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svenrus

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When getting the hexagram: is it a mere coincidence the way in which the coins falls - the yarrowstalk get parted etc. ? Off course, we should be very clever to know which tails or heads occures when throwing them.
I've read here and there that the ancient diviners in China made a ritual before consulting the oracle letting the ancestors/heavenly will speak through the cracks/numbers received; if this being so it is not a mere coincident; those ancestors or this spirits decides by will the cracks in the bones or numbers occured by means of the yarrowstalkcounting....

I cannot see a splitsecond into the future as well as I cannot know which heads and tails occurs by the throwing of the coins (or whatever medium I use).

The closest I get to a feeling that I'm not alone is when I use the stalks of yarrow. I can not explain this strange feeling thou I don't believe in ghosts and such - the feeling still is there. I've never felt something like this when using other media (dice-coins-counting things).

So: mere coinsidence or controlled by some forces not understandable ???
 
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Lilly-La

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So: mere coinsidence or controlled by some forces not understandable ???

Mere coincidence, I´d say.
Most situations have more than one aspect. That plus the openness of the YI text make your brain think. So to say you are 'forced' to look/think about other aspects and approaches to a question/situation which you would probably not have done without a challenge like the Yi offers.

I have greatest doubt your ancestors 'speak' to you :)
 
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svenrus

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No matter wether it's mere coincidence or not (I agree with You that it is a mere coincidence the way the medium used - coins/cards etc. - falls out) still the basics for the Hexagram is that medium used; without that no hexagram. And our attention seems to be fixed on reaching the hexagram.... not wondering what lies in this coincidence: what is a coincidence: does it exists at all ? Some says that nothing is incidentally and other claims that out of Big Bang everything goes on by mere coincidence. Two schools arguing against each other.
I could go on asking to which of those two "schools" divination belong but I think the limit has been reached by now.
 
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Lilly-La

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Let´s imagine for a minute a construction company gets a contract -> building a bridge. A structural egineer prepares all the plans but makes a tiny mistake because he was tired one day. Now the bridge is build and months later it breaks apart while cars cross it. The construction company keeps the tiny fault secret and claims it was soft soil or too heavy cars causing this crash. Victims might then believe it was God or some higher power or just karma they crossed the bridge the moment it crashed.
Our brains want explanations which make sense. Vague explanations like soft soil no one has observed previous to the incident are a bit senseless for our brains.

If you feel the YI gives you correct answers when you use starks it might as well be that your brain is trying to give a 'senseless action' a meaning / a sense.

I always wonder how people do really believe the Yi would seriously answer questions like: will my friend return to me. We don´t know and the Yi does not know. Nobody usually knows. All what is happening is our brain is wrapping around a misterious text and while doing so is going thru all kinds of aspects of the situation even those it did not consider before plus our instinct. It might come to a conclusion or proceeds with seeking the correct answer.
That´s the way i see it.
 

moss elk

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So: mere coinsidence or controlled by some forces not understandable ???

In English there are two words that people often use interchangeably:
Comprehend and Understand.
Comprehend means to grasp with the mind, to be able to wrap your head around.
Understand means to coexist with.

So, I see the important question as :
Can you live with (understand) something that may not be comprehensible?
 
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svenrus

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lilly,

I'd read your answer a couple of times and no sure I understand; Do You compare the construction of the bridge with the throwing of the coins, the bridge itself with the hexagram and the accident with the answer given by I Ching ?
I was not into neither the hexagram nor the answer given by I Ching but incidentallity (hope this is a guildy english word) as a whole...
In another thread I gave my relation to part of this, See Link and I know it's another topic but the meaning behind it is somehow the same.
 

Lilly-La

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svenrus,

in the essence i did talk about what Moss Elk put in more or less perfect words: understand and/or comprehend.

Your question was: When getting the hexagram: is it a mere coincidence the way in which the coins falls - the yarrowstalk get parted etc. ?

I believe it is mere coincidence. If we ask the YI and get a misterious bit of text we do not understand our brain seeks and seeks and seeks an answer. You feel more comfortable with yarrow stalks. They give you a safer and closer feeling. It is more a ritual compared to throwing coins. You like the ritual.

At one moment months or years back, I guess, you liked using the stalks, the ritual and got a fitting answer. Your brain decided: "this is the best and most comfortable way to me 'working' with the Yi. Coins are not that good."

Now you wonder why you feel so comfortable and not lonely with stalks. My answer would be, it is the whole setting your brain feels most relaxed with. My answer is based on an observation with kids. Kids love rituals. Rituals give them a very strong feeling of safety. It´s not that different with adults. Additionally rituals are a great way building up relationships. And one can build up a relationship with all sorts of things not only with humans.
 
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svenrus

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Just want to add that we call it a mere coincidence.... because the coins follows common physical laws, the weight of the coins, the force with wich they are thrown up into the air, the very tiny resistance they are met with from the air when falling and the material on wich they fall, hard or soft - all decides the outcome: heads and/or tails.
But yes, I agree it being a mere coincidence.

It seems that as long as we don't control the outcome of the cast it's OK, the incidentallity have got free room "to speak" beyond our will. Beyond our will !!! And that's an interesting point here; it's our hands holding the coins and shaking and throwing them - it's our decision to do it but it's not our ability to decide the outcome so: what is mere coincidence ? Does it exists ?? and who's "voice is it speaking" through the outcome of those coins being heads and/or tails ???

I believe that within us we have access to know the very truth about everything. Our consciousness in the daily hurry is but a fraction of that knowledge. Could it be that IT speaks through us in the way we cast the coins and that I Ching as a whole is kind of a dictionary that translates this mere coincidense.... (?)

I don't want an answer to this last question just to share some wonderings
 
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canislulu

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My view is different from lilly's. I don't believe it is mere coincidence that determines the cast. I believe it is some "something" --- some other that is paradoxically "other" and "Ourself" simultaneously.

Perhaps it is just a difference of semantics.

"Some of us call it Longing, and others call it God" --- William Herbert Carruth
 
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svenrus

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The thing is: it can't be experimental proven - until now at least, or if time could be stopped....
 

charly

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The thing is: it can't be experimental proven - until now at least, or if time could be stopped....


attachment.php


Kerson Huang, The Oracle, available in Google Books(1).

Believe it or not!

___________________________________
(1) https://books.google.com.ar/books?r...50xQC&q=it+functions#v=onepage&q=Bohr&f=false

Kerson_Huang_On_Divination.jpg

Ch.
 

Lilly-La

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I believe that within us we have access to know the very truth about everything.

If i would be a fluent native english speaker i would have answered:

The naive conception of truth is as a static construct which persists in reality, but reflection and introspection reveals that reality is absolutely fluid - all things change. So we shift our conception of truth to a conceptual construct which mirrors reality. But then it is impossible for something static to fully mirror something dynamic, although there may be 'sticking points' within the patterns of a movement which seem roughly consistent through time. We abstract from those rough consistencies to render them static and thinkable, so we've got something to work with. However this is necessarily only an approximation, and the feature of existence which it approximates is itself ever morphing and ultimately transient. Even the division of an aspect is itself epistemologically arbitrary.....

First part of article:
Is-your-truth-static-or-dynamic?
 
S

svenrus

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The thing is: it can't be experimental proven - until now at least, or if time could be stopped....

If time could be stopped ? In real time it surely would be a mere coinsidence if two hexagrams build up immediately one after the other would be absolutely identical - one out of a thousands.
The moment in which we consult the oracle is the very same and only moment given for an answer and whether the answer is only random or decided by a will - of whatever sort - could be decided if time could be stopped: in this frozen moment we could imagine a lot of casts of the coins and if mere coincidence decided the outcome each and every cast would be different from each other (well, mostly) but if (still in this imaginary frozen moment) a will - of whatever sort - decided the outcome the outcome would be the same again and again.
And I could go on: what is a moment ? Using the stalks of yarrow it takes around half an hour to build up an hexagram and with the coins around half a minute - but this moment is still the one moment used to build the hexagram or: those two moments (30 minutes/30 seconds) don't differ at all in the process: it's still THE moment used to build up the hexagram.
But this commentary just to explain what I meant in writing "stop the time" on #10
 
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