I asked the I Ching why we sometimes get vague convoluted answers when there are alternative hexagrams available that could answer the question precisely. (grr..)

I received 40. Release.

Fruitful in the southwest. (The place of friendship - should we ask friends for help?)
With no place to go,
To turn around and come back is good fortune. (If you don't understand the answer at all, turn the question around and start over?)
With a direction to go,
Daybreak good fortune. (If you have a hint of what it could mean start working on it? Or maybe sleep on it, you'll understand better in the morning?)

A noble one pardons transgressions and
forgives crimes. (Is the I Ching asking my forgiveness for being so obscure?! Ha!)

Release follows 39. Limping. "Things cannot end with hardship and so Release follows. Release means letting things take their time." So again if you don't understand the answer right away give it a rest? Or does a vague answer mean you didn't let the question gel, that one should sit with it for a bit before tossing the coins?

Any thoughts?

This is something I've wondered, too, so thanks for actually asking.

When I've wailed to Yi that I don't understand answers, often enough to notice Yi's given me 13 in some form or another. I've taken it to mean the mechanism or parts, all the context stuff (paired hexagram, opposite/complement hexagram, nuclear story, etc.). Like if a reading is a molecule: what we think is the most precise line might be the wrong molecule, when you consider everything it's attached to.

40 fits into that, I think. 40's about paths to places. It says if there's somewhere to go, then go there. If there isn't, come back. I think Yi's saying it gives us the reading that goes somewhere, that's a question's whole answer, including all the fruitful friends to be found in the west and south (the context parts).

Convoluted is a good word for it, though, and this doesn't explain why sometimes the context parts are helpful and sometimes they're not, and how if we try to use all of it we can get hopelessly tangled up. I don't know - maybe even if we don't use the whole molecule (this metaphor is wearing thin), it's still the only correct molecule Yi could give us?

"With no place to go, To turn round and come back is good fortune" - maybe that's about this part:

rosada said:

So again if you don't understand the answer right away give it a rest? Or does a vague answer mean you didn't let the question gel, that one should sit with it for a bit before tossing the coins?

Click to expand...

If I don't mangle it, yes, I think Hilary says in her courses that both of those are important. Time is our friend, both before and after casting. ( )

a

rosada said:

I asked the I Ching why we sometimes get vague convoluted answers .... I received 40. Release.

Click to expand...

Ha, so you asked about vugue responses from the Yi and maybe the Yi responded with what might feel like a vague response?

In looking at the Yi's response (by way of the trigrams and being more intuitive than academic): if we get what seems like a vague or convoluted answer, perhaps we shouldn't be too quick (like thunder) to find a solution or to interpret what it means.

Instead we might try looking - like water within the abyss - for what lies just a bit deeper than our first 'knee jerk' response. And perhaps too, maybe we need to give the response more time and attention to become fully-formed.

I'm reminded too of this idea of things happening in their proper time - that thunder and rain conditions have to be right for there to be Release (that 'ah-ha' moment). And in the meantime, we diviners may need to cut ourselves some slack - to 'pardon transgressions' and to be 'broad-minded regarding offenses - either our own or the Yi's!

(Besides all that, I was thinking that a vague response and a convoluted response can be two entirely different things - though I don't know how that effects the Yi's response in this instance?)

So, how's that for a vauge response to your response?

Best, D

Hi Rosada
A few years back I spent quite a bit of time working with The Emotional I Ching: Language of the Vague by Chris Lofting which I thought at the time was an excellent title and summed up many of the readings I was getting. I came to realise that vagueness is actually a good thing as it gives room for things to become more ordered and eventually more meaningful. The vagueness in some readings just is. It's when we apply our mind to the reading or grasp at getting 'the right answer' that it all becomes convoluted.

For a reading, staying with the vagueness is good, engaging with convolutedness is bad. Sitting in that cloud of unknowing is a difficult thing to do especially when we have a lot invested in getting a clear, concise and actionable meaning. Alternative hexagrams that could answer the question precisely, unfortunately, would not reach the same spot and certainly not by the same route.

With readings as with most things, I find the journey is more important than the destination. It's a canny Yi that we are dealing with working on all sorts of levels. Maybe the frustrations coming forward were considered more important things for you to see first rather than an answer to the question you posed. Who knows?

Hex 40 is about relief, release, unblocking blockages, letting go of suffering and talks of being gentle and compassionate towards errors and crimes. So maybe tensions sitting with you at the time of the question formation are causing frustrations on the other side of the cast. Your pre cast relationship with Yi (southwest) had nowhere to go.

It's interesting that the nuclear of 40 is 63 Already Across. So there could be an element in your vague answers that really, somewhere deep down, you already know the answer to your question and that you are playfully being treated to a bit of Hex 4.

As always... or maybe it's nothing like this at all.

Good Luck.

Sometimes I won't comprehend a reading.
I write those down.
Later on, maybe even a year later, I get the meaning.

The vagueness, the confusion, the lack of comprehension lies inside of us.

Rosada asked
"...why (do) we sometimes get vague convoluted answers when there are alternative hexagrams available that could answer the question precisely. (grr..)"
40. Unchanging.

Hex 40 is the Character of unraveling or untying a knot. You can rarely pull on just one spot when you are trying to untie a knot. If you focus on just one spot, you only make the knot worse.

I never presume that there is better explanation than the one the Yi is giving me. My presumption is entirely opposite, the Yi could have said that - and intentionally and specifically did not. So this is exactly where one needs to work on unraveling the problem.

Actually, as I have progressed as a reader, the importance of the relating or context hex has become increasingly important to me kind of for this reason. It makes clear exactly what aspect of things the Yi is talking about or pointing at.
And with yes no kinds of questions - often the most difficult or vague to read - many times that is exactly where the answer is.

- LL

"Why such vague answers?"
40uc ~ "If you'll just walk on water, Rosada, then you won't have any more questions."

In hex 39, the problem is that Form (mountain) is under water:



In other words, the querent is "in the Washer Machine" getting thrashed around due to her attachment to (impermanent) Form.

This is like falling off your water skis, but still hanging-on to the rope and keel-hauling yourself behind the boat?

Under those conditions, the questions you ask will be confused, and the answers you get will sound vague.

What you want to do, imho, in order to gain greater Clarity for both your questions and your answers, is to *Release* the rope of attachment to Form?

Then you will suddenly be walking (thunder) on water:



...in the perfect calm of the witness position. Everything will be Clear, the way forward will be Obvious, and you won't have any more questions...

I hope this helps!

radiofreewill said:

"Why such vague answers?"
40uc ~ "If you'll just walk on water, Rosada, then you won't have any more questions."

Click to expand...

So you're saying the answer is mystical, mythical, obscure - and vague then?
Well seek and you will find! Lol...

- LL

rosada said:

I asked the I Ching why we sometimes get vague convoluted answers when there are alternative hexagrams available that could answer the question precisely. (grr..)

I received 40. Release.

Click to expand...

I don't especially have this experience and wonder is it partly you are assuming the answer you should have got would be the one issuing a clear instruction or description but the I Ching is more than that, it's not your servant to perform the duty you ask of it on the level you ask for it.

Also I wonder, given you have 40, of these answers you think are convoluted are actually convoluted. I suspect what might be happening is you try to make the answer fit the question and to do so you have to use your own convoluted reasoning but actually Yi was saying something else far less convoluted. I don't think Yi gives convoluted answers I think we might bring to the answer a convoluted frame of reasoning we may insist the answer fit.

40 therefore says undo the knots of your convoluted reasonings, it isn't convoluted. Either you can use or see an answer or you can't at that time so either go with your initial hunch or feeling or move on but don't make long convoluted reasonings of answers. Perhaps. I mean whatever else you take from this answer I think 40uc as an answer does not encourage convolution nor does it appear to make it necessary. It asks for a kind of speed of connection with the answer, with Yi. Take the answer, use it as a direction to go or don't but whatever you do don't try to make it fit with your own convoluted ideas and you might know when you are convoluting by when you start to make an answer complicated, where you have to really bend and twist things Yi says to meet your theory of what it says. If you have to do that you aren't understanding so let go (40) let it be. Let it go it's own way. If you can't use the answer let it be and if you can then move with that answer but don't take knotty imponderable routes.

Thank you all for your thoughtful and insightful responses. One thing I didn't emphasize but I think is kinda interesting was that when I read the image, "The noble one pardons transgressions and forgives crimes," I got an actual vision of a wise Chinese sage bowing to me as if to say, "So sorry for the confusion" and "If the answer I give does not help please Release it" and I of course was totally embarrassed that I was so foolish as to question Master IC!

Anyway, I too have found that letting an obscure answer be for a bit allows the meaning to eventually reveal itself. I wonder if involving more ritual makes a difference? Like writing the question down, burning sage, lighting candles, tossing the coins or yarrow sticks versus just clicking the computer buttons? Hmm.. new question, "How to consult the I Ching?" We'll see....

Hi Rosada,
am I still in time to participate?

rosada said:


" I asked the I Ching why we sometimes get vague convoluted answers when there are alternative hexagrams available that could answer the question precisely. (grr..)

I received 40. Release. "


Why?

because in a context where we need support(37) to have a liberating(40) answer we must (action) be open, receptive(2) (...and obviously we are not )

makes sense?

cheers,

breakmov