Change operators at work here

[active8]

Hi

I'm struggling with the contradiction between Karcher's co-authored paper "Tools for Change" - tools.pdf and what the software Total Yijing shows, as well as those great vessel articles that get it backwards. My background is in enginerring and I have a hard time with things couched in vague language. The PDF document uses an energy Hexagram representing the changing lines as yang lines and says it acts on the outer aspects of change. The context hex is the comlement of that. This way makes sense to me, but he manages to tell it backwards on the great vessel site's example readings and still make sense - like massaging the answer to fit that data. I'm flipping between too many confusing web pages to figure this out. I'd normally dismiss the whole concept as hogwash, but these two hexagrams pop up in my readings as being significant too often for me to ignore them. I just can't wrap my mind around the concept to be able to explain it to someone - even myself.

In an effort to learn how to use as much of the matrix as I can, I've taken to asking easy questions to which I can later verify the answers.

example:

I wanted to know if going out for a few beers last night would be good/bad/neither. I got 45.1 which gave some advice / warning, but ultimately no harm. Well, the context hex is 44 Coming to Meet which warns about a maiden. Wouldn't you know, some good looking girl made a comment which led to an interesting conversation. Both the conversation and observation of her other actions left no doubt that she was probably trouble (glad her ex drug her out of there) but there's no doubt that 44 was talking about her - the maiden. She's the maiden in her Aunt's Wiccan coven. Or maybe she was and her Aunt threw her out for making other Wiccans look bad.

I just don't know if this context hex is relating to inner or outer change.

Turning the change lines to yang for the energy hex, we gwt 24 Turning Point or Return and I have no clue how that figures.

Incidentally, a post beers reading suggested that I handled the situation well, avoiding conflict with all the mundanes trying to pick her up.

Could someone please help me wrap my mind around the proper use of these change elements? I've read that if there is a change line in the inner trigram (which there is) that the context hex (inner change) may be related to it. I see it, but can't explain it. I can't say how it relates to the inner *or* outer world - whichever way is actually correct.

I'm waiting for engineering books to start contradicting themselves so I can check in to the mental ward

Thanks in advance
Mike

 

[pargenton]

hello Mike,

Me too have a background in engineering, however, since I'm a bad engineer, I am a bit more relaxed in doing readings
I mean, divination is an art, not a science, and definitely not engineering.

I generally use Karcher operators as "additional info which can be useful", that is sometimes they give me additional insights.

Sometimes one of the operators is equal to the primary or secondary hexagram, in that case I feel Yi Jing is stressing the message of the hex.

Peace
Bashir

 

[lightofreason]

I wanted to know if going out for a few beers last night would be good/bad/neither

Rather than ask the IC questions, let the IC ask you and in doing so identify what is pushing your buttons to ask a question in the first place. No divination here. ;-)

http://members.iimetro.com.au/~lofting/myweb/lofting/icplusEProact.html

...and far more consistant than Karcher (and it picks up the contradictions between conscousness and unconsciousness (emotions) through the ability of consciousness to suppress - also see the preamble:

http://members.iimetro.com.au/~lofting/myweb/EmotionalIC.html

and the articles posted to the thread:

http://www.onlineclarity.co.uk/friends/showthread.php?t=3404

Chris.

 

[active8]

Rather than ask the IC questions, let the IC ask you and in doing so identify what is pushing your buttons to ask a question in the first place. No divination here. ;-)
Chris.

I guess it's time to read that first article, but you quoted me out of context. To paraphrase, I said I'm asking easy questions that I can look at later to see how the whole matrix figures in. I always know why I'm asking. And your second link is broken, Chris - oh... you just misspelled your name. Adjacent letters are tricky like that.

Thanks
Mike

 

[lightofreason]

... I always know why I'm asking...

ummm.... no. There will be times when you feel uncomfortable but dont know why and will ask a question of the IC. BUT if you use magical/random methods they will not help in consistantly identifying what your unconscious is focused upon. The Emotional I Ching is more consistant in such in that it identifies what is pushing your buttons, making you uncomfortable (where the discomfort reflects consciousness supressing emotional assessments of a situation)

your consciousness is but a PART of you. It works to mediate and regulate the unconcious through monitoring instinctive behaviour in a social context as it does allow for you to come up with novel perspectives free of dependencies on history.

...and I fixed the link.

Chris.

 

[hilary]

I think Stephen has changed his mind over the years about what the two change operators correspond with. There are actually forums at GreatVessel.com where you can post questions about his work for him to answer. If you do, send us a link!

 

[kevin]

Hi Mike

Yes, I can understand your frustration. It took me a number of years to get comfortable with some approaches! As Hilary said Stephen worked with the idea over a number of years until he got it to a point where he felt satisfied with it.

The explanation given on our website is the correct one.

You will see a brief explanation here http://www.onlineclarity.co.uk/friends/showthread.php?t=4455.

Additionally Stephen goes into his approach and methodology in detail in his new eBook, ‘Foundations of Change’, which is available here: http://www.greatvessel.com/DesktopDefault.aspx?tabid=580&tabindex=0&DocumentID=2446.

Testing the Yijing is a tricky business. For me doing a divination opens up the ‘moment’ and on studying the reading my perceptions and therefore my circumstances change. If I had to choose I would say that it is an interactive process more than a simple predictive one.

Yes, verbiage can be very irritating and Stephen has been accused of that in the past. What he is trying to do with his language is to write in such a way as to stimulate the imaginal mind and to quieten the noise from the cognitive mind which prefers facts. The Yijing is in large part a book of images and a reading is cluster of these. In a given reading some will apply and some will not. The cognitive mind sees conflicting ideas when the imaginal (or dream type mind) does not get hung up on seemingly odd juxtapositions. For me the last task do be undertaken with a reading is to make sense of it by applying it to the world of form. Before that my inner world of imagination needs to feel its way through the images, finding the ones which seem to address the question best. It is the imagination which is the most appropriate mind tool for the job – cognition comes at the end.

Foundations of Change goes into all of this. There are a number of ‘less traditional’ techniques around and I have found that a good approach is to take a few old readings and to try them out, much as you have done. My experience is that on doing a reading the ideas drawn from a given method might feel ‘dead’ whilst those from other approaches feel charged or meaningful. I go with what I feel speaks to the time for that reading.

I hope this helps.

I might add that I too am a qualified engineer – but I am afraid that didn’t help me a lot with the Yijing!

All the best

Kevin
www.greatvessel.com

 

[hilary]

Kevin, your 'brief explanation' link is to this thread . Maybe you meant this page?

I was first introduced to 'patterns of change' through Stephen's 1997 book, How to Use the I Ching (republished as I Ching Plain and Simple, still strongly recommended), in which he only mentions a yin pattern. Since then my ideas have been fed by a mixture of my own experience, other people's ideas on these patterns developed independently from Stephen, and of course Stephen's own changing ideas.

Yang patterns/operators (represent each changing line with yang) seem to me to be 'inspiration' for a reading, the 'way in'. Yin patterns, which I noticed from the first tended to offer good advice (especially when the question didn't ask for any), are more of a 'way through' the situation: the open space for change to happen.

Probably my own account on this site is out of date, too. I have a new version of the article for the new site design.

 

[bruce_g]

Hi, Kevin. Nice to hear from you, as always.

I understand your point regarding SK's imaginative mind vs the cognitive process, however, cognition doesn't necessarily eliminate imagination or dream/mythological images and impressions from the process. Though I admit, the imagination (or what Blake called "the divine imagination") seems inaccessible to many, where cognitive reasoning is concerned.

 

[hilary]

...and for me, the route into imagination often involves taking reason to the end of its rope, but with the most concrete language possible. It's easier for me to go through gates into the reading and out from it, than to conceive of applying change operators that reflect inner or outer transformative aspects of a situation.

 

[kevin]

Change Operators

Hi Hilary
Doh! That’s what comes from not going to bed and thinking I am still half awake at 5.00 in the morning! – Thanks

Your post has given me pause for thought. Reading the first para of Stephens article I suspect that there is not a world of difference in the position you have both ended up at. My own approach is the same as yours for the Yin operator. I am less settled on the Yang operator. Inspiration of the time? Yes, could be, I find that conceptually it sits better with me. Stephen sites the ‘inspiration’ as being sited in ones inner world position or stance – the where one has come to in oneself in the time.

I shall take my own advice and try your perspective on some readings.

Thanks
Kevin

 

[kevin]

Hi Bruce

Good to touch base again.

Yes, I expect I am a little extreme in the way I attack the cognitive processes when divining. Perhaps because I see so many folk trying to think their way through readings rather than to allow their deeper imaginative processes to take the lead for once. Of course it is probably not possible to silence the cognitive completely anyway. For many years I was caught up in careful methodology and painstaking analysis of things like what the original word in a piece of text might signify. Then the day came when I started circulating images (built from many hours of cognitive work no doubt) and the whole process came alive.

Going back to Stephen’s work. The images he presents are probably from much study of Chinese texts filtered through his own processes of what works. Not all of those images work for me and I expect it is for each of us to develop our own.

Similarly I am very keen on trigrams in a reading. So for me looking at the hexagrams and the component trigrams and the line positions for any changing lines is more than adequate to find the meaning in a reading. Yes, I am becoming a little suspicious of some of the text (There! That will earn a knock on the door from the Yi police!). However I remember well those Clarity discussions re. trigram images and this place: http://www.yijing.nl/candid/hexagrams/index.htm, and the boosthey gave to my imaginal perceptions.

Cheers

Kevin

 

[kevin]

...and for me, the route into imagination often involves taking reason to the end of its rope, but with the most concrete language possible.

Yes, Timely reminder - not everyone uses their brain in the same way I do!

(Probably a good thing too).

From a contrite right brainer.

Kevin

 

[bruce_g]

Hi Kevin

mmm, I’m thinking that the cognitive process needn’t exclude either imagination or hard logic. In fact, as I understand cognition, it is a marriage of both.

Not to sound like a broken record but, what is often chalked up to intuition is really a mixture of facts and creative imagination. The mind seems creatively bent on solving riddles; all it needs is a few clues.

My heart is warmed that our humble Yi images and captions have inspired you. That is exactly what they’re intended to do. Not to say “this is the image of”, but to act as a catalyst to free ones own creative imagination.

:bows: