A curious answer to a question How to stabilize my mind... Hexagram 22.1.2.3.5 to 59

[jayne743]

I asked, "How can I stabilize my mind," particularly related to completing the many writing and business projects I have going.
I am finding myself doing a bit on this project, a bit on that one to keep pushing everything along. Normally, I am quite focused, but not in recent months.

It's interesting that Hex 22. Line 1,2,3,5 is about beauty. Beauty is one topic of larger work I am doing, beauty in its various forms, but that is not central to my work, which is focused on spirituality.
In recent months, I have also been thinking of my changing my image, aware of the impression.

Could you shine a little light on my hexagrams?
With thanks, Jayne

 

[my_key]

22<>59
You can stabilise your mind by imagining that you are held in a bright light that breaks through the illusions (59). You are invited to see each time you re-enter a project as if you are starting afresh (22). This means that you will be faced with having to learn how to wash away the residues of how you have seen and done things in the past.

Maybe it is time to ask yourself some difficult questions and listen to how you answer them.

Yi advocates that you can best bring about stability of mind when your approach is bathed in positivity and through not being too hard on yourself or looking to dominate all things that cross your path.

... or it might not mean anything like this for you.

Good Luck

 

[jayne743]

22<>59
You can stabilise your mind by imagining that you are held in a bright light that breaks through the illusions (59). You are invited to see each time you re-enter a project as if you are starting afresh (22). This means that you will be faced with having to learn how to wash away the residues of how you have seen and done things in the past.

Maybe it is time to ask yourself some difficult questions and listen to how you answer them.

Yi advocates that you can best bring about stability of mind when your approach is bathed in positivity and through not being too hard on yourself or looking to dominate all things that cross your path.

... or it might not mean anything like this for you.

Good Luck

 

[jayne743]

Thank you for your insights. Indeed, I am a hard taskmaster for putting pressure on myself! This is what should be washed away, I imagine. Any thoughts on the Beauty aspect of 22? Kind wishes, Jayne

 

[my_key]

Thank you for your insights. Indeed, I am a hard taskmaster for putting pressure on myself! This is what should be washed away, I imagine. Any thoughts on the Beauty aspect of 22? Kind wishes, Jayne

22 is a hexagram of transformation.

I think, though, rather than say any more here, that further exploration of 22 falls under the umbrella of "Maybe it is time to ask yourself some difficult questions and listen to how you answer them."

Good Luck

 

[Daeluin]

Forest of Changes for 22 > 59

Together stones can spark,
But only if all is dry.
Profits are not increasing and money is short,
Things get tougher every day.

The dynamic represented (in my view) by hexagram 22 is of grace vs adornment. Of elegance that comes of simplicity vs complex posturing that needs to be maintained when all affairs are embellished.

Whenever mountain is involved above, it provides a container that creates pressure below for a type of change. However, the top line of mountain is like a seal that is easily broken and allows the pressure to escape.

Fire is a dynamic with yin on the inside, and yang on the outside. Inwardly clear, outwardly glowing. In stillness a light may provide illumination from which one may read by, and here the mountain provides that stillness - such is the recipe for gracefulness, and too equanimity and poise.

However when it is unable to be clear and still, it may easily flicker and stir. When burning unpure fuel, it may become wild and chaotic, without clarity or elegance. It becomes consuming, trying to do too much and unable to restrain itself. And we have the fire overflowing from the mountain top, much like a volcano might do - and too this can be seen as how we take to embellishment, adorning ourselves with that which is the overflowing of our emotions and passions of our inner fires.

It is said that stillness strengthens the mind, and here we see the same principle. The more we try to do, the more we exceed our capacity to do it with poise and grace, and the more it begins to consume our poise and strength.

(I kid not, a friend just texted me an image of a volcano crater. It is the image for a definition, "Lacuna" - an empty space. And our empty space is that which allows us the space for clarity and stability.)

So on to the text - here for 22 we are told it is beneficial to go somewhere, but in a minimal way. This is suggesting that if the way is not minimal, it may not be beneficial.

I'm working from The Taoist I-Ching here, as it is full of interpretations on how to stabilize the mind. It says that here we have clarity (fire) beneath stillness (mountain):

Although clarity and stillness adorn each other, one should value still clarity. Still clarity is not empty inaction that does not use illumination at all. But while one is illumined within, one does not show it outside. One rests in clarity and does not rest where it is unclear. Clarity is within stillness; one does not lightly use the clarity of illumination. This is the meaning of self-minimization.

Minimizing oneself, one is prudent and cautious, getting rid of intellectualism, inwardly preserving clarity of spirit; with open awareness that is unclouded, one cannot be moved by anything. There is much benefit in this, but minimization that is too extreme is stillness without illumination; it is not the form of union of clarity and stillness that this hexagram represents -- how could it be developmental or beneficial?

Stillness means resting in the highest good, being tranquil and imperturbable. Clarity means clarifying the quality of illumination, being sensitive and effective. Uncontrived when quiet, creative when active, clear in stillness, tranquilly employing illumination, attaining it in the mind and proving it in affairs, only then is it called true stillness and true clarity.

The reading gives lines 1, 2, and 3, the lines that make up the fire trigram, which is what must be tended to in order to be clear. And line 5, which represents being in the hills and groves away from society where there are no people or social concerns. Because it is excessively austere, there is a sense of shame and loss, and yet one is still able to operate gracefully and self-sufficiently and developmentally.

My sense is that the answer is guiding you to reflect on the clarity of your inner fire, and pointing out that a simple environment is an environment that allows things to settle and therein is found stability.