Earth medicine, p.32
Earth Medicine, page 32
As a preliminary to meditation itself, it is necessary to relax the physical body and the mind and to release any tension that might otherwise block the flow of vital energies through the chakras.
It is best to wear something loose-fitting while meditating so that the body is not restricted in any way, and to remove your shoes.
Sit comfortably, back straight, legs slightly apart, and feet firmly in contact with the floor. Rest the palms of your hands on your knees.
Then relax the body. Simply let go of all bodily tensions, starting at the feet and working up to the head.
Relax the mind by letting go of all mental worries and anxieties, and all the cares and concerns about your work, your home, your family.
Close your eyes and picture a peaceful beauty spot. If you have a peaceful place where you always feel at ease – a deserted beach by the sea on a warm, sunny day perhaps, or a cool glade in a forest, or by a gently flowing stream, or in an open meadow – just call it to mind. Be there in your imagination, now.
Listen for the sounds of Nature all around you – the gentle lapping of waves on the sand, the song of birds in the trees, the soft dance of flowing water. Smell the tang of sea air, the musky freshness of trees, the clear fragrance of grass and heather and wild flowers. Feel the soft sand under your feet, or the springiness of grass. Let your imagination activate your inner senses in this way and you will be creating for yourself a beautiful, relaxing mind-space where you can go anytime and be secure, safe and tranquil.
Having now relaxed and found tranquillity in your mind-space, the next stage is to extract cosmic energy from the atmosphere around you and to channel it through the chakras.
We all know that it is breathing that keeps us alive. It has been explained to us at some time that physiologically the process of breathing extracts oxygen from the air when it reaches the lungs and it is then absorbed into the bloodstream and it is this that keeps up alive.
But there is another element in the air which modern medical science does not recognize because it cannot be seen or measured. I have referred to it earlier as prana or mana. The Chinese call it chi and the Japanese Ki. Whatever word is used, it means ‘life-force’. It is not physical substance but pure spirit-energy. It permeates all things and supports every atom, keeping everything that is in existence shimmering and vibrating. It is that which makes possible all organic functions, whether conscious or unconscious. It comes to us in the food we eat, in water, in light from the Sun, but we have access to it in its most immediate form through air. The practice of meditation will help you to come to know for yourself the existence of this force in yourself and within all things.
Rhythmic breathing is a way of extracting more of this life-force and, by channelling it through the chakras, utilizing it more. By so doing the more vitality you will possess, the greater will become your sense of awareness, and the more effective will be your creativity.
Take a deep breath. Breathing in is an expression of the yin – the principle of receiving. Now bear in mind that what you are receiving is not just oxygen, but the life-force itself. Holding the breath is the unifying principle through taking in the life-force.
Now breathe out. Breathing out is an expression of the yang – and an outgoing projection of the will and intention. The pause before taking another breath is the neutralization – the pause before the cycle is repeated again.
This pattern of Raise – Hold – Release – Pause, is the same fluid motion, that powerful rhythm, that permeates Nature and is at the centre of all creativity. It is the rhythm of raising power within an energy-system, of controlling it and bringing it to its full potential, and then discharging it under the power of its own impetus.
By recognizing this pattern and by putting it into the same natural rhythm of the Earth – caused by the phases of the Moon, we harmonize with the natural energies of the planet. We become attuned with the Earth’s energy-field. And we harmonize ourselves and become ‘centred’.
That pattern and sequence has been discussed earlier when we examined the phases of the Moon – 11 days when the Moon is waxing, 3 days when it is full, 11 days when it is waning, and 4 days of the Dark Moon. This 11–3–11–4 pattern is the rhythm of the Earth’s ‘breathing’.
Try it now, just to get the hang of it. It is simply:
breathe in 1–2–3–4–5–6–7–8–9–10–11,
hold the breath 1–2–3
exhale 1–2–3–4–5–6–7–8–9–10–11,
pause 1–2–3–4.
As you establish this rhythm as part of your meditation practice, imagine as you take in each breath that the energy is being drawn up through your feet and filling your body, energizing every cell of your being as you hold the breath, and then giving away what you no longer need as you expel the air, and then pausing before the cycle is repeated.
Keep this routine going for three or four minutes, remembering that you are in your special mind-space. Then breathe normally.
4. Create the Vision
Visualization is the creation of a mental picture of an object or a situation. It is thinking in pictures rather than in words. It is seeing in the mind’s eye an image of what is required, and so vividly that it takes on the appearance of an objective reality. Not everyone finds it easy. But it is a technique that cannot be worked at or striven for. It has to come gently and naturally.
In visualization you are making use of the power of your imagination, which is part of the creative energy of the universe, to create for you an image of what you want.
What now follows is a continuation of Creating the Power, for the power is activated by the use of creative visualization. The method I am now going to explain is a simple but effective way of developing the ability to visualize in meditation and to open up the power centres.
Having recharged the system through a few minutes rhythmic breathing, the next step is to imagine a glowing sphere of golden light just above the top of your head. With your eyes closed, ‘see’ it there hovering just above you like a miniature Sun. Now perform the rhythmic breathing sequence four times, sense the feeling of warmth descending into you.
Now imagine the ball of light has moved down to your throat area. Perform another four cycles of rhythmic breathing while it is there.
Let it move down to your chest and feel the energy from the golden sphere vitalizing your entire body as it rests there for four breathings.
Now let it descend to your navel and do four cycles of breathing while it is there. Then to your pelvic region for four breaths, and finally down to the area around your feet for four breaths.
Then, as you inhale, imagine to your count of eleven, that the energy from the sphere is rising up through you from your feet, up your legs to the base of your spine, then up inside your body to your neck and the top of your head. As you hold your breath to a count of three, see it like a jet coming out through the top of your head. Then, as you exhale, imagine it as a fountain of golden, shimmering light, descending all around the outside of your body and down to your feet. Then pause. Keep this image in your mind throughout a cycle of four breaths. Then return to normal breathing.
This will have begun to open up your energy centres and activate your imagination. You will not only feel deeply relaxed, but invigorated by the power of the life-force itself.
These four essential conditions should form the pattern of your meditation session to begin with and should be well established before you extend your meditation to include contemplation of any totem. After energizing the chakras you then merely visualize the totem – be it animal, plant or gemstone – that you wish to work with and then just observe: look and listen. Write down whatever thoughts and impressions come into your mind immediately you finish your meditation period.
So, set aside a period of twenty minutes to half an hour every day, if possible, but at least three or four times a week. The biggest difficulty is in setting up the routine in the first place and making the time for it. Once it is established and you have begun to experience the benefits, you will then treasure that period of your day.
3.8
Earth Medicine and the I Ching
THE ORIGIN OF THE I CHING, WHICH MEANS ‘BOOK OF CHANGES’, like the Medicine Wheel, is lost in pre-history, but we know it pre-dates the Confucianism and Taoism of the East and influenced them both.
In the West, the I Ching has become known as a means of predicting the future, like Sun astrology, but this is not one of its principal purposes, which is as an oracle, and that is not quite the same thing. An oracle is a means of measuring the quality of the moment and obtaining advice on its significance.
The Chinese revered the I Ching and approached it as if it were a very wise person, for if it is treated as if it were a person its replies are like personal replies.
The I Ching, the Medicine Wheel and Runes are designed according to a universal Law of Octaves, or cycles of eight. Like the DNA code, music theory, and computer binary notation, so the eight primary trigrams of the I Ching can be related to the Eight Directions of the Medicine Wheel. In Section Two, the eight primary trigrams have been assigned their appropriate places on the Earth Medicine Web and one of them is related to each of the twelve personality groupings.
A primary trigram represents a set of frequencies which are incorporated within the human energy-system. These impulses are indications of the way the individual personality is put together and can thus form the basis of a code or ‘call sign’ or ‘function key’ to access into the inner self and communicate with the Higher Self, ‘divine’ Self, True Self, or whatever name we choose to give it.
To complete the ‘code’, a question is asked and a further trigram obtained by the tossing of coins or the division of yarrow sticks, and this is built on top of the primary trigram to form a six-line symbol called a hexagram.
To the rational Western mind, a hexagram is thus formed in an entirely random manner using coins or yarrow sticks. But to the oriental mind and to the ancients, the pattern formed was not random at all, but a product of the moment. The use of coins or yarrow sticks was merely a mechanical device to tap a spiritual power which might be related to the subconscious mind. The hexagram or hexagrams arrived at when a question was put revealed to the individual’s conscious mind how energies were moving towards a probable future, but one which could be changed by actions taken in the present.
Consulting the Oracle is like stretching out time as if it were a rubber band. It is like looking down on a situation from a higher perspective and seeing a situation in a broader context. It can, perhaps, be likened to being in a car which is suddenly caught up in a traffic delay. From your seat behind the windscreen you cannot see beyond the vehicles immediately in front of you so you have no idea what lies further ahead. You can’t tell how long you are going to be delayed, and you don’t know the route well enough to know if there is a turn-off you can take to get round the source of delay. You can’t see far enough ahead to know what is going on. You can only sit and wait and be the victim of circumstance.
But if you were looking out from the top window of a tall block of flats overlooking the road, you would be able to see the route you had followed to get where you were, and to see clear ahead for quite a long way. You would be able to see what was causing the traffic hold-up and, if it was an accident and emergency services were arriving, how long it was likely to be before traffic was able to get moving again. You would also be able to see where there were turn-offs and the best one to take to get you out of the line of traffic to make a quick detour of the situation.
Consulting the I Ching is like being able to switch your viewpoint from the window of car to a window at the top of a block of flats, or like plugging yourself in to advice from a traffic policeman viewing the scene overhead from a helicopter.
As we have seen, a trigram is a combination of three parallel solid or broken lines, there are only eight possible ways in which solid or broken lines can be combined in a trigram:
A trigram forms the lower and upper portions of a hexagram which is the full symbol needed to consult the oracle. From this joining together of two trigrams into a six-line hexagram, it is possible to develop sixty-four different combinations, or sixty-four different frequencies. And since one or more of the six lines can be a changing yin or a changing yang line the number of possible variations runs into many hundreds.
The coming together of two trigrams in this way indicates the interaction and dynamics not only of the subtle forces affecting the human condition, but of the interaction of the conscious and the subconscious within the individual.
Each hexagram forms a ‘gateway’ to show the way things are moving. Since movement enters the hexagram from the bottom, so the bottom line represents the beginning of a situation, and the movement flows upwards through its development and change to the top line, which indicates its likely outcome.
You obtain the trigram to build on top of the birth month trigram and thus into a hexagram by simply casting coins or by separating yarrow sticks and the use of the yang and yin principle I have already discussed in detail elsewhere in this book. I shall not describe the yarrow sticks method here since I want to keep the ‘casting’ as simple as possible. The use of yarrow sticks and the traditional Chinese way of ‘working’ the Oracle takes much longer than the coin method and is more ritualistic. A full explanation of this method is included in most books giving I Ching interpretations and you can make use of this method later if you so wish. I shall concentrate on the coin method which has the advantage of being both simple and effective.
The three coins you select for casting should be the same size, and small enough to be shaken within the cupped hands. Three newly minted pennies or cents are ideal, but any coins will do. Clean them first and leave them for a day or so in a salt water solution to cleanse them of grime and unwanted vibrations since they will have gone through many hands before they came into your possession, then put them aside for I Ching use only. The deck of I Ching Cards produced by the US Games Systems Inc., of New York, USA, comes complete with three special metal yin and yang coins with the numerical values also stamped on them. These are ideal, and the cards, too, are most helpful. In spite of the advice given in some books, it is not necessary to obtain old Chinese coins with square holes in them.
The three coins are shaken vigorously in the cupped hands and then simply dropped on to a flat surface.
A head is used represent yin, and counts as 2.
A tail is used represent yang, and counts as 3.
In casting the three coins and noting whether each comes up heads or tails – yin or yang – and adding up their values, you will come up with four possible totals from each throw of the coins:
6 (three heads).
7 (two heads and one tail).
8 (two tails and one head).
9 (three tails).
7 produces a yang and is represented by a solid line, thus:
8 produces a yin and is represented by a broken line, thus:
6 produces a changing yin – that is, a yin that is in the process of changing to its opposite, yang – and is represented as:
9 produces a changing yang – that is, a yang that is changing to yin and is represented as:
The first fall of the coins produces the bottom line of your new trigram, the second throw brings about the middle line, and the third throw produces the top line. You then locate your upper and lower trigrams on the Table of Hexagrams on. It will give you the number of the relevant section of the Oracle to consult.
Before casting the coins, however, it is necessary to formulate your question. You must have it absolutely clear what it is you are seeking advice about. Take time to think your question through so that its wording is clear and precise. Write it down for the act of writing it will help to concentrate the mind.
When using I Ching in this way – that is, for the purpose of exploring the Medicine Wheel – questions should be limited to the kind that have a direct bearing on your own self-development. Remember, the primary trigram which forms the lower trigram of the hexagram, is attuned to the direction to which it is assigned and is therefore relevant to that direction and all things connected to it. It is being used as a ‘key’ to open up deeper chambers of the direction. So questions of a more general nature may require the building up of all six lines of a hexagram.
Avoid framing the questions that invite a Yes or No response. They are not questions, but indecisions. The Oracle is not for the purpose of telling you what to do and making decisions for you. For instance, ‘What will be the effect of my taking this or that course of action?’ should be asked rather than ‘Should I do so-and-so?’ Questions like, ‘How can I best develop this or that quality?’ ‘What effect would (state the choice) have on my life?’ and ‘How am I likely to be affected by . . .?’ give an indication of the way questions should be framed.
After you have written the question down and examined it and are finally satisfied with it, try to see some sort of image of the question in your mind before you cast the coins. A face, perhaps, or a place, an object, an action, or a mannerism, connected with a quality being sought.
Once you have gained some experience and confidence in using the I Ching in this way, you may wish to seek guidance regarding a proposed ‘move’ to another segment of the Circle in order to acquire what it is you are seeking. You may be in some doubt as to where to go to first. In this case, don’t put the question: ‘Should I got to Beaver (or Snake, or whatever) to seek ways of strengthening this or that, or to aid me in whatever?’ for this again invites only a Yes or No reply. Rather, ask the effect a ‘move’ to one direction is likely to have, and consider the answer you obtain. Then put the same question regarding another direction. Then compare the two responses, and weigh them up. The choice will be yours, but you will have obtained useful insights to enable you to consider the pros and cons.
