Great Change
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__ __ Blood runs black and yellow.
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_____They have grown too arrogant
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In the symbolism of the I-ching, the Book of Changes, the present state of the cultural world can be perceived as being predominantly represented by these two hexagrams and their ordering. The six solid lines at the bottom place yang, or the pure masculine element, at the forefront of the impetus, and the six broken lines of yin, the pure feminine element, behind yang.
The present condition is the perilous overshoot of the planet's sustainable ability to support human life, both in numbers of population and manners of living. The enormity of the consequence is like an approaching storm yet beyond the horizon, only the faintest beginnings of which can be discerned, the true magnitude unperceived. The expression of the hexagrams now as pure yang or yin represents this extreme juncture of humankind, such at that which prevails prior to Great Change.
Only the shortness of our cultural memory conceives this ordering as an immutable condition of humankind, for whatever yin or yang lines may currently compose the hexagrams, whether of the proposed pure expression or whether normally more mixed, transformation into their completely opposite expression is frequently the nature of change. Thus, it is possible and logical that an eventual state of a more mixed expression should first require transition through the opposite of the existing, which in this case would mean pure yin moving to the forefront with yang confirming the relation from behind. Regardless the duration or breadth of expression, this reversal should be the essential fulcrum point of Great Change.
Man in the forefront now rages across the world in the madness of war, overpopulation, and environmental destruction. While preconception might assume that he seeks this position, it is woman who also pushes him to be there, in front of herself. For the character and arrangement of the double hexagrams is the concordance of the evolved stance of each element. Whether the moment is more one of harmony or of antagonism, it is the play between the two that brings the Way into being.
Genuine human community stands as believed to have existed in the past, and to be possible in the future. With the near universal reliance upon the master of money and the negation of community wrought from this principle of separation, woman has had to largely recede from any prior importance other than her childbearing role. For lack of alternative, she commonly seeks to monogamously bind the man unto her, powerfully through the physiological bondage evoked with procreative sexuality, and culturally through the sanctification of childrearing within the nuclear family, that shelter from alienation and loneliness so resulting in population increase. While not the universal rule, in the western world the woman's cultural momentum is one of presentation before the mating process with the promise of contingently gratifying a sexual lust that she attempts to provoke, a provocation that an encouraging society labels as displaying sexual attractiveness, for society has understandably evolved with procreation its principal endeavor, regardless of any now greater ecological wisdom. Even if the individual woman wishes to avoid the provocative role, society as a whole overwhelms her abstention. Clothed in holiness and narrowed the experiential dimension of love, the base chakra of sexual drive predominates. We are encouraged to believe that thus it has always been and will always so be, that the pursuit of this base drive is the central meaning of life, and that giving birth is more important than the reality of the living.
The woman focuses her world upon her offspring, and bids the man to share her focus. He struggles against all for the benefit of his few, ever seeking more wealth and its complement, power. She does not see the greater world as the province of her mothering, nor would that be the reflection of reality. If her children were more perceptibly dependant upon a greater community than that constituted by blood relations, if a person were known by what community they came from rather than which family, the focus would be upon that community, and from that immediate community it could more readily extend unto the greater world, which is the focus that will be ultimately required for ecological sanity. A wall of infinite dimension stands before the present course of human evolution; it is the wise finitude of the Earth and its resources.
If a man perceives that the aspiration of his heart is better furthered by urging woman to the forefront, then how can he do otherwise? Being in front does not mean greater or wiser than being behind, and the influence of the one behind should never be underestimated. Greatness resides in recognizing the Way and embracing it wisely without allowing obstruction from an erroneous preconception of one's role. It is the propitious nature of change that the leading steps might now require the smaller feet, rather than the larger that have long been in the forefront.
If a woman does raise the serpent power, the kundalini of tantric yoga, with a man whom she does not wish to forsake, and she then invites another desiring woman to raise the consciousness with that man also desiring, she gains a sister with the sharing. If, with the woman the sister then shares another man with whom she does practice the yoga, the two men are with joy engulfed in the community created by the loving design of women. First established in heart and soul through this meditative sexuality, such community could transform the physical and economic structures of society by superseding the normal importance of individual and relative economic wellbeing and the necessity for masculine power struggles inasmuch as they are derived from yin being behind.
In procreative sexuality, the man is bid to be masterful, that he might by bringing forth woman's orgasm forge a stronger physiological bondage of each to each. This currently leads to the nuclear family with its much higher financial demands for attainment of security, its necessity to provide the emotional world through the procreated, its focus narrowed toward biological offspring and away from the greater human community; it is an integral component of yang being in the forefront with yin behind in concordance.
In meditative sexuality, the man is the emanation of his light, a stillness that she covers with her art in raising their awareness unto the higher chakras. A possibility of the Way, this depends upon man supporting from behind woman in the forefront, in her structuring of community, in her practice of non-binding sexuality, in her bearing of children without attachment to a perhaps older sire who is chosen for his proven retention of health and mental acuity, and without the sire's attachment to the offspring, a cultural aggregation that now takes place largely due to the vacuum of alternative, to the absence of community. Such liberty belonging to women to determine their offspring should enable over the generations a marked physical improvement in the species as well as a potentially swift reduction of global population toward the optimum, which portends to be more than ecological wisdom, an absolute necessity for survival of the integral planetary ecosystem. This would require distancing from the perception that Flesh begetting Flesh is the essence of creation, which is quite prevalent among those who imagine that gene propagation is the entirety of evolution, rather than any unfolding of involved Spirit. The absoluteness of the new practice over the other, or the expertise with which it be practiced, is not as important as there being a new cultural directive.
With the accumulated momenta of millennia, society has locked the primary definition of love into the procreative sexual relation, with the urges repressed and provoked until the dam breaks in spontaneous consummation so often resulting in unwanted pregnancy, with the goal thereafter an enduring lust to conjugally be ever gratified. As evolution is often the relegating of what was a major development unto a minor role so that the new might be above constructed, the playfulness of lust could in a society more able to encompass the complete gamut of sexuality, become the instructed enjoyment of youth, while the more serious raising of consciousness and design of community become the province of maturity. There is a difference between a pairing that endures because of remarkable affinity, and the pairings that are essentially the survival option in a society oriented around the alienation that the nuclear family alone bulwarks against. Massive and overwhelming is the cultural influence that inculcates our longing for the procreative sexual partner, the romantic goal of each only unto one other. We venture into the little known when we would direct love outward toward the entirety of the existing, when we would sing the song of the highest chakras.
Yin in the forefront means that yin would take the initiative in the meditative sexual relation as well as be the active agent, and yang would be the passive agent, the attractor —instead of a relationship based upon incitement of lust that is identified as love when consummated, spiritual qualities such as soulfulness, the ability to speak to the heart of the other, a demonstrable perception of the beautiful, a desire for the attainment of community —these would be the qualities by which the man encourages the woman to take interest. The cultural directive of raising consciousness, of dwelling within the higher chakras, no matter how incipient it may be, portends vast social transformation. One need not foresee every curve and swell in the path ahead, to know it is the rightfully chosen to commence journey upon.
Yin in the forefront does not imply a reversal of roles. Rather, it means that she will be responsible for creating the essential change of Way, the primacy of planetary well being before that of birthing her own offspring. Yang is a father when he cares and acts for the future. Now, society commits unto his scope of endeavor those whom he sires, but the match is not necessarily the most fulfilling possible for either sire or sired —it is but the level to which we have culturally struggled to evolve. Yang, in the bosom of community, would be able to move away from the competitiveness of each for his own enjoined by the present system of conjugal reproduction and the usage of money that both reflects and mandates this nuclearity. He might rejoice in camaraderie, in the opportunity to evolve spiritually and to create beauty throughout a world no longer demarcating into yet more private properties.
While the above is replete with speculation unfounded upon experience, the prerequisite of any contemplated Great Change is that it be equal in potential magnitude to the existing evolutionary impasse, the problematique. Difficult to conceive how arduous and far the journey is likely to be down from these present heights to below the roof of sustainability, if the cleverness of tool making within a market economy should not forever be the Way, as logically it should not with this transition to a long era of declining per capita net energy. Nor may it be thought that any new cultural momentum will be able to prevent the world from needing to experience the widespread loss of present dreams, for the existing is of too great an impetus. At best, we can reflect upon the potential velocity for cultural evolution, a potential that has never been as great as it is now, nor with such pressure to so evolve; at best, there may become an established light that can shine forth should darkness descend.
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--Morningthunder