There are times – plenty of them – when not being able to think of a question for the I Ching seems an impossible luxury, and the difficult thing is to stop asking. There’s a constant whirling of questions in your mind: ‘What if I tried…?’ ‘How can I…?’ ‘What about…?’
This article is about the other times. When things are not in crisis, when you’re not in an agony of indecision, then what happens to the oracle on the shelf?
One simple, easy answer would be that it stays there. If you can’t think of anything to ask, you don’t need to ask anything, so why not leave the I Ching alone until something urgent comes up?
Well… there are arguments for that approach, but personally I’m not convinced. True, at times people feel the need for a ‘divination holiday’, and I’ve even occasionally recommended such a thing. But it doesn’t follow that the I Ching is ‘off limits’ unless there’s a crisis. In fact, there are several very good reasons for keeping channels of communication with the I Ching open at quieter times:
- Divining when you’re not knee-deep in crisis gives you a reservoir of experience with hexagrams and lines that you can draw on when you most need it.
- An open reading can alert you to the first signs of trouble brewing, so you may actually be able prevent the next crisis.
- Above all, why settle for ‘OK’? Life may be quiet and normal; that doesn’t mean it can’t be deeper, richer and more alive. Why not grow a little?
We don’t have to wait for the next ‘learning experience’ ( 😕 ) to learn. You may not be able to think of a question, but you can still feel an inner desire to open up to life and connect. You might ask…
- What can I do this week to deepen our relationship?
- How can I be more creative?
- What’s the deeper pattern of this ongoing situation at work?
- What is it that draws me to this (book/film/person/sport/…)?
- What did last night’s dream have to tell me?
- What do I need to be aware of now?
…and so on. I make a regular, weekly reading, asking for advice or what to be awake to, and this has a ‘tuning’ effect on my awareness on many levels. With regular readings, and a constant to-and-fro between experience and divination, you can create a positive cycle of noticing more and understanding more, steadily deepening your sense of connection to every part of your life. This, I believe, is what divination is for.
Hmmm, I’m with the alternate team, the one does not bother the oracle when there is no need to do so. A concept wherein the oracle “must” be consulted on a periodic basis to keep “channels” open reminds me of having a milk farm: The cows must be milked every morning… 😀
As for coming up with questions to ask, why not just draw an oracular answer, sans questions, and then figure out what the Yi is telling you. I haven’t found any original text that says a question must be posted to the Yi. Now, that’s a real test of intuition… LOL!
My first ten to twelve years with the Yi were filled with such question-less drawings and the lesson I learned is that yes, you do grow a very strong intuition in the process, and no, there are things I rather don’t know in advance.
Cheers,
Luis
But you milk the cows every day because the cows need it. I ask questions every day because I need it — because it helps me understand.
Early on I used to ask once in a while about a very simple thing I did not care deeply about: “am about to head out to lunch, what should I expect?” This helped me a great deal in getting a sense of the many layers of hexagram meanings. Once the answer was 47, which quite scared me; I imagined all sorts of catastrophic scenarios involving police etc. I walked out to the parking lot and saw that my car was blocked in by a fire truck attending to a minor accident. Oppressed by officialdom! Not going anywhere for a bit! and yet so far from my catastrophes, I sat on the curb and laughed.
Another time after asking that question I got 44 and was completely perplexed. In that same parking lot, a woman ran up and asked me to give her car battery a jump. That jumpstart image really crystallized 44 for me — a powerful, useful, dangerous, electric force, but it can’t last long, and whatever you do don’t TOUCH it.
That’s how I feel about it, too. Yi doesn’t ‘need’ consulting, and I doubt anything I do can ‘bother’ it. But I need to keep in touch.
Thanks for the 47 and 44 stories. 🙂
If one does it because “one needs” it, it is fine. There are no rules I know of. There are also a lot of daily needs one must fulfill, some of them quite vital. The thing is, as Hilary points out, the Yi does not have a need to be consulted. The onus is on us, not the oracle. Being that the case, and since we are showing our needs, what does our approach to the Yi may be saying about us?
In my case, I phased out (weaned?) of my daily need to question the oracle more than 15 years ago. Mind you, I DO NEED to consult the oracle, of course, but there are patterns one should start seeing after a respectable time of daily use of the oracle. Once one realizes that, at least in my case, the so called “need” went away.
Well… Because you have no question to ask does not mean that you could not use some advice : Dreams happen and provide advices and warnings about situations you are generally not aware of, or if you are aware of a situation, about aspects of these situations which you had not considered. It is up to you to listen to the advice – or not – but it is provided.
I see the I Ching as “working” in a way very similar to dreams.
For Carl Jung, dreams are the way the Unconscious adresses the individual on his or her WAY to individuation : his WAY to becoming a more complete and whole person, on his WAY to realizing the totality of his potential.
I suggest that the I Ching can do the same “job” and help each one of us to reach a certain level of self realization, just like dreams can.
I personally have been recording dreams for several years, and also recorded my I Ching readings. Unfortunately, I am not very good at getting a general trend of advice from the Dreams, but the I Ching is much more clear.
I propose the following method (I already posted this one) :
draw the oracle every morning for a year, even if you have no question to ask – and record the results.
After one year, compile your records, figure out how many times each hexagram has been drawn. Chances are, you will realize that 2 or 3 of them are much more frequent than the others, and that some of them are never drawn.
Then think about this, and you may discover some very interesting things that the TAO – which also means the WAY – is trying to tell you.
MOO
MU
WU
TOO
Consulting th e I should not be restricted to tough times or crisis,it should be
approach everyday even without a question in mind:just let it talk to you,tell you what you do not want to hear or what you do not know yet;help you to
be aware of what you overlook or dismiss;advise you how to be in harmony with
your times and situations. But it will not live your life for you so better not bother it with too many questions.Action with no action=asking with no questions.
Sergio
P.S:…same to you ,Thomas…..