Fish Eyes and Bagua

[Anonymous]

Liu’s Bagua system is coming together. I think I finally got the gist of the whole system, the progression from neigung to emptiness to trigrams, from the 8 to the 16 to the 64.

In previous posts I’ve proposed that the lines or the trigrams correspond to the lower, middle, and upper tan tiens. Here I want to propose that there is a very specific order to train the tan tiens that corresponds to Liu’s numbering of the palm changes.

The order is 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8 or Heaven, ☰, Earth, ☷, Wind, ☴, Thunder, ☳, Fire, ☲, Water, ☵, Mountain, ☶, Lake, ☱. When I practice I can create and sustain Heaven, the expansive, yang force. It doesn’t matter whether I’m standing still or walking around waving my hands. I can also create and sustain the energy of Earth, the condensing, yin force. When I perform the Wind Palm Change, I make the yang expansive energy go to its extreme and start to change it to yin. Lately I’ve been working directly with all of the tan tiens to express this. I’ve noticed that the change tends to start in the physical and then spread more fully throughout the etheric body.

This sparked an idea: what if the tan tien is the eye of the fish, the dot in the center of the yin/yang symbol? The change from Heaven, ☰, to Earth, ☷, worked with all of the tan tiens generally as a set. The Wind Palm Change works specifically with the lower tan tien and just the lower line. So, Heaven, ☰, changes to Wind, ☴, and the lower line or the lower tan tien changes to yin while the middle and upper tan tiens continue to sustain the yang expansiveness.

When I perform the Thunder Palm Change, I’m changing the bottom line or lower tan tien from an extreme yin to yang. Earth, ☷, changes to Thunder, ☳. The lower tan tien changes while the middle and upper tan tiens sustain the energy of condensing yin.

So what’s next? Fire, ☲. And, how do you get there?

I’ve posted about this before. I think you change from Heaven, ☰, to Fire, ☲, and I think you are isolating the middle tan tien. So the middle line changes and this means the center or eye of the middle tan tien is the key to the change. That’s where the flip will start. When I try to sustain the energy of Fire, ☲, I found that I can do it by either going in until I start going out or going out until I start going in. For me, it was more about the inside and outside of the body, but now, it is that plus it is focusing on the middle tan tien as well. By the time I could do this well, the energy of Water, ☵, started to be possible. This is where the yin and yang change is starting to go in both directions simultaneously.

I’ll be working on being very precise and clear about changing from Heaven, ☰, to Fire, ☲, in the Fire Palm Change. And going from Earth, ☷, to Water, ☵, in the Water Palm Change. I want to get the first four palm changes together before this step.

I think it is important to do this for two reasons: 1) safety 2) clarity. You want to be very clear and gain control over each tan tien in isolation and in combination. The safety piece is based on my intuition (which usually serves me well).

In fact, my gut tells me that it is important to do the next steps 7 and 8 in a very particular way that is based on a particular progression and may not be obvious. That is, you might think the Mountain, ☶, and Lake, ☱, palm changes would isolate the upper tan tien. My gut says no. Rather, it is important to continue the pattern. Go from Heaven, ☰, to Mountain, ☶, in the seventh or Mountain Palm Change. Go from Earth, ☷, to Lake, ☱, in the eighth or Lake Palm Change.

Why? Safety.

You are preparing for the upper tan tien, but you should get the energy of the physical and etheric bodies (centered in the lower tan tien) working first. Then get the emotional and mental bodies open (middle tan tien) working well. Then work with the lower and middle tan tiens together. All of this should be completed and mastered before going directly for the upper tan tien. You don’t want to damage the delicate structures in the brain! My gut tells me the sequence will prepare you for the final stages.

Notice that this pattern makes the sets of 1,3,5,7 and 2,4,6,8 make more sense. In palm changes 1,3,5,7 – you are going from Heaven to the next trigram. In the palm changes 2,4,6,8 – you are going from Earth to the next trigram. Whether I’m correct about the safety piece or not, I’ve laid out a nice systematic progression for training that just makes sense and corresponds to the way you’ll eventually approach opening the corresponding energy bodies. If you recall, I believe that the lower tan tien controls the physical and etheric bodies. The middle tan tien controls/ connects to all aspects of the emotional and mental bodies. The upper tan tien controls/ connects to all aspects of the psychic and causal bodies. The seventh starts working with emptiness and the eighth is a complete understanding of that emptiness or the Tao.

The I Ching or 64 changes may be a more granular approach where each of the six lines corresponds to each of the first six energy bodies and you are developing the ability to control the frequencies of each independently and in combination with any other.

Phew! Hopefully you are starting to get a sense of how Liu’s Bagua system is organized and an appreciation for how intricate it is as well as how complete it is as well as how it is intended to be methodically and systematically mastered.

Heaven, ☰,Earth, ☷,Wind, ☴,Thunder, ☳,Fire, ☲,Water, ☵,Mountain, ☶,Lake, ☱,

[Anonymous]

Thanks James.

“Phew!” is right.

First, I admit I really don’t know bagua.

I spent a couple years just learning the 4-part mud-step.
I look back at the “Bagua Mastery Program” materials.
(I read all of it. However, nothing about the Water Single Palm Change ever sunk in.)

I just recently noticed Bruce’s videos on the Energy Postures.

I have skimmed the “I Ching” (the translation by Alfred Huang.) My understanding is small.
Confucius reportedly wished that he had another 70 years to study the I-Ching.

Although I’m enthralled by your studies of Liu’s Bagua system, I see little correlation between your descriptions and the “I Ching.”

First of all the “I-Ching” analyses the transformation of Hexagrams–2 trigrams, which go through 6 changes when each yin line changes to a yang line–from bottom to top.

Kun is:
Earth, ☷
Earth, ☷

First, the Initial Six:
Kun, Responding, (2) alternates to Fu,Turning Back, (24)
when the bottom yin line at the bottom trigram changes to a yang line:
Earth, ☷
Thunder, ☳ (your Thunder Palm change)

From this small clue one should be aware of what is coming;
then one can take preventive measures against possible trouble. see the I-Ching.

Maybe this corresponds to the gut feeling (lower tantien feeling) that the right time is at hand
while the middle and upper tan tiens sustain the energy of condensing yin.

This might be the “eye of the fish” with which King Wu could see that he should prepare to rescue his people from the tyrant of the Shang dynasty.

The yang energy starts a new cycle.

I’ve got no idea how this manifests when you perform the Thunder Palm Change.

In Tai Chi this might manifest when Roll-Back (Earth) is followed by Split (Thunder)–the yang energy in the forward hand, the yin energy still rooted in the back hand.

My question to you James:
In the progression 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8
1 being Heaven,
in which direction do you see Heaven?

There are 2 choices:
1. NW or
2. S

1. NW is the after heaven arrangement of King Wen
(I think this direction is more external)
2. S would be the before (earlier) heaven arrangement of Fu Hsi
(I think this is more internal.)

Of course, “the eye of the fish,” the dots in the centers of the taiji symbol (not a yin/yang symbol because technically yin and yang have not yet separated)
is the INTERNAL EYE with which see the the pending change.
In bagua the center of the circle represents these “eyes of the fish.”
Ha, the fish is not a halibut which has both eyes on the top of its head.

If Qian (Heaven) is taken in the NW direction, its opposite would be to the SE (Xun–Wind)

If Qian (Heaven) is taken in the S direction, its opposite would be to the N (Kan-Water)–

I thought that we wanted to feel the stillness/emptiness in the tai chi space between the opposites, in the center of the bagua?

I don’t see any correspondence with Thunder in the opposites.

I do, however, see how changing that bottom yang line to a yin line creates Thunder.

Is this just an academic exercise?

Or is it the physical start of a rescue?

Bob
typically confused
Phew!

Heaven, ☰,Earth, ☷,Wind, ☴,Thunder, ☳,Fire, ☲,Water, ☵,Mountain, ☶,Lake, ☱

Heaven, ☰,Earth, ☷,Wind, ☴,Thunder, ☳,Fire, ☲,Water, ☵,Mountain, ☶,Lake, ☱

[Anonymous]

The diagram I always refer to in my posts is the one on the cover of every binder and at the beginning of every module of the Bagua Mastery Program.

[Anonymous]

I also primarily refer to the standard Eight Diagram
(eight trigrams)
which is copied on the cover of Bruce’s Mastery Program materials.
This evolved from the Tao Te Ching:
The way begot one,
the one became two,
then the two begot three,
from three came everything else.

Historically, the primary Eight Diagrams is the Before Heaven arrangement of Fu Hsi (3,000 B.C.)

King Wen later re-arranged them into an arrangement, the After Heaven arrangement, to compliment the Before Heaven arrangement. (1172 B.C.)

The Book of Changes, the I-Ching, has through thousands of years, evolved to an even more complex level.
Thus, there are now two major divisions of the I-Ching:
1. The Upper Canon (the Before Heaven arrangement, Eight Trigrams) and
2. The Lower Cannon (the After Heaven arrangement)

As Stuart Alve Olson demonstrates, the more complex 64 arrangement can give deeper meaning to tai chi postures and forms.
When these are superimposed along each other there are 64 trigrams.
0 to 1, 1 to 2, 2 to 8, 8 to 16, 16 to 64.

I think that they can also give additional meaning to bagua forms.

Apparently I must admit to making some of your comments more complicated then you intended.

I’m digging into HOW you create Earth energy.

It seems to me that the process is neither simple nor easy.

[Anonymous]

My original post wasn’t about the I Ching. There is only one sentence of the entire post that refers to the I Ching and it was pure speculation. In fact, the post wasn’t about what the energies of the trigrams are or how they are manifested. It was about a very specific order to train the tan tiens.

[Author]

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