I’ve been thinking and divining about confidence in readings, and acting on readings, and being coached along the way by Yi into asking more lucid questions.
Having the confidence to act on a reading, by itself, was no guide to anything. Reaching the right moment to act on a reading could be a powerful thing (or a quite trivial thing, depending on the reading), but it clearly wasn’t the apex; there’s something more to aim for beyond 35.6, some place where the dao would shine out.
So I asked one more question:
How can we both act and be in harmony with readings, so that intuition and oracle are all part of one flow?
Yi answers with Hexagram 26, Great Taming, changing to Hexagram 41, Offering.
We can tame and cultivate ourselves for great purposes, like the farmer who rears big animals and cultivates rich fields so as ‘not to eat at home’. And we can do this kind of nurturing-controlling-taming-cultivating work as an Offering.
Which works out, specifically, like this:
‘A fine horse for pursuit.
Harvest from constancy in hardship.
Daily training, drawing chariots, defending.
Harvest in having a direction to go.’
In the previous reading, I learned that the right moment to act on a reading is characterised by both receiving a gift of horses and being as responsive as a mare. Now here’s the horse again, and it needs training.
“How to both act and be in harmony with readings?”
“Work on it.”
🙄