Clarity,
Office 17622,
PO Box 6945,
London.
W1A 6US
United Kingdom
Phone/ Voicemail:
+44 (0)20 3287 3053 (UK)
+1 (561) 459-4758 (US).
Oh, no, milk or not, I still value the cow! I love her! Apart from that, I don't eat meat. Is a soya meat BBQ okay for you?
Yeah, I've tried prefacing what I say when I interpret here with 'the Yi seems to be saying'. I think I need a more honest preface. Maybe 'applied to your situation and question, the symbols in this line seem to mean something like this...'
"I guess that perhaps I have just a hunch and I might very well be wrong, I probably am, and I don't know if this is of any use to you, it probably isn't, but perhaps the answer you received may mean at least sometimes something like ... "
I came to that same conclusion quite a few years ago as I think it is a disservice to the querents, and even disrespectful, to shot-from-the-hip with statements like "the Yi is telling you this or that" and openning the field for others to provide their own grains of salt to the soup
Luis, stoking the fire, said to the cow: Welcome! Any friend of my friends is my friend too. Come, please sit by the fire...
Also, I can see what you're saying here and I agree that it can be dodgy. But you know, I consult the Yi daily, and I need to be able to come up with snapshot interpretation if it's going to be useful to me. Then I need to be able to remember it. And apply it.
No problem.
How nice of you! I will bring my best friend then, he loves humans!
Can the application of a long list of interpretive tools be a form of laziness?
Um, don't think so. You try walking round 4 line pathways for 4 changing lines, and then looking at the change patterns... it's quite the workout.
If the human mind needs to find patterns of order in chaos, even if it must invent them
But I think that consulting an oracle is in some cases already a form of 'spiritual laziness'. I mean, sometimes (often?) we know the answer, or we could know it, if we only listened to subtle cues and signals. But throwing coins is easier ...
For me, it's acted as a ritual that puts me in intentional touch with my higher mind. In the beginning, it felt very daring. Now I have a sense of a reliable higher mind that is constantly present for me to access whenever I choose, and this sense is based on years of uncannily accurate and useful consultations.
Hence the next paragraph I wrote, addressing exactly that.It's a lot of intellectual 'work' perhaps but it could still be 'lazy' in the spiritual sense because one refuses to engage ones intuition or higher mind. That is what Dobro means, if I understand him correctly.
Question: If you read for yourself instead of for others, does it make a difference? Do you use less tools?
The relief for me is in seeing an approach that simplifies interpretation and makes it more genuine.
And I'll tell you something else too. I can't stop noticing the relating hexagram when I consult - too many years of conditioning for that. But I'm now going to stop assuming it's really part of the picture. I'm going to challenge it. For instance, this morning I drew 44.1.2, and up until now I'd assume that 13 was also part of the picture. Well, maybe I don't need to consider 13 at all! Maybe I only have to consider resisting temptation by putting the brakes on and avoiding the temptation to go get the answer out there somewhere. See what I mean? I'm not saying 'Don't you agree?' I'm saying 'Do you understand what I'm talking about now?'
I'm hungry now and can't think straight. Can somebody remind me what the thread was about?
In any case, just to clarify the observations mentioned by Harmen and that I quoted, the formula "Meeting Hexagram1 之 Hexagram2" appears to have been a way to put emphasis on particular lines, the same way we today use "64.1," for example. What Harmen mentions about the non use for the 'derivative hexagram' (please correct me if I'm wrong) is based in that in those same records there is no specific discussion of them as part of the prognostications. Regardless of that fact, IMHO, the absence of "a specific discussion" doesn't deny the possibility that the overall prognostication was perhaps the product of a more holistic approach rather than based on what is specifically recorded. Furthermore, I'm inclined to believe that perhaps this is the argument that crossed Zhu Xi's mind when he proposed his methodology.
Clarity,
Office 17622,
PO Box 6945,
London.
W1A 6US
United Kingdom
Phone/ Voicemail:
+44 (0)20 3287 3053 (UK)
+1 (561) 459-4758 (US).