Initiating --> Little Accumulation
This I Ching oracle surprised me with six yang in a row, which is sometimes interpreted as Heaven, but Alfred Huang interprets it as Initiating, which is still a combination of Heaven-over-Heaven.
"The Chinese character Qian is an image of a rising sun radiating its light and energy--chi--and nourishing the entire world ... it denotes health and vitality ... the purest yang energy ... the most powerful strength."
It is the first of the 64 gua of the I Ching.
One ancient commentary compares it to "mounting on six dragons soaring in the sky."
But the so-called "moving line" takes me next to the gua interpreted as Little Accumulation. Although I may be at a moment of relatively good health and strength, I am cautioned to be patient, to wait for a favorable timing before moving forward.
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I'm not even sure what I want to move forward toward. What is "forward" for me, here and now?
Finishing my fifth decade on earth as Bug. I do feel generally healthy, and I do feel my relationships and job are relatively stable and secure.
I'm not sure what my goals for the immediate future are or should be. But I think this I Ching instance is telling me that's OK. I'm at a position of health and stability, and I should take my time before moving forward. Scan the horizon for targets and threats, feint one way and then another, build up my reserves, test my scaffolding, test my boundaries, test the forces pressing against me and holding me in place.
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I listened to a history podcast about the I Ching last night. I was so happy to find it, I wasn't even looking for it. I was instead curious about the May Fourth Movement in Beijing during 1919.
While hiking with Tod today I tried to explain to him how pre-modern civilizations, like the one that gave us the I Ching, didn't view progress as a linear or exponential path toward ever-better results, instead progress was temporary and everything inevitably returned to baseline. But over the past two or three hundred years, as some of our human societies catapulted into modernity or even postmodernity, we've taken it for granted that we can continue to have economic growth in perpetuity, and our democratic populaces become frustrated with stagnation.
Pre-modern civilizations typically viewed society and nature as part of a cyclical system of birth, life, death, and rebirth. The concept of endless growth would've been ridiculous to them, yet today we assume it as part of our birthright. Our 100-fold increase in per-capita GDP over the past few hundred years is viewed as just the start!
Yet this assumption of endless progress, while it has been accompanied by various types of tangible progress, seems to be leading us toward a planet-wide mass extinction.
Yet ... this will not be the first planet-wide mass extinction on earth.
The cyclical stability of the pre-modern civilizations was a mirage, as the human race was continuing to evolve, and technologies were continuing to improve, but at a pace that was imperceptible to those living through it. We are currently living during a period when technological improvement is perceptible, but the planet-wide destruction that is resulting from that technological improvement is also perceptible now (to most of us, anyway).
I have no proof that any of the prior mass extinctions resulted from technological improvements, this could be a once-per-planet type of event ... and I suppose there is still hope that we'll find a way to technologically save ourselves from our own technological progress ... but I don't think that particular way forward is up to me. Or to you. No one person is in control of this planet-wide drama.
But I think we may need a planet-wide movement, to do something about this ecological catastrophe, while we still can, if we even can.
"The Chinese character Qian is an image of a rising sun radiating its light and energy--chi--and nourishing the entire world ... it denotes health and vitality ... the purest yang energy ... the most powerful strength."
It is the first of the 64 gua of the I Ching.
One ancient commentary compares it to "mounting on six dragons soaring in the sky."
But the so-called "moving line" takes me next to the gua interpreted as Little Accumulation. Although I may be at a moment of relatively good health and strength, I am cautioned to be patient, to wait for a favorable timing before moving forward.
-----
I'm not even sure what I want to move forward toward. What is "forward" for me, here and now?
Finishing my fifth decade on earth as Bug. I do feel generally healthy, and I do feel my relationships and job are relatively stable and secure.
I'm not sure what my goals for the immediate future are or should be. But I think this I Ching instance is telling me that's OK. I'm at a position of health and stability, and I should take my time before moving forward. Scan the horizon for targets and threats, feint one way and then another, build up my reserves, test my scaffolding, test my boundaries, test the forces pressing against me and holding me in place.
-----
I listened to a history podcast about the I Ching last night. I was so happy to find it, I wasn't even looking for it. I was instead curious about the May Fourth Movement in Beijing during 1919.
While hiking with Tod today I tried to explain to him how pre-modern civilizations, like the one that gave us the I Ching, didn't view progress as a linear or exponential path toward ever-better results, instead progress was temporary and everything inevitably returned to baseline. But over the past two or three hundred years, as some of our human societies catapulted into modernity or even postmodernity, we've taken it for granted that we can continue to have economic growth in perpetuity, and our democratic populaces become frustrated with stagnation.
Pre-modern civilizations typically viewed society and nature as part of a cyclical system of birth, life, death, and rebirth. The concept of endless growth would've been ridiculous to them, yet today we assume it as part of our birthright. Our 100-fold increase in per-capita GDP over the past few hundred years is viewed as just the start!
Yet this assumption of endless progress, while it has been accompanied by various types of tangible progress, seems to be leading us toward a planet-wide mass extinction.
Yet ... this will not be the first planet-wide mass extinction on earth.
The cyclical stability of the pre-modern civilizations was a mirage, as the human race was continuing to evolve, and technologies were continuing to improve, but at a pace that was imperceptible to those living through it. We are currently living during a period when technological improvement is perceptible, but the planet-wide destruction that is resulting from that technological improvement is also perceptible now (to most of us, anyway).
I have no proof that any of the prior mass extinctions resulted from technological improvements, this could be a once-per-planet type of event ... and I suppose there is still hope that we'll find a way to technologically save ourselves from our own technological progress ... but I don't think that particular way forward is up to me. Or to you. No one person is in control of this planet-wide drama.
But I think we may need a planet-wide movement, to do something about this ecological catastrophe, while we still can, if we even can.