How did Master Shengyuan use Chinese chess divination for direction before being able to receive spiritual messages clearly?

In my early years, I experienced spontaneous spiritual movement and had some sense of the deities, but I could not yet clearly receive and assess spiritual messages. Chinese chess divination was then an important tool for understanding situations. It offered a direction for thinking about why a problem had arisen and what needed to change.

When preparing to leave my work in public relations events, I consulted different teachers and also used Chinese chess divination myself. The readings reminded me to move toward benefiting others. I did not clearly know from the outset what kind of person I would eventually become. I was finding my way one step at a time by facing the questions before me.

Looking back later, Chinese chess divination was more than a skill for my work. It also helped me use my earlier experiences of spiritual cultivation to understand situations. A friend once conveyed a reminder from the Three Pure Ones that Chinese chess divination would lead me into a sacred realm of spiritual practice. For me, that growth became something I gradually understood through continuing to use it to help myself and others.

Another kind of learning came from encountering the same type of question repeatedly over a period, but from different people and through different readings. Sometimes the question concerned ancestors, and sometimes wealth or relationships. I had to understand each one individually. In retrospect, it felt as though the deities were using different cases to let me repeatedly learn how to explain problems clearly. This is my own experience of faith; not every teacher learns in the same sequence.

The first time I helped a friend with seeking wealth in those early years, I honestly said that I had never performed this ritual for someone before. After finding a direction through Chinese chess divination, I told him we could try doing it this way and asked him to come back and tell me whether it helped. A week later, he reported receiving more work opportunities. That became one part of the experience I later accumulated. I did not pretend from the start that I knew how to do everything, and this feedback cannot be treated as a promise that everyone will get the same result.

I have described this change as feeling 'as though the Ren and Du channels had opened.' My existing foundation in spiritual cultivation and spontaneous movement seemed to connect with my later study of Chinese chess and experience helping clients with their questions. Before, I had only experienced spontaneous movement without knowing how to use it to help people. Chinese chess divination gave me a clearer direction for understanding problems and considering where adjustments could begin. It was an important turning point in my becoming a teacher.