Making use of seeing the great person

I love reading new commentaries on hexagrams – even when the author is unaware even of the existence of the hexagram his work illuminates.

This time the hexagram is 46: Pushing Upward, a figure of aspiration and steady, step-by-step progress towards a goal. The article is by Norman Barlow, and entitled ‘How to Discover your Purpose in Life‘. He may have written this as general advice, but I think it would be of particular help to anyone who’d received hexagram 46 from Yi.

‘Pushing upward, creating success from the source.
Make use of seeing great people.
No doubts.
Set forth to the south, good fortune.’

Several other hexagrams – including this one’s Pair, Gathering – say there is li in seeing great people: it’s fruitful, effective, it brings harvest. But only this hexagram advises you to make use of your seeing. This word means to employ, use, apply. Not being a scholar of Chinese, I don’t know how much weight to place on this difference. The sense I have of it, though, is that in Hexagram 46 in particular, the emphasis is not just on the benefits of seeing the great person, but of taking that vision or encounter and putting its energy to work.

In fact, I think there’s a very coherent, persuasive evolution of ideas in this text.

To forge onward and upward, Yi says, to move to another level of possibility, you need to start from the source of inspiration and creativity, and begin to involve this in your daily life to good effect. And a first step is to ‘see great people’. That is, either literally to meet people whose example you can follow, or to have a clear mental vision of your own potential. This will create a tension between your life now, and the person you want to be, that’s a source of energy in itself.

The first part of Norman Barlow’s article is about imagining a future self.

“I believe that most of us could create a picture of who we would like to be in the future, and, in most cases, we would choose descriptions that would be positive and push us beyond who we currently think we are.”

He describes an exercise called ‘The life you have always dreamed of living.’ Unsurprisingly enough, it’s a visualisation exercise, to make that possible future real to you. (This, I think, is what ‘seeing great people’ is for, whether you see them in the flesh or with your mind’s eye.)

When he did this exercise himself, he found that in his envisioned life, he was a popular motivational speaker and published author. In his real life, he was neither of these things, nor yet on any path that might lead to them.
And so he continues:

“I could have become overwhelmed and depressed since my dream life seemed so impossible to achieve.”

This is natural enough: tension between your present reality and what you aspire to can be motivating, or it can just as easily lead to depression and anxiety. And as you face this difference, Yi is right there waiting for you: ‘No doubts.’ Don’t worry. Instead, set your face towards the light – the south, the realm of light and work – and move forward.

Norman Barlow writes:

“I did not start out writing a book. I contacted the local newspaper in town and asked them if I could write a weekly article called Moments of Motivation. I knew the task of writing a book would be overwhelming to me; however, I started out small and did what I could with what I had and where I was, to get me headed in the direction I wanted to go.”

And so he recommends that when you’ve completed the ‘Life you have always dreamed of living’ exercise – when you have your vision of great people before your mind’s eye – that you ask yourself:

“What small step could I take on a consistent basis that would take me in the direction I want to go?

What kind of person do I need to become in order to live out my dream? What changes can I make right now to begin making progress toward becoming such a person?

In what ways can I ‘bloom where I am planted’?”

Or as the Daxiang puts it – in the same image, of a growing plant –

‘Centre of the earth gives birth to wood. Pushing upward.
In the same way, the noble one with patient de,
Builds up small things to attain the lofty and great.’