The Toltec I Ching Blog

Gradual influence is both the seed and the fruit of Insight.

It is the seed of Insight in the sense that external factors gradually influence our internal state, building up greater sensitivity until it triggers a new Insight.

It is the fruit of Insight in the sense that our inner Insight gradually influences the external situation by consistently encouraging harmful things to change and beneficial things to be preserved.

So although Insights seem to come full-blown and of a sudden, they actually result from a slow accumulation of subliminal experiences that gradually sensitize us to our surroundings.  We are not suddenly more insightful, in other words—rather, a growing awareness of something new works its way up through our unconscious until it crosses the conscious threshold and we can grasp it conceptually.  Insights seem to arrive suddenly because we have unconsciously been preparing for them by building up an emotional tension to be released once they enter conscious awareness.  This is why Insights are experienced as important and meaningful:  they arrive as the marriage of a new idea and a profound emotion—a marriage whose union gives birth to the breakthrough experience.

And although it seems that our Insights do not significantly impact our surroundings, this actually reflects a failure of our own perseverance.  Once we accept that each thing is on its individual path to perfection, then our influence can only add to or subtract from the other’s momentum:  criticism and conflict cause friction that impedes momentum, whereas approval and encouragement help propel each along its path.  The way of gradual influence, therefore, is the way of facilitation and accord:  we are able to put our Insights into effect when we methodically and consistently help others break through the impasses holding them back on their path.

The lower self will argue that this may sound nice enough but it is not practical because not everyone is a good person deserving of goodwill or kindness.  In fact, it will argue, there are those who are so cruel and malevolent that they deserve only cruelty in return.  This kind of argument—reducing issues to their extremes, as if that disproved a point that holds valid in a vast number of other cases—is a favored tactic of the lower self when it feels its interests threatened.  Wisdom does not express itself in obvious arguments against a compassionate and egalitarian ideal.  Anyone, after all, can construct hypothetical cases in the extreme that show how religious, spiritual, and philosophical ideals cannot work in the real world.  It takes the Insight of the higher self to see how they can.

For example, it is self-evident that if everyone everywhere was treated from birth with kindness, approval, and encouragement, generation after generation, so that no one anywhere experienced any cruelty or malevolence, then the number of people who became cruel and malevolent would drop each succeeding generation until the trait all but disappeared.  Those who claim this itself is impossible will admit that under the right circumstances they themselves would be able to extinguish their own tendencies toward cruelty and malevolence—but they will not admit that others would be able to do the same.  Such is the nature of the lower self, which fears most of all the prospect of living up to the potential of its light half.

As already stated above, although it seems that your Insights do not significantly impact your surroundings, this actually reflects a failure of your own perseverance—it requires the long view and a faith in the principle of metamorphosis for you to keep acting in a way that ennobles all when so many others appear to be doing just the opposite.  However, once you accept that your ideas, goals, and endeavors are all part of your own individual path to perfection, then the conduct of others no longer has any bearing on your own.  Rather than you being impacted by others’ actions, in fact, it is your conduct and demeanor that gradually influence others to change what is harmful and keep what is beneficial.  This form of inner power emerges because your attitude and behavior stem from inner Insight rather than short-sighted self-interest.

Success of every kind depends on this alternating expression of Insight:  on the one hand, external events gradually bring about internal breakthrough experiences and, on the other hand, internal breakthrough experiences gradually affect external events.  In this sense, we become more sensitized to our surroundings, which leads to more penetrating understanding, which we express through our actions, which better sensitizes others to their surroundings, which leads to their own Insights.  And just as we are motivated to act in accordance with our Insights, others are motivated to act in accordance with theirs.  By allowing others to influence us, in other words, we are able to influence them.

Fail to keep increasing your sensitivity to your surroundings, however, and you will lose the creative momentum that keeps you moving from success to success.  Fail to keep increasing your sensitivity to your surroundings, furthermore, and you will lose touch with what motivates those you seek to influence.

Failure of every kind depends on a lack of Insight.

What is holding me back?

Increasing my sensitivity to everything in my surroundings may not always be enough to answer this question.  There are times when I need to turn Insight back upon myself in order to advance the next step on my individual path to perfection.  This is both simpler and more complex than deriving Insight from my external surroundings:  simpler, in the sense that my internal impasses depend wholly on me for their existence—and more complex, in the sense that much of my identity is formed around my internal impasses.  Once I break through them and leave them behind, they no longer exist—but so long as they do exist, they deform the natural flexibility and adaptability of my personality and character in much the same way that dams change the natural flow of a river.

This brings us to the Seventh Paradox Of Wisdom: the more fixed my internal impasses, the more fixed my sense of personal identity.  If I do not periodically look for and identify my internal impasses, then I come to live with them so long that they seem to be part of me.  If I do not find a way to pass through them and resume my original direction, then the very course of my life is changed by the artificial reactions I have to my surroundings as a result of the habits that have replaced the natural flexibility and adaptability of my personality and character.

I am not fully myself, in other words, until I resolve all the internal impasses still haunting me.  Which is to say that I cannot reach my full potential so long as I fail to break through my internal impasses.  This is because I allow these internal impasses to create friction and conflict in my life—I myself slow my own momentum on my individual path to perfection.  If I am to reverse this tendency, I must increase my sensitivity to my unconscious habits of thought, emotion, memory, and instinct, identifying and then breaking through each in turn.

A straightforward approach to that end is for me to ask evocative questions and then follow the train of associations that my answers set in motion.  It does not take long to see how each habit has developed into an internal impasse that has shaped my reactions, and therefore my relationship, to my surroundings—

My habits of thought come to light when I inquire, What do I believe strongly?

My habits of emotion come to light when I inquire, What do I strongly dislike?

My habits of memory come to light when I inquire, What do I react to with alarm?

My habits of instinctual drives come to light when I inquire, What do I feel compelled to do?

As I encounter each impasse, I identify it quickly and accurately—is it a true impasse, a false impasse, a receding impasse, a sticky impasse, a hard impasse, or a soft impasse—and then treat it accordingly.  Using these questions to draw my impasses out of the unconscious and into awareness where I can break through them consciously, I feel myself progressively lighter and lighter, as if burden after burden has been lifted from me.  As impasse after impasse is penetrated and passed through, my sense of buoyancy and good will spontaneously result in my reverting to the natural flexibility and adaptability of my true personality and character.  In this way, my authentic reactions to my surroundings are restored and my relationship to the world more accurately reflects my individual path to perfection.  I regain my creative momentum and find it many times easier to break through the external barriers to good fortune.  My ideas and plans are part of the underlying harmony of the world and I find collaborators with whom to reap success.

This is called using Insight to release trapped power.

It is a principle otherwise expressed in the Eighth Paradox Of Wisdom: the longer an internal impasse goes undetected, the more powerful the resulting breakthrough experience.  Once broken through, in other words, it is the oldest, deepest, and most unconscious impasses that are the most liberating.

What is holding me back, it turns out, is what ultimately propels me forward.

Freed from internal impasses, where does Insight propel us?

Or, perhaps more to the heart of the matter, What are the further reaches of Insight?

As impasses are penetrated and left behind, we gradually realize that we ourselves are becoming Insight, in the sense of a special form of awareness, of attention, that, like a beam of light penetrating the dark of night, cuts through the entangling vines of the senses to perceive the real nature of existence.  We don’t want to be misled by the words special form, however—this metamorphosed form of Insight is simply the natural and normal awareness of the higher self.  As the barriers to contentment and fulfillment fall away like a butterfly’s cocoon or a serpent’s shed skin, so do the persistent misconceptions and uncertainties that plague the lower self.  As these impasses dissolve and melt away, our identity undergoes a gradual but profound transformation:  we identify less and less with the single lifetime of this material body, and more and more with the immortal lifetime of this immaterial awareness.

It is at this point that Insight is turned around to shine full upon itself, like light reflected back upon its source.  It is here that Insight empties out into the source of awareness, like a river empties out into the sea.  And it is here that Insight comes to embody a living emptiness, a dwelling place where all life might dwell, a timeless garden where all might ripen to perfection.  Insight turned back onto itself is the gate of the Great Reunion.

The further reaches of Insight, it turns out, extend all the way back to its origin in the Beyond.

Exercise One—Close your eyes and breathe slowly and deeply.  Visualize a dark grey stone wall before you.  Visualize your attention as a steady gentle wind blowing against the wall.  Visualize that wind gradually eroding a hole through the wall.  Visualize that hole growing larger and larger, until the wall gives way and falls.  Once you have succeeded in breaking through the wall, begin the exercise again, this time repeating the catch phrase:  Is this the limit of awareness?

Exercise Two—In the routine of everyday life, see each person you encounter as having an enlightened master within them.  See each person’s inner master as testing the quality your spiritual perceptiveness by pretending to be opinionated, hypocritical, greedy, ambitious, self-centered, and driven by instinctual needs.  Hone your Insight until you can see the enlightened nature of each person’s inner master peering out from behind the persona of the lower self.  When you can hold this perception steadily for periods of time, then turn your Insight around and see the enlightened master peering out from behind your own persona.

Just as there cannot be good fortune without wisdom, there cannot be wisdom without Insight.  And there cannot be Insight without gradual penetration of the impasses that afflict us within and without.  When we break through all impasses, we return to the state of wholeness.  When we return to the state of wholeness, we relive the time before we were ever wounded.  When we relive the time before we were ever wounded, we reclaim our perfection.  But we don’t want to be misled by this word perfection—this is not the static stereotyped perfection of the temporal imagination but, rather, the ever-evolving individual perfection of eternal Insight.  In this sense, the higher self is the Wind Of Light coursing through the Night Of Matter, patiently, gradually, carving the one infinite impasse into a perfect mirror of the Beyond.

So what the lower self calls success is achieved when we are able to influence our surroundings in a way that furthers our goals, whereas what the higher self calls success is achieved when we are able to influence our surroundings in a way that furthers the perfection of the Whole.  Treat all of existence as a single soft impasse through which you are flowing, wearing away all the detritus until only the hidden diamond remains:  fulfill your role as part of the great spiritualizing influence and the unrelenting wind of your good will and encouragement will assure your ultimate success.

~

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.

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.