Seeing my own life

Hexagram 20, line 5, has a cryptic brevity –

‘Seeing my own life.
The noble one is without mistake.’

– and even more so when you consider that the sixth line differs from it by just one word:

‘Seeing their lives.
The noble one is without mistake.’

As you move up through the lines of hexagram 20, Seeing, you have steadily more influence over what you see. Someone at the second line peers out from hiding, seeing many possibilities from her position off-stage. Someone at line four becomes a guest of the king in his shining city, perhaps borrowing his broader View of the world.

And at opposite extremes of the hexagram, lines 1 and 6, are the child and (it’s traditionally said) the sage. Each in their own way is ‘outside’ the situation. Children see the adult world, which controls and creates their whole experience, only from the outside. For the small person – the one who responds and adapts, and has no power to make things happen – this is no mistake. The sage also sees ‘their’ lives unfolding from the outside, like an aerial view of the flow and confluence of rivers, and knows that it isn’t about him. “Don’t take anything personally,” as Ruiz’s ‘agreement’ says.

But at line 5 I see my life. This is traditionally the ruler’s line, and it was also traditional for the good ruler to accept absolute responsibility for his kingdom and everyone in it. So in a way, at this line I must take everything personally – including other people’s behaviour. Whatever is in my life is here by my invitation and example.

I think it makes sense that both these lines say the noble one is without mistake. For the rest of us, line 6 could easily slip into cold indifference and failure of empathy (“I can’t have made you unhappy; only you can make yourself unhappy”), and line 5 into delusions of solipsistic grandeur or just a huge, futile guilt trip.

20.5 was my reading for last week. To start with, it connected with the journey of questioning and research I’ve embarked on recently, trying for a better understanding both of those people I’ve reached with Clarity, and those I haven’t. But it also gave me a fresh perspective on things that ‘happened to me’ during the week.

For starters, I won a generous prize from a forum owner, for asking a good question. Lucky, lucky me! But also – hm, this is the second time I’ve won a prize for asking a good question. Maybe there’s something in this.

Then I received an email advertising an upcoming concert by a local chamber orchestra. I know a couple of other ‘cellists who play in this somewhat select group, and who tell me about the wonderful pieces they play and soloists they play with. I asked about how people got into this orchestra, and was told it’s ‘by invitation’. I have spent years dropping broad hints about how lucky my friends are to play with this orchestra, turning an unattractive shade of pea green when I hear about their latest concert, and brooding about not being invited.

When the email came to say they were performing Beethoven’s 9th Symphony, I decided I’d felt sorry for myself for long enough. I’d give my right arm for a chance to play in that (if you see what I mean…). I contacted their organiser and asked to join. She said oh, she was sorry, she’d heard through the grapevine how very busy I was, and it had never occurred to her I might like to play. It was too late for me to play in the Beethoven, but she would put me on their list for future concerts.

So if I’d ‘seen my own life’ as my own creation years ago, and taken the initiative, I’d be preparing even now for what would surely have been one of the most beautiful musical experiences of my life.

‘Seeing my own life’ at line 5 involves Hexagram 23, Stripping Away. Observing your whole life, including how others behave towards you, and seeing all this as the truest image of who you are – or at least who you’ve been up until now – will tend to Strip you of misplaced ideas of who you are or where you’re headed.

This can be a harsh experience, but it need not be. It might feel more like the fan yao, the matching position in a line’s relating hexagram that can pinpoint your way of ‘relating’:

‘String of fish
Through the favour of the people of the house.
Nothing that does not bring harvest.’

See the relationships that make up your life. These connections might extend further and bring more blessings than you imagined possible.

Another perspective from the ‘pathway’ of lines around this one. Hexagram 19 Nears; Hexagram 20 Sees. Seeing creates a space for the emergent energy – the power, care and warmth – of Nearing; it invites it in, draws it out. There’s a mutual relationship here – it reminds me of Rilke’s first Sonnet to Orpheus, where he says that Orpheus’s song created for the wild animals a ‘temple in hearing’. (That feels to me like the same temple where the ablution is made, but not yet the offering.)

On a smaller scale, we can see the same relationship between each pair of lines: 20.5 invites and responds to 19.2,

‘Influence nearing, good fortune.
Nothing that does not bring harvest.’

‘Seeing my own life.
The noble one is without mistake.’

Hexagram 23 stripped out a lot of clutter of dead ideas about what you were really creating or intending. Into the new space it opened up, Nearing Returns, and awareness grows, as ‘influence’. This is the name of Hexagram 31, with all its associations of being opened and moved by an inner connection. When you see your own life, you’ll see – and foster – your own growing presence within it in this form: open, connected, moved and moving.