Tiger Bites Toddler

[autumn]

The Yi has a sense of humor..

Last night as I was undressing my almost-two-year old I was horrified to see a terrible scratch on her chest. I asked her what happened and she pointed and nodded her head and said some things that I couldn't understand. Her nursery school will always notify me with an incident report if anything at all happens to her during the day, so I could not figure out what could have happened, and immediately worried someone had mistreated her. After she went to bed I asked the I-ching what had happened to my baby. The answer:

10.2.3. (13)

As soon as I saw this, I thought, oh, another baby did it. The answer is quite funny, though. The answer was about what did happen, so 13 becomes the backdrop, or setting. This happened among her peers. Hexagram 10 refers to the active elements of the context, and is about social order and behavior. (How to behave on the playground).The lines explain the dynamics of the incident.

Line 2- A lonely sage remains withdrawn from the bustle of life, treading the easy, smooth course. (I want to play alone. Don't bother me. I do not want to share my toy!)
Line 3- Another actor enters the scene and challenges the protagonist. A battle on behalf of the greater cause ensues. In the course of this worthy battle, misfortune. Treading on the tail of a tiger. The tiger bites the man. (This is my toy and I will fight you for it. The other baby scratches.)

This morning, her teacher had an incident report waiting for me that the afternoon teacher had forgotten. In fact, she had been in a fight with another baby over a toy. She didn't tell me who started the fight, though.

[sparhawk]

This morning, her teacher had an incident report waiting for me that the afternoon teacher had forgotten. In fact, she had been in a fight with another baby over a toy. She didn't tell me who started the fight, though.

Holly cow! The account is hilarious!! That goes to show the Yi is overflowing with humor.

I would get a set of three of those oversized chinese coins they sell on eBay (oversized so she cannot swallow them and choke...) and hang them on her neck. A two pronged approach to her safety: 1. she would have a chance to consult the Yi about her playmates; 2. she can swing the coins over her head and keep angry playmates at bay... :D

L

[autumn]

A two pronged approach to her safety: 1. she would have a chance to consult the Yi about her playmates; 2. she can swing the coins over her head and keep angry playmates at bay...

LOL..:rofl:

That's a perfect idea.

[lightangel]

This is so cute! :)

[hollis]

In fact, she had been in a fight with another baby over a toy. She didn't tell me who started the fight, though.

Or the toy, a little stuffed tiger!:D

[hilary]

I imagine a playground-full of mini-tiggers! I love the 'scalability' of Yi.

[rosada]

I love the fact that the second hexagram was 13. Fellowship with Men. Like, after working through their issues they become best friends?

[dobro]

After she went to bed I asked the I-ching what had happened to my baby. The answer:

10.2.3. (13)

The answer was about what did happen, so 13 becomes the backdrop, or setting. This happened among her peers. Hexagram 10 refers to the active elements of the context, and is about social order and behavior.

Hilary, you take the relating hexagram to be the context, don't you?

[hilary]

Yes. But 'context' is a woolly word. Maybe 'what it's about for you' puts it best. The issue for Autumn's tiggerette would be harmony or the lack of it between people. What actually happened involved learning how close it's safe to get to the tiger in this context.

[autumn]

Really interesting ideas! Thank you.

http://www.babyanimalz.com/images/baby_tiger03.jpg

Looks like these two have achieved harmony again.

[hilary]

:eek: Argh! Cuteness overload alert!

[dobro]

Cuteness in excelsis.

Hilary - are you familiar with the figure/ground idea in Gestalt? Is that how you see main and relating hexes?

[hilary]

Ugh?
Erm, no, not in the least bit familiar. What is the figure/ground idea in Gestalt? What's Gestalt?

[autumn]

Gestalt is German for 'whole'. It is a Psychology of perception. It studies the whole perceptive experience without de-constructing thought. It's very interesting. You know those black and white pictures where one image fades into the other? Those come from Gestalt Psychology.

[autumn]

http://www.jaist.ac.jp/~g-kampis/ActiveP/gestalt.gif

[dobro]

Yeah, take the above picture for instance. Sometimes it looks like birds turning into fish, and sometimes it looks like fish turning into birds. Other times it looks like someone walking up a flight of stairs, but if he keeps going suddenly it looks like he's walking down a flight of stairs.

Oh sorry... wrong picture...

[dobro]

Ugh?
Erm, no, not in the least bit familiar. What is the figure/ground idea in Gestalt? What's Gestalt?

Figure's what you notice, ground is the background or context of what you notice. That's the dumb explanation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gestalt_psychology

Here's a better explanation, with fun pictures.

Anyway, I thought that your take on primary and relating hexes might be the same as Gestalt figure and ground, and I was interested in which you compared to which. But I can't do that now. Cuz you don't know about Gestalt. Pooh.

[rosada]

I always thought the term Gestalt meant The Whole Exeprience which might be different from the particulars thus, "The funeral was meant to be very peaceful, but just as they were saying the final prayer's a fire alarm went off so the actual Gestalt was very unsettling."

[dobro]

You're probably right. I've never studied it. But somebody once described the figure/ground thing to me and if that's what Hilary sees as the primary/relating relationship, I'll look into it some more.

[martin]

I always thought the term Gestalt meant The Whole Exeprience which might be different from the particulars thus, "The funeral was meant to be very peaceful, but just as they were saying the final prayer's a fire alarm went off so the actual Gestalt was very unsettling."

It has this meaning also in Gestalt psychology. 'Gestalt' is originally a German word that means something like 'whole'.
Generally the Gestalt, the whole that we perceive, is more than its parts, because the parts can be organized in different ways. The picture that Autumn posted illustrates this. Depending on how we organize the details we see a young woman or an old woman.
So we have two Gestalts although the parts are exactly the same. But the meaning of the parts is different in the two Gestalts.

Gestalt psychology (not to be confused with Gestalt therapy, a therapy that is partly based on the insights of Gestalt psychology) studies the laws of Gestalt formation, the principles that we use to create Gestalts.
Figure-ground is one of these laws: our perceptual Gestalts are organized in such a way that some parts are perceived as belonging to a figure or figures (foreground) while other parts are perceived as belonging to the (back)ground.

The following well known picture shows that also in this respect the whole is more than the parts, because we can 'figure-ground' the same parts in different ways. In the picture we see either two faces as the figure or a vase. What is foreground in one Gestalt is background in the other.

[lightofreason]

You're probably right. I've never studied it. But somebody once described the figure/ground thing to me and if that's what Hilary sees as the primary/relating relationship, I'll look into it some more.

The forground/background dynamic reflects issues of our consciousness being limited in it scope re meaning. See

http://members.iimetro.com.au/~lofting/myweb/wavedicho.html

The illusions of sensory paradox reflect the 'complex line drawing' that is the whole and the focusing of attention to bring a pattern into the foreground and so out of context to be interpreted as something it is not>

See comments and examples in http://members.iimetro.com.au/~lofting/myweb/paradox.html

All of this feeds into the XOR/AND dynamics etc where these paradoxes are the price we pay for high precision.

[parasio]

Gestalt is German for 'whole'. It is a Psychology of perception. It studies the whole perceptive experience without de-constructing thought. It's very interesting. You know those black and white pictures where one image fades into the other? Those come from Gestalt Psychology.

Hi, there are many connotations of the german "Gestalt":

- build
- conformations
- design
- figure
- form
- likeness
- shape
- coherent perception

But isn't "whole" or only in the meaning: as a whole

Bye

[autumn]

The word "whole" is a valid, though perhaps subtely incomplete, description of the fundamental perceptual phenomenon Gestalt Psychology focuses on.

http://chd.gmu.edu/immersion/knowledgebase/strategies/cognitivism/gestalt/gestalt.htm

Gestalt theory focused on the mind’s perceptive processes (Kearsley, 1998). The word "Gestalt" has no direct translation in English, but refers to "a way a thing has been gestellt ; i.e., ‘placed,’ or ‘put together’"; common translations include "form" and "shape" (EB: "Gestalt Psychology", 1999). Gaetano Kanizca refers to it as "organized structure" (Moore, Fitz, 1993). Gestalt theorists followed the basic principle that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. In other words, the whole (a picture, a car) carried a different and altogether greater meaning than its individual components (paint, canvas, brush; or tire, paint, metal, respectively). In viewing the "whole," a cognitive process takes place – the mind makes a leap from comprehending the parts to realizing the whole

[dobro]

Figure-ground is one of these laws: our perceptual Gestalts are organized in such a way that some parts are perceived as belonging to a figure or figures (foreground) while other parts are perceived as belonging to the (back)ground.

Okay, so if that's the case, then which is figure and ground when you look at primary and relating hexagram? Or does the figure/ground idea not apply to your understanding of Yi hexes?

[hilary]

It doesn't quite seem to want to fit whichever way round I look at it. The relating hexagram's a 'background', but in the sense of providing a personal context. It's often the first part of a reading someone can recognise and identify with - and from what you good people have written, that doesn't sound like 'ground'.

Maybe the 'problem' is that personal perspective and attention shifts within a reading so much. Eventually the lines would become 'figure' and the whole framework described by both hexagrams would become 'ground'.

[rinda]

hmm... the art of Martin Escher comes to mind also.

Rinda

[bruce_g]

It doesn't quite seem to want to fit whichever way round I look at it. The relating hexagram's a 'background', but in the sense of providing a personal context. It's often the first part of a reading someone can recognise and identify with - and from what you good people have written, that doesn't sound like 'ground'.

Maybe the 'problem' is that personal perspective and attention shifts within a reading so much. Eventually the lines would become 'figure' and the whole framework described by both hexagrams would become 'ground'.

Wonderfully said, imo. That's why I can't answer 'the relating hex. means This.'

I mostly perceive and apply it as the contextual background, but that background can also extend into the future, and I believe that's where the notion of "future hexagram" comes from. I picture a strip of carpet which is rolled out – the shown path to tread. Sometimes the path of the reading is brought to completion, the matter is resolved. Sometimes the path of the reading continues on into the not yet, and that involves our relative future. Since we perform as a player on this path, the future becomes something liquid, something we may be able to affect or change.

[bruce_g]

In contrast, the primary hex. represents (for me) “the story within the story”, the plot of the reading, and the playbook: showing possibilities and potentials. It gives the tools and methods you have to work with, to meet or change the future. Even 5 seconds into the future.

[sparhawk]

Hey, y'all!! I liked the baby's perspective on this much better. She had immediate concerns and for her "Gestalt" is another word for "Gerber"... :rofl:

L

[martin]

Okay, so if that's the case, then which is figure and ground when you look at primary and relating hexagram? Or does the figure/ground idea not apply to your understanding of Yi hexes?

I always first look if the relating hexagram somehow reflects the question or what the question was about. Or more in general if it reflects the situation or state of mind of the questioner.
I think it usually does.
In this case the relating hexagram was 13 and I suppose Autumn was indeed asking 'about 13', i.e. about what had happened socially, relationally, in terms of group dynamics, union of babies :) or the lack of it, etcetera.

Not sure about figure-ground in this case. If we call 13 the 'ground' there is a problem, as Hilary pointed out. We can focus on any object (including a relating hexagram) and make that our figure. So what is figure and what is (part of the) ground at a given moment depends on us. It is not something that is 'out there', although our figure-ground configuration may be partly conditioned by what is out there. It is hard to not make a figure of loud noise, for example.

But even if we later focus on the relating hexagram, perhaps the first hexagram is still something like a 'natural' figure, an object that like the loud noise (but not because it is so noisy) invites focus?
I certainly tend to focus on the first hexagram if the relating hex indeed seems to reflect the question or the situation/state of the questioner. In that case I see it as the answer.

[autumn]

There's nothing for me to really add to what Hilary, Bruce and Martin have said, but perhaps you would like to know that "13" is what instantly spoke to me about the situation, and was the key to understanding the rest of the reading. As soon as I saw that 13 was the relating hexagram, I knew instantly that my daughter hadn't been hurt by an adult or hadn't accidentally hurt herself. 13 said to me, "this happened within a context of being with others who are socially similar to her". The dynamics of the situation were 10 (behavioral, ranking) dynamics.

When I asked the question, my 'gaze' was directed backwards, not forward. Something had already happened, and because of that, I expected the second hexagram to reflect the energy being 'grounded' in the past (but using the term in a much different way than in the principle of figure/ground in perceptual psychology). Had I been asking about the future, I would have expected the second hexagram to reflect a potential future path unfolding from the dynamics reflected in the first hexagram.

Reification is a principle of Gestalt psychology that is more directly analogous to what is going on in a reading. An explanation of it is provided in the first link posted in this thread, on Wikipedia. In fact, I have a theory that all "inspired" texts that are imbued with inherent meanings were inspired from the bottom-up instead of the top-down through collective reification.

[my_key]

Gestalt ? - I thought that this was simply about living in teh NOW.

[martin]

That is what Gestalt therapy is about, not Gestalt psychology.
Even in the now we have to makes distinctions sometimes. :)

[lightofreason]

There's nothing for me to really add to what Hilary, Bruce and Martin have said, but perhaps you would like to know that "13" is what instantly spoke to me about the situation, and was the key to understanding the rest of the reading. As soon as I saw that 13 was the relating hexagram, I knew instantly that my daughter hadn't been hurt by an adult or hadn't accidentally hurt herself. 13 said to me, "this happened within a context of being with others who are socially similar to her". The dynamics of the situation were 10 (behavioral, ranking) dynamics.


From the non-traditional perspective, any methodology recruits the whole IC as a source of meaning and, in association with local context, will sort all hexagrams into a best-fit/worst-fit sequence. Random/miraculous methods will not guarantee that that sequence is consistantly the best fit for the context and your comments above re attraction of 13 suggest that it was higher up the best-fit sequence than 10.

The IC is a filter and all elements of it apply to any perspective, all hexagrams contribute to the meaning of a situation but lack of understanding of what is going on at unconscious levels can cause consciousness to make up a story, an interpretation, to satisfy a need for immediate gratification. If that story is not re-assessed when new research gives better insights on to what is going on then the story becomes increasingly distanced from the reality.

The 'binary' sequence ordered into a best fit with 13 at top is:

13 49 30 55 37 63 22 36
25 17 21 51 42 03 27 24
01 43 14 32 09 05 26 11
10 58 38 54 61 60 41 19
33 31 56 62 53 41 52 15
12 45 35 16 20 08 23 02
44 28 50 32 57 48 18 46
06 47 64 40 59 29 04 07

10 is in the beginning of row 4 and so a bit down the list.... but note your immediate attraction to 13 still does not put it as best-fit, just higher up in some order than 10.

There is a logic of relationships here - in the natural binary sequence all pairs reflect the relationships of the core pair, 01/02 - here we focus on 13/07 thus each pair reads as "01 is to 43 as 13 is to 07, 44 is to 28 as 13 is to 07 etc etc' with an increasing shift overall from 13 to 07.

From a questions perspective we can interpret:

situation was about a fact (the scratch)
situation was about what how did that happen (what could have happened)
you were being proactive (asking her etc)

these seed the trigram of fire. Fire covers interpretations, issues of acceptance, and as such covers attempts to make the unknown known (we make 'maps', identify 'facts' that fit our ideologies etc etc)

If you feel you were being more reactive then the trigram is thunder - a focus on the emotion of surprise, something unexpected, new, sudden etc

We could interpret you as being initially reactive and becoming more proactive (thunder into fire). Thus your third question would reflect a changing line.

if we just stick to the three questions we double the trigrams to give a generic focus on things - and so 30 or 51. Note 30 and its relation to 13 ( in the binary sequence 30 is a few steps away from 13 as both are from the octet of fire-based hexagrams), the hexagram you intuitively connected with.

The 30 'binary sequence' best fit format is :

30 55 13 49 22 36 37 63
21 51 25 17 27 24 42 03
14 34 01 43 26 11 09 05
38 54 10 58 41 19 61 60
56 62 33 31 52 15 53 39
35 16 12 45 23 02 20 08
50 32 44 28 16 46 57 48
64 40 06 47 04 07 59 29

The logic of relationships now covers 30 is to 55 as 30 is to 29, 35 is to 16 as 30 is to 29 etc etc and overall a shift from 30(best fit) to 29 (worst fit).

29 could fit with its focus on containment/control and so would have elicited meaning but that was not your focus, you seemed to focus more on a fact than a value and so wanted a 'how' of that fact.

Chris.

[autumn]

13 isn't a better fit than 10. It simply explains the scenery for the dynamics of 10 to unfold. 49 is not a better fit than 10 in relation to 13, either, even though 49 is ordered immediately after 13.

In fact, I don't know that I could imagine a better way to explain through the line changes of 10 to 13 what was happening, and as Hilary pointed out, what she was learning about getting close to others. It seems to need both hexagrams to give such an excellent description of what (actually) occurred (and of course it is less statistically probable two best-fit hexagrms would occur together than just one).

But 30 is a quite a good description of what I was doing, so the Emotional I-ching seemed to work well here.

[heylise]

"Toddler expelled from school for sexual intimidation of teacher", you sure got tigers in US!

I encountered America for the first time many years ago, through the books of Carl May, with Winnetou and Old Shatterhand. This toddler must be the reincarnation of Old Shatterhand.

He hugged the teacher and touched her breast! WOW!

LiSe

[sparhawk]

"Toddler expelled from school for sexual intimidation of teacher", you sure got tigers in US!

I encountered America for the first time many years ago, through the books of Carl May, with Winnetou and Old Shatterhand.

It isn't the American's fault; we need a place like Amsterdam here and Las Vegas isn't cutting it... :D

L

[bruce_g]

I believe that law is called The Pat Robertson Initiative. Thy teacher’s breast shall thou in no way touch.