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The basic human need Yi answers, part 2: the Well

This entry is part 2 of 6 in the series The need Yi answers: 49.1.2.4 to 48
My last post but one was about a reading from years ago, about the human need the Yijing answers. Yi says this is the need for Radical Change, Hexagram 49, changing to Hexagram 48, the Well.

Readings with adjoining hexagrams from the Sequence have a particular resonance, I think. In this reading, the changing lines reveal how the Well stands behind Radical Change. Such change, after all, doesn’t happen by itself: it takes energy to overcome inertia. The Sequence of Hexagrams points to where that energy might come from:

‘The way (dao) of the Well does not allow things not to change radically.’

That double negative – ‘does not allow not changing radically’ – is potent stuff. It’s not possible to tap into the Well without bringing about Radical Change.

This always reminds me (not least because the name of 49 also means ‘leather’) of the saying in the Gospels, that you don’t store new wine in old wineskins. That’s just practical common sense: new wine would still be fermenting, and the stiff, unyielding leather of the old skins would burst under the pressure. If the essence is fresh and alive, then the form must also be new and flexible – and if it isn’t, it will break. Likewise, if our readings tap into unchanging essence, then they will require that our way of living be flexible enough to change. (Many people seem to know this intuitively, and avoid asking Yi a question they ‘logically’ should be asking because they sense their unreadiness.)

The way of the Well requires Radical Change; Radical Change needs an underlying resource to justify and sustain it.

‘The Well. Moving the city, not moving the well.
Without loss, without gain,
They come and go, the well wells.
Almost drawn the water, but the rope does not quite reach the water,
Or breaking one’s clay jug,
Pitfall.’

Hexagram 48 is an old friend in readings about the oracle. Jung, in his famous foreword to the Wilhelm translation, wasn’t the last person to find Yi referring to itself as a Well, and I don’t imagine he was the first. It’s a very natural, fitting image – the unchanging resource, always present, ‘wholly connected’ (Zagua); the efforts needed to reach it and keep our connection in good order.

The text says that all kinds of human things can change (foreshadowing 49), and the well is what doesn’t change. Literally it says, ‘No loss, no gain, going-coming, welling-welling.’ Welling-welling… personally I think this is making a ‘deep’ point about the changing and the unchanging, and the relationship between them.

So Hexagram 49 is about timeliness, the fu (trust, truth, confidence) of the right moment. And the relating hexagram, behind it, is about the timeless – only, as you might expect from Yi, not just about the elegant metaphysics of the thing, but about the work we have to do to maintain it. If our well-usage and -maintenance skills are not up to the task, disaster. (And there are, goodness knows, plenty of ways to approach the oracle with a short rope, or smash the jug.) This is pointing to divination as (part of) a practice of staying connected to source.

Taking one step further back in the Sequence sets this in context, and reflects the human need for divination in a way we can recognise. The Well follows from Hexagram 47, Confined: an image of frustration, entrapment and isolation. This is when we ask: when we’re stuck, when the answers or help to be had ‘out there’ are just not sufficient to the need. Then,

‘Confined in reaching upward naturally means turning inward, and so the Well follows.’

Naturally – where else?

One other thing about the Well: to be literal-minded for a moment, one person unaided cannot dig and maintain one. While we can read this relating hexagram as talking purely about an individual process – being blocked, reaching inward for spiritual connection, doing the work to keep that connection alive, and…

‘Above the wood is the stream. The Well.
A noble one toils with the people, encouraging them to help one another.’

…involving all parts of yourself in the work with plenty of ‘positive self-talk’ – I think that would be missing some of the point. On the one hand, divination speaks perfectly to this ‘age of the individual’: it’s just you and the oracle, in conversation, and that sense of being spoken to individually is the heart of the experience. On the other hand… the Yijing is the product of a huge, living tradition of people exploring, meditating, divining and sharing. Consulting the oracle, you may find yourself immersed in the tradition – or beyond that, in common humanity.

Series Navigation<< The basic human need that Yi answersThe basic human need Yi answers, part 3: the change >>

33 responses to The basic human need Yi answers, part 2: the Well

  1. I,m loving this blog topic. Its an interesting way to view the relationship between individual and the collective. I think the reading also addresses evolution, not specifically the Darwinian kind, but culturally and spiritually. Great food for thought!

  2. One way that we miss the mark, so to speak, and don’t reach all the way down to the well is that we don’t realize that the I Ching is not just giving us limited answers to limited questions, but is teaching us with each reading, its own nature, and the way of the cosmos, or the tao, and that we can grow and mature by its wisdom. By not realizing this, the rope does not go all the way down, and the jug breaks. Line three puts this in slightly a different way by saying, “The well is cleaned, but no one drinks from it. This is my hearts sorrow. All of us, without exception, more or less only “shoot fishes” at the well, and do not understand it on a deeper level. We only appreciate what our level of maturity allows us to understand. In this way the jug leaks, so that, while we get water, we do not get a full portion, only that which we can comprehend.

    Gene

  3. Isn’t that always true? Sometimes we make the mistake of applying it too personally, and sometimes not personally enough, and I dare say I could manage both at once with a little effort.

    Mind you… one implication of the idea that we approach the well in the first place to shoot fishes is that this might be the best or only way we can start. Maybe it’s easier to start pondering what else that water source might have to offer when we’re sitting digesting our fish supper…

  4. Yes, the only way we can start. We can not realize there are deeper waters until we understand life and spirit on a deeper level. Until that time, the rope does not go down far enough. We do not seek a spiritual life until we realize that our life is not working, and when we do we at first seek it only on a shallow level. Hence line three says if only the seeker would know there is depth in the well. Nicodemus approached Jesus by night, because he was still mostly in the dark. Jesus approached the woman at the well, who still did not have a deep enough rope to reach the living waters. But Jesus would not have approached at all if the woman had not already begun to realize there were deeper waters. We can only accept and understand what we are ready to understand. Beyond that, our bucket leaks, and the rope does not go deep enough. each receives the teaching that is available on his or her level. We can see further. But with continued dipping into the well we begin to undersand little by little that the well is deep.

    Gene

  5. Yes, the best or only way we can start. We cannot know that there is a deeper message until we are spiritually aware enough to understand that message. We shoot fishes because we are concerned with problems in our daily life, not with eternal matters as that seems too ethereal or unreal or non existent to us. It is a daily progression. The world is always “too much with us.” And we carry it wherever we go. If we realized there were deeper water we would let the rope go down further, but we do not because we do not know.

    I lost this response and it seemed to be gone, so I started over again. So now there are two responses which say much of the same thing, but not entirely.

    Gene

  6. As Gene said people understand their answers according to their level of consciousness. So Hilary got an answer she understands as applicable with her level of consciousness. It is a beautiful answer….for her. Its what she understands of it…which is worth sharing…but its still hers, speaks to her. It is only telling us this is Hilarys answer to this question and how she understands it.

    However I read it sounding as ‘this is the answer to this question’ which of course it isn’t. It is an answer (one answer) to that question…..one of many. Maybe there are as many answers as there are people

    quote

    In this reading, the changing lines reveal how the Well stands behind Radical Change. Such change, after all, doesn’t happen by itself: it takes energy to overcome inertia. The Sequence of Hexagrams points to where that energy might come from: unquote

    Change does happen all by itself. Its not possible for anything to stay the same. That is the basis of the I Ching isn’t it

    Hex 49 also shows natural change, inevitable change. Plants, animals, people, growing, moulting, living, dieing all happening all by themselves with no work ethic required and naturally drawing on the well of life that gave rise to them. People cannot stay the same however much they want to so what is really meant by ‘inertia’ here

    Part of this answer might be about dealing with change rather than having to work really hard at reaching the well in order to make it change you…since you will naturally change anyway as its impossible not to

    As to Genes point about people not realising there is also a teaching in their answers….well thats the beauty of the I Ching IMO. People can naturally learn deeper truths by asking about the little things of daily life. They learn whats true for them at their level of consciousness.. without all the dogma of ‘teachings’. Everyday life is where people learn
    and everyday life is naturally inseparable from the eternal…how could it not be .

    It is not always concerns of the world that stop the jug reaching the well….indeed it could be concerns with dogmas and ‘teachings’ that stop ones jug reaching the well because to believe worldy concerns and the eternal are separate is an illusion in itself…..and all ‘teachings’ about ‘us’ can actually get in the way of connecting

  7. I didn’t realize this blog was written upon the occasion of someone actually receiving a reading. There was no intention on my part to say that anyone’s reading was not “all that it could be.” I was just talking of a principle in general and it doesn’t take into account or refer to any reading that anyone actually did or the answer they got. Sorry if that was misread.

    Well, I certainly enjoy the conversation.

  8. Eh ? Hilary says this blog post is about her reading of 49>48.

    I don’t know what you mean by the “all that it could be” sentence above or who you are quoting…I only know there is no need for you to apologise for anything as far as I can see.

    I think you may have misread me… when i said this ;

    “However I read it sounding as ‘this is the answer to this question’ which of course it isn’t. It is an answer (one answer) to that question…..one of many. Maybe there are as many answers as there are people ”

    I was referring there to Hilarys blog post not your comments on it.

    Oh well… nothing to apologise for anyway

  9. About the reading being only mine, not applicable to anyone else – hmmm. Not convinced. Divination is extraordinarily individual – but maybe not exclusively so. I think we Western moderns are very comfortable with divination as a purely individual thing as it fits so well with how we honour the individual – nothing wrong with that. But it doesn’t mean that’s the only thing it does. 49 your perspective to a 38 angle (hm, connection between hexagrams with trigrams reversed?) and it might appear quite differently.

    Change does happen all by itself. Its not possible for anything to stay the same. That is the basis of the I Ching isn’t it

    Hex 49 also shows natural change, inevitable change. Plants, animals, people, growing, moulting, living, dieing all happening all by themselves with no work ethic required and naturally drawing on the well of life that gave rise to them. People cannot stay the same however much they want to so what is really meant by ‘inertia’ here

    I mean ‘inertia’ in the more precise sense: the tendency of things to carry on in the same way as before. A ball rolling along the floor has inertia; something has to act on it to make it stop. And an individual or society going through the daily round cushioned by lots of engrained assumptions has inertia: it takes a revolution to make it change.

    Certainly there are other kinds of change – natural, evolutionary, within nature of the thing. But I don’t think 49 is a broad, general thing encompassing all of those. It’s specifically revolutionary, change-of-identity change. If I keep sitting crouched over my computer screen all day, this changes me into a myopic hunchback – and that’s not 49 change. (But it is inertia.)

    As to Genes point about people not realising there is also a teaching in their answers….well thats the beauty of the I Ching IMO. People can naturally learn deeper truths by asking about the little things of daily life. They learn whats true for them at their level of consciousness.. without all the dogma of ‘teachings’. Everyday life is where people learn
    and everyday life is naturally inseparable from the eternal…how could it not be .

    It is not always concerns of the world that stop the jug reaching the well….indeed it could be concerns with dogmas and ‘teachings’ that stop ones jug reaching the well because to believe worldy concerns and the eternal are separate is an illusion in itself…..and all ‘teachings’ about ‘us’ can actually get in the way of connecting

    Yes – that’s why I said something about ‘too personally, or not personally enough’. And I do agree that the way to deeper connection, and hence to deeper truths, is through the day-to-day questions. No separation of realms, no hierarchy of questions.

  10. I’m not communicating well my reason for unease with someone proclaiming ‘the truth’ for one and all via a Yi cast. You, anyone, can ask questions on behalf of humanity and get an answer that enlightens you, that you understand and are quite happy with then share with others what you understood as your answer to this question and they can enjoy and appreciate it as that…. But… isn’t it an act of huge hubris to write as if your interpretation is actually the answer for everyone ? That it is ‘the truth’, that ‘the truth’ is your interpretation ? To state it as if that is the truth. It can never be more than your insights from the cast . Maybe thats all you ever meant anyway…I don’t know. I only know that when someone bestows their answer upon me (as a member of humanity) I can’t see any good reason I’d take their word for it unless I’d appointed them as my guru.

    I don’t of course think that you would be engaging in an act of great hubris…..not something I’d associate with you as ever doing….so that makes it all the more puzzling a stance to take.

    I tried to think of what I’d be doing if I asked a question on behalf of humanity … like um ‘what is the purpose of the human species’ whatever my answer was, however much sense it made to me I’d still take it as a tiny tiny sliver of truth, a truth for my consciousness about that matter. How could it be otherwise. Others could ask same question and get entirely different answers so how could I say mine was anything other than my answer or at best an answer people at my level of consciousness found meaningful.

    You appear in this blog post to actually be saying “this is the answer to this question” rather than “this is my answer to this question”.

    Re this ;

    quote

    ‘The way (dao) of the Well does not allow things not to change radically.’

    That double negative – ‘does not allow not changing radically’ – is potent stuff. It’s not possible to tap into the Well without bringing about Radical Change.

    unquote

    I can’t find that sentence anywhere in any of my books…not even yours. “the way of the well does not allow things not to change radically”

    Maybe I overlooked it somewhere…but I don’t see the well as always occasioning/necessitating radical change. I guess you’d have to believe in the meaning of the sequence to get to that (I don’t) so am unsure of your statement there.

    Ah I found the sentence in the ‘sequence’ part of 49 in your book but not in 48….so yes that statement is very much tied into a belief about the meaning of sequence that not everyone shares

  11. BTW re this

    “Certainly there are other kinds of change – natural, evolutionary, within nature of the thing. But I don’t think 49 is a broad, general thing encompassing all of those. It’s specifically revolutionary, change-of-identity change. If I keep sitting crouched over my computer screen all day, this changes me into a myopic hunchback – and that’s not 49 change. (But it is inertia.)”

    I’ve cast 49 many times for changes of a natural kind…. so I do think 49 encompasses all these things. The I Ching is based on nature afterall, seasons and calender are referred to in 49. I don’t think 49 has to be specifically revolutionary at all nor as mostly about change of habits or behaviours…(thats more hex 7 territory IMO)…plus of course changing habits and behaviours doesn’t change identity anyway….whatever identity is being defined as here. Being myopic or not has no particular impingement on your core identity IMO

    An animal moulting is an image of 49…its seasonal, its effortless, its time to moult so it moults

  12. How would it be to say that this is just my interpretation of an answer that can be true for more than just me? Different ideas about the sequence or the kind of change 49 represents are going to mean different interpretations. That’s in the nature of the thing, and doesn’t mean the reading can’t be for anyone else. (As usual, I would be leery of saying what Yi cannot do.)

    Also, not that it’s the answer for everyone, but that it’s an answer for everyone. I came across another such the other day, when someone on Quora, a social site, asked what use the I Ching is. Someone sensibly asked Yi, and got 15 changing to 16. I’m very happy to receive that answer as meant for me.

  13. “How would it be to say that this is just my interpretation of an answer that can be true for more than just me? Different ideas about the sequence or the kind of change 49 represents are going to mean different interpretations. That’s in the nature of the thing, and doesn’t mean the reading can’t be for anyone else. (As usual, I would be leery of saying what Yi cannot do.)”

    I think the answer (and interpretation of it) it remains very much yours and that others may learn from it or relate to it as in ‘this is what Hilary thought it was saying to her’ yes. But If I wanted to know what basic need Yi served for me I’d have to ask it…although the question would be based on assumption there even was a basic need it served…where there may in fact be many, even within the individual. Also people who use Yi to get football predictions etc don’t seem to be interested in changing as you describe but wholly securing the future…or at least trying to secure a knowledge of the future and that seems all about security. Actually I think security in the midst of constant change is the need that Yi answers for many…well one need anyway. The well, the unchanging must serve as a kind of security, something that stays constant throughout any change however catastrophic.

    ‘Also, not that it’s the answer for everyone, but that it’s an answer for everyone. I came across another such the other day, when someone on Quora, a social site, asked what use the I Ching is. Someone sensibly asked Yi, and got 15 changing to 16. I’m very happy to receive that answer as meant for me.’

    I can’t see it as an answer for everyone….unless everyone accepts it as an answer for them. I always resent the presumption that goes along with asking on behalf of everyone….and then the act of telling everyone what it is they do, what it is they use Yi for. I’m not sure why people do this. They may as well acknowledge their reading as personal to begin with then others can take it for themselves as they want to

    I think most of all I regard it as a bit of a sacrilege when people attempt to formulate ‘teachings’ from Yis answers…as for example Carol Anthony does. She has her beliefs, her agenda, then uses the I Ching to speak her voice. Of course as individuals we all do this, impossible not to since we are not blank canvases…but if then as an individuals with our unblank canvases we use a reading to make a kind of ‘teaching’ about what Yi says for everyone…I think it can take us far away from the immediacy of the person/oracle interaction…plus, for myself, I’m not happy to accept it. While I can see that 15>16 was a great and meaningful answer for him I’d disown his assumption and bestowal that its for me too.

    Not that you have attempted to give a ‘teaching’ exactly but the ‘we’ used in the blog post implies things ‘we’ need to do to stay connected and so on ..

  14. Wow. Imagine getting to a point to consult the Yi on behalf of the World. One who does this work I think would need to be very brave or a coward.

    In doing so, do they not take on much duty to educate, share, work and help as many as one can? Or does one set themselves up for frustration and regret as they cower from these heavy responsibilities they perceived as their own?

    Either way paths seem rocky and tumultuous.

    I send love to see them through.

  15. Trojan, Manofthenorth, I’m really glad you’re arguing this and pushing me into a corner where I have to clarify things. Very helpful, in a thoroughly uncomfortable way.

    On the one hand, I’m not a great fan of Carol Anthony’s more recent work, and I don’t think I’m formulating teachings from Yi’s answers – I certainly never intended to have any teachings.

    And on the other hand… it would be completely disingenuous to say, ‘Oh, I’m just saying what is there in the reading.’ There are actually things I believe about why divination is important – yes, for the whole World, capitalisation and all – and I see some of these truths in the reading. Evidently there are a bunch of other truths in the reading I will not be able to see – but that doesn’t diminish those I can.

    About taking on duty… yes and no. Yes, I do want to change the world. However… what’s important to me is to dedicate myself to a change that’s orders of magnitude bigger than anything I could actually accomplish. (Merely confining my efforts to things I can do would be stultifying and uninspiring in the extreme.)

    When it’s laughably obvious that what I’m devoted to is not something I can do, then it becomes necessary to draw on something greater than the small self. (We might know a hexagram – or a hexagram pair, come to think of it – about this.) So there is certainly a duty to do my utmost to educate, share, work and help – but without ‘owning’ or taking on more than is really mine.

  16. while I have taken some inspiration from Carol Anthony, my approach is much different. I also realize that everyone is different in their approach and what is meaningful to them. I must say though, that the I Ching is very, very much a teaching tool, and that is its highest use. Without that, it becomes not much to us. Carol Anthony gets what she gets out of the I Ching, it works for her. I get what I get out of it and it works for me. Boy does it ever work. (That’s not to say I haven’t misinterpreted or got myself into trouble for doing so; that is part of the teaching too) If you take the teaching element out of it, it becomes somewhat baseless and purposeless. The whole point of the I Ching is to help us understand the way of the tao and become one with it. Without that the divinations are relatively meaningless. The I Ching is a living entity, and it must be honored and respected. We each get out of it what we can on the basis of our own personality, character, and level of spiritual understanding. The book needs to be honored, and allowed to teach us the path that is meant for us. And that is, by the way, a significant portion of the meaning of hexagram forty eight, not to mention four, twenty nine, and several others.

    Gene

  17. Gene I think the I Ching teaches us probably every time we consult whether we are aware of it or not. Nowhere have I denied the Yi teaches us. But exactly how and what it teaches each person is not something you, or anyone will ever know IMO. Even if we use it ‘badly’ its probably still teaching us something.

    Learning whilst being unaware of learning is probably the deepest kind of learning. It works great for children and it probably works great for us too. Being told how something is is not at all the same as experiencing how your life and the advice from the oracle connect or don’t connect. There is plenty to learn from other people about the Yi but its not the same thing as learning what you yourself need to know right now, directly, from the Yi.

    I didn’t mean to press you into a corner Hilary but that seems to be the natural consequence of saying what I think here. However , I think for myself, that being a reader of blanket interpretations that include everyone can also feel vaguely like being pushed into a corner….

    I mean it doesn’t bother me that much I just tend to mildly resent the blanket interpretation but most Blog readers here seem to like it and to easily accept the interpretation as for them….and its your blog you don’t have to justify the blanket approach, I wasn’t expecting that, more just expressing my sense of it, and my puzzlement at it.

  18. I actually appreciate being nudged into this particular corner. Did me good.

    Have you read Rachel Pollack’s Forest of Souls? That contains some quite extraordinary readings, with questions like, ‘What was the reading God used to create the world?’ Wonderful divination-as-sandpit-of-life stuff.

  19. I tried to imagine why anyone would ask a question like the one you quoted and thought it would have to be a time when they had absolutely no problems whatsoever……because from my POV theres always something more pressing to ask about than that !

    I did pick up a book today called “Quantum Change” and the subtitle was “When epiphanies and sudden insights transform ordinary lives”. I think it relates how out of the blue peak spiritual experiences, have left people irrevocably transformed. Of course my neuron fired making a connection with this blog post and how you cannot reach the well without being transformed.

    I was troubled for a moment thinking you may have been right afterall …but these transforming experiences all seemed to have happened unbidden, spontaneously…. like a bolt from the blue The writers had been working in the whole self improvement field…but then became aware of this sudden spontaneous kind of transformation….quite different from conscious working towards change. People relate how they were overcome or had an overwhelming sense of bliss or connection etc etc seemingly from nowhere and it left them changed….and they didn’t do anything to get there.

    There could be a non work ethic approach to 49>48 too ?

  20. Ever have those moments when you are thinking about God or an equivalent and the clouds part and a beam of sunshine spotlights your place, like some kind of cliche theatrical moment of revelation? I think people often dismiss this as someone taking a mere co-incidence and turning it into an ego trip for some special connection with divinity over others. It occurred to me today that when these moments happen its not that one is taking a leap of logic so they can feel or look more philosophical or holy, its not that they themselves have drawn the universe to them — its that they have finally connected with the universe. When you do that, as the saying goes, you can find the universe in a grain of sand. Thunderclaps sounds when you start saying something important, rain pours down when you finally let go and you can be witness to what we all are as a whole.

    As for the reading , I guess we need to 49 in order to get back to the well, so often we veer off course and the manner in which this happen is individual but the happening of this is universal. And you need to revolutionise yourself to connect again, to that which wants you to be connected to it.

    It reminds me of the 7 up doco series, there was one kid who after school became homeless, he wasn’t in all the consequent series but by 42 up they had caught up with him again and it was exactly at this time he had decided to run for local council, after having lived a homeless life all that time, he turned himself around and he won the election. At 42.

  21. Quantum Change is in the air and I join many with such a story. I just crossed the book yesterday and see Trojan mentioned it as well. Which connects to ChingChing’s post.

    After creating Shifting Circles and being exposed to seven healers power in seven hours, I, and now friends, have had stunning and major synchronicites. The number of them overwhelmed me and led me to read Jung’s ideas on the phenomena and in turn brought me to the Yi Ching. So it has been a fast ride from zero to here.

    Regarding an “ego trip” connected to cataclysmic externalization phenomena and synchronicity I plead guilty to one thing- believing the more you experience the more you are connected somehow, as Universes themselves are children of synchronicity.

    As for “divinity over others” the more this child learns of the YI and connects, the more responsibility I feel to be love, not to be loved.

  22. Interesting conversation going on… There are outer and inner transformations for everyone. The clues are in the heavenly stars. You will know when you are on the right track when you sense ‘love/ compassion/ humility/ peace’. And YES we are all connected ultimately and are ONE.

    I am interested in why people consult the IChing ? If they do, am I right to think that these people believe in a mystical divine order and therefore have no power over their destiny?

  23. I consult Yi because I think I can do a lot for my destiny, and I’d like to learn how to do it well.

    I agree and disagree both with this being a reading for Hilary or a general reading which applies to the world. Or at least a little part of the world. If you read her reading and interpretation and you like it, it is for you too and not only for Hilary. If it leaves you indifferent, it is not for you.

    Things are not just “what they are”, they are most of all the life which someone gives to them.

  24. If you read her reading and interpretation and you like it, it is for you too and not only for Hilary. If it leaves you indifferent, it is not for you.

    I think that resolves it nicely.

    It’s possible to do a reading within a group, for the group – even casting one line each. I’ve had good experiences with that. So why wouldn’t it also be possible to do the reading first and identify the group it belongs to afterwards?

    Going to search on Amazon for this ‘Quantum Change’ book…

  25. “I think that resolves it nicely.”

    if anything needed resolving…which I don’t think it did really.

    “It’s possible to do a reading within a group, for the group – even casting one line each. I’ve had good experiences with that. So why wouldn’t it also be possible to do the reading first and identify the group it belongs to afterwards?”

    LOL I think the exact opposite …The reading that I heard from CC where a few people cast 1 line each for ‘what is money’ and got hex 4 I really thought was a reflection of the procedure……and the question (hex 4 as in Yi being slightly rude’) not an answer to the question put….since there could not be one….as there is no single answer….it depends on who you ask or how you view it. Similarly I’ve seen where you asked a question on behalf of everyone and got an especially personal answer in “The Kitchen”…. you interpreted it for ‘us’ but later it was clear it was for you all along….wasn’t it ? I thought so anyway.

    The answer in this blog post is definitely more ‘usable’ for others than those examples….but I think one always has to allow the possibilty Yi isn’t answering directly, which it wasn’t IMO in the previous 2 examples I gave.

    “Going to search on Amazon for this ‘Quantum Change’ book…”

    I haven’t read it properly it might be rubbish….

    I’m happy agreeing to differ re the group readings thing….no resolving is necessary.

    Why do people always want to resolve things ?..theres a question for the whole of humanity…but I won’t be asking….for all the reasons above outlined

    The End

  26. Good question WHY DO PEOPLE ALWAYS HAVE TO RESOLVE THINGS?
    In reality, there is no need to do anything because everything is taken care of. What then is the use of the IChing? The hexagram movements sums up the dynamics of the universe ie there is a universal natural law operating and we are subjects to this order. However as LiSe mentions : consulting the IChing gives guidance to one’s destiny as our consciousness develops. The ‘answers’ are within yourself / ourselves already. Go deep into the well, someone says…

  27. …well it’s been three weeks of study since this interesting conversation humbled me to learn and develop more. I felt ready to consult the I Ching for the second time ever ….. how I even ended up in this conversation in the first place….but anyway….. 48 stunned.

  28. I am wondering if one can understand the Tao to be the same as the Buddhist idea of emptiness. And when I think of the unchanging, I am reminded of of primordial nature of each individual and perhaps that is the well and when one is connected securely without obstructions of clarity perhaps one has infinite possibilities for resolving ones issues????

  29. In SILENCE In EMPTINESS; Comes CLARITY and ALL POSSIBILITIES. The well indeed is very deep very still, empty. Resolution of one’s issues???? What are you trying to ‘re-solve’ ? Tao has no definition(s).

  30. can I ask a question: I ask to know if i will have a baby, I am old woman, and I had this 48 exagram.
    In your opinion how have I to interpret that?
    Thank you

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