Questioning?

[sunrise65]

Hello all

I was wondering how much or how little people use the the yiching to explore the daily and life decisions. I have used it at major junctions in life and try not to ask to many questions, but what is your relationship to the oracle. I am guessing this is down to how stable 'your' life is at the time as on the whole we don't need guidance when things are going well, or maybe we do!

Look forward to hearing replies.

Tom

 

[meng]

Hi Tom,

I think personal Yi use is a private affair, which folks aren't eager to divulge.

There's probably something to what you say about the conditions of life influencing the use of, or even reliance on the Yijing to "fill in the blanks", so to speak. When there's more uncertainty, there's more to question.

But "life leads the thoughtful man on a path of many windings. Now the course is checked, now it runs straight again." - Confucius. During quite a stretch of 4 decades of Yi use, it wasn't used at all, but it was mentally referred to, since by earlier obsession I'd memorized enough of Wilhelm to have available hexagram images to contemplate and apply to every day living.

"Times change, and with them their demands." Wilhelm 60.

Now, during a later time in life, I use it quite a bit more. Frankly, because it keeps my brain active, even though my body isn't so much as before. I have liberty and very little responsibility, and so I'm free to indulge in all sorts of dirty little obsessions, such as the Yijing.

Bruce

 

[chacha1]

I consult it anytime I feel I don't have enough information to make an educated decision. I use it when I'm dealing with an unsettling situation, and also when I get the feeling that I am being deceived, and I want the truth of a situation. I'm still (relatively) young, and I have only been consulting the I ching since 1999, and as the years progress (and I mature)I've been using it more and more because I'm growing in comprehending it's answers, learning more about our world, and I am less afraid of it. P.S. it's not something to actually be afraid of, it's just that sometimes the answers I receive are so obvious and clear I have gotten the eerie feeling of being "watched".

 

[lloyd]

Hi Tom
Funny question and it may be clarifying to read the answers of regular posters on Clarity.
I have known I Ching for forty years and intensively studied it for twenty. My approach is textual. I do not dive deep into ancient symbolism and characters, apart from what is taught in the Wings.
Over the last twenty years I had about all the versions you can think of, from Legge onwards, and eventually settled for Lynn, with the aid of Sherill’s astrology texts, which I find often quite useful.
If need be I may dive down into nuclear hexagrams (etc).
I did my share of coin throwing at the beginning of my study (to get to know the book). Eventually my records showed that I often asked the same question (intention) in the most curious different wordings (watch out for that one ...). I also did not look at the book for some years.
Over the last ten years I use the I Ching once in three months or so, only for situations that keep bugging me or hit me deeply. I take my time to translate these situations into questions that take a broad view. I never cast the coins when I am emotional, restless or curious. I write questions down and consult in a suddenly found free moment, when I feel clear and relaxed. When I get an answer (broad) that makes sense (almost always) I study it for a day or so and I often come with a next question (or eventually two, sometimes three, as the dialogue goes on).
Meanwhile I keep in touch with people who study I Ching and lately I stay imaginatively alert by giving consults twice a week in a near-by yoga hall; which can be tough, when dealing with life/death matters. I definitely could not have done that ten years ago ...

 

[chacha1]

Lloyd, have you found that consulting the Yi when feeling intense emotions have affected answers? This may be the reason why I have received so many of the responses that I have.

 

[lloyd]

Hi Chacha
I want to quote a text from the Wings. Not because it is old and Chinese, but because I see here the inner preparation that suits a poet before he sets a pen on paper:

“The superior man consults the Changes, and he does so in words. It takes up his communications like an echo. He sets his person at rest before he moves; he composes his mind before he speaks; he makes his relationships firm before he asks something. If he asks something without first establishing relations, it (answer, poem) will not be given to him."

Much about questioning can be found in the Wings, or other Daoist sources. Take this one:

“When you have doubts about any great matter,
consult with your own mind;
consult with your high ministers and officers;
consult with the common people;
and consult the oracle.”

A King was not supposed to pound on I Ching without forgetting he had a world around him; which is probably the most Chinese aspect of I Ching.
Besides, you gather information about yourself among ministers/partners/relatives, officers/friends/colleagues and the people (standards of the time) and the words in I Ching are there only to be taken up again together with your partner, friends, etc. You are the one who brings in the morals and/or the ethics, the book represents Tao and has none of either.

I also like the idea that, with but a few hundred manuscripts in ancient China, a questioner would have to leave his door to see a diviner; a walk in which to think, or even cool down maybe.
Here is another one from the Wings, which you can take into yourself:

Work with people
as long as they are receptive and open,
retreat when receptivity wanes
this is learning to let go beyond doubt.

And with (emotional) words coming cheap as they do, let’s not forget the one that is the hardest:

The young fool seeks me. At the first oracle I inform him. If he asks two or three times, it is importunity. If he importunes, I give him no information.

I can see in all of this the ingredients for a creative writing course (no Jungs attached).
Anyway, much of the questioning on Clarity is about how ‘I’ feel about X, or how X feels about ‘me’; everybody wants to love somebody, sure enough, but ...
I found that it is an easy way out, in questioning, to consider myself as ‘the standard’, because my life changes me all the time. So now, in case an X would hit me, I would begin by asking whether (in this period of my life) I am made of the material that love is made of.
I feel that I found this approach in the Wings, don’t ask me to explain it, and I like the first quote most, as an aid in contemplation.

 

[jesed]

Great quotes from the Wings!

 

[lloyd]

Thanks

 

[neegula]

Hello all

I have used it at major junctions in life and try not to ask to many questions, but what is your relationship to the oracle.

for major junctions in life i Ask Yi not so often, like every 2 or 3 months.
in certain periods i Ask for "minor" matters, even every day, through different kind of divination:
aeromancy and cledonism, for instance