Free-flowing answers

Here’s an example from personal experience of how the message of a reading can attune you to the larger flow of what you need.

My advice for last week from Yi was Hexagram 59, Dispersing, moving at lines 2 and 3 to 53, Gradual Development. I’m happy to see 53 as a backdrop or underlying process, as one effect of the Seasonal Affective Disorder I’m overcoming just now is a sense of being divorced from energy and purpose. 53 shows an opportunity to ‘remarry’ into life.

But the foreground, the process to work with, was Dispersion: solid things dissolving, barriers breaking down, giving a longer view and freer communication. And especially line 2:

‘Dispersing, hurrying to your support.
Regrets vanish.’

– and line 3:

‘Dispersing your self,
Without regrets.’

What followed over the course of the week is a good example of the ‘radio tuner’ effect of a weekly consultation. That is, the reading doesn’t just bring what you need to hear, it also ‘tunes’ your awareness so you can hear what you need to.

In my case, the first ‘broadcast’ I picked up was hard to miss: a remarkable thread at the I Ching Community about 59.2. How to translate it (not necessarily as I’ve done above…), how to interpret it, how to use it as advice. For me, this time around, it meant finding what worked and kept me afloat, and taking refuge in that. My usual systems for structuring my life and keeping things moving forward were Dispersed and fast disappearing down the river. So I drew together everything I knew would work, and everything I thought might help, and used it. It’s working.

The next programme on the schedule: Adam Kayce writing a new article, ‘What to do when caught in a flood’. Since I find ‘flood’ imagery a very helpful way to draw together and relate to the meanings of hexagram 59, I had to smile at this. What he says about a flood of information applies just as well to a flood of things to do, responsibilities, pressures, and so on:

“Rather than try to swim through the flood on your own, get into the lifeboat of your heart. Feel who you are, and what you need, from a place of connection.”

It seems to me that he’s talking not only about the experience of 59 but also the response of 59.2 – not least its movement towards 20, Seeing.

And then came an email from an old friend, opening the floodgates to clear out an Augean stable (or maybe just an Augean hamster cage) of misunderstandings. This is a Dispersing operation, too, the removal of barriers between people, restoring clear flow.

Along the way, I found myself writing to him about the way I see my work, life, identity, worth and all as a single thing, not readily divided into independent compartments. At the time of writing, I thought this was a pretty good way to be – holistic, or integrated, or some such. But then I went back to reading Neil Fiore’s (excellent) book on procrastination, The Now Habit. If you identify your whole self with your work, he says, then failing at a task makes you a failure. It becomes much safer and more sensible to avoid starting anything truly important.

And 59.3 says,
‘Dispersing your self,
Without regrets.’
I can dissolve this set of identifications without regrets, without losing anything. I might even gain in connection to something more.

Now, I know that for many people, it wouldn’t take a reading, a seven-page forum thread, an article, several emails and a book to understand this… But this is one of the things I love about living here: the cosmos doesn’t cut its losses and give up on you; the answers keep flowing.