The Magician's I Ching Facebook Group Has Over 2100 members!

The Facebook group created in honor of The Magician's I Ching, but which is a general discussion group for all I Ching related subjects, has now reached just over 2100 members!

So if you haven't already joined the Magician's I Ching Facebook Group, please consider joining!  It's free, and filled with interesting conversation and material related to the I Ching and I Ching studies.  It's open to people coming from western or eastern traditions.  It's very welcoming to newcomers to the I Ching, and you can get questions answered or useful advice. But it also has many very learned and highly experienced advanced students of the I Ching, and if you are one of those people you'll find some excellent higher level discussion about some of the finer points of I Ching study.

While you're at it, please consider joining the Yi Fa Society.  Members of the Yi Fa Society also have a (secret) discussion group, and benefit from a complete and detailed training program for studying Yi Fa Qi Gong and the I Ching.   Members of the Yi Fa Society are taught additional Qi Gong and I Ching secrets that are not available anywhere public.

At higher levels of membership, the advanced exercises of Yi Fa Qi Gong are taught, and students are provided large numbers of instructional materials (whole books, like "Secret Techniques of the I Ching", "Universal Yi Fa", "The Yi Dao", and "the Great Book of Yi Fa", among others) on how to deepen their work with Qi Gong and I Ching for self-transformation and the work of enlightenment.

Members of the Yi Fa Society can work personally with me to keep up their practice, to resolve problems in their practice, and to develop discipline and structure in their spiritual path.   Members also have the opportunity to have monthly Skype meetings with me for the same purpose.

Yi Fa Society membership is not free, but basic membership is on a monthly donation basis set by each student.


If you are interested in joining the Magician's I Ching Facebook group, just click on the link and join, and start reading and sharing with us!

If you are interested in joining the Yi Fa Society, please contact me, here or on Facebook.

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.

Power and Success

To get power, you have to make room to receive it.
Power is something obtained when you are open to receiving, not when you are aggressive.
Only by being below can you give space for what is above to enter; if you try to make yourself tall it can't.

Power doesn't come from tension, tension has no power.
Power comes from a deep looseness, where energy isn't being all expended in tension.
That looseness allows flexibility, and can be in-tensified to create force when needed for a specific purpose.
A state of tension has no room to become more intense, has no reserves to apply force anywhere else.

To get power, you have to submit.
Then you can impose, and thus obtain success.

Video: The Power of the I Ching

Today's video takes a look at the underlying structure of the I Ching, and why it works.

If you are interested in more teachings and receiving information that goes deeper into the structure of the I Ching, the nature of space-time, and personal cultivation, please don't hesitate to contact me about joining the Yi Fa Society.

A Poem From Zhu Xi

It is easy to be young,
but to get to become old-school is hard.

Seeing Time
like one inch of light in the darkness,
impossible to ignore.

By the still pond,
unborn Spring grass dreams;
yet on the front steps
the sound of leaves
fall like rain,
announcing Autumn's coming.


-Zhu Xi (who called himself the "Tea Immortal")

New I Ching Video: Hexagram #9 - Small Nourisher

Here is the latest commentary video in the I Ching series. This one covers Hexagram #9 - the Small Nourisher.

Members of the Yi Fa Society get access to additional I Ching video and text commentaries that go into more depth on the symbolism and divination uses of the I Ching's Hexagrams. If you are interested in joining the Yi Fa Society, please get in touch.

Health Issues and Qi Gong

Most schools of Qi Gong today sell themselves as being about health and healing. This is because mainly the people promoting those schools either have no real grounding in what Qi Gong is for, or are aware but felt obliged to keep the real purpose hidden.  In China, Qi Gong was very badly persecuted during most of the Communist period. It was only allowed to be revived in the time after the terrible persecutions of the Maoist Cultural Revolution, when the Chinese Government eased away from attacking traditional Chinese culture, and when the nation was facing a health-infrastructure crisis.
In fact, there was no such term as "Qi Gong" before the  modern age, this was a name created to unite concepts in traditional Chinese healing, cultivation practice, and internal martial arts. The government began to promote Qi Gong, not as a spiritual practice of cultivation, but as a system for improving health and wellness. So many opportunists who had little or no real understanding of cultivation set themselves up as "qi gong healers", while some of the genuine teachers began to teach again by hiding their more esoteric training behind the facade of "health and healing". In fact, this fit in nicely with the historical tradition of "secret schools", where serious Qi Gong masters would hide the nature of their teaching.





But regardless, Qi Gong was not meant to be about health, or healing. It was meant to be about cultivation for the purpose of eventual enlightenment.

So how useful is Qi Gong, for someone who is only interested in preserving their health or healing some kind of ailment?
Regarding health issues and Yi Fa Qi Gong; or health issues and Qi Gong in general, you have to consider the sources of various health problems.  They are caused by one of a selection of sources:

0. Accidents or short-term illness: a broken leg or a cold or upset stomach are not really caused by anything in most cases, except misfortune. These problems do not really need Qi Gong to heal.

1. Genetics: This is one of the most common causes of non-acute health problems. Recent medical studies have found that a great number of health issues are largely caused by genetic predisposition. This is a product of birth.  Qi Gong can't really do anything to prevent these problems. There's not really anything Qi Gong needs to do about these, in terms of prevention, and only limited amounts it can do in terms of treatment.

2. Environmental issues:  These are health issues caused by where you are, by elements of your environment.  This also includes things you might have a genetic predisposition toward, but would not be affected by it without being exposed to some environmental trigger.  These health problems can sometimes be resolved by changing your environment.  Doing Qi Gong without making changes in your environment won't be of any real help.

3. Lifestyle/choice issues: Some health problems are caused as a consequence of your lifestyle or behaviours, related to eating habits, sleeping habits, drinking, drugs, smoking, or other choices. Again, if you don't change your lifestyle, Qi Gong will not be of help here.

4. Stress or emotional issues: some health problems appear as consequences of mental stress or emotional tension manifesting in the body. The best resolution to these problems is through relaxation, meditation, and the expanding of your own consciousness until your attachments disentangle themselves. The exercises of Yi Fa Qi Gong are effective at dealing with these issues, if properly practiced.

So this is why I do not put very much emphasis on 'health' in Qi Gong practice. Anything related to health that can actually honestly be helped by Qi Gong can and will be helped by performing Yi Fa Qi Gong correctly, even though Yi Fa Qi Gong's primary goal is not health but Enlightenment.

None of the other sources of health problems can be significantly helped by any Qi Gong, even those forms of Qi Gong that allege to be about health.