Blog post: Hexagram 23 in readings

[hilary]

The essential message of Stripping Away is devastatingly simple:
‘Stripping away.
Fruitless to have a direction to go.’
Your ‘direction to go’ can be whatever plan you have in mind, your purpose or vision or intent, or something as slight as a*curiosity to explore in a certain direction. The root of the idea is to travel from the centre to the borders, to explore and sound out the unknown. Stephen Field associates Hexagram 23 with King Hai at Yi – exploring and testing his boundaries in a new culture, something that didn’t work out so well*for him.
Hexagram 23 responds*to whatever part of you is saying ‘Onward and outward!’ with ‘Nope. No use.’
So in practice, in readings, this is pretty simple: you see Hexagram 23, and give up whatever you had in mind.
Naturally, simple is not the same as easy. We*like our ideas; we do not want to let them go. And a particular frustration of Hexagram 23, at*least for me, is that I tend to receive it just when I’m convinced I’ve had a grand*and entirely new idea – only to realise, in the course of the reading, that I was only perpetuating the old.
When Hexagram 23 is the primary hexagram, especially, it tends to point to some purpose or self-concept or pet idea that needs to be shed completely. The shape of the hexagram*shows how what the idea rests on is not solid*and offers no support. There’s no point trying to travel to the borders when the centre is crumbling; you can’t build towers on air.
But the advice isn’t just to recognise your idea is doomed and drop it; it’s to*strip it away actively and create mental space. It’s particularly important not to respond to 23 with, ‘Oh, this idea must need some tweaking to make it work…’ The shadow hexagram for 23 – Hexagram ‘Minus 23’ in the Sequence – is 42, Increase, with its Image of a noble one who ‘sees improvement, and so changes; where there is excess, she corrects it.’ Increase’s way of thinking is ‘this can be changed, this can be improved’ – and in a time of Stripping Away, that would be a trap.
As long as old ways of thinking linger, we tend to repeat ourselves. Hexagram 23 is a call to create such emptiness that the next move can*only be completely new. Perfect*tabula rasa; no precedent. In this space you might find a*true seed of change.
The Image helps us find this mindset –
‘Mountain rests on the earth. Stripping Away.
The heights are generous, and there are tranquil homes below.’
– because it depersonalises. The mountain rests on the earth, the soil erodes into the valley, the heights are generous, and the process of change is ongoing. There’s no person here called on to give things up, willingly or not; there’s just change happening. It isn’t about you.

 

[Trojina]

But the advice isn’t just to recognise your idea is doomed and drop it; it’s to*strip it away actively and create mental space. It’s particularly important not to respond to 23 with, ‘Oh, this idea must need some tweaking to make it work…’

Of course, there's nothing there to tweak in reality so don't tweak. I disagree though that 23 is generally advice to actively strip away I think it is far more simply to accept the nature of the time. As soon as you start believing you are the one actively stripping then you aren't accepting the being stripped, you are being proactive again and so avoiding seeing what is really being stripped. You don't choose what is being stripped. Erosion isn't like that, it isn't deliberate. So I don't entirely go with the idea of creating mental space. You will have more space presumably now that whatever it is is stripped but what kind of space that is will not be your choice.

The shadow hexagram for 23 – Hexagram ‘Minus 23’ in the Sequence – is 42, Increase, with its Image of a noble one who ‘sees improvement, and so changes; where there is excess, she corrects it.’ Increase’s way of thinking is ‘this can be changed, this can be improved’ – and in a time of Stripping Away, that would be a trap.

Exactly so why are you still finding a way to 'do' 23 ? I think you are trying to change/master/hold the 23 experience by suggesting that you do the stripping away yourself . You're suggesting you have some kind of choice about the stripping but the whole point of 23 IMO is the very lack of choice. We do not choose when to die and so in smaller deaths in our life we do not choose. Hence the idea of doing the stripping and creating space for me is a contradiction of what the 23 experience involves.

As long as old ways of thinking linger, we tend to repeat ourselves. Hexagram 23 is a call to create such emptiness that the next move can*only be completely new. Perfect*tabula rasa; no precedent. In this space you might find a*true seed of change.

No I don't think it is a call to create emptiness, you are not the creator here. You get the emptiness given to you, you don't create it.

 

[butterfly spider]

Hex 23 is on my wall at the moment - the hexagram on papyrus. It has a rabbit bone at the bottom with a fox knawing at it being watched by hunters.....and I think you are right, the stripping away is not your choice.

In yoga today we were given an image of the cells of the body being empty vacuums. When we breathed we had to imagine each cell filling with air and expanding. We then did a meditation of colour which filled up this vacuum (mine was orange today). I get a feeling that the space of 23 is already there - but you can choose what you fill it with. The image of cleansing this space with new air and getting rid of the stale stuff caught my mind with the above posting.

The doing of hex 23 is to do with next steps - what to do when things are back to the bone, when there is nothing there. The choice of 23 is always ours, I think.

 

[Trojina]

There isn't much choice with 23. You can choose not to fight it that's about all. You can choose, well almost choose, how painful it needs to be. The more you try to prop things up the harder it gets. I guess you can choose to some extent what to put in the emptiness as there will always be some kind of gap left I guess. There appears to be choice in line 3.

I think experiencing lack of choice is a fundamental part of being human. Not sure we learn anything until we learn about lack of choice. What I mean is that's the point, on meeting something inexorable, we all have to let go. If one has never met that it would be harder to mature. Thinking about it it's meeting that which cannot be avoided, losses, that build a mature character.

 

[hilary]

Yes, and yes... I probably expressed myself badly. My point was that when I have 23, as often as not I am starting out with a 'direction to go' in mind. The best thing I can do with that is to strip it away actively - thus ending up with no ideas at all about where I'm going or what I'm doing. The alternative would be to hang onto my direction/ idea, think it just needs correcting somehow, and if I can adjust it enough I can make it work. And this would not be sensible.

(Pause to think if there are any moving lines that would make it sensible... because with most hexagrams, whatever generalisations you can make about them are contradicted by at least one line. Hm. 23.5?)

So there is a choice, but it's all about choosing mindset: 'Make my idea work' vs clearing the mind of 'make', 'idea', 'work' and not least of 'my'. Creating mental emptiness.

(Something I didn't mention in this post but have in others: if you're aware of looking not at a shiny new pet idea but at an impossibility, something falling apart that you can't hold together, then 23 is a merciful answer.)

 

[butterfly spider]

When I was 18, one of my best friends who lived in my road, met and married an older man who had a market stall in a dodgy area of London and who lived in an even dodgier area. She was bright, had been offered a place at University, but chose to go and be with this man. He was a kind soul, 22 years her senior, who she adored on a very mundane, secure level. Looking back she needed someone - her much older father had died a few years earlier....

I went to see her in her house - far removed from my life at College, I felt really quite sorry for her actually. She made tea on a checked tablecloth and had brought a Mr Kipling cake. She turned round and said - "youve got to make the best of things aint ya".... an almost reconciliation to fate, a fait de complit of her life. I have never forgotten it.

Her life did not for about 20 years end up like my own - not that mine was vastly exciting, but I had choices, she didnt. She had children, very little money, and an older, eventually ailing husband.

I have always thought that her choice of no choice was hers.... whilst I felt sorry for her I could not see how she could have thought to make that choice in the first place. It was as if she was stripped to the bare bones of life.... almost like Trojina says above, experiencing lack of choice is a fundamental part of being a human being.

But this was her decision - and this is where hex 23 gets to MY bones. It was as if my friend needed to learn about lack of choice. She almost needed to put herself in a position where her choices were limited. I felt suffocated when I visited her - it was like a giant wet blanket over my head listening to her talking. It was almost as if she had surrendered to the the giving up - placed herself in a vulnerable position to learn how it felt without any choice at all.....

This was cross posted with Hilary's response above

 

[butterfly spider]

I think choice is a good choice of word for hex 23. The rabbit on my hex 23 papyrus - his options were limited. He got caught by the fox. The fox had more choices, but still his choices were limited. The hunters waiting for the fox have more choices, and yet they still watched the fox. Who is watching the hunters? Our choices appear sensible, we think we know what we are doing, but someone is always there to make their choice about our choice......we have no control over this. When we feel we have got to the nitty gritty or the bones of a situation, there is often something that we have not seen.

I agree with Trojina that hex 23 is about having no choice, but how much of that is our own making and how much is it about where we are in the choices of others.

 

[butterfly spider]

Something also that I thought of - hex 53.6. My friend did end up with a good job, and managed to buy a nice house almost 35 years on.....almost as if the place she was at in 23 moved to 53. experiencing difficulties en route, not really being in the right place all along, but auspicious nonetheless.

 

[deflatormouse]

I disagree though that 23 is generally advice to actively strip away I think it is far more simply to accept the nature of the time. As soon as you start believing you are the one actively stripping then you aren't accepting the being stripped, you are being proactive again and so avoiding seeing what is really being stripped.

Hex 23 is on my wall at the moment - the hexagram on papyrus. It has a rabbit bone at the bottom with a fox knawing at it being watched by hunters.....and I think you are right, the stripping away is not your choice.

I would have to concur that in my reading experiences of 23 I would seem to be the object of stripping rather than the subject.
The thing is, for something to be stripped, something else has to do the stripping.
The rabbit gets gnawed by the fox in Butterfly's papyrus.
I agree with Trojina to the extent that she is saying, 'don't assume you're the subject', but not if or to whatever extent she may be saying 'assume you're the object instead'. Though my experience has been that this is more often the case, I think it's generally good practice to consider how you may be either, or both: Glaciers cause erosion when they melt (erode).

We then did a meditation of colour which filled up this vacuum (mine was orange today).

[video]https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Nr1TBOxlcAg[/video]