Category Archives: I Ching

2017!

My dear blog has fallen into the shadows of neglect. Let’s see if we can remedy this.

My first beam of light here in … 2017 already!? … has to do with our current world sit-u-eh-shun.

Keeping it really simple: There are only two wrong turns in life: one is left, the other is right.

Psychologists used to believe that everything was piled up on top of each other inside of us — that we had to pass through the subconscious and all kinds of other gobbledygook in order to rise up to our higher, ideal selves. Well, as it turns out, we’ve got the past (conditionings) and emotions running in our left sympathetic nervous system, all our future projections (ego) in our right sympathetic nervous system, and a beautiful ascending waterfall of evolution smack-dab in the middle: the once mysterious parasympathetic/autonomous system.

If you look around (and in the mirror) you’ll find that most everyone — with the exception of most babies, maybe — is being led around by those carrots-on-strings that are our thoughts streaming from one extreme and/or the other. Very rarely do we encounter peaceful souls who know exactly who and why they are, and are satisfied with that. The whole jumble in most of us is now becoming increasingly transparent in world affairs. Unless and until we can naturally zoom into central focus mode, that mega-mess is not going to fade away. It will only continue to get worse until we click and fine-tune into the center of ourselves. That’ll reveal that reality is not noisy after all, unlike most of our previous identifications.

I put a helpful link at the end of this post (a technique I can sincerely vouch for after almost thirty-five years of daily use) but first I’d like to share this insight from the I Ching about our collective 2017.

In this new (very, very temporary!) Trumpish age, people, lost in their own self-mistrust and misleading ideas, tend to mistrust others more and more. The big picture changes then to Innocence, a quality, by the way, that never actually leaves a human being, but simply becomes buried and ignored deep inside. Every one of us is empowered with the instrument and all the natural means to reawaken this universal quality. It’s not a manmade procedure, but something builtin, ready and waiting for our desire and attention to trigger it.

Be alert and quiet, and you will discover that the present moment is bigger and more abundant with amazing possibilities than you have ever imagined.

fellowship-with-men

 

 

 

 

THE JUDGMENT

FELLOWSHIP WITH MEN in the open.
Success.
It furthers one to cross the great water.
The perseverance of the superior man furthers.

True fellowship among men must be based upon a concern
that is universal. It is not the private interests of the individual
that create lasting fellowship among men, but rather the goals
of humanity. That is why it is said that fellowship with men
in the open succeeds. If unity of this kind prevails, even
difficult and dangerous tasks, such as crossing the great water,
can be accomplished. But in order to bring about this sort of
fellowship, a persevering and enlightened leader is needed
— a man with clear, convincing, and inspiring aims and the
strength to carry them out. (The inner trigram means clarity;
the outer, strength.)

THE IMAGE

Heaven together with fire:
The image of FELLOWSHIP WITH MEN.
Thus the superior man organizes the clans
And makes distinctions between things.

Heaven has the same direction of movement as fire, yet it is
different from fire. Just as the luminaries in the sky serve for
the systematic division and arrangement of time, so human
society and all things that really belong together must be
organically arranged. Fellowship should not be a mere
mingling of individuals or of things — that would be chaos, not
fellowship. If fellowship is to lead to order, there must be
organization within diversity.

THE LINES

Nine in the third place means:
He hides weapons in the thicket;
He climbs the high hill in front of it.
For three years he does not rise up.

Here fellowship has changed about to mistrust. Each man
distrusts the other, plans a secret ambush, and seeks to spy on
his fellow from afar.We are dealing with an obstinate
opponent whom we cannot come at by this method. Obstacles
standing in the way of fellowship with others are shown here.
One has mental reservations for one’s own part and seeks to
take his opponent by surprise. This very fact makes one
mistrustful, suspecting the same wiles in his opponent and trying
to ferret them out. The result is that one departs further and
further from true fellowship. The longer this goes on, the
more alienated one becomes.

(then changing to …)

innocence

 

 

 

 

Ch’ien, heaven, is above; Chên, movement, is below. The
lower trigram Chên is under the influence of the strong line it
has received from above, from heaven. When, in accord with
this, movement follows the law of heaven, man is innocent
and without guile. His mind is natural and true, unshadowed
by reflection or ulterior designs. For wherever conscious
purpose is to be seen, there the truth and innocence of nature have
been lost. Nature that is not directed by the spirit is not true
but degenerate nature. Starting out with the idea of the
natural, the train of thought in part goes somewhat further and
thus the hexagram includes also the idea of the unintentional
or unexpected.

THE JUDGMENT

INNOCENCE. Supreme success.
Perseverance furthers.
If someone is not as he should be,
He has misfortune,
And it does not further him
To undertake anything.

Man has received from heaven a nature innately good, to
guide him in all his movements. By devotion to this divine
spirit within himself, he attains an unsullied innocence that
leads him to do right with instinctive sureness and without any
ulterior thought of reward and personal advantage. This
instinctive certainty brings about supreme success and
“furthers through perseverance.” However, not everything
instinctive is nature in this higher sense of the word, but only
that which is right and in accord with the will of heaven.
Without this quality of rightness, an unreflecting, instinctive way
of acting brings only misfortune. Confucius says about this:
“He who departs from innocence, what does he come to?
Heaven’s will and blessing do not go with his deeds.”

THE IMAGE

Under heaven thunder rolls:
All things attain the natural state of innocence.
Thus the kings of old,
Rich in virtue, and in harmony with the time,
Fostered and nourished all beings.

In springtime when thunder, life energy, begins to move
again under the heavens, everything sprouts and grows, and
all beings receive from the creative activity of nature the
childlike innocence of their original state. So it is with the
good rulers of mankind: drawing on the spiritual wealth at
their command, they take care of all forms of life and all forms
of culture and do everything to further them, and at the proper
time.

(I ‘performed’ in an old primary school here in Vienna for over a hundred children recently, reading from my books, meditating a bit and partying with my Roland Handsonic. We had lots of fun communicating, dancing and playing music together. My friend, who’s a teacher there, told me a few weeks later that the mood and vibrations of the school had been surprisingly improved by that event. Many children were more cheerful afterwards — the mother of an autistic child was amazed to find her child so balanced and happy — and my friend felt light and cool entering the school each day! Click on the following link to enjoy more experiences about Sahaja Yoga meditation …)

http://www.innerpeaceday.org/en/

two-girls-with-blossoms-above

earth-kundalini

happy-meditating-oriental-child

chakra-modern

Shri Mataji enjoying

children-kundalini-awakening

heaven-is-here-on-earth

indian-children-meditating

http://www.innerpeaceday.org/en/

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resurrection, Narnian vegetables, the I Ching and 2013

awaken

    I’ve just returned from three-and-a-half months in the shadow lands. (Sorry for the lack of blog posts, but my literary lights were dimmed.) At the beginning of September, after weeks of amazing emotional revelations ranging from euphoria to utter despair, I got physically sick and didn’t really recover until now, four days before Christmas 2012, and the very day that the Mayan calendar runs out — whatever that historic milestone may prove to imply. There were three or four days (and intensely dark, suffocating nights) in which I was convinced that my time on Earth was almost over, and that I had reached a humiliating and unexpectedly sudden demise. After three decades of daily yoga meditation I never get sick any more, but it seems I still had some deeper, traumatic issues to work out before the unprecedented personal and collective events of 2013.

     In the ancient language of Sanskrit, Maya means illusion. Not only has mankind marched steadily into the most morally confused time of our evolution, but the point of highest spiritual opportunity as well. Somewhere behind all the mumbo-jumbo about cosmic cataclysm and last chances, there lies the simple truth that we have all been on a very long journey, and it’s high time to harvest the fruits of that struggle.

    Not long ago there were two buddies who used to get together in a Cambridge pub once a week to discuss life and literature. One was a booming evangelist, the other a more soft-spoken Christian. It seems that they both had a subtle, inner connection to reality that expressed itself very differently through each. J.R.R. Tolkien considered the bible the greatest epic tale ever told, but chose to only hint at the image of Jesus Christ — archetype of the greatest of kings who fell and rose again in supreme benevolence — in his now classic novel series, The Lord of the Rings. C.S. Lewis on the other hand (often to Tolkien’s displeasure) would shout his admiration for the Son of God from the rooftops, especially after his kundalini suddenly rose up his spine while he rode a Cambridge public bus to work one morning, causing him to write Surprised by Joy. He also praised the Divine, albeit without naming names, in his (also now classic) children’s series, The Chronicles of Narnia.

     The other morning I woke up after hearing myself say, in a dream, “I wonder how well Narnian vegetables would sell in our local market”. (This was a few days after I woke up to a Voice that softly reassured me that, “His love for you is unlimited. It just flows,” which I understood to refer to Jesus … or Aslan?) C.S. Lewis had an uncanny knack of being able to accurately describe the attributes and effects of divinity and the shadowy lack of it, which we sometimes call evil. Bearing that in mind, I’ve come to pay special interest to the end of the adventures in Narnia, when paradise is overrun by destructive shadow, and a magical door appears in the midst of danger and chaos, leading to a new, somehow better, more colorful, wider, higher Narnia.

     It was the unicorn who summed up what everyone was feeling. He stamped his right fore-hoof on the ground and neighed and then cried:

    “I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now. The reason why we loved the old Narnia is that it sometimes looked a little like this. Come farther up, come farther in!”

    … “The farther up and the farther in you go, the bigger everything gets. The inside is larger than the outside.”

    Lucy looked hard at the garden and saw that it was not really a garden at all but a whole world, with its own rivers and woods and sea and mountains. But they were not strange: she knew them all.

    “I see,” she said. “This is still Narnia, and, more real and more beautiful than the Narnia down below, just as it was more real and more beautiful than the Narnia outside the Stable door! I see … world within world, Narnia within Narnia …”

    “Yes,” said Mr. Tumnus, “like an onion: except that as you go in and in, each circle is larger than the last.”

    And Lucy looked this way and that and soon found that a new and beautiful thing had happened to her. Whatever she looked at, however far away it might be, once she had fixed her eyes steadily on it, became quite clear and close as if she were looking through a telescope. She could see the whole southern desert and beyond it the great city of Tashbaan: to eastward she could see castle Cair Paravel on the edge of the sea and the very window of the room that had once been her own. And far out to sea she could discover the islands, island after island to the end of the world, and, beyond the end, the huge mountain which they had called Aslan’s country. But now she saw that it was part of a great chain of mountains which ringed round the whole world. In front of her it seemed to come quite close. Then she looked to her left and saw what she took to be a great bank of brightly-colored cloud, cut off from them by a gap. But she looked harder and saw that it was not a cloud at all but a real land. And when she had fixed her eyes on one particular spot of it, she at once cried out, “Peter! Edmund! Come and look! Come quickly.” And they came and looked, for their eyes also had become like hers.

    “Why!” exclaimed Peter. “It’s England. And that’s the house itself — Professor Kirk’s old home in the country where all our adventures began!”

    “I thought that house had been destroyed,” said Edmund.

    “So it was,” said Tumnus the Faun. “But you are now looking at the England within England, the real England just as this is the real Narnia. And in that inner England no good thing is destroyed.” (The Last Battle, by C.S. Lewis)

 Narnia door

    It has now been clinically proven that the state of alert mental silence produces an ideal equilibrium throughout the human organism. This state is so powerful that it can naturally correct any healable ailment in us, and remove causes such as anxiety. The effects on society are not yet documented, but it’s easy to foresee a harmonious collective environment free from the violence and suffering that has come to be synonymous with so-called civilization. Anyone who has clearly experienced this state may have noticed the light, soothing flow of energy (kundalini) that passes up the spine and out through the limbic area of the brain, referred to long ago in Sanskrit as the Sahasrara Chakra, or the thousand-petal portal to the Kingdom of Heaven. This integrating connection was called yoga, meaning union.

     There’s a lot of talk at the moment about divine councils and portals and what-not, that tend to turn most of us off to the possibility that each of us is able to reach a transcendent state of deep peace and understanding about our existence. Actually, meditation is the least complicated of all things we can reach and benefit from, needing no explanation and thought-producing concepts. I would just like to express my feeling here that our jolly old Cambridge professor may have unconsciously been describing the transformation of human consciousness with his magical door to a better world — a liberating passageway that allows us to see and feel life as it really is: beautiful and fulfilling. A very real state that enables us to perpetually improve ourselves and our planet, instead of destroying them.

     I took the liberty this morning of consulting the I Ching about the spiritual state of mankind in 2013. It said that examples should be set by those who are wise and brave, revealing the deepest spiritual connection (meditation) that can be shared by all:

    ‘Thus a hidden spiritual power emanates from them, influencing others without their being aware of how it happens.’

    ContemplationThe hexagram Kuan represents an observation tower. Those who sit on top of it can see far and be seen by all. Amazingly, the individual line that was selected for detailed reference was the top one — that very position of highest perception: 

    ‘Contemplation of his life. The superior man is without blame. Here in thetower highest place everything that is personal, related to the ego, is excluded. The picture is that of a sage who stands outside the affairs of the world. Liberated from his ego, he contemplates the laws of life and so realizes that knowing how to become free of blame is the highest good.’ ‘He has not yet forgotten the world and is therefore still concerned with its affairs.’

    (It has been said that the ultimate time of Judgement is when every human being will have the clear inner perception to look within and judge — understand and correct — themselves.)

    The I Ching then pointed out, with hexagram Pi / Holding Together, that just as water will always flow to a collective meeting place, human beings will gather with like human beings.

   Holding ‘Holding together calls for a central figure around whom other persons may unite. To become a center of influence holding people together is a grave matter and fraught with great responsibility. It requires greatness of spirit, consistency and strength. Therefore let one who wishes to gather others together ask whether he/she is equal to the undertaking, for anyone attempting the task without a real calling for it only makes confusion worse than if no union at all had taken place. But when there is a real rallying point, those who at first are hesitant or uncertain gradually come in of their own accord. Late-comers must suffer the consequences, for in holding together the question of the right time is also important. Relationships are formed and firmly established according to definite inner laws. Common experience strengthen these ties, and one who comes too late to share in these basic (inner) experiences must suffer for it if, as a straggler, he/she finds the door locked. If one has recognized the necessity for union and does not feel strong enough to function as the center, it is one’s duty to become a member of some other organic fellowship.’ (I Ching ~ The Book of Changes, translated by Richard Wilhelm and Cary F. Baynes)

     This may sound quite black-and-white, but the inner evolution of each of us is determined simply by our desires. It’s not unimaginable that the nature of that stream of wishes will ultimately carry us toward the opportunity to attain a higher, lighter state of wellbeing; or into a meaningless dead-end. We’ve been blessed with freedom to choose our way and our destination. No one can be forced to strive for liberating collective consciousness.

     May the delicious, enlightening vegetables and fruits of the new Narnia nourish us in the upcoming Harvest.

     Wishing you and yours a very merry Christmas and joyous New (kind of) Year,

    Edword

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AWAKENING

(author unknown)

In a mother’s belly there were two babies. One asks the other:

“Do you believe in life after birth?”

“Of course! Something must exist after birth. Maybe we are here because we need to prepare for what we will become later.”

“Ridiculous! There is no life after birth! How do you think this life would be?”

“I don’t know, but surely there will be more light than there is here. Maybe we will walk on our own two feet and we can feed ourselves through our mouths!”

“That is absurd! Walking is impossible. And eat through our mouths? How ridiculous! The umbilical chord is how we are fed. Let me tell you something: There can’t be life after birth. The umbilical chord is too short.”

“Well I believe there must be something. And it could be just a little bit different than what we are used to here.”

“But nobody has ever returned from the other side after birth. Birth is the end of life. All in all, life is nothing more than a stressful existence in the dark that does not lead to anything.”

“Well, I don’t know how it will exactly be after birth, but surely we will see Mother and she will take care of us.”

“Mother? You believe in Mother? And where do you think she is?”

“Where? All around us! We live inside her and through her. Without her this whole world would not exist!”

“Well I don’t believe it! I have never seen Mother so, logically, she does not exist.”

“Yes but sometimes when we are very silent, we can hear her singing or feel how she caresses our world. You know, I think there is a real life waiting for us, and that right now we are just preparing ourselves for it.”

coolcheck.org

sahajameditation.org

freemeditation.com

shrimataji.org

I feel cool.

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my 30th second-birth day today

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~CLICK on a treetop above the spectacular West Coast ocean view to enter the tale~

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message from the I Ching

There are moments when we encounter an idea powerful enough to pull us firmly into focus, into the unlimited awareness of where we actually stand here and now. Some of these revelations are interesting, some fascinating — and some can forever change the way we see ourselves and the world we live in.

Here is one such revelation:

(open and enter)

 

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