HEXAGRAM 59 SOLUTION OR SCATTERING
OR DISPERSION

After Meeting Gia-Fu Feng, waiting to go to Stillpoint

Stillpoint Foundation and Gia-Fu Feng’s Taoist lifestyle became my personal ideal.My lifestyle changed immediately, perhaps most obviously in adopting their custom of eating a spoonful of brewer’s yeast each morning. I returned to Chicago May 29th, having already decided that summer to leave my new home in the II-U Church community and my family of origin in Chicago and go to live at Stillpoint for at least the rest of 1973 or forever, whichever came first.

I gagged on the brewer’s yeast until the 1st of June. I maintained pretty well The Buddhist fast of not eating after 4 pm each day. My diet changed to eat asfew carbs as I could. I tried seriously to diet and lose weight though I seem to mostly have lost and then regained the same few pounds over and over.

When I left for the weekend, I was in rehearsal for a community theater production of The Tempest. I played Gonzalo, counselor to the King of Naples. After my weekend, I put a t’ai chi emblem on the T-shirt of my costume as a Taoist counselor to the king.

Along with this play production, I had a small job in a local non-profit environmental group, a girlfriend who was more friend than lover, and a bit of a career as a professional astrologer. My decision to leave town in August apparently had a good effect on my relationship. We enjoyed each other’s company; it was just the thought of staying together that was scary.

Our relationship improved and her life and job weren’t going well. She found a book that mentioned Gia-Fu and said nice things about him, so she too was considering coming out with me to Stillpoint.

I was also an integral part of the local II-U or Second Unitarian Church community which I was sad to leave. The Church went on vacation over the summer, so it wasn’t an issue until the fall. As I thought more and ore about my life in Chicago and moving off to Stillpoint in CO, my resolve and mood would wax and wane.

I started planning to leave my roots in Chicago and re-start my life at Stillpoint Foundation that summer. I expected to remain there some months, probably at least to the end of the year. In these weeks, I found my most difficult challenge was getting in touch with my center and staying focused there.

My love affair blossomed, I was enjoying being a Shakespearean actor, and my Buddhist fast disappeared in the fellowship of the nightly cast parties till 4 AM. Some days I spent the afternoon and evening with my girlfriend until she fell asleep at my apartment. Then I would go out to the cast party till the wee hours and come home to sleep a few hours before she had to get up and go to work.

In the months of June and July, that relationship went through its complete cycle. We became close and comfortable with each other every day. As it worked out, that set loose inner demons in each of us. She went back to Kansas to visit her family and came back too caught up in her internal issues to continue the relationship. We remained friends, breaking up every time we got close together and vice versa.

Some mornings I was awakened early by friends from the Church community calling for astrological counsel and personal support. A group from that community came to one of the shows of the Tempest. They were a great and supportive audience, even applauding one of my longer speeches that night. Their enthusiasm encourage a great performance by me and the rest of our cast. The Church group even had a party with a combo band afterwards, till 4 AM.

My job involved meeting various folks in the non-profit environmental sector. It also got me on TV during this period. The Church hosted a local Transactional Analysis education and therapy program which both my girlfriend and I were involved with (that was how we met).

I was working on my creative writing, reading astrology books by Marc E. Jones, actively involved in my non-profit environment awareness job. My mother had an annual garden party of 40 or more. This year she had hired me to cast horoscopes for each of her guests. I was becoming quite accomplished—and settled into my life in Chicago.

I met a work colleague of a friend in the cast of the play. He was a fascinating person, an American who had been in China with his missionary parents. Now he was like a Taoist baseball sage. He showed me a notebook he had put together of several of the Poems of the Tao Te Ching with his calligraphies and translated from a dictionary. Because of my interest, he made several copies and gave me one.

Having this very large, clear calligraphy of the first few poems of the Tao Te Ching and the dictionary translation of the text inspired me. I began learning the Chinese and practicing drawing the characters. At my mother’s party a long time family friend who was chairman of the anthropology dept. at Northwestern and a native Chinese made it clear he could not read any of my Chinese characters.

There turned out to be 26 horoscopes for me to interpret, so I developed a one page typed format and wrote them all out before hand. That way I could just pass them out and still enjoy socializing at the party. The party was the last weekend in July. It was quite a highpoint of my professional astrologer career.

I moved out of my apartment in Chicago. I took leave of my friends and family. I went to the airport and flew off to Colorado Springs for my new life at Stillpoint Foundation. Ready willing and internally able to stay there at least 100 days, perhaps forever.

HEXAGRAM 40 SOLUTION or RELEASE (RE-LEASE)or DELIVERANCE

Wu Wei and The traditional Stillpoint experience—1973

HEXAGRAM 53 DIAMOND CUTTING or GRADUALLY APPROACH
or DEVELOPMENT (GRADUAL PROGRESS)

I arrived 1 August, and was warmly greeted when I showed up at Stillpoint. The four people who had been at the workshop remembered me and welcomed me. I told Gia-Fu I had been studying Chinese. He was pleased and handed me a copy of Wieger’s Chinese Characters to study.

That first day I hiked Barr trail a bit, we all played volleyball. The group also went to see Last Tango in Paris that night. The next morning I was up at 5 AM. We meditated and chanted as the sun rose before us. Morning meeting-- people related their dreams of the night before.

Breakfast, then I walked up to the Trail to the first stream, over a mile away. I spent my first day meeting the other folks at Stillpoint, chatting about astrology, and doing horoscope interpretations for some of them. That evening we all took a sauna together.

I found out that Gia-Fu was leaving August 15th and everyone there was en route somewhere else. One fellow was driving to Chicago in late August and it seemed clear I would be riding with the group going with him. My plans to stay there came together and changed all in that first day.

The next day again we meditated and sounded to the rising sun, walked up the Trail a mile or so, studied Chinese Characters. Again afternoon game of volleyball in the Taoist style—to be totally competitive and cut throat during the game, but not care at all afterwards. I spent the evening washing dishes, cleaning the kitchen, taking out the garbage-- and thoroughly enjoying doing those chores. That second night we went out to see the movie Jesus Christ Superstar. And later, back into the sauna again.

I began to feel my return to Chicago was imminent. A strange turning point after psyching myself to uproot my connections back home to come live here in this communal group. Within a few days, I was settled into the Stillpoint routine, thinking my return to Chicago would only be temporary and I would be back.

I found my mind more empty at sunrise meditation. My reading expanded to include Marc Jones’ Sabian Symbols which I greatly appreciated. I decided to write to him and perhaps go out to visit him. My morning walks got longer and more extensive, exploring various trails, getting lost beyond the Incline, yet finding my way back and realizing it was all still on the Barr Trail.

We all went camping the on the 6th and by the 19th of I was back to my Chicago roots having returned by van, car, bus and subway. I had left expecting to be gone for months while I re-organized my life. I returned in a few weeks with my life all different but having done very little at Stillpoint.

The next week we all went on a 3-day camping trip over Cottonwood Pass near the Continental Divide. Our encampment was along a series of beaver ponds, canals and dams. Impressive engineering and beautiful scenery, but things did not go well. Discord developed, cold rain started falling and folks got pissed and upset, I got sick.

Next morning we went on a five mile hike. I had a hard time keeping up, but we joined up at the end and returned to camp. The next morning was cold, hard frost on the ground. We decided to go home early. Gia-Fu and I went walking alone for several hours. Along the way, I asked him for his perception of me and what I should do. He gave me his opinion and suggested I do 100 day program at Stillpoint—do sculpture, build a tea house, meditate.

We returned to Stillpoint, and everyone began planning their trips away. My ride East was set to leave the next week, and I would be returning to my mother’s house while she was away to spend my time alone. Visitors kept showing up at the front door to visit, though none seemed at all into the spiritual. The regulars who had been there a long time were all preparing to go somewhere else.

I cast the horoscope for Stillpoint. It had a number of connections to my own chart, especially my sun conjunct Stillpoint Venus, so my individual quest connected with the personal satisfaction of the place. Several people were discussing my horoscope interpretation of Stillpoint, especially the Sabian Symbols with their extremely evocative imagery.

With my studies, and my horoscope interpretations, and everyone else moving on, I became a more central part of the group, moving from the bunk house into Gia-Fu’s study. The general atmosphere was one that things were coming apart. Everyone preparing to split while new and strange visitors were showing up for various reasons and length of stay.

I came to realize I needed to find my personal Tao, but I got no further insight than realizing it was necessary but not at all clear to me. The general routine started to disintegrate. My diet dissolved into my usual post-diet malaise. We made a big feast to celebrate everyone leaving 15 August. By 19 August, I was back to my Mother’s house and my own private retreat alone. In the process my life began to re-organize and come together in new ways

Looking back upon my Stillpoint experience, those weeks in August of 1973. I learned the meaning of the Taoist aphorism: Do Nothing, Leave Nothing Undone. The ultimate questions about my life and relationships were resolved. Not by any great insight, rather by pulling up stakes and then coming back, and discovering neither made any great difference in my life.

It was time to begin the rest of my life. In the upcoming months I applied to Law School, was accepted and decided to go to Boston College (my mother had found me a place in Chicago at Northwestern Law School, but I couldn't inflict my eccentricities upon the locals--Boston could take anything).

HEXAGRAM 64 EVE or NOT YET COMPLETED or NOT YET OVER

Continue the Narrative to Gia-Fu--FRK Taoist translation of I Ching

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