THE LEADERSHIP I CHING 2ND EDITION 2015
BOOKS BY PETER FRITZ WALTER
Sovereign Immunity Litigation Coaching Your Inner Child The Leadership I Ching Leadership & Career in the 21 st Century Creative-C Learning Integrate Your Emotions Krishnamurti and the Psychological Revolution The New Paradigm in Business, Leadership and Career The New Paradigm in Consciousness and Spirituality The New Paradigm in Science and Systems Theory The Vibrant Nature of Life Shamanic Wisdom Meets the Western Mind Creative Genius The Better Life Servant Leadership Creative Learning and Career
THE LEADERSHIP I CHING Your Daily Companion For Practical Guidance Second Expanded And Revised Edition, 2015 By Peter Fritz Walter
Published by Sirius-C Media Galaxy LLC 113 Barksdale Professional Center, Center, Newark, Delaware, USA ©2015 Peter Fritz Walter. Some rights reserved. Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License This publication may be distributed, used for an adaptation or for derivative works, also for commercial purposes, as long as the rights of the author are attributed. The attribution must be given to the best of the user’s ability with the information available. Third party licenses or copyright of quoted resources are untouched by this license and remain under their own license. The moral right of the author has been asserted Set in Palatino Designed by Peter Fritz Walter Walter 2nd Edition, Expanded and Revised, 2015 Free Scribd Edition Publishing Categories Business & Economics / Leadership Publisher Contact Information
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[email protected] About Dr. Peter Fritz Walter http://peterfritzwalter.com
About the Author
Parallel to an international law career in Germany, Switzerland and the United States, Dr. Peter Fritz Walter (Pierre) focused upon fine art, cookery, astrology, musical performance, social sciences and humanities. He started writing essays as an adolescent and received a high school award for creative writing and editorial work for the school magazine. Upon finalizing his international law doctorate, he studied psychology and psychoanalysis and started writing both fiction and nonfiction works. After a second career as a corporate trainer and personal coach, Pierre retired as a full-time writer, philosopher and consultant. His nonfiction books emphasize a systemic, holistic, crosscultural and interdisciplinary perspective, while his fiction works and short stories focus upon education, philosophy, perennial wisdom, and the poetic formulation of an integrative worldview. Pierre is a German-French bilingual native speaker and writes English as his 4 th language after German, Latin and French. He also reads source literature for his research works in Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, and Dutch. All of Pierre’s books are hand-crafted and self-published, designed by the author. Pierre publishes via his Delaware company, Sirius-C Media Galaxy LLC, and under the imprints of IPUBLICA and SCM (Sirius-C Media).
In memory of Richard Wilhelm (1873-1930) (1873-1930) A German sinologist, theologian, scholar and missionary who lived in China for twenty-five years, Richard Wilhelm has made the first translation for the West of the Book of Changes , in German entitled ‘I Ging: Das Buch der Wandlungen.’ This book, the result of a colossal scholarly achievement, was translated to English by Cary F. Baynes and published by Princeton University Press in the United States in 1950 (Bollingen Foundation). It contains an important Foreword by Carl Jung.
The author’s author ’s profits from this book are being bei ng donated to charity. charity.
Contents Preface
13
How this Book Can Help You!
Introduction
31
The I Ching and HeartMath® Research
The Technique
45
A Road Map for Your First Consultation Watch Your Mood Get Prepared Ask Your Question Make the Hexagram The Moving Lines Reading the Hexagrams
Base Structure of the I Ching
51
THE LEADERSHIP I CHING
What is Right Action? The Men of Old First Line Yang Second Line Yang Third Line Yang Forth Line Yang Fifth Line Yin Sixth Line Yin Patterns of Change Mastering Change The I Ching and Morality The I Ching and Emotions The Reflection Pattern The Karma Pattern Action Patterns Three Phases of Action Non-Action vs. Bold Action
The Hexagrams
111
64 Hexagrams and 384 Lines
1 Qian
113
Yang / Creative Energy / The Active Principle
2 Kun
117
Yin / Adaptive Energy / The Receptive Principle
3 TUN
121
Difficult Begin / Birth Pangs / To To Be Stationed
4 MENG
125
Immaturity / Lacking Lacking Experience / The Undeveloped
5 XU
129
Waiting Patiently / Stagnation Stagnation / Hesitation
6 SONG
133
Dispute / Conflict / Inner Struggle
7 SHI
137
The Army / Military Military Leadership / Collective Power
8 BI
141
Fellowship / Unity Unity / Togetherness
9 XIAO CHU
145
Small Accumulation / Limitation / Incremental Progress
8
CONTENTS
10 LI 10 LI
149
Conduct / Behavior / Attitude
11 TAI 11 TAI
153
Peace / Harmony / Success
12 PI 12 PI
157
Obstacle / Adversity / Obstruction
13 TONG 13 TONG REN
161
Fellowship / Community / Uniting with People
14 DA 14 DA YOU
165
Great Harvest / Power / Abundance
15 QIEN 15 QIEN
169
Modesty / Humility / Moderation
16 YU 16 YU
173
Enthusiasm / Harmony / Expansion
17 SUI 17 SUI
177
Compliance / Following / Diligence
18 GU 18 GU
181
Correct Corruption / Improve Things / Act Against Decay
19 LIN 19 LIN
185
Advancing / Going Forward / Progress
20 GUAN 20 GUAN
189
Contemplation / Stocktaking / Reflection
21 SHI 21 SHI HO
193
Biting Through Hardship / Correction / Reform
22 BI 22 BI
197
Adornment / Beauty / Grace
23 BO 23 BO
201
Erosion / Decline / Fragmentation
24 FU 24 FU
205
Return / Renewal / Revival
25 WU 25 WU WANG
209
Innocence / Unexpected Happening / Surprise
9
THE LEADERSHIP I CHING
26 DA 26 DA CHU
213
Great Potential / Creative Energy / Great Power
27 YI 27 YI
217
Nourishment / Nutrition / Self-Cultivation
28 DA 28 DA GUO
221
Critical Mass / Great Excess / Imbalance
29 KAN 29 KAN
225
Watery Depths / Danger / Abyss
30 LI 30 LI
229
Fire / Synergy / Cooperation
31 XIAN 31 XIAN
233
Mutual Attraction / Wooing / Marriage
32 HENG 32 HENG
237
Constancy / Continuation / Perseverance
33 DUN 33 DUN
241
Retreat / Withdrawal / Going Backward
34 DA 34 DA ZHUANG
245
Power of the Great / Great Strength St rength / Use of Strength
35 JIN 35 JIN
249
Success / Progress / Advancement
36 MING 36 MING YI
253
Time of Darkness / Ignorance / Difficulty
37 JIA 37 JIA REN
257
Family / The Clan / Group Life
38 KUI 38 KUI
261
Contradiction / Opposition / Disharmony
39 JIAN 39 JIAN
265
Obstruction / Obstacle / Difficulty
40 JIE 40 JIE
269
Dissolution of the Problem / Release / Liberation
41 SUN 41 SUN
273
Sacrifice / Decrease / Reduce the Excessive
10
CONTENTS
42 YI 42 YI
277
Benefit / Increase / Advantage
43 GUAI 43 GUAI
281
Resolution / Decisiveness / Rushing Ahead
44 GOU 44 GOU
285
Contact / Encounter / Temptation
45 CUI 45 CUI
289
Congregation / Gathering / Harmonizing
46 SHENG 46 SHENG
293
Rising / Progress / Going forward
47 KUN 47 KUN
297
Adversity / Exhaustion / Entrapment
48 JING 48 JING
301
The Well / Water Hole / Reaching the Water
49 GE 49 GE
305
Revolution / Reformation / Groundbreaking Change
50 DING 50 DING
309
Cauldron / Harmonization / Stability
51 ZHEN 51 ZHEN
313
Force of Thunder / Shock / The Arousing
52 GEN 52 GEN
317
Keeping Still / Impediment / Non-action
53 JIAN 53 JIAN
321
Gradual Progress / Step-by-Step Plan / Positive Development
54 GUI 54 GUI MEI
325
The Maiden / Marriage / Subordination
55 FENG 55 FENG
329
Peak / Abundance / Over-Capacity
56 LU 56 LU
333
The Wanderer / Traveling / On the Road
57 XUN 57 XUN
337
Gentle Wind / Conformity / Submissiveness
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THE LEADERSHIP I CHING
58 DUI
341
Joyousness / Enjoyment Enjoyment / Contentment
59 HUAN
345
Scattered / Dispersion / Dissolution
60 JIE
349
Self-Restraint / Limits / Limitation
61 ZHONG FU
353
Inner Truth Truth / Insight / Faithfulness
62 XIAO GUO
357
Predominance of the Small / Restraint / Minor Excess
63 JI JI
361
After Crossing Crossing the Water / Already Done / After Completion
64 WEI JI
365
Before Crossing the Water / Not Yet Done / Before Completion
Annex
369
Book Reviews Books Reviewed
Bibliography
381
Contextual Bibliography
64 Hexagrams
399
A Synopsis
Personal Notes
401
12
Preface How this Book Can Help You! You!
THE LEADERSHIP I CHING
There is nothing constant in the universe. All ebb and flow, flow, and every shape that’s that’s born, bear in its womb the seeds of change. —Ovid, Metamorphoses This book is not only about the I Ching or the age-old Art of Divination , and it’s not just another interpretation. In this case it would not bring something new and original to you, dear Reader. There are now countless books on the market that extensively explain, annotate and interpret the ancient Book of Changes , as the I Ching is called by most scholars. The present interpretation of the old wisdom book has grown with me over the last twenty years. I have consulted half a dozen of famed interpretations over the years starting with the perhaps most classic one by Richard Wilhelm. Wilhelm. —Richard Wilhelm, The I Ching or Book of Changes, translated by C. Baynes (1967).
Most of them left me with the discovery that a too narrow and ‘literal’ translation of the wisdom book results in a sort of verbiage that is not of our time, and that can at times be quite misleading. In addition, some I Ching editions authored by famous Taoist masters, such as Hua-Ching Hua-Chin g Ni, contain their particular teaching.
14
PREFACE
—Hua-Ching Ni, The Book of Changes and the Unchanging Truth (1983/1999).
If one is a disciple of their philosophical school or doctrine, this may be agreeable, but when that is not the case, the practical use of the I Ching for your daily divinations is restricted because you are served a terminology that you don’t understand. Last not least, we are living in a modern society today, and our thinking has switched from a moralizing mode, so typical for former centuries, to a functional a functional mode. With the expression ‘functional mode’ I mean that we today are more inclined to find moralistic reasoning a part of ‘religious’ sectarian opinions and rather unfit for a person who is spiritually awake, whereas we more easily welcome an empirical approach to life that is based on scientific evidence and human experience. The HeartMath® research that I am going to discuss in the Introduction is such an approach: it is scientific, yet it proves age-old wisdom traditions right that say we have an intelligence of the heart heart that is different from the intelligence of both our brain and our body. This ‘Heart IQ’ as it is also called is in my opinion responsible for the fact that divination works, for it’s our heart which knows what is right in every moment and for each and every decision. Thus when we divine, we are doing nothing else than involving our heart in our decision-making process!
15
THE LEADERSHIP I CHING
The I Ching has a clear and natural approach to morality, which means it does not not embody a ‘moralizing’ approach. Taoism is based upon natural or genuine morality which can be expressed in what has been termed the ‘golden rule’ of not doing to others what you don’t what others do to you. For example, the I Ching has nothing against wealth, but it i t is not enamored with poverty either; it i t recommends to remain simple and to see that our efforts should surpass a mere striving for comfort, as comfort alone cannot give meaning to our lives. However, However, this does not mean that the I Ching suggests us to stay out of the world or to retire in the forests. Not at all. The art of living the I Ching teaches is to stay in the world without becoming entangled with the world. Negativity in interpreting the I Ching, which I found in all and every I Ching edition I was using, even those from famous scholars from the East or West got me to draft a radically new and modern interpretation that is using the vocabulary of our time. In truth, the I Ching doesn’t divide life in black and white, as our media so often do. The idea that a ‘punishing’ destiny is looming or that there is a revengeful God are not in accordance with the philosophical approach of the old wisdom book. It has to be seen also that especially for beginners, to receive one of those really negative lines may cause fear and even shock to you, and this is i s certainly
16
PREFACE
not beneficial to your evolution, for we never grow in wisdom by fear or shock! We simply do not learn through fear to better our lives, and our behavior, but through correct assessment of our motives of motives of action, and the situation itself. Also, as my own interpretation of the I Ching focuses on leadership, the art of leading others through properly leading self, it is essential to start with a positive mindset, rather than a fatalistic and superstitious one. We are far beyond the times when people were consulting fortune tellers; today serious astrologers, numerologists, cartomancers, and life consultants are changing their consultancy style from ‘predictive’ to ‘psychological.’ All learning is gradual, and when it involves a change of basic behaviors, it is incremental. This means that evolving ‘from chaos to coherence,’ to quote the title of a book I will be talking about further down, will not be possible overnight. It’s a slow and gradual process; it starts with building awareness of ‘what is’ in order to move toward a different way of seeing the world. In my long years of experience with I Ching editions that are overly negative, my moving forward in life life was often slowed because of the fear triggered by some really negative readings; and in some notable extreme cases, I lost huge amounts of money because the I Ching reading
17
THE LEADERSHIP I CHING
was absolutely opposite to opposite to common sense and my clear intuition! I followed it nonetheless, addicted as I was at the time to being ‘guided’ and that was a bad idea altogether—and I tell you these stories not because I think my life is particularly important, but because they may serve you as a warning to not do it the way I did it, and thus use divination to your advantage! In other words, divination has to be done with reason , with common sense, not in a fatalistic mood that believes there is only one right solution. Often in life there are many more options for action than just one, and many more modalities of how to act correctly. All belief in ‘fate’ is outdated, based upon an archaic magic-fatalistic worldview that has no place in a world governed by science and reason. For example, when I inherited my family fortune back in 2000 and my main commercial tenant, an Italian Gelateria , threatened me with not paying the rent for the next sixth month—8,500 Euros/month—for out of the air if not unlawful reasons, my first reaction was to go to a lawyer. I was fortunate enough to have one right at the opposite corner of the street where my property was. She was not from our region, but from North Germany, a straightforward and tall woman with a firm intention and diction, that you might call a tough career lawyer! She was exactly what I needed, and I knew it immediately upon meeting her. She said: 18
PREFACE
—We have to strike hard, with a heavy blow to these sunshine guys who want to play rolling skates with you while they never spoke up against your mother as long as she was the boss. You need to throw a stone, and a heavy one! Please sign this form so that I can go to court and start the action tomorrow morning at 8 am. I hesitated, suddenly thinking, I will go home and consult the I Ching before I make a decision. She said okay, let’s talk about it again tomorrow morning at 7:30 am when I come to the office. I went home and consulted the I Ching and it said that to go ahead aggressively would end up on an impasse and that I should conciliate. The next morning at 7:40 I called her and told her to wait with the action. She replied that she felt I was going to make a mistake but I did not listen. At 10 am one of the two Italians came and asked for a talk. We sat down and he said they were in trouble but would not want me to lose out on rent. They could possibly not pay for one or two months but would surely pay thereafter. I asked what happened and he confessed that he had personal problems with his partner since quite some time, that he had wanted to work for a local company and thus break up with his partner but it had had not worked out so far. far. I more or less agreed, not sure what to do while before consulting the I Ching I had a sure intuition that intuition that acting immediately and aggressively was the right action!
19
THE LEADERSHIP I CHING
And I knew why. why. I knew the troublemaker was not this tall and honest-looking Italian from Venice, but his little fat partner with the innocent-looking gray eyes. And my intuition had been correct. About two weeks later I got a letter from their lawyer. They had taken a lawyer who had been one of my colleagues at law school, a man who had a big mouth and was notoriously notoriously wrong wrong with all his legal work. But as I had revealed his real face several times in class by correcting his mistaken replies, and the whole class had laughed at him, he had a matter to settle with me. In his letter, he confronted me with an absolutely insolent ultimatum. ultimatum. I supposedly had to let them stay for the next six months without receiving rent, then they would go, and all that on the shaky grounds that there was ‘water running down the walls in the cellar’ and that the pipes were clogged and they could not produce icecream. I immediately got the plumber who told me nothing was clogged, and that I should be careful with ‘those Italians.’ I took another lawyer, again following the I Ching, instead of staying with the tall lady from the North. It was another university colleague of mine, a soft-spoken young man who was very gentle and ‘understood my situation.’ But he did nothing that was in any way effective and when I invoked a clause in the contract to change the locks and shut those tenants out because they were more than two
20
PREFACE
months in debit with the rent, he had a hundred arguments against the procedure. procedure. Then, destiny gave me another option. One day eating icecream in an Italian Gelateria in Gelateria in the capital, I got to know the owner, an Italian from Genova. I told him the story. He simply replied: —That’s my opportunity. I know your place since long and I have only waited for this day. I will pay you 11,500 Euros per month and want to take the place over as soon as possible. With me you have a stable tenant! Baffled, I told him how he was going to solve the problem with the two Italian shop owners? He smiled and said: —Among Italians we have got easy solutions … Upon which he took out a gun from his pocket and put it on the table. I froze to ice, saying I would think about it and call him up the next day. I asked the I Ching that same night and it predicted great predicted great danger if danger if I chose this option. So I let it go. To make a long and painful story short. It was impossible to get any money from them while they were put out by court order order after one entire entire year. year. A month before the final judgment, they had evaporated to Italy and my lawyer was unable to find out their address. While they had to pay the costs of the trial, I had to pay my lawyer and had rental losses of 85,000 Euros. I knew by then that I had done it all wrong and should sho uld never have listened to the I Ching! 21
THE LEADERSHIP I CHING
Then, during the financial crisis back in 2008, I made another wrong assessment and financial decision following the I Ching and lost another 70,000$. It was only after the storm was over and the damage done that I discovered to what point my readings at that time had been influenced by my overall negative thoughts and emotions, and the mood of panic I had been in. As a result of this learning experience, I have used all my diligence to render a new interpretation for those ‘critical’ hexagrams and lines l ines in a way that You, You, the user of this book, gets a signal that change is needed, without however losing your spontaneity for decision-making in accordance with your deeper intuition. For one thing is really important, and it’s not revealed in any of the I Ching literature I consulted. When a reading flagrantly opposes and contradicts your intuition about the matter, and and you are tense and scared by the situation at hand, do not follow not follow the I Ching reading! Either ask again when you are free of fear, or if the situation is such that you remain tense and afraid of future events, by all means follow your intuition, and not the I Ching for you have then impacted negatively upon the reading because of your negative negative emotions! It is important that you understand that the I Ching— and generally all divination—doesn’t overrule your intuition. What you get is a suggestion, not more, and not less. You do not need to follow it if you feel it’s not in harmony with your intuition, or that the reading is against 22
PREFACE
common sense or impractical or completely disregards the realities of life. In a case as with the Italians, it was clear to me from all my life experience that hitting hard and right away was the only correct thing to do. And I had had the chance to get a good lawyer right away, but changed her, again because of the I Ching, against a guy who had neither a brain nor balls in his underpants. Then life gave me another chance to get a new Italian tenant who paid me substantially more, was reputed as a business person and had an ‘Italian only’ solution. Why was I afraid? Why did I let him go? Twice destiny offered me solutions and twice I let them go because of the I Ching. In 2008, the situation was even more clear-cut. I should have left my money in the bank in Cambodia in the first place for nothing happened to that economy during the financial crisis, absolutely nothing, for they had no stock market yet, while I following the I Ching got my money to a bank in Singapore who against initial promise did nothing to setup my portfolio, and paid me a lousy interest of 0.8% for my funds while in Cambodia I had got 8.25% interest. It was from the start the wrong decision but I was so scared that I obviously influenced the readings, for in this case I had made several, and they were all negative. Hence, the importance of how you prepare for a reading, how you set it all up, which mindset you have at that time, and how you handle any kind of anxiety or anticipa23
THE LEADERSHIP I CHING
tion. It is also important to not make too many readings for the same question. This brings me naturally to giving you some advice on how to divine with the I Ching. The easiest manner to consult the I Ching is to drop three coins on a flat surface six times. Head counts 3 and tail counts 2, thus when you get two heads and a tail, you get the number 7, which is a — yang line, but no answer, or you get two tails and a head which gives you the number 8, which is a – – yin line, but equally no answer. However if you throw three heads, you get the number 9, which is a — yang line and an answer and when you throw three tails, you get 6, which is a – – yin line and also an answer. Let’s say you throw 7-8-7-9-8-8 which results in Hexagram 55:
55 FENG Peak / Abundance / Over-Capacity (— —) 8 (— —) 8 ——— 9 (———) 7 (— —) 8 (———) 7
24
PREFACE
As we have seen, 7 or 8 are no answers, which is why I have put these lines in parenthesis. While they are no direct answers to your question, indirectly they are necessary for composing the hexagram that provides the overall answer. swer. This overall answer is i s then to be seen under the lines and for this hexagram reads as follows:
Things are at a peak or climax. A developed person uses their full deployment for serving others and enriching the world. According to the natural law of balance, when something reaches its point of fullness, decline is inevitable. Everything in the universe follows this cycle. it’s it’s like a tidal movement. If one has more than enough, he should not hold onto everything for himself, but be charitable. When abundance becomes full, it’s like the sun being too strong: the light is blinding one, vegetation dries up, the land becomes parched, and nothing can flourish. Feng teaches the value of control in a situation of abundance so as to not overstress the cycle. We have also seen that you have drawn the 4 th line as your direct answer. This line reads as follows: 4—If you want to be useful, having learnt the lesson indicated by the 3 rd line, the universe will guide you and you will attract an associate with whom you can work together to realize your goal.
25
THE LEADERSHIP I CHING
Now you may ask how is it possible that by any means the I Ching can know what’s going on inside of your mind and even how it can help predicting your fate, or help you in making a sound decision? That sounds almost impossi ble for anybody who first first hears about it. Joseph Needham writes in his Foreword Foreword to The Genius of China (2013) by (2013) by Robert Temple: Temple: Francis Bacon had selected three inventions, paper and printing, gunpowder, and the magnetic compass, which had done more, he thought, than any religious conviction, or any astrological influence, or any conqueror’s achievements, to transform completely the modern world and mark it off from antiquity and the Middle Ages. He regarded the origins of these inventions as ‘obscure and inglorious’ and he died without ever knowing that all of them were Chinese. (Id., 10)
Just as the Chinese were the the first to invent the magnetic compass for navigating in the exterior world, they coined the I Ching as a compass for navigating our interior world. The wisdom of the I Ching is based upon the fact that all changes in nature occur as a matter of cyclic change, but while this may be conspicuous, it is less obvious how these how these changes come about , and what the patterns of those changes are! Based upon the binary code that was long unknown in the West, the I Ching incorporates all of the dynamic patterns of living that are resonance patterns patterns of our thoughts, and vibrational patterns of our emotions, together with the 26
PREFACE
actions we set in the world, which also have a certain positive or negative resonance. As we today know from systems research and quantum mechanics, all we think and do creates interference patterns in the energy ocean of the universe. The I Ching somehow got the blueprint of it all, and that—5000 years ago. It’s quite a feat! The Chinese worldview was a holistic one in those olden times, just as our science develops it now after its long ‘Newtonian Sleep.’ For an unbiased observer it is obvious that nature is not a machine and machine and doesn’t function like a clockwork. A good example is medicine. While modern medicine uses a mechanistic mechanistic approach and is focused upon symptoms, Chinese medicine is concerned with the underlying causes of disease, and therefore has developed a valid approach to disease prevention. prevention. Using pulse reading and acupuncture, Chinese medicine is able to diagnose disease long before it is actually manifesting in the physical body, by examining the underlying energy field of field of the patient. To understand how the I Ching works, we can actually draw a comparison to acupuncture. The acupuncturist focuses on the energy flow in the body, detecting imbalances or blockages in the flow, and then correcting the condition by establishing harmony. harmony. The I Ching deals in a similar way not with the body but with the patterns of living; these patterns are energy fields and the I Ching detects if they are harmonious and thus beneficial or inharmonious and harmful. 27
THE LEADERSHIP I CHING
Let me say a last word about how you benefit from this book compared compared to a classical I Ching interpretation. interpretation. What I tried to do in writing this book is to help you as a beginner to focus your learning efforts on the essential, avoiding to ingest all the more or less tedious anecdotic or historical details that those voluminous commentaries present. This kind of information is not directly relevant for consulting the I Ching while it’s of course of high interest for the scholar. As I did not myself find a book that gave me such a practical opening path for working with the I Ching, I was for a long time wading through hundreds of pages of material that confused me more than anything, until I started to actually use the I Ching for divination. For example, Richard Wilhelm’s world-famous first interpretation of the I Ching in history is divided in two parts, both of which contain relevant information. But to this very day I cannot see how the second part adds on to the first part without giving a lot of non-essential and rather confusing additional information? Likewise, the Book of Changes and the Unchanging Truth (1983) by Master Hua-Ching Hua-Ch ing Ni consists cons ists of more than 650 pages; the first 215 pages are meant to be introductory yet are highly difficult to understand! My goal in writing this book was thus to present to the reader a practical and modern interpretation of the I Ching which has incorporated the important research on inner coherence and and success principles principles that HeartMath® research
28
PREFACE
delivered and that has been taken over by many business leaders and Fortune 100 companies all over the world. —See, for example, Doc Childre and Bruce Cryer, Cryer, From Chaos to Coherence, Boulder Creek, CA: Planetary, 2004.
29
Introduction The I Ching and HeartMath® Research
THE LEADERSHIP I CHING
The I Ching may Ching may well be the oldest book on the planet. Like the Bible, the Book of Changes was Changes was a co-operative effort spanning many centuries. R. L. Wing, in his I Ching interpretation, makes the assumption that the deepest ideas conveyed in the I Ching were handed down orally from the elders of nomadic Siberian tribes. These early sages were great observers of nature; they looked at the stars and tides, plants and animals, and the cycles of all natural events. They also made out the patterns of social life, government, warfare, and the rules pertaining to the welfare of the family. Contrary to Western philosophers who thought of the cosmos as a static static arrangement of atoms, ancient Chinese scholars put their focus on the organic and systemic nature of the universe; they looked at how things change in nature, and how structures organically emerge. Their idea of nature was of a fluid, ever-evolving organism in which everything is connected: an interconnected system of relations , which is exactly what cutting-edge systems research now reveals to us, thereby falsifying hundreds of years of speculative, and largely superfluous, philosophy. —See Fritjof Capra and Pier Luigi Luisi, The Systems View of Life: A Unifying Vision (2014).
They then condensed their insights into the sixty-four hexagrams of the I Ching. It is i s quite astonishing to see that those sages had an acute awareness of the hidden parallelism 32
INTRODUCTION
between agricultural cycles, social patterns, courtly manners, warfare strategies, cosmic events, and the practice of self-cultivation. The authorship of the I Ching is attributed to the legendary Fu Hsi, Hsi, who ruled China during the third millennium B.C. He is said to have created the arrangement of the initial eight trigrams that trigrams that are at the basis of all the sixtyfour hexagrams. Another influential author and commentator of the I Ching was King Wen, Wen, the founder of the Chou Dynasty (1150-249 B.C.). He is said to have written his commentary on the I Ching during the time of his imprisonment under the tyrant Chou Hsin. The legend goes that a dream had revealed to him a hexagram displayed on the wall of his cell, upon which he began to describe his mental images in words. After he was rescued from prison, King Wen took the throne, and his son, the Duke of Chou, completed his father’s work by writing complete commentaries on all the lines of each hexagram. At that time, and even later in ancient China, all great scholars were devoting much time and energy to study the I Ching and write their own commentaries for it. Among them are Lao Tzu, Mencius, Mo Tzu, Chu Hsi, and Chuang Tzu. Confucius (551-479 B.C.) made the perhaps most important contribution, known as the Ten Wings , which is a collection of philosophical essays on the I Ching.
33
THE LEADERSHIP I CHING
Confucius was among the first philosophers who considered the potential of the I Ching for self-development, and especially the development of leadership qualities. The anecdote goes that he consulted the I Ching so often during his later years that he had worn out three times the leather thongs holding together the parchment upon which it was written.
Another important I Ching scholar was Carl Jung. He came across Richard Wilhelm’s celebrated translation for which he later wrote an important Foreword. Jung saw in the I Ching a brilliant brill iant mind map of human nature and cosmic order, and the cosmic memory of archetypal forces which he named as the ‘collective unconscious.’ 34
INTRODUCTION
R.L. Wing writes in The I Ching Workbook (1984) that (1984) that the search for a solution to the mystery underlying the constant motion and change in the universe has spawned both the science of physics and the earlier science of metaphysics. There is a line going through all the impending change in the cosmos; it could be called a developmental energy, or creational principle that the old Chinese called the Tao. ao. Modern science has revealed it through quantum mechanics and calls it the Quantum Field or Field or Quantum Vacuum. While this technical expression suggests that within this field, there is nothingness, the exact contrary is true. As Ervin Laszlo put it in his book Science and the Akashic Field: An Integral Theory of Everything (2004), (2004), it’s actually a plenum. What the old Chinese called ch’i and ch’i and in the West used to be called pneuma called pneuma or ether , is now considered as obsolete by modern physics in the sense of a secondary mover. As Einstein put it, the field nature explains sufficiently why electrons are entangled even over huge distances and why there can be ‘spooky motion at a distance,‘ as a result. But the very core of the I Ching is the principle of polarity which is an underlying reality in all of nature. The old Chinese called it the dualism of ying of ying and yang. All the hexagrams in the I Ching are reflections of these polar yet complementary energies. Carl Jung, known to have studied and worked with the I Ching for many years, 35
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actually explained its working with synchronicity or meaningful coincidence. When you throw the coins, the way they fall has meaning; ing; it’s not a random event. The resulting hexagram reflects the content of your subconscious mind which knows what the outcome of the situation will be, so the I Ching, as any other divination device, actually projects projects the content of your subconscious mind. As we often today are afraid of change, we can learn to become more change-friendly if we often consult the I Ching and follow its advice. The good news is that the I Ching will always counsel you to change in a non-hurtful, smooth and predictable manner, manner, so that the change is intelligent and harmonious. Following the I Ching you thereby become more flexi ble in your overall approach approach to life and to problem-solving. problem-solving. In this sense, the I Ching is not just a manual for fortune telling, nor a substitute for your intuition! Now, let me explain how the recent, quite revolutionary HeartMath® Research both confirms and explains how our heart’s intuitive wisdom impact upon life and creates reality. Honestly, I did not expect that once scientific research would prove all my intuitive insights to be true. But this has well been the case. Stephen Covey reports in his book The 8th Habit (2004) that controlled double-blind scientific laboratory studies ‘are producing increasing evidence of the close relation36
INTRODUCTION
ship between body (physical), mind (thinking) and heart (feeling).’ —Stephen R. Covey, The 8th Habit: From Effectiveness Effecti veness to Greatness, London: Simon & Schuster, Schuster, 2004, 51.
Before I go more into detail using the original research report, let me outline here the quite far-reaching conclusions that Dr. Covey drew from it, calling it our four intelligences: !
Our Physical intelligence (PQ);
!
Our Mental Intelligence (IQ);
!
Our Emotional Intelligence (EQ);
!
Our Spiritual Intelligence (SQ).
The IQ is our classical intelligence concept as affirmed by psychology and early brain research. It was widened in the 1970s by the understanding of ‘emotional intelligence’ or EQ. —See for example Daniel Goleman, Emotional Intelligence, New York, Bantam Books, 1995.
Goleman writes in one of his later books, summarizing his many years of research on emotional intelligence that ‘for star performance in all jobs, in every field, emotional competence is twice as important as purely cognitive abilities.’ —Daniel Goleman, Working with Emotional Intelligence, New York: Bantam Books, 1998, 31. 37
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The intelligence of our body, namely our gut, and our spiritual intelligence have been discovered only recently. Doc Childre and Bruce Cryer write in their research research report: The human body is an incredible system—roughly 7 trillion cells with a mind-boggling level of physical and biochemical coordination necessary just to turn a page, cough, or drive a car. When you consider how little of it you have to think about, it becomes even more amazing. When was the last time you reminded your heart to beat, your lungs to expand and contract, or your digestive organs to secrete just the right chemicals at just the right time? These and a myriad of other processes are handled unconsciously for us every moment we live. Intelligence manages the whole system, much of it unconscious. The notion that intelligence is a purely cerebral, aloof activity uncontaminated and unaffected by emotions has been shown in this and much other recent research to be an outdated and misguided myth. —Doc Childre & Bruce Cryer Crye r, From Chaos to Coherence: The Power to Change Performance, Boulder Creek, CA: Planetary Publishing, 2004, 27-28, and 33.
What I was trying to point out in my own words, that is, that self-regulation is self-regulation is built in our body and mind system, and that peak performance is a result of inner peace is now confirmed by HeartMath ® research. These scientists have termed the inner state that is conducive to success ‘inner coherence.’ Based on this insight, they are talking about the need for inner leadership and leadership and in-
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INTRODUCTION
ternal self-management as self-management as the starting point of all highly effective leadership. HeartMath® research confirms what ancient mystics knew, namely that the world is an ‘internally created phenomenon.’ We all live in a different world as we process the sensory date we receive according to our mental setup, our beliefs and our emotions to create what each of us experiences as ‘the world out there.’ The authors write in their report: Creativity, decision-making, health and well-being all improve when mind and emotions are coherent and relatively noise-free. —Doc Childre & Bruce Cryer Crye r, From Chaos to Coherence: The Power to Change Performance, Boulder Creek, CA: Planetary Publishing, 2004, 3.
From my several years of work experience as a corporate trainer in South-East Asia, I know that today organizations not just in Asia but everywhere in the world are challenged at a very high level. The mechanistic management solutions most executives have learnt and believed in are not working any longer because they disregarded the human element, which means the human being that has also an irrational side, and is emotional, rather than always rational. Under the old leadership paradigm and before globalization, this tion, this was still quite workable, but with the networked world economy and the relocation of producing markets to
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virtually everywhere on the globe , the old model proves to be increasingly insufficient. It is not surprising, then, that the authors summarize their research in these alarming terms: In an age of chaos, emotional management or mismanagement is more important in determining the long-term success of an organization than product success or process improvements. This is as true of start-up firms that experience rapid success but are unprepared for its operational realities as it is for the massive older organization or institution affected by large-scale emotional turmoil and malaise of its workforce. It is also true that 80% of the Fortune 500 companies of 1970 have disappeared off the list. —Doc Childre & Bruce Cryer, From Chaos to Coherence, 34.
This is why the individual learning experience assumes such importance. When executives and workers in a company are left alone to self-manage self -manage their emotions and learn new knowledge, they will fall back on old memories, those namely they had in school or even earlier. earlier. Without conscious thought or choice, a person often avoids learning environments and challenges because of unpleasant feelings imbedded in neural tracks in our brains during earlier learning experiences. —Doc Childre & Bruce Cryer, From Chaos to Coherence, 34-35.
What this research also revealed is that the cognitive capacities of employees become far more sharp and effec40
INTRODUCTION
tive as emotions become balanced, understood and integrated. If organizations continue to leave people alone and without professional support in handling their emotional conflicts and challenges, they will not be able to help their staff handle the enormous stress that today is part of organizational life everywhere on the globe. Abundant research delivered the proof that millions of people today are maladapted to handle the stress of life in our modern consumer societies, both at work and at home. —See, for example, Hans Selye, The Stress of Life, Revised Edition, New York: York: McGraw-Hill, 1978/1984, with many references.
Hans Selye was the first researcher who found that not all forms of stress are harmful. He even asserted that some basic level of stress is needed for advancing in life; in other words, our emotional system can cope with stress if stress levels remain within reasonable boundaries. According to HeartMath® research it depends on the person’s ability to handle their individual individ ual ‘stress response.’ response.’ In so doing, a person skilled in self-management can actually take stress as an opportunity for personal growth. Thus chaos is not the problem, but how long we need to build inner coherence! Research on emotional intelligence has shown that the most successful people in life are the ones who have learned to manage their emotional reactiveness, neutralizing or transforming negative emotions in the process of gaining a new richness of experience. 41
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—Doc Childre & Bruce Cryer, From Chaos to Coherence, 43-44.
This research also demonstrated that when the electrical patterns of the brain synchronize with the rhythmic patterns of the heart people operate with greater physiological coherence, resulting in increased conscious awareness and greater intelligence. The ability to self-generate feelings such as care, appreciation, and compassion is i s key to greater brain efficiency, efficiency, enhanced learning, and a more emotionally balanced life. This is one reason why heart intelligence is such a powerful metaphor for increasing personal and organizational effectiveness. —Doc Childre & Bruce Cryer, From Chaos to Coherence, 45-46.
One of the most cutting-edge findings of this research is that, contrary to traditional neuroscience, people can learn to ‘rewire’ neural tracks that inhibit learning, growth, and emotional maturity, and that are necessary for achieving success. The brain has showed to have an enormous plasticity plasticity for those processes of rewiring neural networks and for changing preferred preferred neuronal pathways that were laid down in early childhood. This fact alone opens enormous possibilities for assisting us with mind and brain changing tools targeting at not only boosting our performance level but changing our selfunderstanding in virtually limitless ways. We need to stop blaming our emotional nature for mismanaged emotions
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INTRODUCTION
and start to see the heart for what it is—the source of our core power intelligence! This is so much the more important as, although the heart and brain each radiate electrical frequencies, the amplitude of the heart’s signal is 40 to 60 times stronger than that of the brain! A mind or organization without heart is scattered, impulsive, and easily distracted. Emotions and organizations without the intelligent balance that comes from the heart create flash fires of instability and waste, causing people to stay locked in self-justified mental loops, missing a heart intelligent perspective that could offer deeper understanding. Incoherences rules. People leave. Groups operating only on instinct arising from gut feelings and often based in fear stay constrained in modalities that imprison the spirit and age prematurely. The heart puts first things first, from the 7 trillion cells it nourishes to the life it sustains to the vitality it ensures—intuitive, intelligent, businesslike; core, fundamental; the first priority. —Doc Childre & Bruce Cryer, From Chaos to Coherence, 51, 55. The results measured after implementing this research are staggering. They included reductions of 65% in tension, 87% in fatigue, 65% in anger, anger, and 44% in intentions to leave the company. company.
Now let me explain how HeartMath ® Research proved the divinatory method of cognition right. The old science of divination knew that there is an intelligence of our heart and that the heart emits vibrations into the universe that have an impact upon all of life and living!
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This age-old insight, however, was denied or declared ‘epiphenomenal’ during the phase of positivistic science, from the time of Bacon and Galileo until the upcoming of systems research in the 1940s. Both the systems view of life and HeartMath® Research now clearly confirm the fact that when we are focused internally, and in a state of inner coherence, we have the ability to lucidly plunge in a state of cognition that is highly aware of where we are steering and thus how our current thoughts and projects will develop on the timeline into the future! While most people are not consciously aware of these patterns of lucid cognition, they can use divination, the I Ching, the Tarot, the Runes or any other method to help them in their decision-making. Fact is that it’s not the divinatory method as such that somehow ‘knows’ our future, but our own heart’s heart’s lucid cognitive intelligence! Throughout this book, for the interpretation of the 64 hexagrams, I have used the expression ‘build inner coherence’ for indicating that the situation requires you to seek your focused state, to make peace with yourself, overcome any fears, face your future positively, and plunge into that state of lucid cognition that, cognition that, if not immediately, so the hours and days following your reading, will signal you the way to go, and thus to act properl properly, y, so that everybody involved in the situation is benefited.
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The Technique A Road Map for Your First Consultation
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Watch Your Mood As I mentioned it already, already, it is very important that you are in a relaxed and meditative state of mind before you set out to consult the I Ching. If you are restless or anxious, avoid consulting it and choose a quieter moment. It is also important to avoid disturbance, to make sure your mobile is turned off and you haven’t any closely approaching appointments. Allow your mind to be quiet, then focus upon the question. Formulate the question clearly in your mind, better: write it down. down. You may want to use a little ritual for getting into the right mood, by burning an incense stick, lighting a candle, and taking a few deep breaths.
Get Prepared You need three coins, some paper, and a pen. You may choose the coins according to your taste and preferences. Some prefer the original Chinese coins that are round with a square hole in the center. But any coins can do, the only thing is that they are of the same kind, the same size and the same weight! Before using the coins for the first time, you may want to dedicate them by washing them and holding them up a moment in your closed hands in front of your frontal lobe (6th Chakra). This preparation may focus your internal energy. It is important that you use these coins for no other purpose, so by preference place pl ace them close to this book, in a dedicated dedi cated 46
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drawer where there is no other material, except, if ever you also use the Tarot and the Runes. In such a case, you may have all your divinatory tools in one and the same drawer. drawer.
Ask Your Question In my experience it is of great importance to clearly formulate your question. If it is ambiguous, you will get an equally ambiguous reading. If you ask an either-or question, you may get a totally off-track answer, so avoid from the start to ask for two alternatives in one single question! For example, if you ask ‘Will it be beneficial if I travel to India for this next vacation,’ this is a fairly precise question. But if you are asking ‘Should I travel to India or to Bangladesh,’ you can’t possibly get a correct answer for you put up two alternatives in the same question.. But you can well ask about a problematic situation in the following manner: ‘Why do I have constant problems with my boss?’ The answer you will get then will point you to the most intelligent way to handle the confrontation; in most cases the I Ching will tell you how you act in a way that is either inappropriate or inflexible, and how you can learn to deal with the situation constructively.
Make the Hexagram Then shake the coins in your cupped hand and let them fall onto a flat, uncluttered surface. To repeat it, you get potentially four different di fferent combinations: —Three tails, 6 (yin, — —, answer) 47
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—Three heads, 9 (yang, —, answer ) —Two tails, one head, 7 (yang, —, no answer) —Two heads, one tail, 8 (yin, — —, no answer) Now compose your hexagram on a sheet of paper, or memorize your sequence. For example, when you draw 68-8-9-9-8, look at the Hexagram Guide Guide below and you will find it’s Hexagram 45, with Lines 1, 4 and 5 as answers. I have found an easy way to write this down on your paper without needing to write the broken and unbroken lines. You simply write 45/1/4/5. This means it’s hexagram 45 with the lines 1, 4 and 5 changing. What is a changing line?
The Moving Lines Now the lines that are answers, the nines and the sixes, these lines are changing. That means you can then immediately compose the hexagram with the changed lines, the one into which the present hexagram will change. You can find that easily by taking your original sequence, 6-8-8-9-98 and then change the moving lines to their opposite. You will then receive 9-8-8-6-6-8 which is Hexagram 24 (Return).
Reading the Hexagrams The first hexagram comments on the current situation. To stay with our example, consult Hexagram 45 below in the text. First read the GENERAL ADVICE , printed , printed in SMALL 48
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CAPS under each hexagram, then look up the text for lines 1, 4 and 5. Then you try to find a synthesis or a direction in your reading. You can only do that intuitively, there is no recipe for how to do that. Read if necessary all this information over and over again until you get an inner hunch! Then look up the changed hexagram by reversing the yin lines into yang lines and vice versa, as I just explained it. Do not look up the lines, however, they are not valid in valid in a changed hexagram, only the G ENERAL ADVICE. Then reflect how this additional information information can be useful to you for further analyzing your situation; then summarize it all in a short and concise sentence and write it down.
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Base Structure of the I Ching What is Right Action?
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The Men of Old Taoism is often misunderstood in our times of machinery, the machinery of mind, the conceptual trap, the confusion about the existential and the imaginary, the sensual and the extrasensorial, the real and the imitated. As there is today so much of unnatural conditioning, people are often unable to recognize what is real, and what is fake. One of the main points in this confusion is to associate Taoism with Confucianism, while here in reality two worldviews are opposing each other. Here freedom, there moralistic life denial, here spontaneity, there artificiality, here abandonment to intuition, there blockage of intuition by obsessive scholarship and discipline. The confusion starts with the very idea to design Taoism as either a ‘philosophy,’ or a ‘religion’ while it’s none of these. It’s pure wisdom. Philosophies are systems of thought, religions are systems of worship. Taoism is the contrary of a system. Its very essence consists in defying any kind of system. The next point in this scholarly confusion about Taoism Taoism is the point to say it was against desire, or the shaping of desire by sensual perception. Some of the translations of Lao-tzu are highly misleading in this respect, appearing to give the impression of an approach to life which is dry and scholastic, against the perfume of sensuality. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Yang Chu, a Taoist who lived in the 4th century B.C. wrote: 52
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Yang Chu
The men of old knew that life comes without warning and as suddenly goes. They denied none of the natural inclinations, and repressed none of their bodily desires. They never felt the spur of fame. They sauntered through life gathering its pleasures as the impulse moved them. Since they cared nothing for fame after death, they were beyond the law. For name and praise, sooner or later, a long life or short one, they cared not at all.
This statement is true. But in our days of hero culture’s pseudo values, such a worldview is highly difficult to understand. Ignorant folks are likely to jump to the conclusion that, then, those ‘old men’ must have been criminals. In truth, the confusion is one of values. Whereas those men were living virtuous lives, the value of virtue is today questioned with the result that ‘correct behavior’ is defined as all behavior that is within the law. law. In screwing down virtue to a mere conformity with reigning laws, it was relativized, it became itself a concept. As laws are constantly changing, under this modern idea, virtue is to be considered as a rather fleeting, volatile notion, something that has no absolute value. Let me quote one of Lao-tzu’s poems to show what he really means, while apparently this poem, as so many others, appears to deny the value of sensuality or of the sensual world.
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Lao-tzu
The five colors blind the eye. The five tones deafen the ear. ear. The five flavors dull the taste. Racing and hunting madden the mind. Precious things lead one astray. astray. Therefore the sage is guided by what he feels and not by what he sees. He lets go of that and chooses this.
This poem is not a recipe for life-denial, not an abasement of the senses, but the experience shared by somebody who has indulged in sensual experiences and comes to a point of satiation, a point where intuition says that wisdom is flowering when one listens inside, at a moment when all senses are satisfied. Only somebody who has had the experience of sensual abundance can abundance can know that after indulgence, this voice of wisdom is the manna shared by our higher self, which then comes as a profound insight. This is meant when Lao-tzu’s says that the sage doesn’t go for fame. What this means is not that he shuns the world, but that he might be insulted anyway because he thinks differently about what ordinary people call ‘the law,’ simply because he knows that all human laws are ultimately deeply and grossly unjust. That is why the sages of old advised to practice deconditioning, to look at life with pure eyes, with eyes of won54
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der,, with a child’s eyes. That is why they, der they, as we would say today, today, promoted the values of the inner child, which can be seen in the depictions of sages, and of Lao-tzu himself. These men look childlike, innocent, and carefree, absolutely the contrary of our modern heroes, with their hard rigid mechanical bodies, and their squared stiff faces full of hatred and violence. The following shows that this childlike wisdom is not a form of foolishness or numbness, or lack of a sense of reality—in the contrary. contrary. It shows that this mindset brings about a keen sense for justice and political realities: Lao-tzu
Why are people starving? Because the rulers eat up the money in taxes. Therefore the people are starving. Why are the people rebellious? Because the rulers interfere too much. Therefore they are rebellious. Why do people think so little of death? Because the rulers demand too much of life. Therefore the people take tak e life lightly. lightly. Having to live on, one knows better than to value life too much.
This chapter is not about I Ching divination in the ordinary sense. If it was, it would not bring something new and original as there are now countless books on the mar55
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ket that extensively explain, annotate and interpret the ancient Chinese wisdom book. If you wish to study the I Ching in depth, you should either buy one of the traditional I Ching translations, such as the one by Richard Wilhelm, that I myself used during the first years of my diligent study of the I Ching, or you should use a translation and annotation by a Taoist master. master. For example, I am today using the I Ching translation and interpretation by Master Hua-Ching Ni. —Richard Wilhelm, The I Ching or Book of Changes (1967). See also Helmut Wilhelm, The Wilhelm Lectures on the Book of Changes (1995), and Hua Ching Ni, I Ching, The Book of Changes and the Unchanging Truth (1999).
Studying the I Ching was not for me a form of l’art of l’art pour l’art , , but it had a practical purpose. I wanted to understand understand the underlying patterns of living that are at the basis of all divination, and the roots of human behavior. And indeed, my understanding of life and living was uplifted through practicing divination on a daily basis since twenty years. These years also coincided to be those during which I was beginning beginn ing to coach groups, both in the corporate setting, and privately. This uncanny kind of holistic learning about emotions, behavior patterns, conditioning, on one hand, and the wisdom of subtle cosmic guidance, on the other, rooted me in my new profession as a coach and corporate trainer; and with that decision, and the change resulting from it, my former career as an international lawyer had clearly found an end. My motivation for changing 56
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my professional career was the outcome of a deep reflection about the sense of life, and my mission. I understood that I am deeply interested in human beings, and in their paths of life. The law profession, while it interested me in some way, was not satisfying my desire to help people grow, grow, to facilitate facil itate their relationships, and to help them lead happier lives. To be a lawyer meant, in daily practice, to sustain people’s desire for conflict and ‘being right,’ for fighting each other, other, and one was supposed to take sides and defend interests. i nterests. The I Ching helped me on my way to find my true mission. This is, then, perhaps the value of this personal guide about the I Ching, as it is the fruit of experience, and not only of theoretical study. And it is destined to help you better understand yourself yourself and others. Understanding yourself and understanding others is however impossible without understanding the underlying cosmic patterns of living. Human beings do not function differently from the rest of life on earth. Besides that, they are rooted in a universal scheme of cosmic interactions that is little known or totally unknown to psychologists today. The I The I Ching or Ching or Book of Changes is Changes is an ancient text that is said to have been completed during the rulership of King Wen in China, in the last generation of the Shang Dynasty (1766-1121 B.C.). Master Hua-Ching Ni explains in his thorough interpretation interpretation of the I Ching:
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Master Ni
The system of hexagrams which we call the Book of Changes or or I Ching Ching was one of the first great successes in ancient man’s attempts to find the laws which regulate all phenomena. Most significant was the discovery that the laws of Nature are also the laws of humanity and that since Nature and humanity are one, harmony is the key to life. This conclusion was drawn after long internal and external searching which revealed the balanced way of life as the fundamental path. This integral vision of the universe became the spiritual faith of ancient developed people. It was the broad and plain foundation for their discovery of spiritual truth and secret methods. Since life is the main theme in all useful knowledge, the Book of Changes , the the Tao Teh Ching , acupuncture, internal medicine, and the internal work of spiritual self-cultivation all make living in harmony with nature their foundation. —Hua Ching Ni, I Ching, The Book of Changes and the Unchanging Truth (1999), p. 4. Regarding the Tao Teh Ching, mentioned in this quote, see Hua-Ching Ni, The Complete Works Works of Lao Tzu (2003).
Regarding today’s modern culture, Master Ni pursues: Master Ni
In contrast, our overgrown human population, com bined with modern city life, obscures the significance of nature in the lives of people today. Great Nature, however, always remains the true source of life. To restore our understanding of this integral truth, we can use the line system of the Book of
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Changes to study the way in which people and events develop. (Id., 3-4). — Hua Ching Ni, I Ching, The Book of Changes and the Unchanging Truth (1999), pp. 3-4.
There are countless studies on the base structure of the I Ching and how it came about with its sixty-four hexagrams that are compositions of two trigrams each. We can consider each hexagram or kua as an energy pattern that pattern that is a unique mix and vibrational code of the two base energies, yin and yang , represented represented symbolically by lines. Yang is represented represented by a solid line, yin line, yin by by a dotted line. Each hexagram is composed of six lines. The first three lines correspond to the lower trigram, the upper three lines compose the upper trigram. Hexagrams are dynamic patterns in that there is a down-to-up movement contained in them, and a certain time-span inherent in that movement. The lower trigram thus deals with matters that are in their beginning stage, from the start of a project until about half way into its realization. The upper trigram deals with the culmination and the end of processes or projects, positively or negativel ne gatively y. All sixty-four hexagrams are combinations of the eight base trigrams that Master Ni calls The Eight Natural Forces. Forces. In nature’s harmonious and balanced Web of Life , there are many cycles interwoven with each other that contribute to giving flexible giving flexible stability to every natural system or process. process.
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—See Fritjof Capra, The Web of Life (1997) and The Systems View of Life (2014).
Now, in every cycle, there is what Master Ni calls the balancing force. force. In the case of pure yang and yang and pure yin , the balancing force is expressed in the central line of the hexagram, which is always the 5th line. line. In general, this line signifies a position of leadership, and it holds the whole hexagram together; it is also the most influential line or decisive factor in the hexagram. In most cases, and without considering the divination result, when you draw the 2 nd and the 5th line of a hexagram, you can almost be sure that you got a favorable reading for your project or idea. The 6 th line, in most hexagrams, deals with some or the other form of excess and thus signals a setback or failure to expect in the future, except in a few hexagrams where the 6 th line is entirely positive, as for example in Great Amassment (26) where the top line is interpreted as Heavenly Blessing. Blessing. Let me explain the base structure of each hexagram using Great Strength (34) (34) as an example. The guiding advice of this hexagram is: U SE YOUR STRENGTH PRUDENTLY . The structure structure of the hexagram is yang-yang-yang-yang-yin-yin. yang-yang-yang-yang-yin-yin .
First Line Yang The 1st line, in all hexagrams hexagrams,, expresses expresses a beginning. beginning. If I am excessive at the start of a project, I risk early failure. In all new endeavors it is wise to use the first time of a new
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project for gathering knowledge, exploring opportunities, and getting familiar in a new environment. In Great Strength (34) , , the first line reads reads as follows: Too much strength in the toes. The beginning stage makes moving ahead difficult. Such strength will surely lead to misfortune. — Hua-Ching Ni, I Ching, The Book of Changes and the Unchanging Truth (1999), p. 304. All further references in this chapter are taken from Master Hua-Ching Ni’s I Ching edition.
This means that when I am in an environment I am not yet familiar with and walk in the room with proud flair, when I am the new one in a team and have the biggest mouth, when I come over as the person who believes he knows all, then I might be rejected or encounter failure. The right attitude at the start of a new project is caution and respectful humility as well as watchfulness so as to get, as early as possible, the feedback of the environment regarding regarding my impacting upon things and people.
Second Line Yang The 2nd line represents a more advanced stage in the realization of a project. I may have gathered enough information and experience so as to go ahead in my endeavor in a more decisive and forward-looking way than at the start. This line reads: Caution in using strength brings good fortune. (Id.)
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Third Line Yang The 3rd line represents the end of the lower trigram. It is sometimes showing some form of excess, frequently being negative in its meaning, or it may contain a warning to correct one’s attitude. This line reads for hexagram 34: Those of self-development do not display their strength. Inferior people willingly show their strength and thus create a dangerous environment. Such a display of strength is like a goat attacking a fence. Because of its stubborn persistence, its horns become weakened. (Id., 404)
Forth Line Yang The 4th line represents a strong position. It is the first line of the upper trigram and thus can be said to play the role of a senior manager for leading the project to its final realization. As this line corresponds with the 1 st line, it can be said to be the higher octave of the beginning line, and reads: Continue marching in the right direction. All obstructions will disperse. Use strength correctly, in the proper place and at the right time. (Id.)
Fifth Line Yin The 5th line represents the central line in every hexagram. It is therefore sometimes also called the ruling line. line. You can say that when you get the 5 th line in any divination, you are on the right track in some way. The 5 th line 62
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shows that there is a strong point in your you r project or endeavor that bears some chance for success: One subdues oneself in order to end all confrontations. No remorse. (Id.)
Sixth Line Yin The 6th line represents the final stage of a project or endeavor, or its final result. In most hexagrams, the 6 th line expresses some or the other kind of excess and therefore gives a negative reading. Or it gives a warning and shows a way out of a possible dangerous turn of events. This line reads, again for hexagram 34: The stubborn goat attacks the fence, but can neither achieve its goal nor retreat. No benefit. If one learns through one’s difficulties, trouble will not last and there will be good fortune. (Id., 405)
To summarize, in hexagram 34 we see the 6 th line operating more like a warning. When you compare this line with the 5th line, you see that the good turn of events (abandoning stubborn behavior) did not happen, probably because the person did not understand that she was behaving in a rigid, stubborn and aggressive manner. manner. And yet the 6th line still sees a possibility for the person to change and turn things in a positive direction. In other hexagrams, such as, for example, in hexagrams 1, 11, 28, 63 or 64, however, the 6 th line predicts a negative turn of events regardless of further action or retreat from 63
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action. It’s as if in these hexagrams, things have developed to a more condensed state of reality than in other hexagrams.
Patterns of Change Nothing in life is static. All is movement. The universe is a dance. In death processes, the relentless movement of life slows down and comes to a point of profound stillness. However, However, in this stillness is contained the grain for further movement, for new life. In every condition is contained its opposite. In stillness is contained movement, in movement is contained stillness, in hot is contained cold, in male is contained female. In the small boy is contained the great general, in the small girl is contained the famous film diva. In yin In yin is contained contained yang yang and and in yang in yang is is contained yin. yin. What is contained is smaller as what bears it because it is in growth. However, by the same token, what bears the smaller is decreasing in size to become small itself. With culmination and fullness decay sets in, and a new cycle of growth is put in motion. When we observe changes, we learn that if things are kept within reasonable boundaries and the balance of yin of yin and yang and yang is is maintained, they will last. Endurance and lasting success thus are the result of balance, and not of unlimited strength, of flexible adaptation to circumstance, and not of rigid willpower put into one-pointed action.
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When yin yin and yang yang are in balance, this is called the middle way. way. But the middle way is a dynamic, not a static condition. Let me use an image to exemplify this truth. When you film a man who steers a car on a straight highway and then review the video and put the playback speed to very slow, you see that the firm static position of the steering wheel is a mere illusion. You then become aware of the fact that for the man to steer the car in a straight manner, he needs to make constant little movements to the left and to the right. What appears to be stillness, then, is actually the resulting line of a movement from left to right and from right to left, and, consequently, the car does not really move in a straight fashion but more in a wave-like manner. manner. With the same logic as there is no straight line in nature, there is no car driver who ever would steer a car in a straight line. It is only because of the rapidity and the smallness of the controlling steering movements that we perceive the position of the steering wheel as still. For the same reason, the direction of the car appears to us as straight and only by slowing down the film, we become aware of the wave-like movement of the car on the straight highway. When you take this as a metaphor and apply it to daily life, you see for example that when you design a web site, you need to be picky about every inch of space; however, being as picky as that in relationships lets you come over as a stodgy jerk, or a stingy nerd. 65
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Rather, it is recommended to show latitude with people, a form of well-meaning generosity that is founded on inner peace and high self-worth. When you treat life and people as straight lines, you actually show that you see the world as a dry arrangement of ideas, and not as an organic and energetic whole that is in a process of constant and dynamic change. This latitude you should show with people comes from the insight that all our weaknesses and what you may find obnoxious in others are but temporary stages or phases of development in a continuous cycle of change and growth. This is true for our fears and worries as well. Most progress progress in life we make by overcoming fears. Fears are guideposts to what lies ahead to be explored for further self-expansion. The biggest mistake we can do in life is to stay away from what we are afraid of, and procrastinate. When you see a small child facing a dog she is afraid of, you will see that the child in most cases does not just run away, but gets into some kind of back-and-forth dialogue with the dog. Run away, come back—run away, come back —and wait and see further … This behavior is very intelligent because the dog will respond to it. The amazing thing is that the dog’s own fear will decrease because of the game-like toggle approach of the small child. And to the extent that the dog’s fear decreases, the dog becomes potentially less and less harmful to the child. A dog that is in peace is not a dog that bites.
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The child does not say: run away forever and see this dog never again. No, the child enters a nonverbal dialogue with the dog which says: —I am interested in you but I am careful not to make you afraid. This is how I want to lower my own fear, in lowering your fear as well! So let’s play a little swing … which will help us to get acquainted with each other. other. When you have a new and daring project, you may intuitively practice the same approach—and perhaps judge it negatively. You may swing back-and-forth and go ahead a little step and the next day step back a mile. Or your steps forward and backward are of equal length, which is already better. better. But let me assure you: there is nobody who always goes forward. The natural way when starting something new is to swing toward your project and away from it for a certain while. The I Ching expresses this truth with ‘he lin gers for a while and eventually eventually gets settled.’ —Hexagram 3 (Difficult Begin), First Line.
Of course, your intuition always is watchful and each time when you swing forth or back, it will give you little hints. The encouraging hints you get and the ones that hold you back of going further are battling within you, and you will be clear, clear, at the end, what the right way to go is for you. It’s It’s the way that feels good. The most dangerous moments for your peace of mind are not those where you are busy, and not even those when 67
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you are tired, overworked or exhausted. It’s the moments when you feel bored because all is working so smoothly; you got used to your comfort and safety and have nothing to worry about. Sun Tzu, in The Art of War War quotes the general Pan Lo who said that for holding on to peace, we should prepare for war! This laconic dictum means to be mindful all the time, and especially in moments where you think you can just whistle and hang around doing nothing. Nonaction is certainly most creative, but only if you keep your mind unspoiled by destructive or nihilistic ideas. This is so because nonaction favors change as life patterns typically change when we are in a poised, relaxed condition, and when we sit back a little from our daily duties. However, this positive condition for change is spoiled when we worry. When we are at rest, destructive thought infiltrates like a bunch of cockroaches creeping in a lonesome house. It starts with the more general worries, that I call the 3F-worries, future, fortune, fate—and fate—and if you allow these general worries to erode your peace of mind, the worry pattern will get stuck with one or the other specific worry issue that acts like a worry-trigger every time you get back thinking about it. Positive thought is a funny thing because all speak about it when they are anyway positive. The positive. The only time you need positive thought is the time when you are not not positive, but caught in the trap of boredom and comfort. The I Ching
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does not help you being more positive, but it helps you to understand why you are negative. negative . It asks you why you worry when there is nothing to worry about. But it also tells you when you should worry, should worry, because danger stares you in the face while you are running forward like a blind hen. And it shows you when your success is going to turn into failure because you try to hasten growth, and thus burden yourself with stress. And stress, in turn, is a primary source of worry. Here, you can see how practical the cyclic principles are that the I Ching teaches. There is a dynamic process in all growth; first there is an effort, and this effort is most of the time so consuming that there is simply no space for worries; then a phase of achievement and success occurs, and that is, as Pan Lo noted, the first dangerous abyss. Or as some philosopher put it: there is nothing to defeat great and lasting success but small success. success. The small petty success is a danger because complacency tends to set in and effort decreases. And with it, worry increases. increases. And doubt. Positive thought can be built into a habit, but for this to happen, you need to invest considerable time and effort. Before you reach this state of consistency in controlling your mind, you may apply positive thought as a remedy in all those moments when you feel your comfort, your safety, your success and your riches are suffocating you. We are most happy at a meal when we start the meal in a really hungry condition. Hunger is the best cook, not a luxurious setting and a bored mind. And the motor of crea69
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tivity is pure enjoyment that comes from a different kind of hunger, sexual hunger or our fundamental human hunger for art, or for religion. When you read the autobiographies of famous creators, painters, actors, singers or pianists, you will see that they invariably are most productive in the first years of their careers, at a time when they were still struggling in all possible ways to make a living and propagate their art to find an audience. Klaus Kinski, a famous Polish-German actor, tells in his autobiography that during his childhood, his family was so poor that he frequently was sent to steal food in the market, and as he could run very fast, he never was caught. And And still when he was learning his hi s art and got his first roles as an actor, actor, he was so poor that sometimes he had to repeat eighteen hours per day for a role without having anything to eat for one or two days. —Klaus Kinski, Kinski Uncut: The Autobiography of Klaus Kinski (1997).
Our human nature is such that the surest death blow to creativity is total satiation. You may have known this state when you look at another, and more common, form of creativity: sex. sex. When have you been most happy in your sexual affairs? Was Was it not during the times when you could have sex only once in a while and when you had to use one or the other form of creativity to find a good partner? It is interesting to see the parallels between the life of individuals and the life of companies. You will then under70
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stand why the I Ching invariably applies for the life of individuals, companies or even countries: it is because life patterns are universal and not bound to human nature. I am talking about growth about growth processes. processes. All life is growth, and growth can be healthy and constructive, or unhealthy and destructive. Cancer is a growth process as well, but a destructive one. The lesson to learn from nature is to not desire blind or excessive growth, but organic and natural growth. Excessive growth is destructive. The I Ching expresses this truth with ‘Hastening growth lets the plant shoot up, but it destroys the fruit.’ fruit.’ When you measure growth only in terms of speed or what I call forward direction, you disregard the cyclical nature of life. Standstill and backward direction or retrogradation retrogradation are essential movements in natural growth processes, and they have within the cycle the same importance as the forward direction. Every planet spins for several months in a year in the opposite direction. This is called retrogradation in retrogradation in astronomy and astrology. In astrology, the energy of a planet is interpreted also depending on its spin. When the energy of the planet is in forward direction, it is expressed more on the outward level, and its effects are immediate and mostly also visible. When the planetary energy however is in retrogradation, the effects of the energy upon our life are delayed and they are for the most part felt on the inward level only. Thus, the effects of retrograding planets are in-
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visible. Some astrologers, for this reason, speak of inverted planetary energy energy during the phase of retrogradation. Similar to planets, the energy of human beings, in the growth process, goes through three different phases: forward direction, stagnation and backward direction. direction. Western scientific thought and philosophy, ignorant about action patterns, considers positive only the forward direction, denying to credit the validity of the two other essential movements of life. But this statement is of course valid only regarding mainstream culture and mainstream science. As I have shown in other publications, even in times of the most fundamental repression of holistic pro-life wisdom in Europe, the original holistic life science was taught and practiced in the underground by alchemists such as Paracelsus, to name only the most famous among them. Today, mainstream science is like a lazy school boy, timidly learning lessons in dim afternoon classes it should have learnt, long ago, in the bright morning hours. In last resort, life can only reward those who have really contributed to the progress of humanity, even if it happens hundreds of years after their physical death. Truth cannot be veiled for long: it will eventually appear and shine through even the thickest layers of ignorance and malevolent denial of reality. Picasso was creative in his younger years, as he was creative in his older years, but when he was young he was very poor and had barely the amount of food he needed 72
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for his subsistence. Picasso, as all great artists, lived apart from consumer culture, but he had to pay the price for it. He had to suffer for his art, and it was his passion for art and the pleasure to be creative that saved Picasso from the ultimate failure of giving up and exasperating before he was famous, acclaimed and financially rewarded.
Mastering Change The danger I am talking about is our need for change. When I was at the end of my twenties, I felt I needed a big change, but at the same time was very afraid of it. I became more and more aware that by marrying early in life, I had put myself in a golden cage and that, in addition, my comfort was not based upon a real foundation. I was still financially dependent on my mother and I had stressed the relationship with her up to a breaking point, asking her for more and more money. She was not minding the money; my mother’s fine intuition was that my marriage was not going to hold for long, and this not because of any material reason, but because of the simple simpl e truth that I had married too young for a stable partnership and that my wife and me had very different characters. I stubbornly rejected my mother’s point of view, view, only to admit later that I had wasted the best years of my life in a deeply problematic relationship that left me angry and frustrated. I had resisted the necessary change of a relationship pattern I was caught in and that later, in
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psychotherapy, was identified as a non-resolved Oedipus Complex. Complex. Without wanting to expand too much about my own little life, I tell these anecdotes as examples for how we may suffer from a resistance to change more than from actual change. Some coaches today specialize on what they call change management , yet I think we should not separate this skill from the other skills we need in order to master life. Managing change is managing life. It’s as basic as that. Life is change and resistance to change is always a trap. When you observe growth processes in nature you become aware very quickly that life essentially is change. When I speak about change, I do not mean only outward change. The changes in the external settings of your life are of lesser importance. The really important changes are those inside of you, in your mindset and belief system. All what you change here has a direct impact on your external life circumstances. When you change a pattern inside of you before you change it in your outward life, the change actually will wi ll feel organic when you incarnate it outwardly in your life. It’s like flowing with life, as if nothing special had happened. It’s what we use to call the welcome change. When change. When you resist change, however, however, and more so if synchronistic events show you ways to change and you repeatedly disregard them, life may force you to change. Then something rather undesirable may happen, an accident, sickness or a backlash in 74
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one or the other of your endeavors, a social or professional downfall or a tragedy in the family. Flexibility is the single most important virtue or skill we need in order to live through changes with an open and childlike attitude. Flexibility is somehow an Eastern value. It has always been taught by sages as the foremost quality for mastering life, but in the West, because of a basically moralistic life paradigm, flexibility was never considered as an important life skill. That is why today, in a world that changes faster than ever before, Asian cultures live through the profound changes modern life brings in a more dynamic and less hurtful manner than cultures that follow a pervading moralistic paradigm. In fact, both Taoism and Buddhism are religions that teach observation of life as the prima the prima materia for materia for the acquisition of wisdom. To learn from direct observation or to study scriptures in which people have told their observation are two different pairs of shoes. When I am immersed in what others think about life, I am out of focus for my own observation of life. When I study scriptures, I study the past. When I directly observe all around me, including my impact upon others, I am dynamically involved with the present, and I move in the present. Flexibility and observation go together in the same way as rigidity and principle-based living.
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It is not a historical hazard that the principle-based life paradigm is presently the one most successfully taught and propagated by famous coaches in the United States. It’s because it fits the principle-ridden and inflexible Christian mindset. But it is definitely not the best teaching for managing change in a non-hurtful, positive and open way! It was not before reaching my thirties that I began to observe life instead of following one or the other religion or philosophy. I had resisted change so long that life forced me to change. But I welcomed this change because I felt I was returning to my own true being and realizing my own nature. I saw my basic intuition confirmed that life is unendingly flexible and adaptable, and that this quality is built into our human human setup because life has created created us. Many of our collective human tragedies are the direct consequence of our life-denying religions and philosophies that teach us to be stubborn and rigid instead of flexible, principle-ridden and moralistic instead of open and loving, and static instead static instead of dynamic. dynamic. It was in some way a benediction that the moment I acquired wealth, I had already gone through many fundamental changes, and had suffered quite a bit of misfortune. I also was at that time ready to accept responsibility for my life instead of blaming parents, childhood or the whole world for my trials. With With this basically disillusioned disill usioned mindset, I could manage without hurt the challenge with our family business.
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The I Ching and Morality The I Ching never is moralistic. It has nothing against wealth, nor is it enamored with poverty. It recommends to remain basically simple and to see that our efforts should surpass a mere striving for comfort, as comfort alone cannot give a sense to our lives. However, this does not mean that the I Ching recommends us to stay out of the world or to retire in the forests. Not at all. The art of living the I Ching teaches is to stay in the world without becoming entangled with the world. The I Ching teaches to focus upon what we are interested in, what we consider as our mission. mission. As a result, result, the I Ching does not recommend a fatalistic, procrastinating attitude but encourages personal growth. I would say, after years of experience in divining, that the wisdom book shows us the difference between greed and commitment , as for building commitment, we have to warp against over-commitment in the form of greed. When you are merely greedy, and your base intention is just to amass more riches, when you are lacking a more outgoing commitment to your profession or activity, then the I Ching will disadvise you to proceed. What is greed? Let us have a closer look. There is no doubt that the powerful motor of capitalism is greed. Greed is an effective drive because it is fed by emotional flow. flow. However, However, greed is not for this reason a natural human characteristic; it is rather a compensation longing for mate77
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rial goods that comes about through the repression repression of our natural desires. To To put it i t shortly: prohibit sex and you will breed greed in people! Greed is a longing for pleasure, and constant pleasure, and it compensates for the prohibited natural body pleasure. Greed is not just a sort of hunger for wealth. What’s wrong with hunger for wealth? What’s wrong with being clean, comfortable, joyful, wealthy and powerful? Greed is not that. Webster’s dictionary defines greed as ‘excessive or reprehensible acquisitiveness’ and it thus bears an element of excess in it. Interestingly, in the Western culture where materialism has come about in the first place, greed is judged very severely as negative and destructive by the Bible. Does that mean that every Western businessman who follows and practices Christian religion will be caught in a deep conscience split? I think that this would be a misunderstanding of what greed is. In Buddhism, there is perhaps no single other characteristic that is so harshly judged as destructive for human development as greed. And yet I have never seen a Chinese, Thai or Vietnamese businessman who was in the least bothered with being strongly focused upon acquiring wealth and social status. I think that when we talk about greed, we really talk about excessiveness. excessiveness. Following the Eastern principle of balance and harmony in all doing, which is recognized as one of the fundamental life principles in Chinese philosophy, we would not need to blacklist greed because it would be
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held as a signal for negative growth because growth because of its excessiveness. This makes much more sense in my opinion than the moralistic judgment against greed that is to be found in Christian faith, in Buddhism and in Islam regarding regarding greed. In fact, moralistic judgments have barely a rational basis, as they are often arbitrary. But it makes sense to avoid behavior that, because of its excessiveness, brings about strife, conflict and backlashes in all ways. To be more correct on the meaning of words, we could then conclude that a free economy is not based upon greed, but upon the natural striving for comfort and wealth , which is just another form of striving for pleasure, but that capitalism in its extreme form is well based upon greed. Such a position gives us headway out of the dichotomy capitalism-communism and a new landscape in which we may build an economic system for the future that is based upon the pleasure principle, and principle, and that avoids to breed greed in the first place through a naturally permissive education. When you look at permissive cultures, you very seldom find greed among people, whereas for example in the very repressive Protestant or even Calvinistic culture, you find greed very strongly developed in people while paradoxically, the religious dogma harshly condemns it. Needless to say that this produces a schizoid split in conscience that more or less strongly marks this kind of culture. These people are not very agreeable to have around; their lips are 79
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tightly closed or even perversely distorted, and they tend to do exactly the opposite of what they are preaching. An intelligent society must avoid moralism as moralism as it’s against human nature, and bring about a human being that is whole as whole as much as possible; this is so because fragmentation brings strife, conflict and violence in human society and in the long run perverts the human nature. Now, after this somewhat scholarly explanation, you may want to ask what in fact you can do, in your life, to avoid greed and still develop commitment and a healthy focus upon the acquisition of wealth using positive growth cycles as a motor? The answer is in the question. When you follow the principle of balance and harmony , you will avoid greed because you are aware of the fact that greed produces hurt, and you don’t want and need hurt for yourself, your family, your friends or your business partners. If you really wish the best for all people you are in touch with, and you go for what Buddha called The Middle Way , you can’t be greedy. Your natural striving for wealth, status and power will come to a standstill in the moment you see that it produces hurt, short-term or long-term, to any creature. You will apply what the I Ching calls self-restraint, and what I call standstill as standstill as one of the three main directions in human behavior. behavior. Example. You may stay longer and longer in the office in order to maximize your revenues, but there will be a moment you have to acknowledge that you see your chil80
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dren only at weekends for a few hours, and you become aware that a child needs a father as a human being and not as walking money purse. You don’t need anybody to tell you that, you know it, and you will know it when the moment arises. And then you may ponder the standstill option or even the backward option, as the forward option then would clearly reveal as destructive for the wellbeing of your family and in the long run for yourself as well. In the education of your children, when you are too strongly focused on eradicating greed in your child, you will create conflict in your child’s mind. This conflict is actually counter-productive to your goal and will make your child still more greedy. There is only one effective way to avoid children becoming greedy; it is to raise them permissively sively and thus to ensure they have real opportunities to live our their emotions. At the same time, you need yourself to not be a bunch of greed for you teach by example— we all do! You cannot bring about qualities qualiti es in your children that you do not yourself cultivate. And yet, most parents try to do exactly that, and later wonder why they are so ineffective with their educational measures. Educating your child means in the first place educating yourself. This is actually true for all leadership. The best and most effective way of leading others is by leading self, by being yourself, by incarnating incarnating the example.
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The I Ching and Emotions The I Ching has often been found to be too Confucian in its overall attitude toward life. However, we should be careful using such statements. The I Ching has existed long before Confucius, and when scholars state that the I Ching was Confucian in some way, they speak about the interpretation of tation of the wisdom book, not about the original text that is written in a poetic language. While it is true that Confucian philosophy puts high stress upon restraining emotions, I cannot make out this bias in the original text of the I Ching. But again, excess should in any case be avoided. To repeat what I said above, being being excessively emotional would run counter to the I Ching’s general stress upon balance and harmony. With this general knowledge in mind, let us see how the I Ching’s stance would be regarding anger , the quintessential hot emotion. Let me first clarify that anger surely is not a negative emotion, as so many religions and philosophies declare. Anger shows us where we do not bestow enough latitude upon ourselves. We may respect others, and the whole world, but often we lack self-respect. The I Ching does not advise against emotions, but it recommends to stay centered despite despite of emotions. Even in the midst of my anger, I can make sure to not insult any body, body, and to guard against over-reacting. over-reacting. And perhaps most importantly, I can accept my anger and refuse to fight against it. In situations of anger, when I asked the I Ching what to do, it recommended to simply leave the place and 82
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change the environment. And the anger was gone on the spot when I had turned my back to the place where I had been angry. angry. When you see that anger signals us a certain change in behavior, behavior, in attitude, or in direction, you see that it is actually a very useful emotion. The I Ching, when you ask it for help in a situation of anger, will not advice you to handle your anger well: it will directly go to the cause cause and look at what in the first place caused your anger. And it will tell you what you should do to change the situation so that further anger is avoided. And here you can see how fundamentally different the I Ching is when you compare it with religious scriptures such as the Torah, the Bible or the Koran. In these scriptures, anger is invariably declared to be a very destructive emotion and the only thing these books do about it is to admonish us to not be angry. angry. But that is stupid because it not only is ineffective, but it completely disregards the higher logic of life that has given us emotions with a purpose , and with a good reason: all our hot emotions are signals that trigger change! Much to the contrary to religious texts, I argue that the lack of emotions is worse than the presence of emotions. I mean with lack of emotions, boredom. boredom. Boredom is the worst that can happen to you.
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It is worse than imprisonment, malady and death. It is a real plague. Boredom is the result of losing your soul or being disconnected from your soul. It is an absolutely unnatural natural condition, while I know that most young people today think that it was a normal condition of modern life. It may be a normal condition of modern life, but this only proves that modern life is a perversion of real life. In real life, there is no boredom. The I Ching does not talk explicitly about boredom. It does not use that word. And when you think about it, there might be a reason for it. The I Ching seems to handle boredom in The Undeveloped One (4) , a hexagram that concerns education and selfeducation. The guiding advice of this hexagram is: Go ahead to enlighten undeveloped ones, but it should be the undeveloped one who makes the request, not the teacher. teacher. He should approach with sincerity. sincerity. (Id., 238)
The 4th line reads: Stubborn and ignorant, one is helpless. (Id., 241)
The I Ching holds education in high regard. It seems to suggest that every true and lasting success if based upon proper education, and that education means a constant effort and commitment to learning.
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Many parents experience their adolescent children being bored, and see daily how destructive this condition is for their children, and even the whole family. family. That this happens is in most cases not the fault of teachers but of highly boring curricula. And boring curricula, in turn, are the outcome of a lack of care, of commitment from the side of politicians and policy makers; they show a deep lack of creativity. Most schools are not the fruit of love and care for children, but the inevitable result of child neglect. Education is always given the last priority in budget considerations, while it is of the first and foremost importance for the future of society. If you are in this position as a parent, you should try all to help your children lead more meaningful existences. To leave it over to schools and school administration boards to educate your children shows more than all that you neglect your children, that you imprison them in institutions that have no regard for the soul of the child, and his or her individual destiny. To revolt against it does not lead to alternatives as long as parents don’t stick together and pressure politicians and educational authorities to take action for changing things positively in the future. To make your children’s lives more meaningful implies first of all that you make your own life more meaningful, and that then you share as much as possible of your meaningful life with your children. You may have plenty of money but your day-to-day reality may look devoid of meaningful moments and ap85
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pear dull and repetitive. I have known children of artists who were quite poor but who shared with their children truly meaningful existences. I found the children invaria bly to be mature, happy, happy, autonomous and intelligent, and they were very gentle and considerate in their relationships with others. It seems to me today that there is nothing more important in life than our soul being nourished with meaning. meaning. Nothing in our materialistic modern societies can compensate for our collective lack of meaning as a culture. Where are the cultural and religious foundations that give us meaning? It seems that we have lost l ost them, or that anyway, anyway, when they seemed to exist in the past, they may have been a part of a rather oppressive cultural system? I found meaning in my own life only after rejecting many of the false beliefs that I saw the majority of my colleagues in school and university were holding. They believed in a one-pointed form of success that consisted of becoming wealthy, wealthy, having a family, family, and a secure job. That was it. When I was bored in my class as a law practitioner, practitioner, and instead learnt English, my colleagues looked at me strangely and asked me, flabbergasted: flabbergasted: —Why the hell are you learning English? What is this good for? Are you not interested to spend your life where you were born? I replied that under the circumstances I was not sure where I was going to spend my life, where I was going to find a meaningful profession, as I knew that the law pro86
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fession was not what I really liked. I further told them that I was doing a masters degree in European Integration Integration for a career in the European Community, and they found me ‘crazy.’ And indeed, I did not know what I really wanted, in my younger years, and I had to wait for many years to pass to have clarity in this respect. respect. Believe it or not, only twenty years later I got an idea what I wanted, and only thirty years later I began to realize it. Perhaps I went the hard way, or, as an astrologer once put it, I had to slow down my spin and become more single-focused. That was very hard for me as I was interested in so many things. And yet, simply looking at what I liked to do in school, I could have seen very early what it was. But I did all and everything to look away from myself, took others as examples, wanting to be like this famous artist or that interesting writer, or again wanted to live like a saint, or a Gandhi, or engage in philanthropy, or change the world as a revolutionary. And when sitting at the piano, I just wanted to mesmerize my audience with sounds they have never heard before. Astrology helped me tremendously on my way from the periphery to my center, my true being, avoiding the pitfalls of certain karmic conditions that made me overlook myself constantly. I was reading books about overcoming the ego, and yet I had no ego, and thus all these books were not written for me. I needed twenty years to find out that I was hardly 87
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ever thinking of myself and that others, and their lives, had a much too important place in my life. I was in fact concerned too much about others instead about myself, while I realized that most people were spinning in the opposite sense. They only had themselves in mind, and others were for them something to keep up with, at best. I would not say that per se, when you are rich, you are more at pains to realize meaning in your life. To say that poor people have a richer life on a soul-level is a nice illusion that I was holding for many years. I think that this dream alleviated me the pain to accept that human life on earth is ingrained with misery. The problem with being poor is that when I work too hard to join both ends, I have no time for myself. The problem with being rich is that when I have too much time for myself, and for maintaining comfort and safety on a daily level, I am too much concerned about myself and life may appear to me as a mere reflection of myself. And then I miss meaning because I reduce life to what appears to be my own boundaries, the bounds of my ego. I then also tend to exclude others from my ego-centered world, or give them a place at the periphery only, instead of letting their soul-being penetrate and enrich me. I do not say that when we are rich, we are per se more materialistic, while this is a tenor that goes through almost all religious scriptures. I believe rather in the contrary and my life experience confirmed me in that view. The moment I had sold the bothersome family property and put the 88
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money in the bank, I felt free of all sorrow and began to eventually focus on what I felt was giving meaning to my life. Never before had I felt such a deep inner peace! I was beginning to pray every day for guidance to engage in the profession I was really talented for, and to enrich other people’s lives with my gifts and talents. In my experience, tabula rasa thinking , the idea that you can start from page zero, does not really bring progress. When you create without a foundation, you risk to be offtrack, off-soul, so to say. Tradition is not a trap, but a pool, a pool for creative development. This is, for example, how Maurice Béjart, the famous French choreographer, described his artistic paradigm. Béjart, being known as a culture-destroyer, culture-destroyer, was in reality a culture-builder. He was very conscious of the tradition he was building his art upon, and he admired it and studied it with incredible diligence and unending commitment. He was, like Picasso, a master in the tradition that had born him to be what he was. But he went beyond that mastership and explored into the unknown. This requires not only a lot of courage, but also a lot of modesty. modesty. You You are not sure you will be the star because you create novelty. You build a new universe and you cannot know who or what will be the center of that universe. universe. It’s perhaps not you, the creator of it, but a star that is better qualified than you to parent and develop what you have given birth to? This is
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what life teaches us, and when you consider this reality, you might be humbled. When you study the biographies of creators, you see that they gravitated around their mission as planets gravitate around the sun. They might have done little jobs for joining ends, but you will not see a painter ending up as a car manufacturer or a pilot. And if he does, you can be sure that the painter in him was not really gifted for his art, because otherwise he would have been more committed to his art than just ‘getting a job.’ I believe that what we are naturally gifted for is like a magnetic field that attracts all that is needed for realizing that gift. But of course, you can use your willpower also for halting when you’ve made half of the way, jumping from a bridge and destroying not only your mission, but also yourself. Human history abounds of this kind of stories, and that again might humble us to acknowledge that nothing is given over to fulfillment when it is not cared for, but taken for granted. This is one of the pitfalls wealth might represent for you. You may begin taking things for granted, success for granted, fulfilled love for granted, and happiness for granted. And then you are off-the-road again and life will teach you that instead of being at an advanced stage of development, you are again in the starting holes. My mother having been suicidal early in her youth, was not less suicidal once she inherited the family fortune and was rich and comfortable. She was not happy before, and she was not happy thereafter. She had not learnt to be 90
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happy. She had taken all and everything for granted, and yet was longing for one single true and fulfilled relationship with a man. But life did not give it to her, probably because she did herself not really really commit to this longing. Truly, life is more beautiful and more exciting when we are hungry, and the most part of the magic is gone when we are satiated! It might be more difficult to attract your soul mate when your thoughts are constantly gravitating around trivial matters, or when you are absorbed in your worries and lose a lot of energy because of sorrow. Tabula rasa thinking means that you cut off the Ariadne thread that led you to the point where you are now, and try instead to explore the labyrinth of life without a guide. It’s more difficult, and there is a certain chance that you do something that is not really connected with your soul. The I Ching teaches that every true progress is gradual. Gradual progress means that we build upon what we built before, and so forth. forth. One step after the other, one brick upon another. No matter how slow we are, as long as we remain focused and committed, we do make progress.
The Reflection Pattern You may know that old parable of looking at a glass of water as half-full, or as half-empty.
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You fill a glass half with water, and then contemplate that strange kind of object. Then you wonder about how you should see that object, as a glass half-filled or as a glass half-unfilled, as a glass half-happy or as a glass halfunhappy, as a glass half-useful and half-useless, and so on and so forth. Needless to mention that positive-minded peo positive-minded people tend to see that glass as half-filled, whereas negativeminded people minded people tend to make the glass down as half-empty. half-empty. We learn from f rom this simple experiment that reality is not to be taken for granted, and rather depends on our way of looking at it! Or to speak with quantum physics: reality is creatively interacting with the one observing it. Light can be seen as a wave or as a particle. Einstein found this already at the beginning of the 20th century, and before the establishment of what today we use to call quantum physics. physics. When I see life as order, I tend to see order in all-thatis, whatever occurs to me. When I consider life as nothing but chaos, I tend to make out chaos in the cosmos, and accordingly I experience my own life as chaotic. My internal belief system thus conditions my perception. This explains why reality is far from being the same for all of us. Why do I perceive life so differently from you? Because our perception of reality is a result of the reality we live in and that we have created by our mind. Is that tautological? It is. Because reality is tautological. If I interact with processes by observing processes, if I change flow by flowing myself, if I let the universe dance to my music by dancing with the 92
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universe, then, for heaven’s sake, I must admit that I have no reason to complain for I am responsible for my world! Then I become aware that all I see is the result of my choice. I want to see roses. So I see roses. I want to see gar bage, so I see garbage. I want to see happy children, so I see happy children. I want to see abuse, so I see abuse. I want to be different, so I see difference everywhere, while difference per se is not a value, but only in relationship to something that is same. If I want to be different for any price, I am just a naughty child who likes to put every toy upside down, to have the clown vomit and the woman her pants down. I want to be conformist, so I see sameness everywhere and all life seems to me carved from one and the same wood. Then, when I see what really appears to be a difference, I tend to argue: —These two things are not really different, they only appear to be different. In reality, they are same. Their difference is infinitesimally small and thus can be neglected. However, when I see that I am limited, I cannot but practice modesty, according to Modesty to Modesty (15), as (15), as I will abhor faking to be all-powerful which is the way of the worldly and political forces in place. I will then recognize with ease that I simply harvest what I sow, and this without regret, without sorrow, without a bitter taste on my tongue. I throw a handful of sand against the wind and wipe my eyes as a result. Like a toddler playing on the beach. That is how the sage evaluates reality. reality. By direct perception as well as trial-and-error. 93
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When I look in the eyes of a small child, I perceive what is true and what is not true. This truth is so strong that it penetrates in my heart and changes things forever. forever. When I judge life, I cannot perceive the responsiveness of the universe. When I judge, I implicitly have a measure to base my judgment upon. What is this measure other than the length of a fantasy f antasy ruler? Can we know how high the next mountain is that nature creates, or how high the next wave is at the beach when there is heavy sea? Can we know how far the cricket will jump? Approximately Approximately yes. But not exactly. exactly. By the same token, all truth is approximate and not exact. In hindsight we can measure all. But that means to measure death! We cannot measure life because that would mean to know exactly the details of things to come. All divinations are approximations. There are good reasons to put away with all fortune telling as it is as approximate as living is. When I live without inquiring into the nature of future events, I am accepting the approximate nature of things, and I live more carefree than when divining all day long. Wallenstein Wallenstein can tell a story. story. He was not a happy man. Nor was Nostradamus. When I really understand the nature of living, I see that there are no dreams that eternally have to remain dreams, but that every dream is the creative contemplation of a future reality.
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The Karma Pattern When I see that not values, which are creations of the mind, but dynamic exchanges with exchanges with all-that-is, which are intuitive dialogues with the universe, bring me closer to perceiving reality more objectively, and less with putting my personal stink, I will avoid values. If you admit or not that the universe is responsive, you will experience karma , the dynamic feedback created by action, a stone or rose thrown back to you. Please note that the notion of karma is not a creation of Hinduism, but a reality in a universe that communicates in an organic multi-vectorial manner. Karma means action , nothing more and nothing less, and it is part of all religions, because it is part of our dynamic and responsive universe. Hinduism has the merit to have put a very peculiar stress upon karma, and for good reasons. But when I know to dialogue with the universe in a dynamic manner, such as the universe itself dialogues with us, I can handle karma creatively and do not need to be trapped by it. As the proverb says: For the sage, karma means liberation. In the West, the notion of karma has been largely misunderstood. It is often taken as a religious theory related to Hinduism or Buddhism. As if the Western part of the globe obeyed to different laws or could abide by different cosmic rules!
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To repeat it, karma, literally in Sanskrit means action; action; it simply means cause-and-effect, or in the terminology of modern systems theory, karma is the law of a responsive, feedback-looping system. I shout in the forest, in a canyon. I hear my voice resonating in space. You can also say that karma is the natural condition in a responsive universe. I kill life and thus raise chances that I am myself killed, because I set an action of that kind, and create a negative resonance. All All actions create a resonance according to their nature. I nurture life by being kind and taking care of others, or feedback to them their beauty, their strength, their originality. I support others in the realization of their original nature. Then, I create a karma of positive resonance that supports me in realizing my own original nature. There is no god, no savior and no punishment. There are no wrong acts, no right acts. There is karma only, only, feed back given by the universe. By observing that feedback and recognizing its nature, positive or negative, I can evaluate the outcome of my actions. There is no other way. You can’t do that by thinking about your about your behavior. Thought is circular and inbound within my own continuum. I cannot abstract from my thought and become an observer-thinker, despite the fact that great sages such as Krishnamurti told us we could develop this ability. ability.
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Let’s assume I have not reached that stage of development and thus am still caught in the ego-based structure. Then I have the option to observe the nature of my actions by evaluating the feedback they create in the universe. In being careful and observing what happens around you before you take any major action, you can avoid fatal mistakes and setbacks and act in accordance with the steering power of the universe. This power is of a higher intelligence, and considers not only your actions but the actions of all other humans, of all other beings, and even the actions of natural forces. How does a particular action you are going to take fit in the universe? universe? What kind of waves will it create? create? What kind of responses will it trigger? All this can be evaluated before the action is taken. And the I Ching has been created precisely for assisting us in that quest. Once you understand this, you will agree that to take blind actions is foolish behavior. behavior. And yet, most people, especially in the modern world, take blind actions all the time, and even think that it was normal human behavior. behavior. It is ignorant human ignorant human behavior. Educating children to take blind actions is irresponsi ble education, or no education education at all. Most Western people will reply that it was through a set of firm behavior rules, so-called ‘morally correct behavior’ that positive karma could be created. However, moral correctness is on the same line as political correctness. It is totally volatile volatile as moral rules are 97
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volatile and change from country to country and in some countries even from village to village, and they change over time as well, and they change when economic conditions change. Hence, morality morality is a fiction; fiction; moralism has been seen throughout human history as one of the most sordid ways to blindfold the masses and keep them from educating themselves about the universal laws and rules that really regulate action and reaction. How much morally correct behavior triggered wars and genocide all over human history! How many massacres have been committed in the name of well-sounding moralistic slogans, how many millions of people were killed for politically and morally correct principles!? When I maintain a rigid principle-ridden mindset, I act from an arrogantly fixated ego position. By contrast, when I am humble and flexible, I do not overestimate the powers of my ego and instead rely on the intelligence of the universe to help me finetune my actions. Then I remain open for help and support and admit that I need help and support in the first place. The universe sends help, but only to those who are open to receive it.
Action Patterns As already mentioned, the I Ching teaches flexibility teaches flexibility as as a foremost value for constructive and positive action, action that creates good and beneficial karma for self and others. When I am flexible, I am ready to go not only forward , but at times also backward , and once in a while, I am 98
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even putting things on hold, a movement that I call standstill. still. Note that I consider standing still, in this dynamic system of positive and constructive action, as a movement. movement. Just as nonaction, from the same perspective, is a form of action, standstill is a form of movement. It is the movement that avoids wrong action by standing still. Wrong still. Wrong action is action that brings about strife, tension, or hurt, to others and, as a karmic reaction, to self as a karmic boomerang. The I Ching teaches a gradual a gradual interplay of different movements, such as, for example, moving forward, standing still for some time, and then moving forward f orward again. This is depending on the lines you receive, and it also depends on the structure and hierarchy of the particular hexagram you are contemplating. Let us first consider the more clear-cut divinations, those that show an unambiguous move in either of the three directions. Moving forward is clearly expressed by hexagrams hexagrams such as Progress Progress (35), Rising (46) or (46) or Gradual Pro gress (53). (53). Moving backward is advised by Retreat (33), and (33), and this unconditionally as all six lines recommend to retreat from the condition in question, and differ only by the fact that such retreat is more comfortable and easy or less comfortable and bothersome. Standstill is clearly advised by Keeping Still (52), (52), and here, like in Retreat (33) , , the different lines only inform about the easiness or uneasiness of the halt, but they do not recommend any movement other than standstill. 99
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Thus, when you get any line of Retreat Retreat (33) or the hexagram without lines, this is a clear indication that you are advised to take a distance from the action or endeavor, or relationship, you intend to engage in, or intend to continue engaging in. The same is true for Keeping Still (52). All (52). All the lines indicate standstill as standstill as the right action for that moment. Note that it is difficult to know how long a particular hexagram is valid. I do not think that the I Ching invaria bly advises to retreat retreat from a certain action forever, forever, but in most cases just for a certain time. It is only through repeated divinations that you may get to know the reason why you should retreat and how long, or else if you should definitely stop action for that particular purpose. All advice on divination that says I Ching readings to be valid for either three months or six months is a matter of personal opinion, not to be found in any serious interpretation of the Book of Changes. Changes. I have had situations where the reading was valid for just one day, day, as the next day a new cycle set in that was foretold by a totally different reading later that same day. This, by the way, is true for all divinatory practices. Books on the interpretation of the Tarot that say a particular reading is valid for six months are expressing personal experience at best, if they are not just repeating the balderdash they themselves learnt from others. In truth, there is absolutely no rule that says that a certain divination is valid for one minute, for one day or for
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one lifetime. This is exactly the uncertainty factor in all divination. You may know all in advance, but you will not know the time when events set in. I have had readings where an event set in the next day, and I had readings where an event never set in, probably because I was heeding the advice and changed the parameters of my behavior in i n time. There is a subtle interplay between your intuition and the I Ching. You know intuitively know intuitively when you should consult the book again. To disregard your intuition and wait six months for the next reading is foolish. The universe communicates you not only the nature of your karma, but also the time when you should consult the I Ching again. Of course, you may return too often to divination, and for reasons of stress or fear. And when you consult the I Ching in a negative mood, you may get a negative reading. But then the I Ching will tell you what’s wrong with you. It will tell you that you lack decisiveness, that you need to put first things first, that you should be firm in following your original purpose, that you worry too much, that you should be persistent or that you should advance despite your anxiety. Or it may tell you to meditate and put things on hold for a moment, to free your mind and get new creative inspirations, or to consult a friend or expert for finding the solution. Or it may advise you to do things in cooperation with others, and not single-handedly.
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As a beginner, you should first become familiar with the idea of action being naturally threefold, and not consisting only of marching forward. When you look at human history, you see that our old-fashioned and somehow extremely violent tradition has created evil, sorrow and misery by ignoring the simple fact that action is threedirectional. directional. Marching forward was seen as the only right action. In a way, marching forward can be seen as the identifier of the total madness that is so characteristic for patriarchy. And the madness of today’s worldwide consumer culture is the logical historical and psychological follow-up of patriarchy with its ignorance of systemliteracy. We can see the three base movements equally in the way the I Ching entered the soil of Western culture. There was first a forward movement, during Antiquity, then a long retreat during the Dark Age, and then a period of standstill. The I Ching could be discovered by a wider range of people only after the horror regime of the Church had found its end, thus from about the Renaissance. When the Church declared the I Ching, together with so many other jewels of human wisdom as diabolic knowledge, we can clearly see a phase of Retreat (33). (33). But for various reasons, the I Ching became popular in Western culture only within the new age movement, age movement, from the second half of the 20th century. Today, the I Ching is clearly again in a forward movement, in Western culture. From the Renaissance until to102
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day, the I Ching was going through a period of Keeping Still (52). It (52). It could be consulted without danger, but was given attention only by a small range of Western Western scholars, among them the German mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz (1646-1716) (1646-1716) who found that the I Ching implicitly uses the binary code that today is used in every computer. computer. In the near future, during the Aquarius Age , the I Ching will receive an honorable and important position within a greater range of wisdom devices that are constantly reaching wider circles among the educated classes of international society, and foremost the young generations, which is one of the main reasons why I wrote this book.
Three Phases of Action Action is what I call forward movement movement within a positioning that sees action together with nonaction and retreat as one of the three phases of action. action. After having introduced the notion of three base movements in the previous paragraph, let me now have a regard on the various phases within the forward movement. The I Ching deals with action in most hexagrams. As already mentioned, there are only a few hexagrams that recommend action through and through, while most are mixed in the sense that within a course of action, diligent attention and careful inspection is recommended to avoid excess, and a setback or failure as a result of overacting. Let me explain this using Yang/Creative Energy/The Active Principle (1) (1) as an example. The first line of this very 103
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powerful hexagram that consists of six yang lines lines recommends nonaction. The second line recommends to seek advice. The third line predicts danger, but says there will be no harm. The forth line, eventually, sets action completely free and the fifth line predicts great success. However, the top line is a quintessential example for excess and is generally interpreted as a painful setback through an arrogant and inflexible attitude, or a rigidly forward-moving behavior. behavior. Let me now give a few examples for hexagrams that end in a positive 6th line. I think it is important to consider that not after every culmination point follows a negative spiral. Such a conclusion would be a misunderstanding of the I Ching. Flexibly intelligent action uses the time after completion , as hexagram 63 teaches us, for securing what has been achieved, and for rest and meditation. It is short-sighted to interpret the I Ching as a set of patterns that ‘predict the future.’ The truth is that no future can ever be ‘predicted’ because every moment a different thought and emotional pattern can be put forward that changes the present state of events, thereby changing the future by changing the present. The future is but an extrapolation of a vibrational pattern set in the present. When I change the present pattern, logically the future pattern will be different as well. That is why, why, as I mentioned earlier, earlier, a particular reading can be superseded in a day, an hour or a week, but not in any time intervals determined in advance.
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Life is infinitely flexible. After a thunderstorm, a hurricane or an earthquake, there may be a certain level of destruction, but it’s not the end of the world. Nothing in nature can cause the end of nature—except human ignorance and willfulness. This is an unwritten law pervading all living in the cosmos. The first example of a hexagram that ends in a positive 6th line is Great Harvest/Abundance (14), (14), which is called by some I Ching experts as the most lucky of all hexagrams. Here, the 6th line simply reads in Hua-Ching Ni’s interpretation: ‘Heavenly blessing. Good fortune. No problem.’ —Hua-Ching Ni, I Ching, The Book of Changes and the Unchang-
ing Truth (1999), p. 295.
Another example is Modesty/Humility/Moderation Modesty/Humility/Moderation (15) where the 6th line reads: He uses modesty instead of aggression with outsiders to correct the confusion within his territory. (Id., 300)
Other examples are: !
Obstacle/Adversity/Obstruction Obstacle/Adversity/Obstructio n (12); ( 12);
!
Advancing/Going Forward/Progress Forward/Progress (19);
!
Contemplation/Stocktaking/Reflection Contemplation/Stocktaking/Reflection (20);
!
Adornment/Beauty/Grace Adornment/Beauty/Grace (22)
!
Great Potential/Creative Energy/Great Power (26);
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!
Nourishment/Nutrition/Self-Cultivation Nourishment/Nutrition/S elf-Cultivation (27);
!
Critical Mass/Great Excess/Imbalance (28);
!
Mutual Attraction/Wooing/Marriage Attraction/Wooing/Marriage (31);
!
Retreat/Withdrawal/Going Retreat/Withdrawal/Going Backward (33);
!
Family/The Clan/Group Life (37);
!
Contradiction/Opposition/Disharmony Contradiction/Oppositio n/Disharmony (38);
!
Obstruction/Obstacle/Difficulty (39);
!
Dissolution of the Problem/Release/Liberation (40);
!
Sacrifice/Decrease/Reduce the Excessive (41);
!
The Well/Water Hole/Reaching the Water (48);
!
Revolution/Reformation/Groundbreaking Revolution/Reformation/Gr oundbreaking Change (49);
!
Cauldron/Harmonization/Stability Cauldron/Harmonization/Stability (50);
!
Gradual Progress/Positive Development (53).
In all these hexagrams, the 6 th line is positive and constructive. Now, Now, if almost one third of all hexagrams of the I Ching give a positive reading for the 6th line, it cannot be said, as some scholars erroneously do, that the 6 th line in every hexagram of the I Ching invariably predicts misfortune.
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Non-Action vs. Bold Action Nonaction is action , Lao-tzu wrote in the Tao Te Ching. Ching. And this wisdom is part of the I Ching as well. You can find nonaction in the I Ching in two different ways: !
As a general standstill, as indicated by Keeping Still (52); (52);
!
As a tactical standstill, as part of various action-hexagrams: •
The 1st line in Yang (1); ( 1);
•
The 1st line in Dispute (6);
•
The 6th line in Small Accumulation (9);
•
The 1st line in Great Harvest (14);
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The 1st line in Great Potential (26);
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The 4th line in Fire (30);
•
The 3rd line in Mutual in Mutual Attraction (31);
•
The 1st line in Power of the Great (34);
•
The 1st line in Resolution (43);
•
The 4th line in Contact (44);
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The 5th line in Adversity (47);
•
The 3rd line in Revolution (49);
•
The 3rd line in Gradual Progress (53);
•
The 1st line in Before Crossing the Water (64).
As mentioned earlier, earlier, when nonaction appears as a line in an otherwise dynamic hexagram, and contrary to the general advice given in in Keeping Still (52), interpretation (52), interpretation is needed. 107
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Typically, one of these critical lines is drawn together with other lines of the same hexagram. When this happens, a temporary halt is indicated or the line can be said to indicate a very careful way to proceed. If the line is drawn as a single answer without any other line, this means that indeed nonaction is the best for a certain time. The time-span cannot be predicted, as I pointed out earlier, but from a systemic point of view I would argue that the time-span of rest or nonaction indicated by Keeping Still (52) is certainly more extended as the one indicated by any of the lines that recommend a temporary halt. That is all I can say on the time matter. For all those who are caught in the erroneous belief the I Ching was but a textbook on Confucianism, and that it did not favor any form of bold and spontaneous action, let me advance the following arguments to put things in the correct light: !
The I Ching is much older than Confucian thinking;
!
Confucius is said to have studied the I Ching most diligently and never pretended to have developed any knowledge or system system that that supers supersede eded d or surpa surpasse ssed d the wisd wisdom om of the the I Ching;
!
The I Ching contains a number of lines that advise bold and massive action, and to prove my point, I will line them up in full detail here, and exhaustively so: •
The 4th line of Yang (1); ( 1);
•
The 5th line of Yin (2);
•
The 4th line of Difficult Begin (3); 108
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•
The 1st line of Peace (11);
•
The 6th line of Obstacle (12);
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The 2nd line of Great Harvest (14);
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The 2nd line of Modesty of Modesty (15);
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The 2nd line in Advancing (19);
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The 5th line of Return (24);
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The 1st line of Innocence (25);
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The 6th line of Great Potential (26);
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The 6th line of Nourishment (27);
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The 1st and 2nd lines of Fire (30);
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The 2nd line of Power of the Great (34);
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The 3rd line of Success (35);
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The 6th line of Contradiction (38);
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The 1st , 2nd and 6th lines of Dissolution of the Problem (40);
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The 5th line of Sacrifice (41);
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The 1st , 2nd and 5th lines of Benefit (42);
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The 2nd , 4th and 5th lines of Congregation (45);
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The 1st , 2nd , 3rd , 5th and 6th lines of Rising (46);
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The 4th , 5th and 6th lines of The Well (48);
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The 2nd , 4th , 5th and 6th lines of Revolution (49);
•
The 5th and 6th lines of Cauldron (50);
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The 2nd , 4th and 6th lines of Gradual Progress (53);
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The 1st line of The Maiden (54);
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The 1st , 4th and 5th lines of Peak (55);
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•
The 5th line of The Wanderer (56);
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The 5th line of Gentle Wind (57);
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The 1st and 2nd lines of Joyousness of Joyousness (58);
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The 1st line of Scattered (59);
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The 5th line of Inner Truth (61);
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The 5th line of Before Crossing the Water (64). (64) .
If more than half of all hexagrams of the I Ching recommend unbridled action in one or several lines, the opinion sometimes expressed in the literature that the wisdom book was an action-breaker and led people to procrastination seems to be unfounded. In fact, having studied and practiced both the Tarot and the I Ching for almost thirty years, I find the Tarot more difficult to interpret because it uses psychological archetypes for describing circumstances. By contrast, the language of the I Ching is rather precise, and its advice to the point. It is perhaps more difficult to get to bold action when using the Tarot for divination as this is the case with the I Ching. Let’s not forget that in the past, in China, many great generals have used the I Ching for war strategy and for gathering precise information about when and how to advance or retreat the army in order to win the battle. After all, what the I Ching definitely cannot do is to act for you! There is a moment when you have to cease reflecting and start acting. And in that moment, the I Ching has to be laid aside.
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The Hexagrams 64 Hexagrams and 384 Lines
1 Qian ——— ——— ——— ——— ——— ———
THE LEADERSHIP I CHING
Yang / Creative Energy / The Active Principle Work steadily. You will achieve favorable results.
Traditionally, pure yang energy was considered auspicious for the realization realization of any project. Most Most of the lines are favorable except the first and the sixth. In the first the energy is not yet ready and the sixth line indicates a possible excess that needs to be avoided. 1. The time is not ripe for outer action, but it’s a good time for self-development and working on inner clarity for your plans and goals. 2. Seek out the advice of a knowledgeable person in your field. It will be good to work together to achieve your goals. 3. You are now in a situation to attract others to your ideas and social advancement is possible. But you need to be prudent in such a time for your creative energy may lose focus and get scattered through too much exposure and input. If you hold your vision, focus and integrity, integrity, you can pass safely through this period of time. 4. This is a moment of choice. You You can either seek public fame or work for your own inner advancement and personal development. Follow your deepest intuition, listening to the inner voice that knows what is true for you. When you affirm and have faith in your guidance, this 114
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guidance will manifest in your life and you will make the right choice. 5. This is a line of great potential and leadership. You can realize an important project now and the outcome will be beneficial for all parties involved. If you are not sure about the why and how of the realization, consult a knowledgeable person. You You will receive help and support! 6. This line shows a need for moderation. Any extreme action should be avoided for it may have a counterproductive effect. You may be too ambitious or you may overstress your possibilities. Restrain yourself to avoid any undesired consequences.
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2 Kun — — — — — — — — — — — —
THE LEADERSHIP I CHING
Yin / Adaptive Energy / The Receptive Principle Adapt. Go with the flow.
This hexagram was traditionally associated with a female horse. It represents soft and gentle characteristics. This hexagram is generally very positive, except the sixth line which indicates the illusion one could achieve success single-handedly. single-handedly. The overall stress of this hexagram is collaboration and communication with others. 1. To understand all means to forgive all. Be openminded. In the beginning stage of a project or relationship, you should be gentle and cautious. Your knowledge is not broad at this point and you should proceed with care and foresight. 2. This line indicates that you act in accordance with the universe now and that your endeavors will be naturally successful. Be honest and upright, and do not worry. You can advance gracefully now! 3. This line traditionally speaks about a government official who is not paid for his work, yet what he does serves the public good. This means that what you do now in a public, unselfish spirit will be rewarded later on. For the moment, keep your talents and ideas for yourself and proceed in this spirit, then you act in accordance with the universe! 118
KUN (2)
4. This is a time for prudence. Run a low profile and be self-contained. You can advance at this time more on the inner level than outwardly. Be faithful to your highest guidance and restrain your impulsiveness in order to avoid unnecessary disturbance; confrontations may lead to undesired obligations. 5. This is a position of leadership. Your Your modest attitude and humility in a position of power and influence lead to great success. The traditional interpretation assigns the color ‘yellow’ to this line, which was associated with intelligence. It said that if leaders were willing to follow the natural virtue of this lin line, e, there would be nothing wrong in the world. 6. You You will gain the insight that the hallmark of success is not competition but cooperation. If you insist on your way in a matter where more people are involved, you may cause losses for all, and nobody wins. The traditional interpretation speaks of dragons fighting in the wilderness. However it also says that their blood blends together, which connotes a blending of yin and yang. Thus, if you are able to ‘blend’ your energy with those of your collaborators, your project may still succeed, but you need to realize this truth and change your attitude.
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3 TUN — — ——— — — — — — — ———
THE LEADERSHIP I CHING
Difficult Begin / Birth Pangs / To Be Stationed Be stationary and firm. Do not move. Reorient Reori ent yourself.
This hexagram teaches a need for careful thought before starting a new venture. It indicates a potentially confused beginning which is why treading carefully and seeking advice is recommended. There is however a chance that persistence leads to later success. 1. You You cannot advance alone in this position. Be faithful to inner guidance; you will attract the right helpers. 2. You need to be patient, for there are difficulties and obstacles in your way. The traditional interpretation speaks of a girl mounted on a horse but at a standstill. This is because she declines to marry and will wed only in ten years. This means metaphorically that you should not collaborate coll aborate with others when the time is not right or when such collaboration is against your principles. In such a case it is better to wait until until you attract the the right people to help you. 3. The traditional interpretation speaks of a person who is hunting in a forest without a guide, unable to find deer and in addition losing l osing his way. way. This means that if in your isolated position you push forward, you will experience a setback. The right action here is to stand still and wait until your inner guidance shows you a way out. You may also
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TUN (3)
want to check out your goals and intrinsic motivation; it may be necessary to adjust your goals to the situation. 4. Now the way begins to open for you, but not for acting single-handedly. You need to cooperate with others, but stay your course and be faithful that you will see the light at the end of the tunnel. 5. This line advises to not granting favors to others and to not realize big projects. This means you should do a step at a time, avoid any form of corruption, and proceed with a humble attitude. Doing small steps toward your goal is after all a form of advance; sometimes slowness is the correct response in certain situations. The most important is that inwardly you stay your course and be faithful to your ultimate success at a later time. 6. This line traditionally is associated with a person mounted on a horse, but at a standstill, weeping uncontrollably. This means that when you encounter a blockage on your way, this may cause you momentary sadness. However, this line also teaches that if you change inwardly, the outward situation will also change. This is a good time for introspection, meditation and self-cultivation. Stop your course of action for a while and ask for inner guidance. You will receive it!
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4 MENG ——— — — — — — — ——— — —
THE LEADERSHIP I CHING
Immaturity / Lacking Experience / The Undeveloped Be willing to learn and educate yourself.
It may be needed to educate yourself as the situation may be confused because you are lacking inner coherence. You may thus be at pains to make an informed decision. In such a case, patience and inner strength are needed to gain clarity for advancing at the right moment, moment, relying on your your inner guidance. 1. Restrain yourself and practice self-discipline. Set yourself strict guidelines for action and you’ll avoid having regrets later on. A stoic attitude and strict principles are the path toward happiness; while leading an unregulated life is not a recipe for success. 2. This line traditionally announced a good marriage. While such an interpretation may be too narrow, what is indicated here is that collaboration with others brings good results. In all human affairs, judgment is short-sighted because we never know all the factors that motivate human action in others. Hence, tolerance and benevolence with others, even if they act inappropriately, is the correct attitude and brings success. 3. This line traditionally speaks of one attempting to marry a women who seeks a wealthy man. More generally, generally, what the I Ching advises here is to not be blinded by desire 126
MENG (4)
and to avoid excess. Thus, wait patiently for a better moment and avoid action. 4. This line warns of ignorance. It may be a matter where you need more background information before you go on. If you do not heed this advice, you may suffer a painful setback. Spiritually, if your inner mind does not support your project, there will be conflict. Right action here is to check if your intended action is in accordance with your conscience and to affirm that you are guided by correct principles. Affirm this over and over and your subconscious mind will pick up on it and will give you feed back, through dreams and premonitions, how you should act in this situation. Until you receive this inner guidance, hold on and do not persist. 5. Being faithful to your inner guidance, you shall achieve your goal and advance in your life. It will bring you advantage to seek another’s advice and support. 6. This line traditionally speaks of punishing an ignorant child. A modern interpretation interpretation would see the ‘child’ as a metaphor for your own inner child. If this inner energy is too boastful and neglects proper guidance you should restrict it by considering the matter from the perspective of your inner adult (rationality) and your inner parent (responsibility). The inner child is your most creative impulse, but sometimes creative solutions are hurting social traditions, and thus you need to apply wisdom to the way how you proceed in life.
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5 XU — — ——— — — ——— ——— ———
THE LEADERSHIP I CHING
Waiting Patiently / Stagnation / Hesitation Be patient and bide your time. Overcome stagnation.
This hexagram teaches the importance of time in all matters that need a growing energy for realization. When you need to wait, rushing ahead only results in restlessness without bringing a real advance. The wisdom of this hexagram is to teach creative adaptation to a situation where quick pro gress is not possible. possible. 1. Do not rush into things. Do not exhaust your energy at this point. Wait until you see a safe way to proceed. 2. There are difficulties ahead. To To be aware of danger is a good way to avoid it. When you are faithful to your inner guidance, you will see a way out and you can advance successfully! 3. You are in a vulnerable position. You may have got into this position by having been too reckless in your recent past. Now be cautious and hold still so as to not invite trouble. 4. The situation is such that retreat is the best action here. Keep your inner light and be faithful to be guided when the moment is right. You may find help and support to get out of this situation if you are faithful to your inner guidance.
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XU (5)
5. This is a time for relaxing and getting a good new perspective of the situation at hand. There is much more to do for realizing your goals; thus remain focused and do not become restless. You will be guided to advance when the time is right. 6. You’ll receive a blessing in disguise. The traditional interpretation speaks of three uninvited guests who need to be properly treated for everything being alright. This symbolizes that in some form or another, you receive a helping hand from the universe, but you need to recognize the blessing which may not be obvious. Often in life, when we do good to others, it comes back to us not from the same people and at a later time, but it does come back to us.
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讼 6 SONG ——— ——— ——— — — ——— — —
THE LEADERSHIP I CHING
Dispute / Conflict / Inner Struggle Tension. It may indicate contention. It may be an inner struggle.
This hexagram traditionally is about conflict with others, a state of contention or a litigation. But it can as well apply for an inner struggle. You You are likely to receive receive it in a reading when you have two ‘talking’ voices within you, one that wants to go ahead, and the other that wants you to stop. In such a case, you need to develop good judgment. 1. Avoid dispute and make peace. If you are bothered by gossip or if others treat you with lacking respect, forgive them, but go your way and believe in your inner values. 2. Pure willpower is often in life not a good recipe for success. Here, patience and tolerance are needed for dissolving a dispute outwardly, or within yourself. You may need to make concessions in a dispute, or you may gain clarity about what you really want. Retreat is a good action for now! 3. The advice here is to run a low profile and avoid public prominence. If you heed this advice and you remain cautious, you may eventually succeed. But do not start new undertakings now! 4. The traditional interpretation of this line is that one’s grievance has been rejected. It is thus recommended to 134
SONG (6)
avoid the conflict altogether by not insisting and making peace. A favorable response may then occur. 5. In this position, you may well proceed with a grievance or litigation. As you are guided by correct principles, you will be successful and dispute can be dissolved. This line may also indicate that you have found inner peace by dissolving conflict within. It is thus favorable to go ahead! 6. The I Ching always advises against competition. Your position here is that while you have won the dispute, you have stirred up an envious reaction in others. Thus to insist until the end is not favorable. The traditional interpretation of this line speaks of a leather belt that was bestowed because of winning a litigation, but that will be snatched away many times. This metaphor teaches the importance of inner poise, harmony and peace of mind, which have higher values than the momentary winning of a dispute. Hence the need for inner reflection and, if necessary, of wistful retreat.
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