Yijing Example
Free Post 8/27/24: Jie #40
today i will report based on my own yijing reading, and tie that into seasonal qi, etc.
1 starting
because i already have a set-up, i can just write down a question and throw the coins. I don’t need to spend a whole lot of time preparing my inner state or ritually cleansing things. Because i do this frequently enough, things are not so backlogged.
when i write the question, i use the writing as a kind of practice as well. a practice of listening and locating the “question” — the embedded desires, meanings, energies etc. there is hygiene entangled within this process.
today i asked/wrote - “what is your advice: FOCUS and then three arrows which i will format as bullet points
to resolve fate
for ease, sustainability, health
joy/delight
i didn’t pre-conceive of these. i discovered them via the process of sensing in.
satisfied with this initial “draft”, i threw the coins.
2 the hexagram
i got 40 Jie: Release, no changing lines.
Jie is thunder over water.
even from just this initial information, more information begins to arise.
I am at the beginning of autumn. autumn is metal season, associated with lungs and large intestine, skin and breathing, and the emotion of “grief”. I have been doing more “breathwork” type stuff lately, breathing and shaking style exercises which i teach to clients. I have also been learning a bit of an acting technique in which there is a “releasing” exercise, so that also is interesting.
thunder is wood element and is related to this year (wood dragon). water is related to blood, and also stagnation. thunder over water creates an image, an icon, which seems to clarify something internally. i can yoke that image with breathing and “do something” and/or i can just “let it be” and bathe in it.
reading the hexagram information:
“favorable in the southwest (flat land and rising moon, auspicious direction) - nowhere to go - coming and going succeeds”
nowhere to go relates to passages of the dao de jing and the abolishment of striving and strife derived from striving. returning home (inward/source/dark) wherever one is. it speaks to being sufficient and closing out the many temptations of the “world” that promises glory, love, rewards, etc.
even after chasing them, perhaps even succeeding in achieving, one inevitably must return home (death, decline)
i was speaking with a friend the other day and talking about acting, nonduality, chines medicine etc… the wave like nature of the world — going down to rise up which comes back down — this waving motion is posited as blues-jazz. blues is the inevitable downward ride; jazz is the inevitable upward ride. same, but expression and emotion are somewhat “different”. yet not at all.
this “BLUESJAZZ” motion is all that is. going down to come up, rising up to plunge down. dragon motion. wave motion.
the image:
“jie speaks to cutting or loosening shackles. untied, disentangled from difficulties. a bad omen is reversed by the release of a sacrificial animal or an exorcism”
(most ppl have no idea what an exorcism is, suffice to say, it is not solely some puking purgation with green snot and oily secretions)
“nowhere to go means no particular goal or purpose because the freedom to choose is new. you can let things come and go, open up by themselves."
”after every period of restraint there is a release (southwest). inhibition naturally thaws.”
i think again of thunder over water again, this time, an iced over lake. the sound of thunder cracking the lake, freeing the water within. this thunder water is reciprocal, not separate or opposed. the thunder isn’t the hero and the water isn’t the villain/victim.
freedom to choose is new speaks to the reality of freedom-fate intertwined. the natural karmic fate we inherit creates a worldview of struggling against limitations. this worldview creates itself, that is, creates the prison we feel we have been shackled with. freedom to choose is also freedom to let go, to release all beings and things from past obligations and debts. to let the sacrificial animals free, or to let the ghosts free as well (exorcism) - no longer requiring any conjoined debts to be paid. freedom to choose is our natural state and is also the state we are most afraid of, because fated constraints seem to be “safer” … this is the human condition, the ancestral fixation that requires structure to learn and which then must destroy those structures to become truly resolved.
auspices
“favorable for cautious, positive or progressive movement. for the best results keep your actions small and focused — others join you to expand the possibilities.”
comment
“jie is about the inevitable end of bondage and restraint. jie is when fate slips you a small knife in your prison supper. you will succeed, by small measures, to be released from bondage to freedom, from illness to health.”
this image speaks to my ancestral resolution project, the garbage clean up that ive been tasked with in this lifetime. the freeing of the wretched prisoners who are imprisoned in their own grief-pain loops. if all i accomplish in this life is this, that is more than auspicious, even if i am reviled, misunderstood, scapegoated and otherwise maligned by other people’s ghost-egos. the only reward is integrity itself. the true meaning of “integration”. stupidity/ignorance is the only “enemy”.
“comply with the divine omens (foxes, arrows and hawks), avoid presumption and freedom will come. The release is not due to your own skillfulness.
You may discover that self-liberation offers practical lessons in leadership.”
because liberation/freedom/resolution is inevitable, it is not created by skillfulness or self-perpetuated heroics. it is a cycle of time/nature/fate. bondage and liberation is the blues-jazz wave. two sides of the same coin. avoiding presumption is avoiding the narrative biases and stories that automatically are secreted as a defensive mechanism of so-called survival. survival to what ends? deathpractice has already shown me the “end of all the roads”, therefore this world is seen to be the same as any other dream. all torture and abuse are also apparitions that will inevitable cease — the release of bondage even of the addicted mind, the abuser, the capitalist pig, etc etc. Don’t we wish for all beings to be free? This is what that means. All beings free RIGHT NOW, via not presuming. A small action yet cumulative.
Release can mean death, so i need to maintain openness towards it. if the end comes suddenly, without “warning”, then i must be ready now to say “all good”, no debts owed on any side.
3 finale
this is an example of an overarching reading. i wasnt asking about specific choices. this reading also had no changing lines (which, when appearing, are the most important part of the reading).
the images of the reading are useful in working with the qi of the divination in a non-thinking way. thunder over water, thunder over frozen lake, releasing the sacrificial animal.
going back over some of the information, these are what is highlighted for me:
for the best results keep your actions small and focused
avoid presumption and freedom will come
the release is not due to your own skillfulness
the freedom to choose is new