Hexagram 35: Advancing, Prospering, Flourishing – I love getting this one in readings and introducing people to it.
‘Prospering, Prince Kang used a gift of horses to breed a multitude.
He mated them three times in one day.’
(There are other possible translations – it could be that Kang was received at audience by the ruler three times in one day – but this one, based on Richard Rutt’s Zhouyi, holds together best.)
Prince Kang was the younger brother of Wu, the ‘martial king’ who conquered the Shang and established the Zhou dynasty. Royal brothers were by no means always supportive of one another’s ambitions, but Kang lent Wu his loyal and unswerving support, and Wu rewarded him with a gift of horses. Kang, instead of just sitting and admiring his gift, set to work to use and increase it.
So this is a hexagram about gifts and blessings: receiving them, making the most of them, multiplying them. And at its core – its nuclear hexagram, the heart or seed-kernel or inner work of the original hexagram – is Hexagram 39: Difficulties.
This is the hexagram of uphill struggle and ‘limping’, a time to draw back towards the southwest to find sympathetic allies. It’s full of reminders of Yu the Great, the limping hero who laboured for most of his life to overcome the great floods.
Gifts, blessings, flourishing, lucky Prince Kang. Difficulties, struggle, limping, the labours of Yu. What’s the connection?
I just saw it explained very simply in this video
from Michelle and CK at ‘Divine Purpose Unveiled’. They’re talking about life purpose, and specifically about what they call ‘life purpose myth #1’: that if you have a purpose at all, it must be obvious, and it must be easy.
The part that reminded me of Difficulties at the heart of Advancing comes somewhere near the middle, when they start talking about Barbara Streisand. (I would have put her in the blog post title too, but it was getting too long…) Receiving gifts is a wonderful thing, and perhaps a purposeful life will flow easily from there – or perhaps it won’t. Gifts are things you work with – hard – and they often seem to present people with opportunities to discover whole new fears, obstacles and ‘learning experiences’. Life purpose might be hidden away at the heart of the gifts and opportunities, and awkwardly disguised as work.
You can download Michelle and CK’s complete report on 7 ‘life purpose myths’ here (also featuring 8 lies and 35 excuses, for good measure!). It’s free – you just need to subscribe, and they don’t do anything bad with your email address. Worth a look.
(Full disclosure: if you click this link and subsequently buy the life purpose ecourse they’re about to launch any day now, they pay me a commission, which helps to fund my out-of-control book habit.)