Hilary Barrett, I Ching

Message from Mick Frankel:

“The first of my three Theosophical Society workshops on the I Ching is on Saturday 25th October at the Friends’ Meeting House, Mount Street in Manchester City Centre near the Library.

The workshop runs from 2 - 4 and costs £4 which includes a cup of tea :~)

I’ll be starting from scratch looking at Yin and Yang, the Trigrams and the structure of a Hexagram. No previous knowledge of the I Ching is needed.

At the end, I’ll consult the I Ching on behalf of one of the attendees.

So, if you live in or around Manchester and you’re new to the I Ching, this is a chance to get to know the basics in a nice, friendly setting.”

You can see Mick’s message, and ask him any questions you have, here. This is a worthwhile opportunity to learn in person from someone who ‘gets it’. Also, there are two further workshops building on this one, on 15th November and 6th December.

Ever heard this?

“I know the I Ching works, but I don’t have time for it.”

Ever said it?

I have… which is more embarrassing than I care to think about. Naturally I have endless time to work on readings for clients, and work out the best possible ways to help people learn the I Ching, and even write the occasional blog post about it. It’s just for my own puzzles and decisions that there somehow isn’t time to bring out the full ‘diviner’s toolkit’ and work out what’s really going on, and why, and where the solutions are. Odd, that - in a breathtakingly stupid kind of way.

I can see I’m not the only one when I glance through the reasons given by people who unsubscribe from Friends’ Notes. Some are just changing email addresses, or going on holiday, or trying to find the bottom of their Inbox (I can relate) - but the biggest single reason offered is ‘not having time’.

It might be nice, at this point, to introduce the 27-second I Ching Express - if it existed. There’s no getting around it: the I Ching does take time. Yes, casting a reading can take just a few seconds, and yes, it’s possible to get a quick answer just by glancing at the line texts - but frankly, getting a genuine, clear, non-superficial answer quickly is one of the most advanced interpretive skills there is, and guess what it takes to learn that? And no matter how much you’ve learned, it will still always take time to receive all a reading has to offer, to let it seep into the deeper levels of awareness and bring about change. Understanding takes time.

All this made me extra-delighted to come across this article by Havi Brooks: Solving the “but I just don’t have time!” problem. I love Havi’s writing, I’m a fan of her duck (naturally), and I think she has the internet’s best order-button at the foot of her ‘Procrastination Dissolve-o-matic‘ page (note to self - should really get round to ordering that before the price goes up tomorrow…). I think she’s really nailed it here:

“It takes time to make time. Taking the time now makes it all go faster when you’re actually doing it. Because . . .

• When you’re functioning from a place of clarity, you’re way more likely to catch (or even avoid) those errors that get made out of haste and annoyance. The same errors that result in everything becoming a tangled, irritating mess. Huge time-saver.

• When you’ve taken time out to get your bearings, you make better decisions. Decisions that impact everything else you do.

• When you stop to re-assess, ground yourself and calm down, everything you do happens more quickly and smoothly. Things start falling into place. That’s what flow looks like.

Plus you have perspective. And perspective is the thing that keeps you from banging your head against the wall. Yay, perspective! Good stuff.

You have to stop to get started.“

Every word of this holds true for divination. The place of clarity, better decisions, grounding, moving into the flow, perspective…

Who else has bruises, and possibly some structural damage to nearby walls, that they know could have been avoided if they’d either a) taken time to consult or b) taken more time to pay attention to a reading?

The I Ching takes time; it also gives time back, quiet and uncluttered and translucent.

It was some time after I thought I’d ‘completed’ my hexagram commentary to contribute to Change Circle’s WikiWing when I realised there was a line I’d completely forgotten. Hexagram 2, ‘using sixes’: the text that’s read when every line is moving, and Hexagram 2 changes towards Hexagram 1.

‘Harvest from ever-flowing constancy.’

If you use the yarrow method of consulting, or a method with yarrow odds - as I do - then this is the answer you are least likely to receive. And in fact, in all these years of divining for myself and hundreds of other people, I’ve yet to receive it. (If you have experience of this one, please post it in the comments!)

What’s happening at this point? Every yin line is becoming yang: every open line is becoming transparent to the creative energy behind it. I found the perfect representation of this in Jaliya’s ‘Quotable I Ching’ blog (which is a joy): ‘Earth’s crammed with heaven.’ Exactly - and here it shines through.

Another couple of quotations, this time drawn from Matthew Fox’s One River, Many Wells:

“What does God do all day long? God lies on a maternity bed giving birth.”

from Meister Eckhart, and

“Even when there are no atoms, and no elementary particles, and no protons, and no photons, suddenly elementary particles will emerge. …The base of the universe seethes with creativity, so much so that physicists refer to the universe’s ground state as ’space-time foam.’”

from Brian Swimme.

I think 2.6 must be where it ’seethes with creativity’.

So why would there be harvest when you respond to this with ‘ever-flowing constancy’?

Yi has already started to coach us gently in the ways of ‘constancy’. First there is Creative Force:

‘Creative Force.
From the source, creating success.
Constancy is fruitful.’

There is creative force at work; it’s good to work with it, to have the loyalty, steadiness and sheer persistence to experience it to the full.

Then Earth, the Receptive starts by echoing hexagram 1:

‘Earth.
From the source, creating success.
The constancy of a mare is fruitful.’

If we can find it in ourselves to be as sensitive and responsive to guidance as the mare, we will gain what we seek. And then -

‘Peaceful constancy brings good fortune.’

The character for ‘peaceful’ shows a woman in the home. It doesn’t imply a limited domesticity, but a sense of being at home in the whole earth, like the mare who ‘bestrides the earth without limit.’

So already we are being taught that there are ways and ways of being ‘constant’. Then as all lines change from earth to heaven, it is good to have ‘ever-flowing constancy’ - ‘lasting perseverance’, in Wilhelm/Baynes. This character - ‘lasting’, ‘ever-flowing’ - actually shows flowing water. But also, in many versions of the character, it shows someone swimming in the current. Have a look at these, at the Chinese Etymology site; especially in the bronze characters, you can see the contours of the human figure flowing perfectly smoothly with the contours of the water.

If the universe is seething with creativity, it may no longer be enough to follow it, or even to be at home in it. Perhaps you need to be already in the flow and moving.

At 7pm UK time tomorrow - Saturday 27th - I’m hosting a call to discuss divination, benefitting more from each reading, staying connected and being changed by it. The call is free, and not a discussion of technical Yijing things; it’s intended to be useful to anyone with an interest in divination and connection to source.

You can read a bit more about it and sign up here to get your invitation to the call. Be sure to download the call notes after you sign up. Parts of them may look somewhat odd, but it’ll all come together during the call.

Hope to speak to you then!

Here it is… I Ching podcast, episode 1. In future I’d like to add more sections to this - some interviews, feedback, shared experiences, maybe even some music like a real, grown-up podcast. Some of the more in-depth stuff will be for Change Circle members only, but there’ll always be a free part, too.

At the moment, after all the planning, divining, thinking and recording and editing and geekery, it seems quite odd that the result is less than 15 minutes long. Still - it makes sense to start small and grow rather than starting huge and dwindling away, doesn’t it? Also, Yi was helpful enough to give me an unchanging hexagram for my first ‘living change’ reading:

Question: Yi, what do we need to know about holding a living connection to source and meaning?
Answer…

…well, what single hexagram would you imagine might answer that one? It wasn’t in the least what I expected, but the more time I spend with the reading the more it moves me. (You know how that works.) Have a listen; let me know what you think. Thoughts about the reading, suggestions for future questions and content… all welcome.

Download mp3

And here’s the link I mention in the audio, to sign up for Saturday’s teleseminar.

Here’s a whole field of study where (as far as I know) we’ve barely scratched the surface.

Each hexagram line ‘points towards’ the hexagram created when it changes, its zhi gua. It’s natural enough to go through the I Ching line by line and see how each one reflects the relationship of its two hexagrams - that’s one of the things I’ve shared in Change Circle’s WikiWing.

But what about when two or more lines change? Does the combination of those lines also reflect a relationship with the hexagram created by the change? I think it does - only the relationship doesn’t tend to leap to the eye in the same way.

Samgirl started a discussion at the I Ching Community about how 26 moves to 50. I shared some ideas there from the ‘pathways’ round each line, which seem to bring out their meaning more strongly. (Line pathways are one of the techniques included in the Yijing Class: they really come into their own in personal readings, when they’re the spark for moments of deep recognition.)

I’ve seen LiSe mention these multi-line changes from time to time, but I don’t know of anyone who’s looked at them in detail. Every now and then, though, something lights up. Like ‘Articulating Seeking Union’, for instance, Hexagram 60 changing to 8:

‘Not going out of the door to the family rooms.
Not a mistake.’

‘Not going out of the gate from the courtyard.
Pitfall.’

Articulating your quest for union, getting the measure of it, naturally you must balance out when to stay in your own core and when to go out and share.

Or how about Hexagram 44 moving to 56?

Coupling’s Sojourning:

‘In the trap there are fish.
No mistake.
No harvest in entertaining guests.’

‘Using willow to wrap melons.
Cherishing a thing of beauty,
It comes falling from its source in heaven.’

Here’s a power that can change and disrupt your whole life - the heir, in LiSe’s translation - like a traveller passing through: the heir’s sojourning. And the two lines in Hexagram 44 that describe ‘enwrapping’ something - images of conception and pregnancy.

I just added my Twitter updates to the blog’s sidebar. You can see them over on the right, just below the subscription buttons and above the ‘Recent Comments’. Then it dawned on me I should maybe explain what on earth this is.

Twitter is a kind of cross between a radically miniaturised blog and instant messaging.

The miniaturised blog part, because people post updates - ‘tweets’ - about what they’re doing, realising, contemplating, reading, bemused by, and so on. In my case this does tend to be Yi-related, which is why you’ll find me on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/i_ching.

The ‘instant messaging’ part, because you can mark your tweets as ‘at’ someone in particular. You’ll see these as clickable links that take you to the person’s twitter page like this: @yijingman. All the ‘@’s flying to and fro naturally bring you into contact with more and more interesting people.

And that’s pretty much it. Simple, straightforward, free and friendly. If you join, please visit my page and click the ‘follow’ button, and drop me an ‘@’ to say hello.