I Ching readings at the year's end
What can the I Ching do for you? It depends what you ask it to do…
While the I Ching by itself can't change your life, it can give you the inspiration and insight to change your own. In fact, almost any of the everyday questions we ask can open doors into anything-but-everyday possibilities. 'Where have I put my cufflinks?' doesn't on the face of it sound like the first step on a path to self-knowledge, but with the I Ching, you never know…
Still, truly extraordinary things can happen when we are drawn to ask bigger questions. And winter does seem to be a natural time for this. The sap retreats and life goes underground; the pace of life seems to slow, and we lose or find ourselves among the darker roots of thought.
Nature gives us this time for reflection, what the I Ching calls a 'dissolving pause'. It's the moment when things come apart and the earth is laid bare. The harvest of this year's growth is stored; Spring will come - and what new forms will grow? Janus is the god of this threshold, and he has two faces: one to look forward, the other back.
The winter of the soul won't always coincide with the seasons, though it very often does. But whenever you have (or need) the sense that you stand on a threshold, where one phase is ending and another beginning, it is a time to turn to the oracle. I like to ask the I Ching two questions, one for each face of Janus:
'What do I learn from this past year?'
'What is my path next year?'
The second question especially is a very open one: what opportunities and challenges to expect, what attitude to bring to them, what waits to be discovered. The answer can serve as reassurance and support throughout the year, giving everything a sense of direction.
But the effect of this future reading is much greater if you begin by seeking an understanding of your starting point. Not that there's any need to do the two readings on the same day, or even in the same month. It's worth taking the time to understand how you got where you are before looking to the path ahead.
The real value of this kind of exploration can only be discovered through experience. But hopefully a few extracts from my own reading for the past year will give an idea of the possibilities.
"What can I learn from the past year?"
2001 has been dominated by my I Ching divination work on the net. A lot of commitment and 12 hour days; repeated inspirations and discoveries as I lurched through what felt like not so much a learning curve as a roller-coaster. The I Ching summarises the experience as 51, Arousing and Thunder, set in the context of Hexagram 3, the Work of Beginning. The repeated shocks are there - depicted as thunderclaps! - and so too is the hard work, and the need to lay foundations (or put down roots) first.
I don't have the space here to describe the whole reading, but perhaps a single highlight will convey a little of what it has given me. The changing lines - the pivotal points of a reading - are in the outer trigram, the realm of the outer world. And at changing line 4, arousal and inspiration have to be put into practice. So what happens? 'Thunder releases a bog.' Suddenly I can see a pattern I had never quite been aware of: the surges of new ideas getting 'bogged down' in a morass of detail (and maybe also stirring up old issues…) - and not always getting out of it.
I know there must be another way - not everything has been 'stuck'. Ah yes… 'Thunder comes and goes, danger. Not losing motivation, can accomplish things.' (line 5) As one clap of thunder fades away, the next is already approaching - this I can recognise... Constant renewal and learning, repeated shocks and 'learning experiences' - many dangers, not least that of never getting anything done! But holding onto my motivation - literally the sound of the heart - I know what I have to do. And my own attempts to make sense of September 11th are in this line, too.
I can see the two ways of being I've enacted in the past year - what worked, what didn't, and why, and what I can do about it. And this only scratches the surface of the reading: I can still explore the patterns of change, the inner possibilities, the sequences and contrasts… When I feel I've fully owned and absorbed the experience, it will become the foundation for moving on: what is my path in the coming year?