Flaws in Virtue

The following is an excerpt from a Level 4 text of the Yi Fa Society:

If a practitioner tries to cultivate without Union, he will only be cultivating for himself. His successes might strengthen him, but only reinforce his narcissism. He will start to feel disconnected from the rest of reality around him, and will reinforce the petty interests of his Inferior Person as if these were significant. He will develop a sense of greatness he will not be able to apply to his actual surroundings. In this way, he will eventually subvert all his own progress.

If a practitioner tries to cultivate without Discipline, he will practice in starts and stops. He may at times seek to overcompensate, even practicing in unhealthy ways. He will fall into excuses for why his irregular practice is not a problem, or even how it is unnecessary for him to practice. He may hide in intellect or in emotion, making pretensions of great spiritual feelings or thoughts, while disdaining simple and basic practice. This will eventually mean that he loses all his momentum.

If a practitioner tries to cultivate without Harmony, he will be afraid of his weaknesses, and will put all his focus on his strengths. He will work with great effort at things he's already good at, while neglecting anything he is bad at. He will make a great show of his best qualities, while trying to deny existence of his worst qualities. In this way he will be unable to continue generating Virtue, or receive Gong.

If a practitioner tries to cultivate without Truth, he will delude himself with any fantasy. He may do the physical exercises, but they will exist in his own little bubble. He will interpret Virtue as anything he feels like. He will be unable to receive insight into how to manifest the Superior Individual. He will be unable to manifest Virtue in the world.

You Don't Matter and That's The Only Way To Matter

A video today, explaining our relationship to the universe, and the path to Union.

Experiencing Harmony

Harmony is one of the four qualities of De (as expressed in the I Ching), the power that can be roughly translated as "Virtue". It is not a concept of morality in the western sense, but rather a state of being.

So Harmony (like the other three aspects of De: Unity, Discipline and Truth) is something you have to work towards, but it is also something that you experience. De can also be translated as "power", and it is the true source of your spiritual power, for Qi Gong or anything else.

So how do we experience Harmony while engaging in Cultivation practice?

The key to Harmony is to understand how to have a direction, in your meditation, in your Qi Gong movements, and in your activities in the everyday world, all while not being unbalanced by your own self-referencing world-view. In other words, being driven by your own 'lust of result' to try to impose your agenda on the world.

But you also shouldn't concern yourself too much about fearing your own Inferior Person, those desires to try to impose yourself on reality, because that fear can also paralyze you and unbalance you.

Rather than trying to resist your own attachments, let go of concerning yourself with attachments at all, and focus on the bigger panoramic vision, first of yourself, and then of yourself in the world.

Find your own vast nature. Not the small little and petty inferior person. The vast and open Superior Individual constantly referred to in the I Ching.
Relax.
Show up, and then open up.
And when you do, connecting to that vast Panorama, you can choose any direction to move within that panorama, and it becomes liberating.

When you aren't doing this, that's when you feel more closed. It feels like you're on a railroad track, you have blinders on, you only see a tunnel going one direction.

When you're acting in Harmony, you see the whole panorama and it feels open and free, to move in any direction while keeping your goals in mind.

Why Do People Naturally Cultivate Virtue?

(The following is an excerpt from a letter to a Yi Fa Society student)

The answer to the question "why do humans decide to cultivate Virtue naturally" is because Virtue is a part of nature, it's part of the fundamental structure of reality.

However, another thing I think you need to somewhat distance yourself from is the idea that Virtue is tied into our ideas of "good".
There's a lot of things a given culture (including ours) will think of as "good" which is not a part of Virtue in the sense of "De", of nature.

And it can be better to understand Virtue, if you are able, as a natural substance, which as such is actually "neutral" in comparison to our ideas of morality.
This is an inherent understanding of Eastern philosophy, and especially in both the I Ching and the Tao Te Ching.

Because it is natural, people do try inherently to cultivate Virtue; but because people are so often distanced from what is Real and what is Natural, it is often very difficult for them to go far.
In particular, a lot of people will only take partial measures to generate Virtue; some will try to work on Virtue only in their minds and ways of thinking, others will try to do so only in terms of acts, and most will fail to engage in the cultivation of their Consciousness (not even realizing that this is essential to understand and develop Virtue; they think they already "know" what Virtue is, so it's not necessary to actually expand their consciousness as a prerequisite to becoming Virtuous!).

On the other hand, some spiritual practitioners will think that meditation and spiritual exercises alone, without the actual application of Virtue in their lives, is enough. Like that thinking happy thoughts, or trying to calm the mind, is itself Virtue.
That's not the case either.

There's much further elaboration on these issues in the Yi Fa Curriculum at Level 2 and especially Level 3.

More on the Cultivation of Virtue

Virtue ("De"), in the context of the Yi Fa work, should not be mistaken for some kind of an idea of absolute morality, or an abstract and impractical set of ironclad religious rules.

Virtue involves the encouraging of a set of qualities, embodied as Yuan Heng Li Zhen, of the growth of those qualities as a substance within one's being.  To encourage and cultivate, through actions, Union, Discipline, Harmony, and Truth. 

What it is really about is being able to act in a way that is:
a) connected to the rest of the world (not shut inside yourself)
b) able to focus and be effective (not dithering or lost in the mind or distracted)
c) balanced and harmonious within yourself and on the outside (as opposed to being divided inside, and wavering from totality on the outside)
d) dealing with things as they really are, right now (and not driven by fantasies or desires or frustrations/fears of the past)

So how do you work these things?
a) by working on connecting to the world and engaging in it
b) by working on a disciplined routine in your activities, including a spiritual discipline.
c) by working on putting an emphasis on those parts of yourself and your life that you are weaker in, rather than hiding only in the ones you are stronger at. Also, by meditation.
d) by committing yourself to honesty and sincerity, and with dealing with things in life as they are rather than running away from them.

Four Virtues, Four Approaches to the I Ching

In the study of the I Ching through the Yi Fa Society, a great deal of emphasis is put on the cultivation of Virtue ("De").

Virtue is here symbolized by the first four words of Hexagram #1 of the I Ching: Yuan Heng Li Zhen.  These words mean "Sublime Celestial Forces in Motion".  But they are also representative of the four facets of Virtue emphasized in Yi Fa cultivation: Union, Discipline, Harmony, and Truth.

These four concepts are also esoterically connected to the sixiang, the four bigrams of two lines which exist at a more primordial cosmological level to the eight trigrams. In esoteric symbolism these are represented by the icons of an Azure Dragon, a Black Turtle, a Vermillion Bird, and a White Tiger. These symbols are further explored in the higher levels of the Yi Fa Curriculum.

Reflected in the concept of these four cardinal facets of Virtue, you can also understand that there are four key approaches to understanding and interpreting the I Ching. These are Image, Number, Meaning, and Principle.

Historically, during the Han era there were two rival schools of I Ching study, the "Image and Number" school, and the "Meaning and Principle" school. Later schools under the inspiration of Yidao masters like Shao Yong and Zhu Xi reintegrated these into unified study.

"Image" involves studying the structure of the I Ching hexagrams and their component trigrams themselves, and the images these evoke. "Number" involves a study of the mathematical systems of the I Ching and their numerical structures. "Meaning" involves an interpretation of the textual descriptions of the Hexagrams and their lines. And "Principle" involves contemplation on the philosophical significance of the text in terms of it's significance for attaining to the Superior Individual.

With the four facets of Virtue, there can be times when emphasizing a certain facet can be important, but it is ultimately essential to cultivate all four facets if one is to achieve higher-level attainment.  Likewise, with the study of the I Ching, it can be useful at certain times to engage with in-depth specific study of one of the four approaches to the I Ching, it is ultimately necessary to engage in all four methods of study to gain a full and profound understanding of the I Ching's mysteries.

On Virtue

In the practice of the Yi Fa Society, "Virtue" is a key part of the system for spiritual growth.  Even as one can only be 'Virtuous' by having an inner awareness-practice (as provided by Qi Gong, among others), and by having an understanding of the nature of reality and our place in it (as provided by the I Ching, among others), simultaneously one cannot make great strides in any practice of development without working on growth in the four fundamental forms of Virtue elaborated in Hexagram #1 of the I Ching.

These are:

1. Union: also understood as "Love", in that sense of seeking to make actual connection. It's ultimate expression is spiritual union through enlightenment, but in the immediate sense it can also represent connection, caring and affection for your life, your surroundings, and the people in it.   The qualities associated with it are "Sublime", "smooth", and "easy".

2. Discipline: also understood as "determination", or sometimes "will".  It is the physical manifestation of seeking one's true Will.  It is thus also understood as "right conduct", that is, moving in the right direction as guided by one's own Superior Individual.  It means not being afraid of hard work in that which is the passion of your heart.  It is associated with "success", and also with clear vision, including power in divination (someone undisciplined will lack the vision and proper clarity to divine effectively).

3. Harmony:  also understood as "justness" or "balance".  It is about creating an inner balance of one's Yin and Yang qualities (the stillness and the motion within one's self, the introverted and extroverted, the soft and the hard); and likewise about creating a harmonious environment around you.  It is associated with the quality of "beneficence", and is about creating harmony by showing generosity, justice (including the rooting out of wrongs), and goodness to those around you.

4. Truth:  it is also understood as "wisdom", because only that which is real can be wise.  No amount of speculation can be true wisdom, as it is not rooted in the firm foundation of Truth.  Thus, this virtue is also understood as "Accomplishment". It is the most direct form of spiritual attainment: the ability to discern what is real from what is illusion.

These four forms of Virtue will increase the more one practices (Yi Fa Qi Gong, and the study of the I Ching), and simultaneously the more one works on embodying these forms of Virtue, the more effective one's practice can become.

The secret Virtue Code of the Yi Fa Society, the Zhi De, is the specific set of guidelines for personal development of Virtue, but it is nothing more really than an elaboration on the four points above, which are easy for anyone to understand and self-evident to work on.