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What each Hexagram has taught me

McGarr178

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I understand that these may not be "correct" but this is what I associate with each Hexagram.

1. Align your intentions with love then set your plans in motion with all the force and persistence you can muster.

2. Open yourself fully to the idea the world is conspiring to present you with opportunities.

3. Don't be disheartened by initial difficulties.

4. Beware of self imposed limitations and the stagnancy caused by over thinking.

5. Sometimes it is best to wait until more opportune times. Use the time to make plans.

6. Don't make decisions when clouded by negative emotions. Examine your motives.

7. Provide the hard work and discipline the situation demands.

8. Use the poetry of the world around you to inspire you towards your goals. Be aware of the myths that bind us together.

9. Persistently chip away at your aims with small subtle steps. Avoid grand gestures or bold aggression. Be gentle.

10. Do what you find fun and find the fun in what you have to do.

11. As soon as you make a firm decision the world will present opportunities to assist you.

12. Don't let the world and other people dictate your fate. Be aware of the forces controlling you.

13. Find people with similar ideas and aims to you and cooperate.

14. Build your self esteem up on your personal integrity and morality rather than the opinions of others and worldly success.

15. Still your mind and listen. Bring an end to your pride and egotism in all it's forms.

16. Embrace the new and novel. Greet changes you can’t prevent with enthusiasm.

17. Follow your bliss. Revelation comes from socialising.

18. When forced to stay still. Settle into healthy habits and patterns. Don’t become so comfortable that you trap yourself.

19. Find your own joy and the world will welcome you with open arms.

20. Focus on the subtle small influences around you that have large effects due to repetition.

21. Figure out and factor into your decisions the cosmic laws regarding karma, fate, intention and love.

22. Back up your charm, style and panache with real substance. Don’t mistake the masks you wear for your true self.

23. Accept that some things must come to an end and let them go.

24. The world is ready for your change of heart. Build a space for your new ideas inside and out.

25. Once you have freed your mind from the inferior you can act in spontaneous, unintentional, innocent and uninhibited way.

26. Set limits on our behavior and environment that protect us and charge our power. Healthy boundaries prevent dissipation of energy.

27. Meditation and non-action nourishes the soul as exercise strengthens the body.

28. Rebelling against limitations and rules can in the end become it’s own trap.

29. There are hidden dangers in the depths - be careful. Beware the pool of narcissistic self reflection.

30. Let your light resonate and reflect with the light of others. Our interconnectedness is fundamental. Share your truth.

31. Let joy be born from the ashes of your outmoded ways of being and thinking. Don’t get carried away when things are easy.

32. Find your inner core of unquestionable beliefs and goals and never deviate from them no matter how much the world shakes around you.

33. Recognise a bad arrangement for what it is and have the strength to cut your losses regardless of how much you have already invested.

34. You have the power to start something new. Be bold and take the initiative. Shake things up.

35. Follow the synchronicities, the signs, the cosmic winks.

36. Transform mundane routine into acts of sacred worship. The divine is hidden in the mud.

37. Make sure that the nest you build nourishes your spirit. Take care of those and that which have been constant influences.

38. Through opposition and conflict we can find balance. Aim for a state of peaceful dynamic tension.

39. Remain patient with life’s obstacles. Free yourself from internal blocks to your creativity. Don’t mistake apathy for non-attachment.

40. Forgive, forget, move on to something new. Create the change you need despite the pain of letting go.

41. There is great joy to be found when we have let go of all attachment and resigned ourselves to our naked selves.

42. Reimagine the common features of your life in an entirely different way. A small detail will surprise you.

43. It’s only through eradicating the underlying sources of you imbalances that you will make a breakthrough. Make a decision and commit to it.

44. Listen to your dreams your intuitions. Become a living amplifier of the small voice within.

45. Find the party! Dance, sing, play and make love!

46. Get your mind in order and you will naturally ascend towards your natural place in the world.

47. Restrain from excess. Just because the fuel is there you don’t have to use it all.

48. Look within for nourishment. You can change your environment but its your soul that that will determine your quality of life.

49. Disseminate ideas that bring people together, inspire them and change the world.

50. Consume the ideas of people further along the path that stir you gently from within. Let them incubate in your subconscious until they emerge understood.

51. Change direction and attitude before the world changes it for you. Be spontaneous. Do something you have never done before.

52. Stop everything and take some time out to reassess what you don’t need. Do absolutely nothing.

53. You will learn something small that will change everything through calm attentive listening to those around you.

54. You will find great joy in something entirely unexpected. Serendipity awaits!

55. Realisations will come like a flash of lightening sending an explosion of awakening within you.

56. Maintain one foot in this world one in the other. Seek calming ideas. Comfort yourself with beauty.

57. Settle in to your environment by paying attention to the details. Plant yourself. Nurture your roots. Ground yourself,

58. Celebrate! Joy reinforces itself. The smile you give out comes back to you.

59. Sometimes you have to settle into a situation that causes bad feelings. Don’t let those bad feelings further poison the situation.

60. Find positive ways of expressing the parts of yourself that you seek to repress .Our passions and drives are forces to be worked with and transmuted. They are not to be caged.

61. Take delight in and foster gratitude in the smallest of things and the hidden helpful influences in your life.

62. Strive towards such peace of mind that even the greatest of changes and shocks fails to stir your inner calm.

63. Seek to understand the metaphor, magic and myth from a scientific perspective. Remember growth is a spiral not a cycle.

64. See the metaphors and myth in science and rationalism. Never feel that you have completed work on yourself. Remain humble and look for more improvements.
 

donato

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Wow! You are giving a fresh and stimulating approach to I-Ching which finds me quite sympathetic.
I need to copy your 64 positive attitudes and print them on paper to see how much I can resonate with them.
I'm amazed how you managed to extract this extremely concise and yet meaningful wisdom from such a complex book. Really as they say in Zen, one needs a beginner's mind....

Thanks for sharing your discoveries with us.
 

donato

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Second approximation

Second approximation.

In my first reply to you I expressed my appreciation for your approach to I-Ching. It surely shows a positive attitude which may bring you far in your achievements and strengthen your sense of power.
It surely is a good exercise in finding a personal and fruitful meaning among the complexities of I-Ching.

After having printed and read more at easy your 64 hex personal interpretations I could not help however indulging in another kind of exercise which IMHO is complimentary to your: which is to see the possible implications of an assumption and its inevitable counterparts. I think that I-Ching, based on the yin/yang complementarity, invites us to be aware of all the sides of an issue and not only stick to one, however gratifying and promising this may seem. Choosing one single vision might lead to a deceiving security (see the thread about self-fulfilling prophecy)

Here are my personal reflections, for what they are worth, I’m only commenting the hex where I have a different approach, while I quite agree with all the others I’m not mentioning:

“1. Align your intentions with love then set your plans in motion with all the force and persistence you can muster.”

Aligning your intentions with love is always a good thing (granted that you are able to do that) but I wonder whether you’ll still have intentions when there is love. Intentions are a product of our ego and I think they are incompatible with love. As far as I can see love has no intentions and no plans, and when there is love there is no necessity to exercise force. The use of force implies the attempt of overcoming or win the resistances and all that surely is not love, is it?

“2. Open yourself fully to the idea the world is conspiring to present you with opportunities.”

The world is full of opportunities, no doubt about that, but the whole issue is to do what?
If you use the word “conspiring” it implies that the world is the accomplice of your possibility/intention to do mischiefs. Hitler used to say: “God is with us”, a very self-centred attitude.

“3. Don't be disheartened by initial difficulties.”

Never! Have you read the story of Ernest Shackleton? That is a magnificent example of what you say. However many people tend to ignore the difficulties in order not to be disheartened and that leads to lack of preparation and so failure.

“11. As soon as you make a firm decision the world will present opportunities to assist you.”

This sounds something very close to what the psychologists call a self-fulfilling prophecy. Of course it might be a very powerful attitude and lead you to success but one thing which often I-Ching recommends is “be ready to adapt to circumstances and to change your plans if needed”.

“16. Embrace the new and novel. Greet changes you can’t prevent with enthusiasm.”

This is just a response I got recently and your interpretation may be useful. Actually you are saying the same thing of what I said in the previous comment.

“17. Follow your bliss. Revelation comes from socialising.”

??? I quite don’t follow you here.

“32. Find your inner core of unquestionable beliefs and goals and never deviate from them no matter how much the world shakes around you.”

I feel more sympathetic to what Wilhelm says:

“This attraction between affinities is a general law of nature. Heaven and earth attract each other and thus all creatures come into being. Through such attraction the sage influences men's hearts, and thus the world attains peace. From the
attractions they exert we can learn the nature of all beings in heaven and on “.


That’s enough for today! I have to deal with the preparation of the lunch… :)-
 

McGarr178

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Donato,

Thanks for your feedback :)

Totally agree with your idea that the every statement needs to be examined from it's compliment. To me a wise statement is true when reversed. For example. Fortune favours the bold. However, fortune also favours the cautious. It depends on the situation. That is what the I ching is all about for me. It extends out these opposites. The sum total of wisdom is zero unless applied to a particular situation.

I disagree with you when you identify love with ego and non-intention. If you imagine the ego as a horse our higher self is riding then the aim should not be remove it but to harness it - to ride it.

Regarding number 17 - the two sentences are not meant to be related.

11 - yes it is a self fulfilling prophecy that has been proven through scientific studies.. people who believe they are lucky are more successful. If you believe the world is offering you opportunities you will notice them more and have more courage to take them. I don't think that's a bad thing. Self fulfilling prophecies are only dangerous when the prophecy is negative that's why in my opinion or oracular responses should offer either hope/inspiration or caution/warning with the implication that action will be taken to avoid a bad thing. They should never tell somebody that something bad will happen.
 

donato

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I disagree with you when you identify love with ego and non-intention. If you imagine the ego as a horse our higher self is riding then the aim should not be remove it but to harness it - to ride it.

Is that only an assumption or an actuality? How can you be so sure that our "higher self" is riding?
Do you have a practical, mistake-proof way to distinguish when our intentions comes from the ego and when they come from our "higher self"? Go deep in yourself and you'll be able to see that often even the most seemingly altruistic intention (I want the good of the people) hide self-centred motives. Look around you and you can see that everybody think they are good and altruistic, and this is the ultimate arrogance.
And by the way: our higher self could (and often is) only a projection of our ego...

All that enquiry requires a great honesty (with ourselves of course): I'm aware that all my intentions, plans, dreams, ambitions are just a manifestation of myself or the ego, it could not be otherwise. When we think to harness the horse, to tame it or to control it (which are the same phenomenon) we are simply playing a nice and subtle trick: we divide ourselves in "higher" and "lower" and one tries to control the other... :)

Now imagine you have a wonderful dream, you think you deserve it (of course!), you make plans for years, you use all your "forces" to overcome the obstacles and attain the desired result. How that differs from a common lower self-centred wish or intention? Because is nobler? You see the trick?
Now, what happens if something or someone hampers that dream? Just look what kind of feelings you get inside you. From that you can recognise the ego.

Intentions, plans, efforts, they all implies that your mind is entangled in the future, and that's exactly how our ego works. Love can be only in the present, so there is no riding of the horse to go anywhere... :)
 

xuesongyu

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Great! I agree with you. In fact, I Ching is a philosophy book instead of a book just for predictions.
However, I think you have some misunderstandings about some hexagrams. For example, what Hexagram 4 teaches us is that it is never too old to learn. A man should keep learning in his life to get rid of ignorance.
By the way, the order of the 64 Hexagrams has special meaning. For example, Hexagram 1 stands for heaven, Hexagram 2 stands for earth, Hexagram 3 stands for a birth of thing, Hexagram 4 stands for enlightenment. When the heaven and earth were formed (after the big bang), new things started to come out; After a new thing is born, we should enlighten it (just like teaching a baby).
 

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