In my internet wanderings, I came across this post on the Original Faith blog that seems to capture the spirit of being Without Entanglement.
“None of this is on my time. I resent nothing and no one.
I share in the whole world by laying claim to none of it,
Tasting what is sweet and bitter even in my own life
Like a sample off a plate in someone else’s home.
I am not here to stay and know it, and I no longer have a care
Because I wish to stay sane enough to keep caring…”
Keep reading – it’s all altogether without entanglement, especially the last line.
Thanks Hilary, for giving this excerpt the extra attention. I wrote the poem as I was coming to terms with the fact that what I had was progressive – it was originally misdiagnosed (for several years) as a rare disease that people usually recover from.
My take on the spirit of hexagram 25 is that of being 100% available to respond to circumstances as they come. To being able to give oneself wholeheartedly to whatever is being done, so that one actually becomes that which is being done. No room for anything else, no room for entanglements such as hidden agendas, hopes of gain or fears of loss. In short, an uncondicional state of being there. There are two other hexagrams which somehow capture aspects of the same stance. One would be hexagram 17, ‘Following’, which is about blending with a situation, so that one flows with it effortlessly. Being able to do so would seem to implicity call for the same attributes of 25. The other one is hexagram 61, ‘connecting to the centre’ which also would seem to call for the same qualities of being described above. I would be very interested to hear your views on how these three hexagram-spirits differ.
“An unconditional state of being there” – exactly, and I imagine that’s something Paul would recognise. There’s also no room for the self-imposed ‘responsibility’ to ‘fix’ how things are.
17 is just one line away from 25, and I agree they have much in common as a way of being. I think one difference is that when Following, you have an objective in mind, some sense of the way you want things to go. Then you learn to trust that the circumstances are carrying you that way – something like those people in the Dazhuan who learned to harness oxen to carts, only most likely with invisible oxen, which may sometimes know an alternative route!
61… absolute, uncompromising presence to the inner nature of things, being penetrated to the core yourself by the truth. Hexagram 25, I think, may say, “This is not mine.” (Not my problem, not my responsibility, not for me to plan, solve or worry about.) 61 seems to me to be already feeling it all from the inside, not capable of disowning anything.
So now I have 17ed the momentum of your comment, and been carried by it to my 61-sense of some hexagrams, I will 25. These are just how the hexagrams feel to me; hopefully someone else will post their own sense of these things.
I have recently experienced all six lines changing within Hexagram 2 whilst consulting the I Ching during the last few months. This hasn’t happened once but probably more like 5 times! Should I perceive this to be a positive outcome to my question?