An email that arrived the other day…
“Hi
I was recently introduced to the IChing by some good friends and I am very pleased with its content and outlook on life.
Bearing in mind that the IChing constantly mentions the ‘collective ego’ as the main obstacle to the true self – how do I approach business areas from an IChing point of view i.e. if I try my best to earn money then it is my ego which is getting involved and not my true self.
So, can the IChing be applied to business at all or is it simply a matter of doing one’s best to get to the true self and let the sage handle all money areas ? Do we just concentrate on applying the wisdom of the IChing to ourselves and others and let the IChing handle other areas such as subsistence and health etc. This is the clear message I get from the IChing.
I would appreciate some clarification on these areas.
Thanks
Pete”
First: the I Ching does not ‘constantly mention the collective ego’.
It doesn’t even mention it once.
Now, Carol Anthony and Hanna Moog in their I Ching: Oracle of the Cosmic Way do indeed talk about ego and collective ego incessantly. Maybe they have a point – but let’s disentangle the voice of the oracle from the ideas of its commentators as best we can.
It’s certainly natural to read much of the oracle as describing voices from different parts of the self: your inner king, general, farmer, suitor, child, wife… And sometimes it points to a moment of choice: who do you want to be today? I’m not convinced that these weighty moral pronouncements about the One True Self have much to do with Yi, however.
Then there is another either/or divide I would like to dismantle: either ‘ego making money’ or ‘true self’. Some hyper-successful business ‘guru’, I think it may have been Jay Abraham, said that the way to financial success is not to ask,
‘How can I make more money?’
but to ask
‘How can I be more help?’
– and forget about the money. (And ‘How can I be more help?’ seems like an excellent question to ask Yi.) I suspect that the ‘ego’ (in the derogatory sense that Carol A uses the word) is not much good at helping people, and hence not much good at making money, either.
So in the long term, maybe the real world doesn’t allow for that Great Divide between making money and the true self. One thing I am sure of is that the voice of the real world – Yi – doesn’t observe it.
I’ve never had a sustained conversation with Yi where it failed to talk to my true self, and I have had lots of conversations with Yi about business over the years.
It’s helped me build good relationships with programmers and friends, colleagues and ‘competitors’.
It’s given me a better idea of what people need me to provide for them, and helped me choose price points for new offers. (This is surprisingly tricky when you’re selling something new.)
It’s provided painfully accurate critiques of my writing, and firmly brought me back to reality when I started hatching unworkable schemes.
It’s pointed out flaws in the widespread militaristic attitude to selling, and helped me choose better people to learn from when I was starting out.
It’s guided me to understand which people I can best help, and who I can’t, and it’s helped me deal with clients whose personal problems were beyond me.
It’s deterred me from spending money on things I don’t need, and encouraged me to get on and buy the things I do. (It’s also encouraged me to quit asking it about minor purchase decisions when I can perfectly well do the research and make up my own mind anyway 😉 .)
This blog would likely still be on my list of things I ‘could maybe do someday’ were it not for some incisive comments from Yi, and there would probably be some unspeakable clunky ‘points’ system for access to the I Ching Community if Yi hadn’t given me 42.5 at a crucial moment in Clarity’s very early days.
…and so on…
There’s no part of your life where you ‘shouldn’t’ ask for Yi’s advice, and nothing it won’t help you with.