An Introduction to the Yi Fa Society

What is the Yi Fa Society really about?

Cultivating the True Will and Superior Individual

What you have to understand is that achieving the True Will (what in I Ching terms is called the Superior Individual) requires three basic ingredients:

The first is self-inquiry. That is to say, growing in your understanding of your self, and what you are really capable of, and developing a way of tapping in, at every given moment and each given decision, to what is the best choice you can make to manifest that true will. Both meditation (Qi breathing) and the study of the I Ching helps with this; the former because it connects body and consciousness, the latter because it guides you in the situations where you can come to frame your choices in time and space. The I Ching is used for divination, but in the context of the Great Work it is a lot more than that; sometimes you will need to cast the I Ching to get answers to difficult situations, but as you grow in practice and if you've spent enough time in contemplating and considering the meaning of the I Ching you will eventually develop an ability to understand what to do by an "observation of nature" (that is, by paying attention to where you are in time and space, and being able to manifest the best possible self in your choices at that moment).

The second is developing in Virtue. The term Virtue is a very specific thing in the context of Yi Fa work; it means working on improving your dedication to the four core concepts inherent in "Yuan Heng Li Zhen": Union/Love, Discipline, Harmony/Justness, and Truth/Sincerity.

It isn't enough to just think about or study these concepts; you have to work on trying to embody them in everything you do in your everyday life. This takes a lot of work, it's like an exercise regime: you'll get better at it the more often you do it. The practice of self-inquiry mentioned above is very important in this regard because as you get better at being able to overcome the passions and impulses of the Inferior Person (the opposite of your True Will, your conditionings) the easier it will be to remember to manifest these qualities.

And the third part is the exercises of Yi Fa Qi Gong. These exercise are a kind of internal alchemy; they gradually transform your body and consciousness at the same time. First off by giving you the opportunity to accumulate Qi (life force) within yourself, that is then transformed within your body to a force that breaks down the attachments you have to activities of the Inferior Person (relating to what in modern lingo could be called the mind/body connection). Beyond that, the regular practice of the exercises helps to generate Virtue, which you can then apply as mentioned above in your everyday life.

As you become more advanced in the Qi Gong practice, it will unlock new levels of your consciousness which will grant you the ability to increasingly directly manifest the Superior Individual.

Of course, all of this depends on you practicing the Work with sincerity and dedication. It takes time, but the longer you do it the more cumulative and lasting the benefits become.

Cultivation Practice Qi Gong Requires Progressive Steps

There are many schools of Qi Gong. Many of these teach amalgam systems, which have either been created by a collection of different exercises from different sources with no consideration as to the progressive nature of cultivation teaching, or from very ancient traditions over many influences of teachers with a lot of mixed up or added material from different sources.



At present, many, undoubtedly most, Qi Gong teachings in the west (or the east as well) focus on good health, and are largely just seen as exercises for health. And in that sense, the significant majority of Qi Gong schools are perfectly adequate for that simple goal.

But the true nature of Qi Gong is not to develop good health. Qi Gong descends from the techniques of eastern Internal Alchemy, and their true purpose is to transform one's consciousness; real Qi Gong is an Enlightenment practice. And when it comes to practicing Qi Gong as a system of spiritual cultivation for Enlightenment, you can't just settle for a hodge-podge of mixed exercises that aren't concerned with establishing solid foundations followed by progressive steps of further transformation. 


The way Qi Gong really works is to imagine a pyramid: the first lowest tier of that pyramid is the Body. it is the absolute foundation. This is why you begin all cultivation practice by being present in your body.

If you are doing things without your active consciousness being in the body it's like you're trying to build a house on air. So that's the first thing you have to learn, how to BE in the body. Because today most people in the West certainly don't know how to do that.



Following that, you must learn how to breathe properly, because the breath is key to the circulation of Qi. In order for that circulation to work properly, your body must be able to relax, so you must not only be consciously in your body, but also to help your body to relax, and breathe naturally.   Only after that can you effectively begin in the basic first-step practices of proper spiritual cultivation, taught in the first level of Yi Fa Qi Gong.

After that, like in the subsequent levels of the Yi Fa society, the work begins to focus on other tiers: the second is the cultivation of Virtue. After that, the effort to unite with what is beyond you, and after that, to experience Reality.

All of these are necessary steps for the system, which is part of why you can't just pick and choose spiritual practices outside of a coherently ordered system, systems of spiritual Cultivation are of necessity progressive. If you just do thing A here, and thing D there, but you skipped B because no one told you about it and C because you didn't like it, then you end up creating a warped practice that will not be able to fully succeed at cultivation.

Chapter 50 of the Path and the Power (Tao Te Ching )

In this new video, I read chapter 50 from my new book, The Path and the Power, a new interpretation of the Tao Te Ching, with commentary. 

You can get a free PDF copy of the Path and the Power if you sign up to the Swami's Newsletter, which will give you one or two updates a month with recent teachings and new material just for subscribers.

You can join the Newsletter by following the link on the video description or by clicking on the "Newsletter Sign Up" link to the right of this blog.

(note that it's an interactive sign-up form so you need to make sure that if you have "noscript" or "adblock" or programs like that on your browser you may have to allow the page's script to see it!  When you sign up, the link to the Path and the Power will be found in the Welcome e-mail sent to you on sign up, so be sure to read that)

New Video: The Importance of Symbols, and Why the West is Losing It

Symbols are the secret language of humanity; the language that operates on a deeper level than surface speech. Universal symbols are common to all human beings and operate on a fundamental level to our human nature; while each culture also has specific symbolic languages that act as their own particular dialect of the human experience, which allows their culture to function.

In the 1960s, the Chinese declared war on their own symbolic language (that began in the I Ching), and it came at a terrible cost. Today, the West has done much the same, and if you lose this language of symbols, really bad things happen to your culture:

The Great Work, Healing, and Growth

Is personal 'healing', physical or emotional, a part of the Great Work?

The Great Work has many levels at which it operates. 
In the Microcosmic, it has to do with growth, expanding consciousness, the achievement of the Superior Individual, and Enlightenment.
In the Macrocosmic, it has to do with the spiritual evolution of humanity. There's much more teaching on this subject in Levels 2 and 3 of the curriculum.

As to 'healing' think of it like this: imagine there's a complex knot tied in a string, and that knot is in a tiny box (say, 2 inches by 2 inches).  The perspective most people have on "healing" is like trying to untie that knot in that tiny little box, because the knot occupies almost all of the space in the box.

Growth is where you expand that box, so the space is now 2 feet by 2 feet; or 2 yards by 2 yards, or 2 miles by 2 miles. So now, that knot that seemed so huge occupies just a tiny little space in the box. At that point, if it was necessary, the knot would be much easier to untie; but you might find that the knot is now so small that it won't really need to be untied at all, it can just be there, as one tiny part of the large space.

On the Scope of the Great Work

On a personal level, the Great Work involves each individual's progress to manifesting the Superior Individual, and attaining to the level of the Sage (Enlightenment).

But on a greater scale, the Great Work involves the spiritual evolution of humanity as a whole.
In that greater scale, the work you do applying Virtue in the world is not meant to change the world at this present time, but to lay down currents of Change that will change the world over the course of cosmic Time. 

Presidencies, nations and whole civilizations will come and go while we perform the Great Work.
Things happening in the world now are the ripple-effect of things Initiates did 300 years ago.

The things we do with consciousness now will ripple forward to change the entire world 300 years from now.
The Great Work on this scale is done not for one's own gratification, because it is not anything any of us will live to see.





It is work to change the future.

The Curriculum of the Yi Fa Society, Level 3

Each level of the Yi Fa Society has its own curriculum, with new material presented for the student's growth, practice and study.  Previous entries already detailed the Curriculum of Level 1, and Level 2.

The Curriculum of Level 3, in brief, consists of the following points:

1. The "Great Book of Yi Fa": a 95-page "secret text", this book elaborates on some of the mysteries already revealed about the philosophy of Yi Fa, the practices of Yi Fa Qi Gong, and the great work of Enlightenment (personal and universal).

2. The Guide to the Taijitu:  this short text consists of an explanation of the Taijitu, the I Ching cosmology's equivalent of the Qabalistic Tree of Life (though it is in fact older than the Tree of Life), and how the different dimensions of manifested reality unfold.

3.  The Level 3 Yi Fa Qi Gong exercise. This is a secret exercise taught only to members of level 3 of the Yi Fa Society program.

4.  The Zhong Yong: a 9-page text on cosmology, philosophy and virtue, revealing the nature of the Middle Pillar.

5. An exercise for understanding the Image of the Hexagrams.

6. The basic instruction on the techniques of Qi Extension.


These advanced teachings are only available to those students who are members of the Yi Fa Society and complete the Level 1 & 2 curriculum.

If you are interested in membership in the Yi Fa Society, please contact me!

On the Nature of Ritual and Qi

The other day I posted a Youtube video related to the subject of ritual, in the context of the Bhagavad Gita:

Now, this video is not part of the Yi Fa Curriculum. But the subject of 'ritual' is very significant to the Yi Fa work.  As the video points out, ritual is not meant to be something done automatically, or even as such for some kind of ulterior motive: it is its own reward.

This brings to mind the question of 'what is ritual'?  We tend to think of ritual in terms of being some kind of ceremony meant for religious or magical purposes.

But in Chinese thought, ritual or "rites" (which is called "li") means not only religious ceremony, but also it encompasses all the notions of 'proper conduct'. It can be understood as including customs, manners, etiquette, 'proper form', etc.  We could call it "rules of art". It is tied to the Virtue of harmony; both in the sense of good harmony within our own being (balance), but also harmony with our world, our fellow human beings, and society.

Another of the Confucian Classics, aside from the I Ching, is the "Book of Rites".  If you look at that book, you will find that it is not some book of magical rituals, but rather a wide-ranging guide to all kinds of standards of etiquette and ancient customs (from the Zhou dynasty, the dynasty that wrote the I Ching).

In relation to Qi Gong, the practice of the forms of Qi Gong (including Yi Fa Qi Gong) are certainly a type of ritual. It is important to further clarify what this means in the context of Qi.  There are many people talking about the "Qi Gong" of other activities: how painting can be Qi Gong, or writing, or dancing, or all sorts of other things (even "Qi Gong Golf" or "Qi Gong Cooking").  In some cases, this is interpreted in some kind of very esoteric way, like as if you are doing some very special mystical technique. But this was not really the purpose of this concept, it is actually just the opposite.

Let's further define an intentional act, and a ritual act. In western esoteric magic, we are told that "any intentional act is a magical act", and that magick is "the art or science of causing change to occur in conformity to the Will".  We can thus surmise that any intentional act is an act where you are directing your will.  
So what marks the difference between an 'intentional' act and a 'ritual' act is that a ritual act is to direct the will within a certain form.  Any practice that has a technique is not only an intentional act, but a ritual act.  This is how to understand 'rites' in the context of Qi Gong. 

What this means is that if you get up in the morning and brush your teeth, and the practice of brushing your teeth is done in a certain way (you stand in front of the sink, you fill a glass, you lift the glass to your lips and slosh some water in your mouth, then spit it out into the sink; you grab your toothbrush, open the toothpaste, put a bead of toothpaste on the toothbrush, put the toothbrush in your mouth and scrub in a certain fashion going from one part of your teeth to another, then rinse your mouth again, wash off the toothbrush, etc.) then you can say that you have a "technique" of brushing your teeth.  But this is not a ritual, unless you are also doing it as an intentional act.  As soon as you are doing this exact same technique, just as you always did it before but now as an intentional act, it becomes the Ritual of Brushing Teeth.

It is the same with countless other things you do in your ordinary life. You have techniques for all sorts of ordinary things in your life. Often, these are done mechanically, specifically as a way to avoid paying attention while you are doing it; you can be on 'automatic' because of how familiar you are with these techniques.

In Qi Gong, Qi is a measurement of the direction of your Will. It is treated as a substance, and thus we understand Will not as some invisible thing or only a mental effect but as a part of our material existence. When we do anything as an Intentional act, we are directing Qi. So if we are doing some technique in a mechanical way, we are not directing Qi into these activities. But as soon as we do that technique in an intentional way, we are directing Qi into them: a mechanical activity becomes a Ritual activity.  This directing of Qi does not really require any special effort on our part aside from intention; just like in Yi Fa Qi Gong you do not need to do anything mentally to 'move' the Qi, it naturally happens just by performing the practices with intention.

If we are trying to brush our teeth, or paint, or play golf, or prepare breakfast or any other thing, through some technique, whether it is ordinary or somehow fancy or ceremonious or unusual, it is NOT Qi Gong, if it is mechanical.  But it can be said to be "Tooth-brushing Qi Gong" or "Painting Qi Gong" or "Golfing Qi Gong" or "Cooking Qi Gong" if we are doing it with a technique and form AND we are also doing it intentionally!

This is why I say people often understand it the opposite way of how it is intended: it is not about reciting some kind of mantra or visualizing something or doing some unusual movements or mentally directing something, while you are doing these ordinary things. It is about doing these ordinary things with order and structure, with harmony and balance, and with the Active Consciousness, with intent. The point is not to try to mystify ordinary activities, but to understand that that all sorts of ordinary things can be mystical, can be part of cultivation, simply by doing them consciously.

And we have to conclude, by this same reasoning, that it is not that Qi Gong is something separate from the ordinary, but very much part of the ordinary.  Our ordinary life does not need to be integrated into our cultivation practice; rather, our cultivation practice needs to be integrated into our everyday lives!  We do not need to separate ourselves from ordinary existence to find the magical, we have to unite our Will to the ordinary. 

There, in the Manifested, is where the Great Work is to be found.