What is the mature response to feeling shame or being shamed? Hexagram 47uc

[Wasserdrache]

What is the mature response when shamed or feeling shame? Due to human physiology, our nervous system has four alternatives:

Fight response, the body's way of facing any perceived threat is aggressively.
Flight mode. The body urges you to run from danger.
Freeze response, the body's inability to move or act against a threat.
Fawn mode, the body's stress response when trying to please someone to avoid conflict.

Fighting is useless, maybe even infantile. What use is there in banging your head against a thick wall (shame, feeling inadequate or defective, especially in front of others)? Fleeing impossible, its a prison, you can dream as a response, but is it mature? If you are ashamed of yourself, to where can you flee? If your parental figures or SO shames you or you them, to where can you flee?

Freezing is implicit in being trapped. One is literally frozen. Thats really not a response, it is how things just are.

It seems to leave only one possible mature response open to shame or being shamed. Coping, by sacrificing oneself, using submission (opposite of fighting), accepting (opposite of fleeing) and growing upwards (opposite of freezing) to see beyond the walls imprisioning us. 47 uc could be developing skills managing our raw or immature emotions.

When all lines change in Hexagram 22, it turns into 47uc. The mirror of hexagram 22 (superficial beauty, skin, adorning) does hexagram 21, biting thru, gnawing and trying to get to the essence. Shame and skin are interesting elements here. Having thick skin means not being easily upset by criticism.


H.

 

[Wasserdrache]

Hexagram 47 is largely seen as negative and maybe for good reasons. The idea of being trapped by force, being basically a toddler in a cage, an adult in prison. disciplined by a system (or belief system), or by persons acting concertedly as drags or energy vampires, creating exhaustion and other phenomenon associated to this estranged state are in general not welcome. You are reminded in many first and six liners about punishment and discipline, think of 61.6, 24.6 or 4.1. Hex 47 is hardship that needs to be handled. But how? If you are exhausted you need to rest. Why can´t you rest? Why can´t you let go?

Shame is drama, no doubt, but the opposite of sustenance. Shame takes away energy, shame controls, shaming is manipulative and a lot like quicksand. You move, you sink deeper. It is also something difficult to face. Nobody likes to talk about it, its taboo. I have given up all hope this thread will get any comments. Thats the energy of 47. Respect is due.

Shaming, pointing the finger or being just plain old stupid when it comes to relating to others and making them feel bad is also too painful to relive. Its best kept under control by dissociating from it. In other words, one is inclined to try to forget the sentiment as soon as possible. Sometimes it is not possible. It keeps you trapped. Is shame a trap? How do you get out of a trap? But there is time, line 1 of hexagram 47 gives us three years to reflect. So, how did you fell into the trap?

A prime number is a great animal, you can't divide it, only itself has the power to do so. 47 is a big elephant, a prime number among primes, a force of nature. Its upper even pair is 48, associated to Hexagram the Well, sustanence, water (emotions) muddy or clean enough to drink. In 48 the well is created, dug up, lined, covered etc, its manmade,

47 is made by nature, its impulsive, it does not depend on humans, its an independent event/place created by mother Earth. Its a dried up lake. It should nurture, but it refuses to do it until acknowledged by Heaven (father), filling it up. Logos respecting Eros. If the father doesn´t punish the son who does not respect his mother, then the mother will not nurture neither the son nor the father. This alone is worth reflecting much deeper, because of its implication in the meta world of I Ching. But not for now.

If you have seen a dry lake, the broken pieces of soil revealing the interior of a historically humid but now arid place, its incredible, majestic and also sad. Like the skeleton of a big elephant. You can see the great generous soul (innocence), lying there, exposed to the elements, to the unremitting heat of the sun, to the cold fracturing wind of the night. The thick skin is gone, nothing is left of the proud animal demanding respect. He got trapped in his shame, his exhaustion, the impartial reality, he stayed where no water was available, no support until he had no more strength to move away. Did you think you were invincible? What was holding you back, what did not allow you to move forward to find water?

Any way, how did you get here, big soul? Where will you go to after your rebirth? It would be interesting to explore further hexagram 45 and 49 as adyacent odd numbers paired in the sequence to 47. Shame doesn´t arrive by itself, nor does it evolve by itself. It is a process probably dependent on how we change (49) adapting to Gathering (45) with others.

The answer is kept open to interpretation. What is a mature response to being shamed or feeling shamed? Exhaustion related to itself. 47uc

H.

 

[Wasserdrache]

The nuclear hexagram of 47uc, which is hexagram 37, results from the concatenation of lines 5, 4, 3 in the upper and 4, 3, 2 in the lower trigram. Shame and family go hand in hand apparently when we search for causality. Let’s look at the trigrams for a second.

The upper trigram is Lake, the youngest daughter, the lower, Water, the middle son. As seen in the interaction between other trigrams, especially the interaction between Earth and Heaven, the order (upper-lower) will determine the nature of the interaction.

When Earth (distance, square extension) is above Heaven (seasons, time), all is good, Heaven (seasons) controls mildly life on earth and everything goes in the right direction, Hexagram 11, peace or flow. But when trigram Heaven is above Earth, when the lower trigram Earth (distance) is controlling seasons, things stagnate, Hexagram 12, Block. How is this possible? Geographical places far from oceans have less rain, seasons are very extreme and unpredictable, and sometimes prolonged draught can last for decades. The Sahara, Antarctica or the vast inner Asian landmasses (Gobi Desert, Siberia) are places like that. This would be a good example of distance controlling time or seasons.

So, the upper trigram is controlled or directed by the lower. The youngest daughter is controlled by the middle son. The youngest daughter represents the joy of openness, and it is directly affected by the middle son, Water, who should teach his younger sibling limits (hexagram 60) and shape her with brotherly love. But he is not, he is greedy and flows below her. If the middle son, Water would help his young brother, Mountain, the younger son would help the youngest daughter to fill up with joy again. But mountain also hasn’t received help (water, sustenance).

If we look at the answer I Ching gave, and try to extrapolate significance beyond the subjective state I was in when asking, shame would be the result of a parental or by older sibling’s negligence. Parents leaving the youngest daughter (openness, authenticity, genuine persona) without emotional support in hands of others more "powerful" (like an older sibling), who restricts excessively, until he “dries” her out, to exhaustion,and in the process destroys or undermines her self esteem. Shame would be the result of uneven power play, in which one part puts down the other to accomodate his own feeling of inadecuacy.

The fraternal bond is broken when somebody shames you or you shame somebody. The absence of the middle daughter, Fire, to control the middle son, is important. No heat, no warmth, no other female to teach the youngest female in the family to stand up for herself, nor eldest son to teach the middle son to be a good brother. Where is the mother? Silent, probably overburdened with duties. Where is the father? Maybe absent or drunk, or dead after having to go to war.

What would be a mature response to somebody close to you, more powerful than you in familial or social hierarchy, who tries to manipulate you through shame and you can´t get away physically? Someone who instead of nurturing, teaching limits, transgresses them and ignores his duty as older sibling or compassionate human being?

Coping with the situation, without fighting it, fleeing from it or freezing up. Coping with the stress response and learning to keep getting better at it, until you grow out of it or over it if you are an adult, until you can "push upwards" (Hexagram 46). I also think, there is a message about teaching patience and resilience to the child as caretaker, because this world is full of middle sons, who have been also neglected by their parental figures. Abuse too often engenders more abuse. If not prevented in childhood, it will reappear in some way in adulthood.

H.

 

[my_key]

The deeper forces acting within 47 come from 37 Dwelling People, from where the time is directed towards inspiring a consistent display of thoughts and actions in unison. In 47 the noble one (the mature one?) is still confined, exhausted or oppressed and so there is enormous effort required in the 47 process - make an offering and you will succeed - to break the existing chains formed by the immature and the small.

 

[surnevs]

Hai Long,

Once I read an authority mentioning the hexagram names best translated was by Wang Bi * and I can't remember or find who that was, but I'll mention it here anyway as I think that it fits with the description or experience with hexagram 47 that you posted here: Impasse

Alfred Huang ** explains the ideograph:

​

"The ideograph of Kun is a tree placed within a big mouth, kou. Here "mouth" signifies an
enclosure. The symbol of the preceding gua is wood growing upward from the earth. The ideograph of this gua is wood confined in an enclosure. It can no longer grow. In the end it will become exhausted and die. Before the Zhou dynasty, the ideograph of Kun was represented by wood and the sign for stop, indicating that the wood stops growing; it becomes exhausted. ........."

I'll not dive into your experience with it also because I've had it but in other connections. Thank you for your posting!

*) The Classic of Changes, Richard John Lynn, Columbia University Press, N.Y. 1994
**) The complete I Ching, Alfred Huang, Inner Traditions, US 1997