The I Ching as guidepost

I had mentioned at one time, or more, that in every line, the I Ching is talking about itself, and I do believe this is true. I want to qualify this statement, however, with the statement that even more so, it is discussing its relationship with us. Therefore, when in the image of hexagram 40, it states, "Thus the superior man pardons mistakes and forgives misdeeds," it is talking about universal law. As such the laws of the universe are natural, and are an attribute of the universal subconscious mind. God is not above law, nor is law above God, they are one and the same thing. They are not only equal, they are in essence, one as the other. There is no separation.

We talked earlier about the nature of God being love. In the exact same way, God and love are the same essence, one is not above the other, and they are not only equal, they are one another. Often the question comes up, how can a loving God allow these terrible things to happen? When men kill and massacre, even slaughter other men or women, when unbelievable cruelty is perpetuated on one's enemies, it truly is hard to say, how can God allow this? One reason for this is that God truly is love, and being love he can not love any less the evil person who tortures another than the good person who is being cruelly hurt. God is not a person up in the sky who intervenes. He is pure love for all, and my mean all creatures. But just as he is love, he is also law. And that law cannot be violated. Therefore when we see the horrors of war, as terrible as it is, we must be reminded of the verse that says, "he that liveth by the sword shall die by the sword." And you didn't think karma was in the Bible! Think again, it is there in almost every verse.

This gets into a philosophical discussion of the nature of reality that a lot of us, especially in the west, are not ready to accept, no matter how eloquently it is discussed. So I will not go into a lengthy discussion of it here, except to say, "there is nothing outside yourself to fear. There is nothing outside yourself that can hurt you. Since everything and everyone is one, those who hurt us are simply mirror images of what we have inside us. Therefore, no God judges you, for there is nothing outside of ourself if all is one. When we get hurt it is because we have judged ourselves, and judges ourselves is no less cruel than judging another. We need to understand this, that to forgive another is to forgive oneself. Self forgiveness is the ultimate. For it is because of a feeling of guilt that we have judged ourselves as separate from God and all there is anyway. Our anger ultimately is not with our fellow man, but with God, because supposedly, he allowed it to happen. We created the separation, in our mind. In our conscious mind. We have not forgiven God nor ourselves for the state we find ourselves in.

Thus when the I Ching says the superior man pardons mistakes and forgives misdeeds, it is talking about the I Ching's relationship with us. It is talking about the relationship of our inner self with others. And in the western world, the disciples of Jesus asked, "How many times should we forgive another? Until seven times? And Jesus said, nay, but seventy times seven. In other words, always and eternally, for our karma will never end until we have totally forgiven.

There was once a discussion on another forum, where an I Ching novice insisted that forgives is an insult to ourselves. I understand that argument, I really do, but it comes from a lack of understanding of the true nature of reality. More on this later.