Success with the I Ching
Unlike most of the oracles popular today, the I Ching does not have its roots in New Age spirituality, but in far older, more pragmatic ground. It developed as a way of discovering answers and becoming attuned with the nature of the moment in a society where this was simply essential: wrong answers would have meant military, political or agricultural disaster. So when the authoritarian Ch’in dynasty supervised a massive burning of books in 213BC, the I Ching was among those books spared, along with medical texts, because it was of practical use. (The Ch’in evidently failed to notice the great subversive potential of an oracle that speaks the truth. The Chinese Communists were more perceptive: they banned it!) So is this an oracle for material rather than spiritual success?
In fact, from the point of view of the I Ching, this is a non-question. It’s based on the idea that material and spiritual are separate compartments of our lives - and I have found that this compartmentalisation is simply not recognised by the I Ching. Asking about a project with its material success in mind, I am reminded of what it means for my emotional and spiritual growth; asking about spiritual growth, I am firmly confronted with practical necessities.
The questions the I Ching can answer are countless: it adapts continually to the needs of those who consult it and the age they live in. And there is a considerable spectrum of questions that can help you to achieve a particular goal. For example, over the course of the year 2000 I designed and wrote Clarity's first website. The questions I asked included: ‘What about hosting with x?’; ‘Where now with this site?’; ‘How should I promote the site?’; ‘What discourages visitors from becoming buyers?’; ‘how should I approach participation in this discussion group?’; ‘How can I best deal with this ongoing problem with my hosting company?’ - to mention just a few. The answers guided me through the process successfully, and the site started attracting steadily increasing traffic and interest alike as soon as it went live.
These questions illustrate some of the different ways in which the I Ching can help once you have a specific goal in mind. ‘What about...?’ questions help in exploring alternatives; new analyses of problems offer fresh perspectives, and, perhaps most usefully, ‘How?’ questions bring new ideas and inspiration.
Once I had my site more-or-less ready, I had to decide where to host it. After I’d done some research and decided what I needed, I was still left with a great many firms to choose from. I dealt with this by asking ‘What about hosting with x?’ for each of them. With one (Company A), the reply was Hexagram 56, the Wanderer, changing to Hexagram 16, Provision. This encapsulated my situation nicely - wandering and looking for a place to stay, trying to provide for the future. But the moving lines - the pivotal points that marked exactly where I would be in this situation - sounded very negative.
‘Wandering, burning your resting place. Losing your young helper. Persistence means misfortune.’
‘A bird burns its nest. Wandering people first laugh, then cry out sobbing. Losing cattle in Yi. Disaster.’
This did not sound like a stable, prosperous website!
In fact, none of the answers I received were unambiguously positive. The company I eventually chose - apart from having a very good reputation in the newsgroups and all the features I wanted - had one of the best: Learning (Hexagram 4), in a context of Receptiveness (Hexagram 2). The first moving line spoke clearly of taking responsibility, like a child who is mature enough to take on responsibility for the household. The other was rather less promising:
‘Punishing the learner. No use to employ violence; useful to resist it.’
I knew full well that I was the learner here, and it seemed that I would not always be well cared for. But still, there was a way through.
I’ve got on pretty well with the host I chose (call them G), with the one exception of a total absence of log files. As these became more and more necessary, and my emails about the problem went unanswered (‘I do not seek the young learner; the young learner seeks me’, says Hexagram 4!), I grew increasingly frustrated - and asked how to tackle the problem. I was given Hexagram 7, the Army, moving to Hexagram 15, Authenticity. It was clear that my natural aversion to conflict was no longer appropriate here - I had to approach this as a military campaign. On the other hand, Hexagram 15 reminded me not to exaggerate the importance of the files, or over-dramatise things. Of the moving lines, one showed me like a general in the midst of the army, blessed with direct orders from the king - which boded well for my campaign. The other said ‘maybe the legions are carting corpses’ - suggesting the dud files and malfunction of the server, of course - and that this meant misfortune and prevented achievement.
After I sent a polite email asking whether I needed to change hosting company in order to get any logs, G offered me the chance to transfer to a new server on which the logs would work. This I did, and so far they’ve only failed once. But if I once more find myself carting the corpses of their technical failings, then my next question will be ‘What about a change of hosting company?’
Reading over these examples again, they seem to show not only the quality of the advice and support the I Ching gives, but also something of its unique style. These three questions haven’t just empowered me to deal with hosting companies, but also given me new images of myself: the traveller, the learner who gains in maturity and takes responsibility, and the military leader marshalling her forces. These help me to become more aware of the deeper currents of growth beneath what started out as eminently prosaic questions. Nothing is out of bounds when you talk with the I Ching; there are no neat limits. It presents you with a true challenge, and a remarkable opportunity for growth and success.