Paul Blakey: Another way to use I Ching

Posted on by Frank DeMarco

An old friend weighed in on another way to use the I Ching, and with his permission I reprint his email.

Hi Frank,

You caught my attention with your thoughts on the I Ching, which has been an ongoing study of mine for probably 50 years now. I started with the Wilhelm/Baynes version but over the years I have collected a number of different volumes. My favourite is “The Book of Changes and the Unchanging Truth” by Ni, Hua Ching.

The I Ching has deepened my qigong practice over the years and I used to have wonderful conversations about the book with my qigong teacher, Michael Tse.

One of the ways he used the book was to interpret the “gua” (situation) of the day, not by throwing coins or dividing yarrow stalks, but by observing the combination of any two of the eight trigrams (gua) in this manner:

Let’s say it is morning, you go outside and the sky is clear and the sun is shining. This is the first thing you notice, so this becomes the first gua (Heaven). You decide to sit on the deck and have your morning coffee but as soon as you sit down your neighbour fires up his lawn mower to cut the grass. This becomes the second gua (Thunder).

Now you have two trigrams, with Heaven below and Thunder on top, which makes hexagram 34, Great Strength. (You put the first trigram at the bottom, because it is the first thing you observe and it becomes the root of the hexagram).

The interpretation of hexagram 34 in Hua Ching’s book is summarized as “When great strength is correctly applied, it is a good thing.”

The general commentary is all about using force in a beneficial manner. In regard to the noise interrupting one’s coffee moment, you have several options. One is to stand up and yell at your neighbour, the other might be to retreat and go back inside, but the other is to use the moment to learn how to control and develop your internal energy.

“Non-action is the term generally used to interpret the Taoist principle of naturalness. However, non-action does not mean that one does nothing, rather that one does not scatter one’s energy. Allowing nature to take its course without interference is the real meaning of non-action.”

I have found over the years that this gives a real ‘felt-sense’ of the meaning of the various hexagrams. It combines natural feelings with daily events to give you a personalized connection to the —  at times — rather abstract commentaries.

Hua Ching continues:

“Each line (starting from the bottom) guides us in the use of force. The first line represents energy that is gathered and cultivated. This accumulation can be used to observe and respond appropriately to the various situations that confront us. The second line recommends the use of self-restraint. In the third line, the choice is given between expressing virtue through non-action or ignorance through strenuous response. The fourth line indicates that this is the right time to apply strength. The fifth line represents a position of weakness and teaches how to deal with such situation. The top line advises using difficulty as a means of becoming strong.”

You can also use this method internally by observing the nature of the inner landscape. For example, in your conversation with the guys you mentioned that you were feeling a bit unfocused …

Feeling unfocused would be the effect of Wind (scatters and disperses), so this would be your foundational qua.

Then, with some help from your friends you settle into the conversation, which I would interpret as being the influence of Mountain (settles and centres).

Which gives you hexagram 18, Correcting the Corruption (Mountain over Wind).

“Work against corruption. This is a beneficial time to engage in an adventurous task. Prepare carefully in advance and make a thorough inspection afterwards.”

You seemed to end your writing with a slight feeling of frustration, as if you felt you were unable to reach the core of what was being transmitted …

[I wasn’t feeling frustrated, but perceptions differ.]

The commentary continues with this (which I think is entirely appropriate) …

“In this hexagram, Wind is below Mountain. However, the gentle wind cannot penetrate the dense air at its base.”

Have a look at your copy of the I Ching and see what you can glean from Hexagram 18, as it relates to your situation.

All the best,

Paul Blakey

 

Yeast

Posted on by Dirk Dunning

Yeast.

I have to laugh. This story is about yeast. This story is about remembering. And most of all this story is about knowing just how much more we are than we often imagine. And it is about how connecting with guidance can help you explore that, as well as to explore what you might do with these tools.

Bear with me a brief while to get there. I need to tell another brief story first for this to make sense.

I spent a large portion of my life in a battle against a rare form of arthritis. I had Reactive Arthritis, Ankylosing Spondylitis and a tongue twister – Diffuse Idiopathic Skeletal Hyperostosis. That last one goes by the moniker DISH. These are terrible and destructive diseases.

These are and were caused both by a genetic susceptibility – an antigen called HLA-B27 and an infection. Scientists love to name things with terrible names. This antigen is one of the “friend and foe” antigens. These antigens are the ones you hear about in medical dramas and at doctors office when they talk about doing a tissue match for organ transplants. These antigens are like flags that cover the surface of cells telling our immune systems – “hey, I am one of us, please don’t kill me”.

My disease is/was an autoimmune disease. It is/was caused by bacteria pretending to be “me” / “us”. The bacteria has a part that looks very much like HLA-B27. When I was infected with one of these as a kid, my body recognized the invader and fought in. But the tricky bugger pretended to be “me” / “us”. And my immune system stopped fighting. This continued as an on again off again war for decades.

The battleground was my body. And the battlefield damage from that war was my spine, my neck, my pelvis, my eyes and more.

In 1997 I cured my arthritis. Doctors say that is impossible. I did it anyway. That story is a long story in its own right, fraught with difficulties, pains and perils. But that is for another time. The story today is about yeast.

A week or two ago I was lamenting to Frank that I was unable to grow yeast in my house. I have tried on and off for the last decade to bake bread, brew beer, make ginger bear, ferment grapes into wine, make yogurt and more. Ever single time that ended with me throwing it all out.

I purchased yeasts of a dozen types tailored to each purpose. I treated them gently. I abused them. I nurtured them. I ignored them. I tried everything I could think of. Yet, not once could I get yeast to grow.

I worried that the water was bad. Perhaps chlorine residual, or something else was killing them. Maybe I even had a bacteriophage (a virus that infects and kills bacteria) that targeted yeast. I tried several types of spring water, distilled water, and others. Nothing. Yeast would not grow.

I borrowed starter from friends. It died. It didn’t seem to matter what I did. The yeast always died.

With the virus and being stuck in the house, I thought again about trying to make bread myself. But my attempts at creating sourdough starter were going no where.

As I talked with Frank about that, he stopped me and asked as he always does – “What do the guys have to say?”

I have been doing my own version of communing with guidance since I was a child. For most of my life I set that aside as I did professional work. In that work, proper “scientists” would reject anything I had to say if they ever thought for an instance that I believed in such ‘nonsense’. My “credibility” would be toast. And so I set it aside for a good long while.

In the past two decades going to the Monroe Institute and getting to know Frank, I have let my hair down again, and returned to my roots. I learned Franks Intuitive Linked Communication version of how to connect.

And so, I asked “the guys” – “What is going on?” “Why is the yeast dying?”

The answer they replied with was immediate and blew me away. They pointed out that I had learned to do esoteric energy work and that I had gotten quite good with it. I knew all of that of course. It is part of my day to day “normal” that most people think is “impossible”.

They went on to say that in using those techniques that I had suppressed the growth of the bacteria that caused my arthritis as a part of the larger battle against it. I knew that played a part of the larger story of how I cured the arthritis.

They said that what I failed to realize is just how powerfully I had invoked that. They said that the reason the yeast wouldn’t grow anywhere around me was because “I wouldn’t let it. I was suppressing it.”

Well, duh! So, right then and there, I changed my energetic pattern so that I would continue to protect my body from a resumption of the arthritis, and at the same time to allow and support the yeast and other beneficial organisms that I grow.

Well that was fascinating. Frank and I continued our discussions and wrapped for the night.

Meanwhile, back in my dining room, I had been trying for a week to get sourdough starter to start with no success. Nothing was growing at all. Before I went to bed I checked on it one last time. It tasted liked flour and water. Nothing. hmmm… Perhaps I can start tomorrow.

Not long after I went to bed. And I thought of a plan for the next day.

I awoke in the middle to the night, as I often do. That too is another long and fascinating story for another time.

I got up and went to the kitchen for a glass of water. Along the way I stopped and checked my proofer where the sourdough starter was sitting nice and warm and had been for over a week. And what do you know, the thing was boiling over.

I opened it and smelled – yeasty!! I tasted it. It was doughy, sour and wonderful. It was only four hours or so since Frank and I chatted and since I changed my energy pattern.

In the week that followed, I have started several different sourdough starters. All of them have worked. I also found a very old, undoubtedly dead package of Red fast rising yeast hinting in my cupboard.

I threw that in a jar with some water and flour. Shazam, it went bonkers. And the next day I made bread for the first time in decades.

The tools we have available to us in connecting with guidance are immensely powerful and varied.

My journey, with the arthritis, with the yeast, and with so many other things has been a journey beyond doubt. It is a journey of remembering.

Yours can be as well.

Dirk

Speaking of “we’re all one thing”…

Posted on by Frank DeMarco

This information isn’t totally new, but think of the implications for human society! Like trees in a forest we appear to be separate, even independent. In truth, though, we are closer to being all one thing than we are to being a bunch of unconnected “rugged individualists.”

What are the implications for our society, if our economic and political theories are based on an entirely erroneous set of assumptions about who and what we are?

https://returntonow.net/2018/02/28/trees-talk/?fbclid=IwAR3ie3yio4u18H4dFpKkNzVhzWJ8qXW5qLmcOzI6FWuxJX0oumrYI0czD9U

Now that the virus has gotten your attention…

Posted on by Frank DeMarco

Photo taken when the book first came out, in 2014

As I watch people coping with the virus, I sometimes think, “I gave them what they need, years ago!” But maybe I was just early, as usual. Maybe people will be more receptive today. The book is still available, and the information it contains remains true. Usually I refrain from promoting my own work, but I suppose that such reticence can be overdone. What I do know is that in this 100-page book I put everything I had learned about healing. The subtitle is “A practical guide to using visualization to improve your health and your life,” and that is exactly what it provides.

The introduction will give you an idea of what the book is about. That is, here’s what’s in it for you.

Introduction

In this book you will find simple techniques to improve your health. They are free, they have no side-effects, and they cannot interfere with any medicines you may be taking. You can mix them with whatever form of medical care you prefer. You can do them with your doctor’s blessing, or you can keep them to yourself.

You can use these techniques, no matter how serious your present condition. Are you in continual pain? Seriously injured? Enduring a chronic degenerative condition? Whatever, it doesn’t matter. You can use these techniques.

The only catch is that you cannot benefit from these techniques while actively disbelieving in them. You don’t have to believe, but you do need to suspend disbelief, or nothing can happen. You cannot be open to new possibilities and at the same time be closed to them. It is that simple. And is it so hard, suspending disbelief? If you try and you can’t make the techniques work for you, what have you lost? A little time. But if you succeed, you have more to gain than you can presently guess.

Please note, I do not promise you perfect health, any more than I promise you a life without problems. I have my own health problems, and anyway it seems to me that life could be described as a series of problems to be faced. I don’t think that’s at all a bad thing. It isn’t like we’re victims – as you shall see.

Neither should you get the idea that the state of your health in any way indicates your level of spiritual development. It would be a more convenient world – and a better behaved one – if the people at the highest spiritual level automatically enjoyed the best health, while those at the bottom of the spiritual scale endured suffering and misery. That would encourage people to work on their spiritual life! But your level of spiritual growth and awareness has little or nothing to do with your state of health, and I don’t think it is very hard to figure out why that is. We are all working on different things in these lives of ours, and suffering can be a very powerful aid to growth.

In other words, affliction isn’t necessarily always a bad thing, any more than perfect health is necessarily always a good thing. So much depends upon what is going on within the person, and no one is capable of judging this from the outside. Nonetheless, there is no reason why you shouldn’t acquire more effective tools to improve your health.

Does this book give you everything you need to maintain your health? Well, yes and no. If you come down with a serious disease, chances are you are going to the doctor, if not the hospital. If you have trouble with your teeth, sooner or later you are going to go to the dentist. And sooner or later you are going to die of something, if only old age. But does that mean it isn’t worthwhile to live according to the principles I have named here?

What would it be worth to you, to live in less fear? What would it be worth to be in greater connection to more parts of yourself than you once recognized? What would it be worth to recognize that your health is less a reaction to outside stress than an expression of what you are and what your life is? What is it worth to know that you and your family and friends need not be helpless before accident, and disease, and injury? Most of all, what is it worth to you to learn how to grow into so much more that you can become? Read on, and find out.

 

A word about the organization of the material.

First comes Thinking differently, because as you think, so you are. Part one gives you a sense of how I see the world, and how I came to see it that way, because society’s present beliefs about health and the body affect us all, consciously or otherwise. For you to change your health,  you must be able to envision new possibilities. To do that, you need a reason to change what you believe.

Part two, Taking Charge, provides the framework and techniques you need to go from being a passive observer of your health to an active creator and shaper of patterns. And, as you will see, this is not restricted to questions of health. A change in attitude will reshape not just your health but your life.

Hence, part three, Living Right, broadens the application of framework and techniques, because your life is about more than health alone.

Part four, What Can Be Done, offers my insights, suggestions, and guesses as to what’s really going on with our health and with our lives. Above all it offers you my encouragement, and wraps up the how of imagining yourself well. It is true, what I promise: You can do this.

Rings and threads

Posted on by Frank DeMarco

About the photo: Originally the guys said spools instead of rings. This was to show that various “threads” (traits) were shared by different containers, and that, from TGU’s point of view, it was as accurate to say that a given thread connected various spools as vice-versa. Of course, each spool contained not two or three but hundreds of threads, maybe millions. This was merely intended to give the general idea.

Tuesday, August 24, 2010

6:30 AM. Open for business – if somewhat later than usual. Our spiritual heredity?

The temptation here will be to retreat into cliché or evasive generality, which we suggest is what Rita Warren experienced in questioning people in the black box. But they had only a short time to concentrate; it is natural.

They had about as long as I have in any given day. It’s true, they didn’t come to it day after day. Miss Rita, I get the impression that you are waiting in the wings to help, this heavily raining morning. [Pause] Or maybe not. Not sure I can really feel your presence. Well, anyway —

There is a logic behind your existence in any particular body at any particular time-and-place. Now listen carefully to that statement. The logic changes according to the time, according to the place. That’s why you change locations or change occupations or change pre-occupations. You live many lives within any given life – as child, as adolescent, as young relatively irresponsible adult, as functioning social unit primarily driven by the needs and motivations of the larger society around you, as older person with a longer perspective, as – perhaps, elder, either known for wisdom or ignored as irrelevant. All this is familiar to you from a social viewpoint. Now think of it from an internal or spiritual viewpoint.

You live many lives within each life. Why is that? How is that?

Of course you will see that part of the answer is that your person-group expresses different constituent parts in different circumstances – including the chronologically-biologically determined circumstances you think of as different stages of life. It should be easily comprehensible that throughout your lifetime you are necessarily different persons. That is, different aspects manifest in turn, and not necessarily once and then not again. You have heard of terms like “arrested development” or “reversion to an earlier form” but may not have considered them in this context.

How different is it when you consider your larger existence? Suppose yourself a being with many threads each of which, or each combination of which, expresses at different times in different circumstances, and how different is that from your present circumstances? As above, so below.

Okay, big jump but I see it. Our common thread here is not so much the body (except at any given moment) but the mind, the consciousness, that somehow has both the moment-to-moment consciousness (and ignorance) and the overview of the life. And you’re saying, in a larger self we are beings – well, you say it.

Nice jump. Yes. As above, so below, because each level is the same scheme, the same pattern, as the level below or above, and so understanding one’s own level is the way to understand all other levels. And after all, how else could you (could the ancients, could the wisdom-keepers) obtain first-hand knowledge of other levels of being? (This doesn’t mean that everything that is experienced is understood in the same way; it does mean, though, that it is the same thing being experienced. Thus, with sufficient insight, one can examine any testimony, correct for its bias, and see the same thing as it appeared from a different viewpoint.)

Bias – I well remember Rita explaining to me – means not unfair prejudice, but inherent inclination. One’s bias in any given matter is how one is most inclined to see it, the easy road, the conclusion one would tend to jump to as opposed to the conclusion one must be prodded toward.

And notice, in mid-explanation you might be said to have “forgotten” whether it was “you” or “us” speaking.

I did notice. The veil keeps getting thinner, doesn’t it?

Or, your awareness of a process that functions continually is becoming more acute.

Well, that’s good. And to continue? (Or do you expect me to do it?)

Yes, a joke, but less of a joke than you might think. As it is not your definition of “you” who speaks, so it is not necessarily your definition of “you” who reads, or hears. Our awareness is your awareness, it’s just that the identity is not obvious to you in your daily lives except occasionally – until you really get it, at which time you truly realize that it has been all along as seemed too good to be true – you are traveling gods in disguise, as Henry Thoreau once put it. Yet it is also a most matter-of-fact piece of news, just as he was very matter-of-fact.

Now, since you have jumped to the way that makes more sense of things, let us look at it a little closely. Again, the easiest way, the richest way, the most fully textured way that will include emotion as well as logic, is to examine this in split-focus, looking carefully at the life you know well, in order to intuit by extrapolation the life you do not know so well.

In any given life, there are stages of growth, times of decay, sudden discontinuities, bewildering crosscurrents. There are strong influences from others, pleasant or unpleasant or alternatingly pleasant and unpleasant or combined intense pleasant-unpleasant flavors. You have intellectual “abstract” interests, artistic “aesthetic” appreciations, strong and weak emotions, satisfactions that are not easily classified. You learn skills, you endure hardships, you – in short – experience life.

Now, what happens during this experiencing of life? One scheme – our scheme – consists of person-groups cohabiting a bodily locus and so experiencing a day-by-day identification with each other, strong or weak or unwilling or unaware, just as you do with external society and for the same reason, because the nature of “inside” and “outside” is the same.

So, at one stage of life any given combination of traits may be – activated, let’s call it. Evoked. Exercised. Experienced. Relied upon. Developed. At another stage, another combination takes the stage (so to speak) and this combination may have little or no or much or conceivably even almost entire continuity with the previous combination, hence “you” change to meet new circumstances. If you were describing just the same process, but were considering it in terms of “reincarnation” as it is called, can you see that it’s the same process?

If you as an “individual” should really be seen as a person-group consisting of many strands, can you see that your particular person-group may be seen as one strand in a many-lived person-group? And so up and down the scale?

We’ll hammer that home a little, though it will be evident to some.

Your “higher self” and your mind are not exactly the same thing seen in different contexts. Your mind, your mental world, is non-physical, yes. But just because your higher self is also non-physical does not mean it is the same as your mind, any more than the fact that your physical body is physical means is indistinguishable from a chicken.

I get what you’re saying; it is conceptually clear to me, but just like your rings-and-threads analogy, I can see that more words are only going to confuse the issue if we can’t pass on the understanding, right-brain to right-brain.

So send out the picture we had you paint for Rita at that time. It will serve as well to illustrate the same concept at a higher level as it did at a lower level.

That’s an interesting thought. And the fact that the same sketch serves for both reinforces your point.

Yes. Care to provide the commentary?

Any advantage to my doing it, as opposed to your doing it?

Communication with the other side need not be expensive and difficult now – our new fiber-optic system combined with satellite uplinks puts it a range of everybody’s budget. Now it’s a matter of your ingrained attitudes being updated to adjust to the new reality.

All right. I’ll provide the commentary here when I find the JPEG to send with this.

 

Keep the channel open

Posted on by Frank DeMarco

Courtesy of a comment by Irene Kendig, this video of Meryl Streep reading a poem to the accompaniment of famous cellist Yo-Yo Ma.

Six minutes. Do watch and listen to the words. This is one way to describe our life, and the meaning of our lives.

https://vimeo.com/35600074?ref=fb-share&1&fbclid=IwAR17I-cPFPSqoSTl72-ibaYCFeDrC1McYsLQ19NLEtX5y2iynhY6NQ8k4jMhttps://vimeo.com/35600074?ref=fb-share&1&fbclid=IwAR17I-cPFPSqoSTl72-ibaYCFeDrC1McYsLQ19NLEtX5y2iynhY6NQ8k4jM