...life can be translucent

Menu

Blog post: Dangers of experience

hilary

Administrator
Joined
Apr 8, 1970
Messages
19,149
Reaction score
3,418
Ah - experience. People phone me up to say they’d like an interpretation from someone who has more of the stuff. We gather it in journals (and Change Circle’s WikiWing); it crystallises into a clear inner sense of what lines and hexagrams mean; it’s worth more than any 20 commentaries put together… so naturally I have to be contrary and write about its dangers.

Here’s one danger - after you’ve done a few hundred readings for people, you start to recognise their situations. There are patterns of human behaviour that are very, very recognisable - like, for instance, the man who hangs onto two women by keeping each one believing that, one day, he’ll commit to her alone. So when you hear the seventeenth woman explaining how loveless his relationship with that other woman is, and how he only stays with her because it feels safer, or because she entraps him with guilt, or something… well, you recognise the pattern.

And there lies the giant pitfall: that you (and when I say ‘you’ I mean ‘we’ or just ‘I’) start to read whatever hexagrams are cast through that pattern you already know. The insidious thing is that most of the time you’ll be quite right to recognise the pattern, it’ll lend you easy insight, and people will be delighted with how ‘accurate’ you are. But you are still basically engaged in a pattern-matching game, not in divination.

And here’s another - subtler and more difficult to check, I think. You have a powerful experience or two with a line; this goes into the journal and into your hexagram notes (if you keep such things), and it makes a tremendous impression on you. You come to ‘know’ that this is ‘what the line means’, and for all subsequent readings you will be looking for that same meaning.

Unfortunately, this is a bit like seeing two red cars and then knowing that all cars are red - which is not very helpful when crossing the road.

What’s the answer? It does help to have more examples, to build a real experience-based understanding of a line.*Working on the book, I took whatever experience I’d already garnered over the years - and then went off and gathered a further half dozen readings or so for each line to check my ideas. (Interesting!)

But much more important than the collecting is somehow distilling the experience to its essentials. It’s easier to see this process with hexagrams than with individual lines, I think. Take Hexagram 23, Stripping Away: I’ve seen it in readings referring to surgery, and to death. What it means isn’t either of these, though, but something more like having what is no longer viable cut away. So 23 in a reading could just as well indicate that it’s time to shed some part of your self-image, or to replace the staircarpet.

Naturally, with a hexagram, any extreme misconceptions are likely to be corrected quite soon by other readings. With a line, that you might see only once in several years, we need to be that much more wary.

I don’t really have a conclusion for these ruminations beyond the obvious: divination is something that happens quite independently of experience. You create a clear, clean inner space where you can bring together person, question and oracle - a unique meeting - and you watch/sense the connections as they arise. Then experience comes in, to enrich your awareness.
 
M

meng

Guest
Nicely said!

I try to approach every reading like it's my first. When I listen to or read someone's question, I try to allow nothing else to exist - especially not that voice which thinks it knows everything through experience. There's nothing more rude than forming an answer before allowing the other to complete their thought. The mouth (like the mind) doesn't close until it bites through the context, and that's hopefully more than just some old dried leather :p.
 

hilary

Administrator
Joined
Apr 8, 1970
Messages
19,149
Reaction score
3,418
Yes, you're right, the 'Oh, I know what that one means' reaction is rude, like completing sentences for oracle or querent or both. Hadn't thought of that.
 

elvis

(deceased)
Joined
Dec 9, 2009
Messages
241
Reaction score
1
One could always use the I Ching itself in that it has the capability to describe itself by reference to itself - as such it becomes its own expert - but at a level of universals, of classes etc. Consciousness then fills in the dots and this can be an issue BUT at least the dots filled in are associated with an 'expert' assessment of the situation in general rather than personal biases all the way up.
 

rodaki

visitor
Joined
Jun 26, 2008
Messages
2,176
Reaction score
78
I've been thinking about this post ever since you posted it Hilary and I'm having some trouble here (well, I guess, what's new?!:rolleyes:)

I can understand the part of how, seeing one situation unfolding many times might make us miss out on the uniqueness of every case (something that happens even when I try to understand my own answers, so much so I guess when the answer is someone else's), but then comes this:
But you are still basically engaged in a pattern-matching game, not in divination.

isn't catching the bird of Yi's answer a matter of contextualizing the energy patterns of the hexagrams/lines received? how else can we read the answer if not by trying to see how the pattern of the answer fits the situation? and how is this different from a certain kind of 'pattern-matching game'?

obviously this whole process is not about one-size-fits-it-all and it would be a bit dump to think that every time a line comes up it involves a copy-paste interpretation from a previous experience with it (as much as it is rude to assume that obvious similarities correspond always with the same single truth). But up to now my understanding of any given line was that they are a kind of shape-shifters, fitting the most diverse situations but doing so due to the fact of having a solid core, a stable pattern of interrelating energies that manifests in one of its forms within the given situation

so, I'm guessing that the answer I'm looking for is somewhere in this part:
divination is something that happens quite independently of experience. You create a clear, clean inner space where you can bring together person, question and oracle - a unique meeting - and you watch/sense the connections as they arise. Then experience comes in, to enrich your awareness.

only I can't really put my finger on it . . there's something I'm missing (related or not, to experience, I'm not sure . .) or am I misreading what is said here??

and then . . if divination is independent from experience why is it that more experienced readers are more likely to give us more reliable information on our readings?:confused:

:bows:
 

rodaki

visitor
Joined
Jun 26, 2008
Messages
2,176
Reaction score
78
hmm, I don't mean to sound oppositional with the above, it's just that the points quoted show a very different side of using the Yi, one I have not thought of at all or know, so if I'm going at things wrongly I'd rather be told than not think of them . . Maybe things like that are already clear to others so bear with me . .


:bows:
 
M

meng

Guest
if divination is independent from experience why is it that more experienced readers are more likely to give us more reliable information on our readings?:confused:

You create a clear, clean inner space where you can bring together person, question and oracle - a unique meeting - and you watch/sense the connections as they arise. Then experience comes in, to enrich your awareness.

It's not that experience isn't important but that before past reading experience and its memories kick in, to keep an open and clear mind, and practice astute listening/hearing skills. Then, experience can be employed. But even then I try remain open and not just knee jerk based on readings past. Intelligence requires more than a good memory.
 

Trojina

Supporter
Clarity Supporter
Joined
May 29, 2006
Messages
26,921
Reaction score
4,426
hmm, I don't mean to sound oppositional with the above, it's just that the points quoted show a very different side of using the Yi, one I have not thought of at all or know, so if I'm going at things wrongly I'd rather be told than not think of them . . Maybe things like that are already clear to others so bear with me . .


:bows:

I'm glad you articulated those thoughts in your longer post, there were things in Hilarys post, that like you I couldn't quite put my finger on but somehow didn't quite hold for me

But I think Hilary was talking about divining for others, ...as i never divine for others I think what happens in my divining experience for myself is not a thing with instructions. I even wonder about the word 'divining' and how its used. Is it such a seperate activity from the rest of our mental life especially when as Neegula was discussing we 'divine' all the time from things in our outer world ? We don't need to make compartments of our minds and put experience in one box and a 'clean clear space' in another box in order to divine from the patterns of clouds or words of strangers.

We walk around carrying the sum total of our experience, not consciously of course, but then nothing is actually comprehensible without previous experience.
We could not perceive a chair as a chair if we had not come to recognise it as a kind of pattern in infancy....hmmm so I'm a little suspicious of this 'clean clear space, being somehow free from experience. Basically it will be ones idea of what a clean clear space is, i doubt its objectively possible to come to anything with a totally empty mind, our brains make patterns into meaningful things. We know from psychology that if something is meaningless our brains try to give it some form, shadows on the curtains become faces and so on.

When transcending the level of thought, in meditation and so on, our minds may be 'empty' but when returned to the world of expereince i think we always bring our experience for our experience is how we makes sense of everything and anything.

Its a nice idea that we can tidy it away to have a 'clear space' and i guess its good to try to make it clear of preconceptions as much as possible in any consultation (?), but i don't think it will ever be truly blank/empty slate. With my own readings I often begin with an idea of the answer is about but then let it 'drop' as if i were letting go of a rope.., so my experience is not of making a clean space but of holding an answer initially in the net my previous experience then letting the answer drop beneath that level, letting the net drop into unknown more open waters.....pull the net up later and theres a different understanding..a different fish than the one i thought i had earlier

I wondered who Hilarys post was aimed at. I thought it must be for those who divine for others. I don't know how many here do that...well i know you do re the dinner party question ;)
 
Last edited:

hilary

Administrator
Joined
Apr 8, 1970
Messages
19,149
Reaction score
3,418
I've been thinking about this post ever since you posted it Hilary
:eek:
and I'm having some trouble here (well, I guess, what's new?!:rolleyes:)
...
isn't catching the bird of Yi's answer a matter of contextualizing the energy patterns of the hexagrams/lines received? how else can we read the answer if not by trying to see how the pattern of the answer fits the situation? and how is this different from a certain kind of 'pattern-matching game'?
Yes, of course you're right, and I didn't write that bit particularly well. (Heh... well, at least I'm writing blog posts - now you want them to make sense as well?) I suppose there are just layers of this, and sometimes recognising a pattern can be an alternative to going further into the reading. 'Oh, I know this one already.' Only - yes - going further in is also a matter of perceiving patterns.

obviously this whole process is not about one-size-fits-it-all and it would be a bit dump to think that every time a line comes up it involves a copy-paste interpretation from a previous experience with it (as much as it is rude to assume that obvious similarities correspond always with the same single truth). But up to now my understanding of any given line was that they are a kind of shape-shifters, fitting the most diverse situations but doing so due to the fact of having a solid core, a stable pattern of interrelating energies that manifests in one of its forms within the given situation
Mine, too. ;)

and then . . if divination is independent from experience why is it that more experienced readers are more likely to give us more reliable information on our readings?:confused:

:bows:
Not sure. I suppose I can accept the 'more likely' part - I think I've got 'more likely' to be reliable over the years. But then again, I'm not the only one to have had the experience of watching someone encounter the Yijing for the first time, and see clearly things that were invisible to me.

Someone should write an article on the benefits of experience. There's the general facility with moving round the imagery and the parts of a reading, having some ideas on how they tend to fit together. There are all the assumptions that get unlearned. And there's the chance to get closer to that core of a line you were talking about, the underlying dynamic of the thing - while I suppose the danger is just in thinking you've reached the core when you haven't.

It's not that experience isn't important but that before past reading experience and its memories kick in, to keep an open and clear mind, and practice astute listening/hearing skills. Then, experience can be employed. But even then I try remain open and not just knee jerk based on readings past. Intelligence requires more than a good memory.
:bows:
I'm glad you articulated those thoughts in your longer post, there were things in Hilarys post, that like you I couldn't quite put my finger on but somehow didn't quite hold for me

But I think Hilary was talking about divining for others, ...as i never divine for others I think what happens in my divining experience for myself is not a thing with instructions.
Hm? No, not particularly. I most often see these things come up in interpreting for others, but that could just be because most of the interpretations I see are of other people's readings.

There's a question. Does personal experience with a line naturally play a bigger role in your own readings than when interpreting for other people? Feels as if it does, most of the time, unless there's a huge great synchronicity between readings of course...

I even wonder about the word 'divining' and how its used. Is it such a seperate activity from the rest of our mental life especially when as Neegula was discussing we 'divine' all the time from things in our outer world ? We don't need to make compartments of our minds and put experience in one box and a 'clean clear space' in another box in order to divine from the patterns of clouds or words of strangers.
...
Its a nice idea that we can tidy it away to have a 'clear space' and i guess its good to try to make it clear of preconceptions as much as possible in any consultation (?), but i don't think it will ever be truly blank/empty slate. With my own readings I often begin with an idea of the answer is about but then let it 'drop' as if i were letting go of a rope.., so my experience is not of making a clean space but of holding an answer initially in the net my previous experience then letting the answer drop beneath that level, letting the net drop into unknown more open waters.....pull the net up later and theres a different understanding..a different fish than the one i thought i had earlier

Nice fishing story. (Hoping someone will post a picture of a coelacanth.)

Maybe your spaces are less cluttered than mine to start with? Mine fill up with a whole assortment of opinions about what's really happening with people, what they're not seeing, what they should be doing and why, how it's just like some other situation, etc, etc. I have to take a giant broom to that lot to create any space to hear what the reading is actually saying.
 
M

meng

Guest
Someone should write an article on the benefits of experience.

And also an article on the befits of inexperience?

I once hired a guy for an advertising sales position who had zero experience. I'd done this several times before, preferring to train them according to what I believed to be a more professional consultant approach. What made this different was a) he had come off a road construction crew, and really had NO knowledge of our industry, and b) he was being brought on board a staff that was rich with experience, truly veterans in their field. The main reason I hired him was because I sensed high ethics and a burning desire to succeed. My higher ups questioned my judgment, and so I had quite a lot riding on this guy.

After a few days of training I turned him loose. I also isolated him from the experienced staff as much as possible, because his mission was different from theirs. This was going to be my new business generating specialist, and I didn't want the experienced folks telling him what couldn't be accomplished. The result was that he generated more new business his first month than the entire staff did, and he didn't stop there. No one told him the rules that experience taught, and he didn't know any better; he didn't know it couldn't be done, and so he did it.

I love reading interpretations from folks who are new. Sometimes they say something so accurate from a vision or fresh understanding, while experienced ones are relying on our past for answers.
 

bamboo

Supporter
Clarity Supporter
Joined
Mar 9, 1971
Messages
1,485
Reaction score
49
Above 9: Not serving king or lord. Honoring one's affairs high.
Everyone's spirit and tao is unique, as long as it serves anyone else it is not true to itself. To find your road, you need a totally clear unsullied mind and spirit. Your Master dwells inside you, listen to him and him only, not grovelling before facts or people.
(Changes to hex.46)


i asked the yi about the dangers of experience in divining and got the above response.
 

rodaki

visitor
Joined
Jun 26, 2008
Messages
2,176
Reaction score
78
many thanks to all who explained this further, will respond more fully tomorrow -too tired now . .

:bows:
 

jilt

visitor
Joined
Jun 26, 2008
Messages
553
Reaction score
14
lise her site

yes, Lise her site is a clear source on this and much more.

about observer and observer observed and the art of interpreting rhyming patters and structures try the thought from Francesco Varela on observation and the involvment of skilled observers who know that they are part of the process. The act of observation already changes the process, is part of the changes.
this involves the theory of autopoisis with all its own quite difficult philosophy of science aspect.

http://www.enolagaia.com/Tutorial1.html#Observer
 

rodaki

visitor
Joined
Jun 26, 2008
Messages
2,176
Reaction score
78
hello again


:eek:

Someone should write an article on the benefits of experience. There's the general facility with moving round the imagery and the parts of a reading, having some ideas on how they tend to fit together. There are all the assumptions that get unlearned. And there's the chance to get closer to that core of a line you were talking about, the underlying dynamic of the thing - while I suppose the danger is just in thinking you've reached the core when you haven't.

I do pay attention Hilary :)(besides, most of my understanding of Yi comes from these forums, so I better be paying attention if I want to learn!)
plus, I've gone into close-reading mode in my own work which means I close read everything that interests me (also means it's impossible to catch the news on tv without getting utterly annoyed by the inconsistencies- I know, I should take off these geeky glasses of mine more often, they make me cranky :eek:)
plus, that initial post did hit some chords . .

Would love to read that article on experience (whenever it gets written that is) . . to me this whole thing brings to mind what is described by hexagram 25 . . the spontaneous connection -what Bruce also described in that training story- but then of course, there is no certainty of success in that. On the other hand, the more readings (of and about the Yi) I do, the more I feel like I'm reaching line 6 of 25, so it seems I can't fully trust my first impressions anymore . . then I try to follow Trojan's 'fishing technique'

never heard of a coelacanth before . . here's one
image

;)

Trojan:
I'm glad you articulated those thoughts in your longer post, there were things in Hilarys post, that like you I couldn't quite put my finger on but somehow didn't quite hold for me


Its a nice idea that we can tidy it away to have a 'clear space' and i guess its good to try to make it clear of preconceptions as much as possible in any consultation (?), but i don't think it will ever be truly blank/empty slate. With my own readings I often begin with an idea of the answer is about but then let it 'drop' as if i were letting go of a rope.., so my experience is not of making a clean space but of holding an answer initially in the net my previous experience then letting the answer drop beneath that level, letting the net drop into unknown more open waters.....pull the net up later and theres a different understanding..a different fish than the one i thought i had earlier

glad to know I'm not the only one that was baffled :)D) . . I really liked the way you described this 'fishing' act (actually reminded me of a verse by Elytis, slightly paraphrased: 'the fisherman that first drew out, then threw back into Time, heaven's catch')
then again, I'd like to think there can be a nook that is in fact devoid of pre-conceptions, a small space of emptiness (was thinking of 61 here . .) where we can retreat and start from scratch in a way . . cause there are these times when a reading makes sense just like that, out of the blue, without applying previous knowledge or experience and then I just know, even if it contradicts what I knew, or thought I knew, before, and then my eyes really open and change truly happens . .

and as far as 'divining for others', I've only really done this in person once (I don't count describing the process as 'divining') and I've never threw the coins on someone else's behalf . . but I think that sometimes we are divining for others in 'shared readings' . . not all the time of course, we might just offer our own experience as an example, or our own understanding of texts, but other times we really are divining, ie, trying to see the pattern thru/for someone else's eyes . .

anyway, the whole experience thing, obviously there's no one way to see it, but (and this might seem slightly OT but it snowed last night here . . ) it's often safer to walk on untreaded snow rather than where many people have walked already and it gets slippery . . keeping in mind that this is still walking on frozen water . .

sooo . . this looks like it's veering straight into rambling (putting on my glasses and going to read a book now . .)
thanks again for the comments and explanations . .:bows:
 
M

meng

Guest
Imo, there's nothing written in the Yi that is necessarily above the comprehension skills of a thoughtful young adult with no knowledge of the Yijing. After all, what are we talking about but natural occurrences and observable patterns: things even children take notice of and wonder about: Why does rain fall down and not up? Why do dust universes dance in the sunlight of my bedroom on summer Sunday mornings? And, how does blowing on them cause so much turbulence to the dust planets and stars? What causes and effects these things? Why do grownups pinch my cheeks? Do they think I like it? Why do bullies exist, and why do small kids get beat up most? What's up with Aunt Ann's hair? What makes water turn into ice? Why is church on Sunday? Why don't girls have one? Why is school so hard each fall? Who are my friends?

There's nothing revolutionary there! What experience brings isn't anything new, but it's something tested. But let me tell you, in old men, the fish he caught continue growing in his fertile mind, and the women grow more beautiful and plentiful. Gua 22 grows over, flourishing rich and colorful, if one is lucky. Life can become enhanced, and fantasies even more far reaching. That's what experience brings, in anything, not just with Yi. Testing, growing, enhancing.

But experience, if not kept in a fertile environment, will do just the opposite. It will become rigid and brittle and absolutely sure of itself. It will think it has already arrived, and the mind closes. The only thing which keep things fertile is the continual feeding and recirculation of resources. Yijing provides a means to keep things circulating, and a way to observe creative order, as well as anomalies, of everything around us and in us.
 
Last edited:

willow

visitor
Joined
Aug 16, 1970
Messages
258
Reaction score
6
But experience, if not kept in a fertile environment, will do just the opposite. It will become rigid and brittle and absolutely sure of itself. It will think it has already arrived, and the mind closes. The only thing which keep things fertile is the continual feeding and recirculation of resources. Yijing provides a means to keep things circulating, and a way to observe creative order, as well as anomalies, of everything around us and in us.

Thank you. that is a wonderfully helpful thought.
 

pantherpanther

visitor
Joined
May 2, 2008
Messages
762
Reaction score
1
An experienced doctor who may know a great deal yet makes a diagnosis without listening to each patient as unique often misses the mark. There is the proverb, "Remove the dust from your own eye before you try to remove the dust from another's."
 
Last edited:
M

meng

Guest
Willow, it's good to 'hear' your gentle soul calling from the shade again. I hope you are well. :bows:
 

heylise

Supporter
Clarity Supporter
Joined
Sep 15, 1970
Messages
3,128
Reaction score
202
Willow! Nice! Welcome back! :bows:
 

mythili

Supporter
Clarity Supporter
Joined
May 21, 2008
Messages
246
Reaction score
4
Willow, although I am relatively new to this forum, I have great respect for your posts. Welcome back.
 

Clarity,
Office 17622,
PO Box 6945,
London.
W1A 6US
United Kingdom

Phone/ Voicemail:
+44 (0)20 3287 3053 (UK)
+1 (561) 459-4758 (US).

Top