Yi on the Secret

Unless you’ve lived under a rock for the past few months, you’ve probably heard of the Secret, and maybe gathered that it’s a creatively-marketed way of presenting the ‘Law of Attraction’. The basic idea is that whereas ‘common sense’ says that stuff happens to us, and that makes us feel certain ways and believe certain things, in fact the chain of cause and effect runs in exactly the opposite direction. What we think, feel, believe and pay attention to attracts our experience. There are variations on this idea, some more extreme than other. Some put it down just to a selection effect: if you’re paying attention to opportunities to make money, you’re more likely to do so than someone who thinks about debt all the time. At the opposite extreme, there are those who say that you create everything you experience, up to and including gravity.

So with all this debate in mind, I asked Yi to draw me a picture of how it all really works: are we creating reality, attracting it, reacting to it?

“How does inner life relate to outer experience?”

And Yi answered with Hexagram 3, Sprouting, changing to Hexagram 17, Following

In this hexagram-landscape, I think the Sprouting is our inner life, its desires and powers, and Following is how it relates to the world.

Hexagram 3 shows a growing centre putting out roots. Inner life expands into the world of experience like a germinating seed, or like a small military encampment starting to explore new territory, or like a new king setting up his feudal lords. All these are images for a tiny, known centre that reaches out and grows into the great unknown. It’s the absolute beginning of self-awareness that begin in the cradle: here I am; there are other things and other people around me; I connect with them in ever-widening circles, and sometimes they resist me.

‘Sprouting.
Creating success from the source, harvest in constancy.
Don’t use this to have a direction to go,
Harvest in establishing feudal lords.’

Creating success from the source… Yuan heng li zhen… The whole creative process is at work here. And we’re advised not to get in its way by having a ‘direction to go’. I think this has something to say about leaping from ‘I create my own reality,’ straight to ‘I intend to manifest a red Ferrari by the end of August.’ There’s a school of thought that would advise me that if I wanted a Ferrari (which I don’t), I’d actually need to get more detailed than that: specify the year, the model number, the colour of the leather seats… . And as a way to get stuff, maybe this would be ideal – but Yi isn’t recommending it as a way to grow. To set a single direction is to limit the possibilities; to fix your attention on what you want to ‘attract’ is blinkered; to reduce the power of Sprouting to visualising a new car would be a waste.

Instead, there’s harvest in establishing feudal lords. For the new king, this is a way to get more information and connections, to expand his realm of influence. It means becoming more aware, but it’s not solely a fact-finding mission; it also creates the kingdom itself. We’re not just here to explore; we’re here to create:

‘Clouds, thunder, Sprouting.
Noble one weaves with the warp.’

Here in the ferment of creation, we can still know the warp threads.

Then comes the changing line:

‘Driving a full team of horses,
Seeking marital alliance.
Going on, good fortune.
Nothing that does not bring harvest.’

The more I read this answer, the more I love it. How does inner life relate to outer experience? As a devoted suitor, who marries into his experience with everything he has. There’s no skirting shyly round the commitment here, no postponing it until life matches up to your notion of the ideal partner. The horses gleam with health, the harness shines, the suitor sets out at full gallop; ‘nothing does not bring harvest.’

Marriage is an image of profound commitment, of finding one’s place, of coming home. And also of growing that idea of ‘home’, an alliance that expands experience. As an image of inner life going to meet the world, it reminds me of those myths where the divine seeks a bride in the material world, like Zeus visiting Danae.

I think (looking round the pathway of lines, 17.4, 18.3 and 4.3) that it’s important to be the suitor who goes out wholeheartedly to make the alliance, whatever it might bring. It’s not about knowing you’ll get what you want; not to know, not to retain control, isn’t such a disaster as we might imagine. (And there is an element of fear in ‘Law of Attraction’ thinking – the need to believe that everyone attracts everything, and hence everything is ultimately under human control, and nothing ever ‘just happens’.) Real experience has more to offer than the golden effigy cast from our own limitations.

And then the Relating Hexagram, Following, shows how our inner life and awareness relates to the world ‘out there’. I think Stephen Karcher, writing on Hexagram 17 in Total I Ching, puts it uncannily well:

“Through Following, your accumulated power and virtue (de) connects with the flow of events in such a way that the spirit moves into the world through you. …Through Following… you are in direct touch with the flow of the Way. You insert yourself into the universal flow of events, the river of time, and are thus able to conform effectively and spontaneously to the unfolding of the moment.”

The ancient Chinese character for Following suggests making offering at the crossroads or the grave mound – at a place where spirit enters the landscape and you can connect with its flow. By making offering, you express willingness to Follow, to move with the river instead of pushing it.

‘Following.
Creating success from the source, harvest in constancy.
No mistake.’

Again, yuan heng li zhen. Somewhere between inner life and outer experience, creation happens. And there is no mistake – though we do tend to feel that unless we’re directing how things play out, there has to be something wrong. This hexagram often shows up when events aren’t moving at the pace we’ve chosen for them, and we’ve decided this amounts to an ‘obstacle’. (And there are any number of products and discussions out there now centring on people’s experience that intention-manifestation ‘isn’t working!’)

The noble one has more respect for the flow:

‘At the centre of the lake is thunder. Following.
In the same way, the noble one at nightfall
Goes inside for renewal and rest.’

You can’t ‘manifest’ noon at nightfall, nor yet a body that doesn’t need sleep, or a psyche that doesn’t need its creative potential renewing in the dream-lake.

So this ‘flow’ we connect with… are we creating it? Attracting it? Or just finding our place within it, like a fish in the river?

It seems clear to me that Yi isn’t just talking about a ‘subjective reality’, where our personal motivation goes thundering out over the responsive earth. That was one hexagram ago; now the motivational drive (the thunder) is internalised and has become something bigger than we are. Hexagram 17 sometimes heralds an experience of synchronicity, of being ‘led’ and offered the right openings at the right moment. It seems our awareness and desire are involved in something bigger than either.

You might think of this as aligning our will to what is. You might think of it as harnessing what is to our will, as the authors of the Dazhuan did:
“They harnessed oxen and rode horses so they could conduct heavy loads to distant places. Thus they benefited all under heaven. The idea for this probably was taken from Sui.”
So when you ride in the ox-cart, are you allowing yourself to be drawn into following, or are you actively using the power available to move great things? Does it matter? Your desire and the flow of events are going the same way; wanting to know which is the ‘cause’ and which the ‘effect’ seems a very human hang-up.