Basic binaries and balances are baloney — keeping things going in a healthy way is rather complex. Just think to a few basic life aspects: work, weekends, sex, self-care, relationships, past-selves, aspirational-selves, artistic expression, activism, high-energy periods, low-energy periods, ennui… these hardly even cover the scope of lived experience — good luck fitting them onto a balance scale or into a yin/yang type symbol. Existence simply doesn’t lend itself to minute parsing as it is more of a combination of eddies or constantly merging and repelling flocks of energies.

What to do then regarding the swinging from mood to mood to mood and from phase to phase to phase and from transition to transition to transition…?

Life for humans when done well is more about learning to have sensitive intelligent intuition, than it is about plonking down hard facts. “Sensitive intelligent intuition” is achieved by nurturing, encouragement and disciplined reinforcement.

As well, the central node of nurturing intelligence is powered by enthusiasm, like a primordial joy/love, not by tricks. What do you love? What gives you joy? Whatever it is (cleanliness of spirit, tennis, caring for others, expressing a thing very particularly like with sculpture or what have you) commitment to it and love of it will innately require discipline and exclusive focus to achieve — this is how love/joy organizes a varied surface (the unbalanced life) — it demands respect and focus. If you truly love something you wouldn’t want to be hungover when you’re doing it. If you truly love something you wouldn’t allow yourself to be to neurotic around it — you’d try to be lithe and calm.

Ultimately, always approach a desire for balance with modesty and respect not a fake it ’til you make it attitude.




This week we pulled the Queen of Cups. The appearance of this card prompts one to think about emotional intuition, that is, the need to receive or administer supportive encouragement and reinforcement. This week consider how you or someone you know might need the loving and nurturing side of intelligence.

Our first hexagram this week is #7, The Army. “If justice and perseverance are the basis of action, all goes well.” “Without strict discipline nothing can be accomplished, but this discipline must not be achieved by force. It requires… an awakening of enthusiasm.” Here a metaphor of an “army” is used to show how to rally and congeal powerful forces into action (whether of the interior or the exterior). The advice centers around discipline, awakening shared enthusiasm(s), discipline and justice. Together these add up to something like true/deep love. As in, nothing substantial/worthwhile can ultimately come to pass without powerful, north-star-type love. We pretend our loves too often and thus lose touch with our joy(s) — all energies getting dispersed into tiring, petty battles. One should lead all of the parts of themself under the banner of that which is most important to them. There was one change in our hexagram of which the specific note is: unscrupulous people should never be given power or significant place in one’s life (even if they have been helpful) — unprincipled people are a disaster.

Our second hexagram, the one that suggests how best to meet the challenges (or the changes) is #4, Youthful Folly. As we’ve mentioned before, whenever this hexagram comes up, we are always struck with the sincere basic truth it transmits regarding the successful scenario for accessing knowledge and experience. Obviously the main substance of the hexagram is a familiar proverb (enough even to be cliche: the student seeks the teacher) but the detailing of “modesty” and “no guarantees” is quite beautiful — as is speaks to a truth we’ve experienced: “…the youth… must be conscious of their lack of experience and must seek out the teacher. Without this modesty and this interest there is no guarantee that they will have the necessary receptivity, which should express itself in respectful acceptance of the teacher. This is the reason why the teacher must wait to be sought out instead of offering themself. Only thus can the instruction take place at the right time and in the right way.” Education is being patient (and modest) for a sincere question to meet a sincere answer.