Yes, occasionally there are good reasons for asking Yi the same question again.
But here is what usually happens with repeated questions:
- Querent asks question.
- Yi gives direct, truthful answer to said question.
- Querent feels this answer is ‘unclear’ or ‘can’t be right’.
- Querent asks again.
- Yi tries putting it another way.
- Querent still unable to accept this, asks again.
- Yi starts approaching the subject from different angles altogether.
The best-known of those ‘different angles’ is Hexagram 4, of course:
‘Not knowing, creating success.
I do not seek the young learner, the young learner seeks me.
The first consultation is clearly informative.
The second and third muddy the waters,
Confusing, and hence not informative.
Constancy bears fruit.’
But having this so well-known as a retort can actually cause misunderstandings:
“I can’t have asked too often, I haven’t received hexagram 4 yet.”
It turns out that Yi has more than one way of changing the subject. Like 40 or 43 as encouragement to make up your own mind, or 8 encouraging you to return to ‘the source of oracle-consulting’, or 20 asking someone to step back and see what they’re doing, or in extreme cases 21.6:
‘Shouldering a cangue so your ears disappear.
Pitfall.’
I keep on coming across new ways, new creative strategies from Yi to get through to us.
Just to say – the above 7-step process is not just something that theoretically might happen, delivered from some quasi-religious standpoint of ‘respect for the oracle’. It’s what I see happen again and again, when someone’s asked a whole series of questions and is trying to understand all the readings at once. The best advice I can offer is to go back to the first answer received and give it time to sink in.
Hilary, Could you please post the above again and again and again? And say what you said in a million different ways? I can’t quite wrap my mind about what you are saying. : )
ROFL!