Today I received an email from a business contact, asking to meet me. I won’t divulge the content, but I felt very uneasy about the way it was phrased.

I would normally have asked a ‘What’s going on here’ kind of question, but I’d just been reading this thread, so I asked ‘What do these people want from me?’

35 4 23

Ouch!

What do they want FOR me?

59 1 4 10

A very interesting and illuminating reading – because I was asking about the other person’s point of view in the situation.

Thank you!

I remember being newly infatuated with the I Ching nearly 28 years ago. All of my initial questions, asked in earnest desperation (hee), were about one HIM or another, or about why this or that friend was behaving so weirdly, or WTF was wrong with *me*?!

Lots of the oracle’s responses, as I saw them then, made me say “Huh …?” — I skimmed the surface, rooting for an ANSWER. Something to TELL me WHAT TO DO! Heh.

All these years later, I do know one thing: that our most pivotal, essential questions revolve around relation. One thing the Yi always does is present some aspect of a moment … a pattern … a habit … a cycle … The oracle answers us from its elemental “self” — always inviting us to look beyond our blinkers (blinders?), and into the quest behind the question. Nowadays, when am enquiring for myself, I don’t ask a question per se — I just “know” that the larger Wisdom “sees” into every nook and cranny I’m blind to, and into all my conundrums and contradictions, and straight to the core of what matters … I trust that the oracle makes sense, because it always has. It’s *me* who often doesn’t make sense … ;-D

People who are new to divination in our culture tend to clump the I Ching in with other “parlour games” or fortune-telling media … Some folks just love to be told what to do, I suppose, and for some, it’s just a kind of silliness but they’ll give it a shot … I think that anyone who stays with the Yi (or any other oracular system) eventually becomes immersed in its depth, and comes to understand it as something profoundly different, singular, enigmatic … The Yi doesn’t mince words or fool around with reality. I truly revere the mystery of it …

A question like “What does he think?” makes me giggle — ’cause of course we can’t know what another person thinks or feels … We can guess, speculate, ruminate, drive ourselves batty in our need to KNOW.

I still find it difficult to write or speak about what the oracle “does.” When my mind gets tongue-tied, I re-read Carl Jung’s forward to Wilhelm’s translation … his thoughts on synchronicity.

And always there’s the Sage, winking back at us …

Jaliya’s last blog post..Liberation isn’t easy (Hexagram 40)

Emotions as contrasted with situations… I don’t see the contrast. In what way is an emotional condition – such as being in love, or being in conflict but not wanting to talk about it – not a ’situation’ in its own right?

Or to look at it another way, if Yi can describe an interface between query and database with 61, why couldn’t it also describe an interface between humans with 61? Or indeed an individual’s inner state of clarity?

But these are pretty much academic/rhetorical questions for me, because I see Yi talking about emotions very directly and clearly, and also with tremendous subtlety, every day of the week.

The meaning created in the moment of the reading, you talked about, is the meaning created by the *situation* of that moment. The romantic feelings do not have such meaning, because they do not really fit by themselves in the set of categories that the Zhouyi text is.

This illustrates my point that the Yi text is a categorization of *situations*. It is *primarily* about situations. That doesn’t mean that emotions or romantic feelings cannot be found out through consultation of the Yi, but it’ll always be an indirect process.

You were right about the adjustments for layout, it was indeed hex. 22 that came up all the time. The not wanting to discuss the issue from the conflict was 2.4 (enclosing is a sack) and 2.6 (dragons fighting in the open field).
I think you took the two database system situations together, while they were two separate ones. Else, I’d think 48 would have been a good one (and I seem to remember having actually received it in such a context).
- “Testing of a new built database system brings up some issues to be fixed” – 3.5 (difficulties that fertilize),
- “New built database system seems to be working reliably” – 61.0 (inner trust).

Ewald, no, I still don’t believe in lines that consistently ‘correspond to’ situations, shorn of the living connection between querent and oracle. But now you’ve stirred my curiosity for this guessing game. For adjustments to layout – 22? For database systems in general – 48? For conflict but not wanting to discuss it – 36?

(And you see, if I’m completely wrong on all three, that just proves my point. )

A situation where there is kind of a conflict, but the querant feels he hasn’t wanted to talk with the other person about what is the matter.

A situation where the testing of a new built database system brings up some issues to be fixed.

A situation where a new built database system seems to be working reliably.

Some years ago, when I was making the webpages for my online Yijing consultation, I was making small adjustments to the layout to optimize it. For testing the page and see how it looked, I just threw the virtual coins. There was one hexagram in particular that came up all the time. Which one?

IV – Mind Reading
13
Many will perhaps grant that intuitions, as outlined above, are reliable in familiar or ordinary circumstances. We are, after all, at an epistemic advantage when exacting highly particularized responses towards those we know well, since we are conversant with their individual histories and sensitive to their moods. On the other hand, much of our interactions involve persons whose histories and idiosyncrasies are relatively (if not completely) unknown. How reliable will our intuitions be in unusual situations? Even with an expansive emotional repertoire cultivated from diverse sources, our emotional stories may not ‘match’ those of strangers.
This is a considerable objection. Indeed, Confucius seems implicitly aware of it, for throughout the Analects we find him hinting at a possible solution: mind reading. As noted at the outset, propriety requires emotional ‘presence’ to be considered virtuous. This suggests that our emotions are, to a large extent, transparent. As D’arms and Jacobson observe, “in normal human psychology… the relationship between feeling an emotion and expressing it – especially in involuntary behavior such as blushing, cringing, or crying – is exceedingly tight. Moreover, others are notoriously perceptive at sensing when we are inwardly amused by their plight or attempting to conceal our anger” (D’arms and Jacobson 2000, 77-78). Nicholas Humphrey describes the relationship as one of “contingent correlation” (Humphrey 1983, 43).(8)

In several passages, Confucius directs attention to this transparency of emotions (1:3, 5:5, 5:10, 5:25, 6:16, and 8:4), and commands his disciples to remain attentive to axiological clues (2:10, 7:28, 9:24, 11:21, and 12:20). Hence, those who seek appropriateness (yi) “examine what is said, are keen observers of demeanour and are thoughtful in deferring to others” (12:20). By ‘mind reading,’ then, I mean nothing more than what we engage in everyday – inferring motives, meanings, and intentions from words, gestures and expressions. Virtuous conduct requires constant fine-tuning, and mind reading is indispensable in fine-tuning our interactions with others. Indeed, since ritual is itself a vehicle for expressing emotion, a sensitive practitioner of ritual will be effective at inferring the inner states of other advanced practitioners.

(8) Some will object that emotional expression is, to a large extent, manageable. This is true. Nevertheless, it is hard to mask expressions entirely, for prior to exercising control there is often what is called a ‘microexpression,’ or the micromomentary occurrence of a characteristic emotional response, which is subsequently replaced by deliberate control. See Griffiths (1997, 53). These microexpressions go largely undetected, though they are inescapable to trained eyes, such as those belonging to the redoubtable Stanley Tomkins. For his story, and his relationship to Paul Ekman, see Gladwell (2002).

It confirms that complex carbohydrates in the mornings have been good for my one neuron…

Luis Andrade’s last blog post..48.1 > 5, A matter of working with what’s available…

Hilary, can you tell which lines from the Yi correspond to these statements?

“He loves me,”
“He finds me attractive,”
“He adores me,”
“He loves me, but doesn’t want a relationship with me, because…,”
“He doesn’t love me.”

Heavens, no, of course I can’t. And if I hadn’t actually asked the questions and received the answer, I wouldn’t be able to tell you which hexagrams/lines can say these things, either:

“Your new script will generate a 405 error” (9.3)
“A connection in your motherboard melted, so you should get your computer sent off for repair right away.” (59.6)
“This is how she feels about going blind.” (29)

Though I could obviously suggest lines or hexagrams that might come up for each of your messages (11 for real love and 12 unchanging for the total absence thereof, for instance), lines don’t ‘correspond to’ answers in that way. The meaning is created in the moment of the reading, in the connection between querent and oracle. And I’ve never yet seen any signs that only certain meanings can be created.

Ah, I now see why these kind of fears are not mixed into “without fault” in my translation. I have “Have confidence” and “Have trust” for those phrases that others translate with “be sincere” or “be true.”

This distinguishes the superego and the trust issues.