About a month ago, I turned to Yi in complete frustration. I’d been listening to podcasts from Steve and Erin Pavlina, both talking about how enthusiastically they leapt out of bed in the early morning, eager to get to their work, because they knew their purpose in life. And I thought – this is well and good, but I know my purpose, I’m even inspired by my purpose, I’m doing work I want to do – but I still don’t have anything like that level of energy, commitment and sheer joy in life. And I want it! So how is it done? What will it take?
Yi answered with Hexagram 39, moving at lines 2 and 5 to 46.
In difficulties – limping onward – yet pushing upward. That summarised the two minds I was in perfectly: the context of determination and self-belief, that if I set out and kept going I’d get where I wanted to be. And the sense of limping, struggling uphill, and wanting to curl up in a small hut and surround myself with insulation. (See LiSe’s explanation of hexagram 39.)
‘Limping. Harvest in the southwest,
No harvest in the northeast.
Harvest in seeing great people.
Constancy, good fortune.’
In the northeast is the sense of a solitary, individual calling. In the southwest are like-minded people and potential allies. If the book had leapt off the table and clapped me on the ear, it couldn’t have been clearer. Stop trying to do it all on your own. Go and do what you said you’d do months ago, and form a mastermind group – for mutual support, encouragement, and accountability.
I knew this’d mean a considerable personal turnaround: it doesn’t come naturally to me to draw attention or try to start a group. But then personal turnaround was precisely what I was asking for.
With line 2 –
‘King, servant, limping, limping.
In no way is her person the cause.’
– I felt Yi was offering me some comfort. I’m in the service of something very big, very awkward, something a whole lot of people have described as a marketing nightmare of the first order. Finding it hard doesn’t mean there’s ‘something wrong with me’.
And with line 5 –
‘In great difficulties, partners come.’
– I felt Yi was making sure I didn’t miss the point. 😉
…
So – at last, after months of finding other things to do or finding reasons why I wasn’t ready – I put out a request for group members. Over the next few weeks, one came together. And I’m not quite leaping out of bed in the mornings yet, but it’s somehow seemed natural to restore some old, positive habits and lose some draining ones, and somehow I’m losing interest in curling up in the hut (or under the duvet) and starting to look forward to next year.
These are just the beginnings: we’ve just had our second meeting this week. I asked Yi before I got on the phone for something to hold in mind during the meeting – and received Hexagram 39, with the fifth line changing. Sure enough, most of us were ‘limping’ in one way or another, and partners in such times bring not just support, but the momentum for a change of direction.
Anyway… this is just one of those small examples of a reading motivating action and causing (aptly enough) change.