Hi,

My friend has just come out of a relationship with a man in the services. She was with him for over 4 years. They've had their difficulties as in any relationship but things came to head and my friend moved out. She was left with a nagging feeling that wouldn't go. This man had had a previous relationship (he was separated from his wife) and my friend knew that he had a child with this other woman. My friend couldn't shake the feeling that something was still going on with them so she wrote the other woman a letter asking her to get in contact (she only had the address but not a number). It transpires that this man has been leading a double life. He's still been with his wife for the whole time and even had another baby with her last year. In the meantime he had been trying to get my friend to elope with him and had moved her up country away from anyone she knew and had made her very isolated up there by not paying his way on the house that they had and so my friend had no money to go out anywhere or even come home when she was feeling lonely. Luckily she is out of it all now but she has lost her partner, job and been made bankrupt in the process. I can't understand how people can do these things to each other. I can't contemplate doing anything like this to another person let alone someone I profess to love. And what about the innocent children involved? I asked the I Ching: In resepct of this relationship how can people do this?

I recieved hexagram 20 with no moving lines.

Wilhelm's text seems to imply to me that man is influenced by the underlying workings & universal laws of the universe. That a hidden spiritual power eminates from them influencing & dominating others without their being aware of it.

Maybe I'm just reading into it what is easiest for me to believe? And honestly, I don't know which is worse at the moment.

Any thoughts/comments would be appreciated.

Nicky
xx

Sorry I've just seen somthing else - hexagram 20 is about contemplation & it was puzzling me. The notes on the sequence say that the meaning of contemplation is that they partly give and partly take. Maybe the I Ching is telling 'how' they do these things and I need to change my question to 'why'?

I asked: With respect of my previous question why do poeple do this?

I recieved hexagram 37 with moving lines 9 in the 1st and 9 in the 3rd - moving to 20 (It always awes me when the I Ching does that.

Hexagram 37 is the family and the lines seem to suggest that there wasn't enough dicipline ["When woman and child dally", the dicipline of the house is lost]

Sorry for such long and disjointed postings.
Nicky
xx

Hi Nicky,

What a terrible experience for your friend. i am so glad to hear she is out of it.

37.1 is about an over indulged child. Was the man a spolied child who was brought up thinking that his every whim should be satisfied? Or was he perhaps the son of such a father? Or was he a control freak who wanted to control your friend as if she were a child?

37.3 is about the dangers of too loose a home arrangement. Was your friend at fault for going along with his unusual requests, thinking that his refusal to be a man and pay his fair share could somehow be over looked?

20. Receiving 20 twice is indeed remarkable. 20 is about seeing and being seen. The fact that this couple made their home away from the public eye certainly allowed the desception to contnue longer than it might have had your friend insisted they not move out of town.

The decision so many couples make now to live together without benefit of marrage has created great problems in our society. Marrage is a ceremony in which a couple asks everyone who knows them to come together and say why they feel this couple should or should not be partners. The group is then asked to vow that they along with the couple will support the union. At one time this public ritual made it almost impossible for there to be hidden wives and surprise children. Perhaps the I Ching is saying that because your friend did not make her partnership pass the test of public scrutiny, she was more vulnerable to the deception.

How wonderful that your friend was able to intuit what was really going on backstage. Perhaps her time in isolation strengthened her inner perception.

Again and again the I Ching tells us that what is ours by right of concsiousness must eventually manefest in our lives. May this be true for your friend and may she soon be back on her true path.

R.

Nicky, the Wilhelm text you've paraphrased sounds more like 61 than 20.

The image that works best for me re: 20 is that of a tower, which is what the construct of the hexagram itself looks like. The higher up you climb, the clearer and further you can see. If I were writing my own Yi I would called 20 "Outlook".

So, regarding your question: "how can people do this?" It all depends on their view. From his view, he probably sees her as someone who can save him from his unhappy marriage and life. From her view, she falls for it, and evidently for him. So now the Yi asks, what is your view? If the view is purely subjective, it would be helpful to climb up the tower a bit more. Once you reach the 5th line, you're on solid footing: objectively seeing, but still from your eyes. Reaching the 6th line: serene objectivity.

Yes, "Outlook", I like that.

Nigel Richmond (his name for hexagram 20 is "Wholeness") writes in his inner I Ching:

Pattern
The wide view
from a height
contemplates activity
on and in the earth.

Nature
The mountain peak
stands serene
sloping down to valleys
where life is teeming.

Human
Time of seeing the whole,
of relating inner and outer life,
quiet amongst activity
but beyond it.

Form
See what is there.
Take stock of it
as a whole.

Dear Rosada,

Thank you for your responce and interpretation of hexagram 37. I have to admit that when I recieved this hexagram I felt agrieved because I thought the I Ching might be telling me that it was to do with the way that he was brought up and I felt disrespectful in disagreeing to a certain extent as I think people are responsible for their own actions. I know that people can be influenced by what happens in their past but I think I've read somewhere on this site that life is about choices and when you reach a certain age your parents or anyone else for that matter shouldn't be making those choices for you. However what you say about being a control freak absolutely rings true and it couples with 37.3 in that I think that she was scared of him in some way and so let him 'get away with it' for a long time or would not completely aknowledge her fears.

Thank you for your views of marriage. I have swayed in my life as I come from a 'broken home' and when I was younger I vowed never to get married. I changed my mind when I became interested in boys of course! But sometime things make me wonder whether my first feeling was right. I like your thoughts though and had never thought about the public scrutiny part.

Dear Bruce and Martin,
Thank you for your explanations of hexagram 20. Thinking about it and taking stock of the whole situation (his and hers) I feel more sorry (if that's the right word) for him in a way. My friend is out of this situation now. She hasn't done anything wrong other than be blind and who can say that they've never overlooked something they know to be true for fear of losing someone or something that they think they love. However, unless this man accepts responsibility for his own happiness in a right and wholesome way rather than a destructive way he will never be able to find whatever it is that he is obviously desperate for. My friend will feel sadness and fear about relationships for some time but that will fade. He's trapped with himself for eternity until he can sort himself out.

Thank you for letting me have a public sounding board. This was bothering me as I was beginning to question whether everyone had ulterior motives!

Nicky
xx

Dear Nicky,

Thank you for the feedback. I felt a bit like I was taking a risk talking about the advantages of going through a marrage ceremony, but you understood I was not trying to impose a religious belief.

Interesting you chose to use the metaphor of sight in discribing your friend in this situation, that she's been "blind" and "overlooked something." Those expressions certainly fit with hexgram 20., the hexagram that is all about Seeing and Being Seen.

20. is 2. (The Receptive ) x 10. Like 20 says she was Receptive x 10 to his point of View and "Full of trust [she] looked up to him."

I really appreciate Bruce and Martin's insights. 20. reminds us that everyone has their own point of view, their own self interest, this is a fact of Nature. If we agree that someone else's needs are more important than our own, if we "fall for it" and ignor our own self interest, we go against Nature and end up serving as a handmaiden to some lesser God, and disappointment insues.

I suspect your friend will gain great self confidence as she survives this ordeal.
In fact, she should run for public office! Why not? She now understands the way the real world works better than woman twice her age who have never gone through such intense levels of misplaced trust and betrayal. Best part is, if she ran for public office, the opposing party would find out about her "Past" and splatter it all over the frount pages.( Seeing and Being Seen) She has nothing to be ashamed of but wouldn't that guy just pee is pants?

Living well IS the best revenge!

And hey, she just might get elected!

Hi Nicky

Your initial question was: In respect of this relationship how can people do this?
That seems to be two questions in one. People is general, this relationship is specific. I'm interested because you mentioned your own insecurities about trusting people. So it seems from this that the first answer might incorporate more than just this specific situation. 20 as an encouragement to contemplate your own life, experiences, belief systems.

By the way: as always very interesting to read all the posts.

Femke

Hi Femke,

It's funny you should say that.....

I consulted the I Ching tonight on a matter that is to do with me personally and recieved 16.4,5,6 moving to hexagram 20! 3 readings with the same relating hexagram. I think someone may be trying to tell me something!!

Nicky
xx

Hexagram 20 seems to be telling me to look and see and with that understand (from Lise's site: http://www.anton-heyboer.org/i_ching/hex_17-32/19-20.htm and from what Bruce and Martin say about it)

I think I might know what it is as well but part of me doesn't want to aknowledge it. Through all of these questions I have lurking in the back of my consciousness: 'But are people really evil? Aren't they just lost and need help? Can they come back?' I'm more than a tad worried that I'm being told to wake up and that some people are. I so want to hold onto the rosie niave 'people and humanity are fundamentally good' view.

Femke, you are right about the trusting people. I've always been told that I trust too much. I am currently in a situation where I am trying to judge a betrayal of trust for myself and I do wonder whether I'm too lax. Either that or I'm being reminded to observe and see whether the trust I place is right?

Nicky
xx

Nicky, would you swing across a chasm on a rope before testing it? Maybe it is trustworthy, or maybe not. Why would trusting people be any different?

Hi Bruce

This might sound like a silly answer. Even as I think it it sounds silly!

I think that I have an internal dialogue that tells me whether I'm doing something right or wrong. If I'm doing something wrong then I can only do it for a certain amount of time before it eats me up and I have to stop or rectify the situation. I guess because I do it I think that everyone else does? Is trust and faith the same thing? I wonder if I just put blind faith in humanity? But that's the point isn't it? It's blind and I have to look?

xx

Nicky, the inner system that guides you sounds, at the end of the day, reliable. If every human was guided by that, it wouldn't be very hard for everyone to get along well, because honesty would govern our intercourse. If only the heart of all of man was as tender and genuine as that. If you automatically assume it is, you will be hurt. If you become hurt, you will be angry. And if you are angry, you will lose your tender heart. Better, I think, to protect your heart from the start.

and Nicky? If you consider the condition you would like your heart to be in when you finally do offer it to someone...

make sense?

It does, thank you Bruce.

Reading this reminded me of a relating hexagram I recieved when I asked how I should act if this person phoned me - 33(Retreat)

'Thus the superior man keeps the inferior man at a distance,
Not angrily but with reserve.'

Again I guess it comes down to responsibility. I read somewhere that if you are too easily hurt then you are not taking enough responsibility for yourself as you are not judging the situation corectly.

I think I will take both hexagram's advice - retreat a little and obsereve before I give poeple the power to affect whether I'm hurt or not.

Thank you
Nicky
xx

"I read somewhere that if you are too easily hurt then you are not taking enough responsibility for yourself as you are not judging the situation corectly."

That?s true, Nicky. But tolerating pain inflicted by someone?s thoughtlessness or just meanness a little each day can lead to thinking ?this is how it?s supposed to be, I guess.? Then without even realizing it, you withdraw into yourself, believing it must be your fault. This is a pattern in abusive relationships. Judging the situation correctly becomes complicated unless it's established from the onset of the relationship.

Sometimes it is helpful to read other hexagrams than just the one we threw.

Hexagram 25 talks about how bad things can happen to good people. 25.3 particularly warns us of undeserved misfortune. "In all transactions, no matter how innocent, we must accomodate ourselves to the demands of the time, otherwise unexpected misfortune overtakes us." The hard part is knowing what exactly are the demands of the time? Is it a time to embrace or a time to refrain from embracing? Perhaps this is where the I ching can be of great benefit, for while it cannot tell us what to do, it can tell us what time it is. In your friend's case it was 20. Time to be out where she could see and be seen. No longer time to be acting like a silly school girl having a secret romance, time to be out in public like an adult. Maybe this is why, when the relationship did not fulfill this requirement, misfortune was the result.
With your own reading 16.4,5,6, - 20., if this is to be looked at as a comment on your life in general, I would agree it seems to be warning that you may be by nature "too trusting", or to put it in IChing terms, "Too Enthusiastic". 16.4 says it's our own enthusiasm that attracts people 16.5 then we have experiences that show whether the enthusiasm is mutual, or is it just you that's doing all the work to breathe all the life into the vision? 16.6 Warns of deluded enthusiasm, or what happens when one is "too trusting". changing to hexagram 20 suggests that one can saved from the worst effects of deluded enthusiasm if we stay involved with the larger world.
Examples might be in situations where one is very enthusiastic about a creative effort. 16.4 At first one's own enthusiasm can cause family and friends to give support.16.5 But then one may notice the friends aren't actually promoting one's project (like they buy your book but never read it..)...(enthusiasm means to put life into something, literally to put breath into it. With 16.5 breathing comes hard). Then with 16.6 one may feel they had been led astray, but were they really, or were they just deluded by their own enthusiasm?
Anyway, the fine point I'm trying to make here is that rather than living life looking for people we can trust, the I Ching is guiding us to recognize when we may make too much of a situation. Like, "Don't worry about whether you can trust the other person, think about whether you can trust yourself!" Is your own judgement deluded, are you going overboard? Was your friend trying to make a marrage out of a pleasant one night stand?
The litnus test is to bring your project out in the open 20. The mass market will either buy your book or it wont, your friend's friend's will tell her if the guy's a jerk, and so forth.

Well, enough pontificating..
R.

Dear Bruce and Rosada,

Thank you very much for taking the time to share your thoughts and I have to admit what you say is true in my life. It's something I have to try and do or not do as the case is - not jump right in with both feet. Sometimes when bad things happen I do wonder whether I'm a bit a fault for giving people too much or letting too many things go. 'Give them and inch and they'll take a mile' I like to think that I'm quite assertive but I get to the point where I feel like a nag. Maybe if someone is constantly disregarding what you're asking of them you should just put space between you. Then if you actually mean anything to them they will come back to you knowing that they cannot do these things.

Love
Nicky
xx

Hi all,

I don't know whether it is right to post this question on the end of this post or whether I should start another but this discussion was appropriate.

I have recieved hexagram 20 again about another matter. I asked the Yi to guide me in the nature of my contact with another and recieved hex 20.2 moving to 59.

I think that the yi is saying that my outlook is quite limited in this situation - 'contemplation through the crack of a door' but hex 59 tells me that perseverance furthers.

I am wondering whether the perseverance in the contact furthers or whether the perseverance in comtemplating - observing and understanding more - furthers, if that makes sense?

I'll repost a new thread if this is not the right place but any advice would be much appreciated.

Love
Nicky
xx

Hi Nicky,

The question is, persevere with what? In crossing the great water? Well, what water? Here's how it appears to me:

59 requires relaxing restrictions, letting go of what ever it is you need to let go of. Since you are looking at this situation from a limited and narrow perspective (20.2), it seems perseverence is required in order to open and expand your view of the situation.

Relax restrictions and swing open that door. Don't be afraid to see the big picture, and don't be afraid to allow others to see you, as you are.

Good morning Nicky!

I see 20.2 - 59 as saying you have gone as far as you can go with the relationship given your understanding at this time. Next step is to get out in the world, do other things, see other people, don't be so tightly focused on this friendship but "Disperse" your attention and then things may have a change to lighten up at home.

Rosada

Dear Bruce and Rosada,

Sorry it has taken me so long to reply but I just wanted to say thank you for your help.

Love
Nicky
xx