Paralyzing life choices

[Innerspacejam]

I've asked 1000 questions about my current living situation and relationship and have finally decided to ask for some help. We love each other but I don't love this town and I've felt very h54 in the relationship. But there are good things there and potential for practical security I want for a family. Time is ticking like it or not. I don't have anything particular to run off to though. What I gather from my two options are the combinations below and I don't know which is worse. Maybe my words and thoughts are out of order?

Enduring obstruction strips inner truth.
Increasing small power retreats to confinement.

Stay together 32.2.4.5 - 39
Break up 42.2.3 - 9

Stay in this town 61.1.2.5 - 23
Move away 33.2.3.6 - 47

 

[diamant]

Hi Innerspacejam,

Sounds like quite a tough situation you're caught in...

Stay together 32.2.4.5 > 39
The current stability (32) will end and the road ahead is closed (39) for this option. The reasons for this outcome are in the lines: you're being patient (32.2), but there's nothing nourishing and substantial there (32.4), and you'll persist in this relationship but the man will change his mind (32.5).

Break up 42.2.3 > 9
Strange answer. Someone benefits another person, then that other person goes to share their new 'wealth' with somebody else. So there will be a new person, for either you or him, very soon after the break up. This unfortunate event will still benefit someone.
Not sure who is who here, but, maybe it's you, because both the active lines are female, i.e. it's the female who acts. So if you act to break-up, you'll find someone else, who you probably won't like super much (your current partner 'increases' you, fills you up, but you take this attraction and play it out with someone else?). It will still benefit you. The result will be 9, that is, some distress, some fruitlessness, or even some manipulative games.

Stay in this town 61.1.2.5 > 23
You need to be vigilant and prepared, as there's real hidden danger in this town. Someone is having a love story in secret, so I'm rethinking who is the possibly straying partner as per previous cast. Or it may be your inner call for the child that you want to have. 61.5 shows a possible pregnancy. Resulting 23 is not a good omen.

Move away 33.2.3.6 > 47
Do you mean moving away together? He'll strive to keep you where you are. He won't want to move, so he'll keep you there are as a servant (in line with the 54 feeling you get). In the end you'll have had enough of that, and move away anyway, and you'll feel glad you escaped. 47 shows sadness and difficulties, which of course is to be fully expected after a painful break up.

I really don't know what I'd choose to do if these were my readings. I think I'd just break up anyway, because like you said time is ticking, and wasting time with such a risky situation will set you back regarding your goal for a family. These are not great conditions or a good basis to form a family. Wishing you luck with your decisions.

 

[Innerspacejam]

I didn't realize anyone responded to me! THANK YOU for dedicating the time to so many questions at once. I don't feel any better about the answers but that can't be helped .It's discouraging to have your fears mirrored back but also appreciated and hopefully helpful. The tricky part in all of this is doing something about it.

 

[Lao_Tzu]

Stay together 32.2.4.5 > 39
Any length of time (duration) will experience obstacles one after the other (obstruction). Life oscillates up down up down. You know this. Any attempt to find happiness elsewhere will result in an unnecessarily hard won lesson that the same challenges remain present. Correct position 32.5 Giving duration to one's character through perseverance.

Break up 42.2.3 > 9
Incorrect (not center) lines received, both in lower gua (absence of heaven). When the superior person perceives good, they move toward it; when they perceives their faults, they eliminates them (increase). One is enriched through unfortunate events. Could this not be clearer? Secret of the universe: Every man/woman is the same man/woman. You have already picked one. Now do exactly what you would want other people in your position to do and make it work. Or else start the entire process again elsewhere.

Stay in this town 61.1.2.5 > 23
Inner Truth (bingo) followed immediately by splitting apart. Ching knows you don't want to hear it.


Move away 33.2.3.6 > 47
Retreat = cease this line of questioning immediately. Stop thinking and end your problems. Hexagram 47 is the "ughhhh" response. Not finding immediate catharsis or quick fix solution. You're over it and the sage is over it.

Wisdom not put to use is worthless wisdom. If we have come to know the Ching as a source of truth (the well) - we cannot selectively pick and choose what is and isn't correct action. Following creates success.

Without going outside one can know the whole world
Without looking out the window one can see the ways of Heaven
The farther one goes the less one knows
Thus the Sage does not go, yet he knows
He does not look, yet he sees
He does not do, yet all is done

 

[Liselle]

I wonder if these readings are confusing because you're deep into a conversation. Talking with Yi isn't exactly like talking to people, but there are similarities and I think this is one of them. Follow-up questions can help, but they can also become a morass. (Ask me how I know . )

It's also tricky for us on the forum. Imagine walking up to people who have been talking for a while - their conversation won't make sense. That's probably true here.

A clue might be lines like 61.1 - "Guided, good fortune. There is another, no peace" (Hilary's translation). I'm pretty sure I've gotten that in exactly this situation, when Yi's already given me advice and I didn't understand it and asked more questions.

Any chance you can find the very first questions you asked on these subjects, and post those? If it was me, I probably wouldn't be able to, but maybe you're more organized.

Another possibility might be that all of your options have pros and cons, that there really, truly, isn't any clear-cut decision to be had, and the best Yi can do is give you things to think about. (Which it seems you've already done and are doing, and it's still confusing... )

32.2.4.5 to 39 - Lasting's moment of Difficulties. That makes some sense - a marriage is something enduring (at least that's the hope) and you're currently having problems.

(It's important to note that 39 is not about only the fact of having difficulties, but about fixing them. You're walking up a mountain and the path is becoming difficult, so you have to turn around, find a better path, get some help.)

Hilary often suggests reading all the lines mushed together as a story. It doesn't always help me, but it's something to try:

"Regrets vanish.
In the field, no game.
Lasting in your character with constancy.
For the mature woman, good fortune.
For the young man, pitfall."

So Yi says staying together is like regrets vanishing - and like hunting in the wrong field where there's no game - and that you have to figure out how "fixed" your "character" is. I don't think that's necessarily a moral judgement - it might be more just your sense of yourself. Are you more like someone who's fixed in his/her ways, or more like a younger person who's not? Something like that.

For what it's worth, here are a couple of 32.5 examples I put in WikiWing. They're for very mundane decisions (not at all like yours), but might help give a flavor.

Example: I'd promised, in advance, to go with a friend to her daughter's school event. I'd done this before, and enjoyed both the events and their company. When the day came, though, I was very upset about unrelated matters and did not feel like going anywhere. But I worried about possibly disappointing them, plus, for all I knew, it would do me good to go out. So I asked Yi, and took 32.5 to mean I wasn't "the same person" (quote from Hilary's commentary in her book) as when I made the commitment. Not going was the right decision. (Liselle)

Example: I'd once wanted to buy something but it cost more than I thought I should spend. A long time later it was on sale at a hefty discount, but at that moment I wasn't sure I still wanted it. If I didn't buy it then, though, it would be gone forever (the price reduction was for clearance), and I wondered if my change of heart was a temporary mood. 32.5 affirmed that I was not the "mature woman" who could rely on her current feelings staying constant, and I shouldn't make a decision based on them. I was the "young man" who had no idea how he'd feel in the future. So I hedged my bets and bought the item. (Liselle)

"In the field, no game." If that was the only moving line for the proposition, "Stay together," it would be pretty reasonable to think, "No, don't stay together. You're looking in the wrong place/relationship."

But - it's not the only moving line, and it's the 1001st reading you've done. So it might not be that straightforward. For instance Yi might mean that at this point (the 1001st reading), casting Yi readings is the wrong field. I can't tell.


Then you asked the companion question, "Break up?" Companion questions are a good idea, but again it's complicated by the whole long conversation that's gone before.

42.2.3 to 9 - Increase's moment of Small Farming.

42 means Blessing, but it also means pouring in a lot of effort and energy. It calls for improving things (see the Image text). Blessing is available, but often not on its own without anything being done. Example of my own: I once got 42 unchanging about a thorny administrative problem. I was able to solve it by writing a long, detailed letter. Writing it was surprisingly easy, but it would have been a mistake to figure 42 meant the problem would fix itself. The letter was definitely necessary.

9 is like being a small farmer who doesn't have much room for error, where every problem with the weather is cause for anxiety. But since he can't control the weather, all he can do is just keep at things every day. 9 isn't a hopeless hexagram - the Oracle (Judgement) says "creating success" - but it is a nervous one that's full of farming/taming work.

So the hexagrams together might mean pouring a lot into that sort of cultivating effort, or achieving Increase through 9-ish activities, or that Increase will feel like small farming - something like that. How do you feel about that? This is Yi's answer to "break up," so you'll have to think about how or why breaking up could be described this way. But again, since you've done so many readings, I wonder if Yi's answering more about the situation overall. I don't know.

The moving lines describe things more precisely. (The hexagrams can be like a frame around the picture.)

'Maybe increased by ten paired tortoise shells.
Nothing is capable of going against this.
Ever-flowing constancy, good fortune.
The king uses this to make offerings to the supreme being: good fortune.
Increased by means of disaster work,
Not a mistake.
With truth and confidence, moving to the centre,
Notify the prince using a jade baton.'

I don't know. The first part - "increased by ten paired tortoise shells" - means that everything agrees. But there could be several ways to apply that:

• As a very straightforward, direct answer to "Break up," it could be advice to do that. But again, it's not the only moving line in the reading, and not the only reading you've done.
• It could be a condition or pre-requisite: "In order for 'break up' to be the right decision for you, all your inner selves must agree to it."
• It might refer to all the readings you've done. 42.2 is about an ancient divination method of heating tortoise shells until they crack, and then reading the cracks for answers. It says this was done ten times, and all ten agree, which is a pretty definite endorsement. And since you've done ten readings (maybe 10 x 100), getting this line seems like quite a coincidence, doesn't it? It might be advice to look back at them. Do they agree? If they don't, and that reflects your actual mixed feelings, it might be important to note that.

42.3 - Hilary's translation is up above; here's Bradford Hatcher's for comparison (I don't know what translation you look at, but it can help to see different takes on things):

'Increase comes by way of unfortunate events
Avoid errors
Hold true and focused in conduct
Report to the prince, offer the jade credential'

What do you think the "disaster work" or "unfortunate events" are? Maybe just the problems in your marriage, I don't know. Another trivial example: I got this line once as a reading for the day, and what I think it meant was I really really did not want to go and do errands, but when I did, at the one store I found something I could use that they'd put on a very steep sale - it was slightly damaged and they'd marked it down to $1.00 or so. So that was "increase" that came from the "unfortunate event" of having to go to the store. (Very trivial example )

You might also think about what "moving to the centre" might mean, who's the prince who's to be notified (your significant other? your inner selves?), what is this jade thing you'd be wielding?

(My brain cells have given up the ghost now... )