Hilary Barrett, I Ching

Every pair of hexagrams, ie every odd-numbered hexagram with the even-numbered one that follows it, carries some un-pin-downable feeling of ‘inspiration and manifestation’ or ‘question and response’ or ‘yang and yin’. Only I just wonder whether there might be a more specific patterns in the 7s and 8s…

Hexagram 7, the Army – and being within it. Hexagram 8, Seeking Union – looking at the terrain from outside to see where you belong. The general and the king.

Hexagram 17, Following – being within the flow. Hexagram 18, Corruption – examining and changing the flow from outside.

Hexagram 27, Nourishment – a containing structure. Hexagram 28, Great Exceeding – ‘the noble one stands alone without fear…’ (Daxiang). Incubating and hatching.

Hexagram 37, People in the Home. Hexagram 38, Opposing. ‘Opposing means outside. People in the Home means inside.’ (Zagua) Two different points of view on the same structure.

Hexagram 47, Confined, the view from inside an enclosed, oppressive space. Hexagram 48, the Well, reaching down into a dark, enclosed space from above to draw out the water.

Hexagram 57, Subtly Penetrating (into). Hexagram 58, Opening. ‘Opening: seeing. Subtly Penetrating: hidden away.’ (Zagua) These two begin to feel like a simple ‘key’ that unlocks the whole sequence.

Are you seeing what I’m seeing – inside and outside? (And if so, is there anything half so clear for other pairs?)

Apologies if you had higher expectations from that portentous title, but this is just a quick note – the kind of meeting of patterns of ideas that I enjoy.

Here’s an article from Bri Saussy about sin. Now I’ve learned that the original Greek, hamartia, means missing the mark, I can’t help thinking of Hexagram 40, Release.

The theme of Release includes forgiveness. The Image, bringing things to a human level, shows how the noble one can do the ‘untying’ work of the hexagram and allow the simple and complete freedom of movement the Oracle describes:

‘Thunder and rain do their work. Release.
A noble one pardons transgressions and forgives crimes.’

Bri writes that

In the story of Christ as in the older stories that follow the same path, there is a moment where all sin is redeemed, forgiven, washed away and cleansed.

– impossible not to think of thunder and rain doing their work. We all know in a simple, literal way how the clear air feels after a storm, and that gives life to the metaphor.

Bri continues:

By analogy, our vision is cleared, our aim is steadied, our target still, waiting, and available.

And in the final line of Hexagram 40 – which is very much the ‘apotheosis’ kind of line 6 –

‘A prince uses this to shoot a hawk, on the top of the high ramparts.
He gets it. Nothing that does not bear fruit.’

I see I have made no posts here for over a month.

Eep.

Why? Erm, let me give you the short version. My Mum-in-law was admitted to hospital as an emergency (this is not the same admission I wrote about before). That was all very intense and dramatic… and it was not the hard part. The hard part is that although she’s physically recovered, she is left very depressed and anxious and has needed my care, so I’ve been staying with her for some of the time. Also, when not staying with her I’ve still been finding it extremely difficult to concentrate on anything else.

So… here I am quietly at my desk, hoping my mind and nerves will presently get the ‘no current crisis, settle down to some work now’ memo, and mulling how Yi has helped me over the past month or so.

Two days after Mum-in-law was discharged, one day after I’d come to stay with her, I cast my reading for the week – and received Hexagram 39, Limping, changing at line 2 to 48, the Well. This reading really set me up to come through the whole thing in one piece. There I was as the sole support for someone suffering from acute anxiety, something of which I have (lucky me) no personal experience at all. And it was all down to me…

… well, you can see how Hexagram 39 was what I needed. I’m very, very familiar with the practical message of this one: THIS IS HARD, SO GET SOME HELP. No, there are no prizes for doing it all by yourself. If this is an impossible uphill struggle, that’s probably because you are going in the wrong direction. Turn round.

And there was also the Well, the reminder of resources that are ever-present – you just have to put in the work to keep access to them. And the moving line – the Well-moment of Limping – which I reckon has to do with appreciating that there is a larger context and most especially seeing that it is not all about me.

I didn’t have internet access, but I could make brief trips out to the local library with my laptop and get online there. I simply sat down, opened the email and started writing messages asking friends for help. Some who would have useful advice, some I could just vent to. And my friends responded, bless them. Paula even replied so fast that I had her invaluable, much-needed EFT advice to take back with me after just the one session at the library.

Wasn’t that just common sense, asking for help, and wouldn’t I have done it anyway? Well… no. I mean, yes, it is probably common sense, but not any that I possess. Knowing me, I would have spent any available time researching Things To Do. (In fact I did that, too. Read up on panic and what to do about it, and took notes of a whole list of useful suggestions.)

So I spent that whole first week thinking repeatedly about what help was available, for both of us, and how I could reach and draw on that help. Friends, EFT, meditation, music – oh, and not least essential oils. (I created a blend and used it to provide a nightly foot-rub.) I am convinced that essential oils are a Well. They offer direct, clear access to the many-layered healing power of the plants – and just as powerfully, they opened the channel to allow a direct, clear flow of love that overwhelmed all my stuttering frustrations.

That was the foundation. Later in the same week, I asked for ‘advice for me’ and received 41, Decrease, changing at lines 1 and 2 to 23, Stripping Away. I was a bit slow on the uptake with this one in practice (members of Change Circle helped me to get the message, for which thank you), but it did help me to understand and learn as I went along. My presence helped. My ‘things to do’ (from that lovely list I’d compiled of oh-so-helpful suggestions!) did not. Yi nudged and prodded me to counteract my natural tendency to do stuff to make things better.

(I’ve had hexagram 25, line 5 since then, and 41 again this week. The tendency in question takes quite some nudging.)

Readings… gave me much-needed advice, and helped me develop some insight into what I was doing. They work in synergy with the wise advice of other people – basically, they make it possible for me to hear what’s being said. (There’s some magic in the combination of familiar gua with new ideas and advice.)

Yi is the opposite of the joke about the rustic type who, asked for directions, begins by saying, ‘Well, I wouldn’t start from here.’ It gives me some understanding of where I am – and some permission to be here, which I need – and then just as many directions as I can take in, delivered in very simple terms. 39. 40. 41. Get help. Let go. Do less.

Also and in the longer term, beyond the surviving-the-crisis part, it lets me learn from experience. I actually cast a reading on ‘what do I learn from this?’ which I think will help me to take in what I’ve learned. (Another tendency of mine: ‘learning’ something, only to forget it until shortly after remembering it would have helped.) That’s an unusual question for me, though (and maybe it shouldn’t be): generally the weekly reading does the job, because it points up patterns I might otherwise have missed.

That’s another way readings help: they nudge/shove/kick, they provide insight and support, and they also point.

Which reminds me… though that would be a neat and tidy place to end this post, I must tell you about the stock. Last week’s reading, as I tried to get back to work: 25.5.6 to 51. The 25 was not hard to see; nor was the line 5. (See tendency #1, above.) And line 6 I could see as having to do with re-engaging with the spirit of my work – with people, with Yi, with the reasons why I do this. To be called away from work for a while is one thing, but to drift along in a detached way so that ‘giving myself some time’ merges seamlessly into ‘where did the week go?’ is something else.

So that made sense in an intellectual sort of way. And then… well, I put the stock ingredients in the slow cooker on Thursday. I took them out on Saturday morning, strained the stock and set it boiling in a pan on the stove to reduce from about 4 pints to about 2, for storage. Then I sat down and played a computer game.

‘Without entanglement. Acting brings blunders.
No direction bears fruit.’

You can imagine, I suppose, the kitchen-full of smoke. What you certainly can’t imagine, unless you’ve met it personally, is what results from boiling stock down to a stage between jelly and carbon. Something gelatinous, bubbled, brown-black and gloopy slithers thoughtfully out of the pan. (It has moved to the compost, where I hope it will be very happy.)

I’ve just had some experiences with hexagram 19 I’d like to share. To give you a bit of context, the long version of the story is in a thread in Reading Circle, but the short version is that we’ve just been through a few wholly nightmarish days with my mother-in-law admitted to hospital. (She’s home now, doing better, and due for an outpatient appointment next week.)

When she first became ill, last month, I asked Yi… well, I wish I could say I asked for advice first, but in fact I started out by asking for a prognosis for her. I received Hexagram 8 unchanging, and got the strong feeling this was no prognosis, but was referring me back to my ‘source of oracle-consulting’: why had I asked? And how about starting over from there? So I did, and asked for my own role or place in all this as it unfolds.

I received Hexagram 19, Nearing, with no changing lines. I needed to step up, to watch over my family – to be the one with the overview, the carer.

‘Above the lake is earth. Nearing.
A noble one teaches and reflects untiringly,
Accepts and protects the ordinary people without limit.’

This does make sense to me – not so much because not a blood relative, as she feels like a mother to me anyway, but because I’ve ‘been here before’: my mother spent a long time going in and out of hospital.

So I’m to be Nearing: always oriented towards the others, moving towards them, being aware of the whole situation. Being emotionally present and as available as the water that wells up under the earth. Not, for instance, shutting down or running the other way, as I might easily have been inclined to do…

And here I must pause for an aside about 19 in general, before I tell you about the ancestors who Neared.

‘Nearing.
Creating success from the source, constancy bears fruit.
Arrival at the eighth month means a pitfall.’

(I know… this is not the same translation as in my book. After a lot of research yesterday, I think I got the translation wrong – it simply can’t mean ‘reaching an end in’. Fortunately, this doesn’t seem to change the interpretation so much.)

The old character for ‘arrival’ shows an arrow that has struck the ground. It’s arrived: it isn’t nearing any more. Nearing means yuan heng li zhen, success from the source, harvest in constancy: a huge positive potential tending towards realisation. Nearing is a state of potential, of tension; if I arrive at the 8th month, harvest time, and set out to reap results, I lose that potential. When the arrow lands, the energy of the bowstring has been discharged and lost, and the movement of its ‘Nearing’ flight has ended. Or in more pragmatic terms, if I scythe through the grain stalks, they won’t be growing any more.

So if 19 happens when you need results, you’re out of luck. And if in a 19 time you let your overview collapse down to a focus on results, you’re sunk. Probably the results will be bad, but in any case something much larger will be lost – and in several readings in my journal, that was empathy and relationship.

For me in the hospital there were no ‘results’ to be had – no way of influencing outcomes, nothing to get hold of – so I just kept on Nearing. I carried the hexagram with me (and sometimes I think Yi provides unchanging readings just so they’re ‘portable’ in this way) day after day.

But Hexagram 19 is also interpreted as the Nearing of a benevolent ancestor. I remembered this as we were driving down to the hospital one morning, and began thinking of ancestors whose help I could use. My father, certainly – a very patient, very calm man. And my mother, with her powers of organisation and ‘getting it done’ – and the very moment I thought of calling on her, I could hear her asking, ‘What can I do?’

That’s exactly what she would say, and so from there I became more involved in the idea. By the time we arrived at the hospital, I was joined by parents, grandparents, many wise and indomitable old friends from the Willows (a day centre for the elderly where I was lucky enough to volunteer for a decade), a powerfully shrewd and determined friend of my mother’s, and even a couple of dogs. An unstoppable, inexhaustible force! I drew on them throughout the day, and always had enough.

Next day I found an initial reluctance in myself to do the same again, as if that would be asking a bit much. Fortunately a couple of Willows people who were never slow to laugh at my absurdities pointed out that this was nonsense, and my crowd of ancestors and I went into the hospital together. Some of them brought strengths well-suited to eliciting a helpful response from the medical staff. Some of them brought endless reserves of patience for caring. Some brought experience of showing some nasty diseases who was boss.

I want to be clear that in my experience this was not just a matter of imagination and memory; I wasn’t just letting myself be inspired by these people’s example. I do that a lot – but this was different: they were there. At one especially fraught point I started to wonder what my father would have said – only to realise, in a moment of extraordinary clarity, that it was exactly, word for word, what I (he) had just been saying. He was already Nearing.

It’s said that Hexagram 19 can mean you are the one who nears, or that some benevolent power is nearing you. On the face of it, that seems unsatisfactory: yes, but which does it mean? Are you nearing or neared? It turns out that it really does mean both at once, and for the past few days for me it could not have been otherwise. I could not possibly have been the one Nearing for so long if my ancestors hadn’t also drawn near. The resource really is as inexhaustible as the lake within the earth.

With thanks to Mum and Dad, Grannie and Grandad, Daphne, Kitty, Rhoda, Dorothy, Vi, Joan, Candy, Meg…

Clarity’s free online I Ching is new and improved; the oracle’s sense of humour is much the same as ever.

First, the new reading features:

• instead of showing all the text of both hexagrams, leaving you to pick out the relevant parts, this displays only the hexagrams and lines that are part of your reading. (Some people mentioned on the forum that they prefer to see everything – you can still do so by following the link in the right-hand menu to the old-style reading.)
• the whole reading is displayed on a single page that you can save
• you can also save, send or share a link to the reading (just copy and paste from your browser’s address bar)
• and there’s a ‘download as pdf’ button
• It also comes with helpful links: at the foot of the reading page, you’ll find a link to start a new thread in Shared Readings, and one to the hexagram search results for your reading.

Many thanks to Ewald Berkers for all this excellence. (Any bugs you find will be the result of my fiddling about with the styling after he’d finished.)

And then the oracle’s sense of humour. As I was saying – unchanged.

There was the time when we seemed to have finished, so I visited the online reading and did a test cast. ‘How are we getting on?’ or words to that effect. The answer was an unchanging hexagram, and revealed a bug with unchanging hexagrams – the text was repeated. And the reading? 56, the Traveller. Still on our way, not there yet.

It’s nice to work with a programmer who will not only fix the bug within minutes, but also get the joke.

Then when Ewald really had finished, I was working on fitting the reading into this site’s template and styling. I am not particularly knowledgeable about these things, so it’s all trial and error. Try copying and pasting something, save, upload, refresh the page, see what’s broken. Back to the source code, try to guess what I broke, edit, save, upload, refresh. Fixed this, broke something else. Edit, save, upload, refresh. And so on, for about an hour. Gradually it comes together.

I did all this with another test reading; this time for the question I just typed in ‘test’. The answer: Hexagram 26, Great Taming, changing at line 3 to 41, Decrease or Offering.

‘A fine horse for pursuit.
Constancy in hardship bears fruit.
Daily training, chariot driving, protecting.
Fruitful to have a direction to go.’

Half a thought that came to me when meditating (along with ‘I wonder how long I’ve been sitting for?’ and ‘must buy broccoli’ and all the rest, which are not so much blog post material…)

I’ve embarked on Clare Josa’s excellent 28 day meditation challenge. The guided meditation she recorded for the first week began with roots and branches. You ‘grow’ roots into the earth and branches up, then follow a steady pattern of inhaling through roots, exhaling through branches, inhaling through branches, exhaling through roots. I’ve found I feel the quality of the energy changing, and the opening at the tips of roots and branches: inhaling earth-strength, growing branches, inhaling light, spreading and transmuting into roots…

And then, because my monkey mind is also full of hexagrams, this reminded me of xun

and dui.

Xun is the trigram of roots: open and sensitive to what’s below. And the branches mirror that: they’re sky-roots, open above, like dui. So the two trigrams together make a kind of energy diagram of a tree and its relationship to everything around it, open below and above:

And then isn’t it funny how this hexagram, 28, turns out to be the one that mentions the growth of trees?

28.2:
‘Withered willow sprouts a shoot,
Venerable man gets a young wife.
Nothing that does not bear fruit.’
28.5:
‘Withered willow sprouts flowers,
Venerable woman gets an upright husband.
No blame, no praise.’

And the rejuvenation of the tree even parallels the way humans come back to life through relationship.

And… lines 2 and 5 are each just at the interface between solid and open, where what’s absorbed through the open roots and leaf-surfaces can be felt as part of your self.