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Steady as she goes?

sugarlobster

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hi all,

first of all, thank you SO much for all the wonderful insights - been browing through past threads and have learned a couple of things - at least!

in the light of such enlightenment
happy.gif
could i possibly ask you to comment on recent questions i've asked about - wanna bet? - a relationship.

i met this person about a year ago in fairly unusual circumstances - the connection was immediate and very intense. boy did i get 51s, 49s, 44s and 31s at the time!

we have a very loose relationship, seeing each other sporadically. every encounter is exciting and wonderful, but there is never talk of 'where we're at' or 'where this is going'. it just doesn't seem right to wonder about that. we are both the kind of people who prefer to watch the tao dance.

but of course, i *do* wonder ;) - what's a girl to do?

of the two, he's the more reticent to increase the frequency of our meetings - so i've been following the flow, pushing when he engages and yielding when he doesn't. trying to just enjoy the dance, which i manage to do splendidly - most of the time.

i think partly the reason for his reticence is that he was breaking up with his then girlfriend when i met him, it has been a long-drawn painful process and right now he's in no position to get seriously involved again.

what i would really want to know is whether this is indeed a very special relationship, in whatever form, for *both* of us, and the likelyhood that at some stage it will progress beyond this cycle of 'now you see me, now you don't'.

i've been asking the i ching about this and here are the answers:

why is he keeping me at arm's length?
50 lines 4 & 6 / 46

i feel strongly that this relationship has a strong potential for love, intimacy and commitment. Would you comment/advice on that?
53 line 3 / 20

what can i expect from this relationship?
35 lines 1,2,5 / 10

what can you tell me about the nature of his feelings for me?
43 line 6 / 01

will i get my man in the end? (i know, i know...)
32 line 6 / 50


today, in an attempt to get 'the bigger picture', i asked for

an image of how he relates to me
31 lines 1,6 / 13

how i relate to him
22

how i *should* relate to him in order to further the relationship
35 line 2 / 64

i know it's a lot in one go, i apologize for barging in like this. just feel free to ignore whatever you don't wish to comment on, but i would really appreciate your feedback immensely, and hope that you will send a bit of your generosity my way and share some insights....

love,
sugar lobster
 

davidl

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I personally feel that you have asked too many questions, and some like, "will I get my man in the end" are a bit scarey. I sense that you are unwittingly manufacturing pressure or urgency . The answers that you received seem in general to be quite good in terms of the future, but it would be sad to change that by forcing resolutions when in your own mind you know that this is not the way to go. My advice is start listening to yourself and drop the attempts at manipulation via the Yi, all your answers are lying in front of you in the first paragraph of your post. Sorry if this seems harsh, but I do wish you the best for the future of your relationship.
 

sugarlobster

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hi david,
thanks for your comments. you're right, i think i do know what the answers are, but sometimes doubt creeps in and i turn to the yi for reassurance - which as you kindly suggest is not the best way to approach it.
love,
sugarlobster
 

malka

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Sugar Lobster,

Speaking from personal experience, I understand that place of you that needs and wants to know more. I've been there myself and I'm likely to be there again. For the moment, I have the gift of seeing this kind of situation from the outside looking in. It is helpful for me to view your situation, and perhaps I can be helpful to you also. If not, please feel free to disregards entirely.

Your description of the relationship dynamics together with 53 > 20 seem to say so much. At best, it sounds like this will be a very slow growing relaitonship. This does not negate that there is likely a genuine interest in each other. But timming and personal baggage by one or both people are part of the dynamic also that we can't ignore. It sounds clearly like he isn't ready for anything more than what you have. It isn't about you or the potential between you. It's about the whole story that includes the potential, but also includes his history (and yours!)

I hear that you've been enjoying the dance between you, and that's great. It sounds like you might be coming to the end of your capacity to enjoy it just for what it is. I invite you to listen closely about what you already know. Can you authentically continue to have no committment, not know when you're going to get together, not spend more time togeher, and just basicaslly continue to be around when he's in the mood? If you can, without any attachment to what it means, or to outcomes, then enjoy and be well. But if (as I suspect, or you wouldn't be consulting Yi) that you have reached your limit, then honor yourself by pulling away from this scenario now.

There is the potential that you are his transition woman, someone who brings him some joy and comfort, reminds him that he is a desireable man, etc. But as much as he may like you he may not be willing or able to put down roots with you. If you are truly following the dance of the tao then there must be room for this possibility. If you are okay with this, genuinely okay in your heart - then continue to enjoy the moments with him as they arise, and continue to live a full life outside of him (including pursuing other men.) If this potential isn't acceptable to you, then you owe it to yourself to pull away from him now.

You are contemplating this relationship, and you are being comtemplated. Be honest in this process.

I wish you well.

Malka
 

willow

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I would gently disagree that it?s too many questions in your case. Of course there is a way to ask too many questions ? usually involving resisting an answer or denying something you already know. And sometimes you need to stop just because you can?t sustain the connection any longer, you?re no longer in dialogue with the Yi, but just stumbling around nervously with some coins or marbles or sticks. But other times it can be like looking at a sculpture from many angles ? each perspective giving you deeper insight into the full nature of the whole. Here, the ?sculpture? you?re looking at is the two of you, ?caught in slow motion.? Makes sense to me.

Some thoughts:
why is he keeping me at arm's length?
50 lines 4 & 6 / 46
the relationship is a container ? he?s using it to grow something, something that needs to grow step by step (difference between images of L4 and L6 ? he?s not sure what he?s got growing; perhaps that?s why he feels he has to keep growing it this way)


i feel strongly that this relationship has a strong potential for love, intimacy and
commitment. Would you comment/advice on that?
53 line 3 / 20
well, you got the idea of gradual progress from 46, but now consider it in more detail. If the ritual container is the open, intermittent dance, what is the thread of continuity? What is it you?re hanging the gradual progress on, and what type of relationship can that thread carry? L3 suggests that might not be a conventional in-the-world partnership, but changing to 20, I?d argue that this wouldn?t rule out the ?potential for love, intimacy and commitment.? By its very nature of continuing, however interrupted or surreptitious, it IS a love, an intimacy, a commitment. Contemplate, ?view? what it?s ?everyday small events? are. Although it may not be giving you the love, intimacy, commitment you expect, is it nevertheless teaching you something about these things, about yourself?


what can i expect from this relationship?
35 lines 1,2,5 / 10
oh, maybe it will teach you something about conduct. As you say, right now, it?s about watching the tao dance, both showing up, but not asking anything of each other beyond your acceptance and delight in each other as partners in the dance. Well, in 10, there?s the white tiger, the tao, and here you are on the path of the tiger, learning how to conduct yourself well in that dance. That 35, progress, can be seen as either a sun rising into the midheaven, or an eclipse taking place there. Either way, it?s a great thing. I think the Yi is commenting that this relationship is / can be a remarkable thing, a great blessing, no matter what the ?outcome?. Honor it as something big ? spiritually big. Don?t let the trappings or outcome (or even fleetingness) of it fool you into thinking otherwise.

what can you tell me about the nature of his feelings for me?
43 line 6 / 01
?the speaking staff? or breakthrough. LiSe says, ?Speaking out one?s conviction, or holding up one's dignity, can be a dangerous venture, but it is necessary for a clean and healthy heart ? and it may also benefit the rest of the world.? Here, it is very possible that Malka is right, you?re a transitional person. Or maybe not. In any event, I think it?s saying that by pursuing the connection with you, he?s been able to break through to his own truth, speak his own heart, enter into relationship with his own voice and creativity (#1). The pitfall of course (L6) is that if this ?goes to his head,? if he begins to think that his essential creative voice is the voice of his ego (instead of the creative voice of the universe passing through his unique expression!), then, well, it takes him out of the dance. He ends up just another coulda-been partner in love with (blinded by) his own power to feel.

will i get my man in the end? (i know, i know...)
32 line 6 / 50
duration, a new container. This isn?t a scary-prediction question at all if you recall that the Yi is as playful as it is direct. You can take this response as speaking about the particular man in question, or you can take it as answering about some ultimate ?my man? (the partner you deserve). ?In the end? is the stress of the question, I?d say. The counsel is duration, or ?steady the helm of the heart,? as I see you clearly get from your topic title. Again, as in the last, you have a L6 change, cautioning you. Here it cautions you about ?restlessness? about allowing your heart to be guided by less than ultimate things.

I can?t quite point in the text to why I say this, but it feels important to me to remind you that steadiness is not the same as never changing. The focus you have on the dance of tao seems to me to be an ultimate thing, but like the constantly paired thunder and wind (gentleness within and movement without), your ongoing relationship with this man, this particular dance, is always changing. It can easily change to another form of relationship; it can also easily dance on to a (perhaps painful) point where it is no more. But so long as you remain true to the dancing, you and your partner will make the changes in a way that (in the end) brings you to your man. Whoever he is, whenever he arrives, what ever form he takes, you could not be his partner if you?d forgotten how to dance.

Joanna Macy, in her memoir, Widening Circles, tells the story of an affair that took place in her Peace Corps days. On the eve of a transfer to a new country, she was in despair over the fact that she would never again see her magnificent soulmate, marvelous dance partner in love for the past 6 months. She has a dream in which a windswept Tibetan woman appears and tells her, ?It is an honor and a blessing to be granted so great a love. Only in strength are you worthy of this honor, only in strength can you receive its blessing. Let this love blow through you line the high Asian wind blows through me; can you feel it? You have this strength, because it is mine.?

She goes on to describe the leave-taking, saying, ?We stayed strong-hearted to the end,? and finally tells of his response when she said, ?and no more mad passionate affairs.? Her lover was aghast, she says, and exclaimed, ?Don?t say that! What a frightful prospect! You?ll make a dreadfully dull scholar. For sheer momentum, you, of all people, need to love with all you have and all you are. It?s like riding a bicycle; you need the momentum to stay in balance.? (Widening Circles, pp 121,122)

an image of how he relates to me
31 lines 1,6 / 13
influence, wooing?yes, even if it?s got this ?no strings? form, he probably does think of himself as wooing you. It changes to fellowship, not exactly the image of wedding bells? But this is an answer to what he sees, not necessarily what will happen. The key thing that makes wooing possible is to have at the same time a sense of self and a sense of relationship. In the language of 31, (LiSe), ?The trigrams say so: inside the mountain, which is you as autonomous individual, and outside the lake, the exchange. The contact can only be real and good if your individuality is the base of it.? It may be that he is just beginning to understand this. He is perhaps dancing with you with respect and attention to his individuality, to yours, and to the relationship also. Or, ?no strings? could just be his way of keeping this respect and insight at arms-length from himself. I don?t know. But in either case (he sees at last what ground every true relationship is built on (from the most intimate to the least intimate), or he willfully keeps himself from seeing the same), what it?s going to look like to him is ?fellowship with men.? Why? Fellowship is the moment when all recognize their commonality. The Yi seems to be suggesting that, by courting you, he is dancing on the edge of understanding what makes every human relationship work. Where will he go with that, I don?t know. Sadly, these days, it seems like the middle ground of places TO go with it hardly exists. The options are so polarized ? go on to committed lovers, or go your separate ways.

how i relate to him
22
grace, adornment, blossoming out? Notice that fellowship (13) is fire under heaven, and the way you relate to him is fire under mountain? both a joyful blazing up of life, into different contexts. A flower is grace ? it is a fabulous surrender to change, the green fuse that drives the flower, the ugly duckling becoming the swan by surrendering to the power of it?s own essence?trusting to the flow. You trust, you dance. Occasionally you wonder why, or what is happening, then you go back to dancing. Even in consulting the Yi, you produce a flowering, a delightful profusion of questions and answers. The cautions of 22 are that flowers, adornments, aren?t whole plants. They?re expressions of ongoing structures, not ongoing structures themselves. But how necessary they are, both for beauty, and for propagation. I like LiSe the best here too, as she notes that adornment is an expression of inherent health. The way you relate to him in no way attempts to control or change him, it simply expresses you, your inherent health. Recently, a friend of mine was talking about listening to a mountain stream for an afternoon, and trying to figure out exactly ?where? the water made its music. ?I finally decided that it?s where two parts of water that were separated come back together. It makes music where it returns to itself.? Expressing its inherent health.

how i *should* relate to him in order to further the relationship
35 line 2 / 64
well, ok?in every multiple question session one always eventually comes down to, ?C?mon, Yi, can you just tell me what to DO!? If it?s been a good session, when you get to this question you can truly say, ?Established in being, perform action.? 35, that sun at midday, comes back. Changing to before completion. I look at that here at the end of this list of questions, and that?s what comes to mind for me. ?Established in being, perform action.? Or the cliché, ?Be the change that you want to see.? The L2 reminds you again to go deep. Feelings, intuitions, even sadness and regrets, will guide you. Your ancestress. What would Woman do?

All of this seems to me to add up to what Malka said so well.

Willow
 

malka

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Willow, thank you for the lovely Joanna Macy piece. I hadn't read that. But it does remind me of a scene from the Ram Daas film, Firece Grace. A young woman speaks about the untimely death of her soulmate, and her struggles with letting go. Finally she has a dream about him where he tells her she'll meet another love. She refutes this, telling him it's his love she wants. He replies that in her new love, he'll be there.

Relationships do not end when we stop being physically together with the person. They continue un our hearts, they influence us, they make us who we've become, and prepare us for the next relationship we'll enjoy.

Willow, you write about Yi so beautifully. The next time I need relationship assistance I want your help!

Sugar Lobster, I wish you well on this journey, and I hope you'll let us know how things go.

Blessings,
Malka
 

willow

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Thank you Malka. That whole book, Joanna Macy is dropping little things that feel true in your bones, that you remember yourself discovering one time too, but you've been surrounded by a culture that insists it's not true, or not important. I found it full of things I'd spent a lot of time and energy pretending I'd forgotten or never learned.
 

sugarlobster

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willow!

wow, what a privilege to read your beautiful comments, thank you so much for taking the time and interest to write that. i'm really grateful.

what you say has given me an amazing insight into what's going on, in many cases just putting into words -so beautifully!- what i already 'knew' - which i guess is a tribute both to the yi and to
your ability to interpret it.

you're right, i'm learning conduct - it has raised my awareness of how to dance with the tao to a level of consciousness i never had before, and that is one of the greatest pleasures i get form this relationship - other than the more usual ones ;) - and my trust in the flow has expanded from this area of affects and relationships to my wider relationship with everything/everyone else, with the most wonderful results in all areas of my life.

in that sense, i will be ever grateful to this man for what he has done for me -perhaps unwittingly- and will always love him for that, in a generic, unconditional kind of way, whatever comes to be between us. i know that even if i never saw him again, this indeed is something big -spiritually big, as you put it so well- for me, and indeed i do honour it as such. and whatever he needs to grow through his relationship with me, and whatever breakthrough it might afford him, i can only wish that he will achieve it, with or without me.

i found your comment that he probably thinks he's the one wooing me rather funny. while i'm the one
who's doing the calling, now that you mention it he probably sees it as him 'leading from behind', being as he is a very committed -and successful- wu-wei kinda chap! which is wonderful, really, because paradoxically it would mean we both have a sense that we're somehow 'in control' - and i mean it in a very positive way.

your comment about 22 i found very reassuring. in a sense, what i was trying to find out there is whether i was relating to him in a destructive or in a constructive way - either for me or for him. the answer, as you interpret it, reminds me that this for me has been -is, will be?-, with all its shortcomings, a very healing relationship, and i'm glad that the yi seems to be of the opinion that i am expressing that new-found health and joy in the way i relate to him. it has indeed 'made me return to myself' and i have found great joy in that. such a great image, the sound of water! the joy of the flow indeed...

also reminded me of something a good friend of mine, who's a tarot reader, told me once: sometimes we see the world through a dirty window: we can't see clearly what's really out there and we misinterpret, make wrong assumptions, our actions are based on clouded vision. the tarot can tell you if your window is dirty or clean.

i do hope my window is clean ;) your comments have helped me understand many of the complexities of this relationship better, and i certainly would never just assume that we will end up being a committed long-term couple. as you say, there are many options between the polarities of 'on' or 'off'. and maybe there will be pain, but it will be part of the yin and yang of it all.

but beyond the nature of the relationship's logistics, so to speak, your interpretation seems to confirm my feeling that as long as i remember that the ultimate outcome is always and ever the dance itself, and the growing wisdom of the dancer(s), then this relationship is a blessing and i must cherish it as such. 'what would Woman do?' i'll think about that one!!

thanks again for your comments. you have a wonderful gift, and you put things so clearly and beautifully - i only wish i could get to understand the yi like you do - maybe some day! with patience, and perseverance ;)

much love to you, willow
xx sugar lobster
 

sugarlobster

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dear malka,

a huge thanks for your feedback. all things considered, you may very well be right, and i might be a transitional woman for him. then again i might not, but reading your comments and those of willow has made me realise again -made me remember?- that whether it ultimately grows into something deeper or not is not really the important thing for me right now, although it is sometimes hard to keep that at the centre of my awareness.

in fact, what it will become never is the most important thing. what's important is what i'm learning and experiencing through this relationship 'being', whatever it is, here and now. we are all in transition from one thing to another, always. and reading through your post made me realise that, absolutely, for now i can go on enjoying the dance, learning, changing, letting go of outcomes or particular manifestations or 'shapes' of the relationship.

your post was very helpful and it made me ask some important questions. i've asked myself why would i stay with this dance? and the answer is because it makes me grow. it heals me, teaches me about myself and the way i engage with my feelings, with loving and being loved, desiring and being desired, with another person's boundaries, with my own, with the excitement and fear of being alive. it makes me feel powerful in the best possible way - connected to the world and the universal energy, humble yet playful, trusting and open to whatever may be.

and why would i stop dancing? out of fear of a future outcome that is not, right now, the outcome i think i would prefer. fear of the pain it might cause me if i go in too far and then it all disappears? or fear that focusing on this relationship might stop me from having a 'better'
one? well, fear is never a good counsellor. i'm not closing myself off to other relationship opportunities - i think -no, i positively know!!- i'm more open to that now than i ever was before i met this man. and in this relationship as it is now, i don't feel abused, or used, or treated with disrespect, or anything of the sort. quite the contrary. it just has a very particular, or
non-traditional nature to it, and is more intermittent than i would like it to be.

it is what it is. we are what we are. what will be, will be. ;)

i will try to be honest with myself, always. thank you for reminding me of that. i will be aware of my boundaries, and will respect his.

again, thanks so much for your thoughts, malka, greatly appreciated.

x sugar lobster
 

willow

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thanks sugar lobster
I like that "are your windows clean?" idea. I think part of what encouraged me to respond (I've been so busy lately!) was that I got such an impression of clear dialogue from that series of questions and answers. As you'll see if you search back, I get into that multiple-question state myself, and it was not only cool to see someone else do it, but reassuring to see (I feel) you getting answered. And also, it always helps me to do interpreting. I learn so much that way. (So thank YOU, especially for pointing me to look at #22)

Willow
 

willow

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thanks sugar lobster
I like that "are your windows clean?" idea. I think part of what encouraged me to respond (I've been so busy lately!) was that I got such an impression of clear dialogue from that series of questions and answers. As you'll see if you search back, I get into that multiple-question state myself, and it was not only cool to see someone else do it, but reassuring to see (I feel) you getting answered. And also, it always helps me to do interpreting. I learn so much that way. (So thank YOU, especially for pointing me to look at #22)

Willow
 

sugarlobster

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hi willow,

yes, sometimes i get into this multiple-question mode, and it never ceases to amaze me, how the answers always build up into this wonderful dialogue, often so clear and articulate it's uncanny. i've often heard one should only ask one question, but then my feeling is, if it seems to work so well, if the yi seems so willing to engage in conversation, it can't be wrong...

love,
sugar lobster
 

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