Use of oracles is tricky business

[pagan]

There is a commentary on the ICHING which I can't remember the author of, but he talks about how we can get out of touch with reality when using the oracles. I had a girlfriend who used the tarot a lot. We would make plans and then she would suddenly back out based on a tarot reading. I have done IC readings about a person and then when I see that person, I am suspicious or biased because of how I interpreted the oracle.

The point is that using the oracles can prejudice our point of view in advance and cause us to lose touch with our self. Using the oracle can lead us to a one dimensional viewpoint of a person or situation, instead of seeing the pulsing flux of life going on at all times in all ways.

Many of the people who ask their questions to the IC and then struggle with the answers it gives back seem to let go of their own understanding of the situation and also betray their own body instincts and common sense.

One thing that I have learned from getting jacked around by oracles all my life is that just because the auspice is bad doesn't mean it is not part of your dharma and or it should automatically be avoided. Oracles can cut us off from a healthy process of living by making us gun shy every time we get a negative answer.

This is why I still say that before you ask the question, spend some time in mediation and contemplation with the Sage and try to remember what the Sage has already said about the situation you are in.

I still feel that you can answer 90 percent of all questions by looking up the answer in the relevant hexagram, and never throwing the coins at all.
P.

[bradford_h]

Hi Pagan-
I think you are right here, although I think even more of the obsessive users just use their answers to rationalize what they were going to do anyway. And of course, 90% of your answers can also be answered just by examining your heart.
I think the limitations you speak of are bound up with the whole predictive slant, asking what the future holds, or even What are my puppets going to do to me next? I don't think there's a cure for this, other than to abandon the whole predictive approach and start asking: What psychological tool or attitude best equips me for the situation in question?

[candid]

LOL.. "jacked around by oracles"

Pagan, I hear ya. You make some very interesting points.

Have you ever deliberately done the exact opposite of what you perceive an oracle has advised, following your predisposition instead? Have you ever noticed that through this exercise, you've discovered that your original understanding of a given hexagram was not at all what it actually meant, when played out experientially? Conformity is not always a virtue, and rebelliousness can teach some of life's most well-guarded secrets.

[jerryd]

A comment here from a philosophical perspective which will be tinged with my prejudice on the matter, If a very young Dahli Lama can be the Oricle to hundreds of thousands what is to be said of discounting devination? If wisdom comes in the advancement of knowledge what is to be said of a Sage? If the western mind is so contaminated with idealisms to clog the conduit to the Oricle it is just as well to access all of the problems from a view of the psychology of man and his flaws in reasoning. If a modicum of all these are not applied by me in my reading of a Hexagram in sorting out my reading am I doing a proper read? I do think one needs to know when to say no to a reading of a question when thay see thay are to close to the person doing the questioning or find thay have a strong prejudice to the question. Objectivity and clearity of purpose are the key. I try to not read my own Hex to closely and will defer to another for results.

[pagan]

My personal relationship with the Sage began when I had my first child. She was one of those babies that had to get up for the 2 am feeding every night for 9 solid months. I kept the IC on the end table next to where I fed her every night and I read about 2 or 3 hexagrams (wilhelm) every night for 9 straight months, never using it as an oracle. I was just astounded by its inherent wisdom. Then I was diagnosed with a terminal illness and I reached for the IC as an oracle. The IChing told me that I wasn't going to die and that I had to follow the Sage meticulously every step of the way to avoid the danger. I did so and that was 25 years ago. I am free of the illness that Doctors gave me no more than 6 months to live, and in the process of healing, I became utterly addicted to the IC.

Using the IC as an oracle is a supreme way to learn the text of the IC. It is a fun way to learn its content and its truth. So I encourage everyone to use the oracle and apply the answers to one's life experience. This is the best application of an oracle. My gripe is that people cast the IC for an answer and then don't bother to comtemplate the answer or run to their mentors to 'interpret it'. I have found that it is very hard to get a good answer out of the IC when the questioner isn't sincere.

But here is the thing; everything depends on asking the RIGHT question. We should spend hours contemplating the right question. Because a right answer can only be given to a right question. If we ask the wrong question, we will get a wrong answer. The IC can't control how we architect the question, we are on our own there.
P.

[candid]

Pagan, may I ask, do you see the Sage as something or someone outside yourself? Tricky and personal question, I realize.

[martin]

It think it all depends on how much one is at one with oneself and in contact with whatever goes on inside. When your left hand has not the slightest idea what the <obscenity> (pardon me) your right hand is doing an oracle can easily lead you astray. But so can everything and everybody else.

The world is a confusing place. And let's face it, our spirituality is mostly nonsense and our spiritual teachers - not to mention our shrinks and therapists - are nearly always phonies.
Omagod, I think I am in a rebellious mood again. http://www.onlineclarity.co.uk/I_Ching_community/clipart/mischief.gif

3.3 (according to Legge): ".. shows one following the dear without the guidance of the forester, and only finding himself in the midst of the forest."
Yes, right, but where the hell is that forester? Somewhere in the forest? How to find him?
Well, here comes the supreme revelation, only the forester knows where the forester is. So if you want to find the forester you first need to find the forester. Sounds quite acrobatic, isn't it?
And consulting an oracle will not make it easier. Because you will surely misunderstand the forester that speaks through it unless your understanding is guided by him. But how can he guide you when you misunderstand him? If you want to understand the oracle you must first .. same acrobatics.

Yes, I know, there are several glaring holes in this logical story. Did it lead you astray? I hope not. Or do I? In any case, the story doesn't matter, what matters is the conclusion.

If thine eye be single thy body will be full of light.

[candid]

Martin, since we're now speaking in abstracts..

I have a friend who helps me sort out those types of questions. His name is Ti Ming. Ti Ming is my forester, teacher and sage. No matter what I say, do or want, it is always Ti Ming that determines the outcome. He opens the gate and also shuts it. If I'm too late, I sleep outside in the cold. But if my own ti ming is correct, then Ti Ming bestows upon me a state, and invites me to closer intimacy.

[martin]

Love your friend Ti Ming, Candid.
A twin brother of Single Eye, I guess.
Same precision.

[bradford_h]

Hi guys-
The question of person here is a fascinting one.
I guess personally I just imagine having a dialogue with the authors. Pretty dull &amp; mundane.
Of course there's the magic of being able to dialogue across the centuries.
They make a big deal now about the place in the brain from which God speaks to you in the second person (Wernicke's area I think). But the believers just can't seem to hear that it's also the place from which God tells you to kill the whole family.
In studying self-hypnosis I was surprised to learn that it didn't work if you did not use the second person on yourself.
In taking entheogens, the really great life advice usually comes from a second person or deity, the Deer, Mescalito, Teonanacatl, Hoasca, etc.
The Yi itself uses the fiirst person (Wo) in a few places, especially at 04.0 (where it also expounds Pagan's advice to be careful &amp; respectful with questions). But it only uses the second person once (at 61.2).
So I'm not sure if we have to split ourselves in two to dialogue with the oracle, but it sure seems like things want to work that way.

Candid- do you know the characters for Ti Ming?
Or what the words mean?

[candid]

Brad,

Yeah, I think it's important to have that second person perspective. Think it's somehow an essential thing to work from. Maybe the importance is that we don't we don't confuse ourselves, as with 4. I can be 4, but Ti Ming is always 1. Even if I am both and just don?t perceive it well.

My Ti Ming is timing. I have no idea what it means in Chinese. Please enlighten?

[bradford_h]

Hi Candid-
It's really hard to say without knowing tones or seeing characters. There are hundreds of characters with these pronunciations. In fact the odds are very good that the word Ti is now pronounced Di (unless it used to be spelled T'i)
If this was given to you by a spirit guide of some sort it may have a very high meaning.
One good Ming is Light, Clarity, Understanding, Intelligence
Another is Fate, Mandate, Higher Purpose
Some good and high Di's:
Earth
Divine, Sacred, Lord, Son of Heaven, Supreme Ruler (as in Shang Di)
Younger Brother
To follow the right path

The only Ti Ming's I see in my dictionary mean "to nominate" and "to autograph", using another Ming that means name.

For the highest meaning I might use either Divine Light or Sacred Purpose, depending on which Ming you choose. Both are in my glossary.

[candid]

Fascinating stuff, Brad. I'm afraid the original influence was nothing so spiritually romantic, though. It was said to me long ago by a business peer, and his meaning was simply "timing". To use his exact words, "it's that old Chinese sage, Ti Ming." You can imagine that it meant more to me than it did to him, and it stuck with me all these years, and has come to mean "heaven's time".

Thanks!

[bradford_h]

Timing
duh!!!!!
Got right past me
Tai Ming wouldna
Thanks

[candid]

chuckles!

[pagan]

I do feel that the Sage is still a separate part of me, calling to the lesser developed parts of my personality to align with his wisdom. Perhaps the day is coming when I will feel completely united and not separate from the sage, but for now I use this part of me; the sage or my higher self or my higher power, to reassure and help direct my very dependent and vulnerable inner adult-child. I don't think this dependency is negative but there is a responsibility to not just listen to the direction of the Sage, but to see his wisdom and make that wisdom my own. Not only hexagram 4 but I think hexagram 48, especially line 5, tells us to apply what we know.

I have friends who are spiritual junkies. They take every new seminar and follow every new therapy and method and technique that they hear about. The thing about these people is that they never really accomplish any one of the techniques, they just scan the surface. One time I was with such a friend and we went into a bookstore. She found another book about 'the way to enlightenment' and had to buy it. I said to her; "have you really followed through on any of the other techniques and systems and practices and affirmations and etc. that you are already acquainted with? Do you need another technique when you haven't used the billion you have already been taught?"

I have been guilty of this too, especially when it comes to using oracles. The urge to throw the coins instead of contemplate and apply what we know about the situation, can retard our maturing process.

And isn't it really true that the answer is always going to be the same, no matter what the question is?
p.

[martin]

I have for the most part given up on psychological (unconscious knowledge, messages of a higher self) and more abstract (synchronicity, etc) explanations of what happens when I consult an oracle since I met inner beings. They exist and once you know that it's only natural to assume that they also communicate through oracles.
So, when I talk to the I Ching, I'm talking to someone else who uses the I Ching as a channel, it's not me, that's how I see it.
Perhaps it's not always true, but I think it is true in most cases, at least for me. Of course your oracular mileage may vary. http://www.onlineclarity.co.uk/I_Ching_community/clipart/happy.gif

What I find interesting is that ancient - so called primitive - explanations so often seem to be nearer to the truth than the more sophisticated ones that we come up with in our intellectually oriented age.

[candid]

Pagan, if knowledge was my only interest in Yi, I'd likely feel much as you do. For myself, the exchange and communication is at least as important as the knowledge. But then I thrive on contact and exchange.

You may have lived with someone most of your life, and you pretty well can predict their responses to most situations. But you don't stop talking with that person just because you have an understanding of them and they of you. If anything, understanding one another makes communication all the more potent because you can trust each other entirely. Neither do you need to walk on eggshells with each other. Each can be direct and completely candid, and especially humorous. It's good to have a friend like that.

[chase]

I don't use the Yi to tell me what to do. I consult the Yi usually to give me guidance when I feel like I can't seem to figure it out on my own.

I do believe there is a certain addictive quality to it though, especiall when it seems to speak so loudly and you get those "I GET IT!!!" moments.

[jte]

FWIW, I definitely feel that I'm communicating with an intelligent "other" when I use the Yi.

I've had experiences in association with using it that seem to confirm this for me (although, unfortunately, they don't seem to be repeatable, empirically verifiable ones).

There are allusions to this scattered throughout the Yi and appendices, without a comprehensive explanation - "spiritual beings", "gods and spirits", "the light of the gods", "the mind of heaven and earth", "suprahuman intelligences".

Perhaps a comprehensive explanation wasn't possible for the Yi authors or perhaps they chose not to spell everything out for users. Maybe, for those who even experience it, it's meant to be intuited gradually via induction/deduction through use of the Yi over time.

Spelling it out would certainly be faster, but maybe that's just not "the way of the Way" =). Don't know.

- Jeff

[pagan]

I often ask the IC if I should stop consulting it for awhile. There are times it answers with a emphatic YES! and other times it seems to say that there would be real misfortune if I don't use it.

Have you ever noticed that the Sage can have a real sense of humor? Like when I asked recently about a plane trip, I got 62 'misfortune from flying, stay close to the ground'.

One time I asked the IC, after asking endlessly "is this man right for me? How about this one? How about this other one?" I got fed up and said, "ok, which hexagram are you going to give me when it IS the right man?" and the IC answered hexagram 30.
P.

[micheline]

Hello Pagan,
I love your posts, by the way, the ones I have read have seemed so genuine and full of life.

I do agree that the Sage has a huge sense of humor. At those times, before I knew better, when i have been childlishly persistent about a response I wanted to see, the old sage would just start giving me the "most positive" readings, as if It had thrown up its hands in exasperation and decided to just tell me what I wanted to hear.

Those readings at first made me gleeful until I realized it was like a 6.6...nagging until you get what you want, but "the prize" is snatched away ultimately. It was really almost as if the Yi itself had stopped responding and I was alone with empty echoes of my wishful thinking.

Someone on this board once wrote that the Yi "went silent" on him for many years....because he had ignored advice, I believe. I didnt even have to wonder how he knew the Yi was being silent... when the connection is flowing, you can feel it.

NOw, if I ever dare to ask too much without heeding advice already given, I promptly get 21.6. Then I know it is time to close the book and put the coins away.
MIcheline

[pagan]

Hi Micheline,
Several years back I asked the IChing about a man that I really wanted and got a negative answer that infuriated me. Like an idiot, I decided that I was going to throw the coins all night until the Sage gives me a positive answer. And I am telling you the truth that I went on for hours and never got a positive answer. I finally gave up exhausted.

I think that the Sage might have entered into such a challenge with me to show me, just once as pure indulgence, that the Sage can interfere with the law of probability if he so chooses. I don't think the Sage would do it again, because I got the point and now it would just be a game.

When I finally gave up, I busted up in laughter just seeing what an immature childish prank that was for me to pull and later it really humbled me. I was actually treating the Sage like the "Mirror, mirror on the Wall" wicked stepmother. I was treating the Sage like he was my servant to materialize my desires for me by teaching me strategy. These strategies were supposed to be designed by the Sage to help me satisfy my desires and ambitions. The Sage worked for me, not the other way around.
P.

[calumet]

Couple of months ago I asked a question about Baldy--not the "will we ever be together again?" variety, but something to help me understand his behavior, which at the time seemed important for reasons I can't now recall. The Yi responded with a hex, a couple of changing lines, and relating and resulting hexes all indicating that he was a candidate for the ancient Chinese equivalent of sainthood. Cracked me up.

[jerryd]

Very clever of you guys and girls to lighten up on all this serious stuff. I will apply for a reading from you Calumet I could use some sainthood just now..LOL

[micheline]

LOL.isnt that funny?...i also asked about a man who was dastardly and got 14.6, 50.6.....and so on....HA. i have no explanation, but it cracked me up too.

[calumet]

Well, I'm sticking to my story that the hex cast is purely random and it's all in the interpretation.

We had a choice. We could have interpreted those draws to mean that we'd made a terrible mistake, rejecting or somehow displeasing a truly wonderful man, and then gone on to do whatever we do when we realize we've made such a mistake--berate ourselves, chase him, etc. Or we could have done exactly what we did, laughing at the irony of looking at "saint" when we had been seeing "cad."

[micheline]

My feeling is this.......there is nothing like a failed relationship, esp a very painfully failed relationship, to make you dig down deep for the gold inside...

hence, the "messenger" may be a cad, personally, but for us, he became an "angel" who forced us into self-exploration we might otherwise not have bothered with.

As it says in the kabbalah (in loose interpretation): never hate nor resent the messenger.
what comes through them HAD to come, and would have come in another way had this person not been so available and obliging.

we needed the message.

[calumet]

Yikes, way too long a perspective for me. Call me a harpy, but if someone wrongs me and then fails to apologize and make amends, I consider myself wronged. End of discussion. Sure, I'll recover, but I'm not thanking the person or feeling thankful for the "lesson." But then, neither have I ever agreed with the proposition that what doesn't kill you makes you stronger.

[martin]

I agree with you both, Calumet and Micheline. Maybe we are talking about reactions that come from different places in ourselves. So when someone pushes my buttons a part of me (somewhere near my stomach?) may find it disgusting and say "bleeeh!" while another part merely watches what happens and finds it interesting.
I think that each of these reactions is valid and valuable.

[pam]

Calumet

I can't agree that the hex cast is purely random...I have used it too many times where the warning I got was very important and I failed to heed it....recently I was feeling bummed about staying home and thought I would just forget the rest of the stuff I had planned to do and visit the library. I asked the Yi if I would feel better if I just took off for awhile...I got 25.6 > 17....I threw again and asked something similar and got 17.5 > 51. I decided the Yi was just telling me this was not an appropriate question to put to it so I left on my merry way. Got to the library, had a nice chat with a person I met there, picked out some books, went back to my car (4 yr. old Mercedes in great condition) and found a lovely gash in the door - someone had 'keyed' my car in the parking lot.

Got the message. I should have remembered that a warning is usually given for a reason, whether or not I think anything could happen.

One time I DID heed the warning about two years ago, I was asking my usual question about how my day would go before leaving for work and I got 5.1.3.4.6 > 6. I thought about that for a bit and wondered if it meant 'waiting at work, I will encounter conflict' or 'wait now .... there is a conflict.' I decided to wait 10 minutes more and read a bit more of the paper. That way if it meant waiting at work I would encounter the conflict, it would come whether or not I waited in the morning, but if it meant 'wait now', I should wait.

Work was about a 25 minute drive; I turned off at my exit, which flowed right into the street without a stop sign, and encountered a huge fatal accident right there in front of me. Someone had jumped the center divider and the car coming in the same direction I was going ran into them without any possibility of stopping. The accident had only happened a few minutes before - one policeman on a motorcycle was just arriving. The driver whose car jumped the median was lying in the road dying. I stopped to help direct traffic around the accident until another cop showed up. The rest of the day I was in a daze....that might have been my car that jackknifed the car that jumped the median. The driver whose car DID hit him was injured. The other driver died right in front of me, even as the EMTs pounded on his chest.

This information to wait certainly did not come from within me. I have to believe there is some spirit guide or god communicating with me.

[calumet]

Pam wrote, "This information to wait certainly did not come from within me. I have to believe there is some spirit guide or god communicating with me."

Why must the information you picked up came from an external source such as a spirit or god? Horses grow restless before an earthquake, not because the gods warn them but because their sensory apparatus tells them something's up. I don't think the human sensory apparatus works much differently. We use the Yi to focus our attention, but in the end we receive and process information much like other animals do. Our perception works in ways that science can't explain just now; but they will turn out to be perfectly understandable and explicable if we ever develop testable theories about them.

So, even after hearing your stories and others, and even after being surprised time and again at how directly the Yi adresses my concerns, I still think the cast is random. What matters is the perceptions and knowledge the individual reader brings to interpreting the response.

[jerryd]

Calumet; I could not agree more with your last sentence here, "What matters is the perception and knowledge the individual reader brings to interpreting the response."
I will ask, is not Random the word for the reading but the cast? When a direct question is ask before the cast does not this limit the random nature of the cast. A cast at random would mean to me one throws the cast without reason and then applies the question to it later. I may be looking at this all wrong. I may also be the biggest nit picker in town. {:>)

[calumet]

Jerryd wrote:

" ... is not Random the word for the reading but the cast?"

The hex you end up with is the cast. I believe it's random: Each time you cast, you have exactly 1 in 64 chances of getting any given hex. That assumes that you're using a method equivalent to the yarrow stalk method. Coin methods I know of are not precisely equivalent, and I'd guess that a lot of computer programs are skewed away from the 1 in 64 odds. The way I use the term--not saying it's correct, just my way--is that the reading is pretty much the same as the interpretation. You cast a hex, and then give a reading, or an interpretation.

Jerry also wrote:

"When a direct question is ask before the cast does not this limit the random nature of the cast."

Not sure what you mean. Are you saying that asking a question changes the mathematics?

[jerryd]

Calumet;
Yes my statement about a question before the cast is vague and confusing. My thought "was" If I ask no question [and] throw the coins then ask a question then read the "cast". I see this as a totally randon process to achieving an answer? I know this is a bit out of line and I have not done it to see if there is any reason to accept this thought. It was more of a mental exersize and it happen to hit the page!!!

[pagan]

A few months back we had a discussion about whether the fact that casting for a hexagram is a random process requires the second hypothesis that the random process will come up with the exactly right hexagram to answer the question postulated. Does the fact of randomness rule out the divine nature of the oracle and its precision in addressing the needed information to the questioner?

As I stated before, I did keep track of all of my questions and answers for years and still do. And even though in the long run it comes out as perfectly random, there is always a run of a certain hexagram or line that is very pointed to what I am going through.

There is a question to be considered that if the IC violated the law of probability, then wouldn't it be more suspect, even perhaps evil?

I think it is important to get past the notion that the ultimate truth of existence lies in the field of cause and effect. I think modern day physics is proving beyond the shadow of a doubt that other dimensions of reality exist and that synchroncity and probability ratios replace cause and effect models at the finest/most potent levels of existence.

But even if you want to keep your reality centered in a cause/effect world, casting the IC for questions and then fully contemplating the answers will make your perception grow by leaps and bounds and will make you more intelligent.

The ICHING pitfall is believing so desperately in oracles that you forget to live your own life.
What I see in most people's questions and reaction to IC answers is this: "I want you to solve the problems I have Sage, and tell me the future, but I don't want to correct anything about myself to create a more perfect character to improve my life on my own".
P.

[kevin]

Have you read Gotswami?

Particle physics and the effect of consciousness?

He reports strong evidence that consciousness indeed affects the material world arround us.

Also that particles can behave as if an event has already taken place as long as the event is going to take place.

Plus much else...

As you say physics is demonstrating much.

--Kevin

[candid]

Pagan,

I fail to understand how the IC can solve anyone's problems when using it as an oracle. But if you do not ask you can not know its answer by guessing. You can scan your memory and review the many lessons taught in the past, and that's all good, of course. But then you can do that same thing with any book which contains wisdom, including the Bible, Tao of Poo or a book of fables. Every metaphor contains a moral. The only thing that separates the IC is the synchronistic effect that connects the lesson to the moment.

The IC?s pitfall is not in its use, but in not having ears to hear and legs to walk the walk. IC doesn?t solve anyone?s problems; it just sheds light on the path.

[martin]

I found something on this page (http://www.satyana.org/html/bohm2.html#Order) about the physicist David Bohm that is perhaps relevant here:

"in any discipline of science, when scientists describe the behavior of a natural system as random, this label may not describe the natural system at all, but rather their degree of understanding of that system--which could be complete ignorance. Random empirical data provide no guarantee that the underlying natural process being investigated is itself random.
Thus, while "randomness" may usefully characterize the empirical observations of the natural process, this reveals little about the actual nature of the process. Hidden orders or subtle variables may be operating at a level that is beyond the ability of current instruments or concepts to detect. The far-reaching implications of this are evident when one considers, for example, the possibility that the "random mutation" that underpins Darwin's theory of natural selection may soon be regarded as just one arbitrary hypothesis among many. The observed randomness of biological mutations gives no assurance that unknown subtle processes are not operative--hidden beyond the veil of today's empirical science. Such unknown forces could include such "taboo" possibilities as teleological factors, divine design, Sheldrake's morphogenetic fields, and so on."

[heylise]

Love your quote, love this thread too, wish I had more time to post,

LiSe

[jte]

Calumet, I want to say in advance that I respect and share (to a lesser degree than you) the view you expressed above that humans can perceive more and possibly in different ways than is commonly accepted.

For the sake of explaining the I Ching's apparent ability to predict the future, let me reverse your argument: "Why must the information you picked up came from an external source such as a spirit or god? ... Our perception works in ways that science can't explain just now"

Reversed:

Why must you think our perception works in ways other than what is commonly accepted medically?

The I Ching's information comes fron an external source, something that has at times been called a spirit or god. Science just can't explain it right now.

In regards to the I Ching's apparent ability to predict the future:

1.) You, personally, have had experiences that led you to believe that there is more to perception than is commonly accepted by science.
2.) I, personally, have had experiences that led me to believe that there is an external source that is some type of non-physical intelligence.

So, is there a way to resolve this impasse? I don't see one. So, perhaps we can "agree to disagree"?

- Jeff

[calumet]

Jte wrote:

For the sake of explaining the I Ching's apparent ability to predict the future ...

See, I don't know that the I Ching does predict the future. Maybe you've seen it do so; I haven't. I'm a skeptic. To the degree that the Yi can predict the future, I'd say it allows the reader to focus on what she knows or perceives that allows HER to predict what's going to happen.

Jte again:

The I Ching's information comes fron an external source, something that has at times been called a spirit or god.

I don't believe in spirits or gods. I believe that any perceptions, prescience, or wisdom that comes from a Yi reading come from within the reader(s). But I'm happy to agree to disagree.

[pam]

Calumet,

I just threw yesterday that I was in for an unexpected shock, something to do with my husband's affection for another woman, a bit of wandering going on - I have long since ceased to care about this anymore since it happened too often over a period of years and my natural defenses just got warn out feeling sad and built a wall to make me stronger. Finally, I am left with calm apathy about these little emotional upheavals of his. So I was kind of thinking 'yeah, so what....?' but had NO INDICATION from him whatever that he was once again feeling this way. In fact, quite the opposite.

So he comes home from work, and later in the evening tells me that he has to take a business trip to a city where one of his old "true loves" lives (my daughter-in-law - now you can see why I have given up on caring) and will probably stay the five days with my son and her.

Now, there was no way I could have known he would be going until he told me - and I was not asking questions about him at all and he rarely travels - I was asking about getting the stove fixed because it has some short in the oven temp switch. The answers just didn't match, so I started asking other things and got the part I told you.

I don't see how I could have predicted this - yet I was correctly able to interpret the reading BEFORE he told me, and his announcement came just hours after the reading. I think this is a case where the I Ching predicted the future perfectly.

I also use it for buying stocks - and it is uncannily accurate on market movement. I don't run the stock market and have no wisdom about events that would make it move one direction or another. In fact, even knowing something as little as Greenspan will address Congress on a certain day and the pundits feel that he will have good news won't alter the fact that an unexpected plane crash or tsunami or whatever won't send the market crashing in spite of the good news. Yet, the I Ching will tell me the market will fall bigtime days before the unknown event occurs.

It also told many people on this site about 9/11 - including me - I was one of the people who threw 51 repeatedly in answer to questions that had no reason to be answered that way - my first question the day before was about watering a large plant in my family room. I though I might be underwatering it and asked the Yi "should I water it today?" Answer: 51. I thought that was weird and went over to another palm and asked if I should water that. Answer: 17 - 51. Twice more that day I got 51. The next morning my sister on the east coast phoned me minutes after the first plane hit.

What part of me would have known about 9/11 on 9/10?

[jeanystar]

I think the "fact" that is missing here is that none of us are separate from the universe we live in , we are part of the fabric, woven into the threads...we SEE ourselves as separate from the enviroment and each other, but in truth, we are not separate at all, we are part of ONE whole.

In this sense, of course you could know about general trends and movements and events before they happen, because on some level , this knowledge is available to you.

The I Ching is only one oracle....it is random, but it is ALSO completely and synchronistically connected with everything happening simultaneously, including your question.

Here is another random but accurate oracle....walk down a busy street and catch snatches of conversation. The words that you hear clearly are meaningful for you. They are a clue for you to follow, a message for you to decipher. Try it.

[calumet]

You think the knowledge you gain from the Yi comes from outside; I think it comes from inside. Like belief in gods and spirits, it's a matter of faith or not-faith. For my purposes, it's the knowledge itself that counts, and not the source.

[kevin]

BTW LiSe - Thanks for the Goswami lead - vey grateful - got there in the end http://www.onlineclarity.co.uk/I_Ching_community/clipart/happy.gif

--Kevin

[martin]

"walk down a busy street and catch snatches of conversation"
Or watch TV. On some evenings it is as if it's all intended for me and for no one else. Yet I know that a few million others are watching the same programs, well, I don't really know it, I assume it, wrong assumption?
Probably not, but there is something strange going on, apparently, that is not accounted for in our official maps of reality. I am the center of the world, so are you.
So I am the axis of the turning wheel of the world, but this is not simply solipsism or narcism because you are also the axis of the wheel and so are all those billion others.
What kind of wheel is that that turns around billions of axes?
The true nature of reality is dazzling ..

"Nothing is too wonderful to be true." (Faraday)

[kevin]

Martin

That's a Magic post for me

Makes me go

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

--Kevin

[rinda]

We are one body...

Rinda

[jeanystar]

NOthing is "outside" of you.......!

[candid]

"We are one body..."
"NOthing is "outside" of you.......!"

Swell, but what does one do with that? They are wonderful engagement stoppers; so grand in scope even meaning has no meaning. Floating in ultimate groundlessness, defying anything opposing - all is one so don't even try to think. Back to oneness of Eden and the nakedness of Eve: the destruction of mindfulness.

Serpent

[martin]

Damned, can't we for once have a paradise without a serpent?

Adam

[candid]

Well Adam! how nice to see you again. http://www.onlineclarity.co.uk/I_Ching_community/clipart/mischief.gif

Surely you may. But don't get any fancy ideas about ... well, this is paradise so I can't say it.

Serp

[jeanystar]

who says "dont even try to think?" ??

The truth that we are all of ONE may be grand in scope but it doesnt preclude mindfulness and it certainly isnt about groundlessness. NO fun is taken out of the game..in fact, it makes it more fun.

"It means what it means" ...(a quote from Unstrung Heroes)

[candid]

Jeany, where does one go from the ultimate? That's the problem with these grand and sweeping truisms. When All is One, there is no need for meaning or exchange. Ok, all is one. Now what?

[candid]

By groundlessness I simply mean without a ground - no opposites. Therefore no mind. Only izzzzzzzzzzzz......... or Auooooommmmm......... It makes a nice samante, though.

[candid]

And so we have differences. Differences in opinions, perceptions and ideologies. Differences in geneology and culture. Differences in musical taste and sexual attractions. It?s what makes the world go ?round, and it is the universe in which Yi operates. Grounded to earth, yet established in heaven.

[lindsay]

I agree with Candid. The Devil is in the details. We all think we have the Big Picture. Never met anyone who didn't.

[jerryd]

All is well in eden I see. My sister just e-mailed me from gods country (oklahoma) and has informed me god is trying to make a point of some kind with the all the chaos in the world today. I replied if god wanted to make an actual statement then there would be no need to kill off 160,000 people to make it.

My point is we are all right and probably all wrong in the eyes of the other half.

[martin]

Hey snake, who said that there are no differences? To make a difference: "one" is not the same as "equal".
It's true, though, that "all is one" can be just empty words. But if you feel it, that's another matter.
And we feel it!

Adam &amp; Eve

PS: We really love you but please don't try that apple trick on us anymore, okay?

[rinda]

Yeah serp- we don't give a fig for your fruit of the woom.... ...or do we?

oh my... I should go to bed now.

Rinda

(run very fast!)

[rinda]

If someone in the act of watching/measuring quarks can change the nature of their manifestation, can asking a question influence the way the coins fall? Are we (as Martin's cool article suggested, and as I very loosely/crudely paraphrase) individual gatherings of energy from a unified field of consciousness/being/whateverthingornothingtheycalledit? Does how hard we pull on the sheets of time and space when we make the bed of our existence influence the end result of the coins we toss thereon? Is our current level of consciousness/being significant to the reading? Do we really exist separately? what is real? what is separate? what is existence? All we can do is live in our own skin, as it were, and know that we may indeed be one body...

[jeanystar]

Dear Adam and Eve,
I so agree....

"one" is not the same as "equal", Candid!!!!!!!! The grand ISness is full of the very details which make the world go round. Viva la dance.

I will refer you to another post (which also annoyed you)....."I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together"
You, my dear man, ARE the walrus whether you realize it or not. And so IS we all.

[candid]

Grounded to earth, yet established in heaven. I never said all is not one. In fact I called it the ultimate truism. Just not much I can do with it. Can you?

[candid]

Can Yi?

[martin]

Why ask? Bite in your tail and see for yourself!

Adam &amp; Eve

[martin]

You know, dear snake, it's like the mother of all things.
You cannot do anything with her. But she does a hell http://www.onlineclarity.co.uk/I_Ching_community/clipart/happy.gif of a lot for you.

[candid]

Why ask? That's a good question. The same one you, Adam, asked only after you bit into the apple. To know yourself. That is why.

Serp

[pakua]

""walk down a busy street and catch snatches of conversation"
Or watch TV. "

Here's an oracle I saw on TV.

Ask a question, put your radio on seek, and stop at the first song you hear. Listen to the words.

It seemed to work for her (but at the end of the show, she split up with her boyfriend in spite of the good "readings")

[jerryd]

Perhaps it all boils down to " how sincere is the questioner? Not judgeing anyone here but it is my belief that we ask most questions not to find answers but to confirm or deny a belief already drafted about a person or event!

[calumet]

Pakua wrote:

" ... walk down a busy street and catch snatches of conversation. Or watch TV ... Ask a question, put your radio on seek, and stop at the first song you hear. Listen to the words."

Hex casts are random; the Yi is not. It is a finely-honed and well-thought-out collection of ideas on how to approach common problems. I'd have to be pretty hard-pressed to use random bits of verbiage as an oracle, and almost certainly wouldn't resort to such if the Yi were at hand.