I've got a situation where I could take a meditation class and learn from a teacher. I've been taking these classes for a while, they are sequential and build one upon another.

I can simply buy a video and learn the same stuff and save hundreds of dollars.

More importnatly,
Right now in my life i'm very busy in school. I have no time for anything but I've signed up for this class already and paid, a while back.

I would like to learn except I don't know if it's not better to just buy a video and learn that way.

So I asked the Yi:

"Please comment on taking this class now?

I got # 62.1
Preponderance of the Small
And changes to #55 Many occasions.

This suggests that I should keep still and not take on more obligations.

Then I asked,

Aside from the fullness of my schedule is taking this class a good idea?
(trying to see if I shouldn't just buy the video)

I got #15
Modesty
no change
...

Then Finnaly I asked,

What if I cancel my enrollment in the class?

I got # 52.6
Keeping still
changing into Modesty.

So I'm not sure what this means. I know it's saying i'm overwhelmed and should not assume any more responsiblities. But I don't see what it thinks about the class in general.

I would appreciate any help.

-CM

It's interesting that you got 52.6 for your last question, as the line can represent the consummation of a meditative state.

Overall, your readings seem to indicate a need to not try so hard to reach your desired end. In fact, desire and trying are obstacles to a natural meditative state.

So, I'd read this as suggesting that you're trying too hard, and also that since meditation is a state of mind, that you may be able to find that state within your current schedule and activities. Reminds me of The Zen of Motorcycle Maintenance - a classic from the 70's. 15 can represent balance, proportion and cooperation. It also means making something difficult look easy.

Bruce G
I really appreciate your reply,

But my question is regarding taking the class with a busy schedule. Not reaching a meditative state. I only included the detail of meditation for the reason that I did get 52.6 and thought somewhat like you did:

" It's interesting that you got 52.6 for your last question, as the line can represent the consummation of a meditative state. "

Nonetheless,
The dillima on my mind is:
1) being able to learn this stuff from a video.
2) Having very little time as it is.

Sorry, CM, I don't understand how you could "learn this stuff" if you approach it the way you describe. I mean, the title of your thread: "Need help fast" doesn't lend itself to taking a meditation course. Maybe someone else can help, though.

OK...

So this is what i've gotten so far.

My first question was about starting the class and the changeing line was a misfortune

My next question was about the quality of the class. It said it's a modest one. It's OK. It's neither good nor bad. It is what it is. It just is.

My last question was about stopping the class and the changing line was was good fortune.

So I guess that means it's a good idea to not take the class.

I'm not going to read into the fact that I got 15 two times. Or that 52.6 could mean reaching a meditation state.

This has been edited because I did not read the question properly, and Hilary pointed the fact out.

So, Hex 62.1 is telling you not to take the class, try some other way to learn the meditation.

Willowfox, we'll have to agree to differ on this one. I do think it's of vital importance to pay careful attention to the whole conversation, which starts with the question. By asking about all options, CM has given Yi a clear, open space to answer in. (Important - prevents any chance of confusion, with Yi 'trying' to get the relevant message across to someone who never asks what about they need to know!)

So we have three readings. A comment on taking the class, saying this would be like the flying bird's misfortune. Attempting too much, going too far, exposing oneself to danger. A comment on cancelling the class, saying that true stillness and good fortune are still available even then. CM got the message right away.

Then inbetween these two -
" Aside from the fullness of my schedule is taking this class a good idea?
(trying to see if I shouldn't just buy the video)

I got #15
Modesty
no change"

Is taking the class at all a good idea? Modesty - authenticity - integrity - seeing yourself at the size you really are. The noble one brings it to completion.

15 unchanging often seems to be a call to reality and realism. In buying a washing machine, you need to find out about the quality of the washing machine. Buying a meditation class is something else. On a purely practical level, will you actually complete the class? I get the feeling Yi's challenging the idea that the class can have value/ the question can be answered 'aside from' the issue of your own schedule.

There.

It's finnaly done.

Thank you Bruce, Hiliary and Willowfox for your help.

Much appreciated.

---

No problem - but what did you decide? Don't keep us in the dark!

I decied I've run out of slack I have to face up to reality.

Basicly that i've thrown a whole bunch of money down the tubes...

Man.. this is a really long long confrontation with fate. I am going to be reflecting on this for the rest of my life.

It's funny... the Yijing never wants to really tell you what your doing with your life is right or wrong. It never will tell you what to do.
It only presents to you the obstacles. Never telling you: WHAT YOUR DOING IS STUPID, but will counsel you on what your doing untill you achive what your going for. It respects everything you do as it is. Does not impede your freedom of choice. Thus will never take responsiblitiy for your choices alone.

Which to me really reveals it as a mirror than a meeting with a spirit or ally (casteneda).




Life or fate, seems to be like hexagram 9. It seems to put small things on the pallate one tiny thing after another. Untill it builds up to the point to where you've got to really take a real hard good look (or taste) at what you've gotten yourself into. Small accumulating factors leading up to something truly revelatory. It's like the fall of of Rome...

This is to me is what has happened. Is i've been using my student loans to learn these Taoist Qigong Meditations. On one hand i'm intersted in them, but on the other, they are ****ing expensive classes, and where they lead to is a very very big gamble - making your living "teaching" those same classes after you learn them, very schetchy. -_-

As of now i've spent thousands of dollars getting to where I am, In these courses. I was desperate for a direciton in my life that was in congruence with what I was interested in personally. This was my only idea on how to fullfill it. But really I made the choice out of deseperation and impulse. I was not being modest, or realistic in my descision to do so. The horror of this realization has kept me running MONTHS from it in turmoil.

Frankly, I was manipulated into doing it by the Guru guy, and so many of these spiritual teacher people are like this, I saw through it as he was doing it but at the same time went with it. It was the sort car salesman plot. You know the car salesman is going to give some BS line at the last second right when your about to sign the contract about how he can't sell it for 1000 bucks MORE than what you were expecting.

This is how the spiritual consumer market works.

But thats a whole nother very long story. Gurus are evil. Nobody knows a damn thing, why trust some idiot who changed his name and walks around with a smile that really wishes to be (but isn't) sincere?

My teacher would not treat me as if we were equal. He always put the guru trip on me, and thus I learned very little from him.

What a lesson life has dealt me.
I should have trusted my self a long time ago.

On the other hand,
The techniques are not useless, I think they may even work. But the lineage and the buttcrack kissing bullshit you have to go through to get them is really more like selling yoru soul. And maybe thats what it's really about. They're creating a network of power for themselves.

I'm just going to buy the book. I never learned a damn thing from him. Everything I know I learned by doing it alone and incorporating my own being into it.

There is a chance that a teacher could serve the people. But it would involve this:

Exterminate the sage, discard the wise,
And the people will benefit a hundredfold;
Exterminate benevolence, discard rectitude,
And the people will again be filial;
Exterminate ingenuity, discard profit,
And there will be no more thieves and bandits.
These three, being false adornments, are not enough
And the people must have something to which they can attach themselves:
Exhibit the unadorned and embrace the uncarved block,
Have little thought of self and as few desires as possible.
Exterminate learning and there will no longer be worries.


....

I knew this up front. I knew what I was getting into. I knew the guy was one of those spiritual Guru hard line salsemen. But I figured. "Ah well, I'll just learn the techniques."
But slowly and surely the affair penetrates my outter illusions and i'm forced to confront what i've been holding inside me all along. Althought I was not one to swear loyalty and infeioroity to the Guru. The situation seemed to like osmosis soak into me and is now finnaly reaching my most deepest reslove. The commitements are getting higher and higher, the thing wants more and more of me, and now I'm forced to be sincere (hexagram 29.3.5 btw is my reading for this week) and play the cards i've been holding. These cards however tottaly put everything i've been doing as a shameful waste of money. But it is my inner truthfulness, and nontheless must be embraced. Or my self alienation will go on and on untill I finnaly overcome it.

So i've decided to simply eventually buy the books learn the stuff that way.
What I should have decided LOOOOOOONG before I threw away all that money.

Books are better than teachers they are cheaper and you always have them around.
For somthing as personal and subtle as Qigong, a teacher will really really not help you.

I'd ask him about somthing in the notes he gave me of the Meditation. And he would really not be able to give much more of an explantion past what it said in the notes!! This is how supeior he is, that he cannot even a personal account of what it means to him. Not becuase I think he doens't have a personal opinion (I would not regard him as a total idiot for my sake) but that he is unwilling to share it with his students because he is so much more wise than we are.

Basicaly It's self cultivation. The only thing you need from the teacher is the steps. And thats in the book.
Practice is up to the individual.

CM, you write with lots of passion and a generous amount of good sense. Maybe you got screwed in this experience, but as you’ve said, “I am going to be reflecting on this for the rest of my life”; and so your lesson, though not the one you intended to learn, was learned in a unforgettable way. Lessons learned from such personal loss are ones which are most valuable, and most painfully enduring. I can not help but to think the mind behind the voice of Yi encourages such foolery.

CM - I appreciate your earnestness with seeking peace through meditation. Your writing sounded agitated - and grasping for an answer to something you are tring to find in this state has resulted in a major life lesson for you. I think you were on the right track though. I can only hope you don't let the idea of meditation go because of this bad experience. I am not a believer in guru worship. If there is one $20 book I could recommend that has helped me immensely, it is Eckart Tolle's "The Power of Now." which teaches us the sacredness of living in the present. THAT is our point of power. Attending a simple weekly meditation along with this reading would be a great start. At very little cost. With your lack of free time, the reading time could be as little as 10 minutes before bedtime.

Hey - just a thought.

Laurie

Thank you both Laurie and Bruce.
My faith in myself has taken a huge blow from this...

... This is a dark time for me.


But about the Yijing being only a mirror...
I take that back....
It's not just a mirror... It's a real intelligence.
I can't explain what it is... It's a communion with a sage.
It sounds so alien to westerners to think this way. But there is no other way to look at it. There is a intelligence behind the Yijing. It's not just a reflection. It's a consultation. There is an other in there somwhere. Somthing that guides the falling of those coins... I don't know how it could be possible. But... the evidence is so overwhelming. I cannot doubt it anymore... it is divine.

It's so hard to believe anything nowadays... so easy to say everything is bullshit. It's so hard to have faith. It's been so abused and shat on ... Faith is the long lost ally of humanity... Well I can't be that way. I have to have faith. It's been treaded on and abused and trashed, and scorned, and alienated. But the Yijing give me faith. Thats why I can respect other religions, becuase they all BELIEVE....

I don't know if it even matters what they do anymore... as long as they believe.

I know it looks hokey to others. I know it looks absurd, living in secular anti-christ and anti-religio technocratic culture... And that it's just such a small thing... But it really everything...

Gotta have faith... Aumanipadmehum.

And now I'm regreting those things I wrote about my teacher...

I just don't know anything anymore....

CyclotronMajesty said:

And now I'm regreting those things I wrote about my teacher...

I just don't know anything anymore....

Click to expand...

Knowing is overrated.

http://www.yijing.nl/i_ching/hex_1-16/hex_e_04.htm

I'm not sure i've made the right decision...

The Yijing...

bruce_g said:

Knowing is overrated.

http://www.yijing.nl/i_ching/hex_1-16/hex_e_04.htm

Click to expand...

lol

Believe it or not I just sent my teacher a letter telling him I'm going to attend afterall.

So it's gone like this so far...

Maybe
Yes
no
yes

lol

Are these the times when you look to see if there is a spell casted on you or somthing?

I mean. But the Yijing...

It's just not going to judge what is right or wrong. It says what it says, but not being an expert on what it means. I'm still left with the decision to decide for myself. It gets to a point where it assumes the coincidencia oppositorum. Union of opposites. Which helps on getting a picture of what's going on. But not on things of personal value and direction in life.

It gives you a picture of your options, and your situation. But...

really I asked the thing again about my decisions and it said It was a misfortune to cancel the class.

where it started out saying it's a misfortune to go to the class. .................wtf...

perhaps what it means is that I shouldn't of done anything at all...!!!!
I shouldn't of said yes or no yet. But remained unsure.

Now that seems to make sense... across all the readings...
That is the only explanation! nothing else can do it.

You still get the decision to make no matter how much of an 'expert' you become . The first readings you told us about on this were very clear, and you got the message straight away with no problem. Consulting again after that, when it's time for action rather than interpretation, muddies the waters. Or in other words, when people ask the same question repeatedly and get confused, I always advise them to take notice of the first answer.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy the class and get full value from it. Try to stay grounded - don't let it take you away from attention to the details of life.