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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

~

Reversing the Course of Fate

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

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

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

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

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

~

The Oracle of Freedom

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Diagram 2: Clockwise Circulation of the Four Bigrams

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

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

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

~

Next:  Reading the Map of Fate

~

The Toltec I Ching, by Martha Ramirez-Oropeza and William Douglas Horden has just received a Silver Award in the 2010 Nautilus Awards.  It recasts the I Ching in the symbology of the Native Americans of ancient Mexico and includes original illustrations interpreting each of the hexagrams.  Its subtitle, 64 Keys to Inspired Action in the New World hints at its focus on the ethics of the emerging world culture.

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

~

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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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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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.

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