Attending the Fire Palm Change Event?

I am planning on being there.

With the Fire Palm change coming up soon, I’ve been thinking a lot about the psychic body and what it is all about. At the moment I think of the psychic as what I’m doing. In the Fire palm, I focus on what I’m creating. The psychic energy has this self indulgent quality. There is only me and what I’m trying to do or create.

This is very similar to the single palm change. It is a very yang point of view. When I practice the form of the Fire Palm change, I’m focusing on creating one circle after another in a continuous flow. In 1999 Bruce described the fire trigram this way: “Fire is known for changing – transforming but it tends to become more dead and what was there is now gone to ash.”

The hands are moving from one circle to the next. The angle is changing from moment to moment, but you don’t keep awareness of all the previous choices. They are dying away and gone. The only thing that matters is the current circle. This is the self indulgent quality.

Bruce didn’t teach much about the fire trigram at that seminar. He seemed to teach it more by contrasting it to water. He left the group with this comment/warning: “one of greatest things taught at I Ching whether sitting, moving, intellectual, or psychic – biggest thing to look for is self delusion – fine to have enthusiasm – when you reach level with no doubt is different than just believing strongly in something – also intellectual pride or eventually moving to dark side – immense, vigorous honesty is all that will save your butt with I Ching.”

I think this makes a lot of sense when you realize that the psychic energy always has the danger of becoming too self absorbed or too focused on your personal power. That’s why contrasting it with the sixth body, the casual or karmic body makes sense.

I don’t think of karma in a moralistic context. If the fifth body is this self indulgent quality of I’m doing something – then karma is its opposite: what’s being done to me. When I practice the Water Palm change, one part of me is doing something, but everything else is in contrast to that. The sixth focuses on the other, what everything else is doing in contrast to my self centered point of view.

So, the psychic is what I do and the karmic is what is being done to me. This is yet another yang/yin pair. It gets a little odd when you realize you can identify with either side. And this ultimately challenges any preconceived notions of what you think you are. You can’t help but ask who am I? Welcome to the 7th palm.