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Does the Yi do "third party"?

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Freedda

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I often see questions and queries posted here like, "does Y love me?" Or, "what is the best thing for my friend T to do in that situation"?

It is my thought that the I Ching dosen't really do 'third party' readings about what others (besides the querent) should feel, what they think, how they should act., etc.

The main reason for this is I think that whatever the Yi is telling us is based on a connection with whomever is asking the question. It doesn't have any way of knowing what someone else is thinking, feeling, or how they should act.

After all, even Punxsutawney Phil, the "Prognosticator of Prognosticators" can only tell how much longer his winter will last!

I know that there are some people who don't put this same filter on what or who someone should ask about. One member once said that they'd do a reading for any question someone asks. Setting aside my own admitted prejudice about 'third-party' questions, I can certainly see the beauty to being that open and of taking people (and their questions) as they are.

Any thoughts?

Regards, David
 
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diamanda

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The Yi (and divination in general) definitely does do third party questions.
This is not a thought, it's a proven fact (check many older threads on it).
Obviously, you're totally free to not do third party questions, if you don't feel like it.
 

moss elk

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Yes, this is possible.
But it can get complicated and very confusing to decipher. And you should really ask yourself, 'Do I need to know this?' and make sure you are doing it with a right purpose, for very good reasons, not just trying to gain an advantage over others or to 'show off'.

I've done this with dangerous people to find a safe path. I've done it to help people.
 

hilary

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I would be very wary of any sentence beginning, 'The Yijing can't...'

(well, maybe if it ends '...make toast' or '...solve quadratic equations for you' or something, it would be OK.)

Can the Yi describe someone else's inner world? Yes. Will it, when you ask? Perhaps. Will you be able to understand the answer? Maybe. Will it help you at all, if you do?
 

Liselle

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What everyone else said, and also I think Yi can stick up for itself perfectly well. It has ways of saying, "I'm not going to answer that," and is quite happy to use them when it wants. Such as - not quite 3rd party examples, but a couple things I can think of offhand that Yi's said to me - "you can make an independent decision; stop asking me" or "you're not going to get the simple, concrete answer you want" (e.g. various lines of 29), or "this isn't as life-and-death as you're making it" or...
 
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Freedda

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Okay, so it seems I've been voted off the island! :eek:uch: But kidding aside, I suppose a better way to pose my question would have been to say:

"I don't understand how the Yi does 'third person.'

For that matter, I don't know how the I Ching provides any answers, but I suppose my believe system around it is that there is some direct connection between the one asking the Yi for a response and the Yi itself, via a query or casting (asking a question, tossing coins, throwing yarrow sticks, etc); I suppose this could be (and has been) described as "synchronicity."

Based on that, (which probably, at best, it's my grasping at how the 'mystery' works), I don't see the 'synchronistic' connection between a distant or third-person "other" who's not asking the question and doesn't seem to have a connection to the Yi at all.

Again, I'm not saying it ain't so, just that my pee brain can't seem to make the connection.

So maybe the broader question is, how do people think the Yi works -- how does it make a connection between 'us' and our queries and 'it' coming up with a response?



Regards, David.
 
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diamanda

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"I don't understand how the Yi does 'third person.'
For that matter, I don't know how the I Ching provides any answers (...)
So maybe the broader question is, how do people think the Yi works -- how does it make a connection between 'us' and our queries and 'it' coming up with a response?

I have no idea. All I know is it works.
And since nobody has a definitive answer as to how it works, I personally don't bother.
Of course there are numerous theories, so each of us can pick one, or not.
I prefer to go without :rolleyes:
 
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Freedda

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... All I know is it works. And since nobody has a definitive answer as to how it works, ... Of course there are numerous theories, so each of us can pick one, or not.

Thanks Diamanda. I agree on all points. I've just never really seen this aspect discussed before, so thought I'd delve a bit - you know, what are the "numerous theories?" I suppose I might be looking for some part-magical / part-rational answer to it all, which I think doesn't exist, but I thought of the question, so I posed it.

Best, David.
 

moss elk

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From Carl Jung's foreward to
Wilhelm's translation,
"The less one thinks about the theory of the I Ching, the more soundly one sleeps."
 
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diamanda

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From Carl Jung's foreward to
Wilhelm's translation,
"The less one thinks about the theory of the I Ching, the more soundly one sleeps."
So true!

what are the "numerous theories?"
When divining, the querent has a question.
And divination (in this case the I Ching) provides an answer.
Broadly speaking, we can speculate that the answer comes from:
- something external to the querent.
- or something internal to the querent.

Examples of extraneous sources could be the voice of god(s), or signs sent by god(s), or spirits, or other entities/realms. Examples of internal sources could be that some of the future is already formed (by current actions) and thus the querent can already see it subconsciously, or the more modern theories of manifesting/willing, and so on. You can look up divination in the ancient world (Egypt, Greece, Rome, China, Scandinavia, etc.), and also more modern stuff like wicca, tarot, Jungian theory etc.

These are just ideas for you to research, I don't endorse (or contemplate) any of them.
 

Liselle

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Moss Elk, your funny bone is doing well today :)

I don't see the 'synchronistic' connection between a distant or third-person "other" who's not asking the question and doesn't seem to have a connection to the Yi at all.

I suppose I don't think that boundary is necessarily all that firm. I mean, if I ask a question about someone else, I'm still the one asking. It's still my question. It's just about someone else.

So if I ask, "Tell me something about X that I don't know," or "Why do people do that :rant:?" - Yi is still answering me, addressing my concerns (or curiosity, or exasperation, or whatever).

Those were both real questions, to which I got clear, helpful answers. The first one, Yi reassured me that my own vision of X's life was accurate - X was fine, there was nothing bad going on that I didn't know about, and I needn't worry. The second one, Yi gave me an explanation, pure and simple.

As far as why Yi will sometimes just answer the question, and other times not - mostly I agree we don't know, and maybe it doesn't matter. Otherwise, it might be a lot of things: it's not a sincere question; we'd get a more useful answer in some other (often real-life) way; a clear answer just isn't available - all the things Hilary said in the class materials re: questions about other people.
 
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Freedda

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From Carl Jung's foreward to Wilhelm's translation,
"The less one thinks about the theory of the I Ching, the more soundly one sleeps."

I never really sleep well anymore :zzz:, but I don't think it has to do with my questions about the Yi! - but still good advice to follow!
 

li chien

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The first time I was 4 and was at my next door neighbours that the grandmother showed me how to read Greek coffee... and also at the house at the back of ours the old woman (what a description... but I can't remember her name) used to give me a cup of black tea every time I visited there and at the end would ask me to tip it over into the saucer, spin in three times clockwise and then pick it up and read the tea leaves. So I was lucky that my first experiences with anything oracular was when I was preschool and so untouched by knowledge that I just assumed it to be a normal thing and it certainly didn't even cross my mind any notion of how it worked or might not be possible. The fact that everyone around me seemed to be doing it made it all seem more natural.

Also that both woman asked me at times to see what was in their cup was a distinction that I didn't get into at the time but I do remember how much more immediate and clear the images in my own cup were than when I was asked to see into someone else's cup. I remember the sensation of how I needed to take a moment to settle myself first, what I would consider now as somehow a clear and specific shift in point of perception... the best way to describe it was it was a bit like when you calm and centre yourself going into meditation... there is a point where you move and cross the boundary or state of being.

While I went on to my first set of tarot cards and (certainly quite ignorantly) had made a Ouija board before I was 12 and went on periodically dipping into divination most of my early life but have certainly been doing fairly much everyday divination since I was in my early 20's (astrology, tarot, runes) and now more recently Yi.

In all these frames of perception I have found third party reading possible and also seemingly reasonably validated by experience but the quality of the connection often seems to relate to the quality of the underlying purpose and or appropriateness of the question and that boundaries always seem to exist in understanding. In the end the more connected I was to the question the more connected I could become to the answer.

That we can divine outside of ourselves opens up a mightily different set of questions in how any of this could at all work. It certainly wipes out some of the easier to consider potentials which in itself is kind of fabulous. Certainly getting more focussed and caught up in the everyday process of interpretation and application of asking questions and applying the understanding to just being keeps the more unfathommable aspects of this mostly at bay. The routine and quite addictive nature of connecting to answers and engaging in those things outside of our understanding and our point in time and even in space kind of distracts from the greater more numinous potentials of just how we actually get to these points beyond in the first place.

It also creates then further questions we can have about our notions of boundaries in our separateness.

I do find more struggle in any attempt to direct and hold onto the lit aspects of consciousness and always greater comfort in the darkness of the unknown so am still sleeping fairly deeply and soundly thankfully.

Once again just asking any question is not just about answers but then connecting to the more central questions I suppose.
 
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diamanda

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Thanks for sharing this amazing story li chien. Maybe we should start a thread on how we all got involved with divination. I'm sure there are many interesting stories and anecdotes around ;)
 

li chien

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I did go for a bit of a wander there with the back story but I started out just trying to get across that for over 50 years of asking questions I've also never really found a limit on third party responses in a range of oracles (as long as they were appropriately framed questions) and that since I started doing this before I was old enough to know how it shouldn't really work at all that I rarely also ponder too much on to some of the bigger implications of David's original question. I do kind of think that dwelling too long on the kind of connectedness that a higher consciousness would need to find answers external of the self is not always an easy position for us as a modern thinking society to grasp.

In horary astrology itvis fairly diagrammatic in terms of defining the relationships between the one who frames the question (the querent) and the one who reflects the divined answer (the astrologer) and that these are actually at opposite points on the horizon. The astrologer can always be both in the same point and also opposite this point at the same time if the astrologer initiates the question. The idea that the point of divining an answer is opposite to the point of asking a question is a fascinating one in that perhaps opens the potential for some shared point of union for questions and solutions could well just be at the centre of all things. If the midpoint between the points of answers and the points of questions was also a shared point of consciousness then to access any answer we may need to put ourselves at the centre of our own consciousness to connect. That this could potentially be an entangled point for all consciousness.

Zero hubris in this though... just another supposition and clearly we'd have to get to the right question before finding any right answers. But there is an elegantness to the notion that everything is simply at the centre.
 

danadanadana

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I have developed a way of posing questions for third party questions about myself, so instead of saying "what does x think about me", I say "what does x think about (my name). Thay way the question is posed from "x's" point of view. Its a fine point, but I do think that how one poses a question often influences the response significantly, and not just with the I Ching.
 

bradford

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The Yi does not "do," exactly like the Well and the Cauldron do not do.
 

Liselle

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"Do" as you used it was a figure of speech, right, David?

But as has been said I think Yi can answer any question at all, which doesn't mean it always will. When I've asked third-party questions, I've gotten answers that were clear as a bell, and answers that weren't.
 

bradford

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Bradford, can you say more? Elaborate?

The Zhouyi uses the first person (wo3) pretty sparingly, but it occurs in both of the Gua symbolized by inanimate objects. In several other cases, wo3 appears in images where some kind of nourishment is sought. But these are means to an end, or tools, or instruments. And as instruments, they have only one moving part - the reader. The Well doesn't chase the reader around, spewing advice. The Cauldron doesn't cook and serve the food for you. The Yi doesn't "do" anything. That's the reader's job. You might ask if the Yi is a useful instrument for third party questions, but even there, the answer would be "Well, is it?"
 

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