Using the Bagua Trigrams: Li

Using the Bagua Trigrams: Li

Li returns us to the shaking up of things intimated by Zhen, but this time it implies the possibility of greater injury.  Li is another communication from supernatural forces, but rather than being directed at you and your action, Li is a correction event regarding forces beyond your control.  It’s not about you, but you may be caught in the cross-fire.  You may have to act, to run and hide or to arm yourself for trouble, but ultimately this lesson isn’t about your behavior or your worth.  Life happens, and when the supernatural has its own problems, those problems can spill over into our lives. 

Li encompasses an event, from the preliminary stirrings of possibility through to the smoking aftermath, and the damage you incur from the event is a measure of your Xun activity.  If you’re connected to the divine, and paying it regular obeisance, then you’re in a unique position to realize when something significant has just occurred.  By staying in contact with your beliefs and your inner truth, you’re ever-ready to receive warnings that others might miss, and thus situate yourself fortuitously for the unfolding of unpleasant events.  Since some bad things can’t be helped, Li is your way of side-stepping some of the painful effects—your ticket out of the consequences.

If you experience a sudden event that harms you without having specifically been directed at you, then you’re experiencing Li.  If you are in the habit of staying connected with your higher self or praying to god, then it’s likely that you were warned of this during a recent Zhen event, and had the opportunity during a Xun time following it to place yourself advantageously for the coming change.  If you recognized the signs and took action, then the relatively little harm that came to you is likely due to these precautions.  If you didn’t notice the warning, and therefore took no precautions, then the harm that came to you is likely the full fallout that you were going to get from the event.  After all, Li means it wasn’t directed at you, but that bad things can happen.  Be honest with yourself about whether or not you were warned and how much of what you could have done you actually did.  In life, lessons often get harder, rather than easier.  It’s a good idea, then to learn from the easier ones and keep up.  The next problem may not be Li; it may be directed at you.

If you honestly believe that you had no warning, but you still received harm during an event that doesn’t appear to have been directed at you, then a message you can take from this is that your connection with the forces that can predict harm coming your way is poor.  You are not communicating with them, hearing them, or listening to them.  You don’t understand what’s being said to you and therefore can’t anticipate harmful occurrences. 

According to the larger dynamics and laws of hyperdimensional beings operating in form, events that transpire that affect more than one person require tremendous investments of energy.  Mistakes can happen, but the beings that might qualify as your higher selves, your guides, your angels or god, are perfectly aware of circumstances where huge investments of energy are in play, and will warn those they favor.  Just as a parent might point out that its best not to run around near a pool, or play too close to the street, higher beings are ever aware of the potential hazards that people face when their lives and activities put them in proximity of something that could at any point cause negative fallout. 

Check in with your higher beliefs and divine beings when you’re making major decisions, changing directions or planning any kind of journey.  If you haven’t cultivated open communication with them yet, then at least pray and meditate.  Your meditation can begin to give you the signals if you focus on your plan and analyze what feelings arise as a result.  Try to resolve your own feelings, and anything that is especially resistant to dissolution or resolution can be considered a sign or message.  If you believe that you won’t be warned, you’ll fail to recognize such warnings.  If you believe you can’t be warned, you’ll learn that you can be, but learn the hard way.

Li might be termed collateral damage.  You can avoid it by recognizing it before it manifests and getting adequate distance from it.  What you can rarely do is participate in it without incurring damage.  Li is not for the weak of heart, or the uncommitted.  There are very special circumstances in which Li can be experienced without harm, and these must be cultivated for long periods of time by Taoist internal alchemy masters.  For the rest of us, Li events are to be avoided.

It’s important to note that some Li events are initiated or instigated by us.  This must be differentiated from events that are directed at us.  When we are the source and we cause damage to those around us, then we are the Li.  Just as before, Li events must be avoided, especially when we are the cause, because these incur karmic debt.  When teachers claim that Li is fire and it should be cultivated, they do a disservice to the lesson of events that need to be avoided.  Without lost meanings of Li, there are no trigrams that deal with the aspect of life that is collateral damage, or undirected hurt.  Fire can be used as a metaphor, but it must be clarified that fire doesn’t intend to hurt you; it just can’t help itself.  Fire is merely burning brightly, as is its nature.  It is for you to gauge your appropriate distance from fire in order to enjoy its teachings without incurring harm.  Li is the force that instructs you in gaining appropriate distance from things in order to retain your inherent self, your individualism and integral cohesion.

Having said that, there is a long tradition of cultivating the “inner fire” that is the interaction of your own soul with your form.  There is light and warmth and movement, and flickering, and power involved in that, so fire is an appropriate metaphor to use in developing the understanding and skills involved in qigong, neigong and any Fire Style of internal development.  It makes sense that teachers of these things would co-opt the Li trigram to re-enforce this message.  There is nothing inappropriate in that.  All we’re suggesting in this blog is to retain the lost lesson of Li; that life can involve damage that occurs even when you’ve done nothing to deserve or incur it, and the way to minimize such damage is to listen for Zhen and react with Xun.

Deep peace to you,

Lihai Sherman, CMQ

Qigong Instructor

I Qi You

(c) I Qi You, June, 2008. All rights reserved.

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