What is the I Ching? Half a century ago, Carl Jung introduced this amazing Chinese oracle to the West. It is a book that invites you to ask any question whatsoever and then applies the specific ancient wisdom that is a targeted answer to your question. You can ask anything you sincerely care about and test the answers to your heart’s content.
Many people ask for guidance about health concerns or relationship decisions, business choices, purchases, and more. It is especially valuable as a guide to growth and self awareness. If you want to learn more about what matters to your soul or how you can best approach a personal problem, the I Ching is a powerful and trustworthy guide. You can explore any aspect of life that you find difficult or wish to understand more deeply.
This unique book enables you to receive a wise and direct answer to any question, in writing. Dr. Jung believed the I Ching gave voice to the deep wisdom of the unconscious by expressing the archetypal situation relevant to our question. Some say the I Ching is a brilliant psychological tool for self-development; other see a spiritual method that gives our soul a voice so it can speak to us directly. Use whatever language makes sense to you.
The good news is that the answers we get from the I Ching are those we would eventually arrive at if we could spend enough time in reflection or meditation. We often return from a vacation with new insights about our lives and a refreshed perspective on what matters. Now you can access that same inner clarity and sense of perspective without spending weeks in retreat; this is ideal in our fast-paced society. Since the I Ching magnifies our own inner truth, each reading is a little like a computer printout from the soul.
The I Ching method originated in ancient China and has survived for nearly 3,000 years in active use by millions of people. The key to this form of guidance is that it mirrors our own inner wisdom. The thing that impressed Jung is how profoundly well it works. Millions of other users are also convinced.
In addition to helping us grow and solve problems, this book helps with real world decisions. In fact, this ancient book is more current than this morning’s weather report as it helps us anticipate the relevant forces that will influence our lives. Jung put it this way: “I am concerned only with the astonishing fact that the hidden qualities of the moment become legible in the hexagram.” This is a book that can actually help us to get what we want in life–while it challenges us to give our very best.
My decades of personal experience and professional use of the Book of Changes have convinced me that it absolutely does work. The best news is that you needn’t take my word for it. You can test this method in your own life and draw your own conclusions. If you find a fraction of the value I do as I use it each day, you will hang onto this book for a lifetime.
A powerful tool for personal growth and self discovery, the I Ching is used by many modern therapists, like psychiatrist Jean Shinoda Bolen who wrote the excellent books on gods and goddesses in men and women. I taught and employed the I Ching in my own psychotherapy practice for decades. My training and experience provided one kind of knowledge and the I Ching added to that a spiritual depth individualized for each person.
Jung wrote in the introduction to the Wilhelm translation of the I Ching: “This book embodies, as perhaps no other, the living spirit of Chinese civilization for the best minds of China have collaborated on it and contributed to it for thousands of years. Despite its fabulous age it has never grown old, but still lives and works, at least for those who seek to understand its meaning.”