It's down to you? 15.1,3 > 24

[em ching]

Hi,

I have found that the I ching always helps. Always fitting - and conducive to the proper action at the time of asking. However, sometimes I've felt that it is speaking of unknowable things - or predicting the future - whereas other times I feel it was just appeasing me - or mirroring what is already known in my unconscious. So in that sense - although i realise this may be too good to be true anyway - when I feel I'm being given a privileged glimpse of, for example, another person's motives or what's going to happen, that may not be the case.

And when you look back on times when a reading has made you expect a certain outcome that hasn't come to be - you could feel duped... in that you think you've been given a gift of knowledge, for example - insight that you couldn't possibly bring to consciousness yourself - when in fact, the Yi may just saying what's appropriate for you at that time - or what encourages you to follow your Tao i.e your feelings in that moment - regardless of whether you're right or your hopes are well founded - because the feelings need to be followed up on and heard so that you learn your lessons.. and perhaps the Yi encourages that.

I asked: Do you only mirror what is inside the enquirer at the time of asking?
(ie the best fit for their current state - regardless of possible changes to the relevance or truth of that reading, in a matter of days, or hours even)

I received 15.1,3 > 24

Does this suggest that yes - the Yi, like us, is a humble 'instrument', because it can only extend as far as ourselves - hence the second hex being Return. Return to self?

15.1 talks of being unassuming. Could it be saying the enquirer needs only to hear what will 'settle matters easily and quickly' to 'accomplish difficult undertakings' ie. it moves you on a bit from whatever pressing emotional issue you have? To bring you peace, but in a modest fashion. Rather than insight into truths unknown?

Lise (15.1) > 'Words are stronger than weapons if one seeks freedom and peace'

Do you think the reading is saying that the words of the hexagrams allow you to philosophise to calm down an emotion? Rather than revealing the unknown or the future? ie what exists outside our consiousness?

And 24 is about following your own Tao. Knowing your path.
So the Yi modestly puts you on it?
Until you try to venture off again that is

But it just makes you feel a bit silly - when things don't pan out as perhaps a reading once made you feel.. your expectations were encouraged one day - but then by the time you realise that things didn't work out as you once hoped or felt certain they would - you also realise it was for the best anyway.. so you're not annoyed at being 'duped' in a sense...

Has anyone else thought this?

:bows:

 

[tigerintheboat]

Live the Question

I asked: Do you only mirror what is inside the enquirer at the time of asking?
(ie the best fit for their current state - regardless of possible changes to the relevance or truth of that reading, in a matter of days, or hours even)

I received 15.1,3 > 24

My experience with Yi is that it often does not answer the exact question we ask...not to say it ignores the question, but, taking the question into account, it answers another question, usually slightly larger, which I have come to term "the question behind the question."

Or sometimes it gives advice which has not been requested. When we ask for prediction or yes/no, I find sometimes Yi gives advice. The advice implies something about the prediction, but it is not precisely a prediction.

(Of course this is all predicated on my personality and my experiences, and my own fallibility in understanding, yadda yadda yadda, the usual disclaimers, your mileage may vary.)

When I read the answer Yi gave you, it comes across as:

Be humble (H15). Do not try to understand more than you can understand. What the Yi is and is not can only be understand over time. To understand is a difficult undertaking, and it is an auspicious omen that you have received Line 1. Begin, undertake your journey of understanding. You will cross many great rivers before you are done.

The difficulty in understanding what you want to know is that knowledge and accomplishments can get in the way of understanding, by removing you from the path of humility (Line 3). The more accomplishments you have, the more you need to practice modesty. You must always have real modesty and humility, despite what you learn along the way.

And you may return to this question (H24). Modesty will have you return to the beginning many times, after journeys long and short.

To express this point of view better than I can, here is Rainer Maria Rilke's quote on loving the question, from Letters to a Young Poet:

"Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language. Do not now look for the answers. They cannot now be given to you because you could not live them. It is a question of experiencing everything. At present you need to live the question. Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it, find yourself experiencing the answer, some distant day.

Tiger

 

[em ching]

Wow that's sounds like a really sensible take on it - as said in the thread on divination skeptics in the Exploring divination section, there are just things in the world that we cannot know, as there are things that we can.

I also agree that it could be saying return to simplicity - we don't know how it works, it just does. I could say that about many technological appliances in my home

Thanks for your thoughts and I love that quote!

:bows:

 

[canislulu]

Returning to this Question

I am resurrecting this old thread today because I love the Rainer Maria Rilke quote that Tiger shares here. I found the thread because I received 15.1.3 < 24 when asking about how to deal with a difficult situation I am involved in with my family. I was specifically wanting to know how to deal with my mother's doctor. It is a complicated situation with complicated (and in my view, unhealthy family dynamics) that I have been struggling with for a long time.

I am not looking for help with the reading which I have only just begun to consider. I am just resurrecting this thread for consideration for myself and others who may receive 15.1.3 < 24.

 

[ZeroPoint]

I find myself, like canislulu, with this reading, having just journaled on the Rilke poem after seeing it not only in the Yi Foundations course but promptly getting it in answer to a difficult and long standing life situation.

I concur, it is a slow learning process. I am revealing myself to myself, and for some human reason this takes so much time.

I am glad this was here to find.

 

[hilary]

Coming a mere 12 years late to the original reading... it reminds me vividly of the jian bird that LiSe describes for Hexagram 15:

Substituting the ‘words’ for ‘bird’ gives Jian, A mythical bird with one wing and one eye. Two of them could fly: the perfect cooperation.
Who has the gift of qian can fly to higher places than he would ever be able to reach on his own. Even more so in the realm of “truth".

15 can certainly be a mirror - and also a partnership.