Ways to involve the I Ching in decision making

It’s a cliché of every I Ching introduction: the oracle is an aid to decision-making. Of course, it’s also perfectly true. Historically, the ancient Chinese divined on decisions about marriage, warfare, whether to open the fields, what to offer to the ancestors. Nowadays people consult the I Ching on which job to take, whether to buy a house, whether to stick with a relationship or leave it. It comes naturally to us to start out with what to do, and come afterwards to questions of how.

Taking decisions means contemplating possible futures. What will life be like if I make this commitment? What lies further down this road? We try to project our imagination further along the path, envisage the possibilities. And, of course, we can easily get ourself lost in a maze of ‘what if’s, disoriented by fear and desire.

Asking an oracle, ‘What if I did this?’ is a way to make these projections more grounded, more accurate. But it’s actually more than that: if we participate deeply in the reading, it will also get the whole decision-making process out of the maze-like intellectual process, into the realm of intuition and unconscious where – for complex questions – it really belongs. We can feel the quality of a decision, and know whether it resonates with us.

Which leads to another way the oracle helps with decisions. The experience of I Ching reading tends to lead to the conclusion that it’s usually not a question of ‘good outcome’ or ‘bad outcome’, but whether that outcome is right for the querent. Some people leap at the chance to make Hexagram 46’s optimistic commitment; others look at the same hexagram and recognise this is just not something they’re willing to undertake. Some flinch from the unpredictability and disruption of Hexagram 44; others embrace it. And so on.

Maybe the question isn’t so much, ‘What would happen if I did this?’ – maybe it’s more a question of, ‘What would it mean for me to do this?’ If decisions are acts of self-expression (Steve Pavlina), maybe we consult with the oracle to clarify our sense of who or what we’d be expressing in following a particular path.

The ideal decision would bring inner and outer worlds into harmony. The interesting thing, though, is that this is rarely a once-for-all affair. We tell ourselves the story that we take a decision once, and then act on it – when in fact, we have to keep on deciding.

The decision to write a book (Mark Silver’s example at the above link) needs re-making regularly. The decision to be in a relationship is continuous. It seems to me that this is about remembering yourself, being the person who took the original decision. (And knowing to change the decision if you become a new person…) How can the I Ching help with this? Well, it all seems to boil down to a basic decision to stay awake…