Apr 21 26
Eight of Wands
23. Splitting Apart
2. The Receptive
2. The Receptive
These first few lines are the general aphoristic returns for the week. They are raw and uninterpreted; there to use how you’d like. (The specific readings follow.)
Question from “J.D.”: What is the purpose of the life experience?
Oracle reply:
Perhaps, “the purpose of the life experience” is to be sincere, pursue harmony with more powerful movements and maintain a devotional attitude.
Complete Reading:
This week we pulled Eight of Wands. “It” is underway. Perhaps nearing completion, or, at least in the downward part of the arc’s trajectory. No point in thinking about beginnings, rather, prepare for fulfillment or resolution.
Our first hexagram this week is #23, Splitting Apart. There are times when the dark completely overwhelms the light (the yin pushes out the yang). This can mean the time for doing is over, and a period of reflection begins, or, more seriously, a time when people with selfish/base motivations thoroughly dominate superlative peoples. In either case, it can’t be helped; it is a natural progression. The best thing to do in such times is submit and be still; favorable conditions will return eventually (the “seed of good” always remains).
There was one change of which the specific note is: “A law of nature is at work here. Evil is not destructive to the good alone but inevitably destroys itself as well. For evil, which lives solely by negation, cannot continue to exist on its own strength alone.”
Our second hexagram, the one that suggests how best to meet the challenges (or the changes) is #2, The Receptive.
The two chief, primordial themes of the I Ching are contained in the first two hexagrams: #1 The Creative and #2 The Receptive. First, the Creative, the élan vital — the emergent life force of the world/universe. The second, the Receptive — “action in conformity with the situation.” To properly use the creative force of this world one first must accept limitation, then, one is “sure to find the right guidance... The superior person lets themself be guided; they do not go ahead blindly, but learn from the situation what is demanded of them and then follows this intimation from fate.” In other words, you do not shape the world — the world shapes you. “Nature creates all beings without erring… A human achieves the height of wisdom when all that they do is as self-evident as what nature does.” Also, “…the superior person gives to their character breadth, purity, and sustaining power, so that they are able to both support and bear people and things.”
- Do not ignore, or worse, pretend, that many aspects of your life aren’t ALREADY underway. Do not deliberate over different destinations when you are in fixed transit to one.
- “Evil is not destructive to the good alone but inevitably destroys itself as well.”
- “A human achieves the height of wisdom when all that they do is as self-evident as what nature does” — because we are nature.
Question from “J.D.”: What is the purpose of the life experience?
Oracle reply:
- Life is underway from the very beginning.
- Life is terminal (as regards life shapes).
- The individual does not shape life, they are life thus are shaped by it, and really, indivisible from it.
- Thus, seek accord/harmony with higher powers (beyond human).
Perhaps, “the purpose of the life experience” is to be sincere, pursue harmony with more powerful movements and maintain a devotional attitude.
Complete Reading:
This week we pulled Eight of Wands. “It” is underway. Perhaps nearing completion, or, at least in the downward part of the arc’s trajectory. No point in thinking about beginnings, rather, prepare for fulfillment or resolution.
Our first hexagram this week is #23, Splitting Apart. There are times when the dark completely overwhelms the light (the yin pushes out the yang). This can mean the time for doing is over, and a period of reflection begins, or, more seriously, a time when people with selfish/base motivations thoroughly dominate superlative peoples. In either case, it can’t be helped; it is a natural progression. The best thing to do in such times is submit and be still; favorable conditions will return eventually (the “seed of good” always remains).
There was one change of which the specific note is: “A law of nature is at work here. Evil is not destructive to the good alone but inevitably destroys itself as well. For evil, which lives solely by negation, cannot continue to exist on its own strength alone.”
Our second hexagram, the one that suggests how best to meet the challenges (or the changes) is #2, The Receptive.
The two chief, primordial themes of the I Ching are contained in the first two hexagrams: #1 The Creative and #2 The Receptive. First, the Creative, the élan vital — the emergent life force of the world/universe. The second, the Receptive — “action in conformity with the situation.” To properly use the creative force of this world one first must accept limitation, then, one is “sure to find the right guidance... The superior person lets themself be guided; they do not go ahead blindly, but learn from the situation what is demanded of them and then follows this intimation from fate.” In other words, you do not shape the world — the world shapes you. “Nature creates all beings without erring… A human achieves the height of wisdom when all that they do is as self-evident as what nature does.” Also, “…the superior person gives to their character breadth, purity, and sustaining power, so that they are able to both support and bear people and things.”