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Tiger Bites Toddler

autumn

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The Yi has a sense of humor..

Last night as I was undressing my almost-two-year old I was horrified to see a terrible scratch on her chest. I asked her what happened and she pointed and nodded her head and said some things that I couldn't understand. Her nursery school will always notify me with an incident report if anything at all happens to her during the day, so I could not figure out what could have happened, and immediately worried someone had mistreated her. After she went to bed I asked the I-ching what had happened to my baby. The answer:

10.2.3. (13)

As soon as I saw this, I thought, oh, another baby did it. The answer is quite funny, though. The answer was about what did happen, so 13 becomes the backdrop, or setting. This happened among her peers. Hexagram 10 refers to the active elements of the context, and is about social order and behavior. (How to behave on the playground).The lines explain the dynamics of the incident.

Line 2- A lonely sage remains withdrawn from the bustle of life, treading the easy, smooth course. (I want to play alone. Don't bother me. I do not want to share my toy!)
Line 3- Another actor enters the scene and challenges the protagonist. A battle on behalf of the greater cause ensues. In the course of this worthy battle, misfortune. Treading on the tail of a tiger. The tiger bites the man. (This is my toy and I will fight you for it. The other baby scratches.)

This morning, her teacher had an incident report waiting for me that the afternoon teacher had forgotten. In fact, she had been in a fight with another baby over a toy. She didn't tell me who started the fight, though.
 

Sparhawk

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autumn said:
This morning, her teacher had an incident report waiting for me that the afternoon teacher had forgotten. In fact, she had been in a fight with another baby over a toy. She didn't tell me who started the fight, though.

Holly cow! The account is hilarious!! That goes to show the Yi is overflowing with humor.

I would get a set of three of those oversized chinese coins they sell on eBay (oversized so she cannot swallow them and choke...) and hang them on her neck. A two pronged approach to her safety: 1. she would have a chance to consult the Yi about her playmates; 2. she can swing the coins over her head and keep angry playmates at bay... :D

L
 

autumn

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sparhawk said:
A two pronged approach to her safety: 1. she would have a chance to consult the Yi about her playmates; 2. she can swing the coins over her head and keep angry playmates at bay...

LOL..:rofl:

That's a perfect idea.
 

hollis

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autumn said:
In fact, she had been in a fight with another baby over a toy. She didn't tell me who started the fight, though.

Or the toy, a little stuffed tiger!:D
 

hilary

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I imagine a playground-full of mini-tiggers! I love the 'scalability' of Yi.
 

rosada

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I love the fact that the second hexagram was 13. Fellowship with Men. Like, after working through their issues they become best friends?
 

dobro p

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autumn said:
After she went to bed I asked the I-ching what had happened to my baby. The answer:

10.2.3. (13)

The answer was about what did happen, so 13 becomes the backdrop, or setting. This happened among her peers. Hexagram 10 refers to the active elements of the context, and is about social order and behavior.

Hilary, you take the relating hexagram to be the context, don't you?
 

hilary

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Yes. But 'context' is a woolly word. Maybe 'what it's about for you' puts it best. The issue for Autumn's tiggerette would be harmony or the lack of it between people. What actually happened involved learning how close it's safe to get to the tiger in this context.
 

autumn

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Really interesting ideas! Thank you.

baby_tiger03.jpg


Looks like these two have achieved harmony again.
 

dobro p

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Cuteness in excelsis.

Hilary - are you familiar with the figure/ground idea in Gestalt? Is that how you see main and relating hexes?
 

hilary

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Ugh?
Erm, no, not in the least bit familiar. What is the figure/ground idea in Gestalt? What's Gestalt?
 

autumn

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Gestalt is German for 'whole'. It is a Psychology of perception. It studies the whole perceptive experience without de-constructing thought. It's very interesting. You know those black and white pictures where one image fades into the other? Those come from Gestalt Psychology.
 

dobro p

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Yeah, take the above picture for instance. Sometimes it looks like birds turning into fish, and sometimes it looks like fish turning into birds. Other times it looks like someone walking up a flight of stairs, but if he keeps going suddenly it looks like he's walking down a flight of stairs.

Oh sorry... wrong picture...
 

dobro p

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hilary said:
Ugh?
Erm, no, not in the least bit familiar. What is the figure/ground idea in Gestalt? What's Gestalt?

Figure's what you notice, ground is the background or context of what you notice. That's the dumb explanation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gestalt_psychology

Here's a better explanation, with fun pictures.

Anyway, I thought that your take on primary and relating hexes might be the same as Gestalt figure and ground, and I was interested in which you compared to which. But I can't do that now. Cuz you don't know about Gestalt. Pooh.
 

rosada

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I always thought the term Gestalt meant The Whole Exeprience which might be different from the particulars thus, "The funeral was meant to be very peaceful, but just as they were saying the final prayer's a fire alarm went off so the actual Gestalt was very unsettling."
 

dobro p

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You're probably right. I've never studied it. But somebody once described the figure/ground thing to me and if that's what Hilary sees as the primary/relating relationship, I'll look into it some more.
 

martin

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rosada said:
I always thought the term Gestalt meant The Whole Exeprience which might be different from the particulars thus, "The funeral was meant to be very peaceful, but just as they were saying the final prayer's a fire alarm went off so the actual Gestalt was very unsettling."

It has this meaning also in Gestalt psychology. 'Gestalt' is originally a German word that means something like 'whole'.
Generally the Gestalt, the whole that we perceive, is more than its parts, because the parts can be organized in different ways. The picture that Autumn posted illustrates this. Depending on how we organize the details we see a young woman or an old woman.
So we have two Gestalts although the parts are exactly the same. But the meaning of the parts is different in the two Gestalts.

Gestalt psychology (not to be confused with Gestalt therapy, a therapy that is partly based on the insights of Gestalt psychology) studies the laws of Gestalt formation, the principles that we use to create Gestalts.
Figure-ground is one of these laws: our perceptual Gestalts are organized in such a way that some parts are perceived as belonging to a figure or figures (foreground) while other parts are perceived as belonging to the (back)ground.

The following well known picture shows that also in this respect the whole is more than the parts, because we can 'figure-ground' the same parts in different ways. In the picture we see either two faces as the figure or a vase. What is foreground in one Gestalt is background in the other.
 
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lightofreason

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dobro said:
You're probably right. I've never studied it. But somebody once described the figure/ground thing to me and if that's what Hilary sees as the primary/relating relationship, I'll look into it some more.

The forground/background dynamic reflects issues of our consciousness being limited in it scope re meaning. See

http://members.iimetro.com.au/~lofting/myweb/wavedicho.html

The illusions of sensory paradox reflect the 'complex line drawing' that is the whole and the focusing of attention to bring a pattern into the foreground and so out of context to be interpreted as something it is not>

See comments and examples in http://members.iimetro.com.au/~lofting/myweb/paradox.html

All of this feeds into the XOR/AND dynamics etc where these paradoxes are the price we pay for high precision.
 

parasio

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Gestalt

autumn said:
Gestalt is German for 'whole'. It is a Psychology of perception. It studies the whole perceptive experience without de-constructing thought. It's very interesting. You know those black and white pictures where one image fades into the other? Those come from Gestalt Psychology.

Hi, there are many connotations of the german "Gestalt":

- build
- conformations
- design
- figure
- form
- likeness
- shape
- coherent perception

But isn't "whole" or only in the meaning: as a whole

Bye
 

autumn

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The word "whole" is a valid, though perhaps subtely incomplete, description of the fundamental perceptual phenomenon Gestalt Psychology focuses on.

http://chd.gmu.edu/immersion/knowledgebase/strategies/cognitivism/gestalt/gestalt.htm

Gestalt theory focused on the mind’s perceptive processes (Kearsley, 1998). The word "Gestalt" has no direct translation in English, but refers to "a way a thing has been gestellt ; i.e., ‘placed,’ or ‘put together’"; common translations include "form" and "shape" (EB: "Gestalt Psychology", 1999). Gaetano Kanizca refers to it as "organized structure" (Moore, Fitz, 1993). Gestalt theorists followed the basic principle that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. In other words, the whole (a picture, a car) carried a different and altogether greater meaning than its individual components (paint, canvas, brush; or tire, paint, metal, respectively). In viewing the "whole," a cognitive process takes place – the mind makes a leap from comprehending the parts to realizing the whole
 

dobro p

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martin said:
Figure-ground is one of these laws: our perceptual Gestalts are organized in such a way that some parts are perceived as belonging to a figure or figures (foreground) while other parts are perceived as belonging to the (back)ground.

Okay, so if that's the case, then which is figure and ground when you look at primary and relating hexagram? Or does the figure/ground idea not apply to your understanding of Yi hexes?
 

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It doesn't quite seem to want to fit whichever way round I look at it. The relating hexagram's a 'background', but in the sense of providing a personal context. It's often the first part of a reading someone can recognise and identify with - and from what you good people have written, that doesn't sound like 'ground'.

Maybe the 'problem' is that personal perspective and attention shifts within a reading so much. Eventually the lines would become 'figure' and the whole framework described by both hexagrams would become 'ground'.
 

RindaR

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hmm... the art of Martin Escher comes to mind also.

Rinda
 
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bruce_g

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hilary said:
It doesn't quite seem to want to fit whichever way round I look at it. The relating hexagram's a 'background', but in the sense of providing a personal context. It's often the first part of a reading someone can recognise and identify with - and from what you good people have written, that doesn't sound like 'ground'.

Maybe the 'problem' is that personal perspective and attention shifts within a reading so much. Eventually the lines would become 'figure' and the whole framework described by both hexagrams would become 'ground'.

Wonderfully said, imo. That's why I can't answer 'the relating hex. means This.'

I mostly perceive and apply it as the contextual background, but that background can also extend into the future, and I believe that's where the notion of "future hexagram" comes from. I picture a strip of carpet which is rolled out – the shown path to tread. Sometimes the path of the reading is brought to completion, the matter is resolved. Sometimes the path of the reading continues on into the not yet, and that involves our relative future. Since we perform as a player on this path, the future becomes something liquid, something we may be able to affect or change.
 
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bruce_g

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In contrast, the primary hex. represents (for me) “the story within the story”, the plot of the reading, and the playbook: showing possibilities and potentials. It gives the tools and methods you have to work with, to meet or change the future. Even 5 seconds into the future.
 

Sparhawk

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Hey, y'all!! I liked the baby's perspective on this much better. She had immediate concerns and for her "Gestalt" is another word for "Gerber"... :rofl:

L
 

martin

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dobro said:
Okay, so if that's the case, then which is figure and ground when you look at primary and relating hexagram? Or does the figure/ground idea not apply to your understanding of Yi hexes?

I always first look if the relating hexagram somehow reflects the question or what the question was about. Or more in general if it reflects the situation or state of mind of the questioner.
I think it usually does.
In this case the relating hexagram was 13 and I suppose Autumn was indeed asking 'about 13', i.e. about what had happened socially, relationally, in terms of group dynamics, union of babies :) or the lack of it, etcetera.

Not sure about figure-ground in this case. If we call 13 the 'ground' there is a problem, as Hilary pointed out. We can focus on any object (including a relating hexagram) and make that our figure. So what is figure and what is (part of the) ground at a given moment depends on us. It is not something that is 'out there', although our figure-ground configuration may be partly conditioned by what is out there. It is hard to not make a figure of loud noise, for example.

But even if we later focus on the relating hexagram, perhaps the first hexagram is still something like a 'natural' figure, an object that like the loud noise (but not because it is so noisy) invites focus?
I certainly tend to focus on the first hexagram if the relating hex indeed seems to reflect the question or the situation/state of the questioner. In that case I see it as the answer.
 

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