Clarity,
Office 17622,
PO Box 6945,
London.
W1A 6US
United Kingdom
Phone/ Voicemail:
+44 (0)20 3287 3053 (UK)
+1 (561) 459-4758 (US).
I hope I can give you an interesting answer!
I see two main points with your post: that the I Ching can't tell the future--which seems to be a challenge--and that the answers it provides are by turns obvious or completely obscure. I think you're right on all counts, but this is a good thing.
If you go back to the original meaning of the term Oracle in ancient Greece, you find that it wasn't about telling the future so much as giving advice. The Oracle at Delphi was famous for people going to it to ask if they should do this or that, and (like your experience with the I Ching,) the answers were obscure and given in riddles. In fact, Greek literature is filled with examples of people who went to the oracle, misinterpreted an answer they didn't understand, and ended up fulfilling a prophecy they wanted to avoid.
But that's the point: these people were forcing their own ideas onto the answers they got; they thought too hard on them, and came up with answers they didn't like, and so the oracle worked against them.
Sooo, you're alive with a new avatar! Must be that aqua new moon!
The only thing the oracle can not do is to be told what it can not do.
It can tell the future, sometimes conditionally...
I would define these, respectively, as: what lies ahead, guessing what lies ahead, and how one may deal with what lies ahead. So to clarify my statement, I believe an oracle is less about giving you details about an absolute future than it is about telling you how you might deal with whatever comes--even if that advice comes with the caveat that "X will beget Y" as described above. The I Ching--and tarot--can be eerily specific when it comes to predicting the future, but I've always felt that even if the oracle tells you such and such will happen, you as an individual have the ability to alter that future. And if that's the case, it's better to treat the oracle as "advice on how to deal with the future", than "this is definitively what the future holds."don't know how we "define" future, prediction and advise here. You project fact to the future to give an advise , isn't it ?
The point I was trying to make it that an oracle won't "tell you the future," because as soon as you ask that question, you've set in sequence a chain of events that would change the answer. I don't believe the future is set, and thus don't believe that it can be known. But that's just me.
I would define these, respectively, as: what lies ahead, guessing what lies ahead, and how one may deal with what lies ahead. So to clarify my statement, I believe an oracle is less about giving you details about an absolute future than it is about telling you how you might deal with whatever comes--even if that advice comes with the caveat that "X will beget Y" as described above. The I Ching--and tarot--can be eerily specific when it comes to predicting the future, but I've always felt that even if the oracle tells you such and such will happen, you as an individual have the ability to alter that future. And if that's the case, it's better to treat the oracle as "advice on how to deal with the future", than "this is definitively what the future holds."
"
I think also it has to be done with discernment.
anemos said:I see what IC can do and how we people use it as two separate things.
"Thus the superior man consolidates his fate
By making his position correct.
It is the same in human life; there is in man likewise a fate that
lends power to his life. And if he succeeds in assigning the right place to life
and to fate, thus bringing the two into harmony, he puts his fate on a firm
footing." - h50 Wilhelm
There's that won't word again, chuckle. I hear what you're saying, and theoretically, I can agree. But in real life, the oracle has indeed predicted things so precisely at times, things I could have had no way of consciously (active word here) knowing, I won't say it won't ever tell me the future. I maintain a respectful Meng-mind about the oracle's capabilities.
Perhaps it's that I don't have enough experience with the I Ching yet to see how powerfully it can predict the future. To be perfectly honest, I've only made a dozen or so readings, and I've always phrased my questions in an open ended..."advisory," for lack of a better term...way. For example: "what should I do about my current job" as opposed to "will I get a new job?"
I have much more experience with the tarot, and so naturally my approach to this oracle is coloured by that. I've never asked about the future when reading tarot cards, because I learned to read differently; but then, that doesn't mean that tarot can't predict the future, does it? I'm simply asking different questions.
So maybe it's time I experiment with a different approach.
But if we keep our awareness sharp, we can catch this happening as it's happening, re-cognition of the prediction.
Does this mean we have no control of our destiny? I don't interpret it that way, but every choice I make becomes the future, including my poor or stubbornly foolish choices.
I'd like to know how people go about fixing their omens, what do people do with their readings, are you all out there just sitting back passively or do you undertake a certain routine after a reading.
I tend to keep it in the fore of my mind, and sometimes literally go out and do what yi advised, but not always, and I've never really thought about developing a way to ensure the omen is carried out or fixed STS. I ask questions purposefully but I cant confidentially say I give the same purposefulness with 'doing my part'.
I have my own theory about Yi , and in many points are in opposition with the rules I have read here many times. "Do that", "don't do that", "Yi does answer Only those questions" etc, etc.
Call me stubborn, call me hardheaded, but when I have been given responds to what Yi supposed NOT to talk about, dunno, just don't believe to those rules.
I generally use the same approach as you do. I can't recall the last time I asked for a future prediction. But that doesn't mean it never predicts. :bows:
When I have the time to sit down and do a traditional yarrow stalk reading, I'm going to experiment by asking about something in the future. I think the next time I do a tarot reading for someone, I'll try to consider the future as well. It will be interesting to see what comes up!
:bows:Sometimes not knowing is not only easier but more natural, as well.
There should be a warning message
If I may offer a suggestion, to ask about the immediate future. I'd occasionally ask about rehearsals or gigs, and it would usually prepare me for what to expect, and give me a chance to adjust to the conditions I'd be dealing with. But it's tricky, because if my own head wasn't well balanced, the answer could always wind up being about me rather than what I'd be faced with. That's why attaining a heightened awareness is the essential element in any case. And, sometimes a heightened awareness isn't comfortable. Sometimes not knowing is not only easier but more natural, as well. There's something to be said about trusting; trusting yourself, trusting God or fate or the Dao or whatever. I've found that if I don't trust enough, if I become needy and too dependent and insecure, the Yi has a way of knocking me over the head with the Book. No fun.
Absolutely!The only thing the oracle can not do is to be told what it can not do.
is there such a things as "now" or is just a construction, a borderline between past and future ? How much it lasts, how can we measure it ?
I think Yi is likely to tell you about the patterns of flow in the whole river. (The hexagrams themselves look a bit like that.) Maybe asking for 'now' as opposed to any other time would be a bit like asking for a nice, solid slice of river on a plate .I used to ask " what do i need to know Now" but it doesn't makes any sense to me lately, so I omit that word. It makes me feel still, disconnected from the process, the flow. Absent. Now is not about present time, its being present.
have been trying to see "now". I brought a river in my mind, the time it is created. The water comes out of the spring and fills the empty space, creates a path to reach the sea. I tried to see it in a slow motion to mark "now". I couldn't. I could see river's past, the water that had already cover the empty space(63). I could see the river's future... the infinite potential futures(64) but I had to stop the flow to see "now".
Which hex is "now" was what I asked then. H5 was the first thing I thought. being present. eating and drinking
Now could be 11 also. disconnected ? 12 ?
i lost "now"
Oh, we have a :bag: here provided specially for just such occasions. I have also met the mailperson you mention. It makes me smile a bit when people worry if they can 'break' the oracle somehow, asking or casting the wrong way. Doesn't really matter if I draw the curtains and tie them back neatly, put my foot in the wastepaper basket, grab the curtains and accidentally rip them down as I fall on my backside, get a dog that demolishes curtains, set fire to them or let them be eaten by moths: I will still not have broken the light that eventually illuminates the room.I believe the messages we get through use of an oracle are addressed to us and if we didn't use an oracle a very pushy mailperson will deliver them instead. Like the time I really needed to not be professionally involved with a colleague who simply had different values to me, but I couldn't see any rational reason to step away so I continued to work with them and then one day I wrote a text to my sister outlining all this person's professional inadequacies and addressed it to the colleague and not my sister. The experience revealed to me just how artful my back peddling can be, but I couldn't help but think if I had just stepped away when there was a good a mutually beneficial time to part (and there was) I probably wouldn't have found myself in a pickle. (I have more sever examples but if I told you I'd have no face left and then what would I talk out of ...)
I'm very, very interested in this, too. I have had the experience too many times of looking at a three year old journal entry and reflecting on how different things might have been if I'd managed to hang onto that 'aha!'. A bit like finally getting the curtains open and then absent-mindedly putting a bag on my head and forgetting it's there for a few years.I'd like to know how people go about fixing their omens, what do people do with their readings, are you all out there just sitting back passively or do you undertake a certain routine after a reading.
I tend to keep it in the fore of my mind, and sometimes literally go out and do what yi advised, but not always, and I've never really thought about developing a way to ensure the omen is carried out or fixed STS. I ask questions purposefully but I cant confidentially say I give the same purposefulness with 'doing my part'.
I maintain a respectful Meng-mind about the oracle's capabilities.
Oh, we have a :bag: here provided specially for just such occasions. I have also met the mailperson you mention. It makes me smile a bit when people worry if they can 'break' the oracle somehow, asking or casting the wrong way. Doesn't really matter if I draw the curtains and tie them back neatly, put my foot in the wastepaper basket, grab the curtains and accidentally rip them down as I fall on my backside, get a dog that demolishes curtains, set fire to them or let them be eaten by moths: I will still not have broken the light that eventually illuminates the room.
have been trying to see "now". I brought a river in my mind, the time it is created. The water comes out of the spring and fills the empty space, creates a path to reach the sea. I tried to see it in a slow motion to mark "now". I couldn't. I could see river's past, the water that had already cover the empty space(63). I could see the river's future... the infinite potential futures(64) but I had to stop the flow to see "now".
Which hex is "now" was what I asked then. H5 was the first thing I thought. being present. eating and drinking
Now could be 11 also. disconnected ? 12 ?
i lost "now"
Quote:
Originally Posted by anemos
is there such a things as "now" or is just a construction, a borderline between past and future ? How much it lasts, how can we measure it ?
Oh come on. Now is now. Woops, wait... now. Wooops, wait..... NOW! Wooops, wait... *sneaking up on it*..... NOW! Wooops, wait....
Doesn't really matter if I draw the curtains and tie them back neatly, put my foot in the wastepaper basket, grab the curtains and accidentally rip them down as I fall on my backside, get a dog that demolishes curtains, set fire to them or let them be eaten by moths: I will still not have broken the light that eventually illuminates the room.
Clarity,
Office 17622,
PO Box 6945,
London.
W1A 6US
United Kingdom
Phone/ Voicemail:
+44 (0)20 3287 3053 (UK)
+1 (561) 459-4758 (US).