Turnaround in Hexagram 39

Hexagram 39 is called ‘Difficulties’ or ‘Limping’. It describes the experience of a perpetual uphill struggle: just one thing after another, grinding on and on, battling with handicaps or with the elements or with an unforgivingly inhospitable world…

…and it also describes the moment when you turn this around.

I’ve told the story of Gun and Yu before: how Gun ultimately failed in his heroic struggle to conquer the floods single-handed, and how his body was laid out on the summit of Feather Mountain, where he was transformed into a turtle and Yu was born from his belly. Hexagram 39 is associated with Yu, the ‘limping hero’ with the ‘going and coming’ dance – but I find it resonates most strongly with Yu’s birth from Gun.

The oracle for Hexagram 39 says,

‘Limping. Harvest in the southwest,
No harvest in the northeast.
Harvest in seeing great people.
Constancy, good fortune.’

To go southwest suggests – amongst other things – seeking out allies, like Yu did. The Zhou people found their allies in the southwest, before they followed their unique mandate northeast. Also, in the ‘King Wen’ arrangement of the trigrams, southwest is the direction of earth, while the mountain stands in the northeast. A picture starts to emerge: fall back and head for level ground; become a bit more receptive and not quite so rock-solid in your determination.

The Commentary on the oracle makes it still clearer: ‘No harvest in the northeast: your path (dao) peters out.’ Going northeast is like trekking determinedly up a mountain alone, while the path dwindles away under your feet. Tremendously heroic, but maybe not so clever. A 180 degree turn would take you southwest. Yi’s gently suggesting that if life is an uphill struggle, you could always try going the other way.

The authors of the Image develop this idea, borrowing a key word from the third line, ‘coming back, turnaround’:

‘Above the mountain is the stream. Limping.

Noble one turns her self around to renew her de.’

This word for ‘turning around’ really does mean a complete change: turning something over, returning, rebelling, turning upside-down or inside-out. It seems to me to epitomise the key moment of Hexagram 39. It’s often the time when you really start to feel the weight of whatever trouble/ problem/ block you’ve been dragging up the mountain with you. And instead of just trudging on with it in tow, assuming it’ll work itself out somehow, you stop, and look at it, and resolve to do something differently.

I find that often just asking myself how I could see this differently will start the inner ‘turnaround’. But if that fails to shift anything, then Byron Katie’s The Work is a very simple, very powerful way to ‘turn yourself around and renew your de.’ (See the videos linked from the home page – a whole lot of de is being renewed there.)

Clouds rise above the mountain; the stream will flow down it. The mountain is the place to be transformed and reborn by turning round and flowing like the stream. There’s no more efficient, powerful way to turn the height of the mountain itself into forward momentum.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 11th, 2008 at 7:54 pm and is filed under I Ching, Interpreting hexagrams. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

5 Responses to “Turnaround in Hexagram 39”

Maurey Says:
December 13th, 2008 at 12:02 pm
I just got 39 as a relating hexagram around a well-worn situation that I’ve been asking about. And yes, I did feel strongly that I just need to stop looking at it and let it go… turning around and going in another direction is what needs to happen!
Hilary Says:
December 13th, 2008 at 7:45 pm
‘Stop looking at it and let it go’ – I think that’s the tipping point between 39 and 40. 39: look at the obstruction/burden/handicap/struggle, hard, and then do something different. 40: the moment of doing something different – namely, only doing the things that have a real ‘direction to go’. Forgiveness, the knots are untied, the storm breaks, tension is released.

That tipping point between 39 and 40 is actually clearly visible in a lot of the Byron Katie videos.
Gene Says:
December 14th, 2008 at 2:47 am
hey Hilary

You really did a good job on that 39 to 40 business. Often we beat ourselves against the wall over and over again, because the key is so often, never give up. But it is precisely at the moment that we do give up, and go a different direction, that the energy opens up and we achieve what we so strived for for so long. Sometimes it is important just to recognize the futility of a situation, and go a different direction, then there is a cloudburst and blessings flow down. We achieve release from the tension, and we are free to start again. There is somewhat of a variation on this in hexagram 3 and 4, with tension in hexagram 3, but the rain comes down, and eventually flows to the foot of the mountain. We give up struggling ourselves, and get the help of a teacher.

Gene
Ann Says:
December 15th, 2008 at 6:08 pm
When I read your blog on 39 Hilary, I thought ‘That’s what my working life’s like now – time for change’. But couldn’t think what to do or how to change things. Today I asked the YI ‘What can I expect at work?’ And Yi said 39 1,2,3, 5 => 19. I just had to laugh.

So now all I have to work out is – what to do differently?!?

I think I’ll go and look at Byron’s website!
Glenroy Wolfsen Says:
December 19th, 2008 at 2:57 pm
Yes – all of this…and when I read Wilhelm on this, I am reminded of another meaning (that strikes me)…it is turning inward…i.e., finding within ourselves resources deeper than the “conditioned” learning that the “Family” (37) can sometimes keep us in – this the necessity of leaving the famiily (38) and finding ourselves “alone” and not up to taking our place in the “real world.” So 39 is a Pivot I agree. My emphasis is on therefore a “turning” or even a “return” to the inner what lets us step into deliverance (40). Letting go of the past, the conditioned, the concensis reality, etc. It also reminds of me two things in the Western Tradition – one is the Hebrew Term, “Techuza” which means a turn around – and a return – and the other equivalent term is (in English) “repent”…but in the Greek it means a complete reversal/change of mind-heart. So to evolve from 39 to 40 means (in part) the willingness to turn and return to the Source what dwells within/without which has not suffered by taking up anything that is not authentically ourselves.
- Glen

Hilary Barrett, I Ching