I offer I Ching classes and consultation. My work with the I Ching grows out of my own experience with the book, as well being a teacher of meditation and creative writing for many years. This work gave me the opportunity to listen - to who people are, to their creative imagination and to their aspirations. The council I provide is founded on deep listening, my experience with the I Ching and the guidance I receive in using the book.

The I Ching may be humanity's most comprehensive book. It is arguably our oldest, with roots preceding the Chinese Xia Dynasty, 2200 - 1800 BCE. One cannot fully understand the I Ching through scholarship alone, much less experience its transformative power. Precisely because the I Ching is more than a book, one must put its advice into action (or non-action). Traditionally called an "oracle," the I Ching is a way of opening our life to a larger system. C. G. Jung called this system synchronicity, “the peculiar interdependence” between ourselves and the events around us." This is also the world of the unconscious, of dreams, of contemplation. It is the world of spirit (or spirits), the world of the dralas. This world is potentially always available to us, ready to support our highest aspirations and activities. The I Ching is door, passage-way and tool. If we have a bit of faith and a bit of courage, the I Ching can speak to us. What matters is the sincerity of our intention and our openness of spirit.

Each day we are faced with countless decisions. Choosing between a green or blue shirt may or may not be of great consequence, but every choice we make has an effect and outcome. Compassion and wisdom are innate only as seeds and must be grown during a lifetime. It is only through informed and courageous decisions that our life becomes rewarding and our contribution to the world significant. Greatness is not measured in fame or comparison, but in what we make of what we have.

The I Ching has survived for 4,000 years because it is a unique tool for helping us make good decisions. I Ching insight reflects both nature and time. Nature is our potential, becoming who we are. Time is what is possible in this process of becoming. Just as a sunflower can only germinate in spring, reach maturity in summer and yield seeds in autumn, good decisions align who we are with the time we are in, telling us, for example, to begin, continue or retreat. The I Ching helps us make decisions that follow the nature and time of our heart.

Consulting the I Ching occurs is a process of stages. From among the myriad challenges of daily life one forms a request, say: Guidance for traveling to Spain. The question or request is taken out of the the control of one's hopes and fears and made through a random or chance method: tossing of three pennies. We cannot control how the pennies will land, thus a gap occurs in our will or ego, and another possibility is allowed to enter and select the symbols appropriate to our situation. When we study the symbols or hexagrams and apply them, we not only may cut through confusion and make a better decision, we have entered into a expanded relationship with life's possibilities.

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The I Ching is used as a tool of guidance or divination, but it is equally and necessarily the outline of a spiritual path. Each hexagram can be studied as a teaching in itself. Four of the I Ching hexagrams are considered "timeless," in that they are inherent and necessary to alll situations, while the other sixty are applicable under specific situations or times.

Each hexagrams has six lines - with every line having its own flavor and specific guidance; taken together, "the 360 lines of the 64 hexagrams are metaphorically associated with the 360 days of the lunar year, standing for a complete cycle of evolution." Within this cycle, the four timeless hexagrams constitute the essense of being a "practitioner," someone who is consciously and actively engaged in spiritual development, for the benefit of oneself and others. In the Shambhala teachings, the word "warrioship" is used to denote that so-called spiritual practice is really human practice, in that it does not necessarily need to be called religeous or spiritual, but that it does require true courage, real gentleness and honest commitment - thus warriorship represents these traits put into action.

These four timeless hexagrams correspond to four of the fundamental Shambhala principles of spiritual warriorship as originally outlined by Chogyam Trungpa.

#1 The Creative / Heaven/ Force / Firm / Yang

The Creative, pure yang. In considering this first hexagram of the I Ching - and the first timeless hexagram - Firm, or firmness, is the term most applicable in daily life. Firmness means being strong, unified of purpose, untiring; pursuing a correct direction in an organized and courageous way. This corresponds to the Father Lineage of Shambhala, the fundamental masculine principle (which is possessed by both men and women) of possessing fearlessness and the correct strenght of purpose that comes from this.

When this yang quality of fimness becomes "delinquient" we might become, for example, strident or aggressive rather than strong. Obstinancy or relying on mere force are delinquinet yang. History and daily life give us abundant examples of delinquent yang, the true Father Lineage quality lost, replaced by fear-motivated actions, the masculine force as overbearing, authoritarian, dictitorial, unforgiving, violent.

Only the choice to confront fear leads to fearlessness, a state earned, step by step. As a lieutenant in WWI, the Greek poet Odysseas Elytis found, "The physical fear of war, the material fear of bombs and shells, annilhilated in me all aspects of a false literature and left naked the meaning of a true need for poetry." Elytis discoverd the true father lineage of lifelong poetic strength. He somehow turned a corner on fear, instead of becoming its slave, as a wounded or bitter (or self-agrandizing) war veteran, he discovered his basic goodness and became fear's master (or the servant or fearlessness):

Though I am hardly brave, I have stood two or three times closer to death than life - in war, of course. It was entirely different from what I expected. I, who was so easily confused in Athens, so easily reduced by a minor toothache, felt, near death, a stunning clarity, an unmediated power ruling both forward and back, and a celestial serenity before which wordly turbulance stopped. It was disgraced, not I.

An "unmediatd power ruling both forward and back" - the essence of pure yang energy, firmness.

#2. The Receptive / Earth / Field / Flexibility / Yin

The second hexagram of the I Ching is pure yin, receptiveness and flexibility. Flexibility means adapting to situations. It works in conjuctions with fimness, ready to adapt to the real needs of the moment. Flexibility is humbleness, gentleness and nurturance; it corresponds the the Mother Lineage of Shambhala, the fundamental feminine principle of gentleness. From gentleness comes clear-seeing and adaptability.

When the yin quality of flexibility turns delinquent when we, for example, become indecisive, weak, faciliating, drifting, overly pliable.

We acqure the delinquent qualities of yang and yin early in life, so they are often invisible to us. The delinquents qualities are what we know and habit, they are our home.

(this section in progress)

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