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Divination tips

‘DIY’ tips for I Ching divination

Being, doing, having – and questions for the I Ching

It’s something of a truism that the cosmos works in this sequence: be – do – have. Who you are leads to what you do which leads (by a more or less direct path! 😉 ) to what you get. Also well-known is that universal human tendency to get this very precisely backwards:
‘If I had lots of money I could do what I want and then I would be happy.’
(If you haven’t come across this before, try googling “be do have”, for about 4,450 pages making the same point.)

So where in this sequence do we usually break in with questions for the I Ching? Unfortunately, there’s a huge great cultural misconception that divination can only approach the ‘have’ end of the sequence. I suppose it’s the popular cliché of the fortune-teller in her tent, with headscarf, greasy card pack, etc: she tells you what you’ll get. (Then you go away and wait until you have it before doing anything different.)

Repeated questions rant

Yes, occasionally there are good reasons for asking Yi the same question again.

But here is what usually happens with repeated questions:

A kinder I Ching?

An email from Quinn in New Zealand, about I Ching translations:

“I have been throwing the I-ching for years, My father taught me how, and I have to say I nearly drove myself crazy.

It’s almost unintelligible, sometimes I get the sense that by the time you understood it in its entirety you wouldn’t need it any more, and if you had the right view of things, you wouldn’t need it at all, or any oracle for that matter.

The Richard Wilhelm version is quite terrible for someone like me who is already quite self judgemental, and can make you feel really worthless. I know in a sense it’s your ego resisting, but would it not make more sense to write an interpretation of the hexagrams that would not fire up the ego, aggravating the problem, and would be compassionate of the fact that none of us can really expect to be truly enlightened. We do our best.

I Ching and business

An email that arrived the other day…

“Hi

I was recently introduced to the IChing by some good friends and I am very pleased with its content and outlook on life.

Bearing in mind that the IChing constantly mentions the ‘collective ego’ as the main obstacle to the true self – how do I approach business areas from an IChing point of view i.e. if I try my best to earn money then it is my ego which is getting involved and not my true self.

So, can the IChing be applied to business at all or is it simply a matter of doing one’s best to get to the true self and let the sage handle all money areas ?