I was pretty much bowled over a couple of days ago when a publishing company – a real one that does real, paper books and pays authors – contacted me to ask if I’d be interested in doing an I Ching book.
Would I?!
Of course I would. At least… – and then you would not believe the sheer volume of contradictory fears that one mind can entertain at once. What if I get excited about this and it comes to nothing? What if it does go through, but then it’s full of mistakes and everyone can see what a fraud I am? And what if it goes through, but it’s one of those appalling ‘simplified versions’ that don’t contain any of the real I Ching at all? (In fact I’m as likely to gnaw my own arm off as I am to write one of those… but that doesn’t stop me being afraid of it somehow ‘happening’ anyway.)
So in a mood hovering between burgeoning excitement and a sneaky desire to hide under the desk, mixed in with a kind of kneejerk impulse to declaim stridently about my refusal ever to be involved in anything that claims to be the I Ching when it isn’t, I asked Yi,
“What’s the best attitude or approach to take to this?”
Yi answers with Hexagram 43, Deciding, changing at the second line to Hexagram 49, Radical Change.
The protagonist of Hexagram 43 is a messenger who enters the king’s court, holding up a token that represents her right to speak. The trigrams, lake over heaven, show the communication of the inner creative principle. It’s about publication (duh…), and it’s also about my awareness of a specific message I want to carry: I want people to be able to have real, living conversations with Yi.
And the Radical Change involved is clear enough: I’ve basically spent the last 8 years working at this from behind a computer screen. What I write is electrons; if (when) I change my mind about something, I edit it. A printed book? Eep.
And also, I’ve spent the last 8 years working almost entirely on my own, not just in the writing but also in marketing and technical stuff. This is ‘radical change’ year from that point of view already, with an exciting partnership underway. The idea that someone else does the making and selling, and I only have to write it, and I even get paid…? Unheard of – and, as I may have mentioned, scary.
Hexagram 43, line 2:
‘Alarmed, crying out.
Evening and night, bearing arms.
No fears.’
This is one of those moments when I feel as if I’m being parodied. Peering out past the defences into the dark, knowing that change is coming but unable to see what it might bring. What if? What if? Spinning round, trying to look in all directions at once, on the alert to defend against rejection and acceptance.
Being on the alert is no bad thing, but there’s no need to be fearful, says Yi. I like the point LiSe makes about this one: it’s because you have sentries posted that you can sleep soundly at night. So I have sentries ready to sound the alarm if the forces of ‘mass market accessibility’ threaten to squeeze out the meaning, and I’m aware that since I can’t fit everything in here, I need to cut the waffle and find the essence, and this alertness means I don’t need to panic.
(Thanks, Yi.)
I kept the advice of 43’sJudgement in mind, too – fruitless to take up arms, fruitful to have a direction to go – and didn’t declaim stridently. It turned out that there was no battle to be fought here at all: of course, said the woman from the publisher, the words of the original must be in there.
It’s not clear yet what will come of this. The book needs to be quite small, and I don’t know yet whether I can write anything worth reading within the word limit. The next step is to try, and if I’m happy, I see what the publisher’s representative thinks of it. And if she’s happy, we see what their partners think. And if they’re happy, then there’s a book. So who knows whether it’ll reach publication?
And that’s a large part of the experience of 43.2, I think – the unknown. Its paired line, 44.5, receives an extraordinary, unexpected gift – willow wrapping melons, containing a thing of beauty that comes falling from its source in heaven – whose nature is still unknown. In my own experience, what falls from heaven is lovely, but by no means always will it work out in practice.
In hexagram 43, you’re bearing a message, aware that this must be carried through and heard at the centre regardless of danger. It can be fraught with tension – in fact, looking at the line texts, it can be premature, scary, humiliating or hideously uncomfortable, and it’s also a big disaster if you fail to make it heard at all (line 6).
Then at the second line, this messenger meets the currents of radical change. You still know your message, and it just became more important than ever to carry it well, and yet you have no idea how it might relate to the new world. What if? What if?
‘No fears.’