Breaking the 18 Formations — Friendly Version¶
What Is a "Formation"?¶
Imagine a vast maze. From the moment you are born, you are placed inside it. The maze has food, family, desires, habits… The harder you struggle, the harder it is to get out. This maze is what Guide Xuefeng calls a "formation" (阵).
He teaches: In the universe there are 36 trigram formations, and in life there are countless traps. Only by escaping these traps can life attain true freedom.
The Greatest Creator set up these formations not to harm anyone, but to keep each level of LIFE in its proper place as LIFE evolves. But for those who want to ascend to a higher realm, each formation is a gate that must be passed through.
Guide Xuefeng has revealed eighteen of these gates — and shown where the exit of each one is.
18 Formations, 18 Exits¶
Formation 1: The Emotion Formation — Trapped in Love and Longing¶
Are you stuck? Are you unable to let go because of parents, children, a partner, or friends? Suffering for emotion, living for emotion, even losing your sense of direction because of emotion — that is the Emotion Formation.
The exit: Not cutting off all feeling, but elevating it. Love more widely — love the Greatest Creator, love nature, love all LIFE — rather than only a few particular people. When the heart has nothing left to cling to, moving freely with circumstances and conditions, you have walked out.
Formation 2: The Desire Formation — Eight Ropes Around Your Nose¶
Are you stuck? Always wanting better food, more fun, more possessions, more admiration, longer life… These eight desires are like a rope through a bull's nose, leading you in circles your whole life — that is the Desire Formation.
The exit: Follow the natural way of the Greatest Creator. Be content with what food comes your way. Let relationships arise and dissolve naturally. Keep possessions at "enough." Don't pursue fame deliberately. Leave life and death to the Greatest Creator. Without desire, desires are paradoxically fulfilled.
Formation 3: The Relationship Formation — The Cage of Roles¶
Are you stuck? You are a parent, a child, a subordinate, a student… These roles shape how you speak, think, and live — leaving you without a truly independent self. That is the Relationship Formation.
The exit: Cultivate independent consciousness. Let truth — not relationship — be your guide. Still fulfill your proper responsibilities and repay your debts; but measure everything by this: "Does this bring me joy, happiness, freedom, and bliss? Does this help my LIFE ascend?"
Formation 4: The Belonging Formation — I Am from This Nation, This Group¶
Are you stuck? You are proud of your nation, ethnicity, religion, or family — sometimes even willing to fight for them. This "I belong to a group" consciousness makes you narrow and self-interested. That is the Belonging Formation.
The exit: See yourself as a citizen of Earth. Don't let yourself "belong" to any nation, ethnicity, political party, or religion. Serve all of humanity, not one group. Your heart will grow vast, and your frequency will align with the celestials of the Thousand-Year World.
Formation 5: The Mind Formation — Being Played by Your Own Emotions¶
Are you stuck? One moment you're heartbroken, the next you're ecstatic, then confused, then composed… "played by the mind as if by a master puppeteer" — that is the Mind Formation.
The exit: Buddha said: "The past mind cannot be grasped, the present mind cannot be grasped, the future mind cannot be grasped." Throw away the mind. Live in xing (your true nature). Buddha is xing, xing is Buddha — how free!
Formation 6: The Intelligence Formation — The Smarter You Are, the More Trapped¶
Are you stuck? A lifetime spent pursuing knowledge, cleverness, standing out, impressing others… the more intelligent, the more exhausted — that is the Intelligence Formation. "The clever person is undone by their own cleverness."
The exit: Laozi says: abandon cleverness, return to simplicity, revert to the infant. Jesus says: become like little children. Like the lily — it neither toils nor spins, yet the Greatest Creator clothes it in glory. Great wisdom looks foolish; supreme intelligence leaves no trace.
Formation 7: The Time Formation — Living in the Past and Future¶
Are you stuck? Always regretting the past, or worrying about the future, or lamenting that "youth is gone" — that is the Time Formation. In reality, time is an illusion — everything was already written in the script.
The exit: Set yourself in the Thousand-Year World in your mind, then watch your human life as if watching a film. Whether you play a hero or an ordinary person, it is all acting — a game — nothing worth worrying about.
Formation 8: The Thinking Formation — Unable to See Beyond the Human World¶
Are you stuck? Your thinking only goes around in three-dimensional circles — you cannot imagine the celestial world, you cannot grasp the miracles of the divine — that is the Thinking Formation.
The exit: Elevate your thinking. Think like a celestial rather than confining yourself to human thought. Escape the Mind Formation, the Desire Formation, and the others — live in your true nature, act in accordance with your innate nature.
Formation 9: The Space Formation — A Consciousness Trapped on Earth¶
Are you stuck? Your senses confine you to three-dimensional perception — you cannot see or feel that other LIFE-spaces exist — that is the Space Formation.
The exit: Decide firmly not to remain human. Learn about the Thousand-Year World and other higher LIFE-spaces, emulate how celestials live, replace your consciousness with theirs, repay all debts owed to the human world, and accumulate provisions for the journey to a higher space.
Formation 10: The Structure Formation — Your Form Determines Your World¶
Are you stuck? A human has a human structure; a pig has a pig structure — each is confined to its own space. The structure of human consciousness keeps you in the human world — that is the Structure Formation.
The exit: Format out human consciousness and install celestial consciousness. Jealousy, resentment, the chase for fame and profit — these are human consciousness. Moving naturally with circumstances, following your true nature, living free of grasping — this is celestial consciousness. Change the consciousness, change the structure.
Formation 11: The Fate Formation — A This-Life Already Written by a Previous Life¶
Are you stuck? Parents, birthplace, gender, appearance, opportunities — none of it feels like your choice, and no matter how hard you work, "fate" seems to override you — that is the Fate Formation.
The exit: This life's formation is fixed. Resenting it only adds suffering — accept it, and be at ease with what comes. But use this life to work toward the next life's fate. Follow the Way of the Greatest Creator — that is how you change what comes next.
Formation 12: The Gravity Formation — Debts Pulling You Back¶
Are you stuck? You yearn for Heaven, but something always pulls you back to the human world — because the debts you owe (to nature, to others, to LIFE) create an antimatter gravity that keeps you here — that is the Gravity Formation.
The exit: Owe not one shred of debt to the reincarnation world, and accumulate treasures in Heaven. Repay your debts, act with goodness, and store celestial treasure — then the gravity of the reincarnation world weakens, and Heaven's pull can draw you across.
Formation 13: The Nature Formation — Habits and Conditioning Covering Your True Nature¶
Are you stuck? Conventional morality binds you; your ethnic traits set you apart; your personal habits make you rigid — the Nature Formation has confined you to a particular kind of LIFE.
The exit: Overcome habitual-nature, relinquish endowed-nature, restore heaven-nature. And crucially — do not avoid xing (nature/sexuality). The more you avoid it, the further you drift from your Buddha-nature. Humans come from xing and return to xing. When the balance between yin and yang is reached, heaven-nature naturally reasserts itself.
Formation 14: The Sloth-Indulgence Formation — Good Times Becoming Your Downfall¶
Are you stuck? A little success and you grow proud; a little comfort and you become lazy; a little accumulation and you start wasting — that is the Sloth-Indulgence Formation. The fall of Rome, the collapse of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom — all traced here.
The exit: Steadfastly uphold the 800 Concepts and build your soul garden. Pursue spiritual enjoyment to the fullest; limit material indulgence. This restraint cannot come from rules — only from inner awareness.
Formation 15: The Fixed-Program Formation — Everything Has a Program¶
Are you stuck? The human lifespan, the seasons, the birth and death of all things — all run in programs. As a human, you are inside the human program — that is the Fixed-Program Formation.
The exit: Replace human consciousness with celestial consciousness. When the consciousness changes, the program changes — the human program ends, and the celestial program begins.
Formation 16: The Instinct Formation — The Pull of Animal Nature¶
Are you stuck? Hungry, you eat; tired, you sleep; frightened, you flee; you want to possess, you want to live forever… These instincts keep you at the human level — the stronger they are, the harder to ascend — that is the Instinct Formation.
The exit: Work at three levels. Physically: reduce the pursuit of food, shelter, and self-preservation. Spiritually: release dependency on emotional bonds, material accumulation, and social status. At the soul level: stop fearing death. Then elevate your thinking and emulate celestials — their ways of living and thinking. Over time, the instincts weaken, and the celestial realm opens.
Formation 17: The Wisdom Formation — The Gifted Are the Most Trapped¶
Are you stuck? You have intelligence and gifts. You use them to create, explore, and pursue a better life — and before you know it, a whole life has been consumed by wisdom. That is the Wisdom Formation. Sun Wukong had 72 transformations — and still could not escape the palm of Buddha Tathagata.
The exit: Keep the Greatest Creator in your heart, let your consciousness rest in empty, clear, and open awareness, then follow circumstances, follow conditions, follow your true nature, and act spontaneously. Throw away the raft after crossing the river. Become like a little child.
Formation 18: The Life-Death Formation — The Deepest Trap of All¶
Are you stuck? Life after life, you arrive and depart, forgetting the last, beginning the next — in the cycle of birth and death forever with no way out — that is the Life-Death Formation, the ultimate expression of all formations.
The exit: Unconventional thinking — treat everything as a game. All phenomena are a game; only LIFE (xing) is real. Release attachments, cast off grasping, rest in the open spaciousness of no-mind. Grasp the hand of the Greatest Creator. Let go of worldly bonds and forge celestial ones.
One Summary¶
To escape a formation, you need the method for escaping it. No matter what formation it is, the master key is first to have a clear head… and to cultivate your independent consciousness.
— Guide Xuefeng, 2009
Eighteen formations. Eighteen exits. And all exits point in the same direction: Revere the Greatest Creator, follow the Way, repay all debts, store treasure in Heaven, and journey to the Thousand-Year World, Ten-Thousand-Year World, and Elysium's Celestial Islands Continent.