Yijing Foundations Class (starting this Sunday)

Starting on Sunday, September 15th, a small group of like-minded students will embark on a 12 week journey from ‘The Yijing is fascinating, but I’m not really confident with it…’ to a fluent, dependable, individual relationship with Yi as guide and companion. (Might you be one of them?)

This is the Yijing Foundations Class, and since this will be the first time I’ve run it since 2015, I thought I should explain what it’s about and how it works…

Yijing

You know this part 😉

But perhaps it’s still important to say that for me – and hence in this class – the Yijing is an oracle. Yes, it’s also a work of art and a repository of deeply-encoded wisdom, but those things are only possible because it’s an oracle.

That means it only comes alive, it’s only knowable at all, when you get into conversation so it can speak to you. Then, it can give you insight – a profound vision of your own multi-dimensional, full-colour reality: the currents you’re swimming in, the meaning of your experience, the direction of the flow. (And yes, this includes what it would be like to pursue a relationship with X, or how best to apply for a raise, or what’s gone wrong with your computer this time: it’s all real, so it’s all included.)

Conversation with Yi is what we call ‘readings’ (a maybe misleadingly passive term for a very active, two-way process). The Class is based on your readings, right from the start, because that’s where the oracle lives.

Foundations

The trouble with learning the Yijing is that it never ends. (If you ever find anyone who says they’ve mastered it and have no more to learn, run away very fast.) There are always more patterns hidden in the structure, more research insights to integrate, more interpretive tools to experiment with, more to see…

…which is why I decided to find the foundations. What were all my readings built on? What concepts and approaches were indispensable to me? And so I gathered together my ‘desert island’ Yijing interpretation kit and built it into a syllabus.

Consequently, there’s a lot that isn’t in the Foundations syllabus: line pathways, big beautiful Sequence patterns, nuclear stories… While these are all exciting, creative, mind-expanding ways to engage with readings, they’re not foundational. They’re more like the conservatory you have built on as an extension: the light and spaciousness they add could transform your whole experience of the place, but you can live without them. And also, a conservatory without foundations would collapse.

(Overworked metaphors apart, this really is how it works: the advanced tools are optional. They can transform your relationship with Yi, but you can also do good, useful readings that make a positive difference in your life without ever touching them. And adding in extra hexagrams, trigrams and lines to think about before you’re fully at home with the basic framework of primary, relating and moving lines is counterproductive, to say the least.)

Class

The Yijing Foundations Course is always available inside Change Circle, for you to study in your own time. The Yijing Foundations Class runs from September 15th to December 8th, with weekly classes (by video chat) and a private forum for daily support and feedback, one module and assignment at a time.

So the Class is for you if…