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Dreams: rain dance of the soul? (from the blog)

hilary

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I asked Yi,
‘Why do we dream?’
I had a few reasons for asking: huge curiosity about the answer, of course, and wondering what Yi might say out of all the possible answers I could think of. (‘Processing’ stuff from the day? Receiving messages? Random noise? Ongoing inner work?) Also as a starting point for an exploration of all the ways Yi and dreams work together – quite a few possible questions come to mind, and this seems a good one to ask first. And because I wanted to share the answer with you, whatever it was, to get ideas flowing that nourish all of us. (So even though this is going to get a bit long, I’ll leave it as a single post so it’ll only create one forum thread.)
(Maybe this is a good place to say that I never expect this kind of reading to tell me everything there is to know about the topic. It’s not possible to learn everything there is to know about why we dream; it is possible to learn something. I trust the oracle to provide the ‘something’ that I – and anyone else drawn to the reading – most need to learn at the time.)
Why do we dream, Yi? (What are dreams for?)
Hexagram 5, Waiting, changing at lines 1 and 2 to 39, Limping.
The relating hexagram is usually the ‘where you’re coming from’ hexagram, the subjective anchor for the reading. With this question, my first thought is that it’s about the waking world: struggling uphill, needing help, needing a radical change of direction. Hexagram 39 I associate with going ‘against the flow’ – being ‘out of dao‘.
Hexagram 5 is the dream’s action – Waiting on help.
Looking at the two together, the dream Waits on help at Hexagram 39, in the place of difficulty and struggle. 5 is waiting for a change in the weather – for the rain to start, or for it to stop, to bring what we need. It reminds me of the Rainmaker story from Richard Wilhelm: the little rainmaker who visits a drought-stricken village, sits alone in his hut and returns himself to dao, until – of course, naturally – it rains.

Dreaming as Waiting

‘Waiting, with truth and confidence.
Shining out, creating success: constancy brings good fortune.
Fruitful to cross the great river.’
Waiting is not passive; waiting ‘shines out’ with trust. When you dream, you are not trying to make stuff happen; you’re waiting with truth and confidence. The ‘shining out’ character, guang, is a remarkable one: its early form shows a kneeling figure with a head of fire. There’s the dreaming mind, alight with readiness.We dream as an invitation for what we need to come to us. You might deliberately incubate a dream, asking as you fall asleep for a response – but this sounds as though all dreams are incubated by the deeper self.
This doesn’t, of course, tell us what it is that comes through dreams; Hexagram 5 doesn’t say what you’re waiting for. But Waiting does also mean ‘needing’ -
‘Young things cannot do without nourishment, and so Waiting follows. Waiting means the way of eating and drinking.’
(How interesting that dreaming, as a way of Waiting, follows on as a response to Not Knowing.)
‘The clouds are above heaven. Waiting.
A noble one eats, drinks and relaxes with music.’
We’re waiting for what we need, for the means of life and growth. It seems to me that dreaming is part of the mind’s working like hunger is: an intrinsic appetite to ensure we’ll be nourished.
LiSe says of Hexagram 5,
“Creativity is not obedient. One cannot call for it and expect it to be there.
But waiting in an open and quiet way makes the clouds gather, and very often they will bring creative rain.
Many things come by waiting, rather than by acting. As if one opens a cosmic door for them to enter.”
Falling asleep = opening a cosmic door. Exactly.
Hexagram 5 pairs with 6, Waiting with Arguing:
‘Waiting means not progressing, Arguing means not connecting.’
In this reading, 6 looks like the waking correlate to 5′s dreams. If something isn’t working or a need isn’t met, in waking life I don’t tolerate this, I take the initiative and seek to make progress; in dreams, I wait and invite connection. There are any number of stories of people finding creative solutions in dreams – to anything from the molecular structure of benzene to the design of the sewing machine needle.
It’s also fruitful to cross the great river, though: to show willing by paying full attention, going as far as you can towards what you’re waiting on. Have you found that when you make a regular practice of recording all your dreams in a journal, even if they’re nothing but insignificant fragments, you start remembering more and more?

*Moving lines – two things dreams do

19.gif

33.gif

Lines 1 and 2 are ‘lit up’ as changing, making a yang change pattern of 19, Nearing, and a yin pattern of 33, Retreat. A clear picture: presence comes; the conscious mind gets out of the way.

Line 1: the outskirts altar

‘Waiting at the outskirts altar,
Fruitful to use perseverance.
No mistake.’
I’ve been doing more research for an expanded Words of Change, including a section on offerings, so I’ve learned a bit more about the outskirts altar. It’s an open-air altar, sited outside the town walls – a counterpart to the temple within them. The temple is to honour the ancestors; the outskirts altar, equally important, is to care for the relationship with all the spiritual powers inherent in nature – including wind and rain.
This line points over to Hexagram 48, the Well – another communal resource. Dreaming: waiting at the outskirts altar, waiting at the well, waiting where you can connect into a deep source of sustenance. (And one, interestingly, that belongs to the community as a whole. No-one maintains a well single-handedly, or makes a solitary offering at the outskirts.)
I think it’s important that this altar is at the border of the town; the ancient character combines elements meaning ‘city’ and ‘exchange, meet, join, communicate’. This is where the city meets and exchanges with natural forces; the ‘intersection altar’ between human concerns and the larger world.
When you dream, you wait at the intersection between your daily stuff and the bigger reality. You haven’t wandered right out into the wilderness where everything is wild and strange; you haven’t stayed inside where everything is familiar and comprehensible: you’re inbetween. This is why you can interpret a dream about your friend Marge by asking yourself, ‘What is Marge like?’, or interpret a dream about a horse by explaining what a horse is to a Martian. The forces from beyond ‘normal’ come close enough to normal to speak and relate in terms you can understand.
“Dream is the personalised myth, myth the depersonalised dream.”
(Joseph Campbell)​
hex32.gif
At the outskirts altar, it’s fruitful to use perseverance – no mistake. This ‘perseverance’ character is the name of Hexagram 32, heng – the heart-boat between two shores. It’s good to make a steady routine of the journey to and fro, inbetween. This is what Stephen Karcher calls ‘fixing the omen’, and keeping a dream journal so the dream images don’t drift away from you is a good start. (You know the well doesn’t maintain itself.)
Also, it just makes good practical sense to persevere at this altar. You might spend an hour in offering and ceremony and see no change in the clouds. Natural forces move at their own pace, alignment with them takes a while, and that’s as it should be: no mistake, persevere, come back tomorrow. So you asked for a dream to solve a great crisis and all you remember dreaming is that you ran out of tinned tomato soup? Write that down and ask again tonight.

Line 2: on the sands

‘Waiting on the sands,
There are small words.
In the end, good fortune.’
You can feel the sands shifting underfoot as you walk, and their shape is constantly changing. Not a secure place to wait. What are we doing, dreaming here?
Well… this line joins with 63, Already Across – which, despite having the decision made and everything in the right place, is a thoroughly anxious hexagram: ‘beginnings, good fortune; endings, chaos.’ You’ve really only got started on the journey; you don’t know if it’ll end well. So you’re across and yet still waiting, and smallness has plenty to say in the meantime.
There’s an idea, isn’t there, that some dreams are Big and some are small? Mostly mental chatter, not amounting to much? Or recurring anxiety dreams that simply rehearse our fears. (I’m trying not to start talking about line pathways here, but doesn’t 63.2 sound like a fear-of-exposure dream?) These things should resolve themselves over time.
So I think that while line 1 dreams are there to invite guidance, line 2 dreams are there to allow the small inner selves time to catch up with outer change, to get used to the idea that we’re moving on. The conscious decision to cross is never the end of the matter. That could be why 63′s Oracle says ‘endings, chaos’ while 5.2 says ‘endings, good fortune’: if the small selves can talk it all out, we can keep our momentum and avoid falling into chaos.
In fact (that resolution about line pathways is not doing well),* if 5 and 6 are like dreaming and waking, maybe the paired lines here have something to say about the waking situations for these dreams? Dreaming goes to the outskirts altar for help when we face one of those ‘significant problems [that] cannot be solved at the level of thinking that created them’ – 6.6 problems, where we can keep on winning and always lose. Or, when we’re making progress outwardly through flexible engagement (6.5), dreaming rehearses small words on the changing sands so there will be good fortune in the end.

Hexagram 39: struggle and turnaround

mountain-storm.jpg
I already mentioned that hexagram 39 in this reading looks like a waking place to dream from – struggling uphill, against the flow, ‘out of dao‘, with dreams expressing and meeting our need to get back in. On reflection – and after looking at the lines – maybe it’s also true that dreams are the struggle of waiting for rain: a limping, to-and-fro dance like the Pace of Yu (the flood hero – he had plenty of weather problems of his own, poor man); the mind ‘showing its workings’ as it grapples with change. Waiting amidst limping, waiting as limping…
But then 39 isn’t only about struggle -
‘Limping. Fruitful in the southwest,
Not fruitful in the northeast.
Fruitful to see great people.
Constancy, good fortune.’
- it’s about co-operation and getting help. Yu the Great struggled on and conquered the floods, but with the help of dragon, tortoise and the lords and spirits; the Zhou conquered the Shang, but only with the help of their allies from the southwest.*There are times when the only lucid, realistic response to struggle is to turn round and look for help.
Which reminds me… of the success of ‘dream circles’, and the sheer number of thriving dream forums, and how when the members of my own Yijing Mastermind group turn their wise attention to my dreams, I experience them especially strongly as powerful allies. Sharing readings is a great thing in itself, but… I wonder if there isn’t something intrinsic to dreams and their purpose that makes us want to tell them. It’s a way to ‘go southwest’ with our waking-and-dreaming work, and share in the energy of other people working the same fields. (Though the dream itself could be seen as a journey southwest, too – enlisting help from inner allies or helping spirits.)
So now I’m not sure whether 39′s turnaround happens inside the dream or outside it – nor exactly where that boundary is to be drawn anyway.
‘Above the mountain, there is water. Limping.
Noble one turns himself around to renew his de.’
Actually… maybe any turnaround worthy of the name is both inside and outside, renewing self and strength. I once asked Yi for the meaning of a dream about Ann, the most enthusiastic of the girls who bullied me at school – an effortlessly popular, confident, dominant personality – but in the dream she needed my compassion and help. I received Hexagram 39. The dream’s inner turnaround couldn’t help but be an outer one, too – a big (and overdue) rearrangement of my way of seeing. So yes… I suppose that’s what guidance does, from dreams or oracles: reorient you, align you with a deeper reality, nudge you away from the uphill struggle…
…thoughts?
 
S

sooo

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Love the answer. See 39 in different shades than you, I think. I love these unreachable answer kind of topics too! I think we're at least somewhat familiar with Jung's work, and his predecessor. But before attempting to address a big picture, such as you've presented, I'll share how I see it.

This, right here and now is a dream. Look how much fantasy is swirling in your mind, thoughts of imaginary conversations with people who are not there.

The Creative does not rest. It couldn't if it wanted to, but moreover, it doesn't want to stop. It IS alive, and it does not rest, ever. Perhaps you recall the baby with no legs or arms, but was energy itself. It was in twilight, but the infant boy was energy. And I realized, it was he who was keeping me awake, for days and nights. It, being an infant, knew nothing of the effect of its energy, which being energy could turn someone on and shut them off like a Christmas toy.

So this thing is going all the time; this thing we generally call yang, heaven, father, etc. When our earth rests, this infant is still going, putting out mass amounts of his energy. Dreams are our construct, while earth rests.

What grows from the shovel of dirt determines the value of the dirt. Some dreams are a sub layer of what you would be thinking if you were awake. Dreamland is a space where you can be surprised by yourself. It's your dream, from your mind; so how could one be surprised in a dream? BOO! AAH! HA HA! And what of nighares? That's our own too. Why would we scare ourselves, and what's more, how? From where does it come within us?

I perceive layers or strata of a dream's significance, just as with an IC reading.

Nice topic.
 

hilary

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Were you thinking of the reading's trigrams when you wrote this? As its outer world is swirling clouds all the way through, while the inner world is qian-with-gen. Which, if you try to look at trigrams in the same way you would their hexagrams, might be 'heaven revealing the mountain' or 'heaven as seen from the mountain'. There's the energy child, and also plenty of strata of resting earth.

Also limits - mountain means stopping place, natural boundary and hence also gateway. But looking at those amazingly vertical Chinese mountains, you can see the meaning 'this is your limit; your normal life stops here.'

This is a dream - ah, you are reminding me of Ravi Walsh, who talks about treating waking life and dream as extensions of one another, being just as open to symbol in either. His response when someone asked about interpreting dreams was along the lines of 'don't stop interpreting just because you woke up'. (This is all in Into the Flow of Change, which I will link to in Friends' Notes - hopefully later today.)

Would you like to say more about how you see 39? That part hasn't quite come together for me yet. Thinking of the 'Pace of Yu' limping to and fro across the boundaries seems fruitful...

(Thank you for finding the thread, by the way. Because I tagged it as a reading in the blog, the system has copied it to SR, where it's liable to disappear under another mountain.)
 

anemos

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what I liked about this reading is that feeling of being in a 'pause' state but still things happen. Both hexes have that in common. Maybe glossing over some difficulties - new or older- but in my eyes those days I feel 39 is not being out the dao , but how dao - or the river - is formed.

Thus the superior man turns his attention to himselfAnd molds his character.

love that ! and whether the dream is a nice comforting one or a nightmare , at the end of the day there is a felt feeling of nourishment that makes that river stronger to overcome the 39 challenges
 

Liselle

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This may have little or nothing to do with the reading, but because dreaming has to do with sleeping - has everyone heard the recent news about sleep research?

To briefly (and hopefully not too badly) summarize, apparently they have determined that during sleep our brains are literally washed, to flush out "neurotoxic waste products." The interstitial spaces in our brains open more widely during sleep, allowing a "lymph-like system" more room to slosh around in there.

Apparently that is why it takes 7-8 hours, and why we can die if we don't sleep.

Here is a Huffington Post article that explains it in normal English. The other links are to abstracts containing terms such as "aquaporin-4 (AQP4)," but if you hop right over those you can get something out of them.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-spector-md/sleep_b_4402920.html
http://stm.sciencemag.org/content/4/147/147ra111
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/342/6156/373
 
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sooo

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Were you thinking of the reading's trigrams when you wrote this? As its outer world is swirling clouds all the way through, while the inner world is qian-with-gen. Which, if you try to look at trigrams in the same way you would their hexagrams, might be 'heaven revealing the mountain' or 'heaven as seen from the mountain'. There's the energy child, and also plenty of strata of resting earth.

Also limits - mountain means stopping place, natural boundary and hence also gateway. But looking at those amazingly vertical Chinese mountains, you can see the meaning 'this is your limit; your normal life stops here.'

This is a dream - ah, you are reminding me of Ravi Walsh, who talks about treating waking life and dream as extensions of one another, being just as open to symbol in either. His response when someone asked about interpreting dreams was along the lines of 'don't stop interpreting just because you woke up'. (This is all in Into the Flow of Change, which I will link to in Friends' Notes - hopefully later today.)

Would you like to say more about how you see 39? That part hasn't quite come together for me yet. Thinking of the 'Pace of Yu' limping to and fro across the boundaries seems fruitful...

(Thank you for finding the thread, by the way. Because I tagged it as a reading in the blog, the system has copied it to SR, where it's liable to disappear under another mountain.)

Not specifically the trigrams, but Limping has never felt right to me for 39. I think LiSe uses it too... yes, cold feet, limping. I think, if I am limping I am still moving forward, and 39 is thrown back upon itself: the noble one reverses his being. It's a turning around, or to use a biblical likeness, you repent (which simply means to turn around). In terms of character building, you self-reflect. It's all the same backward looking and movement, as I experience it.

It's not a big thing, which is why I called it shades.

Also limits - mountain means stopping place, natural boundary and hence also gateway. But looking at those amazingly vertical Chinese mountains, you can see the meaning 'this is your limit; your normal life stops here.'
Love that. The word normal sounds appropriately humorous.
 
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sooo

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You refer to it here and elsewhere.

So now I’m not sure whether 39′s turnaround happens inside the dream or outside it

I think the turnaround is the playback of the dream itself. It's our feedback on a subconscious level. Once in awhile a revolutionary dream occurs, usually along with real life revolutionary changes. They belong in their own category of dreams, containing archetypes in big visions and dreams. I personally think of them as crossroad dreams. They are the big 39s. But even our every night or cyclic dreams can have roots extend beneath the surface. Not all dreams are junk mail or last night's pepperoni pizza. I think 39 is a perfect explanation of what is the function of dreams?
 

hilary

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what I liked about this reading is that feeling of being in a 'pause' state but still things happen. Both hexes have that in common. Maybe glossing over some difficulties - new or older- but in my eyes those days I feel 39 is not being out the dao , but how dao - or the river - is formed...

Not specifically the trigrams, but Limping has never felt right to me for 39. I think LiSe uses it too... yes, cold feet, limping. I think, if I am limping I am still moving forward, and 39 is thrown back upon itself: the noble one reverses his being. It's a turning around, or to use a biblical likeness, you repent (which simply means to turn around). In terms of character building, you self-reflect. It's all the same backward looking and movement, as I experience it...
Yes, I agree the turnaround - or carving the course of the river - is central to 39. Implicit in the old text (not sw, ne, 180 degrees away) and the hints at Yu vs his father, and explicit in the Image.

But you wouldn't turn unless you were faced with a storm over a mountain and forced to stop, I think. My reading-conversations with 39 in tend to boil down to:
'Oh no, this heroic journey up this mountain in the teeth of the wind and rain all on my own is so hard! How can I go on?'
'Well, you could try turning round and going to join the people in those fields down there, where you might get something useful done.'

...I think the turnaround is the playback of the dream itself.
Ah! I like it!

.It's our feedback on a subconscious level. Once in awhile a revolutionary dream occurs, usually along with real life revolutionary changes. They belong in their own category of dreams, containing archetypes in big visions and dreams. I personally think of them as crossroad dreams. They are the big 39s. But even our every night or cyclic dreams can have roots extend beneath the surface. Not all dreams are junk mail or last night's pepperoni pizza. I think 39 is a perfect explanation of what is the function of dreams?

Yes - and I keep noticing that dreams are not just there to deliver a message, any more than waking activities are. They alsoact. (Readings, too.) So yes, maybe turning things around is what they do. Maybe dreams are the pause state for turnaround to happen - 5 being useful as it puts a stop to the obsessive mountain-climbing for a moment, too.

lisa said:
apparently they have determined that during sleep our brains are literally washed, to flush out "neurotoxic waste products." The interstitial spaces in our brains open more widely during sleep, allowing a "lymph-like system" more room to slosh around in there.
Well... we do have kan as outer trigram all the way through. Probably a full wash and spin cycle ;) .
 

anemos

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But you wouldn't turn unless you were faced with a storm over a mountain and forced to stop, I think. My reading-conversations with 39 in tend to boil down to:
'Oh no, this heroic journey up this mountain in the teeth of the wind and rain all on my own is so hard! How can I go on?'
'Well, you could try turning round and going to join the people in those fields down there, where you might get something useful done.'

in 39 seems its not time to keep exploring new territories (north) but return to the familiar (south). There is a theory re sleep and dreaming that suggests that they are related to memory consolidation and learning. How learning occurs , if we see it as new connections ( synapses/ pathways) are created using our experiences I can see a connection with the h39 route and the U-turn.

when you encounter with something unfamiliar and haven't found the way to connect it with what you already know it feels like you have reach to the end of the known world , the abyss is what follows.. feels like you can't walk anymore in that direction so you need to return and re-visit what you already know in a fresh way- like the refreshing rain, when decode it.
 
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sooo

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..and whether the dream is a nice comforting one or a nightmare , at the end of the day there is a felt feeling of nourishment that makes that river stronger to overcome the 39 challenges
Exactly. For me, it's been the most frightening dreams that held the cart of daemons, that were the most abundantly rich and memorable. How you deal with fear during a dream is something worth noting. It can revolutionize you. Dangerous dreams are there to teach, remember?

I know of a dream

of a girl who was falling into an abyss.

She decided to let go of fear and to trust God.

A very large pair of hands caught her.


That's a crossroad dream.

Any who recall a couple of symbolic dreams I shared... White Dog and Black Boar dreams. LiSe graciously hosted the stories on her site. They were my daemons, and my diamonds (29), because what they taught me was worth more than both. Crossroad dreams.
 
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sooo

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Yes, I agree the turnaround - or carving the course of the river - is central to 39. Implicit in the old text (not sw, ne, 180 degrees away) and the hints at Yu vs his father, and explicit in the Image.
Care to teach and elaborate on Yu and his father, for we western types.
 
S

sooo

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One of the coolest things I've witnessed on the water is when water backs up from a fallen tree, or even a beaver dam (I know they're real pests to farmers and land owners who don't want their land to become a pond or small lake, but otherwise, an entirely new ecosystem is created. Using the large tree fall because it's common. The water that it forced back upon itself forms this pond. Because the current is still rushing along, it digs deeper, creates nooks and hiding places for small fish, crawdads. Soon bigger fish find their way to it..... it becomes it's own living environment. At least for as long as it lasts, but there'll be another obstruction downstream away. Oh, a rock slide? They last a long time. Let's go! SWOOOOOSH!
 

Tim K

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I think hex 5 speaks of 'turning your mind and logic and judgement off'. Waiting patiently and accepting all the contents of the dream. No worries, no anxiety.
When you are dreaming, you live in the moment, there's no past and future. Sure that woman just became a horse, and that clock was reading 7am a second ago, but now it's showing 15.15, so what? you just accept it.

I like Legge's version of line 1, waiting at the distant border, of 'reality', while your body does the work of repairing itself.

And line 2 speaks of the sand coming from the mountain stream(unconscious mind), like grains of wisdom that you find dissolved in the torrent of thoughts/images. Sand is unstable, you go from firmly standing in the ground to the shifty nature of dreams.

Huang named hex 39 'Admonishment': This hexagram explores the varied reactions to advice given, and complements hex 8 - Support.

I think in dreams you act out the advice you have received from cosmos/spirit guide/soul/unconscious, you can explore it, trying this and that without worrying about the consequences.

I also think that the purpose of dreams is to show us the duality of reality. It can be physical, it can be thought-based, it reminds us of our origin - beings of pure energy using only thought and will to do anything. Who haven't flown high in the skies in their dreams?

After reading sooo's story about falling girl I've remembered one of my unusual dreams.
I was standing on the wing of an airplane, flying at least 3000 ft high (1 km), and then I just jumped off.
I was falling down pretty fast, looking on the green field beneath me, then i got scared 'uh-oh' but i kept watching the dream, i was strapped in the seat of a wonderful cinema which had gravity effect system installed.
3.. 2.. 1.. and then BAM! I hit the ground, I felt the pain for a sec, and then ' I'm alive!! Woww!!! Let's do this again! '. I jump back 10 seconds in time, and then BAM! I hit the ground again, and again, and again! I felt like God.
 
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sooo

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I was standing on the wing of an airplane, flying at least 3000 ft high (1 km), and then I just jumped off.
I was falling down pretty fast, looking on the green field beneath me, then i got scared 'uh-oh' but i kept watching the dream, i was strapped in the seat of a wonderful cinema which had gravity effect system installed.
3.. 2.. 1.. and then BAM! I hit the ground, I felt the pain for a sec, and then ' I'm alive!! Woww!!! Let's do this again! '. I jump back 10 seconds in time, and then BAM! I hit the ground again, and again, and again! I felt like God.

That's like what I expressed on another thread, spinning down the river on a floating leaf, and even if you dive in and try to drown yourself, it won't let you.

Had to laugh at your description.
 

anemos

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They were my daemons, and my diamonds (29), because what they taught me was worth more than both. Crossroad dreams.

love that. daemons and diamonds... daemons before ascribe to it negative connotation has to do with the dynamic of life.

"Crossroad dreams" : crossroad indeed. You walk( or sleep) unsuspected and suddenly you reach this point. Whether i have fully comprehend the dream or not when i wake up there is that feeling that you are no longer the same person. Jung's thoughts on dreams come in mind and love the reading that suggests to see the Great Man.

Have being thinking about a series of dreams - the big ones- and how after almost a year I can see them manifest. it was a series of 5 dreams more or less the same theme and apart the last one that had some comforting message the others were pure nightmares. What I have been thinking lately is the dream before the "good" one. I wake up so scared that I recall my first thought :" forget the dream".... makes me wonder , even if I don't recall it, even trying to delete it , has it "disappeared" ? I think not. there must be somewhere "written"... maybe in the water...
 

anemos

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its funny , but I re read this thread and I'm sure I experience a h39 situation :eek:... so many interesting thoughts and points to talk about and thinking of this reading hex5 becomes clearer in my mind.
 

Lilly-La

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Why do we dream, Yi? (What are dreams for?)
Hexagram 5, Waiting

Amazing answer. I did get Hex 5 a month ago or so. I felt like beeing stuck (in my job + daily life) for no special reason. I did ask whats going on and got 5. A couple of days later i had my first or second dream which did explicitly referr to the I Ching. By accident i did come across Nigel Richmonds book 'Language of the Lines' once again. For 5 he writes: Lack of path. Mood for action slowly stirred, finds no path.
I don´t dream much (or do not remember) however, the dreams i do remember and were of some significance had always to do with finding a (path) way / solution.

BTW a while ago i did dream a little ape was sitting on my book shelf. When i noticed him/her i was very confused and a bit scared. We looked into each other eyes and i thouhgt ohh, this is a wild animal. Then he/she jumped on my shoulder, looked again at me and suddenly gave me a very sweet and soft kiss. I was very moved and woke up. All day long i was in balanced, happy mood :)...

However, Happy Christmas and may all your wishes come true!
 

hilary

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That one sounds as if your little ape might stay on as a helper.

Random thought while waiting on a train platform today, reading Robert Moss' The Three Only Things: how about this for 5.2?

'Waiting on the sands,
There are small words. [literally: 'small has/there-are words']
In the end, good fortune.'

Robert Louis Stevenson, writing about the helpers who told him new stories in his sleep - and marketable ones, too, especially when he was getting into financial straits -

"Who are the Little People? They are near connections of the dreamer's, beyond doubt... What shall I say, they are but just my Brownies, God bless them! who do one-half my work for me while I am fast asleep, and in all human likelihood, do the rest for me as well, when I am wide awake and fondly suppose I do it myself. The part which is done while I am sleeping is the Brownies' part beyond contention; but that which is done when I am up and about is by no means necessarily mine, since all goes to show the Brownies have a hand in it even then... . My Brownies are somewhat fantastic, like their stories hot and hot, full of passion and the picturesque, alive with animating incident; and they have no prejudice against the supernatural."

(Happy Christmas :) )
 
P

peterg

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On the subject of Yu and the flood
JSYL 1>61 http://ctext.org/dictionary.pl?if=en&id=85389
CTP 乾之: 中孚:舜升大禹,石夷之野。徵詣王庭,并治水土。
David Raft : Shun promoted Yu the Great, In the wilds of Shiyi. Called to attend the king's court, He was appointed to order the water and earth.
Raft quotes from Yilin Jiaolue by Di Yunsheng (19th century) which identifies shi yi 石夷 as an abbreviation of barbarian lands past Mount Shiniu and cites a source saying Yu was born at Shiniu.

I searched Yu 禹 at CTP and found references to Shun and Yu and the great inundation, almost certainly an historic incident in China's history.http://ctext.org/pre-qin-and-han?searchu=禹
More about 'Yu floods'( type into search box, and go) here from Anne Birrel's Chinese Mythology:An Introduction
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0801861837/clarityiching-20#reader_0801861837
 
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Trojina

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Not read all of this but have thought sleeping is also a hex 5 'activity'...

The reasons for needing sleep aren't totally understood, as far as I know. There's theories but they aren't watertight. I recall years ago reading that our ancestors, cavemen, slept because there was nothing else to do....it was almost a survival mechanism, close down keep out of harms way, wait for daylight. Well it was something like that. Doesn't sound a very feasible theory the way I tell it but there is somewhere a theory of sleep as waiting.


One cannot really ask "why dream" without also asking "why sleep" as dreams do not happen without sleep (unless day visions etc).

Anyway I can see hex 5 as sleeping. Often I have had hex 5 around doing routine daily things I'd associate more with hex 9. But I think there are many periods of the day when we are simply waiting, living is often waiting and so is sleeping. In waiting we watch. We watch clouds float across the sky, we watch dreams float across our inner vision.
 

anemos

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The reasons for needing sleep aren't totally understood, as far as I know. There's theories but they aren't watertight. I recall years ago reading that our ancestors, cavemen, slept because there was nothing else to do....it was almost a survival mechanism, close down keep out of harms way, wait for daylight. Well it was something like that. Doesn't sound a very feasible theory the way I tell it but there is somewhere a theory of sleep as waiting.

yes, or because of the natural selection, those stayed inside/sleep survived.

about dreams, some say ( will find that theory and post it later) that we "see" random images - remainder or our waking life and because our propensity to create narratives we "create" dreams and this is why many dream are surreal
 

Tim K

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I've been trying to find this book on my computer since I've seen this post, and I've finally found it!
I just have to post this part:

There is a moment upon just waking up from a dream when you experience a startling shift in perspective; in that moment you realize that the life you were most recently leading-the life in your dream-was merely a product of your imagination. In this transition period your return to the waking world often seems like the termination of an illusion. As you must realize by now, moreover, awakening from a lucid dream can be just as startling. That's because the conscious realization that you are dreaming does not dilute the power of your dream identity at all.

In one of our all-time favorite dreams, the dreamer found himself in an amusement park, confronting a magnificent roller coaster with a sign that read LIFE. The dreamer took a seat in the front car and handed his ticket to the roller coaster operator. "Ready to go?" the operator asked the dreamer. "You know, it's a hell of an illusion!"

"I'm sure I can handle it," the dreamer said, "I've been on this ride before."
With this, the ride commenced. The scenario of the amusement park faded, and the dreamer found himself being born as an infant in another reality. Before long, the dreamer saw himself growing up, going to school, graduating, developing a career, getting married, having a family, growing old, and eventually dying. All of this seemed to cover a life span of roughly seventy or eighty years. As the dreamer finally felt his life fading away, he heard the sounds of the roller coaster slowing down in the background. In a moment, he found himself back in the amusement park, looking up at the operator from his seat in the front car.

"Well," the operator asked him. "How was it? Learn anything?"
"That was pretty incredible," the dreamer said, suddenly aware that he was experiencing this alternate reality in a dream. Now thoroughly lucid and hoping to take the dream further still, he handed the operator another ticket. "This time," he said, "I'd like to be someone else."

The roller coaster started again, and the dreamer immediately woke up. Needless to say, upon awakening from this dream the dreamer could not help but wonder whether he was returning to an absolutely tangible reality or was experiencing yet another convincing illusion.

The dreamer came away from this dream somehow changed; the moment of awakening jogged something in his mind so that he experienced a sense of expanded consciousness. The illusory nature of his dream helped him understand something profound about the illusory nature of his own waking life. Moreover, the dreamer felt more comfortable with the concept of death. Indeed, he viewed it more than ever as part of the larger, cosmic scheme of things-something he could, in effect, transcend. Perhaps most important, he recognized in his dream identity a deep and long-hidden part of his inner self.

"Lucid dreams in 30 days" -the creative sleep program-
Keith Harary, Ph.D., and Pamela Weintraub.
 

anemos

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I asked Yi,
‘Why do we dream?’

some say that animal are "dreaming" too ( they use another word tho)... so if that is true, then how that answer would apply to animals in general ( humans and non-humans)
 

Trojina

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yes, or because of the natural selection, those stayed inside/sleep survived.

about dreams, some say ( will find that theory and post it later) that we "see" random images - remainder or our waking life and because our propensity to create narratives we "create" dreams and this is why many dream are surreal

though the phenomenon of the recurring dream, those dreams we have over and over again for years on end mean we cannot think of dreams as random creations. If dream were that random what would be the chance of having the same dream over and over ?
 

Trojina

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some say that animal are "dreaming" too ( they use another word tho)... so if that is true, then how that answer would apply to animals in general ( humans and non-humans)

Yes mammals dream, they have the Rapid Eye Movement, REM that, characterises the dream state. It's an important point. If animals dream then theories about dreaming must include them.

I reckon my dog used to dream about these things on a regular basis :


1. chasing rabbits or other creatures (hrmmphing sound, paws and legs twitching)
2. practising chasing rabbits (paws, ears, all in motion)
3. rabbits (blissful expression, sighing)
4. being chased by maybe vengeful rabbit ....( yelping and panting, paws working hard)


Dreams are often a kind of rehearsal. Hence if a worrying event is coming up we dream we are doing it already. Having seen dogs dream it looks to be about hunting as far as I can see.....rather than their relationship with their parents. I can't recall if cats dream this way, I think they do ? Somebody probably already mentioned dreaming as rehearsal. Dreaming must consolidate learning as the information is processed and rehearsed. How that relates to the reading I'm not so sure....except in waiting one doesn't do nothing...we sort of 'tick over' like an engine on idle. Play is a form of rehearsal and in hex 5 we are advised to have play time, relax and so on in preparation for the more arduous times to come (hex 39) perhaps.

ah yes checked back, rehearsal was referred to here


Or, when we’re making progress outwardly through flexible engagement (6.5), dreaming rehearses small words on the changing sands so there will be good fortune in the end.
 

anemos

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Dreaming must consolidate learning as the information is processed and rehearsed. How that relates to the reading I'm not so sure....except in waiting one doesn't do nothing...we sort of 'tick over' like an engine on idle. Play is a form of rehearsal and in hex 5 we are advised to have play time, relax and so on in preparation for the more arduous times to come (hex 39) perhaps.

ah yes checked back, rehearsal was referred to here

I think it's the 39 that represent that. New knowledge/learning new synapses. Will sleep on it :) ( bedtime here)

the theory I mentioned earlier is the activation synthesis theory ...can't say I agree with it - here is the paper and there is a published debate but need sometime to find it .
 

hilary

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yes, or because of the natural selection, those stayed inside/sleep survived.
That reminds me of something from Robert Moss - I've started devouring his material on dreams and signs. He has many stories of very ordinary, undramatic precognitive dreams, carrying warnings like, 'The air conditioning in the lecture theatre will be too loud'. He suggests that the ability to dream the 'future' is an ordinary, evolved human ability, useful for telling where the sabre-toothed tigers will be. Life (let alone sleeping!) in a world of large predators would not be safe without the dream-self on guard.
 

anemos

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haven't read him. maybe you can offer an outline /summary when you read his work. I'm interested but have other books to finish first.

Hex 39 , to me, still feels a very interesting answer. Interesting you mention "future", like yi , I believe we get glimpses of the future , not merely as prediction, but as a cause-effect sequence.

keep asking about dreams . Love the subject
 

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