Winter to Spring, Yin to Yang

Life Cycles And The I Ching

Everything in the universe has a lifecycle. Even a thought has a lifecycle. And, understanding the Yi Jing (I Ching) helps us see the lifecycle in everything.

Perhaps we can best understand lifecycle by looking at something we experience from the moment our lives begin—seasons.

Seasons experience lifecycles, too. In them, we see both the cycle of constant change and the effects of the cycle on life.

When we look at the transition from winter to spring—the cycle from death to life—we see what may be the most spectacular of all cycles.

I love to watch the transitional change of the seasons from winter to spring. Once I became aware of these universal transitions, I began to observe all the seasonal cycles.

The cycle from winter to spring is by far my favorite!

Life begins with Yin—winter, or death—nonexistence.

Consider words like waking up, recovering, rebirth, enlightenment, and relaxation. They express the basic idea of moving through an ailing stage, a period of weakness, constraint, debility, or hibernation, into a state of exuberance, energy, activity, and—life.

We are all privy to the cycles in nature—but many may not consider them as the blueprint for understanding the cycles of life, arising from death or nonexistence.

Life sprouts from emptiness or nothingness, again, nonexistence.

“Everything comes from nothing”—a verbal expression of the universal concept lending insight to the idea of yin-yang, which arises from Taiji.

Yin-yang is two opposite energetic expressions contained in one simple ”whole.“

The Two encourage each other to create, support, and nurture the cycle of life. Just as we cannot exist in a world of single energies, they cannot exist one without the other.

Yin-yang is the cycle of life.

The Western mindset divides and separates. Potentially leading to an incomplete view of a world apparently built on divisions and separations—rather than connections and relations.

The Chinese mindset—based on yin-yang connections—cycles and harmonizes relations on the basis of contrary expressions, as described in the Yi Jing.

The Yi Jing reads from the bottom up

Fig 1. The Taiji, “The Whole,” gives way to yin yang

When reading the two-line bi-grams of the Yi Jing expressing the ideas of seasons and divisions of time, we see a natural process at work. We observe patterns that affect life and living things—even thoughts, emotions, sensations, and the myopic lives we experience inside our minds.

As we gain insight into how yin-yang balances the physical and elemental universe, we also see how it influences our lives. From the Taiji, a single line representing the “whole,” giving way to “the two.” (see Fig 1)

We read the lines from the bottom up. By doing so, we understand the natural progression of life as moving upward.

Fig 2. Spring. One yin below one yang.

Above, we see yin energy, a broken line, representing the remainder of the cold, dark winter. It is beneath yang energy, an unbroken line, representing the upward transition to the warm, bright energy of spring. (see Fig 2)

And below, two unbroken lines express the heat and brightness of summer. (see Fig 3)

Fig 3. Summer. Two yang lines.

In the same way, two broken yin lines express the cold, darkness, and lifelessness of winter below. (see Fig 4)

Fig 4. Winter. Two yin lines.

And below, one unbroken line beneath a broken line express the warmth and brightness transitioning from warmth to cold of fall. (see Fig 5)

Fig 5. Fall. One yang below one yin.

(Note fall is the flipped oppposite of sping, which is cold transitioning to warm.)

Universal Continuum Versus Human Division

The movement of time; years, months, days, hours, minutes, and seconds, adds up to eternity. Each is connected to eternity and is eternity. We perceive them as separate units. Though they connect directly to the stream of eternity.

Our narrow views do not and cannot change reality—though they may change our perceptions. Such a reaction to change is simply the expression of discomfort—whereby we cling to what we desire to be truth.

When we observe changes in nature, contemplate life, and death, ignorance and enlightenment, we learn to understand universal truths outside our worldviews and understandings of life.

But the more we force the narrowness, the less open and accepting we become of other viewpoints and worldviews.

This does not change reality.

Seasonal changes exhibit struggles experienced by all of life.

We may observe the struggle between winter and spring as: cold clings to a dream of being the eternal truth, yet spring moves in, and through warmth and the spark of new life, we see the weather change. Incrementally, it gets warmer. And the light of day gradually longer.

The bright, warm, and active yang energy replaces the darkness, the cold, stiff yin energy.

And the seasonal cycle continues, just as the cycles of our thoughts and lives.

What we learn from the cycles of seasons.

We Learn to apply the best energy to our lives and our thoughts, following the patterns laid out in nature.

The more we give way to yang energy—warm, bright, active thoughts and practices—the more warmth, light, and “spring” we experience in our lives and relationships.

The Yi Jing is a tool for insight.

The Yi Jing is an oracle that spawns wisdom and sparks enlightenment—far beyond the narrow, two-dimensional perspectives social conditioning has us cemented to.

This insight—available to us everywhere we are willing to see it—guides us to observe nature and the cycles of life from both a yin perspective of dark and contracting, to and that of yang, a perspective of warmth and expanding.

By contemplating the concepts of the Yi Jing, we gain insight into change, cycles, and progressions in our lives, relations, and careers.

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If you found this interesting, consider reading my book: “The Heart Of China: How Mindfulness Changed My Life.”

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