The I Ching is the Book of Change. So when there is a change I very much want to make, but somehow haven’t managed yet, why not call on the oracle’s help?
The most obvious way to do this is to ask directly ‘How to…?’ – and I’ve discovered many good strategies with ‘how to’ questions over the years. But this time, I took another leaf from Stephen Karcher’s book and asked for a guide. I started out by writing a lot down: here’s how I want to be, here’s how I am right now and how I do not want to be. I set and clarified my intention as best I could, then said,
‘Yi, here’s my intention. Please give me a guide to achieve this.’
This felt as if it combined asking for a guiding principle, and asking for a personal guide, a helper.
Yi answered with Hexagram 49, Radical Change, changing at the third place to Hexagram 17, Following. I understand that as making a radical change in what and how I follow, and also as aligning the power and momentum of following to support radical change. Plenty to think on and be guided by.
What hits closest to home is the moving line:
‘Setting out to bring order means pitfall,
Constancy means danger.
Words of radical change draw near three times,
There is truth and confidence.’
This is the third line, the inner threshold, the moment when resolve builds to tip that inner impulse over the edge into action. In his ‘unusual techniques for applying I Ching hexagrams’ I linked to in my previous post, Jim Peters associates the third line with the ‘soft bit just below the ribs’. Isn’t that pretty much where you experience butterflies? 😉 And the moment of change from inhalation to exhalation?
So this line is building up towards the real-life enactment of Radical Change – beyond the theoretical part, or merely the desire. And at this stage, the first thing to know is that ‘setting out to bring order means pitfall.’ Bringing order is an act of discipline, of oneself or others: sorting it out, setting things straight, applying force to make it work. In some readings it would mean ‘fixing’ other people; for me at this stage it means self-discipline – not the way to bring about major change. (Well, it hadn’t worked so far, but I always thought that was because I hadn’t got enough of it…) And constancy, doggedly carrying on the same way, takes me into danger.
What I most need is not discipline, but fu: the quality of truth, sincerity and confidence that is represented in the old Chinese by a hand or claw firmly grasping a child. For me it has to do with being wholly present, altogether at one with the moment; I need to find unanimity. Setting out to bring order sets one part of my will against another – not the same thing. This is all oriented towards Following.
And to bring about that truth and confidence, the words of change must go around three times. This was a puzzle to me to begin with. I could see what didn’t work, and what was needed, but not how to apply this advice on getting from a to b. Then on that same day, I had two unexpected opportunities to tell strangers about my plans, which gave me a significant boost. In a group I imagine this would mean the conversation going round, ‘This is what we’re going to do…’, until everyone is at home with the idea. For an individual, just putting the change into words several times seems to create momentum in itself.