29.4 changing to 47 for work - prison or charity work?

[UnrivenFuss]

Being fed up with my lack of clarity about what I must do and pursue in life, I asked the Yi "What is my life path? What am I supposed to be doing?"

The answer was 29.4. Should I be feeding people? (I used to be a cook, but got quite tired of it...), or be working in a prison? Or is it telling me that I am not confined and can make any choice I want? I have no idea!!

Thank you all!

 

[Tim K]

Have you considered teaching, as 29's image suggests ?

.4 shows simplicity and being of service to others, so I think maybe a school teacher somewhere in a small town/village?
Or taking into account 47 and 'He introduces his important lessons (as his ruler's) intelligence admits' [Legge] working with underdeveloped/slow minds?

Could also mean a consulting job.

I think being a cook would have shown as h27.

 

[UnrivenFuss]

Ashteroid, thank you so much for your input. I had not thought about teaching, as I am very self-conscious and not very confident in my own intellectual faculties – I am yet to find why that is, maybe the root is in being put down by a narcissistic family member as a child.

Maybe the reading has something to do with this aspect of myself. I am qualified for a few jobs with my degree and post-grad studies, but because I was a labourer for the past few years and did virtually no intellectual work, I have a hard time trusting myself to do something like teaching.

However, and having had this experience of feeling inferior, I have a "talent" to help people feel more confident in their own abilities... In that sense, if I can bring myself to use this, I could do exactly what your interpretation suggests...

Have you considered teaching, as 29's image suggests ?

.4 shows simplicity and being of service to others, so I think maybe a school teacher somewhere in a small town/village?
Or taking into account 47 and 'He introduces his important lessons (as his ruler's) intelligence admits' [Legge] working with underdeveloped/slow minds?

Could also mean a consulting job.

I think being a cook would have shown as h27.

 

[Tim K]

not very confident in my own intellectual faculties

That may be what '(as his ruler's) intelligence admits' is hinting at.

Also an idea - why not teach cooking classes? Or those things that you know by hand, learned and perfected from practice.

 

[Liselle]

Hi Unrivenfuss

Your question didn't exactly ask Yi what your specific job should be, though I realize that's what you had in mind. You might have to think of the reading in more general, symbolic terms, more as "life advice".

It can be hard for Yi to be terribly specific. There are so many jobs it won't have good "words" for. What if you're meant to be doing one of those?

But we can still try to look at it according to what you had in mind and see if anything pops out. All this will be wild speculation!

47 as the relating hexagram - I don't have a very good handle on this hexagram, but it might suggest isolation, something you do by yourself. However it's the relating hexagram, not your direct answer, so it might not be saying to find a job like that.

'A cup of wine, a pair of dishes,
Using earthenware.
Let in with ropes from the window.
In the end, no mistake.'

[Am adding this after writing everything below - you have a lot of education, but some of what I wrote down is rather unskilled work. So if your aim is to make use of your degrees, you'll want to use more imagination and think about the line more abstractly. But you said you've been a laborer in recent years, even after finishing school, so you might be happy with that general direction and just want a different job?]

Having dishes and cups of wine - serving those to someone (through a window or otherwise) - could describe working as a server in a restaurant, or something related to that.

The physical action of letting something up and down with ropes - elevator repairman or attendant? Are there any other jobs which involve moving things up and down? Crane or loader operator? (Picking things up, putting things down.)

(A lot of this might be extremely silly - do elevator attendants even exist anymore?)

Working in the oil industry, where the point is to drill down into the earth and pump the oil back up?

Window washer? (The line mentions a window, and window washers use platforms suspended by ropes, I think.) (Probably also silly! - I mean, if someone suggested to me I become a window washer on the basis of 29.4, I'd stop listening to anything they said.)

Window installer? (Where I live there seem to be constant advertisements by window companies for people to put new windows in their houses; presumably the companies are hiring.)

The line might describe an action you can't directly see happening. The dishes are being lowered down through an opening using ropes - the person may not be able to literally watch it.

So...a surgeon who performs operations using a computer screen and robots instead of a scalpel? You didn't say your degree is in medicine, though, so maybe some other kind of job where you'd control something remotely?

Ocean or cave exploration, maybe remotely using cameras? (I have no idea how that's done, but oceans and caves are deep and chasm-like.)

Do they inspect underground water systems using cameras? Is your degree in engineering?

Something else involving cameras or imaging? Cameras might be like "windows" - you see things through them. I think there are some medical tests which involve moving tiny cameras down through someone's insides, which might be chasm-like.

There's probably more - think about it at different levels of abstractness.

Also, I had at least one reading with this line where the following commentary from Hilary's book was important:

"Simplicity and discretion help to ensure the connection can be made smoothly, where grand gestures might alert the guards and trigger a defensive reaction."

So, something that won't "alert the guards," whatever that might mean to you? Something unobtrusive and discreet, where you're not calling attention to yourself? I think in my reading, Yi was saying don't do "activity x" the splashy way - find a quieter, more subdued way.

Another aspect that applied to one of my readings - Hilary wrote: "Imagine someone isolated in a prison pit, with just a small opening to the world above, and help lowered down through the opening. With a link to the world above the pit..." I'd had an opportunity to help someone as best I could, provide them a needed lifeline of sorts (but only that - this wasn't any kind of heroic rescue) and some idea that someone noticed them and cared a little bit. These things don't come up often in my life, but it did that once. So, something where you're helping people at bad moments?

So there's several different angles here, undoubtedly more than what I've mentioned, and I don't know how any of it might pertain to you.

 

[Trojina]

Being fed up with my lack of clarity about what I must do and pursue in life, I asked the Yi "What is my life path? What am I supposed to be doing?"

The answer was 29.4. Should I be feeding people? (I used to be a cook, but got quite tired of it...), or be working in a prison? Or is it telling me that I am not confined and can make any choice I want? I have no idea!!

Thank you all!

It is answering your concern that you don't know what you are meant to be doing. It is saying this feels a bit like a deep dark pit where nothing is certain. 29.4 is telling you not to struggle and try to make headway. if you wait soon enough there will be a glimmer, an inkling of the way forward (29.4) and then you will be able to follow that. Don't let this feeling oppress you too much (47)

The idea that there is one 'right' thing we are 'meant' to be doing can be quite a misleading one. Thus Yi is addressing your overall sense of confusion and dissatisfaction. I mean you feel like the person in 29.4 right ? That is how Yi is showing your situation. It helps to always identify where you are in an answer. I think you are clearly the person in 29.4.

 

[Liselle]

if you wait soon enough there will be a glimmer, an inkling of the way forward (29.4) and then you will be able to follow that. Don't let this feeling oppress you too much (47)

Ah. :bows:

 

[UnrivenFuss]

Thus Yi is addressing your overall sense of confusion and dissatisfaction. I mean you feel like the person in 29.4 right ? That is how Yi is showing your situation. It helps to always identify where you are in an answer. I think you are clearly the person in 29.4.

Trojina, you are completely right, the Yi is mirroring my own frustrations, also because of the non-specific character of my question, as Lisa also suggested. The Yi has been telling me to slow down a lot lately. However, some of Lisa's "wild speculation" makes a lot of sense! One one hand, I want to be fulfilled with my work, but I still have no idea what will fulfill me. What I know is that at the moment, I could be doing something to help others. And that's where I think Lisa's experience with the same reading is so interesting.

One of the things I have been considering lately is training for a suicide hotline, but I am afraid of some of my issues interfering – I grew up the child of someone co-dependant who would threaten suicide to receive my undivided attention, and even though I’ve been treated for the emotional damage this caused, and can now respond compassionately to a suicide threat (God gifted me with a close friend who is given to sudden and grave bouts of despair), I know it can be an exceptionally hard job and I am afraid of not having what it takes. I also need to be paid eventually and this is usually volunteer work, which I don't mind but will still not be practical long term. I just asked the Yi if I should just apply for a suicide hotline training, and the answer was 50 unchanging. "Stew", Trojina

I am working with The Pathfinder by Nicholas Lore, and I found that I have always been fascinated by things that are somehow mysterious and need to be explained (my career goals being the first on the list!). However, not having much more than logical reasoning as a tool (my training is in humanities), science is only an option if I go back to studying (an idea I’ve been entertaining).

I got a job as a journalist while I was still in university, held it for 6 years, but it wasn’t fulfilling, and one of the reasons was that I didn’t have the time or the freedom to delve into subjects deeply. I left disappointed with the profession and since I left it I've been travelling and doing all sorts of things to experience the world and get by financially, and none of them has been "it". I received a lot of praise for every one of my contributions in previous jobs, but I find praise a bit futile. I want to change the world. But thinking about how I'm supposed to do it is keeping me from doing it.

About the intellectual inferiority, ashteroid, it's mostly a feeling, because I have done some very intellectually demanding jobs, but I do agree that this could be the "ruler". I have a few friends in Academia who are very successful, and I sometimes think I would have liked to take that path, but I get bored easily and my attention goes to a million things at once. One would think journalism is good in this case, but I am just not interested in the superficial approach. I feel my own inconsistency...

Thank you all so much for your replies!

 

[Liselle]

Actually the idea of a hotline does sound like 29.4, doesn't it? You're connected to the other person through the telephone line ("rope"), and neither of you sees or knows the other one. 29 and 47 could describe depression. Maybe Yi's nudging you to give it a try.

(Or not - I'm making guesses again, and I babbled on enough already with ridiculous guesses uch