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A long method for multiple moving lines

uselesstree

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Hi folks. I have been experimenting with the following method for dealing with multiple moving lines.

Say you start with hex. 17 (following) with moving lines at 1, 2 and four. 17 has to do with following and therefore the life of the group. The 9 at the bottom deals with a time of "changing standards" a time of new beginnings. LiSe writes on this line:"Who stays inside does not notice the world is changing. He stays behind and loses his ability to bring about things. Always weave the patterns of the time into your life, in order to understand your time and be understood." The idea here is that one ought to move with things in such a way as to both influence and be influenced by them. This might be seen as a kind of spirit of interdependence which is important in groups.

Changing this line brings hex 45. This also deals with life in the group. LiSe says: "being one with a group can mean being one with all the things and people in your life. This can be like a beautiful garden, but when your mind is universal enough, the borders disappear, it is not a garden anymore, you ARE your life." The outcome of the kind of interdependence spoken of in 9 at the beginning of hex 17 is shown here. Of course groups have their dangers to. These are addressed in the 6 in the second place of hex 45. LiSe says: "Work together, join others, be one of a group ? but never give up your own personality or potentialities. When one is with others there is always the dilemma how much to surrender and how much to stay oneself. Do not search for a middle road but do both. Be a member AND be yourself,". Once we take this line and its advice into account we get hex 47.

47 has to do with confinement. LiSe says: "Remember your garden! Life can be big and interesting or full of duties, but happiness dwells in a small and limited place, a secret garden. There the tree of life is growing. Never stay out of there too long." Confinement has two meanings in 47. It can drive roots deeper as LiSe suggests but it can also enclose and crush the spirit. This is realavent to the life in groups theme which runs through all three of the hexagrams discussed so far. LiSe says:" Prisons exist too, but they are not inside, they are outside the garden. You can be a prisoner of opinions, fears, guilt or duties. As soon as you enter the gate of your garden, you are no prisoner anymore, all is locked out." So we can excape the tyrany of our worldly connections by retreating into our own soul to seek more deeply the source of our life. This is important if we are to be valuable in a community for as the members of the community lose their soul so does the community as a whole. Advice given in 9 at 4 in hex 47 is;"When the mind is not free from fears, wishes, fixed ideas or other obstructions, then thinking is dragging. A free mind finds the right choice, decision or action without much effort." So this is consistent with the idea that one needs to protect themself from confinement within conventions and fears which can come from life in the group. This line finally brings us to hex 29.

LiSe says: "To get out of dangers or misery is not by solving problems. It is by leaving the fear. In the arts of fighting one learns to get used to danger, so it does not call up fear anymore, and defense can come entirely out of one's skill. No fear interfering." and later: " Deep inside one has a stable, quiet and safe core, but in the course of life, most people forget about it. Just remember and no danger can afflict you." We are called once more to return to our inner garden in order to master fear and pass through danger. Jean-Paul Sartre says that hell is other people. This can be true enough, but most of us need and want to live among those we love even with the hellish challanges which come in this living. By keeping in touch with our soul we can address our fellow humans in a spirit of oneness without succuming to the dangers of life with others.

The idea here is that the multiple moving line problem can be solved by creating a series of hexagrams, a process which carries us through a number of intermediate stages between the first hexagram and the one made through the line transformations. This method gives a longer, more detailed and, I think, more coherent reading. I recieved this sequence this morning during my daily "forcast". Today I worked with a group of volunteers building a chicken yard on the farm where I work. Many different kinds of people there. Work in groups was a big thing on this day and I think this reading really helped.

Has any one else experimented with this method?
 

gene

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Hi

I haven't tried it per se...In multiple lines I usually find one line or the hexagram itself has the key to the information I need. However, to delve deeper into the I Ching, more is needed, and the post above is a good context...

I do not use the I Ching in this way, but I do know that each of the trigrams has a number of symbolic meanings which relate to tangible things. Also, the lines correspond with people on different levels. The first line often corresponding with the masses, the fifth with a ruler of some type, and the sixth with an expert of some kind that is beyond the scope of every day living. When multiple lines are received, it is conceivably possible to put these meanings together to come up with an idea of an event that is likely to happen. One example might be the fifth line and the first line received, the president might be giving a state of the union address to the masses. Or the Priest giving a mass, or the president of a corporate discussing corporate policy in a meeting. In this use it becomes much more like Tarot cards. Once again, I do not use it in this way and am not that familiar with the various things the lines and trigrams represent. But it is my understanding that it can be used this way.

Gene
 

pedro

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I have discovered lately that this method can indeed work. I start by taking the lines per se, and figuring out myself. But then it doesnt hurt to try this method as weel, and I usually do now when I get lots of moving lines.
The funny thing is this method unveils a path one should follow. If the lines progress in time, then this method might show the hexagrams we'll be going through, as time unfolds, and indeed Ive made much sense of some answers this way.
This method also seems like a plausible way the duke of chou might have gotten the meanings of the lines. If you have one single line, then its meaning is related (although with some puzzling exceptions) to the resulting hex. But this way even multiple lines become possible to be analized this way (while if you go to the resulting hexagram and read the same lines, the meaning might not be at all related to the original changing line's text)
Incidentally, you should check the multiple moving lines thread, as this and other methods are described there
 

kts

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Dear Uselesstree,
Sorry to throw a spanner in the works, but your method is different from that outlined in Stephen Karcher's books (quoted often by Hilary). The stages of change are taken one moving line at a time, but are NOT cumulative, as you are using them. Of courze, if your method provides meaningful answers to you, stick with it. I'm not sure that reading the stages of change helps me anyway (information overload, though it sometimes has been meaningful), but I just thought I would draw this to your attention.
 

uselesstree

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Thanks Kts

I wonder if your comments don't open onto another question. Is there a right way to read. I have good reasons for working the way I do. Just started doing it this way a week or two ago (I cast every day). There is lots of information of course.

But the interesting point again is, is there a difinitive "right way" to read oracles? Its like the interpretation of dreams. I muck around in Freudian, Jungian modalities but don't take any of them as "gospel". I had a lot of doubts when I started using this method but it seems to work well and make sense.
 

lindsay

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Dear Frank,

Yes, I believe there is a definitive way to read the I Ching. And that way, always correct, is to listen to one?s inner voice.

There are scores of commentaries on the I Ching. There are dozens of experts willing to advise. Some of their words differ, some are incompatible by rules of logic. I believe every word should be considered a suggestion, a proposition, a guess, if you will ? a freely-offered expression of goodwill by people who wish to help to you, but understand the limitations of their own blind advice in any specific situation.

We are all of us unique, and every second of our lives matches no other second ever lived. But there are patterns. We belong to the same species. Like lions or elephants, we behave in recognizable, even predictable ways. Generic advice can be very helpful, in a pattern-language sort of way.

In the end, however, you and only you can determine what aspects of the reading are appropriate to your situation. A word here, a phrase there, a striking sentence can crystallize your thoughts. Who cares where or how you came by it? The important thing is not the I Ching. The important thing is living your life as best you can. If the I Ching helps, use it. If it doesn?t, get rid of it. Of and by itself the Yi is only an object of curiosity, a study, a hobby, an entertainment.

The river of your life can flow through the I Ching or around it. If you are serious about the I Ching, you must be serious about yourself, serious enough to know the difference between a tool and a master. You are the master.

So what is the proper way to use a saw? Right hand or left hand? Long or short strokes? Rapid or slow motions? In the morning or the afternoon? What difference does it make as long as the lumber is cut?

Of course, you knew all this before you asked your question. But the question is always worth thinking about. Thank you.

Lindsay
 

heylise

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This should be printed on the first page of every YiJing!!

It also made me understand hex.13. "We are all of us unique, and every second of our lives matches no other second ever lived. But there are patterns. We belong to the same species."
In Wilhelm it says, the noble man organizes the clans and makes distinctions between beings. Literally the characters say: classifies clans, reads trails of creatures.

The patterns are the unity. Inside that pattern we are all unique.

LiSe
 

pedro

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hum, reading trails of creatures, nice image
happy.gif

I think much of this is like schroedinger's cat, when you wonder whether he's dead or alive prior to opening the box, the answer is "dont ask!"
Too many rules and you fail to hear that "inner voice", but too less rules and you may loose the meaning. Its like people who say that each hexagram is the same, one could derive meaning from any of the 4096 answers... I mean, to an extent yes, you can, but there is more to it, like getting that oh so particular answer that couldnt be just random, something one only realises in practice. So who cares how it works?

Its like, bringing the subject back to lines, those odd lines that dont seem to follow the rule, and end up being the most eye openning ones. How could this lines have been determined if not experimentally?
 

uselesstree

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Yes, too few rules and meaning goes out the window. I think the whole idea of the I Ching implies that there is order in the cosmos, to quote Jungs intro to Wilhelm Baynes that the universe is "a cosmos rather than a chaos". Meaning implies "this" rather than "that", or maybe, if both this AND that then something else which reconciles, balances them.

I started doing the "long form" as a result of thinking about the way Haung gives, with every moving, its responding hexagram. I thought, well all of these lines move neatly to another hexagram but what about the multiple lines. Then I thought of how you read the lines bottom to top. Combining these ideas I got the idea that the lines might be read one at a time which geve me the inspiration to do multiple hexagrams as a kind of narrative sequence.

In addition, since the places have particular meanings regardless of which hexagram one is looking at then there might be something like a "meta hexagram" which is no particular one but rather a set of rules by which hexagrams come into being, a kind of grammer or syntax or algorythm. A kind of tao behind the hexagrams as the 10,000 things.

Any way, this kind of thought probably has a lot to do with my passion for philosophy and particularly for metaphysics.

Thank you all for your input. This forum provides a chance for "joining with friends for discussion and practice" (hex. 58)

peace
 

pedro

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Hey Tree (you're not so useless
happy.gif
)
I rather see the universe as a chaos, but one that is common to the whole universe, like one single heartbeat accross the whole universe. I bet when you cast an hexagram, the cracks on the walls at that time and place, the clouds in the sky, the aparent random motions of the wind, even the flapping of flys wings, are also saying the same thing. The Yi just provides a way to tap into that, a way that is practical. Reminds me of John Cage, the way he spent his life searching for the purest random process he could map into music. All oracles find one way or another to extract a glimpse of this random order that pervades. That glimpse is a peek into the creators mind.
 

uselesstree

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Hey Pedro, nice.

Yes the whole cosmos/chaos thing is quite problematic. Now we have chaos science so people are waking up to the fact that even chaos has rules.

Yes I think the fall of my coins resonates with the exact conditions of the rest of the cosmos at that moment. Reminds me of somethig else. If I have some specific issue which I want to address in divination I often find that the "answer" I get applies to a whole range of other things that are going on in my life. Most of the time, therefore, I don't ask specific questions but think of my morning readings as a kind of "weather forcast". The weather forcast tells me lots of things, should I bring an umbrella, will my tat soi grow well and be nurished, will the kids spend too much time in front of the TV, lots of things.

It some ways I think this is how chaos begins to appear as cosmos, you start with a bunch of things/situations that seem to have nothing to do with one another, then you find some common thread that runs through them all.

Well, got to go into the field now, measuring and mapping newly lain planting beds today.

Peace
 

pedro

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Hey
happy.gif
I guess you get such broad answers precisely because you are not stating precise questions. This way what comes up is the whole of your thoughts and concerns, condensed into a single symbol. Thats a way to use the Yi, I sometimes do it like that as well, but Im a practical person and need concrete answers, so most of the times I phrase a standard question. But Ive also had ocasions in which I would be worrying about some matter, while asking something else, and the Yi would reply to what was my concern and not to what I had phrased. This is rare, cause it means I was not paying much attention, and that is breaking my #1 rule, but it shows that the Yi has its own personality, and we better adapt to it cause it aint working the other way round

Yesterday I did something I had never tryed before. I asked about three important matters, that are somewhat related (well, theyre all important to me
happy.gif
), but I asked about the three at once. Then I asked about each other separately.
Now what Im thinking in the back of my mind is that the combined answer, is somehow derived from the combination of the three individual ones (combined: 778866 (#19); separate: 799989 (#14), 887888 (#16), 877978 (#28)). I havent found a mathematical relation (probably there is none), but I seem to intuitively believe that the combined #19, is being most of all influenced by the first separate answer (actually the one with most weight in my concerns), the #14 with all the 9's turning to #24, which "averaged" with the two becomes #19.
So I thought this could be a way to test the Yi, by repeating this procedure (ie asking global and then the parts and checking correlations). Or this can be just a waste of time
happy.gif
 

heylise

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Hex.19 is oversee, get an overview. Seeing things in their totality, and accepting them as such.
Makes a lot of sense.
LiSe
 

pedro

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hum, I never thought of 19 that way... what is the difference to 20 then? the "not making it easy"?
It seems out of all significance you provide in your account of this hex, Wilhelm only took the idea of approaching, arriving...
I had marked this hexagram as "becoming great", mainly cause of Wilhelm's explanation. But you dont seem to embrace this thought...
 

heylise

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Hexagram 19
In old texts ?lin? is often used for descending towards a valley. It is nearing, but it is also overseeing. From high above one sees the whole valley. In regard to ?nearing? people it means to see them in their totality, with all the things they do and have, need or reject, like or fear. Seeing the whole picture, not just the details. And most important of all: without judgment. It is the condition for helping or organizing. For the person who is seen this way, it feels safe.

Hexagram 20
Guan is also seeing, but here the emphasis is on understanding. Contemplating what one sees, and drawing conclusions or knowledge from it. It is not outward active, like hex.19, but inward. It generates wisdom, and for the other person it feels comprehended.

When the astronauts saw the earth from far away, they felt a great love for her. This is 19. An overview of ?your people?.
If God looks from there, it is 20 (not sure if he looks or if he contemplates, but it is just for the image). Guan yin is the Chinese equivalent of the Virgin Mary. Yin is sound, so guan yin is listening to or contemplating sounds, prayers, laments.

LiSe
 

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