in search of a teacher

[philippa]

Hi all,

For a while now, I've felt that I've hit a limit on what I can absorb from reading (on I-Ching and Chinese philosophy in general) and I think I need some human guidance. My issue is that I can intellectualize the content but have trouble making use of the knowledge in reality.

I realize the journey itself can be difficult. (I received 39 and 50.1 a few months ago.) Nevertheless, I want to give it a shot.

My aunt came visiting and I mentioned this issue to her. She suggested that perhaps I shouldn't try so hard. (Sui yuan, she said. Perhaps there's a bit of fate to that?)

I asked, what to do? I got 2.2.6 -> 4.

Receiving 4 is obviously amusing. 2.6 is also reflective of my mental state.

Thoughts? Comments? Anyone who has a similar experience?

Philippa

 

[pargenton]

Hi Philippa,
I received a similar (2.2) answer when asking a question about personal practice...
http://www.onlineclarity.co.uk/friends/showthread.php?t=3054

Hugs
Paolo

 

[lindsay]

Hi Philippa -

I think I know how you feel - I've been in that position many times. One can learn only so much from reading books and thinking. Divination is a "practice", something you do, an act of personal engagement.

Here are some suggestions of things that helped me when I got stuck in the desert of intellectualization (aka the "Slough of Despond"):

(1) Put the Yi aside for a week or two. Give yourself a rest.

(2) Focus on asking tightly constructed questions with knowable circumstances and outcomes. It is so much easier to work with a question like "What will happen if I buy a new cell phone?" than one like "What should I do with the rest of my life?" Learn to walk before you try running a marathon.

(3) Forget about China, Chinese philosophy, Yi lore and tradition, systems of interpretation, and the rest. Strip it down to the basics. Q and A.

(4) Work on reading your own emotional cues and intuitions. Know thyself.

(5) Work on interpreting symbols and the like. I am very much a non-fiction kind of guy ("fiction is a waste of time because it's not true"), but this works for me: I read poetry. I read modern, contemporary poets because we live in the same world, I should be able to understand them, and they are indirect in exactly the same way the Yi is. I read the same poems over and over until something happens. So far, something always does happen, sooner or later.

(6) Read for other people. Start with somebody easy, then go for someone a little more challenging. Or chime in on the group readings here at Clarity. When you read for others, you remove yourself from direct emotional involvement in the reading, BUT you force yourself to work through it so THEY can understand it. Too often we sleaze through our own private readings instead of struggling with them. "Hex 35 changing to 44? Oh, yeah - whatever!" You can't get away with that with other people. They want to know, and they want you to tell them the answer. So the reader learns by reading, the teacher learns by teaching, the performer learns by performing. It's called on-the-job training. It's surprising how creative you can get to avoid humiliating yourself.

(7) Spend some time on Lise Heyboer's website. Spend a lot of time on Lise's website. She is an international treasure. She has a certain quality that people like you and me (i.e., "head" people) need as much as eating our vegetables.

(8) If you can possibly afford it, take Hilary Barrett's correspondence course through this website. Click on "practical I Ching" at the top of your screen right now and read about it. Hilary is still using some of my sound bites from 2 or 3 years ago, but I still stand completely behind my endorsement. Hilary's course (and Hilary's personal attention and skillful means) was the turning point in my relationship with the Yi. Hilary's course material is very good, but Hilary herself is priceless as a teacher.

Finally, I encourage you to stick with the Yi. It's hard and it's difficult and it's frustrating and it's annoying and it often feels one slice short of a sandwich - but somehow it's all worth it.

Good luck!
Lindsay

 

[heylise]

Wow Lindsay, me proud!!
I printed that out, going to carry it in my pocket and read it to anyone who is not being VERY nice to me!

Just kidding, but still very proud.

Ex-head-person LiSe

 

[jesed]

Hi philippa

Yet another aproach, from traditional teaching

When you say I've hit a limit on what I can absorb from reading, ..

wich part of you had reached it's limit?

If it could be of any use, I would suggest you the following discussion:
"Xiang. More than gathering information", in greatvessel forum

Not to say what Kevin or myself wrote is true, but in case that could open some gates on your own opinion and undertanding.


Best wishes

 

[hilary]

!!

 

[hilary]

Here's a link to the GreatVessel thread Jesed mentions.

 

[lightofreason]

do the Emotional IC questions with reference to yourself as the 'situation'.

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

tell us what you get and from there we can figure out the 'best fit' path for your nature.

.. or do the 'quick' MBTI mapping to get a rough idea of your particular nature:

http://members.ozemail.com.au/~ddiamond/qmbt.html

Note these are all generic, touching on you as a specialist species-member more than you as Philippa.

Chris.

 

[stevev]

On the other side of the coin

You could just take your Aunts advice, take it easy and enjoy the long road with the IChing as a companion, whom you‘ll get to know along the way. At times just ask general, even jovial or philosophical questions without the fixed goal of deep understanding, perhaps a brief insight would do. I see a lot of people trying to extract exact truth out of every word, and personally I find that excruciating. Words do not express truth fully. I love the images of the IChing, the spring at the foot of the mountain, the gnarly old tree on a hill and the overflowing lake. Like everything, sometimes the IChing doesn’t make much sense and relentlessly pursuing meaning is probably just a short cut to delusion.

 

[bruce_g]

Hi Philippa,

Your aunt sounds very wise. Before you cast the oracle, she is believed. Beautiful answer from both she and Yi.

One unique feature of Yijing in comparison with some other teachings is that Yi is half made of inaction, or not-doing. That is contrary to western thinking, which places far greater emphasis on doing. Things are not approached as much as there are attacked. In this respect, Yijing demonstrates the way of nature, and it includes the way of temperament. Half of the time that temperament needs to be restrained, so that nature can do her work in quiet. The other half, of course, consists of creative action, without which the seed only rots.

 

[bruce_g]

Thought this slightly tongue-in-cheek comment from my blog may speak to your question, Philippa.

Take the smartest fifty men and put everything they know in a barrel. Push the barrel off a big waterfall. What is left is worth keeping. So who is smarter, the men's knowledge or water and rocks? To be dumb like a rock and water is to be a monk.

 

[lightofreason]

Thought this slightly tongue-in-cheek comment from my blog may speak to your question, Philippa.

Take the smartest fifty men and put everything they know in a barrel. Push the barrel off a big waterfall. What is left is worth keeping. So who is smarter, the men's knowledge or water and rocks? To be dumb like a rock and water is to be a monk.

ummm... I would focus more on who put the men in the barrel and then pushed it.

 

[bruce_g]

Chris,

Oops.. misread what you said. Give me a few to ponder that. Care to elaborate?

 

[bruce_g]

While you’re doing that, perhaps I can clarify that this hypothetical example is merely intended to point out how meek man’s (any man’s) actual knowledge is, and that the forces of nature can and do continuously overwhelm even the greatest minds.

 

[philippa]

Hi all,

The responses are all very interesting.

Thanks to everbody, esp. Lindsay, for sympathising/recognizing where I'm coming from.

To answer Jesed's question, when I said I've hit a limit, what I really meant was that I no longer have any gut intuition on the text. When I see the text of a line, multiple possible interpretations come to mind. This is great if I were to do a lexicographic work on the Yi, but I'm not. My head is so crowded with the history, stories, past experiences, I have trouble seeing the big picture.

It's clear to me that I've hit some fatigue threshold, not just reading the Yi, but also at work and in my personal life. My problem with the text is probably is a symptom (!) of my mental state.

What Bruce said bothers me the same way what my aunt's said. Tremendously. I do not know when to say, "Ok, I've done my best" and leave it at that. How do you draw the line between doing and not doing? "Not doing" is extremely effortful for me. I can put aside the book but work must go on. Life must go on. And I get the sense that this is not supposed to be effortful (c.f. 2.2). I'm very bothered by this, and I guess, that's why I think I need the help of a teacher.

Comments?

Philippa

 

[jesed]

Dear Philippa

I'll try to express myself better.

My assumption here is that maybe you had reached a top limit in your studies. And that the limit you had reached is the mind-limit.

In traditional teachings, the deeper understanding of Yi Jing is rooted not in the mind (not in rational aproach, neither imaginative aproach), but in the spirit.

So, one can achieve a great degree of understanding by the mind (some by the rational aproach, others by the imaginative aproach, and other by the combination of both). But, following that path, one finally reaches the mind limits.

When this happen, the only path to move forward and deeper is by spiritual aproach.

That was the point I tried to make in the greatvessel post I suggested here.


Now, a more theoretical description on this can be found in the following article (East Asia's Unexplored Pivot of metaphysics ans Hermeneutics"
http://www.hm.tyg.jp/~acmuller/articles/indigenoushermeneutics.htm):

Such a view of intrinsic unity between universal and particular can be seen as closely related to the tendency of sinitic metaphysical discourse to be so fully connected with actual practice, as the phenomena of the universe as a whole were always seen to be connected to, acting upon, and receiving influence from the actions of individual persons. Thus, mere theoretical understanding was never accepted as sufficient when it came to such matters as the apprehension of the Tao. The non-dualistic understanding of essence-function also limited the extreme to which self-transformation, or religious practice, could acceptably be divorced from activity in the "real" secular world. This means that mystic absorption into the infinite was almost always considered to be inferior to the "marvelous function" of the true sage, who was deeply in touch with, and greatly valued his t'i, but who superbly manifested that t'i in his function within the world of everyday phenomena. Numerous early Confucian texts reflect this tendency, but it is probably most succinctly summed up in the adage from Chapter Twenty-eight of the Tao Te Ching which says "know the white (ï mï ï ï ï everyday world, manifest world, yung) but cleave to the black (ï ç‘´ï ï the essence, the tao, t'i)." Down through time in the three traditions, it was this balanced approach to religious practice which would be the most respected. It becomes particularly manifest in the Chinese Ch'an school (as well as in Korean Sŏn and Japanese Zen), where, despite the intrinsic mystic tendencies of the meditational schools, great value comes to be placed on "skillful function." Again, this is reflective of the meaning of integral practice, here adding the further connotation of yung being integrated with t'i and t'i being integrated with yung, in the course of a "practice" which is none other than daily living.

If any of this made an inner eco to you, the I could suggest you one teacher if you like.


Best wishes

 

[getojack]

I'm not the teacher, but

Philippa,

Learn to read the spaces between the lines of poetry.

Learn to see the moon that the finger points at.

And if you find the teacher, let me know.

 

[martin]

My assumption here is that maybe you had reached a top limit in your studies. And that the limit you had reached is the mind-limit.

Yes, perhaps it's that. When the mind (the logical as well as the imaginative mind) reaches its limits it begins to feel cramped.
It's time for the awakening of another faculty that knows in other ways.
Perhaps the old theosophists would say that it is time for the "third initiation".

If this is indeed what is going on, Philippa, then the good news is that feeling the limits of the mind is a sign that you are already moving beyond it. If you were still completely immersed in the mind you would not notice how "flat" it is.
A flatlander is blissfully unaware of the flatness of his world until he has had at least a glimpse of the third dimension, of space.
And once that happens he starts to feel uncomfortable, imprisoned. It means the end of his 2D bliss.

Not doing - you can look for signs and synchronicities of course. And watch your dreams and try to find a teacher.
It seems that we humans must always do something, otherwise we get bored or nervous. And our doing is not entirely useless.
But this transition to 3D - so to speak - is not something that anyone can do completely on their own. And there is no need to. The helpers, the guides, are waiting for the "pupil" (hex 4). They will come and carry you across this river when the time has come.
You can have trust in that, it is bound to happen.

 

[lindsay]

Hi Philippa,

Thank you for being so honest. This business of "I Ching fatigue" is rarely discussed. It isn't really a case of being 'cognitive' vs. 'spiritual' in one's approach, nor does it involve taking a stance of 'doing' or 'not-doing'. In my experience, it is a feeling of desolation, of being dry, parched, barren, abandoned, alone in your conversation with the Yi. The connection just isn't there. Perhaps this isn't what you mean at all, Philippa, but I would still like to talk about this feeling a little.

In religious terms, this sort of thing corresponds to the "dark night of the soul," the crisis of faith, the inability to leap into the abyss. Often we want to control things too much, things we cannot control at all. Sometimes we want to be perfect, to prepare in every possible way for something that happens or does not happen by itself, on its own terms. We are impatient. And often we are frightened.

The Yi used to frighten me a lot. I was afraid it would tell me things I did not want to know. Does this sound crazy? Early on, I noticed the Yi did not necessarily answer my superficial questions, but addressed deeper issues behind the questions. This was a little scary. Maybe it was my subconscious bubbling up - but any psychiatrist can tell you there are good reasons why our subconsious is "sub" conscious. Because there are things we do not want to know or think about consciously. Sometimes it seemed like the Yi was digging up a little too much dirt, being a bit too perceptive. When I felt like this, it was hard to come up with questions. Nothing was safe. But superficially there just didn't seem to be anything I wanted to know, no questions to ask the Yi. It was like meeting a famous movie star, and finding nothing to talk about. I wanted to use the Yi but I couldn't find a way to approach it, since I never seemed to have any questions I couldn't answer myself by ordinary means. No questions means no need for divination, right? This is what is commonly known as being in denial.

I finally got out of that crazy impasse, but it wasn't easy. In the meantime, I stuffed my head full of everything I could find out about the Yi. I was like a person who knows every part and function of an automobile - but cannot drive.

There is another kind of blockage I have also experienced. When I finally became comfortable with the Yi, I came to regard it as a familiar and helpful friend. Then something awful happened in my life. I turned to the Yi, but I could not read it. I was under great stress, too wrought up to focus, too distressed to think. The last thing I needed was a bunch of ancient Chinese riddles. Metaphors and symbols felt like nails and daggers in my heart. All I wanted was a little comfort. Even the illusion of control would have been helpful. The I Ching was useless to me in a crisis. I just couldn't get anything out of it, I wasn't up to it. My friend the Oracle had let me down at the time I needed him/her most. I was terribly disappointed. Why had I spent so much time on something that is worthless when you need it most? Frankly, I still haven't answered that question - but there will probably be people in this forum (like the friends of Job) who will be glad to tell me how it was all my fault.

When your mental resources are thin and stetched, you may not want to reach for the Yi as your life-perserver. Reading Psalms or Emerson might be more effective spiritually. You know what you need. I only get into all this because I think people have a lot of unrealistic expectations about using the Yi. Yi is very powerful, but I believe it has its limits. You might want to think about what you want to use the Yi for. Very few people give that question a moment's consideration, but one cannot escape the truth of one's actions. The truth finds everyone and gives them what they deserve.

Lindsay

 

[jesed]

Hi lindsay

Just to avoid misunderstandings, and that made me say the oposite that i did say

If you understand what I wrote in terms of a case of being cognitive vs. spiritual in one's aproach, then you hand't understand me at all.

Maybe if you read the article i linked to the comment, you could find the diference.


In traditional teachings, Cognitive-spiritual issue is not in terms of dichotomy (cognitive VS spiritual), as in Western cultures; is the other way around, the autor wrote it in terms of integrality practice (I wrote it in terms of not only cognitive, not only spiritual... if you walk only cognitive you can advance, but not as long as with both).


Best wishes

 

[lindsay]

Hi Jesed -

I'm sorry if you think anything I wrote diminished your ideas. That was far from my intention. But I felt intuitively that Philippa might be having existential problems with the Yi, problems I have encountered myself, so I wanted to move the discussion out of the realm of ideas into that of direct experience.

I'll try harder to understand your position, but I must tell you I'm not having much luck with your article. To me it is too redolent of academic double-speak. It reads like Chris Lofting's stuff, confusing taxonomy and technical jargon with insight. Naming things is not the same thing as understanding them.

Lindsay

 

[bruce_g]

Hi Philippa,

No-one, including Yijing, said that growing in understanding is supposed to be easy or comfortable. Lindsay’s personal testimony attests so clearly to this, and I think he speaks for anyone who has taken Yi seriously enough to place it in the position of personal teacher or trainer. That level of frustration doesn’t occur unless something is deeply meaningful to us, or strikes something hard in ourselves – something we know that sooner or later we’re going have to bite through. It might as well be now… or later.

The question is: How to carry on with this learning experience? Speaking for myself, sometimes walking entirely away from it is the best way. But walking back to it is also a valuable experience, especially if we come back to it with new understanding of ourselves. The more we understand ourselves the more we understand the Yi, and vv.

In any relationship there are times when it seems we lose all connection and communication with our partner. But a true relationship isn’t based solely upon how the moment feels. It’s based on something which endures beyond temporal exchanges and interactions. Sense of destiny overrides momentary inclinations and temperamental flare ups.

The Yi can have severe negative effects on someone’s psyche and life, if said person insists on pushing ahead when Ti Ming says to be still. And, we can fall asleep if we don’t move when it's time to move. Movement and rest from movement is how nature endures and furthers everything in time. The teaching of Yi is to learn this natural rhythm, and learn it not only in our minds but in our entire being.

 

[lightofreason]

....It reads like Chris Lofting's stuff, confusing taxonomy and technical jargon with insight. Naming things is not the same thing as understanding them.
Lindsay

All I asked Philippa to do is work through the Emotional IC page and let us know what comes up - that is direct experience, no confusion or taxonomy nor technical jargon other than that belonging to the IC. Simple stuff dude. You should try it yourself some time - get directly in touch with your emotions and what 'they' interpret the current reality is. It it obvious to me that the need to make the request she did indicates a conflict of rationalising consciousness and an internal 'vibe' that is sourced in the emotions - 'something' in the context is setting off the emotions - the idea is to find or what that is where the questions allows us to bypass 'censorships' etc

Chris.

 

[stevev]

Partially Relevant

In relation to asking questions, I have always found the IChing very positive in it’s answers, it usually seems to agree with me. I rarely ask questions like will I or what if I or she, and mostly ask questions like what do I believe and is it true, and often lately what do you think, of something I usually already had an opinion on. I started to realise that the IChing really just encourages what you already believe, or maybe aligns with your mental state, part mirror part stream ?

Another other part of the IChing is a belief system and philosophy in it’s own right, partially Taoist, Buddhist, socialist, environmentalist, generally the lefty / pinko sort of stuff that I grew up with anyway.

Now if you get to the IChing or similar philosophy early enough so that it embeds in your psyche, having the IChing encourage and promote that view sound like a good thing to me, and I think the majority of people that gravitate toward the IChing are made from this mould.

I then wondered what if you went to the IChing with a different belief system, with destructive intent, for instance I’ve heard it said that the Japanese naval commanders consulted the IChing on the eve of the battle of Pearl Harbour.

Well recently in a state of depression and anger I consulted it about a really stupid plan I was hatching and again found that it simply encouraged me. But to my surprise I found that it’s encouragement speed me on the path to the realisation of my delusions and thankfully out the other side. Where as, had it discouraged me I may have bounced around in an indecisive manner harbouring resentment or holding on to a half baked idiotic plan.

 

[philippa]

Hi all,

Thank you all again for taking the time to respond. Esp. to Lindsay for sharing your personal experience.

I'm not expecting the process to be easy at all. But I also think I have something to learn. I'm tired of being stuck in a rut and I want to break the pattern.

As an aside, I did try Chris' method and coincidentally, and not surprisingly, I got 39 -> 8. (Btw, it was obvious to me how the questions map to the hexagrams. It was not easy to ignore the correspondence but I managed to answer the questions.)

To respond briefly to Lindsay's question, my intention was to use a random method (be it coins or some random number generator) is to approach an issue, NOT from the usual "rational" route, in order to open up alternative perspectives, perspectives that are objective. I have no idea if this is an unrealistic expectation but I was, for a long time, quite tired of being subjective. Not that being subjective is a bad thing, but it is often narrow and incomplete. To a certain extent, I always want to use the Yi in a way that I can "internalize" the text. Am I making any sense here?

I'm not giving up. The question is, what's my next step.

Philippa.

 

[lightofreason]

As an aside, I did try Chris' method and coincidentally, and not surprisingly, I got 39 -> 8. (Btw, it was obvious to me how the questions map to the hexagrams. It was not easy to ignore the correspondence but I managed to answer the questions.)

I could use the MBTI approach - drown you in 100+ questions all carefully crafted to get your associations of 4 dichotomies! ;-)

That said, it does not matter if your consciousness can 'link the dots' since it is your consciousness that is asking the questions of your emotions. The focus is on the generality of the questions, their lack of refined emotional content such that in the responses the emotions add the emotional colourings in that they return their emotional interpretation of what they sense is the situation. IOW we are giving the emotions some generic, emotion-free aids to 'paint' in the emotion - a helping hand if you wish.

Here we have hex 39 (001010) into hex 08 (000010) means only 1 changing line - 3. This implies, from the trigram level that your base trigram could be mountain or earth where BOTH cover issues of identity seeking; IOW the core issue is on issues of personal identity; of belonging to something/someone etc. and through that gaining identity.

The move covers (a) experiencing obstructions and so in need of getting around them (bypass) OR being the obstruction, standing up to the 'mindless flow', going against the flow. WITHIN THIS we have qualities of hexagam 08 where the focus is on an unconditional attraction to some 'leader' or 'group'. Note that 08 in general reflects control issues operating in a context of devotion to another/others. (the 'court' is passive but devotion to that court/king elicits control by the court/king)

If we interpet 08 operating in 39 so we have a general state of being attracted to some form of, centre of, control in a context of experiencing obstructions or caught up in the mindless flow. 39 covers the island in the stream and so covers getting around it (bypass) or climbing onto it (join in with its defiance).

Emotionally the water focus in both covers issues of rejection/rejecting and so the 'us vs them' nature where the boundary acts to protect. There is the implication of a feeling of being lost, that flow can pull you in all sorts of directions and the current can be strong and so not worth fighting against - UNLESS you can find an island that is strong, standing out against the flow, accepting of you in that its defiance is rejecting the 'mindless' flow with the focus on control. Running concurrently is the issue of being rejected if you make an approach to the 'island'.

SO your emotions appear to be in tune with what you have described as your current state - IOW we have established congruance of emotion and reason/consiousness.

Now comes the issue of where you would like to go, which line would you like to 'change'.If you cannot find a local group then set one up - advertise etc to see if you can attract others (note that your original focus was on being attracted to some teacher/group but you can turn that around to YOU being the source of attraction but in a 'passive' way of setting up a group and work off that - this maps to turning water into fire. rejection focus into an acceptance focus, protection into exploitation - this is also reflected in the mountain base where the suffering can be turned into discernment (mountain doubled) as done in Buddhism etc).

Your choice.

Chris.

 

[RindaR]

Hi all,

<snip>

Thoughts? Comments? Anyone who has a similar experience?

Philippa

Philippa,

I think from your description I've been there too, and got similar advice from Yi -

"quit trying so hard"

...though I don't remember the hex and progression.

Sometimes I feel an inner pull, other times I drift away (or am pulled away). Each time I notice a turn in the cycle I find I've been enriched. May it also be so with you. I think our teachers are always there, in some form or shape or situation or person, though it can be tough to recognize them for what they are...