Shall I post this dream on Clarity? -- 16.4. > 2

[Hartloper]

Dear Clarity followers,


so this is the very first time the Yi Jing / I Ging specifically appeared in one of my dreams.

As I have recently started sharing readings here, I felt inclined to share this dream with you.

To turn it into a proper shared reading I addressed the oracle with the question:

How will it play out for me if I post this dream in the shared readings section of Clarity Forum?

Answer: 16.4. > 2

I take that as a: Do it!


DREAM

I go to a public screening of a film I recently created with my 9-year old daughter. I leave it up to her whether she would like to join or spend the time in the child care section of the cinema. She opts for the latter, because they have a very special "ball bath" like they have in IKEA furniture markets. It is advertised as "the biggest ball bath in the world" and features a fountain, which looks like Arcanum XVI / 16 from the Jodorowsky/Camoin Marseille Tarot. The Tower (La Maison Dieu) incessantly spurts colorful balls, which seem to be sucked in again at the bottom. The pool is large and about 4 feet deep. It's a perfect match. My daughter just has her head above the "surface". I see she will have the time of her life and go to attend the screening.

The movie theatre is packed. Nobody knows I am one of the creators of the film. There is a petite Italian woman next to me with very benevolent and intelligent eyes, presumably in her mid to late forties with a slightly crooked nose. When the movie is over she tacitly gives me an Italian 1-Euro coin and a tiny snow globe (a miniature earth actually). At closer sight it turns into a sphere of purple haze with a kind of sigil in the center (reminiscent of a chakra sign).

I also see an inscription inside. It reads: I Ging -- East.

The movie is very well received and I leave the theatre casually flipping the 1 Euro coin with my right hand and my little earth / snow globe in the left hand. My daughter meets me in the lobby. She asks me for a 1-Euro coin for the bubble gum machine (the gum balls look just like the balls from the ball bath). I only have the Euro the Italian woman gave to me, which I am reluctant to relinquish as it feels like a personal talisman, but then pull myself together and give her the coin. She gets three gum balls, one blue, one red, one yellow. It turns out every one of them hides a 1-Euro coin, one Finnish, one Greek, one German.

Of course, my daughter wants the snow globe also. We agree to share it and choose a special place for it in the living room. I leave the theatre with a deep sense of serenity and ease (My real life is in quite a Tohuwabohu right now).

I would appreciate your comments and thoughts regarding the dream and / or reading.


Many Thanks,

jd

 

[dfreed]

DREAM

Thanks for sharing. Just to clarify, you're asking us to interpret / comment on your dream, and not a Yi casting, correct? Thanks.

 

[Hartloper]

Hi dfreed,

Thanks for your response

I guess, both, if anyone feels inclined to. Might be a little out of line. I just felt moved to post it here, because it was the first time the "Yi Jing" or "I Ging" (German transliteration) specifically appeared in a dream of mine, and I have just started engaging in the shared reading section here after following the forum for some time.

Also, I don't quite get the meaning of the inscription "EAST" inside the little earth / snow ball. It could point to "eastern wisdom" in general, but that doesn't click for me. I know about the meaning of "Northeast" and "Southwest" in Yi castings, but was wondering whether the trigrams are associated with specific compass directions.

I'm not just interested in "what it means", but about getting a more comprehensive grasp of the experience the dream bestowed and in what direction it might be guiding me. I was hoping for a little exchange of ideas. Might be the wrong place for that. But who knows who might do a search for Hexagram 16.4. > 2 some day and maybe find this thread helpful.

I know some contributors here have been mentioning the Tarot as an additional divinatory tool.

Kind of a neat coincidence the dream featured Arcanum No.16 in the Tarot and I got Hexagram 16 in response to my inquiry about posting it here.

Jodorowsky's take on "The Tower" / "La Maison Dieu" (Jodorowsky/Camoin version of Marseille Tarot) is mostly positive as opposed to the more widespread moralistic interpretation based on the Rider-Waite imagery: the joy and enthusiasm of breaking out of constricting belief systems or getting them shattered by "divine intervention".

There's always two sides to a coin. You can either look at the perceived shattering of your life as just that: a devastation and shattering - or embrace it as an opening towards something entirely new, which might thoroughly change the course of your life.

I believe, I'm in the epicenter of that experience right now with "my coin" wildly flipping from one side to the other between "shattering of the old" and "joy of opening towards the new". If that makes sense.

And I'd be thankful for any ideas and insights regarding the opening the dream seems to be guiding me towards. I would believe it is represented by that little earth globe / chakra ball with its inscription "I Ging -- EAST", which I ended up taking into our living room in the dream.

Would be grateful for any response, but am content with just sharing the dream also, for what it's worth.


Many thanks,

jd

 

[dfreed]

DREAM - I go to a public screening of a film I recently created with my 9-year old daughter ....

A few thoughts:

One option for you would be to do a reading about your actual dream (and not just a reading about the outcome of posting your dream on this forum). You could post this to Shared Readings if you want people's interpretations and ideas.

Here's an example where I did a reading on a dream I had (though it's within a thread that's more broadly about our 'experience regarding dreams').

I think that doing readings about our dreams can yield interesting and insightful results; I've even done this with dreams I hardly remember or only have remember snippets of.

About some specific parts of your dream:

I Ging -- East.

One traditional association for trigram Thunder is with the direct East, and also with early morning and the beginning of the new year - early Spring in the traditional Chinese reckoning. So, perhaps this is a 'sign' pointing you in a new direction - to the potential for a new or fresh way of seeing and being.

The Tower

I know very little about Tarot. However, Bradford Hatcher's "Tarot as a Counseling Language" webpage gives some ideas about the Tower which I found interesting:

​

One of his associations - or 'correspondences' with this card is with trigram Thunder.​

​

Also, I gleaned from his take on this card a sense of the meanings for, and 'definitions' of:​

​

The convergent or Thunder-like, and the divergent or Wind-like paths or ways of being for: Thunder is sudden and forceful, whereas Wind is more gentle and long-lasting, (With trigram Thunder and Wind being the opposite of each other, with all of their solid and broken lines switched)​

Though not really 'opposites', this reminds me of the 'paths' your daughter and you took in the dream: you each decided to do different things, but in the end you came back together to share coins and snow globes - and you leave together and you "leave the theatre with a deep sense of serenity and ease".

For me, all of the trigrams - as well as the hexagrams, etc. - have both positive and negative (balanced / unbalanced; opportune / challenging, etc.) aspects to them, though in your dream I sense more of the 'positive' aspects. On another Tarot website, I read these ideas associated with the 'thunder-lightning' aspect of this card, and not so much the Tower:

​

* Lightning breaks existing templates to create opportunities for new things (Me: perhaps new ways of thinking and perceiving).​

​

* Lightning as a sudden feeling of inspiration that breaks through ignorance.​

​

* Sudden changes of perception that can (might) ... turn all of our previous thoughts upside down.​

​

* 'Unbalanced' thunder arouses anxiety (e.g. thunder, broken boulders) – which is not welcomed by those who does not like change.​

​

* Sudden change might sometimes feels that it is happening too fast and suddenly.​

Best, D

 

[Trojina]

First step for me when wanting to understand a dream is to locate where in your current waking life you feel/have felt the feelings in the dream.

There doesn't seem to be many feelings/reports of feelings in the dream? Will reread to see if I missed those.

 

[dfreed]

First step for me when wanting to understand a dream is to locate where in your current waking life you feel/have felt the feelings in the dream.

Similarly, I will try to sense how I feel upon waking - how did I feel in the dream and/or upon waking, how do I feel when I think about this dream? I've had dreams where they seemed joyful - at least when I thought about them - but revealed other aspects when I recalled how I felt in the dream - or how it made me feel afterwards.

Best, D.

 

[Liselle]

Another thing I noticed was how you thought the coin was special and shouldn't be used in a gumball machine, but then you changed your mind.

This is probably silly, but it's something that occasionally comes up here and it reminds me of something Hilary has addressed from time to time. Is there any way in which you feel you have to use a lot of ritual with your divination practices? That is perfectly fine, a lot of people find it helpful, but if anything you do along those lines feels like it gets in the way, or you're doing it because it's "a rule" or something - it's okay to stop, just like it was okay to buy a gumball with the coin.

 

[Liselle]

If none of that applies, obviously ignore... that's why I said it was probably silly.

 

[Hartloper]

Thanks a lot for your replies, Liselle, dfreed and Trojina, greatly appreciated

I‘ll look into them more over the weekend. Would just like to share that I went pumpkin shopping today, because my daughter really wanted to carve one for Halloween, and when I got a random Euro coin from my wallet to put it into the shopping cart I noticed it was an Italian one! I live in Northern Europe, so it is a rather striking coincidence (and the other ones I had in my wallet turned out to be a Greek and a German one, just like in the dream, only missing the Finnish one — I swear I‘m not making this up)

 

[Hartloper]

First step for me when wanting to understand a dream is to locate where in your current waking life you feel/have felt the feelings in the dream.

There doesn't seem to be many feelings/reports of feelings in the dream? Will reread to see if I missed those.

Hi Trojina,

I was musing about that "feeling tone" of the dream last night. Then I fell asleep and actually found myself sitting next to that Italian woman in the movie theatre again and looked at the little earth globe with the sigil and "I Ging - EAST" inscription. The Latin lettering turned into Hexagram 24.

(BTW, my waking life situation couldn't be much more out of order right now and when I recently asked the Yi Jing about that: "What's my current situation?" it answered with Hexagram 23UC)

My daughter and I actually did "make a movie" in waking life. Its somewhat of a cineastic collage around the old church building where my maternal grandmother and her parents grew up. For my daughter it was just a fun experience, for me it had a deeper layer of meaning related to transgenerational healing.

with gratitude,

jd

 

[Hartloper]

Another thing I noticed was how you thought the coin was special and shouldn't be used in a gumball machine, but then you changed your mind.

This is probably silly, but it's something that occasionally comes up here and it reminds me of something Hilary has addressed from time to time. Is there any way in which you feel you have to use a lot of ritual with your divination practices? That is perfectly fine, a lot of people find it helpful, but if anything you do along those lines feels like it gets in the way, or you're doing it because it's "a rule" or something - it's okay to stop, just like it was okay to buy a gumball with the coin.

Hi Liselle,

thanks for your response. I certainly don't think it's silly. I didn't see a connection to the dream at first, but it does make perfect sense when you consider the three coins (--> coin tossing! -- which I have never used, btw)

best,

jd

 

[Hartloper]

A few thoughts:

One option for you would be to do a reading about your actual dream (and not just a reading about the outcome of posting your dream on this forum). You could post this to Shared Readings if you want people's interpretations and ideas.

Here's an example where I did a reading on a dream I had (though it's within a thread that's more broadly about our 'experience regarding dreams').

I think that doing readings about our dreams can yield interesting and insightful results; I've even done this with dreams I hardly remember or only have remember snippets of.

About some specific parts of your dream:


One traditional association for trigram Thunder is with the direct East, and also with early morning and the beginning of the new year - early Spring in the traditional Chinese reckoning. So, perhaps this is a 'sign' pointing you in a new direction - to the potential for a new or fresh way of seeing and being.


I know very little about Tarot. However, Bradford Hatcher's "Tarot as a Counseling Language" webpage gives some ideas about the Tower which I found interesting:

​

One of his associations - or 'correspondences' with this card is with trigram Thunder.​

​

Also, I gleaned from his take on this card a sense of the meanings for, and 'definitions' of:​

​

The convergent or Thunder-like, and the divergent or Wind-like paths or ways of being for: Thunder is sudden and forceful, whereas Wind is more gentle and long-lasting, (With trigram Thunder and Wind being the opposite of each other, with all of their solid and broken lines switched)​

Though not really 'opposites', this reminds me of the 'paths' your daughter and you took in the dream: you each decided to do different things, but in the end you came back together to share coins and snow globes - and you leave together and you "leave the theatre with a deep sense of serenity and ease".

For me, all of the trigrams - as well as the hexagrams, etc. - have both positive and negative (balanced / unbalanced; opportune / challenging, etc.) aspects to them, though in your dream I sense more of the 'positive' aspects. On another Tarot website, I read these ideas associated with the 'thunder-lightning' aspect of this card, and not so much the Tower:

​

* Lightning breaks existing templates to create opportunities for new things (Me: perhaps new ways of thinking and perceiving).​

​

* Lightning as a sudden feeling of inspiration that breaks through ignorance.​

​

* Sudden changes of perception that can (might) ... turn all of our previous thoughts upside down.​

​

* 'Unbalanced' thunder arouses anxiety (e.g. thunder, broken boulders) – which is not welcomed by those who does not like change.​

​

* Sudden change might sometimes feels that it is happening too fast and suddenly.​

Best, D

Hi dfreed,

thanks for taking the time to share this valuable information.

The link to the thread about using Yi Jing for dream interpretation is super interesting! I will try that.

And what you say about "thunder" and its relation to both the cardinal direction "east" and the Tarot Tower makes perfect sense to me.

I also found this quote about zhen/thunder (it's from Harmen Mesker's site I believe):

"5. God comes forth in the sign of the Arousing. All living things come forth in the sign of the Arousing. The Arousing stands in the east."

In the Rider-Waite Tarot a thunder bolt hits the The Tower and blows of its top. Personally, I associate The Tower more with the joy of "Leaving the Ivory Tower" (which I find more aptly expressed in the decks based on the older Marseille Tarot).

I was trained as an academic philosopher, but felt suffocated by books and footnotes at some point. I ran as far as I could from academics, but I might have been carrying that Ivory Tower with me in the 15 years since.

I believe The Tower has also been associated with the body (as a temple).

Best, jd

 

[dfreed]

"5. God comes forth in the sign of the Arousing. All living things come forth in the sign of the Arousing. The Arousing stands in the east."

This is from the Shougua, eight part or 'wing' of the Ten Wings commentary; this one is sometimes referred to as "Explanation of the Hexagrams and Trigrams". This line is one of many explaining the meanings and relationships between the trigrams.

For example, it also says "Thus God" (or the creative, or the Dao, etc.) ....
"manifests in Li (trigram light)
"gladdens in Dui (trigram lake)" ... and so forth.

an academic philosopher

Not being an academic, nor a Tarot reader myself, and remembering that this is your dream - and not mine - one thing that strikes me is the idea that your daughter went off on her own, but then you two came back together. It made me wonder, if this is a new phase in your relationship - a sign of her increasing independence, and a sign you're okay with it? It brings to mind the idea of the young princess being freed from an (or her) ivory tower. But that's just me ruminating some about your dream.

Best, d

 

[Hartloper]

Well, yes, it suits her age also She has become much more independent. Just proposed reading fairy tales to me before bed (instead of me reading to her). The first one she chose herself last night happened to be Rapunzel.

The girl locked up in a tower, but she gets freed by a prince, an influence outside the parental dominion

best, jd

P.S.: I see there is still a lot to learn for me regarding the Yi. I know hardly anything about the traditional commentaries.

 

[Hartloper]

btw, I feel a little more locked up in my head again after a strong sense of opening towards some kind of broader consciousness, but that serendipitous magic did continue all day:

I got 4 euro coins as change over the course of the day: one German, two Italian, one Greek. What are the odds?

 

[Hartloper]

Another thing I noticed was how you thought the coin was special and shouldn't be used in a gumball machine, but then you changed your mind.

This is probably silly, but it's something that occasionally comes up here and it reminds me of something Hilary has addressed from time to time. Is there any way in which you feel you have to use a lot of ritual with your divination practices? That is perfectly fine, a lot of people find it helpful, but if anything you do along those lines feels like it gets in the way, or you're doing it because it's "a rule" or something - it's okay to stop, just like it was okay to buy a gumball with the coin.

Hi again Liselle,

As I mentioned I had trouble to relate to what you said about "using too much ritual in divination practice". It got me musing. And I realized I do have a method. It's quicker than tossing coins and builds the hexagrams in the same way. But it requires me to be online. When there is no wifi or mobile internet I cannot do a cast. I want to change that.

This morning I woke up with a sore right foot and feeling of "detachment from the source".

For the first time I used three coins for tossing (offline) and asked:

"What is my right foot trying to tell me?"

I received Hexagram 12.3 > 33

"they bear shame"

There was a second part to my dream. It started with my escape from a situation I found impossible to bear emotionally. I excused myself to the bathroom even though I sensed no urge to pass water. Then I got confused, because instead of identifiable gender signs, there were two doors, one very very narrow on the left (almost a vertical line) and a wide open circular one on the right (with a revolving ring).

Both doors showed hexagrams made of the trigrams for "heaven" and "earth". The one on the left had heaven on top and earth at the bottom. So that would make Hex 12.

I felt more inclined towards the right, but as a man I thought it was my duty to choose the left and I felt shame at the thought of involuntarily intruding into women's space (in the dream I reasoned Hex 12 was for gents). I ended up pressing my body through the narrow slit and even felt proud of my 'manly" deed and bruises on my body. Now, if anything, that's SILLY!

I don't know, maybe my first offline coin toss is a hint to retreat from sharing too much here.

I do feel comfortable to share this much though and paradoxically feel that receiving Hex 12 here is part of the current serendipitous flow (that would be Hex 11, the bathroom on the right), which has me receive the coins from my dream as change in the outer world.

I might be wrong.

Thanks for your inspiration,

jd

p.s.: after writing this my foot feels better again, as if some tension is released

 

[Hartloper]

RESTORING THE ANCESTRAL TEMPLE

After that last post I felt that shame. How did I get from 16.4. > 2 to 12.3.>33 that quick and then did not get the message? Retreat!

The reason why I am adding another post here is that I simply do not want this thread to end with shame.

I realize we are all mostly just total strangers to each other here.

Trojina asked me for feeling tones in the original dream. I felt proud that my and my daughter's movie was shown in a public screening and when the Italian woman next to me gave me the little globe with the Yi Jing inscription I instantly knew it was all that mattered. I felt no further need to walk up to the podium and be recognized as the creator of the movie anymore.

I dreamed the dream a third time (never happened to me before).

To make a long story short. It turned out the "shame" is not mine. It belongs to my ancestors and parents. And the question is how do I tread in their footsteps without unconsciously emulating that shame.

I was named after my grandfathers. One was a coal miner whose nickname was "the philosopher", because he read books and pondered the meaning of life, the other one was a sales manager, but also an avid reader and amateur storyteller. Both lived in shame for not having lived up to their potential and suffered greatly in their love life. I am 43 now and I have been trained as an academic philosopher and worked as a sales manager till I became a ghostwriter for machines. I don't want to live a ghost life anymore.

My life fell completely apart in the wake of the pandemic, just reduced to the core of taking care of my daughter, putting food on the table etc. But I am slowly feeling this crisis is a chance to rebuild better and more genuine and true to the core of my being.

What I did today was carve a large pumpkin together with my daughter (she carved her own). Again, for her it was a fun experience (she could share with her best friend from school), for me it had a deeper layer of meaning: the restoration of the Ancestral Temple.

I cleaned the pumpkin with salt and carved 14 little alcoves for everyone of my fourteen progenitors up to my great-grandparents. Then I put a little sweet in each one of them and lit a candle on either side of my ancestry, maternal and paternal. I sat on the balcony with the pumpkin for a while after bringing my daughter to bed. It was a very special moment. The wind seemed to be caressing the plane tree in front of our apartment building.

It's meant as a poetic act. The unconscious believes in art and poetry and I am convinced such "folly" can nonetheless catalyze deep change and beneficial effects.

It's somewhat of a culmination of doing deep family research over the past 2 or 3 years and suffering "in the shoes of my ancestors":

As to the second part of the dream: I got out the "Hexagram 12 lavatory" by accepting my hurt and feeling of shame and ceasing futile mind games (over-analyzation). It enabled me to reconnect with the people in the artsy café I had been visiting in the second part of the dream.

The name of the café in the dream was "CANDIDLY".

All other visitors used the lavatory with Hexagram 11 as gender sign. And in the end the wall between the two was broken down and the "Hexagram 12 lavatory" became the room where one could stop to look into the mirror and fix one's appearance before delving into what had turned into a large hammam or roman bath with "the Flow People" (Hexagram 11).

I started this thread, so now it was important for me to pull through also and move beyond "shame" before retreating and fixing my life on planet earth.

I thank everyone who read this far for their attention and time. I can't say whether its the most balanced thing to do. But I really just had to get it all out there.

And suddenly there is a strong sense of purpose and guidance.

Really thankful for your comments, Trojina, Liselle and dfreed. I believe they were great catalysts.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN TO EVERYBODY!

 

[Hartloper]

First step for me when wanting to understand a dream is to locate where in your current waking life you feel/have felt the feelings in the dream.

There doesn't seem to be many feelings/reports of feelings in the dream? Will reread to see if I missed those.

Felt like adding this much more:

Trojina, your question made me realize the only time I felt as one with my myself as I felt in the dream when being handed the little magical earth globe was when I spent two weeks with an American family friend close to the Canadian border. I had just turned 21 (more than 20 years ago). He introduced me to a vibrant artist scene. I wrote poetry every day and just radiated energy.

Only now do I realize it was also a visit to the area where I was conceived, and it suddenly strikes me I am most probably the only one in my entire ancestry who was conceived outside Europe (might account for my always feeling like an alien).

So after all this research devoted to the family tree (the movie of ancestral memories in the dream), it seems like my unconscious is telling me to divert my attention elsewhere.

And it so happens the copy of the Yi Jing I am still using is from a used book store I visited with this family friend, poet and vagabond back then.

For me it raises the question of who I am beyond my bloodline.

What makes a human being unique beyond being a mere "offspring" in a family tree?

Just putting this here in case it strikes a chord for someone.

Time for a radical change of perspective, it seems.

love,

jd