Hex 23 - stop or go

[candid]

*rim shot* LOL Gawd, Martin.

Pagan, whether we actually effect our destiny is a matter of looking back, forward, or from the present. If you refer to altering our present, we can do that. In fact, that is the only way to steer our future. If we look at it from the future looking back, it's a done deal and unchangeable. The fact that we can't see the future doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Just depends which way the hands of time are moving.

I like your earth bound or earth life picture. We as people generally view our soul as something that descends from heaven rather than it growing upward from the earth. I'm inclined to view it as the latter. The influence of what is above is like the sun shining onto the ground, inspiring all things to grow, including us.

I don't understand how anyone can imagine we are autonomous beings. 'Shall the eye say to the hand, I am greater than you?' Eye to hand coordination is what gets it done. We are the hands. The question is, who's is the eye?

 

[pagan]

Okay, I confess. I do a tarot reading AND an IC every morning. Then at night I checked them to see if they pan out. They are just TOO damn accurate every day. In fact, last night I checked and my tarot reading indicated a woman, the queen of cups, as the outcome. I said to myself, "well, no queen of cups" and then went to bed. I woke up to the telephone ringing an hour later, and it was the queen of cups.

So how the hell does the Sage know what is going to happen in my reality if there is something like free will? Is my free will just what I use to react to what is going to happen anyway?

It seems to me that if every atom had free will then our bodies would fall apart. And since we are made up of atoms, how do we have free will if they don't?

If every part of us comes from mother earth, how can we be conscious if the earth is not?

I like Deepak Chopra's idea that the 'here and now' was created by the past and so we have absolutely no control over it--you made your bed so lie in it--but the future is being created by how we deal with here and now and we have immense control over that. This reconciles fate and free will: fate is created by yesterday's free will.

This would explain how the Sage knows outcomes and the general direction of things. Because the Sage knows our faults and character defects better than we do. And since character = destiny is a mathematical certainty, all the Sage has to know is your character to know your absolute destiny. However, if you change your character with your free will then you also change your destiny.
P.

 

[candid]

Pagan,

If the Sage knew what was going to happen (anyway), why would the oracle offer us choices?

 

[candid]

"If every part of us comes from mother earth, how can we be conscious if the earth is not?"

Who said the earth is not? Intelligence is born into all things, giving each its nature. A flower opens and knows to face the sun.

 

[jeanystar]

we are not autonomous but we are macrocosms of the whole. the power to co-create is inherent in us.

If I deny my desire and will to create and shape my destiny, I am rendered impotent. In one sense, we can relax and trust Destiny to unfold, but our conscious intention to participate seems to play a very important part. at least in terms of our own experience.

WE are in the body for a reason. Isnt it possible to know our purpose through natural action and "lowly listening" as emerson said? . Through SYNCronicity. BY surrendering to our deepest desires, not resisting them. through trusting the body.

the journey neednt be seen as linear either. A change in consciousness changes everything. Didnt carlos casteneda (or Don Juan) say to "have no history." strip it. return to your origin.

What I feel the Yi knows is our state of present consciousness and all its attendant factors, SYNCronicities. BUt that can change - by our efforts- or in the twinklng of an eye.

 

[candid]

Jeanystar,

"the journey neednt be seen as linear either. A change in consciousness changes everything."

Isn't that the most amazing thing?! Just one simple *click* of something in our mind, or sometimes in our body, if we listen to it; some tiny adjustment somewhere, and our whole reality changes in an instant.

 

[jeanystar]

yes, candid, amazing. "stopping the world," don juan called it. Think I will re-read those old castaneda books again. ; )

 

[candid]

Race ya to Ixland, last one there is a flea ally!

 

[jeanystar]

lol

 

[pagan]

Don't fix your mind, it is reality that is malfunctioning!

So Hexes 23/24 are the symbolic death and ressurection. The movie Passion of the Christ sure did a good job expressing hexagram 23. So was the Trilogy of the Ring, when finally Gollum had to bite off Frodo's finger and fall into the burning pit of Mordor. It ain't easy.

But 24 isn't a tabula rasa. There is karma and/or genetics and/or subconscious programming that lingers. One has to imagine that Frodo suffered post traumatic stress syndrome after the whole ordeal. And when God showed to Job the full monty, miraculous or not it had to have left him a bit rattled.

24 is 'starting the cycle over again'. This hints at a pattern that is inherent within our genetics. 24 seems like beginning again with a little better understanding of the role we play or the job we do or the quest we live. It seems connected to the greater whole and our part in the greater system of things.

In terms of fate versus free will, 24 line 6 seems like missing the promotion we were working towards because we get too programmed and we forget to be autonomous when we have the chance to!!!!

Candid, I think that we can chance our inner environment in the 'here and now' which will greatly affect the look of the outer world tommorrow. But this instant was created by yester-attitude and that is now fixed in time and space. Fate is created by fixed attitudes that we are often unconscious of.

Consciousness, which is a function of the here and now, is the only free will we have, and it is creative. So from the stand point of here and now, we can use pure conscious awareness to 'yield' and this alone will lift us out of the familiar ruts of our own spoiled mindsets.
P.

 

[tashij]

Pagan what you write reminds me of what Simone Weil writes: the only choice we have is the one to look up.

 

[tashij]

I also have an image of a face looking from the ceiling of my sky at me, blue, smiling, hewn from a gem, multifaceted and steady.

 

[martin]

Why do you think that the past is fixed, Pagan?
I know, that's what we learned in school ...

But do we ever step into the same past twice?

 

[martin]

Ever?? twice?? what nonsense ..

Kurt Gödel

 

[pagan]

Hi Martin,
I know the Casteneda books have a part where he is instructed on how one can change the past. I have done this myself. After deleting email, I go into my trash bin, click on the deleted item and send it back to my inbox and voila! I have resurrected the dead!!

The way you change the past is to first have one.
Then you make it 'fixed' by tying it to a mulberry shoot.
P.

 

[martin]

Changing the past is not difficult, we all do it.
It's not so easy to see that we do it, though. The belief that the past is fixed gets in the way. If we become aware of a change we tend to think that only our perception of the past has changed, not the past 'itself'. Because that is impossible, isn't it?
What our simplistic maps of reality tell us about time is often dead wrong. When you remember something, for example, you are not just watching "memory traces". You are IN the past. And your presence in the past probably changes it in one way or another, if you want it or not.
Same for the future, you are there when you think about it ... and your presence changes it.

Impossible?
Okay, another impossibility: when you study the Yi you actually meet the writers of the Yi and exchange ideas with them.

 

[megabbobby]

'let tomorrow's dream become reality to me'

you could be in a situation that is developing and think 'how could this be a good memory to daydream about in the future' and let it's plot go that direction

 

[candid]

Ah, Pagan, that's cheating. An item isn't really dead until it's deleted from our hard drive. Assuming it ever is completely deleted, and not just transformed.

Megabobby, to know the seeds?

 

[tashij]

I know I have a tendancy to try and fix the past all the time, tie and retie it to that mulberry bush. It seems to be the 'Groundhog Day' syndrome. The feeling that if i could get it right, in the past, then fate will show the happy ending.

I am starting though to look at past events more as a musical note: hear the pitch, and let it fall, with nothing more than the vibration to keep me in tune to what the present moment is.

I believe in fate, but for me it has happened in certain periods of time, with long stretches of unfated banal moments between. I like the climax, the syncronisity of fate, but surely a very worthy task is to face the day to day reality (chop wood etc) in between. In between? Oops. Must be living in the past and future again.

One suggestion Yi has given me to deal with this trial and error is hex 11 line 3.

 

[tashij]

And I do think Frodo had Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome. But I believe he could rest, having done all he could do. I wonder though, that Job was silenced, dusted,completed, .

 

[pagan]

Martin,
Can you recommend someone who can redesign my past? Less funky, a little more refined and sophisticated?

Candid,
We are hopelessly stuck with memory like doodoo on our shoe that won't wipe off. Pretty soon they will be selling us all disposable hard drives so we don't have to cope with the past. Memories cannot be erased they can only be hidden in code, but they will still operate from a hidden location, so as unappetizing as they are, we have to marry them forever until death do we part.

Megabobby,
Anything you dream up for the future must neccessarily stem from the past, so you are putting post mordem stuff in your future, stop that!

Tashij,
My image of 11.3 is like a teeter-totter at the playground--is it more fun to push up or fall down? One half of the process wouldn't be anything at all.
P.

 

[martin]

<BLOCKQUOTE><HR SIZE=0><!-Quote-!><FONT SIZE=1>Quote:</FONT>

We are hopelessly stuck with memory like doodoo on our shoe that won't wipe off.

Anything you dream up for the future must necessarily stem from the past<!-/Quote-!><HR SIZE=0></BLOCKQUOTE>

Can anybody please help Pagan? The poor thing has a nightmare. She dreams that she is imprisoned in her past!
Help!!!

 

[megabbobby]

supposedly there is no such thing as time ..so it's like solid globs of experience..you meet one..know it's beauty..
and then the other nice time globs want to hang out with you
soon it is known thruout the time universe that it is a priviledge to be your time glob
all the greatest globs in history are waiting standing room only to pass through your reality on whatever form or media

 

[martin]

Yes, that sounds more like it.

I'm thinking about opening a pub where people and time globs can meet each other and I have already bought a piece of time not far from the Big Bang.

 

[candid]

Ta Chu as time globs? likes that

 

[jeanystar]

past, present and future are just a function of the mind, created for convenience. Castaneda did not speak of teaching how to "change the past," he said to "have no history"..drop your past, have none.

you dont change your destiny by changing your character, changing your character is a mind game.
You drop your history, erase it, by stepping into the present moment, the only time there is. The Great Reality.

I have been thinking about writing a book about people who have changed form, the 49.5. From the level of ego, change is only superficial. YOu cant change your spots on that level. True change is transformation, you are a new being...it is like you step out of the old form, condtionings.

this is why yogis can be in two places at once. enlightened beings are free of karma, have no human history!

But I dont think transformation has to wait for full enlightenment. I know of ordinary human beings who have changed their spots, become new creatures, wholly transformed, as if they cartwheeled into a new way of life, without a trace of their old, petty self.

and it happens via a cartwheel, no other way. Character building is a nice pasttime,I guess, but it is really just bulls##t. ( a buddhist psychiatrist said that to me once)

and isnt this why the Yi says a 49.5 doesnt even have to inquire of an oracle.

Pagan, you contradict some of your own statements above by insisting that the past is solid and immutable:
"Consciousness, which is a function of the here and now, is the only free will we have, and it is creative. So from the stand point of here and now, we can use pure conscious awareness to 'yield' and this alone will lift us out of the familiar ruts of our own spoiled mindsets."

 

[martin]

Yeah right, changing or building character belongs in the same category as - what shall we say? - armchair socialism? And what is "my character" anyway, an euphemism for "my rigidity"?

Oh, I love to rant about all this elephant sh*t!

 

[candid]

Hopes a cartroll will suffice. These old bones don't wheel like they used to.

"But I dont think transformation has to wait for full enlightenment." "and isnt this why the Yi says a 49.5 doesnt even have to inquire of an oracle"

Interesting observation.

 

[pagan]

I am not sure what I think or believe. But why is the IC so hung up on remorse and regret and shame if the past does not exist?
P.

 

[martin]

The writers of the Yi had their own hangups. There is no reason to assume that they were less neurotic than we are. I think.
I respect them and their wisdom but I don't put them on a pedestal. They are human, like you and me. Fortunately, as far as I'm concerned. Well, I guess I'm not a devotional type.