The Way of the Tao is Love

There is so much available in the I Ching for personal development, for instruction in divination, for wisdom and deeper understanding, that it would take ten thousand years to even come close to exhausting it, although, ultimately, it cannot be done. Therefore, when I sit down to write, I don't even know where to begin, and even when I do, as I start to write, the words just start to come out and it ends up nothing like I had planned. If we try to do things through the ego, our actions may temporarily have some benefit, but ultimately they go by the wayside. It is important to just let things flow. Ultimately, that flow, bigger than our little selves, is born of love. For the I Ching itself, and all sacred literature is primarily and primordially created out of love and is given to mankind as a gift.

The four attributes, listed in the first hexagram as: sublime, success, furthering, and perseverance, all are cornerstoned by the function of love. Love is the primary motivator of the creation of all that exists within the universe. It is not true that the universe is just a bunch of particles created by unknown and unknowing forces by accident, and without any conscious direction or plan. Everything that exists exists as a force of love. And as a force of love has an energy field unimaginable in human terms. If we could tap but a trillion trillionth of that power we could rule the galaxy. We would be an unassailable force not imagined by any man. Yet we don't know how, which in our present condition is an act of unimaginable love. Out of love comes the four fundamental attributes. The Wilhelm/Baynes version of the commentary on hexagram one states, "To sublimity, which, as the fundamental principle, embraces all the other attributes, it links love." It is easy to think we understand the term love, as an emotion, but we do not. For true love is greater than emotion. It is a fundamental state of being, and we must uncover this fundamental state of being within ourselves, or our relationships will never work. That is not the powerful, but very limited nature of romantic love, which is based on emotion only and is based on what our partner does for us. True love functions under all circumstances, regardless, and does not depend on any external factor that makes us happy. One great definition of love was spoken by one of the kung fu masters on the David Carradine Kung Fu show. The master said, "love is harmony, even in discord." How many of us can love even when all around us is discord. No, our love is ego based, and based on what's in it for me. And this love can never hold a relationship together. (In order to hold together both partners need to have uncovered this love inherent in their deeper selves. One cannot do it alone.) So, when the I Ching gives us an answer, it does so out of love. Not just love for the seeker, but love for all humanity and indeed all creation.

Since love is the primary attribute of the universe, then the only hell anyone can experience is the experience of thinking of oneself as isolated and not part of the stream or flow of the universe. That is the prodigal son who has left his father's home. He thinks he is separate from his father, but he is not. Therefore he puts himself into the wastelands of materialism only to find out that he is a slave to that very materialism. Since he is still truly the son of his father, he is by nature love, but he, (or she) hides that love behind a facade of self interest, and puts self first. This is in effect hell, and it is right here, right now on earth. To be condemned to hell is to be condemned to another incarnation in the flesh. Nothing more than that. But through understanding the hidden truths in the I Ching, we can come to learn our true heritage as "heirs," with the Father. Then we allow that love to shine through, and recognize that we are not separate but that we are all one.

One more little note here, although somethings are temporarily being skipped, but this is important, is that, as the commentary says, "The attribute furthering is correlated with justice, which creates the conditions in which each receives that which accords with his being, which is due him and which constitutes his happiness." In these words we have the foundation for the concept of reincarnation, and karma. We are not born into a world happenstance, in which anything can happen to us at any time by accident or circumstance, but something within us unconsciously creates the circumstances in which we find ourselves. The entire universe is a machine of justice. Everything that happens is fair play because it is born out of our own attitudes and conditioning, which we ourselves have created, and which conform to the laws of the universe, whether we are aware of them or not. Things don't just happen to us, we attract those things by the nature of our being.

Gene