians of antiquity, comes to an end after nearly two million days, precisely on the Winter Solstice of 2012.

Troublesome indeed.  What are we to make of this strange coincidence?  Certainly it has now become a cultural meme of the first magnitude, propagated by an apocalyptic movie, dozens of knowledgeable books, and thousands of concerned websites.  The noise, for those tuning into the conversation, is an escalating crescendo of mixed messages and contradictory predictions.

What are we to make of this strange coincidence?  Here we are, alive at the time that the Mayan Calendar completes its Grand Cycle.  The stirring of voices around us grows louder with warnings, alarm, and scientific debunkings.  The media has jumped into the fray with both feet now and its ratings-driven programming requires as sensational an approach as possible.

I have written elsewhere in these blog postings about the actual mechanics and meanings of the Sacred Calendar, as well as the tendencies of groups to move unconsciously as a herd, so I am not going to cover that ground again here.  At the suggestion of Paul Cash of Larson Publications, I have consulted the Oracle of The Toltec I Ching regarding the meaning of this strange coincidence and what changes this 2012 cultural meme augurs.

With all this in mind, I cast the Oracle on November 14, 2009, and received an answer of Hexagram #5, Restoring Wholeness.  The result contained no line changes, indicating a relatively lengthy period—at least two years long—of similar change.  In other words, there may be fluctuations in the degree of change but not in kind.  The clearest way to think of this is that each Hexagram represents a season:  although every day in summer may bring some changes, they are within the context of summer and do not partake of the spirit of another season until that one passes.  We are entering the situation of Restoring Wholeness and there are no prevailing trends within in it signaling a move into another situation any time in the near future.

The term Restoring Wholeness, of course, indicates first and foremost that the situation we are coming out of is one of division, conflict, and alienation—a not-too-far-off description of the past few years of our collective, even global, experience.  Since the 2012 cultural meme has expanded beyond any borders in particular and is considered significant in nearly every country in the world, the present reading should address the global human situation as well as possible.

Image:  An old woman heals a young male warrior, who wears an arrowhead necklace.  While she chants an ancient curing song, she places a lizard on his shoulder and administers purifying herbs and water.

Interpretation:  This hexagram depicts great benefit fulfilling great need.  The old woman personifies the great-great-great-grandmother, the feminine force of profound wisdom and nurturing, the inner healing force within all, the aged and loving medicine woman.  The male warrior personifies the strength and vitality of youth, the great potential of the young, the idealism and insensitivity of the inexperienced, the impatient and reactive nature of the untrained passions.  Taken together, they symbolize the exchange of forces needed to heal old wounds and enable you to bring benefit to all around you.  The herbs symbolize the feminine medicines of compassion and the understanding of relationships.  The arrowhead represents the masculine medicines of single-mindedness and the pursuit of new experiences.  Taken together, they depict the exchange of energies whereby the new must be refined by the old and the old must periodically be revitalized by the new.  For this reason, the hexagram shows that the young warrior is both a patient and an apprentice of the medicine woman, learning firsthand the ways of restoring natural and original wholeness and, thereby, bringing much needed energy to the feminine half that has been giving to others for so long.  The lizard, the one who grows back its tail, represents the spiritual medicine of regeneration whereby the original state of wholeness is restored.  The medicinal herbs and water together represent the purifying and cleansing away of the useless, the wasteful, and that which only confuses and drags down the original energy of body, mind, and spirit.  Taken together, these symbols mean that you reclaim your spiritual birthright of indivisible wholeness.

The most obvious aspects of this hexagram are the discrepancies between the healer and the warrior.  She is aged, wise and benevolent.  He is young, inexperienced and independent.  She is the ancient healer, whose vitality is no longer that of the young.  He is the youthful warrior, whose vitality is not yet that of the aged.  In terms of the global rift whose wholeness requires restoration, she symbolizes the older naturalistic worldview of heart-based spirituality, while he symbolizes the newer technological worldview of head-based scientific materialism.  She is the nature mystic, attuned to and immersed in the sacredness of everything.  He is the manipulator of nature, the controller bending dead matter and insentient life to his will.

Interpreting the Oracle’s answer in terms of these two worldviews is dictated by the context of the question, which seeks to uncover the meaning behind the confluence of the ending of the Mayan Calendar and the way the modern mind is reacting to it.

These worldviews are no longer confined to ethnic cultures or geographical regions, of course.  Now entire sub-cultures of people living in the technological culture, for example, have abandoned the worldview of matter as dead and insentient, taking up a lifeway of revering the sacred in every form.  This movement back towards the animistic—or what is often thought of as the shamanistic—worldview can be seen as the vanguard of the coming widespread restoration of humanity’s ruptured wholeness.  It is not necessary to recapitulate all the elements of that rupture.  Everyone in the world knows that things cannot continue in this way. We have entered the time of Restoring Wholeness.

This Hexagram says that nature and people will no longer be treated as disposable resources.  Heartless greed and cold intellectualism will no longer make policy for the whole of nature and humanity.  The head is a good adviser but a heartless tyrant when allowed to rule.  The newer worldview of technological hubris will voluntarily step out of the leadership position and take up a power-sharing stance with the older worldview of openhearted reverence for all of nature and humanity.  The head is gradually realizing it is part of this relationship between spirit and matter.

Knowledge is not wisdom.  Knowing how to wreak havoc is not the same as having the wisdom not to do so.  Knowing how to harm ourselves is not the same as having the wisdom not to do so.  The young warrior in this hexagram knows how to produce vast technological changes but not how to reverse their unintended consequences.  The old healer in this hexagram knows how to avoid creating unintended consequences by sustaining a more simplified, if less materially extravagant, lifeway.

The warrior’s arrowhead symbolizes the directness of his approach to matters.  The drawback to this strategy is that different circumstances require different approaches—the approach cannot always be direct and purposeful action.  Such a one-sided focus on doing creates tremendous stress on the body.  Those brought up in a worldview of doing are constantly frustrated by the fact that they cannot act yet, or that they missed the opportunity to act, or that increasing competition among other actors conflicts with their own actions.  Those brought up learning how to change things do not learn how to accept things that do not need changing.  This fundamental level of chronic stress upsets the body’s natural response to life, causing poor sleep, an impaired immune system, a heightened sense of alarm, anxiety, and impaired judgment.  Impaired judgment—not the best resource for people bent on doing at every turn.

Awareness is.  Will does.

The healer’s medicine, the power to restore wholeness, is based on the ability to be with things.  This is not nearly as nebulous as it sounds to the modern mind, which generally translates being with things as not doing anything.  Nothing could be farther from the truth.  Or closer.

Being with things means being a part of things, feeling ourselves a part of things, sensing the world around us—indeed, the entire universe—as the larger body of which we are an integral part.  So not doing anything does not describe the active process of psychologically merging with the one body of creation.  It requires dropping away boundaries of the self-other duality and feeling ourselves fully immersed in the Whole, just as each of our cells is fully immersed in our bodies and each fish is part of the sea.   On the other hand, not doing anything does precisely describe the ancient worldview, since it is the world itself that is doing and any active striving on our part to exert our own will on things inevitably results in unintended consequences. The ability to move along with the flow of change, making sure that all people and animals and plants are living in peace and shared prospering, is an ancient art and one built on the wisdom of sustaining a lifeway that is in harmony and balance with the entire world.  Of what good is progress, in other words, if it leaves the majority of people in the world behind and drives other species into extinction and sows the seeds of our own destruction in the environment?

Wisdom is.  Knowledge does.

By answering with this hexagram, the Oracle is saying to us all, the solution is not coming from outside you:  you must commit to an extended period of healing this immature warrior mentality—only then will you have the sense of belonging together that you need to move forward as an entire world.

Action:  The masculine and feminine halves of the spirit warrior replenish one another.  It is a time for seeking new experiences that will broaden your vistas and deepen your joy of life.  Your innate wisdom and compassion do not have their source in thought but, rather, in life—they are not replenished by good intentions but, rather, by meaningful experiences.  In order for a well to bring benefit to others, it must tap into the unseen river of benefit flowing beneath the surface of the world of the senses.  Take no comfort in your accomplishments or knowledge now.  Instead, look to your need and pursue new interests that hold the possibility of discovering more meaningful joy in this lifetime. Because you make yourself whole again, you succeed in bringing benefit to others likewise seeking to restore their own wholeness.

Restoring wholeness with the world is an essential step.  But real wisdom knows when to open the heart to compassion and forgiveness.  Old enemies will find the profoundest source of relief and joy as they put away arms and forget old wrongs.  Difficult as it is to imagine before it has happened, this will feel like the most natural and foreordained of events once it has occurred.  The worldview of the nature mystic fosters not just mutual respect among all but reverence, love and adoration.  Life cannot hate life.  Life cannot hold one life more sacred than another.  The change that is coming is one of universal reverence—we will be One again once we hold the sacredness of all things in our hearts, we will be Whole again once we feel nothing but benevolence and good will toward all.  The lost art of regeneration is a soul art:  it is the forgotten practice of dissolving guilt, anger, hatred, revenge, and hostility with the open heart of joyous gratitude.  It is the lost soul art of dropping every expectation that joy is going to come from outside and setting forth to spend every moment producing joy regardless of circumstances.

Intent:  When people’s reactions are out of proportion to events, it is a clear signal that an old wound has not fully healed and is being reactivated by present circumstances.  Such reactions barely disguise the fact that something in the present is provoking an individual or group to relive the emotions of an old injury.  But disguise it they do, for the impact of many injuries is either long-forgotten or unrecognized.  Whether you find this imbalance in yourself or others, the nurturing-medicine of the wise feminine force must be augmented by the directing-medicine of the single-minded masculine force:  while it is essential that the wounded warrior be healed through reassurance and loving-kindness, it is just as necessary that the wounded warrior take up the discipline of recognizing that the new is not the old.  At the first sign of distress, the wounded warrior must immediately name the present and not allow the past wound to be re-opened.  Using the beneficial masculine force in this way allows you to keep the past from infecting the present.

The Oracle closes with these final words regarding the intent we need to carry forth with us into the coming time of Restoring Wholeness.  The day-to-day practice involves constantly reminding ourselves that this is not the past.  We must all be willing to start over, recognizing that there is more than enough blame to go around on all sides and that the old worldview of forever keeping old animosities alive by constantly recounting the wrongs of history needs to be replaced with a worldview of universal amnesty and goodwill.  The past is dead, long live the present.

Everyone in the world knows that things cannot go on like this any longer.

The Oracle says everyone in the world is on the verge of acquiring the wisdom to act on that knowledge.

The Golden Age of Humanity is within our grasp if we will but dare reach out our hand.

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

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The ancient Mayans, along with the other peoples of pre-Columbian Mesoamerica, held a view of time as cyclical and spiritually potent.

Cyclical in the sense that history is divided into a series of Ages (sometimes called Suns), each of which led to a better, more humane, world.

Spiritually potent in the sense that the creative forces governing certain time periods (sometimes called gods in Western thinking) have sacrificed and invested themselves in the creation and sustaining of the world.

We moderns tend to view time as linear, forgetting that, as one Taoist sage put it, Everything we know about spirit we learn by analogy from nature.  The seasons of the year correspond to the times of day, both of which correlate to the four directions of the compass in what has been termed the Spatializaton Of Time—

The Map of Inner Change

By analogy, we know that Spring symbolizes the sowing of seeds, that Summer symbolizes the cultivation and care of what we are growing, that Autumn symbolizes the gathering in and harvesting of our efforts, that Winter symbolizes the resting and saving up of energy for the next creative effort.  This is the cyclical aspect of time:  starting something new, nurturing and developing it, sharing the benefit with others, and consolidating resources for the next endeavor.

But the spiritually potent aspect.  That is something else.  It requires that we sensitize ourselves to the Livingness of Space.  It means leaving behind the view of matter as dead and directly experiencing stone and tree and animal and weather and the sun and stars as Alive and Aware, with no less a spiritual half of their body than ours possesses.  It means standing in Spring and feeling the mood and intention of the creative force governing that season.  It requires, in a word, returning to the world view of indigenous people everywhere who hold every thing in creation as sacred persons, each with a lifetime and heart-mind of its own.  It is only our lack of sensitivity to the mood and intention of the creative forces invested in, and emanating out of, each thing that keeps us bound up in isolation and alienation from the loving embrace of Spirit-Nature.

It will seem strange to some to think of a stone as a sacred person.  But then again, have they ever thought of themselves as a sacred person?  They may know that indigenous people ask the plant for permission to take its leaves or ask the stone for permission to carve it but do they understand that the plant or stone are being treated as a sacred person?  One thing we can see as utter fact is the equality with which the universe treats all things:  the eagle may take the hare, but it dies touching the high-voltage wires around its nest, dooming the rabbits offspring as well as its own.  Any hierarchy we imagine to exist is leveled by death and accident.  The electrons making up my body come from stone and tree and sun and stars and, when this body disintegrates, its electrons will fly off into billions of directions to help constitute other persons, many of whom will not be human beings.  The webwork of subatomic particles forming the space-time continuum has no “holes”.  It is simply one unbroken interwoven Livingness of Space.

Every practical person in the world knows that things cannot go on like they have been any longer.  Only blindfolded ideologues and self-serving demagogues continue to push civilization closer and closer to self-destruction.  The rest of us know—or are rapidly coming to recognize—that we cannot simply go on propagating the same old dead worldview that allows the most brutish among us to continue desecrating Nature and Humanity.

The ancient Mayans and their counterparts throughout ancient Mesoamerica—as well as other indigenous peoples around the world, such as the visionaries who constructed the ancient Chinese oracle, the I Ching—were well aware of the patterns of human behavior, both individual and collective.  Intrinsic to such worldviews is the concept of a universal duality that makes up the universal unity of the world.  While this has many cosmological significances in term of the creation and sustaining of the world, it plays itself out in the patterning of human perception and behavior through the rule of action and backlash.

The future, in other words, becomes predictable simply by understanding that sooner or later, everything changes into its opposite.  The art of such predictions lies in being able to recognize when things are getting to be either “too much” or “too little”, states which call forth their opposites.  This requires a sensitivity to the underlying mood and intent of things, which manifests itself as a keen sense of timing.  The greater the historical shifts from one opposite to another, the longer the time frame.

December 21, 2012 marks the end of a 5,128-year cyle.  The Mayan Long Count calendar is established as beginning on a purely mythological date of August 11, 3114 BC in order that its end date would occur in our time.  The Mayan mathematicians went so far as to drop the date directly on a Winter Solstice, just to get our attention.  Aware of the patterns of human perception and behavior, the Mayan priest-scribes foresaw this time, our time, as the one in which the dead worldview would give way to the Living Worldview.

Let us honor their sensitivity to the changing Ages of human nature and their keen sense of timing.

Let us honor our own sacred nature by ending this Dark Age of inhumanity and joyfully advancing in the next, more humane, Golden Age of Humanity.

.

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

Bookmark It

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