Hilary Barrett, I Ching

As I’ve mentioned before, I first got to know Hexagram 14, Great Possession, through volunteering. When I was just getting started with Yi, I asked about volunteering in general and about various individual opportunities, and received 14 again and again in the answers. What I came to love about volunteering was how great things arose [...]

“What an abyss of uncertainty whenever the mind feels that some part of it has strayed beyond its own borders; when it, the seeker, is at once the dark region through which it must go seeking, where all its equipment will avail it nothing. Seek? More than that: create. It is face to face with [...]

I’ve been listening to Clarissa Pinkola Estés talking about creativity and telling stories (always a good idea). She talked about that time when an artist becomes utterly obsessed by his (or her) art: the work is so perfect, so beautiful, so right, that nothing else matters. The artist forgets all about food, sleep, bills, family [...]

I’ve been reading Multiplicity: the new science of personality by Rita Carter. I’m only part way through, so this isn’t a good representation of the book, just half an idea that struck as I was reading. The basic thesis of the book is this: your character as an individual is not so ‘individual’ (ie indivisible) [...]

This is from Havi at Fluent Self, who once again is writing about Yi without knowing it. This time she’s unwittingly explaining Hexagram 11, line 1, as a matter of fractal flowers. Hexagram 11 is about Flow, working with it or creating it or stepping into it. There is no issue here with lack of [...]

On the one hand, ‘Already Across’ is certainly a good, literal translation of the name of Hexagram 63. The old character for ‘already’ shows someone turned away from a food pot, implying a completed action. The historical resonances of the book as a whole imply that this is the moment when the Zhou have already [...]

This morning I picked up a book at random, opened it at random, and found myself reading what Thomas Moore has to say about jealousy in Care of the Soul. He relates it to the myth of Hippolytus, a young man who was a devotee of the goddess Artemis, something of a misogynist, avoided women [...]