117. The I-Ching art of war introduction (☶/☵)

When becoming an I-Ching master, a person becomes a master in the art of transformations and change. The physical process of becoming an I-Ching master is a long and winding journey that sometimes feels like detours. Part of the reason for this, is because most of the literature around the I-Ching is so heavily 'spiritualized' that unless a person is into spiritual stuff, the I-Ching is useless. This is what it's like on the Western side. Over on the Eastern side, the I-Ching or Classic Book of Changes, has been used since the Xia and Shang Dynasties to council kings as China's first war manual. The first 32 hexagrams are about building up a country internally rich, powerful and strong so that it cannot be conquered by others. The later or remaining 32 hexagrams are about conquering external enemies. When we do an internally focused martial art, we tend to fall into the trap that it's all about the internal stuff and nothing else. This is just the same with externally hard focused martial arts but the other way round. While, for a while this is okay... For a while... The reality of internally focused martial arts is that when you are doing it, you are also cultivating your qi: It starts with breathing, moves down to what you eat and drink, and then eventually leads to pure inner energy work. When that happens, our qi starts to grow and eventually expands outwards beyond ourselves. This is the moment where it ceases to be 'internal' and becomes about our relationship with the world beyond us. We have shifted from being in hexagram 32 over to hexagram 33. The shift is instantaneous just like electrons doing a quantum jump. For hard style external martial artists the shift goes from outside to inside. When and where it happens is different for everybody but we can feel the energy shift as it draws nearer and nearer. The snake feels like it's slowly suffocating under its own skin and wants out. The story it has created to be it's life has become limiting and a new bigger brighter story is waiting in the wings (of its skin shedding). Then the search is on for that thing or event that can make the first wee tear in one's restrictive past so that the future can exist.