Wei I Ching Life

Becoming Your Authentic Self
1. Auflage 2005
ISBN: 978-1-4835-4711-4
Verlag: BookBaby
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 238 Seiten

An insightful and empowering book that shows how to apply the unerring guidance of the I Ching to make decisions that are right for you, protect yourself from danger, and attain success in all areas of life. Living in harmony with the ways of the Universe allows you to naturally express your authentic self. In this practical and insightful work, Wu Wei shows how you can live in harmony with the universal laws embodied in the I Ching so that your life will be filled with long-lasting good fortune and happiness. Step by step, I Ching Life illustrates how to apply the profound and ancient wisdom of the I Ching to all areas of your life today--including business, relationships, health, wealth, children, work, recovery, and your personal goals--to enable you to achieve sublime success in all you do. You will discover how to flow with changing events so that anger, frustration, and despair disappear from your life.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Wei, Wu

Leseproben

CHAPTER TWO

How the I Ching Works

The wisdom of the I Ching has been passed along from person to person for perhaps as many as ten thousand years. In this, it is no different from any of the other old wisdom or information that has come down to us through the centuries from the people of all the ancient lands. What makes the I Ching stand apart is that there is substantiation for it in the Universe—physical substantiation.

The sixty-four kua of the I Ching were originally arranged by Fu Hsi somewhere between six and ten thousand years ago. He originally arranged them in the order shown on the next page. Two hundred years ago, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, a German philosopher and mathematician, invented the binary system. It is a numerical system, using only zeros and ones, with which any number can be represented and upon which all computer language is based. Shortly after or shortly before Leibniz developed the binary system for writing numbers, someone sent him a copy of the I Ching. He inspected it and realized that if ones and zeros were substituted for the broken lines and the solid lines of the sixty-four kua, the kua could be read as binary numbers from zero to sixty-three. In effect, Fu Hsi had developed the binary system somewhere between six and ten thousand years ago.

THE EARLY HEAVEN ARRANGEMENT

The chart above shows Fu Hsi’s original arrangement of the kua, called the Early Heaven Arrangement. It was later revised by King Wen in 1143 BC in what came to be known as the Later Heaven Arrangement (shown on facing page), which is the arrangement that is in use worldwide today. The arrangement of the kua does not affect the readings.

THE LATER HEAVEN ARRANGEMENT

What is more important, in 1973 it was discovered that the sixty-four kua match perfectly the construction of the sixty-four DNA codons of the genetic code when represented in binary form. That is ample substantiation that Fu Hsi’s system is based on Universal order.

Think of that. With no computers or equipment of any kind, Fu Hsi extracted from the Universe a tiny mathematical model of itself. What’s even more incredible is that he applied it to the answering of questions. If you have not used the I Ching as an oracle, a source for answering questions with complete accuracy, the following brief explanation will make the process clear.

YOU CAN KNOW WHAT THE UNIVERSE KNOWS

Because you are part of the Universe, and because time is a living entity that contains consciousness—may indeed be the consciousness of the Universe, permeating everything, including ourselves—you can know everything the Universe knows. All you need is a key to unlock that fount of sublime wisdom and complete information. That you have the key is unquestionable. Every time you get a new idea, you have used your key. You may like to think that you created the idea, but what you did was no less noteworthy. You channeled the idea from the Source; you used your key.

The premise of all divination is that the key exists within each of us. Divination presupposes that there is a part of us that is at one with everything, including time, and therefore knows what everything knows. The English word divination is derived from the Latin words meaning “deity” and also “to foretell.”

For us to be able to draw from the fount of Universal wisdom, we must have a means to do so. Some people draw from the fount by praying, some by meditating, some by being quiet and focusing their attention on the subject under question or on no question at all, some by consulting with psychics or astrologers, others by interpreting dreams, and still others by manipulating coins, tarot cards, runes, yarrow stalks, or other objects.

All of the systems work, but only up to the limits of those systems and the capability of the questioner or interpreter. If, for instance, you ask a question and flip a coin to get an answer, you are limited to a yes or no answer. If you ask a question and select from a deck of cards, where each card contains several sentences of guidance printed on it, you can obtain counsel beyond yes or no. The more sophisticated the system, the more complete and detailed the answer you will receive.

If you and I decided to formulate an ideal system to obtain answers to questions, we would want to make sure there was an answer for every question that could be asked. Fortunately, we do not have to create such a system of answers: the I Ching masterfully fills that need. It may seem difficult, even impossible, to have accomplished that task, yet one answer can be sufficient for many questions. For example, all questions regarding taking action can generally be satisfied with three answers: to take action, to take no action, or to delay taking action.

The ideal system of divination would also have to devise a method for determining how to obtain the answers that apply to specific questions. Because we are searching for cosmic answers, we must prevent ourselves from intellectually tampering with the way in which we obtain the results. We need a method that permits only the spiritual portion of ourselves—that portion that is at one with All-That-Is—to participate. The I Ching’s yarrow stalk method perfectly accomplishes that end.

When you close your eyes and grasp a number of yarrow stalks from a bunch of forty-nine stalks, when you select cards whose faces you cannot see, when you choose a stone from a pile of inscribed stones whose faces you cannot see, or use similar practices, you exceed the ability of your rational mind. That is because you cannot know how many stalks were grasped, which card was chosen until its face is seen, or which stone was chosen from the pile until the inscription on its face can be read. All such methods of choosing rely completely on the intuitive ability of the questioner, on his ability to draw upon his spiritual source, which knows everything. In the words of Lao Tzu, “to feel beyond touch... to hear beyond sound... to see beyond shape, and... to tell beyond words.”

Does the I Ching system of divination work? Yes. Will it work for you? Yes, as long as you seek the truth with reverence, sincerity, and good intent. It works because there is a part of you that knows the answers to all your questions and will guide you in choosing the correct answer. You are a divine being in an eternal Universe of which you are an inseparable part, and that Universe is an inexhaustible wellspring of cosmic information from which you may freely draw.

FINDING THE ANSWERS TO YOUR QUESTIONS

Fu Hsi’s sixty-four kua are each made up of six lines stacked one above the other (see pages 6 and 7). The lines can be either broken (- -) or solid (—). Each kua represents a particular situation or condition, and each of the six lines of the kua has a specific explanation associated with it and represents a stage of evolution within that situation. These stages are (1) about to come into being, (2) beginning, (3) expanding, (4) approaching maximum potential, (5) peaking, and (6) passing its peak and turning toward its opposite condition. Since every ending contains a new beginning, the ending of one kua is the beginning of another.

Fu Hsi’s method for selecting the appropriate kua is unique: the manipulation of fifty yarrow stalks, one being laid aside as an observer stalk and the rest being divided and redivided eighteen times. When you ask a question using the I Ching, the answer you receive, which is in the form of a kua, tells you the situation or condition that surrounds your question and what actions you need to take or avoid to achieve a successful outcome or to bypass danger.

In your I Ching readings, you may receive one or more lines that are called moving lines. Manipulation of the yarrow stalks results in numerical answers, either sixes, sevens, eights, or nines. The lines that are obtained with sixes or nines are called moving lines and are the ones that provide information you should follow (the moving lines and how to use the yarrow stalk method with the I Ching is fully explained in my book The I Ching: The Book of Answers). The moving lines offer specific guidance about what action to take or not to take to bring about the result that is best for you or they give essential information relating to your question. The moving line or lines also result in the formation of a new kua, which will provide additional information relevant to your situation.

A moving line is so called because it is charged with so much energy that it turns into its opposite: a broken line turns into a solid line, and a solid line turns into a broken line. This results in a new configuration of the six lines. Only the moving lines, those obtained with sixes or nines, change into their opposite.

Here is an example of how it works. Say that in consulting the I Ching you receive kua 59, Huan (Dissolve, Disintegrate, Dissipate, Unify), which looks like , and that your reading indicates that line 5 is a moving line. Line 5 is the fifth line from the bottom and it is an unbroken line. Because it is a moving line, it changes into a broken line, bringing about the formation of the second kua, which you will take into account in your reading. In this example, the new kua is kua 4, Mêng (Inexperience), which looks like . The new kua describes what the situation you are asking about will become or it supplies additional information that will guide you.

What is magical about the I Ching is not its presentation of the sixty-four kua but that it provides the key to identifying which kua will correctly answer your...