Not for the pure of heart

calumet · Oct 5, 2004

This post is NOT for the pure of heart, and it is posted by someone who is NOT invariably pure of heart. I'm very patient and pleasant and generous until seriously crossed. Then I get nasty. If this thought horrifies you, and if you cannot bear to imagine that the Yi's advice might be sought for less than kind and good-karma-creating purposes, please do not read or respond to this post. As a matter of fact, if you are of that mind, I'd say you may be a trifle naive. It is my belief that over the milennia the Yi has been consulted in relation to every sort of human purpose, and you may have noticed that not every human purpose is absolutely saintly. Should you choose to read on, remember: You have been warned.

For those stalwart souls who have stayed with me--what do you think of consulting the Yi about projects that don't pass the moral purity test? I have a couple of these going right now, and the answers I'm getting about my less-than-pure projects are along the line of "be very very careful," "if you fail you will be covered in shame," and "in spite of everyting, this might work out to your advantage."

What do you think--does the Yi insist that we be morally pure, or is it willing to give neutral advice when what we are doing is wrong and we know it?

candid · Oct 5, 2004

The Holy Grail was presented to man through the neutral angels, not those who sided with good or evil.

calumet · Oct 5, 2004

Candid, I didn't know that. Thank you. Can you refer me to original or secondary sources? I am interested in exploring this idea, which I find most compelling right now. For what it's worth, I believe that very, very few things are purely good or evil, although any given thing can be more heavily weighted toward one or the other.

seeker · Oct 5, 2004

I think Yi will give you advice, but as you said, it will warn you if your actions will bring you humiliation. And you might get some comment about the superior man. But on the whole, I think it is fairly neutral; it isn't here to dole out our karmic lot. Besides, I also think Yi knows what lessons we need to learn, so it might let you forge ahead if that was the path you needed to take.

jte · Oct 5, 2004

Personally, I wouldn't do it, and I'd advise anyone who thought about it not to.

- Jeff

candid · Oct 5, 2004

Calumet,

Having no resource with the information on hand, I just typed ?holy grail and neutral angel? into Google. I?m sure there are several other sites and sources to confirm the myth.

grail

Establishing our own true path means leaving our mother and father, or any facsimile thereof. That also means defining our own ethical and moral values. It?s not that Yi doesn?t speak to morality, but it speaks to each individual according to their inherent inner core values.

calumet · Oct 5, 2004

Hey, Jeff, I'm not a witch or a succubus or anything of the sort. Just a tad ... Machiavellian. I hear ya, though.

candid · Oct 5, 2004

Violating yourself is what gets you into trouble. I don?t believe there?s a born mass murderer; somewhere along his path he crossed over the line of his conscience, violating himself. 25 speaks to this core, which it says is pure and innocent. But according to who?s standard?

candid · Oct 5, 2004

Continuing the thought:

"Violating yourself is what gets you into trouble."

If this is so, and I said it so it must be, (little joke there), then the punishment of 21 is according to a violation of one's own core being.

In a way, 21 is a trickster. It causes us to seek approval of an authority, and then lets us go nuts trying to figure out what this authority deems right or wrong for us.

calumet · Oct 5, 2004

Interesting thought, Candid. I'm something of a cynic, which is to say, I'm a romantic who's been burned too many times. I firmly believe that motives are often so mixed as to be near impossible to classify as good or evil. As we all know, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. But I wonder ... can the road to heaven be paved with bad intentions? I'll keep you posted.

As to 21--you makes your bets and you takes your chances. What's new?

heylise · Oct 5, 2004

I think 25 may say a lot about ?pure of heart?, and that one is literally ?not succumbing?: not to anything, including prevailing morality.

In nature, everyone eats everyone else, but they all do so with a pure heart. So the Yi can very well be asked about the best way to eat someone.
You said this thread was not for the pure of heart, but I see nothing so far going against pure hearts.

LiSe

heylise · Oct 5, 2004

I think it all depends on what you expect. If a bank-robber asks if it is morally good to rob a bank, Yi will give him a moral advice. But if he asks it because he does not want to get caught, or how he can get the largest loot, Yi will give practical advice.
Good and bad are both part of our mind, and I think they must be both part of Yi, not in a good-bad way, but by not excluding any part of life.
After all, even God is ?everywhere?. He is ?nowhere not?. I think Yi too is ?everywhere?, covering all aspects of life.
We here, at least most of us, have in general good intentions. We ask questions within those intentions, so we don?t expect Yi to even be able to do anything else. Some people ?know? it is bad to invest in stocks, so to them Yi will advise against it. But to those who do not think there is anything wrong about it, Yi gives answers about how and when.

"be very very careful," "if you fail you will be covered in shame," and "in spite of everyting, this might work out to your advantage."

So Calumet, be careful when you rob that bank.. and if you care to share some of that advantage..

LiSe

martin · Oct 5, 2004

I asked the Yi if it would help someone who wants to hurt others (I did not use those exact words but that was what I had in mind)
The Yi said: hex 54, line 6 changing.

Now is that a "no!" or is the Yi telling me that my question is empty and devoid of meaning?
Oh, these oracles ...
Anyway, even if it is a no, I guess that there are Machiavellian

tricks that do not hurt others. They will hurt their purse perhaps but that may be good for them in the long run!
And in line with LiSe's suggestion, if you give 10% of the money to Clarity it's probably okay.

hilary · Oct 5, 2004

Only 10%? Hmmm

Stephen K once told me he'd seen Yi guide people with malicious intent into the nearest deep pit. I've never seen anything like that myself, but I have seen a couple of cases where Yi apparently withdrew support for a certain kind of reading (eg for trading) that had worked smoothly and supportively for years. Maybe encouraging the querent to move on?

BTW, will someone please define 'morally pure'? A lot of readings are about 'persuading' or 'encouraging' other people to do something, for instance. (And not just relationship questions, either: Yi helps me out with sales letters.) Morally grey?

martin · Oct 6, 2004

When do we have a "pure" heart? When we are selfless? That has been the religious and spiritual teaching for ages. Yet the birds and cats and dogs I know are quite selfish sometimes although I believe that their hearts are very pure. Or take a 3 year old toddler. Not selfish? Come on! Pure? Sure!
So ....

candid · Oct 6, 2004

Closest I can think of to morally pure is amoral; the idea behind the Grail angels. As soon as you choose a side you've "made" an enemy with its opposite. Funny, even Jesus asked "why thou callest me good?"

Would Yi council a thief to a more perfect thievery?
What if his children were starving?
What if it was his family?s lineage to be thieves?
What about counseling a business executive to run a more profitable business?
What if it was at the expense of his employee?s benefits?

I don?t see Yi as a flag waver or as a condemner. I see it as the mean, and amoral. We are our own accusers.

martin · Oct 6, 2004

I don't think that what speaks through the Yi is neutral. Objective maybe, but that is not the same.
Neutrality is dead, objectivity is alive.

candid · Oct 6, 2004

Objectivity is neutrality, Martin.

IE: "One must first rid oneself of all prejudice and, so to speak, let the psyche of the other person act on one without restraint." WB 61

This is precisely the position from which Yi operates.

martin · Oct 6, 2004

It's a bit difficult to explain, Candid. Love can be objective, but it is not neutral.
What speaks through the Yi can be described as "loving wisdom".
The state that Wilhelm mentions (I assume it's Wilhelm) is a kind of "tabula rasa" state that humans can attain. It is used by psychotherapists and scientists, in different ways.
I think that the intelligence behind the Yi (and the intelligence of All That Is) goes beyond that.
It's neither neutral nor moralistic, it is ... objective. I don't know a better word for it.
Do I make myself (un)clear?

candid · Oct 6, 2004

Martin,

I wanted to give a little time to think more on this difference, if in fact there is one, before responding.

?Love can be objective, but it is not neutral.?

That really depends on the kind of love you?re referring to. Certainly there?s nothing objective about romantic love, nor the love of a mother racing to save her child from an accident. Those are entirely subjective responses, But If you mean agape or God-like love, that is the love that can not discriminate one?s own child from a complete stranger. That is impartial and neutral. Neutral doesn?t mean not to act, but to act with equanimity. To be truly objective, one can have no personal interest.

So then, what is this personal interest - this loving wisdom, as you called it - we sense from the I Ching? I don?t think that?s explainable without the use of metaphor. So I can only explain how I see it.

I view Yi as a mirror. And behind the mirror is an impartial God. When I inquire the oracle, I project that particular part of myself into God, which appears as a reflection of my own self. A sort of super-self, if you will. The great man, or sage. This image is impartial, and that?s why I can trust his/her/its/their judgment.

There?s something I believe we largely miss, regarding spirituality. We view God as coming down upon us from heaven. But this is actually a relatively contemporary idea. For thousands of years our species viewed God also as growing up from the earth. We place divinity above. But divinity also grows out of the earth. We pit the good of heaven against the bad of the earth. But divinity is undivided. How then can it choose a side? Would it choose your child or mine?

jte · Oct 6, 2004

"I'm not a witch or a succubus or anything"

Hehe, those thoughts had not occured to me. For the record, I don't believe in succubi and the few Wiccans and Pagans I've gotten to know have as a rule been very nice folks.

Regular, run-of-the-mill human beings, however, have repeatedly proven themselves capable of atrocities almost beyond belief.

The rather well-thought out and eloquent arguments above seem to start with the idea of naive or "innocent" evil - i.e. evil that is not aware that what it is doing is evil, or doesn't perceive it as evil (the 3 year old and the businessman, respectively).

However, Calumet knows full well that what she is doing is wrong... so, I think that's a bit different.

- Jeff

calumet · Oct 6, 2004

I love this discussion, and am delighted to hear that so many of you think the Yi is capable of dispensing advice that is not necessarily aimed toward what commonly is regarded as sweetness and light. I tend to believe that the Yi is neutral--not impartial, because it was written by wise people; and the wise wish, ultimately, for good. But the Yi's advice is neutral, and reflects back to us only what we bring to it.

Regrettably, I am completely atheistic. There's no Grand Design; it's all pure chance; you and I and the earth we stand on are temporary chemical arrangements; and this is all there is. I regret my atheism because I miss the 23rd Psalm and the Lord's Prayer, and also because atheism denies me the comfort that others derive from spiritual beliefs. (And in case you wonder, I held this rather dark view long before Baldy-chasing-25-year-olds broke my heart.) I also believe almost completely in a deterministic view of human behavior--Machiavelli, Sun Tzu, Robert Greene, Freud, the psychobiologists--they're all essentially right. Action A leads to reaction B, or maybe to reaction B' if things are especially complicated. But I use the Yi anyway because I see it as a psychological tool, a jewel cut by masters and polished through the ages. We hold it up to our selves, and it does to our selves what a prism does to light, simply showing the components of any given reality--components that we knew all along were there, but couldn't see. So I think the Yi answers neutrally. What we do with its answers depends on the balance of dark and light within us. And who can truly claim to know that?

HeyLise, I loved your question--What is the best way to eat him? I'll ask it a lot, even after my current melodrama is a dim memory. Which will be any second now, I hope.

candid · Oct 6, 2004

Calumet, I also enjoyed, or am enjoying this discussion, and I think it was gutsy of you to initiate it. It really does qualify the base of personal beliefs as one personally applies it to Yi.

We seem to hang up on terms though. Neutral, impartial, objective. They all express the absence of personal gain or loss, from the diviner's perspective. From the inquirer's perspective, it's just the opposite. They must bare their soul, with complete trusting, that the answer they receive contains the answer that they need.

The untouchable quality is also what makes Yi embraceable. Yi is our imaginary lover. She becomes to us whatever we imagine her to be. In my opinion, it really doesn?t matter what that image looks like except to the one interacting with it. They are the one standing in front of the mirror, transposing the impressions of the unconscious to the recognizable images they seek.

martin · Oct 6, 2004

Yes, it looks like we are hanging up on words. "Words are witches", as a friend of mine used to say.
I agree with most of what you said, Candid. The difference is perhaps that I believe that the intelligence that communicates through the Yi has values and will try to guide us in the direction of what is "good". This "good" is universal (more or less as Plato envisioned it) and does not always coincide with what we see as moral or ethical. So, although the Yi is impartial it is not neutral in my view.
I also believe that the intelligence behind the Yi is a presence that exists independent of me. It mirrors me and it allows different relationships, it can be a friend, a lover, a teacher, a parent, etcetera. But it also exists as itself, as a separate identity.
I think that the beings that speak to me through the Yi are the same beings that communicate with me in other ways. However, I don't know what happens when you use the Yi. Who or what is on the other side of your Yi-phone? It could be that we dial different numbers, of course.

candid · Oct 6, 2004

Martin, maybe you're right about Yi having values. I just view them more as principles. In other words, values without morals: cause and effect. Morals vary greatly from culture to culture. Just look at how the indigenous American Indian tribes' values were seen by the early European settlers here in the US. Savages! And yet their values were deeply rooted in both heaven and earth, as well as family. So which of these values would the Yi support and which would it reject?

Intelligence, yes. I too believe the universe has intelligence. But it's not a separate intelligence from anything else. It's not that intelligence there, or this intelligence here. It is the same intelligence as you or I have, except that it is without our personal bias. To my thinking, that's makes universal intelligence impartial, unbiased, neutral and objective.

I?m trying to avoid Jungian lingo because it can sound cliché, but I believe what is on the other end of the phone, and behind the mirror of Yi, is the collective unconscious mind. Brahman: ultimate power underlying the universe: in Hinduism, the ultimate impersonal reality underlying everything in the universe, from which everything comes and to which it returns.

calumet · Oct 7, 2004

Candid, I'm the gutsy type. I like to think of gutsiness as a species of honesty, which in turn is a species of faith, which as you know is one of the cardinal virtues. It's not the very best one--charity is. But you work with what you've got.

hilary · Oct 7, 2004

Calumet, when this is all done, could you let us know the outcome and what conclusions it leads you to?

calumet · Oct 8, 2004

When I posed this question, I didn't realize how interesting a question it is. I truly was looking for advice. But on second thoughts it is a very interesting question, and one I intend to follow from my vantage point and from others' vantage points, as best I can.

As for my current situation, as I've said I don't pretend to be morally pure. I'm probably not much worse than the average run of humanity, but really I'm not the best person to mess with.

At the moment I can report that I'm getting on with life, and having the usual ups and downs associated with a breakup. I'm also keeping an eye on my trap lines--those traps having been set specially for what's-his-chrome-dome. (I don't actually have anything against the follicularly challenged, but this little bit of verbal nastiness makes me feel better. So sue me.) I consult the Yi from time to time on whether to leave the trap lines as they are, or to bait them a little more heavily. He's sniffing at them so much it's difficult for me to believe he doesn't know on some level they're traps, and MY traps at that. Not pretty, I realize. I rationalize it all by telling myself that he could learn a very important lesson from this. I could too, I suppose.

Anyway, I'd bet the grocery money that this isn't the first time the Yi's been asked how best to eat someone. Right now the Yi is telling me to lay low. But if I were a certain someone, I'd be watching the landscape very carefully for the tip of a twitching tail.

It may take awhile, but I'll get bored with the whole thing eventually. Meantime, sure, I'll keep you posted--but can you stand the hostility?

martin · Oct 8, 2004

ROTFL! Well, it is easy to laugh. These traps are not meant for me.
I hope.

calumet · Oct 9, 2004

Hilary, you asked to be apprised of the outcome and my thoughts on the matter, and not the ongoing drama. And yet I can't resist reporting that Baldy is no longer merely sniffing at the trap lines, but actually has begun to tug at them, as if to say, Come on, I know this thing is going to pop sooner or later. Well, it might, and then again it might not. Yesterday I asked the Yi a general question about the situation, and got 34.3-->54. Today he tugged so hard and so unmistakeably that I simply asked the Yi why he had done so, and got 2.5.6.-->20. Perhaps Karcher was right, and I'm being led into the nearest pit. We'll see.

Laugh and enjoy, Martin, for it certainly is a farce. You're in no danger here, though I would, just to keep in practice, occasionally scan the landscape for the tip of a twitching tail. Hell hath no fury, you know.

Not for the pure of heart

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