The Toltec I Ching Blog

The wisdom teachings are clear on this point:  all of existence arises from and returns to the Current.  All form arises from and returns to this formless Current.  Everything visible arises from and returns to this invisible Current.  Everything known arises from and returns to this unknowable Current.

The Current cannot be described in its entirety—but there are aspects of it that can be described.  It is the on-going Act Of Creation that continues to flow, back up, fill up, spill over, fall, eddy, stall, dry up, submerge, surface, and flow ever on, from seed to fruit and back again to seed.

The Current cannot be described in its entirety—but its entirety can be expressed.  In fact, we cannot avoid expressing it every moment.  All we see and experience is its on-going expression.  It is the living moment, whose continuous outpouring carries all of existence from one end of eternity to the other and back again.  It is the aware dwelling place, whose emptiness houses the natural unfolding of the universe as it expands to infinity and contracts back to infinity again.

It is for this reason that it is said, Move along with the Current and you will know no end.

It is not merely that nothing will be able to stop you—it is that nothing will want to stop you.

Indeed, the action of the Current is its own unfolding.  This is the action of self-revelation, by which the Current reveals itself to itself by means of its own unfolding.  To move with the Current is to align ourselves with its action, allowing its intention to be our own.  In this way, our own unfolding leads to our own self-revelation:  we come to discover our true potential by intending to move along with the Current’s unfolding rather than trying to direct it.  Moving against the Current is the source of all frustration:  trying to direct my life by the force of my own will power is like a leaf trying to make its own way against a rushing stream.

We are trained from birth to exert our will on others and the world in general.  We are taught, by word and by example, that the only way to succeed is to use our will power to overcome others in the competition for resources.  Yet this logic is patently false:  we often succeed, for example, because our competitor fails due to a crisis completely outside our awareness.  Or, just as likely, it is we who fail because of a crisis completely outside the knowledge of our competitor.  Will power cannot make a great sumo wrestler into a successful jockey nor a great jockey into a successful sumo wrestler.

Exerting my will power on circumstances does not bring me good fortune.  This is principally because I cannot be aware of the direction of the Current’s unfolding.  Because the Whole is greater than the sum of its parts, the behavior of the Whole cannot be perceived by its parts.  This means that blindly trying to direct my life by the force of my own will power inevitably leads me to move against the Current.  In this sense, exerting my own will power is the precise opposite of my expressing inner power.

Clearly, the difference between will power and inner power is one of intent.

When we speak of the chain of spiritual cause-and-effect, we are addressing the way in which intent changes the behavior of people and events:  spiritual cause, in this sense, refers to an intent, whereas spiritual effect refers to a change of behavior.  Intent is able to cause a change of behavior on the spiritual plane because the essence of one person is identical to the essence of another.  Just as salt permeates each drop of water in the sea, intent leaps from essence to essence.  This essence-to-essence communication lies at the root of all beneficial influence:  beneficial intent triggers a change of inner behavior—a change of motivation—on the inner, spiritual, level, which eventually results in a concrete change of behavior on the outer, physical, level.

In this context, will power is the energy directed by the lower self to achieve its aim:  its intent is to promote its own self-interest, even at the expense of others.  Inner power, on the other hand, is the energy directed by the higher self to benefit all:  its intent is to promote the well-being of the Whole, even at the expense of its own.

Both of these intents produce a change in behavior.  As far as the lower self is concerned, its intent to promote its own self-interest causes a backlash against it among the people and events it seeks to influence—no one likes to be exploited and sooner or later the exploited turn on their exploiters.  As for the higher self, its intent to benefit all causes a resonance in the people and events it seeks to influence—everyone wants peace and prospering and they will do everything they can to support those who are willing to sacrifice their personal interests for those of the Whole.

The backlash change-of-behavior brought about by will power stands in stark contrast to the resonance change-of-behavior brought about by inner power.  While both are certainly responses to my own intent that then become spiritual causes of their own, their difference lies in how they influence my progress on the Current:  backlashes hinder my advance, whereas resonances further it.

The backlashes caused by my lower self’s intent accumulate over time, raising inner and outer dams between me and good fortune.  They stand like intangible obstacles between me and the connections I need to make in order to advance.  They thwart my progress, leaving me with the sense of being penned-in and stuck in place—I seem to be unable to step off this treadmill that I no longer remember ever having decided to step onto.  The backlashes caused by my lower self’s intent accumulate over time, spinning a web of entanglements that hold me back, disrupt my sense of timing, and pull me out of the rhythm of the Current.  They accumulate over time, intensifying my own fears, frustrations, and resentments—which only intensifies my lower self’s intent.  By promoting my own interests, I set myself in motion against the Current and away from good fortune.

The resonances caused by my higher self’s intent to benefit all likewise accumulate over time, helping weave the strands of all beneficial intents everywhere into the single tapestry of beneficial coincidences.  These resonances stand like invisible crossroads that unexpectedly bring me together with people and events that open up opportunities and further the completion of my endeavors.  They increase my momentum, restore my sense of timing, and pull me into the rhythm of the Current.  They accumulate over time, intensifying my gratitude, happiness, and creativity—which only intensifies my higher self’s intent.  By promoting the benefit of all, I move along with the Current and toward good fortune.

This is attained by eliminating the lower self’s intent while cultivating the higher self’s intent.  It is not as complicated as it might sound.  It simply involves watching how our lower self single-mindedly intends to promote its own interests by trying to turn everything it encounters to its own advantage.  Once we observe how single-minded intent works, we simply exchange the higher self’s intent for the lower self’s.  It is not necessary, in other words, to intend a specific aim in order to generate a spiritual cause—it is simply a matter of consistently intending that everything benefits all.  If we practice this uninterruptedly for even a short while, we soon find ourselves collaborating with everything we encounter.

Aligning ourselves this way with the higher self allows us to move along with the Current, increasingly finding ourselves in the right place at the right time, enjoying the sense of belonging that comes with being part of a steady stream of beneficial coincidences.  No selfish intent in the world can carry us into this stream of unselfish coincidences—only when we act as part of the Whole do we sense the movement, rhythm, and harmony of the Whole.  Unforeseeable things happen by chance and we are an integral part of them, employed by them to advance the well-being of all.  Unexpected things happen by accident and we seem to arrive just in time to help shape them into wellsprings of benefit overflowing into the lives of all.  Each moment is a crossroads of resonances, where we arrive together with the momentum of all the beneficial intents everywhere carrying us toward the destination of our shared longing.

This is called using inner power to foster beneficial coincidences.

And it defines the difference between shock and inner Surprise.

Shocks are created to capture attention in order to advance the interests of a particular group or individual.  Inner Surprises are serendipitous coincidences that we have made room for in our lives:  they arrive unforeseen, their very unpredictability opening new windows of opportunity for all.

Shocks are like rocks tossed into a pool, each creating ripples that intersect with the others, generating an on-going series of more and more complicated backlashes.  Inner Surprise is like moonlight falling into a pool—by its very nature it cannot make ripples.  In this sense, moonlight is the essence reflected in every pool of awareness facing the immeasurable night of sleep.

Shocks are intentional and destructive.

Inner Surprises are unintentional and constructive.

We are able to avoid using shock to influence people and events by incorporating the previous stages of Calm, Resiliency, Autonomy, Gratitude, Nonresistance, Curiosity, and Insight into the least expected acts of inner Surprise.  By intending that everything benefit from our every thought, word, and deed, we find ourselves as surprised as those around us by the good fortune we share.

Stabilizing this single-minded intent by returning to it immediately every time it is interrupted, we unexpectedly find that we have crossed the threshold of wisdom and are traveling, irrevocably and irresistively, the path of good fortune.

You cannot create or construct such coincidences—trying to direct or control the Current like that merely reveals the quality of your motives, causing an untold number of backlashes that work against your advance.

Such coincidences occur—and involve you—because you coincide with other beneficial intents.

Certainly, the lower self will argue, everyone knows that such concepts sound fine in principle but have no place in the real world of dog-eat-dog and big-fish-eat-little-fish competition of everyday life.

Yet, the higher self will assert, two ants from the same colony will struggle over the same piece of dung even though both of them intend to carry it back to the same destination—after we have tried the path of competition and found it unfulfilling, how much further down the road must we go before taking a new one?

Interesting, the lower self will argue, but I practiced these principles all day yesterday and nothing whatsoever changed for the better.

Yet, the higher self will assert, you do not think it strange that the light from a distant star takes years to reach your eyes—the more your intent harbors hopes of personal advantage, the longer the time lag between the spiritual cause and its material effect.

Lightning and thunder, the symbols of shock, are natural characteristics of powerful storms.  They may be accompanied by rain, bringing much-needed water to the land.  But they may also be accompanied by the wind, bringing destruction and hardship to people.  Before the storm, it is calm.  After the storm, life wants to return to calm.  Things cannot thrive and prosper in a climate of constant storms.  Our own endeavors should not contribute to sustaining a climate of constant shock.  Our own endeavors ought to use the element of inner Surprise to help return things to their state of calm.  Shock may shake people out of their routines of thought and feeling, but so can inner Surprise.  There are enough natural and historical shocks that it is not necessary to fabricate any—especially when they are merely attempts to gain some advantage for our own interests.

Real freedom is able to exercise self-control for the benefit of the Whole.

Real wisdom serves the needs of people and the natural world upon which we all depend.

Real good fortune is being a well of benefit overflowing into the lives of others.

Real joy is being carried on the Current through this life into the Beyond.

Exercise One—Sit quietly with your eyes closed, breathing slowly and deeply.  Visualize yourself as having achieved complete peace of mind, sitting calmly in the center of a circle.  Around you, turning clockwise, are the four seasons, each of which is fixed to one of the cardinal directions:  Spring to East, Summer to South, Autumn to West, and Winter to North.  As the seasons and directions turn around their center, visualize yourself as a great tree whose roots extend vertically deep below you and whose trunk and branches extend vertically high above you.  Now align yourself with this vertical axis running through you, running through the center of the turning seasons and directions.  As you open yourself to sensing the power and peace of the unchanging center of all change, silently repeat the catch-phrase, Tranquility is the center from which all my actions and reactions come.

Exercise Two—Lie down and close your eyes, breathing slowly and deeply.  Visualize yourself on your deathbed, surrounded by your loved ones.  Visualize who is present and how they are acting and how you are feeling about them.  Allow yourself to feel that these are your last moments alive, that these are your last breaths.  As life slips away and you look upon your whole life from the end, ask yourself, What was most important? Linger in these feelings, absorb them deeply, allow yourself to be affected by them.  Complete the exercise by writing your future self a letter setting forth your priorities.  Now govern the rest of your life accordingly.

If we respond to this age of overexcitement, agitation, and frenzy with encouragement, tranquility, and good will, then we can capture attention without shocking, we can influence people and events without creating backlashes, and we can succeed without causing suffering for the Whole.  Before following the example of others who are competing with us, we ought to study the consequences of using shock to attract attention to our endeavor—we ought to look deeply into the backlashes it produces and how it disrupts the natural unfolding of people’s lives.  We ought to keep in mind that just because we can do something doesn’t mean we must.  We ought to try to begin right away, uninterruptedly intending for all to benefit from our endeavors, accumulating resonances in the field of spiritual cause-and-effect that will draw together the diverse forces needed to create the most beneficial surprise possible.

This is called the art of making the whole world the path of good fortune.

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

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

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

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.

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—

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.

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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.

Inspired Action cannot be defined or even imagined beforehand.

Why?  Because it must be tailored to the moment.  It has to be a response that circumstances evoke from us.  It needs to be an act of collaboration with the Living Whole.

It cannot be premeditated or calculated because we cannot know what the moment holds until it arrives.  We cannot sense what the whole of circumstances requires until we are fully immersed in it.  To imagine how we ought to act beforehand causes us to fall into predictable patterns of behavior that fail to express the miraculous nature of the ever-new creation within which we live.

Inspired Action 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.

It doesn’t matter whether it’s talking to a stranger, shopping for food, driving to work, watching a movie, starting a new endeavor, walking in nature, meditating, repairing a relationship, making love, or creating art—if where we stand is authentic, our actions will be inspired.

Flower-and-Song

For the ancient Toltecs and the civilizations they spawned, the highest expression of a spirit warrior embodied the mystical philosophy of Flower-and-Song.

“Flower-and-Song” is a difrasismo, a common form of expression in Nahuatl 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, demanding that its practitioners 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 driven to our knees in 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.

“Flower” forces us to a profound gratitude and appreciation in the face of perfection even as it forces us to honor each perfection for its nobility in the face of inevitable death.  It is the spirit warrior’s courage to authentically feel, Everything I know and everything I love is perfect and dying.

“Song” in this context means that the most authentic act a spirit warrior 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”.

Inspired Action makes use of every thought, word and deed to embody the ancients’ philosophy 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.

Inspired Action enters each moment asking these two questions—

What is in front of me?

How am I treating it?

The answer to the second question is much simpler than the first.  What is in front of me? forces us to confront the ultimately unknowable nature of the world.  It forces us to accept the extraordinary mystery always veiled by ordinary appearances.  It forces to us to look harder:  Is this merely what I have become accustomed to 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?

None of this, however, should be interpreted as thinking or acting naively.  Of course, not everyone will treat you as you treat them.  Of course, there will be those who seek to take advantage of you.  Of course.  But how others treat you is beyond your control.  None of us can control what happens to us.  The only thing we can control is how we respond to what happens to us.

Inspired Action does not imply being a doormat or punching bag for untrustworthy people.  Wisdom is based on solid clear-eyed discernment, seeing things for what they are.  Understanding is based on a wide array of experiences, providing a keen grasp of human nature.

The question of ethical strategies is one we will take up in the third installment of this Inspired Action theme.  But to study strategies before we work to clarify our intent is to invite cynicism and self-interest in the back door even as we’re showing false hope and naiveté out the front.  There is little purpose to devising strategies, in other words, until we have undertaken the effort to rid ourselves of ulterior motives.

As we read in Hexagram 6, “Fostering Self-Sacrifice”—

“One of the ancients’ great teachings is that acting out of self-interest to the detriment of the whole injures all.  Because profit brings gain for one at the expense of many and benefit brings gain for many at the expense of one, the logic of benefit is superior to the logic of profit.  Because self-interest cannot injure the whole without injuring oneself and self-sacrifice cannot benefit the whole without benefiting oneself, the logic of self-sacrifice is superior to the logic of self-interest.”

And again, in Hexagram 62, “Conceiving Spirit”—

“…..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 makes 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 play 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.  Because you increasingly see the invisible within the visible, your thoughts are filled with insight, your feelings with good will, and your actions with benefit.”

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.