Hi,
I asked the chi for some supportive advice on how to give up smoking and it came up with this reading

29.4.6 -> 6

initial interpretations are eat healthily and simply. Gain support. To take a gradual approach? (line 4)

line 6 is much harder to put into this context for me. i can't imagine the yi is telling me that there is no hope of escape from this habit, a few ideas come to mind but it really isn't clear to me.
Lise says "If one tries to make life unassailable, it disappears. Its most important quality is its vulnerability, changeability. Give it a solid base, but upon that, make it alive, delicate, new every day."

the resulting hex 6, perhaps referring to the ongoing dialogue with myself in the course of releasing myself from this habit? a continual negotiation? is it saying that i need to make the decision firm within myself, aware of the dangers of continuing, but be flexible within my approach?

insights much appreciated ...

Hi Che,

I'm not really answering about your hex, I don't feel skilled enough to do that.
But I do have experience in quiting with smoking.
I quit smoking over two years ago, I've been smoking for more then 30 years. Nothing worked.
Untill I read about Champix. It's a relatively new medicine to help with getting rid of that nasty addiction.
You have to get a prescription from your doctor for it, at least I did. Once you start taking the pills, you can still smoke.
You can read how it works here:
http://www.patient.co.uk/health/Smoking-Helping-to-Stop-with-Varenicline.htm

But allthough I am very happy to have been able to quit the habit with the use of this medication, I'm still convinced that Champix did the job for 20% but 80% was my own determination to quit.
I also drunk loads of water, and whenever I really wanted to climb the walls, I went for a walk or a bikeride.

Now for the hex, but I hope somebody more skilled then me will also answer.

Maybe the 29.4 stands for not rushing into it. With Champix there is no rush. It's all very gradual.
There is no benefit for me to recommend this to you, I'm not connected to Champix. I'm offering you this advice because I want to help you.

In times of danger ceremonious forms are dropped. What matters most is
sincerity.

29.6 could stand for the struggle you will get by quiting. It's very hard. But if you really want it, if you quit because YOU want to quit, I'm sure you can do it.
It might take a long time before it's really out of your system.
I'm still having times that I really hunger for a cigarette, even after more then two years.
But if you put your fist down, and remember why you wanted to quit in the first place, you can beat this.

29.4.6> 6

Conflict

The image indicates that the causes of conflict are latent in the opposing
tendencies of the two trig rams. Once these opposing tendencies appear,
conflict is inevitable. To avoid it, therefore, everything must be taken
carefully into consideration in the very beginning.

If you do this, you will get in conflict, conflict with your addiction.
When you are struggling, remember why you quit, remember you are in charge, remember that you can do it!
If you are 100% determined to quit, you will succeed.

The 29.4 suggests that they are easily available to you, the cigarettes.

The 29.6 suggests that there is something extremely hard to change about a smoking habit.

Maybe something has to change deep within you, about something that you want for yourself, before you'll be ready to let the cigarettes go. That is, you have to decide deep within yourself that your health is more important than always having the option of reaching for another cigarette.

It often takes a long time to give them up for good.

Darned bad habit!

Best of luck with it! You can do it!

I think 29.4 is telling you that understanding you must give up smoking is not difficult. You can get the idea into your brain as easily as you can pass wine through a window.

But doing it is hard.
29.6 Says it may very well be literally three years before you are completely free of the addiction.

However, the image for 29 is very encouraging.
"If you are sincere, you have success in your heart and whatever you do succeeds."

As to what you could do to help, 29.4 and the idea that this could mean getting a thought into your brain suggests to me you might get results with hypnosis tapes.
-Rosada

Hexagram 6: It's going to be a struggle. "A cautious halt halfway brings good fortune" suggests that a gradual reduction might be better for you than trying to stop cold turkey. Then, after you have done something for yourself and established commitment, "see the great man" and get medical help.

Hello,

You'll succeed in your efforts to give up smoking ... persevere

Hex. 49.4 - 'Repenting extinguished, possessing conformity. Amending fate. significant.
Comments: To amending fate belongs significance. Trustworthy purpose indeed'.

Hex. 49.6 - 'A jun zi, a leopard transforming., The small in the person skins the face.
Disciplining, pitfall. Residing in Trial, significant. Comments: A jun zi, a leopard transforming.
One's pattern beautiful indeed. The samll in the person skins the face. Yielding uses adhering
to a chief indeed'. The chief being ... yourself taking charge and any medication/advice that
may enhance your efforts. Won't be easy ... just hold on tight with steely determination.
Reduce dependence/in take gradually until you can make do with one a day/one every 3
days, etc. Just a lil suggestion, depriving yourself through drastic measures would be unfair
and difficult.

The Original I Ching Oracle : Sabbadini & Ritsema.

You could consult other versions: Hilary's online Hexs. & WikiWing; Legge (Sacred Texts); LiSe (HeyLise); Wilhelm.

Just keep doing everything that's out there -- support groups, nicotine patches, breathing exercises, group hypnosis, private hypnosis -- whatever works for you.

My husband and I both stopped. It took a really long time, but now we've both been smoke-free for 16 and 11 years. I don't care if people smoke around me and have not even the slightest urge to pick up a cigarette. It really is possible to quit smoking.

Just never give up.

many thanks for all your responses so far... much to think about, i will address them soon, tomorrow i hope when i have a bit more typing time.

i asked for more insight, and was given the following hexagram:

50.1.6 -> 34

I interpreted this initially as needing a detox to flush out my system, and needing a firm but gentle approach. There are other elements of interpretation that i'm not addressing here yet, I really need to go into more depth with this, wish i could now but i need to go to work... again any thoughts most welcome, and i will give more detailed feedback to your replies tomorrow i hope when i have a free day.

For me stopping smoking after a heavy habit (well 20-30 a day) of about 30 years with a few giving up gaps of a year or so in between...was ultimately down to the full realisation that smoking gave me absolutely nothing and hurt me. I was hurting myself. I woke up in the middle of the night indignant on behalf of myself that I should do this to myself...as if there aren't enough things out there to hurt a person why do it to yourself !

Of course people had been telling me for years this very fact but I hadn't really heard. To me it always felt like these people just wanted to stop me enjoying myself

The biggest part of stopping smoking for me was the clear inner decision to stop. A full realisation that no part of your being benefits from it ! That you don't like it...you don't want it you don't want to do this bad thing to yourself everyday What do you hate yourself or something !? I found beligerance against my smoking habit quite useful...once I had clearly identified it as an enemy not a friend I think half the battle was won.

Nicotine gum helped me enormously though with the withdrawal though but I needed that firm decision too.

People say stopping is hard, and it is, but your power of decision is incredibly strong too but the thing is it has to truly be your decision...I think i failed before because I did not have the full personal realisation that this was a way of kicking myself in the teeth each and every day in order to make myself sicker, poorer and uglier.


However I do recall getting 24.6 about stopping a some point before I quit. Obvioulsy it can't mean you can't quit...because you can quit the moment you 'stop putting them in your mouth and lighting them' That is how to give up...fundamentally that is all you have to do to give up

For me all the books and helplines and all that had no impact after I heard that phrase "just stop putting them in your mouth and lighting them" We kidded ourselves we are powerless against this nasty carcinogenic habit...but the hell we are !


I gave up 6 years ago and still have the pack of cigarettes in the house that I had on the day I gave up and I haven't touched them. For me psychologically I found it easier to know I could have a cigarette if I needed one. If I had tried to give up with none in the house that would have made me a bit panicky. For me thats easier but everyone is different


However I found that giving up gradually did help. This is I think the opposite of what the self help books say. With such a long term habit giving up is a bit scary...somewhere in your mind you believe you actuallly need them so for my psychology it helped me to cut right down, more and more each day till the day I had none.

I think 24.6 could be a warning...don't leave it too late, do it now.

Hex 6...well that comes back to what i was saying about the importance of decision. perhaps you are still divided in your mind about giving up because you still think, perhaps subconscioulsy that you actually need cigarettes.


You don't !

29 and 29.4 might best be understood here in the words of Master Yoda:
"Try not. Do or do not. There is no try."
Not like I haven't been there. I had a 2-1/2 pack-a-day habit.

As to 29.6, you can also understand this with Transitional Hexagrams, which takes you through 47.6 instead. This is equally foreboding. But the menace here is not outside of ourselves. It's not some "cunning, baffling and powerful" inanimate substance. It's our own whining and feeling sorry for ourselves. This is the conflict to be resolved. You just need to get all the parts of your being pointed in the same direction and want to breathe oxygen again.

I go back to what Lise said, "Give it a solid base, but upon that, make it alive, delicate, new every day."

That last phrase: new every day.

Take it day by day. A commitment to yourself each day. You have to get only through TODAY. Tomorrow is different. For now, you focus on now, today, getting through only this day.

Sometimes goals are easier to achieve if you subdivide them. Don't look at the next week or month or year or lifetime: just look at today.

Just my two cents.

There seems to be a correlation between serious study of the Yi and the ability to give up smoking

bradford said:

29 and 29.4 might best be understood here in the words of Master Yoda:
"Try not. Do or do not. There is no try."
Not like I haven't been there. I had a 2-1/2 pack-a-day habit.

.

Click to expand...

Yoda sounds a good ally to me

che said:

50.1.6 -> 34

Click to expand...

50.1 for me has meant stopping or resolving the conflict causing the turmoil that leads to the need to smoke. It means to stop arguing, if only with myself. Stop seeing myself as always right while the other person or situation is wrong -- and irritating me ...

I do not think of this as either inspirational or instructional, only as matter factual. I began to smoke on my 17th birthday and engaged myself in a forty five year, pack a day habit until one morning after lighting what was to have been my first one for that day I realized that it no longer tasted any good. That was the last I've smoked in fifteen plus years.

R.

Wow! That sounds like one of those transformational moments that happen only rarely. Usually in order to change we have to plug away at something, chipping away at it, little by little