Help me interpert yijing divination results

[waterdrop]

@Michael Sternbach    I have asked the last question now  -   so i asked about practice in general about stretching and wuji stance  -   and  now i asked about danitan gong - i asked :

"What effect the lower dantian work i did had on my spine ?  and if i return to it what effect will it have on my spine ? "

I got hexagram 56   -  with changing lines 2,3,6      --- and it turns into 40    (hidden hexagram is 28)

how you interpret that ?

Edited November 26, 2020 by waterdrop

[Daeluin]

Poking around in here, seeing if anything stimulates a response...

 

What is the impact of the stretches i did up to know on my health?

 

Hexagram 61.

 

Changing lines 3 5 6.

 

Changing line 3:

Finding enemies, sometimes drumming, sometimes stopping, sometimes crying, sometimes singing.

 

Getting into aberrant practices, attached to your own body, attempting forced manipulations, is like faith in which one finds enemies -- faith becomes enmity; after a time there inevitably comes a change, as one first believes in this, then that -- when this practice doesn't work, one then tries that practice; "sometimes drumming, sometimes stopping, sometimes crying, sometimes laughing," vain and insubstantial, this is what is referred to by the statement, "It's easy to work with what is of the same species, hard to work with what is not of the same kind." Believing in what is not to be believed will inevitably destroy faith. This is faith that takes the false to be true.

 

Changing line 5:

 

With faithfulness that is firm, there is no fault.

 

Being strong and also balanced, and correctly oriented, yin and yang blended, essence [xing], feeling [qing], vitality [jing], and spirit [shen] all return to the center [earth], benevolence [wood], justice [metal], courtesy [fire], and wisdom [water] all return to the mind; the five elements aggregate, truthfully unified without division. This is faithfulness that is firm; it is secure and cannot be dissolved. This is what is meant by the saying, "When a grain of gold elixir is swallowed into the belly, for the first time you know your destiny depends on you and not on heaven." When the work reaches this point, you are integrated with natural principle, the celestial design, and all entanglements are void; there is naturally no fault. This is faithfulness in which strength and flexibility are one.

 

Changing line 6:

 

The voice of a pheasant reaches the skies; even if devoted, the outlook is bad.

 

If one uses one's own intelligence to indulge in guesswork and personalistic interpretation, unable to humble oneself to seek from others and thoroughly investigate true principles, and plunges into practices impetuously, one who advanced rapidly regresses swiftly; though one originally wanted to climb to the heights, instead one falls. This is just the call of a pheasant, incapable of soaring to the heavens to accomplish that which is rare in the world. This is faith that misuses intellect.

 

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So it sounds like that might actually answer your question appropriately.

 

This is from Cleary's translation of Liu Yiming's "Taoist I Ching" also found in "Taoist Classics Vol IV" , which I recommend.

 

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As for changing lines, that was them. I see a 6 or a 9 as being activation of the coagulation of yin or vibration of yang - activation of the change within the hexagram. Not changing polarity. Harmen has a video about the history of treating the lines as a changing polarity in his YiTube series, and this is also mentioned in Richard Rutt's book. Basically it is not a convention that was always used with the I Ching.

 

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As for yes or no questions. The I Ching is perfectly capable of answering a yes or no question. Or a this or that question. It answers what is between yes or no, what is between this or that. That is my experience. So if you want to try to interpret that, great. For some questions it can be helpful, for an advanced reader capitalizing on the mechanism. I wouldn't recommend it for beginners.

 

To Harmen I'd say that I think not asking a question at all is a fantastic way to divinate without getting in the way by setting up an extra vector with a question. And that if we are getting into the WenWangGua here I'd say the WenWangGua is armed with a lot more interpretational resources in which to answer a yes or no answer than a typical I Ching reading.

 

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As for your other two questions, you ask multiple questions at one go. This complicates things. If you want clear answers, ask clearly focused questions. If you ask two questions you might get an answer that combines two answers or something. Why not ask them separately and keep things clean?

 

When we go to cross a road, we want to know if it is safe. So we look in one direction, and look in the other direction, and from the tapestry revealed we make a proper judgement about whether or not it is safe. We end up with a "yes" or a "no" in some sense, but we did not ask a yes or no question. We asked what it looks like over here and over there.

I would advise treating the I Ching the same way. Use it to paint a clear description of the tapestry of change you are navigating. Be simple and patient. Sometimes just describing a situation is a better way to add complexity than asking a question about it.

 

 

 

Edited December 4, 2020 by Daeluin