not, as yet, quite intelligent enough

[sooo]

Join me if you will.

Join you? Tom, I've been contributing to Shared Readings and its earlier titles for over ten years, diligently in the earlier years. Though I wouldn't call what I've done divining. Just sharing what I've learned, along with whatever inspiration I receive. I used to feel a calling to respond to every empty niche. Now I'm much more selective and casual about my participation on this forum, probably to the relief of Hilary and maybe some others, and especially to myself. Ones own happiness can't be discounted or dismissed as inferior or of lesser importance.

 

[chingching]

sure you can travel without naming the road but, for example, you sooo have very definite personality traits detectable through text, I could tell if it was your writing but under another name. There are traits you exhibit that are markers of you-ness, and its not a persona thing, I can see that too but differentiate it.

I recently got my hair cut, bullied into a hairstyle by a cranky hairdresser who kept saying no your hair is like this that wont look good on you etc. She gave me a haircut that I used to have in the 90's and its awful. She didn't get me at all.

 

[anemos]

I recently got my hair cut, bullied into a hairstyle by a cranky hairdresser who kept saying no your hair is like this that wont look good on you etc. She gave me a haircut that I used to have in the 90's and its awful. She didn't get me at all.

Interesting example!

61's "delay executions" is of great significance, imo. Its the differences between reacting vs responding. Reacting here includes many prejudices which work as limitations while responding comes from another place.

ETA: There are those rare times when before a reading (mine or others) I feel I'm loosing connection with here and now. I become nothing, or better a mere observer, witnessing a story unfolding,in front of me.

 

[sooo]

sure you can travel without naming the road but, for example, you sooo have very definite personality traits detectable through text, I could tell if it was your writing but under another name. There are traits you exhibit that are markers of you-ness, and its not a persona thing, I can see that too but differentiate it.

Yes, I know what you mean, though persona and personality are closely related, I believe. I never meant to deny either, only that I see neither as being 61, since 61 does not refer to individual traits but to the unnameable, which is common in all things. Not the you-ness but the that-ness. This is more than theoretical to me, yet many theories try to explain it. Very easy to get tied up in explanations, but what comes out is more you-ness. Nothing wrong with you-ness, until you mistake it for inner truth.

To quote someone I've met, "the best I can do is jump up and down, pointing at it."

The Dao De Jing is as near as I've ever heard it expressed. Next would be the dialogues in the Upanishads, though the debates themselves make it more difficult to get close to, as debates typically do.

But back to the personality, including the inward personality, the you-ness. I don't intend to belittle it, nor to suggest it can't be read or divined, nor to say that Yi doesn't commonly address it, speak to and about it. Quite the contrary. But I do make a distinction between those individual traits and that which is common to all, which I view as the true inner being.

My reference to 54 is disturbing to people I've shared the personality comparison with, and I've shared it with a couple whom I have a great deal of respect for. But it is the way I view my existence here on this plain. I don't dislike it or have contempt for it, any more than I would my young sister. To use a Christian metaphor, we are the bride of Christ. When Yi tells me that I am experiencing 54, I interpret that as saying 'you are experiencing the bride, the individual you-ness, the individual expression, the spark which flies outward from the whole.' That entity is what we identify as self, and it's how I view 54. It is where we live while here, and it can at times feel like a compromise, as though we are not living in the light of eternity. I don't view 54 as a negative, only as a temporary place and existence, a place to call home, but not our eternal home, not as our eternal being.

 

[chingching]

Ok my Q on this is , is my inner truth your inner truth as what is common to all. Thinking particularly of line 2 which to me has an underlying theme of someone else with a similar inner truth or a connection hears the call, not all things do. I know this is going more and more off topic.

No I see what you mean by 54, I think Lise explained it in a similar way in a thread on 54 somewhere too.

I have always felt like the true "I" of me is just outside of me just in front of my eyes and not quite all the way in this body. Looking at my dog I fell like I'm looking at the inner me, she is always alert and in tune with me, reacting to every movement be it my legs or my iris, the me that is silent.

anemos I did delay execution in this instance, I left with her thinking she did a great job, and to her credit the hair was cut very professionally I just hate the style. When I got home I had a fit. I'm still adjusting, I felt a real loss of self (not inner self though )

 

[anemos]

anemos I did delay execution in this instance, I left with her thinking she did a great job, and to her credit the hair was cut very professionally I just hate the style. When I got home I had a fit. I'm still adjusting, I felt a real loss of self (not inner self though )

Lol.

By delay execution, i meant to refrain from giving names

 

[chingching]

I know but it fit my story too!

I wanted to say also delay suggests it will be done just not right now. Again I see 24 more this notion of sap and open space than 61

 

[pocossin]

Ones own happiness can't be discounted or dismissed as inferior or of lesser importance.

I think people are happiest when practicing their skills and talents.

 

[anemos]

I know but it fit my story too!

I wanted to say also delay suggests it will be done just not right now. Again I see 24 more this notion of sap and open space than 61

yes , it fits

they go together i think.

don't know if its a clear example, but my little niece has been a lazy reader when younger. she was reading the first letters of a word and "filled the blanks" without reading the rest of the word. Most of the times was reading something that didn't exist This is how, in a way, I see 24 working along with 61.

 

[sooo]

Ok my Q on this is , is my inner truth your inner truth as what is common to all. Thinking particularly of line 2 which to me has an underlying theme of someone else with a similar inner truth or a connection hears the call, not all things do. I know this is going more and more off topic.

I think it's an appropriate question. Yes, I think inner truth is the same as inner truth, regardless where it resides. The beauty is when it comes out and resonates with the same truth of another, such as when you connect with your dog and vv, or when I hear the mountain, or when it hears me. It's one song, one melody of vibrations, the sound of God, the sound of a waterfall, the sound of silence. When the young hears its call, it is drawn to it, as your signature says. When the bride hears it, there is peace in her heart and soul. There is a wedding.

But it is the nature of this world of duality that this bliss lasts only for a time, before the self, the bride, is again swept along in the tides of countervailing forces, where conflicting emotions and doctrines and diverse species rule, and survival makes demands upon the brides, where philosophers debate, and rulers make war, and one lives upon lives of others, where hair dressers think they know what's best for your hair .

 

[chingching]

auto correct, it meant to say Dao not sap, sorry for that.

How did we arrive at this conversation? Anyway my dog says thanks

 

[sooo]

lol, love it!

I've already learned the you-ness of the translation of sap = Dao.

 

[pocossin]

I used to feel a calling to respond to every empty niche. Now I'm much more selective and casual about my participation on this forum, probably to the relief of Hilary and maybe some others, and especially to myself.

Top dog or not, your bark is worse than your bite. I value your contributions and imagine that Hilary does too.

 

[sooo]

I didn't mean to imply I was a top dog, and I don't intend to bark or bite, only that I'd once been very active in the interpreting area, and involved with the forum's activities in general. Often I'd wake up and go about responding to a half dozen or so inquires in rapid succession, mostly out of some sense of moral duty. I'm happier since not taking the forum (and life in general) so seriously. I do get passionate and excited re certain concepts, 61 being one of them. My convictions are strong and far reaching, but I also realize that it is part of long-held personal beliefs, and therefore can lose some objectivity and openness to other possibilities. I have to reel myself back in once in awhile and relax.

One test I've learned to give every hexagram and line is asking, "what if I received this answer while living on a deserted island?" Therefore, all answers have the potential to have inner meanings, or relating to other than human relationships. This began with gua 13, which is commonly called 'fellowship with men', or 'mankind', or 'fellowship with others', yet if I am the only human on the island, the meaning must extend to include either inner elements or other natural elements. Fellowship with sky, earth, trees, fish, boar, spiders, snakes, etc.

This has extended to every hexagram, inner or outer, but always with the possibility that it may exclude human relationships - bearing in mind that I've lived alone for over ten years. 61.2 presents especially interesting possibilities, but retains continuity with all the other examples. This, to me, is completely inline with Daoist thought, therefore completely reasonable. It is far reaching but not farfetched. Wilhelm comments:

The character of fu ("truth") is actually the picture of a bird's foot over a
fledgling. It suggests the idea of brooding. An egg is hollow. The light-giving
power must work to quicken it from outside, but there must be a germ of life
within, if life is to be awakened. Far-reaching speculations can be linked with
these ideas.

Anyway, it all makes perfect sense to me, but it often feels like I'm from Mars or Mercury when speaking about it. To speak or not to speak, that's a good question. I can learn to be content not speaking, but that seems pretty selfish. It seems that limitation is the reasonable middle way.

 

[sooo]

Hexagram 61

Affinity

Can the rocks speak, or land moan?

Can you hear their voices as your own?

Listen!​

 

[anemos]

subtle sounds salient in silence

 

[rodaki]

Hexagram 61

Affinity

Can the rocks speak, or land moan?

Can you hear their voices as your own?

Listen!​

. . have you seen this?

once the moon lake pours forth a full glass from its cup

all the sound turns to color and

rise up

on a far flight of stairs

. . maybe rocks hear in vision
​

(p.s: the painting is by a Spanish guy named Miro - this just made too much sense! )