Hex 23 - stop or go

[pakua]

Hi all,

"'Hexagram 23! I mustn't do this' as opposed to 'Hexagram 23 - what will be stripped away? What is under the appearances?' etc, etc"

I saw this while browsing an old thread. This opens another door for me. Prior to this, I had always thought, when receiving 23, it meant stop, proceeding will lead to disaster. But now I have the idea, that if I have the courage, and the desire, that in some circumstances it might be a good thing to go ahead, as long as I know what I'm letting myself in for.

I wonder though, would it depend on whether it's more of an inner-directed or outer-directed question - in other words, if my question has to do with inner states or relationship energies, or if I'm planning a course of action (being vs doing)?

Anyone have any ideas?

[martin]

In terms of doing and achieving in the outer world 23 can be quite disastrous, but it depends on the lines that you get. In terms of inner being there is often a gain.
In other words, although 23 can be a disaster for your personality - your identity in the world - it will probably be beneficial for your essence or "soul".
Whatever happens, I would say that an inner orientation is always helpful with this hexagram. I think that it says in fact that the real purpose is inward.
There is a Sufi saying: What you really posses is what you cannot lose in a shipwreck.

[pagan]

Hi Pakua
The whole feel of hex 23 to me is that something inferior has penetrated 'your resting place' the bed. Under the bed would seem unconsciously done, splitting the bed means that what you rest upon inwardly is cracking into two. Whatever the question, it would seem to me that 23 is saying that there is elements that are creating a division within you and this will cause you to lose your calm inner center and force you to take action when you should have kept still. In the outer world, it might correspond to a separation of some sort that may ultimately be beneficial, especially if it leads away from the inferior element which is at the core of the hexagram's message.
P.

[sunpuerh]

Dear P: I had that idea once about 23 and then I disabused myself of that notion. Yes, stop, march in the other direction, seek deliverance. Don't fiddle while Rome burns!
Only the fifth line offers and any hope and that not much. The hexagram is similar to the tower of tarot. For inner spiritual work see 'When things Fall Apart"
by the Buddhist nun Padme Chodrun.

sun

[candid]

It depends upon what's most important to you that determines if 23 is good or bad for you. Gain the world and lose your soul? Or lose the world to gain your soul? Lose the camel and you just might make it through the eye of a needle.

[candid]

Have you ever looked at line 6 as the ascension?

[yddo8obby]

there's 5 solid yins that are totally stable, they just dont have any guidance---dare to be stupid and win

[megabbobby]

that's kind of like a joking way of talking about it above...

but really---it seems there is 'flow' in the hex 23 situation- there is flow in every hexagram

think about a movie that was about a huge disaster that was still a good movie
many horror movies probably kind of plotwise resemble hex 29 'the abyss'...but it is still an entertaining movie

just because youre in a hex 23 situation does not mean it has to be bad..,
every hex has 'sweet spots' that you can align yourself with..
the taoistic yumminess is always in every moment.on some level--physical mental emotional///infinite possibilities

you align yourself into the hex 23 and you will taste the yumminess

[jeanystar]

Megabbobby,
I enjoy your words.

There are times in life when the stripping away is the very best that can happen.
Consider a person living in a very cluttered house who decides to finally clear out, throw away, get rid of everything that once seemed so impossible to part with. You need to strip it ruthlessly.Because the time has come. There is no progress until you do.

Anyone who has ever moved knows the psychological upheaval that accompanies unearthing the material stuff and throwing away. The outer process and the inner are inseparable. Your "bed", your resting place, has eroded and collapsed.

If you can be really bold, there is an exhiliration in tossing and stripping, in realizing that when you strip down to bare bones , what is essential is untouched...and it has a chance now.

hex 23 says to me that it is time to strip away absolutely everything that is clogging your channels and your life.. things, people, attitudes and situations.

[candid]

From the "I Ching Slang Book"

23
1. cut backs
2. knock it off
3. turn it down

Simply good advise when energy is going to waste.

[pagan]

Hi Everyone,
I am sometimes floored at how other people interpret lines as good or bad. For example: Sun's decision that 23 line 5 "offers hope but not that much". Just looking at the hexagram, one might use a strong sexual image of a vagina to be penetrated. Each line of the hexagram seems to talk about how 'deeply' penetrated the subject is. But line 6 is a strong sage that has a very weak or corrupt following (lines 1-5), his only recourse is to retreat into the heavens, or else he will become enmeshed (contaminated) in lesser things. He could stay around and challenge himself in this way (lost in a harem) but there is an over-arching image here that shows he has already gone beyond a taste for lesser things and really has no choice but to move on.

So it seems to me it depends on who you are in the image of hex 23. Are you line 5? Then you have a choice to be led away by following the strong sage at the top and not listening to the weak minister in line 4. Hence the whole situation could turn around for you. But if you are the person in line 2, hankering after a weak partner in line 5, the situation bodes little hope.

I think every hexagram could be the basis of a great novel in and of itself.
P.

[sunpuerh]

My image of the hexagram is decay and corrosion from within leading to everything falling apart. The fifth line has a slight opportunity to unite the other yin lines to resist this strong tendency, probably only ONE chance. This is a moving, fluid, and inopportune situation. The sixth line will fall to the ground and sprout again-it is not seen as moving upwards-it's the top floors of the World Trade Center.

No hexagram is inherently good or bad, it is the human mind that labels it as such. In fact, adverse conditions can become learning situations and, as Gene says, this is a dualistic realm, empty itself of inherent existence.

I REALLY RECOMMEND THIS BOOK 'WHEN THINGS FALL APART!!'

With that in mind I offer a tongue-in-cheek reading:
Dear Son of Heaven: You have asked about the future of your realm and received Hexagram 23 with several moving lines. There will be drought and crop failures, we will be invaded from the north, your court will dissolve into competing factions and there will be more war, you will attempt to avoid all this by having me tortured and killed and my clan sold into slavery yet this will fail to help the situation You yourself will not live long and your heir will be defeated by the Jin clan. Since we have intermarried with the Jin, they will give us positions in the new government and eventually we will prosper.
Do not try to find me, by this time I have fled in accordance with the times. Good luck, sir, and remember eventually things will turn around.

[candid]

Pagan, I?m coming to the conclusion that ?Yi people? can be some of the most negative individuals on God?s green earth. It sort of reminds me of an old fundamentalist Christian friend who, when I told him he saw a demon behind every rock, corrected me saying ?no, I see at least two!?

But certainly not all Chingsters are this way, IE: Meggabobby, who sees the blessing behind every demon ? ?the taoistic yumminess is always in every moment?. And his cousin, who says ?dare to be stupid and win.? You go, Bobby! This is much more than mere positive thinking. It?s positive understanding. But don?t tell that to nay sayers, or you may become a demon too.

[stuart]

I think hex 23 is positive the further up the hexigram you go.23 line 4 is the turning point;sort of similar to 59 line 5.However i have had this line when in real danger.Perhaps this is the line of someone who finally experiences the stripping and wiil have to endure the danger in whatever degree it presents itself.

[pakua]

I had 23.4 recently, and nothing much happened. Maybe that's because I chickened out and backed off. My girlfriend has been promising to do something with me for some time, so I wondered if I should press her for it now. I took the advice and didn't say anything about it. It didn't seem worth it. I can wait.

I'm concluding that only if you're desperate would you go through 23 voluntarily... if you're thinking, come what may, I need to go for this, and let the chips fall where they may.

Sun,

If you go through the Tower with a dedicated focus, because you have to, and don't lose sight of your goal, that may be a similar good medicine. http://www.onlineclarity.co.uk/I_Ching_community/clipart/happy.gif

[seeker]

If I had seen this discussion a few months ago when I was brand new to I Ching, I would have run screaming every time I got 23. Luckily I have had some experience with that particular hex now, so I know it doesn't foretell doom and destruction. Someone mentioned the Tower card of the Tarot. I mentioned in the other discussion comparing the two that I see 23 as Death. Its a transformation, but a positive one. Its the stripping away of what you don't need, what is no longer useful to you. It can be painful, especially in regards to something you are not ready to let go of, but eventually you come out the other side and are better for it. When I get 23, I always think, this too shall pass. Just my newby two centshttp://www.onlineclarity.co.uk/I_Ching_community/clipart/happy.gif

[sunpuerh]

Dear Seeker, Candid, Pagan, Pa Kua, Stuart and all,

Hexagram 23 when viewed in its entirety is the cycle of destruction (and its true, inherently neither good nor bad). However, one rarely encounters the entire cycle. A lower moving line is not so bad; multiple moving lines mean trouble.

For myself, in reading this line over the years I detected in myself a denial of the potential of this hexagram to indicate destruction and potential death. This was part of a denial of the power that the Changes could reflect. I mean no one wants to ask an innocent question and see this reading. ("There I was minding my own business and the divination says my world will fall apart, blah, blah).

I just went through a health crisis of hexagram 23 with multiple moving lines. Every moving line represented an facet of the crisis as things got worse and worse and actually the doctor told my family to make arrangements as I battled it out in intensive care.

But I had the better overall view of the situation via the I Ching and I knew it was coming, that it was serious and I should insist on being hospitalized, really strongly insist, until the crisis came. (The hospital had sent me home finding nothing wrong and I waited 48 hrs and called an ambulance and this time they found the immediate problem and eventually, three months later, the underlying problem which it turns out is completely treatable with antibiotics.)

I also knew as I divined about other aspects of this crisis, despite the look on the doctors faces and my family, that I would make it through thanks to the Yi for giving me the knowledge to go against the hospital and doctors who couldn't find anything and also for letting me know it wasn't fatal, I would not die.

So, what can I say? This deeper knowlege the I Ching gives requires courage and acceptance of reading, not denial. (I often think that when such a strong reading occurs that we should have the help of professional diviners since its hard to do this for yourself.)

One or two moving lines is really not so bad but multiple moving lines shows a strong cycle of destruction.

Now, it may be a relationship question and the two people in question needed to part anyway so the legs of the bed are broken,there is the removal of decay, the stripping away idea. But inherent in the hexagram is death, the cycle of destruction, a force of nature neither in and of itself good nor bad but applied to individual circumstances can indicate tragedy.

This is a watershed in the I Ching career: Do I want to go this far in experiencing the Book of Changes or do I want to stay at a less serious level? I would say that beginners should stay at the less serious level; old timers cannot help but experiencing this Hexagram. I also think that delving too deeply into the Book of Changes is not good for many, and may be ultimately harmful and is best left to professionals. With that in mind, I feel that the level of engagement with the Yi is absolutely a matter of personal choice that must be respected.

As ever,

Sun

[jeanystar]

Dear Sun,
I dont really understand how interpreting this hex as a very dire situation would mean one is "going deeply into the I Ching" - while interpreting it as less dire would mean being a Yi reader at a "less serious level".....I think it has all to do with the situation.

I tend to agree with Seeker.....i used to get very frightened when I got this hexagram.but after 15 years, I have gotten this hex on numerous occasions....and it didnt end up meaning anything so dire as I might have feared.

I got it this past august when questioning about my job. A Yi friend of mine was frightened for me and said that maybe I was going to lose my job, etc. I took it as a reflection of the fact that I was undergoing a major revamping of my career goals, a personal crisis of sorts. I am still in process of sorting out my life goals and making decisions about where I want to be in future....And 23 was telling me that I am not where I belong ultimately....but other than that, it was not foretelling anything esp foreboding.

One of the multiple lines I got was 23.3. What ended up happening in Sept was that someone I worked very closely with, and who was not someone I enjoyed being around to put it mildly, resigned. This "stripping" marked a major change in the atmosphere of my immediate suroundings and it was "not a mistake"..it was a fortunate change. Altho I am still considering ways to move on, I dont feel in crisis.

One thing that Karcher says still prods me...that I need to strip away (this job) or "the way will close." That makes me feel pressured because I feel like I am dancing as fast as I can, and there is no viable new position on the horizon.

Is 23 what you would see as a call to take greater action, or is it a time to submit to the forces at work and be prepared to exit?
I guess that is the original question in this thread! What is the appropriate stance to take after a 23 reading......aggressive action or an internal revamping. Surely it cannot be the only alternative just to submit to "tragedy?"
Jeannie

[candid]

Greetings, Sun.

Great post. I wish I had time to respond now more in depth because you raise some succinct points. No doubt that your experience with all 64 hexagrams demonstrates a variety of applications, from gravely serious to passing fancies. 23 is no exception. Yes, I too have seen the foretelling of death from 23, and it was tragic for me to lose this person. In the bigger picture, however, even death is the beginning of life. ?Oh, death, where is thy sting?? I believe this is more significant than idealism and more realistic than denial. If truth is what we seek, we must be prepared to deal with it, and still benefit from it. ?This concerns the deepest stratum of his being, for this alone is superior to all external fate.? This, above all things, is what Yi has taught me.

Take care, and thanks.

Candid

[megabbobby]

sometimes it's good to be naughty

who comes out on top in twenty three?
the forces of darkness-disintegration

can you take a step back and become the darkness

[candid]

Hi Jeannie,

"Surely it cannot be the only alternative just to submit to "tragedy?"

So agreed! Submitting to 23 is inevitable. Things fall away. That is unavoidable. But when a branch is pruned the tree's life returns to the root, and from there new and greater life grows. If we mourn death too much, we fail to make the most of a life which follows. If we fear loss too much, we won't recognize the life which is present.

[sunpuerh]

Now this thread is getting down to brass tacks. I would say to those who wish to embrace the darkness and destruction you would make good tantrics of the Tibetan type since they are known to meditate in the presence of the dead. I myself study with the New Kadampas (a tibetan tradition) and the first thing I asked the kadam is whether or not I had to meditate with dead bodies in a cold cave somewhere. I understand this idea. The tantra I practiced was sexual-immersing oneself in that which is strong within you and by giving yourself in its fears or pleasures, transcend it. The underlying idea (whether sex or death) is the same.
Mayahana Buddhists spend a great of time practicing the process of death and leaving the body. Its almost tiresome, but the aim is to have a controlled rebirth, not one dictated by one's karma. (I guess that means I will be back harrassing I Ching students in the future-so perhaps we all will meet again and Hilary can still labor getting her newsletter out on time.)
Those who know me know well that I never recommend passively accepting a fate that is unfavorable. The advanced practice in the Yi Jing is to, if possible, overcome an unfavorable reading-knowing the lines and hexagrams is only the first part. (Of course, the other advanced practice is knowing how to accept adverse happenings and they frequently cannot be changed).
I always say, "Seek deliverance!" As the Yi itself says we can through divination "Aid the gods in governing the world." The Great Treatise also points out that "misfortune is never the will of heaven." We co-create with the Universe when we change an outcome and its a great accomplishment when we do this for the good . I first saw this idea of co-creating with the Universe in Joseph Adler's "Sung Dynasty Uses of the I Ching." so this is not a new idea at all.

As ever,

Sun

[pakua]

"The advanced practice in the Yi Jing is to, if possible, overcome an unfavorable reading-knowing the lines and hexagrams is only the first part. (Of course, the other advanced practice is knowing how to accept adverse happenings and they frequently cannot be changed). "

Sun, I'm wondering how one might distinguish. Would it be correct to say, if the event comes at you from "outside", such as society-at-large-, work environment, natural disaster, there is not much one can do except learn to accept, but if the event is "internally" generated, then it should be possible to overcome, by changing attitude, changing your methods, etc?

Or is that too simplistic?

[candid]

Sun, I'm not sure what meditating in a cold cave before the dead has anything to do with what I've said. http://www.onlineclarity.co.uk/I_Ching_community/clipart/howmuch.gif

[pagan]

Hi everyone,
I guess I'll take a turn at the 'overarching' meaning in hexagram 23 that we are all trying to point at.

As long as we judge everything we do from an outer world standpoint we keep trying to 'manage' the outer world and that is where we tend to miss the point.

It seems that everyone's point of view here is about what is "going to happen" but is that really the point of studying the IC?

When a woman wants to wear lipstick does she apply it to the mirror or to her own lips?

If we want to improve the look of the outer world, don't we make the application to our perception, attitude, habits, faith? Or do we 'do' something in the outer world to 'make' it happen out there?

When the caterpillar changes into a butterfly, how did he do it?

Sitting still in a cave with the dead? Isn't that just some more outer world crap? Sit still in here with the 'inner' dead and see how nature will just automatically process it and move on.

The major effort is to get out of our own way.
P.

[martin]

Sitting in an outer cave is a trick, sitting in an inner cave is also a trick, what is the difference?
In both cases one is trying to avoid the real thing.

[lindsay]

Martin, please tell me what the "real thing" is, if you can! I cannot make much sense out of this string. Everyone is trying too hard to be "deep" and "spiritual," I think. Hex 23 has been my constant companion for almost two years. Tell me something real, please!

[martin]

Omagod Lindsay! A friend of mine who is very fond of language always insists that I must & should be able to put (my) IT into words.
But I can't. Because ... I can't.
I don't know why. It's not deep or spiritual. Maybe it's simply too simple.
I will take your question with me when I go to bed and who knows, perhaps, tomorrow ...
Give me some time. http://www.onlineclarity.co.uk/I_Ching_community/clipart/happy.gif

[candid]

Generalizations are troublesome. We each have personal experiences with each hexagram and line, and we draw the association into our present interpretations. Then there is the matter of our own personal design and inherent nature. A spiritually inclined individual will always be that way, and they will interpret the world and the Yi through those eyes. A scientist will always see life as a scientific phenomenon. A philosopher will see it as a philosophy, etc. A minimalist could view 23 as a positive thing. A materialist will see it as a loss. One?s no better than the other, just different views from different natures. No one way defines it completely, just individual observations of the same thing.

[lindsay]

Quite right, Candid. It's the old business of the blind men and the elephant, isn't it? Each of us has a different interpretation depending on what parts of the elephant we have touched. A nice fable.

The problem for me is that I have come to doubt there really is an elephant. That is the part Martin is going to clear up for me, as soon as he finds the words.

On a less abstract plane, I am not so sure we are condemned to always sit in our own boxes. It is quite true a scientist will view phenomena according to his science - but he wouldn't be a scientist otherwise, would he? And - more to the point - he is not always thinking like a scientist. Sometimes he is a father, a friend, a lover, a tourist, a movie-goer, a devil, a worrier, a mess. What of his view of the world then?

No, no, Candid, I find I ultimately cannot agree with you here. We are capable of seeing things more than one way. And people do change their minds once in awhile, don't they? We share a lot more as people than we differ as individuals.

So perhaps each of us thinks along several different, but parallel lines when we read the Yi. Eventually, depending on the situation, we settle on one of them. But it is always, always provisional, isn't it? Subject to change - I should say "correction" - without notice. Reading the Yi is like trying on a new pair of shoes. Normally I wear a size 11, but sometimes I go a half-size up or down. Also the shoes must be appropriate for the occasions I plan to wear them. The trick is finding the right "fit",

Meanwhile, regarding Hex 23, I must say I have found it more positive than negative in the long run. More hopeful than discouraging. Often I have been slow to praise Stephen Karcher, but I find his vision of Hex 23 the most useful. Think of yourself as a crustacean. Sometimes one outgrows one's shell, and it is necessary to leave the comfy and familiar behind. There will be a period of acute vulnerability - also wonderful freedom from restraint - and lots of tenderness and pain. But regeneration is part of living life. A fact, a given. Reality, if you will. But let's wait for Martin before we speack of reality.

[candid]

Oy! With bated breath I wait!

Yes, I agree, one is not all one way, but some are very close to one way. Some are just stuck in one way because they refuse to leave one shell for a bigger and more suitable shell. Likes that image very much. Has 49 inclusive in it, as well.

I think the one factor that has the power to create a common ground for all is, mystery. A scientist, intellectual, analytical, priest or artist can experience this in common. But to explain what that mystery is, that will be expressed according to their individual nature. Hence different explanations of a hexagram or line.

[martin]

Yes, wait for me. Lol.
What is real? What do we mean when we use the words 'real' and 'reality'? It's probably impossible to define these words in an absolute sense but perhaps we can say something about 'more real' and 'less real'.
I hear a noise in the kitchen, I look and see a cat, I approach the cat and touch her. Hear, see, touch, with every sense that is added the cat becomes more real to me.
And there is something else. Touching the cat seems to convince me more of her reality than seeing her. The sense of touch is older, more basic (or primitive) and more direct.

So, 'more real' corresponds to more senses involved and older senses are usually more convincing.
This is also true inwardly. For every outer sense there is an inner sense.
(Or, if you like, for every gross sense there is a corresponding subtle sense. Or ... It can be formulated in different ways, but I will use the terms inner/inward and outer/outward. Hopefully it's clear what I mean)
There is inner seeing, inner hearing, inner touching, and so on. Inwardly there are in fact (!?) more senses than outwardly, there is a kind of inner knowing, for instance, that is not seeing, hearing, touching and so on. It's more subtle.
But the 'reality principle' is more or less the same. More senses involved --> more real, and some senses are more convincing than others.

Did I say anything deep or spiritual till now?
I hope not. http://www.onlineclarity.co.uk/I_Ching_community/clipart/happy.gif
Now, give me a moment, while I'm trying to find my way back to hex 23 and what I said earlier about avoiding the real thing.
http://www.onlineclarity.co.uk/I_Ching_community/clipart/howmuch.gif

The real thing - there are some many paths, so many exercises, so many tricks. I believe that it was Alan Watts who once said (I think he cited it): "Yoga is the worlds most complicated way to postpone enlightenment." Or something like that.
Well, I have been there, on a path, got the T-shirt, etcetera. But in the early nineties I went through a long and intense 23.

As I see it hex 23 only describes the form of a process. The hexagram doesn't say anything about the energy level, the intensity of what happens. Sometimes the 'stripping' is not even noticeable.
And hey, stripping can also mean striptease! http://www.onlineclarity.co.uk/I_Ching_community/clipart/biggrin.gif It's not necessarily painful or tragic.

Anyway, the stripping that I experienced was very intense. And sometimes painful, although I never saw it as tragic, as far as I remember. It came to a point where I could only watch. I was watching my own destruction. Oh, that sounds heavy, well, it wasn't. Not for me. I was just watching.
What amazed me afterward is that I was never afraid. I guess that the path that I had walked till then - including all the exercises - had somehow prepared me for this. So, what I had learned on that path was useful. Thanks for that.

Yet, when the storm finally subsided and I slowly realized that I was still (or again?) on the planet the path had disappeared. The seeking, the reaching, the exercises, it was all gone. I didn't notice it immediately, it took me a while to discover that the seeking and all the rest had stopped. I didn't stop it, it happened.
Later, when looking back, I saw how double edged my path had been. Yes, it probably prepared me, but on the other hand it was also clear that I was stuck in it. I was running in holy circles.
Keeping myself busy and all the way avoiding ... what? My own execution perhaps?

Pffff, time for a break ...
More later perhaps. Hope I'm making sense so far.
Am I?

[candid]

Yeah, Martin. You're making great sense. Looking forward to more.

[martin]

After 23 comes 24, but the one who returned was not the seeker. The seeker never returned.
I remember him, vaguely. Outwardly we are look alikes and even our minds work more or less in the same way. Deeper down, however, the feel is different, very different.
It's like I'm much more real than he ever was and I believe this is related to inner touch. I can feel, touch my roots, my inner ground. He couldn't.
That's why he was a seeker, I guess.

Somewhere in the midst of the 23 episode there seems to be a gap, a nothingness. What happened there? No memories, nothing is registered. Perhaps there was nobody who could register it?
Sometimes I speculate that the original pilot of this body-mind-spaceship left. The ship was unattended for a while and then another pilot took over. If that is true it's not just that I changed. I'm somebody else!
An alien?

http://www.onlineclarity.co.uk/I_Ching_community/clipart/strange.gif

http://www.onlineclarity.co.uk/I_Ching_community/clipart/biggrin.gif

[lindsay]

Martin, that is really very interesting! Please continue, if you have a chance - I would like to hear more. I think I am learning something about stripping from your experience.

It meshes pretty well with my recent experience, but my experience has been much less drastic. Still, there is a sense in which stripping is beyond good or bad -- it is unavoidable. It is something that happens to you; you do not necessarily choose it. You can watch it happen, but it almost seems outside of your control. It feels like something impersonal catching up with you, the way I imagine stepping off a cliff would feel when you suddenly realize you are in freefall.

I think you have to get to a certain point in your life where you have done a great deal of the same thing before real stripping occurs. A lot of work, a lot of worry, a lot of seeking, a lot of practice. At the time, it seems like this phase of your life will never end, it could go on forever. Sometimes this is good - you think you are completely satisfied and content with things as they are. Sometimes it is frustrating, almost beyond endurance - you feel you will never achieve what you want or find what you are looking for.

I think one is ripe for stripping if you are often bored, or distracted, or flying on auto-pilot through life. Part of you is dead or dormant or atrophied. Everything is flat, completely predictable. Watch out! You are asleep, but not for long.

A law of nature I learned the hard way: Use it or lose it.

I do not think stripping in this sense has much meaning to younger people. What does one have to lose, when one has not completely identified yourself with your external situation? One has to have that inviolable daily routine, those habits you follow without fail, the TV show you cannot miss, the false sense of security and order only a middle-aged person can have.

The time comes when we lose it all, and what will we do then?

[lindsay]

Martin, our posts crossed, but this is getting very, very interesting. I had not thought about 24 being linked so closely with 23, but you are right. For a long time I resisted thinking in terms of hexagram pairs, I am very suspicious of facile patterns. But evidence seems to be mounting; now we have this remarkable association of 23 with 24.

I am old enough to look back on several versions of myself that seem almost like other people. I wonder if my body has been inhabited by multiple beings? That would be an easier explanation than accounting for the actual changes that have occurred.

24 is a paradox. Strictly speaking, returning is impossible. The old Greek gentleman who kept trying to step in the same river twice proved that point. So what does returning really mean? Maybe it means something on the personal level similar to reading a history book? Returning means reading your own history, seeing everything again from a different perspective, as a different person.

What is the use of reading history? What is the use of returning? I do not know.

[candid]

Don't think we ever lose it all, Lindsay. There's always something growing back. Even the dead tree grows mushrooms. mmmm mussshroooms...

What was I saying? Mushrooms, yes. Oh, and leaves that fall.

maple trees must lose their leaves in autumn
every rose goes back from where is came
summer's made for children in playgrounds
winter's made to start all over again

Now, 'scuse me while I kiss the sky...

[martin]

In general, I'm also not a fan of hexagram pairs, Lindsay. But in this case - 23 corresponds to the time just before the winter solstice and 24 to the time just after it, when the light returns.
The solstice itself, in between, would be hexagram 2 and perhaps that corresponds to the gap that I mentioned, the nothingness.

Meanwhile I'm surprised that I can talk about this at all. Well, at least a little bit.
What happened back then left me completely speechless. Much of it was so strange that I couldn't even think about it. I still feel that every story that I tell about it doesn't really tell the truth. Because it introduces frameworks and concepts that were not part of what I experienced. They are constructed and added afterward.
Well, it's not easy, but maybe I can say more, I don't know.
Thank you for listening. http://www.onlineclarity.co.uk/I_Ching_community/clipart/happy.gif

[candid]

Lindsay and Martin,

"24 is a paradox. Strictly speaking, returning is impossible."

I know what you mean. When the call to return comes, I look around for the hole I came out of, and it's not there. So where to return to? It seems then that returning is more like evolving. Where you are, what you are born into becomes the new hole, or dwelling place. Never feels exactly the same twice.

[martin]

Greek 1: I never kissed that girl twice!
Greek 2: That's a deep one!
Greek 1: Not at all, she disappeared after the first kiss ..

[jeanystar]

Love your story Martin, love it!
Stripping, and decay, is not a bad thing. Even something like "faith" has to decay before it can be born into something new, before it can become not just faith but Knowing. and when the faith is dying, it feels like there is nothing to hold onto anymore.

Same with "love" or beliefs, or concepts we have clung to.
If we can just let them be stripped when the time comes, it feels like we will be left with no skin, no dwelling place, nothing to believe in , no 'right' or 'wrong', 'good' or "bad", and yet in that void, from out of that void, comes.....maybe another plateau on a higher ground.....or maybe the leap into the abyss where we hear the sound of our own wings.
NO constructs at all. Just being.

I had a terrible "stripping" day today...long story but I went, weeping, for a walk in the woods, feeling as though nothing would ever feel "normal" again. (could I be so lucky?) As I walked, I picked up a nice size stick. When I turned it over, it had a face on it. two little eyes... and am impish grin...I swear! An impish grin. The Fool. That stick is outside my back door right now, stuck in the ground. He is my shamann now. He teaches me to come back to ground zero. and smile.

[lindsay]

?Mussshrooooms,? Candid? I think you?ve been out in the Sonoran desert too long, my friend. I seem to remember a certain Yaqui named Don Juan who liked such things. Why strain to engage all your senses to find reality (a la Martin) when Mother Nature has provided us with such efficient little helpers?

Speaking of psychopharmacology, does anyone know a book called ?The Invisible Landscape: Mind Hallucinogens and the I Ching? by Terence and Dennis McKenna? I have not read this book, but I have heard it is really quite amazing. Lots of heavy-duty mathematics and methylated tryptamines. I wonder if it?s worth reading?

Leave it to naughty Martin to reinterpret Heraclitus?s famous dictum as ?You can?t kiss the same girl twice.? I tried this on my wife. ?Honey,? I said, ?I find - after much deep and spiritual thought - that I am philosophically unable to embrace the same woman twice.? Does anyone know how to reduce the swelling of a black eye?

[martin]

Oh, I love that, Jeanystar. It's like I can see that grinning stick and hold it in my hands.

Walking in the woods, I have done that a lot.
Trees are miraculous beings. Healers. When I was a student there was a tree near the entrance of the building where I studied. I saw the tree every afternoon when I left the building with a head full of academical stuff. It had a kind of aura, a light around it that made its leaves look like jewels. When I looked into that light I saw all the leaves at once, thousands of jewels, as if I focused on each of them simultaneously.
Which is impossible according to what I learned inside the building ... LOL

[martin]

LOL Linsday. You know, these deeper truths can cause a lot of trouble.
What do you think that happened when I told a former (!) girlfriend that I saw God in every woman?
23 !!
And I don't mean striptease. http://www.onlineclarity.co.uk/I_Ching_community/clipart/biggrin.gif

[candid]

LOL Lindsay! Nooo, no no.. you say something like, "I lose myself in your every-changing beauty.."

Jeanie, a shaman?s staff, how wonderful! More wonderful is that you recognized it and brought it home.

There is a small alter here I call the ?myth alter?. Each item has come to me as a gift. Each from an entirely different place or person. Each lends me power. A deer antler I found while walking, 350,000,000 year old salt crystals from the Himalayas, a toy hero figure, a fishing shaman, an Avalokitesvara pendant given to me by my son, sea shells and an old horseshoe my dog dug up from the desert (what were sea shells doing in the desert?), and white sage to burn as a cleansing ritual. It is my quiet place.

I believe that it is important to see your own myth, have a certain reverence for it, and be able to seperate yourself from it. It is not the items themselves but the recognition of them in you, but none of which are really you. The myth of you. What is left is ...

[candid]

http://www.onlineclarity.co.uk/I_Ching_community/messages/48/2894.jpg

[sunpuerh]

Hello everyone and as Leonard says, "Namaste!",

A question appeared int his thread addressed to me:
Sun, I'm wondering how one might distinguish. Would it be correct to say, if the event comes at you from "outside", such as society-at-large-, work environment, natural disaster, there is not much one can do except learn to accept, but if the event is "internally" generated, then it should be possible to overcome, by changing attitude, changing your methods, etc

You know, I can't answer this off the cuff and will need to think about it. When I get the reading of Hexagram 23 I usually divine again about seeing whether or not deliverance is possible; I don't usually distinguish between inner and outer events. For example, a reading of 23 when going on a trip where external events might happen to you which are harmful, you might to decide to stay home and in inquiring of the Sage about staying home and get Hexagram 40, well, I would stay home. I guess this would be a mixed event, both inner and outer.

Candid: meditating in a cave in the presence of dead bodies is to embrace that which you fear, to see that ultimately we must embrace all aspects of this dualistic realm. Lately I have been reading about the Thugees of India who worship the Goddess of Destruction,Kali (discussed her on my page of Hexagram 29)

http://fortunecity.com/business/influence/1805/the_page_of_kan__the_middle_son.htm

The image of Shiva and Kali also is water dangerously flowing through an a abyss.

Wearing a necklace of human skulls, Kali stands for the cycle of destruction. The thugees were a death cult from which we get the word "thug." This is a way of embracing death to the extreme. They roamed the countryside is search of victims they strangled who were then offered to Kali. (a great movie about the British attempts to destroy this cult is "Gunga Din.," )

Tantrics embrace death as well, offering their own bodies ritually and drinking their own blood out of a cup made from their own skulls-it seems to be based on a Tungus (shamanic tribe near the Manchu)ritual.

I do see, as many have pointed out, that Hexagrams 23 and 24 represent the entire cycle of life, both destruction and re-creation. Hexagram 24 stands for the other side of the cycle, that of re-creation.

As ever,

Sun

[heylise]

An important meaning of 24 is turn again. It is also returning, but on the path which is yours, going it again and again. Like the earth goes its path around the sun, year after year.

When 23 has done its work, your 24-path comes closer to the one which is really yours. Not diverted by the things which used to cling to you, but were not really part of you.

LiSe

[heylise]

?The Invisible Landscape?, Terence and Dennis McKenna

Part one: Mind, Molecules and Magic
1 the figure of the shaman
2 shamans and schizophrenia
3 organismic thought
4 toward a holographic theory of mind
5 models of drug activity
6 an experiment a La Chorrera
7 psychological reflections on La Chorrera

Part two : Time, Change and Becoming
8 the I Ching as lunar calendar and astronomical calculator
9 order in the I Ching and order in the world
10 the King Wen sequence as a quantified modular hierarchy
11 the temporal hierarchy and cosmology
12 towards a physics of concrescence
13 the wave of time
14 evolution and freedom

not mentioned: introductions, epilogue, bibliography, appendix

I read it very long ago, and loved it then. It seems that the calculations are not entirely correct, but it was very interesting all the same.

Gene posted in Clarity about it, but I don?t know in which thread, not even which year, only that it was posted March 16. Give or take a day for the time difference.

LiSe

[lindsay]

LiSe, thanks for the information about the McKenna brothers' book. Perhaps I will read it sometime, but it sounds a little dated to me. I think it is a sign of growing maturity, of the coming of age of a subject, when that subject moves beyond the phase where many big and technical words are needed to discuss it. Finally, in the last few years, Westerners are saying serious and important things about the Yi in plain language. The Yi has become so compelling for us that we can discuss it without always referring to some other frame of reference, without dressing it up in borrowed clothes. Finally it is no longer necessary to justify studying the Yi by deriving every scientific, religious, and philosophic idea and principle from it. I do not think - in fact, I think it is ridiculous to claim - that the secrets of DNA or the origins of binary arithmatic were encoded by the ancients in the Yi. Such claims make the Yi sound important, but they completely miss the Yi's true value.

Stepping down from my soapbox for a minute, I also wanted to thank you for comments on Hex 23 and 24. Regarding 24, maybe a more accurate mental picture than a circle closing in on itself - return seen as "coming full circle" - would be the image of a spiral. From one perspective, a spiral looks like a circle constantly closing in on itself, but in fact something quite different is happening in its third dimension. There is no actual return to any point the spiral passed through previously.

When the intervals are short enough, return becomes mere repetition. Doing the same thing over and over again. Is it possible that 24 also refers to repetition?

[candid]

Lindsay, a dragon is said to move in coils.

[lindsay]

Candid, that's excellent! Now my image of 24 is a dragon corkscrewing its way up from the abyss. Looking down from his boat on the surface, the sailor only sees a small circular swirl going round and round that reminds him of returning. Won't he be surprised!

[martin]

Surprise surprise, my boat is a rocket and it was launched by the monster of Log Ness!

A long time ago (in a former life?) I read a novel by Ouspensky, "The Strange Life of Ivan Osokin". It is based on (his version of) the idea of eternal return.
Lives repeat endlessly (including the day, hour and circumstances of birth) with very little variation (the spiral is nearly a circle) as long as there is insufficient awareness. Ouspensky took this idea very seriously. He hoped that he would be able to escape from the circle in his next life but was apparently not very optimistic.
There is also a movie on this theme, "Groundhog Day".

Good to hear you speaking on the soapbox, Lindsay.
I always get a bit irritated when I hear about yet another book that tries to read quantum mechanics into old mystical texts. Oh no, please, not again!

And what one cannot say (in plain language), about that one must be silent.

Martin Wittgenstein

[heylise]

You are right - of course it is a spyral. The earth moving around the sun is also a spyral, never coming back in exactly the same point.
Loved the dragon too. The one who dares to face it, will see the circle, the others see only the waves.

LiSe

[candid]

Lindsay, that's a funny image. Reminds me of a time I was fishing off a low-to-the water-pier in Panama while in the Navy during the Panamanian crisis. Something very heavy was on my line. Suspecting it was a huge pile of seaweed, I tugged and reeled it slowly toward the surface, my feet dangling nearly to the water. With a final weighty lift of the heavy rod, a rather large octopus bloomed wide onto the surface. I suddenly found myself standing, looking down at this ?thing? from the deep, heart pounding in my throat! Now that was unexpected! To the locals it was just an octopus, but to me it was as a dragon. I ?returned? it, quickly!

[pagan]

Sometimes I think we all see ourselves as autonomous self willed entities with the inherent ability to decide our own fate. I really doubt that. We use the oracle to try to influence this fate instead of learning how to better flow with it.

We are individuals AND we are the body of mother earth. If you look at the earth as a living organism, and not as a dead chunk of rock, then we see that we are cells in her living body. If that is true, then we have a function in the biology of earth. Like the cells in our own body have a job to do, but any given cell may not know that it is part of a living human being.

Hexagram 24 seems to me that we return to a familiar pattern that is uniquely our role in the whole of things. Whether we like this role or not is somewhat outside the issue. It can never suit our ego entirely because our egos cannot ever be satisfied.

Complete autonomy as living creatures would not allow for us to function as part of a greater whole. Total free will is anarchy and madness. Total free will would be the reign of ego and existence would fall apart instantly. Fate is bigger than free will. Free will is a small orb of influence we have that effects very little of the larger whole. Fate leads on to a destiny that we have no control over. We are carried along in evolution despite our unwillingness to see our perfect part in it.

It is chaotic to think that we don't belong to the whole and that we have free will that can do whatever we want to. That ego-serving point of view causes a schism between ourselves and the great mother goddess.

To meditate on your inseparable connection to the whole will relieve the male ego of its need to conquer and detroy, and comfort you in knowing that you really belong and you are being taken care of completely, despite your distaste for being simply part of the earth and nothing more.
P.

[martin]

Our fate as a given that we encounter or as our own creation, in traditional Christian terms the will of God versus our own will - the last word about that has very probably not yet been said, Pagan.
But I don't really see or feel a paradox there, it seems that the two go together quite effortlessly in life. Until we start to think about it. Then it begins to look like we are dealing with opposites that exclude each other, either this or that.
I suspect that the polarity is an artifact that is created by our way of thinking.
For example, when I think about it - again in traditional terms - it seems that surrender to God must diminish me as an individual. As if I must become less myself in that surrender. But that is in fact not true. I become MORE myself.
The actual experience is very different from what the mind, looking at it from a distance, thinks it is.

As to 'ego', I believe that the problem - if there is a problem - is in most cases the superego, not the ego. It is the "I should be", "I should not be", "I should become", "I should not become". Including the spiritual versions, perhaps especially the spiritual versions. "I should become enlightened", "I should have no ego", and so on.
Self torture!

[heylise]

?I can feel, touch my roots, my inner ground.?
?it seems that surrender to God must diminish me as an individual. As if I must become less myself in that surrender. But that is in fact not true. I become MORE myself.?

Love it, and am in the wonderful situation that I experience it too.
LiSe

[rinda]

Let's not should on ourselves...

*grin*

Rinda

[martin]

Or if you have to should then should at least in style ..

http://www.onlineclarity.co.uk/I_Ching_community/messages/48/2903.jpg

[candid]

*rim shot* LOL Gawd, Martin.

Pagan, whether we actually effect our destiny is a matter of looking back, forward, or from the present. If you refer to altering our present, we can do that. In fact, that is the only way to steer our future. If we look at it from the future looking back, it's a done deal and unchangeable. The fact that we can't see the future doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Just depends which way the hands of time are moving.

I like your earth bound or earth life picture. We as people generally view our soul as something that descends from heaven rather than it growing upward from the earth. I'm inclined to view it as the latter. The influence of what is above is like the sun shining onto the ground, inspiring all things to grow, including us.

I don't understand how anyone can imagine we are autonomous beings. 'Shall the eye say to the hand, I am greater than you?' Eye to hand coordination is what gets it done. We are the hands. The question is, who's is the eye?

[pagan]

Okay, I confess. I do a tarot reading AND an IC every morning. Then at night I checked them to see if they pan out. They are just TOO damn accurate every day. In fact, last night I checked and my tarot reading indicated a woman, the queen of cups, as the outcome. I said to myself, "well, no queen of cups" and then went to bed. I woke up to the telephone ringing an hour later, and it was the queen of cups.

So how the hell does the Sage know what is going to happen in my reality if there is something like free will? Is my free will just what I use to react to what is going to happen anyway?

It seems to me that if every atom had free will then our bodies would fall apart. And since we are made up of atoms, how do we have free will if they don't?

If every part of us comes from mother earth, how can we be conscious if the earth is not?

I like Deepak Chopra's idea that the 'here and now' was created by the past and so we have absolutely no control over it--you made your bed so lie in it--but the future is being created by how we deal with here and now and we have immense control over that. This reconciles fate and free will: fate is created by yesterday's free will.

This would explain how the Sage knows outcomes and the general direction of things. Because the Sage knows our faults and character defects better than we do. And since character = destiny is a mathematical certainty, all the Sage has to know is your character to know your absolute destiny. However, if you change your character with your free will then you also change your destiny.
P.

[candid]

Pagan,

If the Sage knew what was going to happen (anyway), why would the oracle offer us choices?

[candid]

"If every part of us comes from mother earth, how can we be conscious if the earth is not?"

Who said the earth is not? Intelligence is born into all things, giving each its nature. A flower opens and knows to face the sun.

[jeanystar]

we are not autonomous but we are macrocosms of the whole. the power to co-create is inherent in us.

If I deny my desire and will to create and shape my destiny, I am rendered impotent. In one sense, we can relax and trust Destiny to unfold, but our conscious intention to participate seems to play a very important part. at least in terms of our own experience.

WE are in the body for a reason. Isnt it possible to know our purpose through natural action and "lowly listening" as emerson said? . Through SYNCronicity. BY surrendering to our deepest desires, not resisting them. through trusting the body.

the journey neednt be seen as linear either. A change in consciousness changes everything. Didnt carlos casteneda (or Don Juan) say to "have no history." strip it. return to your origin.

What I feel the Yi knows is our state of present consciousness and all its attendant factors, SYNCronicities. BUt that can change - by our efforts- or in the twinklng of an eye.

[candid]

Jeanystar,

"the journey neednt be seen as linear either. A change in consciousness changes everything."

Isn't that the most amazing thing?! Just one simple *click* of something in our mind, or sometimes in our body, if we listen to it; some tiny adjustment somewhere, and our whole reality changes in an instant.

[jeanystar]

yes, candid, amazing. "stopping the world," don juan called it. Think I will re-read those old castaneda books again. ; )

[candid]

Race ya to Ixland, last one there is a flea ally!

[jeanystar]

lol

[pagan]

Don't fix your mind, it is reality that is malfunctioning!

So Hexes 23/24 are the symbolic death and ressurection. The movie Passion of the Christ sure did a good job expressing hexagram 23. So was the Trilogy of the Ring, when finally Gollum had to bite off Frodo's finger and fall into the burning pit of Mordor. It ain't easy.

But 24 isn't a tabula rasa. There is karma and/or genetics and/or subconscious programming that lingers. One has to imagine that Frodo suffered post traumatic stress syndrome after the whole ordeal. And when God showed to Job the full monty, miraculous or not it had to have left him a bit rattled.

24 is 'starting the cycle over again'. This hints at a pattern that is inherent within our genetics. 24 seems like beginning again with a little better understanding of the role we play or the job we do or the quest we live. It seems connected to the greater whole and our part in the greater system of things.

In terms of fate versus free will, 24 line 6 seems like missing the promotion we were working towards because we get too programmed and we forget to be autonomous when we have the chance to!!!!

Candid, I think that we can chance our inner environment in the 'here and now' which will greatly affect the look of the outer world tommorrow. But this instant was created by yester-attitude and that is now fixed in time and space. Fate is created by fixed attitudes that we are often unconscious of.

Consciousness, which is a function of the here and now, is the only free will we have, and it is creative. So from the stand point of here and now, we can use pure conscious awareness to 'yield' and this alone will lift us out of the familiar ruts of our own spoiled mindsets.
P.

[tashij]

Pagan what you write reminds me of what Simone Weil writes: the only choice we have is the one to look up.

[tashij]

I also have an image of a face looking from the ceiling of my sky at me, blue, smiling, hewn from a gem, multifaceted and steady.

[martin]

Why do you think that the past is fixed, Pagan?
I know, that's what we learned in school ...

But do we ever step into the same past twice? http://www.onlineclarity.co.uk/I_Ching_community/clipart/happy.gif

[martin]

Ever?? twice?? what nonsense .. http://www.onlineclarity.co.uk/I_Ching_community/clipart/spin.gif

Kurt Gödel

[pagan]

Hi Martin,
I know the Casteneda books have a part where he is instructed on how one can change the past. I have done this myself. After deleting email, I go into my trash bin, click on the deleted item and send it back to my inbox and voila! I have resurrected the dead!!

The way you change the past is to first have one.
Then you make it 'fixed' by tying it to a mulberry shoot.
P.

[martin]

Changing the past is not difficult, we all do it.
It's not so easy to see that we do it, though. The belief that the past is fixed gets in the way. If we become aware of a change we tend to think that only our perception of the past has changed, not the past 'itself'. Because that is impossible, isn't it?
What our simplistic maps of reality tell us about time is often dead wrong. When you remember something, for example, you are not just watching "memory traces". You are IN the past. And your presence in the past probably changes it in one way or another, if you want it or not.
Same for the future, you are there when you think about it ... and your presence changes it.

Impossible?
Okay, another impossibility: when you study the Yi you actually meet the writers of the Yi and exchange ideas with them.
http://www.onlineclarity.co.uk/I_Ching_community/clipart/happy.gif

[megabbobby]

'let tomorrow's dream become reality to me'

you could be in a situation that is developing and think 'how could this be a good memory to daydream about in the future' and let it's plot go that direction

[candid]

Ah, Pagan, that's cheating. An item isn't really dead until it's deleted from our hard drive. Assuming it ever is completely deleted, and not just transformed.

Megabobby, to know the seeds?

[tashij]

I know I have a tendancy to try and fix the past all the time, tie and retie it to that mulberry bush. It seems to be the 'Groundhog Day' syndrome. The feeling that if i could get it right, in the past, then fate will show the happy ending.

I am starting though to look at past events more as a musical note: hear the pitch, and let it fall, with nothing more than the vibration to keep me in tune to what the present moment is.

I believe in fate, but for me it has happened in certain periods of time, with long stretches of unfated banal moments between. I like the climax, the syncronisity of fate, but surely a very worthy task is to face the day to day reality (chop wood etc) in between. In between? Oops. Must be living in the past and future again.

One suggestion Yi has given me to deal with this trial and error is hex 11 line 3.

[tashij]

And I do think Frodo had Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome. But I believe he could rest, having done all he could do. I wonder though, that Job was silenced, dusted,completed, .

[pagan]

Martin,
Can you recommend someone who can redesign my past? Less funky, a little more refined and sophisticated?

Candid,
We are hopelessly stuck with memory like doodoo on our shoe that won't wipe off. Pretty soon they will be selling us all disposable hard drives so we don't have to cope with the past. Memories cannot be erased they can only be hidden in code, but they will still operate from a hidden location, so as unappetizing as they are, we have to marry them forever until death do we part.

Megabobby,
Anything you dream up for the future must neccessarily stem from the past, so you are putting post mordem stuff in your future, stop that!

Tashij,
My image of 11.3 is like a teeter-totter at the playground--is it more fun to push up or fall down? One half of the process wouldn't be anything at all.
P.

[martin]

<BLOCKQUOTE><HR SIZE=0><!-Quote-!><FONT SIZE=1>Quote:</FONT>

We are hopelessly stuck with memory like doodoo on our shoe that won't wipe off.

Anything you dream up for the future must necessarily stem from the past<!-/Quote-!><HR SIZE=0></BLOCKQUOTE>

Can anybody please help Pagan? The poor thing has a nightmare. She dreams that she is imprisoned in her past!
Help!!!

[megabbobby]

supposedly there is no such thing as time ..so it's like solid globs of experience..you meet one..know it's beauty..
and then the other nice time globs want to hang out with you
soon it is known thruout the time universe that it is a priviledge to be your time glob
all the greatest globs in history are waiting standing room only to pass through your reality on whatever form or media

[martin]

Yes, that sounds more like it. http://www.onlineclarity.co.uk/I_Ching_community/clipart/biggrin.gif
I'm thinking about opening a pub where people and time globs can meet each other and I have already bought a piece of time not far from the Big Bang.
http://www.onlineclarity.co.uk/I_Ching_community/clipart/clown.gif

[candid]

Ta Chu as time globs? likes that http://www.onlineclarity.co.uk/I_Ching_community/clipart/happy.gif

[jeanystar]

past, present and future are just a function of the mind, created for convenience. Castaneda did not speak of teaching how to "change the past," he said to "have no history"..drop your past, have none.

you dont change your destiny by changing your character, changing your character is a mind game.
You drop your history, erase it, by stepping into the present moment, the only time there is. The Great Reality.

I have been thinking about writing a book about people who have changed form, the 49.5. From the level of ego, change is only superficial. YOu cant change your spots on that level. True change is transformation, you are a new being...it is like you step out of the old form, condtionings.

this is why yogis can be in two places at once. enlightened beings are free of karma, have no human history!

But I dont think transformation has to wait for full enlightenment. I know of ordinary human beings who have changed their spots, become new creatures, wholly transformed, as if they cartwheeled into a new way of life, without a trace of their old, petty self.

and it happens via a cartwheel, no other way. Character building is a nice pasttime,I guess, but it is really just bulls##t. ( a buddhist psychiatrist said that to me once)

and isnt this why the Yi says a 49.5 doesnt even have to inquire of an oracle.

Pagan, you contradict some of your own statements above by insisting that the past is solid and immutable:
"Consciousness, which is a function of the here and now, is the only free will we have, and it is creative. So from the stand point of here and now, we can use pure conscious awareness to 'yield' and this alone will lift us out of the familiar ruts of our own spoiled mindsets."

[martin]

Yeah right, changing or building character belongs in the same category as - what shall we say? - armchair socialism? And what is "my character" anyway, an euphemism for "my rigidity"?

Oh, I love to rant about all this elephant sh*t! http://www.onlineclarity.co.uk/I_Ching_community/clipart/biggrin.gif

[candid]

Hopes a cartroll will suffice. These old bones don't wheel like they used to.

"But I dont think transformation has to wait for full enlightenment." "and isnt this why the Yi says a 49.5 doesnt even have to inquire of an oracle"

Interesting observation.

[pagan]

I am not sure what I think or believe. But why is the IC so hung up on remorse and regret and shame if the past does not exist?
P.

[martin]

The writers of the Yi had their own hangups. There is no reason to assume that they were less neurotic than we are. I think.
I respect them and their wisdom but I don't put them on a pedestal. They are human, like you and me. Fortunately, as far as I'm concerned. Well, I guess I'm not a devotional type. http://www.onlineclarity.co.uk/I_Ching_community/clipart/happy.gif

[sunpuerh]

It's never too late to have a happy childhood!

[jeanystar]

<BLOCKQUOTE><HR SIZE=0><!-Quote-!><FONT SIZE=1>Quote:</FONT>

It's never too late to have a happy childhood!<!-/Quote-!><HR SIZE=0></BLOCKQUOTE>

YAY! Let's go practice cartwheels down on the beach!