Wuxing, Elemental Alchemy, Persona and the Nature of Free Will

[JustARandomPanda]

So I've finally been reading An Anthology of I Ching and to my surprise it is almost entirely about Wuxing to divine one's situation, personality and fortunes in life. It mentions the Heavenly Branches and the Celestial Stems, Chinese Astrology, assorted methods of divination via tossing coins, separating stalks, numerology, etc.

 

The thing this anthology seems to stress over and over is that the changes, this fluxing of the 5 elements follows a predictable and discernable pattern.

 

Now...what got me was the chapter on astrologies. Specifically as it relates to one's personality or persona.

 

It struck me that if this energy or mind or dependently originated relative self goes through these patterns in each lifetime then "I" will have manifested every single one of the personalities, weaknesses, strengths, fortunes, misfortunes, etc mentioned in this book that is dominated and influence by that particular configuration of these 5 elements at the time of my birth. In practical terms what this means is that the personality I manifested in a prior lifetime(s) would be different from the one I am now. I test as an INFP in this lifetime. Was I an ESTJ in a prior one? According to the Wuxing of the 5 elements I sure was. Endless times since time out of mind.

 

In a universe which has no beginning and no end I have fluxed through every single personality or persona configuration that could possibly come about via these 5 elements. That means at some point I've been much like any one of you personality-wise. Change even one thing about the 5 element configuration and the whole "me" that I am would be completely different. Or at the very least *express* itself differently.

 

If even all of this is subject to flux how then can I be judgemental toward any one of you or to anyone who pisses me off and I don't like? Technically speaking - according to the I Ching - I've actually *been* just like that someone I don't like at some point in time of the fluxing of the universe.

 

Where then is free will in all of this? What is truly me? Is it fair to say that Mind or DO-relative-self is really me? How can it be if all this is is just the orderly wuxing of the 5 elements? The more I delve into this idea the more I'm forced to conclude that a vast part of what I consider me isn't really me at all and never was. In fact...maybe *none* of it is me. Is this beginning to get an inkling of the Buddhist idea of No-Self? Nonetheless I'm stuck with this "I" sense. Like there's some Master-Me in the driver's seat directing the whole show and thus is responsible for my life, my reactions and my decisions good or bad.

 

But I am a part of this universe and thus the orderly wuxing of the five too. I'm confronted with the disturbing notion that anything that fluxes like that can't really be a me at all. If there's no permanent me and it's an orderly progression where does free will come into all of this?

 

I am rather baffled about this. What does Taoist or Shamanic teachings - especially when it comes to the I Ching - have to say about all of this?

 

Just as a disclaimer: I am still very much a baby when it comes to the ability to still my thoughts. I'm still stuck at the very beginning stage of simply trying to hold rock solid focused for more than 1 or 2 seconds on my breath so I have zero meditative accomplishments. I make no claims to having any deep prajna wisdom, meditative insights or internal alchemical attainments. All the preceding was just from assorted logical analysis and admittedly probably not very thorough or deep analysis at that.

[gendao]

a vast part of what I consider me isn't really me at all and never was. In fact...maybe *none* of it is me. Is this beginning to get an inkling of the Buddhist idea of No-Self? Nonetheless I'm stuck with this "I" sense. Like there's some Master-Me in the driver's seat directing the whole show and thus is responsible for my life, my reactions and my decisions good or bad.

 

But I am a part of this universe and thus the orderly wuxing of the five too. I'm confronted with the disturbing notion that anything that fluxes like that can't really be a me at all. If there's no permanent me and it's an orderly progression where does free will come into all of this?

 

I am rather baffled about this. What does Taoist or Shamanic teachings - especially when it comes to the I Ching - have to say about all of this?

I suspect there's some sort of hierarchy of "us."

 

Soul - screenwriter of our lives

Heart - scriptwriter for our minds

Mind - actor that reacts and delivers lines

 

The deeper you go, the more expansive, more connected, less individual, more knowing and more influential levels of consciousness you reach.

The shallower you go, the more individual, more disconnected, less knowing & less "free will" you experience.

Hence, the mind-based person is essentially a straw dog puppet - as the DDJ says.

Edited June 3, 2011 by vortex

[markern]

For some time now I have been thinking that whenver someone does somthing bad I have probably done the same in a prevous life. Whenver someone says they must have done something bad in a previous life for having deserved the sufereing they experience today I usually think and say that we have all probably been child rapists and mass murderers at some point so don`t be too harsh on yourself.

[markern]

By the way I found the AYP I am mantra very powerfull in stilling the mind. Also to me one advantage of standing meditation is that even if my mind does not stay stil all the time a lof of energy is produced and this in turn leads to the mind eventually becoming still. Tai chi works the same way for me with the added benefit that the continuous moving gives me something to focus on all the time so eventually it makes my mind forget everything else than the tai chi.

[Birch]

I suspect there's some sort of hierarchy of "us."

 

Soul - screenwriter of our lives

Heart - scriptwriter for our minds

Mind - actor that reacts and delivers lines

 

The deeper you go, the more expansive, more connected, less individual, more knowing and more influential levels of consciousness you reach.

The shallower you go, the more individual, more disconnected, less knowing & less "free will" you experience.

Hence, the mind-based person is essentially a straw dog puppet - as the DDJ says.

 

I liked that. I haven't met my soul very often but she does seem to let me know when I ought to be doing something else. Or getting out of Idaho. She's currently allowing me some R&R.

[Taomeow]

So I've finally been reading An Anthology of I Ching and to my surprise it is almost entirely about Wuxing to divine one's situation, personality and fortunes in life. It mentions the Heavenly Branches and the Celestial Stems, Chinese Astrology, assorted methods of divination via tossing coins, separating stalks, numerology, etc.

 

The thing this anthology seems to stress over and over is that the changes, this fluxing of the 5 elements follows a predictable and discernable pattern.

 

Now...what got me was the chapter on astrologies. Specifically as it relates to one's personality or persona.

 

It struck me that if this energy or mind or dependently originated relative self goes through these patterns in each lifetime then "I" will have manifested every single one of the personalities, weaknesses, strengths, fortunes, misfortunes, etc mentioned in this book that is dominated and influence by that particular configuration of these 5 elements at the time of my birth. In practical terms what this means is that the personality I manifested in a prior lifetime(s) would be different from the one I am now. I test as an INFP in this lifetime. Was I an ESTJ in a prior one? According to the Wuxing of the 5 elements I sure was. Endless times since time out of mind.

 

In a universe which has no beginning and no end I have fluxed through every single personality or persona configuration that could possibly come about via these 5 elements. That means at some point I've been much like any one of you personality-wise. Change even one thing about the 5 element configuration and the whole "me" that I am would be completely different. Or at the very least *express* itself differently.

 

If even all of this is subject to flux how then can I be judgemental toward any one of you or to anyone who pisses me off and I don't like? Technically speaking - according to the I Ching - I've actually *been* just like that someone I don't like at some point in time of the fluxing of the universe.

 

Where then is free will in all of this? What is truly me? Is it fair to say that Mind or DO-relative-self is really me? How can it be if all this is is just the orderly wuxing of the 5 elements? The more I delve into this idea the more I'm forced to conclude that a vast part of what I consider me isn't really me at all and never was. In fact...maybe *none* of it is me. Is this beginning to get an inkling of the Buddhist idea of No-Self? Nonetheless I'm stuck with this "I" sense. Like there's some Master-Me in the driver's seat directing the whole show and thus is responsible for my life, my reactions and my decisions good or bad.

 

But I am a part of this universe and thus the orderly wuxing of the five too. I'm confronted with the disturbing notion that anything that fluxes like that can't really be a me at all. If there's no permanent me and it's an orderly progression where does free will come into all of this?

 

I am rather baffled about this. What does Taoist or Shamanic teachings - especially when it comes to the I Ching - have to say about all of this?

 

Just as a disclaimer: I am still very much a baby when it comes to the ability to still my thoughts. I'm still stuck at the very beginning stage of simply trying to hold rock solid focused for more than 1 or 2 seconds on my breath so I have zero meditative accomplishments. I make no claims to having any deep prajna wisdom, meditative insights or internal alchemical attainments. All the preceding was just from assorted logical analysis and admittedly probably not very thorough or deep analysis at that.

 

Interesting questions!

 

It's not orderly though. The monkey wrench is the Yi of the Yi Jing/I Ching. The "Changes" of the book of changes are not the regular wuxing process, it's the "times that have yi" when it was written, and it's the "times that have yi" it has been written for. Yi is not wuxing. It is "emergency." It is "irregularity." It is "intervention."

 

As for "the real you," the taoist view would be, concern yourself with what you know, try to learn what you don't, adjust accordingly, and don't worry about the "big metaphysics" of it all until it becomes tangibly, practically useful to you and/or others. You are the real you. While being the real you in this-here life, knowing the wuxing layout of your current life makes you more conscious of some of the deeper aspects of the real you than not knowing it. Discovering the current imbalances and consciously doing (or choosing not to do) things to bring your whole current self closer to balance is where free will would come in consciously. Free will is consciousness by another name. The more of the latter, the more of the former.

 

There's limits though. Traditional Chinese astrology asserts it's about 40-40-20: 40% is predestined, 40% subject to free will (how much of the maximal amount available you will actually use depends on how conscious you get to be in this life, from 0% to 40%, with all in-between possibilities); and 20% is random and unpredictable and even gods don't know and no one controls. So the world is neither wholly deterministic nor wholly free-willy. It's a co-creation...

[Sloppy Zhang]

You are the real you.

 

I don't know if this is what you meant, Taomeow, but it reflects a sentiment that I hold, and that sentiment is the reason I never got on board with all of the "higher self" paradigms. People make a big deal about meeting your higher self, communicating with it, getting advice from in, unifying with it, etc etc etc. But you are your higher self. At least, that's how I always viewed it. Why would I need to personify and then talk to myself in order to find out what I already know? Seems like a bunch of needlessly complicated and potentially maddening steps taken to simply remember something you might have forgotten.

 

 

I can't speak to anything else in the thread, but I just wanted to throw that out there Interesting conversation though, so I will be reading

[Taomeow]

I don't know if this is what you meant, Taomeow, but it reflects a sentiment that I hold, and that sentiment is the reason I never got on board with all of the "higher self" paradigms. People make a big deal about meeting your higher self, communicating with it, getting advice from in, unifying with it, etc etc etc. But you are your higher self. At least, that's how I always viewed it. Why would I need to personify and then talk to myself in order to find out what I already know? Seems like a bunch of needlessly complicated and potentially maddening steps taken to simply remember something you might have forgotten.

 

 

I can't speak to anything else in the thread, but I just wanted to throw that out there Interesting conversation though, so I will be reading

 

 

Imagine meeting your two-months old self, SZ. He is no less real than you. It's just that he is not ready to read TTB yet. Or the scriptures, for that matter. Does it make him less real than the current you? Nope.

 

I think it's the same deal with the "higher self." Higher, maybe... at least that was my experience meeting her when I had an NDE at the age of 17... physically higher, "up there," just as a fully grown adult is "higher" than the little kid he or she used to be (still is in a different space-time/has always been/will always be) -- i.e. taller... head farther away from the ground. But "more real," nah. Just experiencing a different facet of reality from the one I am experiencing. Higher? Yes... so what?.. More real? What's more real, a soup of particles or a soup du jour?.. Everything is real. It's just that different realities sometimes overlap, sometimes compete, sometimes harmonize and sometimes clash, sometimes support and sometimes deconstruct each other... That's because reality is not unlike you and me... and that's because we are not unlike reality.

[Sloppy Zhang]

 

Imagine meeting your two-months old self, SZ. He is no less real than you. It's just that he is not ready to read TTB yet. Or the scriptures, for that matter. Does it make him less real than the current you? Nope.

 

I think it's the same deal with the "higher self." Higher, maybe... at least that was my experience meeting her when I had an NDE at the age of 17... physically higher, "up there," just as a fully grown adult is "higher" than the little kid he or she used to be (still is in a different space-time/has always been/will always be) -- i.e. taller... head farther away from the ground. But "more real," nah. Just experiencing a different facet of reality from the one I am experiencing. Higher? Yes... so what?.. More real? What's more real, a soup of particles or a soup du jour?.. Everything is real. It's just that different realities sometimes overlap, sometimes compete, sometimes harmonize and sometimes clash, sometimes support and sometimes deconstruct each other... That's because reality is not unlike you and me... and that's because we are not unlike reality.

 

Interesting thoughts

 

I kind of think about it like, say I lost my keys. I know I had them yesterday, but I don't know where they are now. The me that had them yesterday put them somewhere. The me that is now knows not where. So for all practical purposes, it was a very real "yesterday me" that put the keys somewhere. If we could meet and discuss, he would surely have information that I do not, and we would be different people. But the past self was, is(?) still me. And technically, I "know" where the keys are, it's swimming around in my mind somewhere, I just don't have the right triggers to easily recall the memory

 

I figure future selves, or higher selves, are much the same way, except the present self is the past self, and somehow we are meeting. But that doesn't change that all of them are "me".

 

But I dunno

[Taomeow]

Interesting thoughts

 

I kind of think about it like, say I lost my keys. I know I had them yesterday, but I don't know where they are now. The me that had them yesterday put them somewhere. The me that is now knows not where. So for all practical purposes, it was a very real "yesterday me" that put the keys somewhere. If we could meet and discuss, he would surely have information that I do not, and we would be different people. But the past self was, is(?) still me. And technically, I "know" where the keys are, it's swimming around in my mind somewhere, I just don't have the right triggers to easily recall the memory

 

I figure future selves, or higher selves, are much the same way, except the present self is the past self, and somehow we are meeting. But that doesn't change that all of them are "me".

 

But I dunno

 

I think along the same lines. "All of them are me..."

...at least if I don't let anyone microchip this "me" (that would be a form of possession -- demonic, I'm pretty sure) and turn into "them."

 

But then, the "whole" me might be big enough to respond, at a point in space-time very far removed yet still connected to the current me, by swallowing up their galaxies and spitting out the pits, thus turning "them" into "me" instead.

 

I dunno either.

[JustARandomPanda]

I think it's the same deal with the "higher self." Higher, maybe... at least that was my experience meeting her when I had an NDE at the age of 17... physically higher, "up there,"

 

 

 

Am I getting this right Taomeow? You actually MET your "higher self" the way two people meet and greet on a street corner?

[Taomeow]

Am I getting this right Taomeow? You actually MET your "higher self" the way two people meet and greet on a street corner?

 

Not on a street corner. In a hospital. I had major surgery, they were having trouble bringing me back from general anesthesia. My... um, everything but the body... went elsewhere. In this "elsewhere" I met my higher self. When I was done visiting, turned out that in the meantime my body was trying to run away and six people were holding me down and they barely managed to strap me to the bed with leather belts and still couldn't wake me up. I was later told that they had never seen a 17-year-old girl detach the body from the... um, the rest of it... and had no idea the body vacated by the mind, spirit, all that jazz, is so freakin' strong -- six people couldn't cope! Well, I had no memory of what my body was doing at that point (I retrieved it twenty years later though, and this got videotaped by the therapist, by the way, so I know what it looked like... also what it felt like), but I remember every detail of my encounter with my higher self that was simultaneously taking place.

 

Why, is it unusual?

[Sloppy Zhang]

Not on a street corner. In a hospital. I had major surgery, they were having trouble bringing me back from general anesthesia. My... um, everything but the body... went elsewhere. In this "elsewhere" I met my higher self. When I was done visiting, turned out that in the meantime my body was trying to run away and six people were holding me down and they barely managed to strap me to the bed with leather belts and still couldn't wake me up. I was later told that they had never seen a 17-year-old girl detach the body from the... um, the rest of it... and had no idea the body vacated by the mind, spirit, all that jazz, is so freakin' strong -- six people couldn't cope! Well, I had no memory of what my body was doing at that point (I retrieved it twenty years later though, and this got videotaped by the therapist, by the way, so I know what it looked like... also what it felt like), but I remember every detail of my encounter with my higher self that was simultaneously taking place.

 

Why, is it unusual?

 

 

I may have to go under general anesthesia sometime soon. I can only wonder what's to happen. So far my options seem to be:

 

A) Go to sleep, wake up, no events.

B ) Go to sleep, crazy events, wake up fine.

C) Almost die, crazy events, wake up.

D) Die.

 

Edited June 4, 2011 by Sloppy Zhang

[Owledge]

Here's a theory: Free will and perception of time can't go together.

When a part of you or realm of perception that you access enables you to see the future, you are accessing information that your time-dependent part is not supposed to have, because as long as you are aubject to time, you can only act upon the many stimuli of this universe - action and reaction. The idea of "free will" might be an empty concept, made up in order to make us believe that we are in control of anything.

Maybe the so-called "true self" is actually not a self, but the one whole, the Tao maybe. Thus, you can only cause a change to the system that can fall under the idea of "free will" if you are the one making the rules. When you're not, you are left with following the rules, and thus everything that happens is predictable from the standpoint of the entity that makes the rules. And since there are cases of people correctly predicting the future, I would say this indicates that there is an entity that knows all the rules, that is observing from outside of the 'game'.

[Taomeow]

Here's a theory: Free will and perception of time can't go together.

When a part of you or realm of perception that you access enables you to see the future, you are accessing information that your time-dependent part is not supposed to have, because as long as you are aubject to time, you can only act upon the many stimuli of this universe - action and reaction. The idea of "free will" might be an empty concept, made up in order to make us believe that we are in control of anything.

Maybe the so-called "true self" is actually not a self, but the one whole, the Tao maybe. Thus, you can only cause a change to the system that can fall under the idea of "free will" if you are the one making the rules. When you're not, you are left with following the rules, and thus everything that happens is predictable from the standpoint of the entity that makes the rules. And since there are cases of people correctly predicting the future, I would say this indicates that there is an entity that knows all the rules, that is observing from outside of the 'game'.

 

*my response moved to my personal practice forum