Lost and found - a success story thanks to the I Ching

[minnie]

Dear all,
I wanted to share a story with you in hope it will be useful for your future interpretations (even if at the end the Yi was quite literal that even I could not misinterpret it).

So, tomorrow morning I have to leave for a long awaited holiday in a place that requires passport and visa. The visa obtained through embassy in of course inside my passport.

This morning my beloved husband (who took my and his passport one month ago to request for visa and than took them home) check the safe (where we keep passports) and says: your passport is not here. Utter tragedy, I would have never had the time to request for a new passport and a new visa in an afternoon even with urgent procedures.

So I start checking in the obvious places to no avail, then I check in the less obvious places always to no avail.

So I turned to the Yi asking where is my passport? Reply 1 unchanging.

In a way getting 1 reassured me that I will find it and then made me think of action and creativity so I checked very very thorougly the place where I do my sawing and where I do my interior decorations crafts .... nothing.

Then I had to go to work. While I was here I started thinking about other possible meaning of 1 unchanging but I could not see.

so I went back to the Yi and asked: "I am sorry to disturb again for the same query but I am very agitated and I ask you respectfully to give me a clearer hint of where my passport is".

Reply: 49.1.4 ... I use Lise's site to cast and make sense of my readings mostly

Initial 9: Bind them using yellow cattle's hide.
There are always innumerable reasons why one thinks change is impossible. Evaluate them critically - very often they are other people's reasons and one has adopted them too easily. What is common is usually not creative.

9 at 4: regrets disappear. He has truth in changing the mandate. Auspicious.
To bring about something viable and strong, one has to follow one's own belief and motivation. What is accepted from others and does not carry this own inner conviction, weakens the result and prevents it from becoming an organic whole.
(Changes to hex.63)

Mmm Yellow cattle's hide ... ok I now know it is hidden in something yellow ... mumble mumble I also looked at Legge's translation
•The first line, undivided, shows its subject as if he were bound with the skin of a yellow ox

BINGO, bound with the SKIN of an yellow ox. Inside the safe there is a flat black leather jewleery holder and the suede lining is beige . So I rush home. Check inside it and guess what was in there? Exactly .... my passport that must have in a way or another ended up there.

I am still unsure on what the Yi meant with the 1 unchanging.

well that's it, I hope it will be useful for you in a way or another

All the best,
Minnie

 

[equinox]

Maybe hexagram 1 meant: Use your creative energy?

 

[Liselle]

It's fun trying to figure things out afterwards.

Um...1 is the very first hexagram, at the beginning, so maybe it meant, go back to the beginning? The safe was the beginning, it was the first place you looked, since that's where the passport was supposed to be.

1's Oracle -
'Creative Force. From the source, creating success. Constancy bears fruit.'

Reading that very literally, it's saying "from the source" - possibly, where the passport was supposed to be, where you started from, like the "source" of a river is where it starts from. "Constancy bears fruit" - keep looking there and you'll find it?

There is no way on earth I would have understood that without the benefit of hindsight. But it does give us another example of hexagram 1, which might be useful in the future.

Of course then one might start wondering, why hexagram 1 and not hexagram 48, which is more literally "the source" or "the well"? I think once before about a lost object I wondered if 48 could mean "where it's supposed to be." Or why not hexagram 24, Returning - go back to where you were before. Especially the "going out, coming in, without anxiety" part - keep going over the same ground until you find it?

So there must be something hexagram 1 was telling you that no other hexagram could say. Do you have any ideas about that? For example, 1's Image says, "The heavens move ceaselessly. A noble one in his own strength does not pause." Does the idea of constant motion ring any bells with you? Either about a process of finding it, or maybe how you misplaced it in the first place? Do you know why the passport was put inside the jewelry holder in the first place? Does anything about this seem 1-ish to you?

Since hexagram 1 is a very basic hexagram, a very fundamental idea, this story is making me wonder if 1 might sometimes convey "it's very basic, very fundamental, very simple, what's the simplest possible answer, don't make it complicated"? Not sure.

 

[Liselle]

Since 1 can mean "Heaven," do you have any religious jewelry in the holder?

 

[justjohn]

I Ching Lost and Found App

[There is an app that with the right centreing and focus could help you in the future. Can be used to find missing objects (stolen or otherwise), friends and pets. The key is to set one's mind still to focus. Myself, I have successfully used it to find my wristwatch(4 days lost) and a friend's cat(gone for a week). Cheers]