Disclosure: this is a promotional posting where I plug my video class, so feel free to skip on to another post.
A lot of times people raise an eyebrow when they talk to me about the 10 Gods Redux Video Class that I sell here on the site.
[shopify embed_type=”product” shop=”purebazi.myshopify.com” product_handle=”10-gods-redux-video-class” show=”all”]
As far as many students are concerned: is this 10 Gods Redux video seriously actually going to do anything for them?
Since I’ve launched the video, I’ve been periodically following up with the students who have been viewing the over 30 hours of content. I like to know how people are responding to the content, what their challenges are when studying the material, and if they feel somehow that they are not getting as much out of it as they thought.
Sometimes they come back to me with questions (or a whole list of them which is both gratifying and a little stressful), sometimes they ask me about certain sections of the video wherein they don’t understand why it was included (and assume it must have been included for a reason), sometimes they don’t understand how a particular chart works because there may have been a small leap of logic that wasn’t explained clearly. So I thought a good way of exploring the contents of the video class (as opposed to you know, the boring old plug on buy it buy it) was to look at some of the feedback I received on the class and to address it universally, but also give people some idea of what this video is really about.
“And there is a lot of chatter about things I can’t relate to from the attendees.”
One of the things I left into the video, which also added to a lot of the work involved in producing it, was the back and forth between the students and myself as well as between the student in the classs. All this conversation was also subtitled, to ensure no problems with understanding what was being said.
As per the feedback above, it as not always immediately obvious why I had left in such material. After all, aren’t the important segments of the video the bits where I talk and give information right? Who cares what the other people in the class have to say? And if one wants to be rude about it, who cares what people who probably know less than I do have to say?
The motivation and basis for leaving in the conversational chatter is twofold: firstly, it may take some back and forth before a student arrives at a realisation or understanding about something that in the past, was simply not on their radar. They only do this when they ask the apparently not obvious question at the start or seemingly unrelated question at the start, before arriving at their actual conclusion. Not all students are able to ask a question that is exact about the nature of what they don’t know. Indeed, one of my frequent challenges as a facilitator is to help students figure out WHAT they don’t understand and WHY they don’t understand it.
Secondly, often times the most interesting nuggets of information arise as a result of a seemingly innocuous question. Everyone learns differently and by combining the formal teaching elements (the Direct Resource) and the informal teaching elements (the Indirect Resource), the goal is to try to get the ideas or information across to students in as many ways as possible. By including both structured and unstructured aspects of information, you get the best of both worlds because BaZi is both about the instinctive (what leaps out at you in the chart) and the deductive (applying the context of the client’s circumstances to their chart, eliminating the possibilities, projecting the outcomes, forecasting the possibilities).
“Most of the students are Chinese and have jobs with bosses. In the US, most clients that come to us are entrepreneurs without bosses”
I included this comment because it is very typical of the questions that tend to arise in normal BaZi classes, and is typical of the 10 Gods Redux video class as well. There are 30 hours of content in this video and it is very easy to tune out segments because you don’t quite know how they relate to your clientele or who you are working with or just the type of people in your orbit in which you typically deploy BaZi with.
Here’s the thing: there are only 10 Gods in BaZi. So these 10 Gods represent everything. Which means even if you think for some reason that a particular 10 God does not relate to a specific matter with your client, it will still relate to your client in some way.
There is a fundamental reason why we emphasise the need for a chart to be complete, in terms of having all 5 elements because each of the Output, Resource, Companion, Wealth and Officer Elements is important to the Day Master in some form or manner.
But more significantly to the question above, it is also very common for students to assume that entrepreneurs are somehow special or different from normal people. This is often borne out of the view that entrepreneurs do not have a boss.
What is a boss? A boss is someone you answer to or are accountable to. It is the Direct Officer Star or 7 Killings Star (or both, depending on circumstances). Every single person has someone they are accountable to in life. Yes, even if you are homeless, unemployed or in jail, you are accountable to someone. The most obvious example is the government. Every person is accountable to the government whether they like it or not. So just because someone doesn’t have a person they take orders from that has the title ‘BOSS’, that does not mean they do not have someone that they have to take orders from.
Entrepreneurs take orders from two people: clients/customers (and remember, every business must have customers otherwise, how is it a business?) or shareholders/board of directors. These are the people who are the bosses to entrepreneurs. As such, information that relates to the Direct Officer Star, although delivered in the context of an employed person, remains relevant to the Entrepreneur.
Further, it is relevant to understand the Direct Officer Star even though a person is an entrepreneur because it may actually explain why they are not succeeding at their business. One of the biggest reasons why I would say No to someone starting their own business is if they lack a good quality Officer Star (and secondary to that, a good Resource Star). Unless you are in what I call a ’emergency business’ or ‘pain commodity’ business (meaning, plumber, doctor, dentist, electrician, handyman), you simply cannot survive without clients or customers. Who is going to give you business? In those instances, it may simply be wise to tell the person not to be self-employed or start a business, but to find some other way to manifest their entrepreneurial objectives (i.e.: a side business or a job which requires entrepreneurial elements) rather than starting a business.
Lateral thinking is important in BaZi because at the end of the day, you’ve only got 10 Gods to play with. These 10 Gods have to encapsulate everything in the person’s universe, from the present possibilities to future possibilities. Now, it is tricky for students at times to figure out when they need to be absolute and when they should be laterally thinking/flexible. But remember that BaZi is Yin and Yang, which means there is always absolute and variable existing at the same time.
“It takes a long time to get through all the material”
One of the reasons for producing a video class, having done this monster class several times live, is that there is simply a lot to talk about. And it is typically my finding that for many students, after a couple of hours of intense BaZi (since my classes often require students to engage in practical sessions), simply are mentally depleted. Bazi is a rigorous and highly intellectual practice – it is a thinking person’s sport if you like.
When taught as a live class, the 10 God Redux class is done over 6 days, which is split into two session of 3 days. Every time I have done this, my students ask the same question: why do we have to waste time in between? Can’t we just have it six days in a row?
By the end of the first 3 days, they are often glad they have two weeks in between the sessions, if not more because the amount of information to digest is tremendous. The average person lasts all of about 4 hours with their brain functioning in a BaZi class, and about 3 days before the topic becomes thoroughly saturating for them. BaZi is a rigorous and challenging subject to study, and it requires a lot of brain power to stay focused during a class, especially the kind of classes I teach, where students are listening, processing and then problem solving at the same time.
As a video class, the sessions have been edited to recognise the challenge of such a large chunk of information being delivered in concentrated form in a live class. The first objective was to shrink as many of the sessions (which sometimes go on for 2 1/2 hours in a live class) into manageable one hour or less chunks. The idea is that you watch a little as you go along, a bit like a slow burn novel.
The second objective was to re-order the material so that the formal teaching is neatly and clearly segregated from the practical sessions (i.e.: Q&A, Case Study, Breakout Discussion), which are less structured. This caters to the more ‘notes’ driven student (who needs to hear in lecture form) whilst also allowing the casual student (who learns more from interaction or practical cases) to also tap into the segments which they work with best, saving the formal lecture for the rainy day.
As you can see from the partial reproduction below of the Session List, there is a mix of sessions on each day, totalling 37 sessions.
[table]
Day 1,Session
1, Opening Q&A
2, Understanding Direct and Indirect Wealth
3, Case Study: The Wealth Stars
4, Breakout Discussion
5,Understanding Hurting Officer and Eating God
6, Understanding Direct Officer and 7 Killings
[/table]
[table]
Day 2,Session
1, Opening Q&A
2, Understanding Friend and Rob Wealth
3, Q&A Session
4, Understanding Direct Resource and Indirect Resource
5,Case Study: Freddy Mercury
[/table]
[table]
Day 3,Session
1, Opening Q&A
2,Case Study: Chairmen of the Federal Reserve
3, Case Study: The Managers of Manchester United
4, Case Study: Succession Planning at Manchester United
5, Case Study: Sex Appeal
6,Case Study: CEOs.
7,Breakout Discussion
[/table]
The video class has also been chunked to allow for students to go first to the sections that interest them OR to focus in on the sections that they feel they lack the most formal or specific information about.
So yes, it’s a lot of information and a lot to get through but the fantastic thing about a video class is that is that you aren’t under pressure to get all the information all at one go (as in the case of the students in the live class). You can rewatch and re-learn and rediscover new information through reviewing the segments. Remember that as your knowledge of BaZi grows, your appreciation for the technicalities and ability to read and perceive new information from the chart will also advance. So repeat viewings actually do benefit and advantage the student looking to leapfrog their knowledge, which is precisely the value of the video class. You can repeat the class AS MANY TIMES AS YOU LIKE. (For USD880, that’s massive bang for your buck, if I do say so myself.)
Serious BaZi students who have purchased my videos have done the class a variety of ways – from binge watching to doing a little a day at the end of each day. Everyone learns differently and my hope is that my 10 Gods video class enables people to learn whichever way is most comfortable for them.
“What if the chart does not have either DR or HO,can the relationship be replaced by IR and EG”
and
“For Ren DM,they need Wu to give them focus , wu is represented by 7k which can also be said as petty people. can i interpret it that ren water is not scared of petty people and the more they have the more effective or focus they get. petty people or slave driver boss gives makes them more effective?”
This is an example of a very specific two questions that was asked by one student who bought the 10 Gods videos. I place this here not because I want to answer the question per se but because her questions were useful to highlight one of the important challenges faced by students looking to push through the ceiling of basic BaZi into more advanced and sophisticated interpretation, but at the same time, it shows how greater and clearer understand of the Day Masters can actually yield very specific knowledge and advice. (Hence, a significant portion of the videos focuses on understanding the Day Masters in a conceptual manner, rather than just in a ‘here is a list of attributes or things or persons or relationships’ manner.)
The first question demonstrates the pitfalls of an absolutist, slightly mathematically driven mindset – if x and y are missing, can a and b suffice? It is very common for students, as they start to get into the analytical and forecasting aspect, to try to assume there is a formulaic approach to a situation.
In the first question, the idea is that you can substitute one star for another, simply because they are of the same group (HO and EG are Output, DR and IR are Resource). But this fails to appreciate the material difference between the two types of Stars, and fails to appreciate that fundamentally, each Day Master has a unique relationship, based on the interaction of the five elements, with each of their 10 Gods.
Hence, there is a huge chunk of the video devoted to the topic called ‘The 100 Gods’ (wherein each version of the 10 God is discussed – meaning, a Jia 甲 Eating God vs a Yi 乙 Eating God, a Bing 丙 Eating God vs a Ding 丁 Eating God, a Wu 戊 Eating God vs a Ji 己 Eating God, a Geng 庚 Eating God vs a Xin 辛 Eating God, a Ren 壬 Eating God vs a Gui 癸 Eating God, and vice versa with each of the 10 Gods) which strives to demonstrate how important and intrinsically subtle differences in how each 10 God manifests, depending on the element that represents it, changes the interpretation of the 10 God’s fundamental features.
In BaZi, nuances are everything. They are the difference between blunt force reading of a chart and being able to truly capture the essence and character of a person, and understand their actions, motivations, manner and style of behaving, in a snapshot. Nuances are what give a reading accuracy – without nuances, you flounder in the pond of the 20% accuracy, with nuances, you can forecast and predict, as well as read with accuracy.
Secondly, each Day Master has a unique relationship to certain 10 Gods. It is not the same thing to say that Geng 庚 Metal needs Ding 丁, but if there’s no Ding, then Bing 丙 will suffice because after all, it’s the same element (Fire) and surely something is better than nothing? Whilst it’s not entirely wrong to say, some fire is better than no fire, it is also not the same to say, any fire will do.
The point of the 10 Gods Redux video class is not to teach you more dictionary meanings to the 10 Gods or give you a laundry list of attributes. Frankly, I am not interested in teaching based on attributes. It simply does not work in the real world of interpretation because it means if you don’t have the list (or the Book of Spells it seems), you simply cannot do any interpretation if something falls out of that scope. That is not the way to learn and apply BaZi. Rather then point of my Video Class is to teach people how to work things out for themselves, by understanding the basic principles, conceptual ideas, by appreciating how to arrive at answers, and by learning the nuances and subtleties of the 10 Gods. (i.e.: In the absence of Ding, rely on Bing, except understand Bing is inferior to Ding, in the case of Geng Metal).
Now onto the 2nd question: “For Ren DM,they need Wu to give them focus , Wu is represented by 7k which can also be said as petty people. can i interpret it that ren water is not scared of petty people and the more they have the more effective or focus they get. petty people or slave driver boss gives makes them more effective?”
Here clearly, the student made the correct connection between the fact that sometimes what you need, is people who in a normal circumstance, we would normally dislike. Bazi is not interested in what you like or don’t by way of preference, it is only interested in what you like or don’t like by way of elemental need. Here the student has also correctly recognised that whilst generally the 7K star is considered unfavourable (due to its negative association with petty individuals, enemies, tough bosses), for certain Day Masters, it works and actually is REQUIRED to help the Day Master unlock its true talent and potential. That is a huge fundamental understanding that tends to elude many people because they are bound by the notion that a negative star (i.e.: 7K) is just that, a negative star. But then, not all 7Ks are created equal (see the 100 Gods point above).
Click to Learn more about the 10 Gods Redux BaZi Video Class, watch preview videos or buy the video class.
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