What is the Truth?

Sung by Johnny Cash in a surprise twist at the Nixon Whitehouse. I turns out that the adrenaline filled excitement created a dense fog that overwhelmed the truth. The addiction to self-indulgence, money, and wars fought by someone else are still with us. Could it be: addicted and don’t even know it?

Random Page from my I Ching Journal

HEXAGRAM 6 ䷅ CONFLICT. But there is more to it than this.

Hexagram 6, Conflict/Strife. The image of Heaven ☰ and Water ☵ go in opposite directions in one translation, while Margaret Pearson, The Original I Ching, translates it "The sky with water pouring down: the image of strife. You [Superior Person] should take on a new direction only after careful consideration of its beginnings."

Oh my, the on-going legal conflict, my lawyer and I had planned for the next hearing?

Pearson's translation of the Judgment.

If you are sincere in your regrets, take the middle way, and you will have good fortune. If you persist to the end, you face disaster. You ought to seek the advice of someone greater than you are. Crossing the great river [attempting a major change] is ineffective.

Going beyond the ladder of emotional interactions, those attachments to outcomes, and reaching for the spiritual world put all of those fears and doubts to bed.

I write a little American Haiku for my previous cast when I do the next one, often knowing the outcome. Just before the hearing:

Duck swimming against

Wind and wave, stopped. Must wait.

See a better way.

I Ching of a 1,000 Doors

Somewhere in the world is a building made of 1,000 doors. It reminds me that the I Ching, in its 3,000 year journey with humankind has been approached by people from many, many traditions...

•••• from humans who saw the world full of spirits with whom they had to work with to make the processes of nature work — thus the need to perform the right ritual and prepare the correct sacrifice.

•••• to the followers of Laozi who saw the world working in accordance with the Laws of Change — everything changing according to its nature,

•••• to Confucius and his followers who saw the I Ching as a path to a moral life,

•••• to Christian missionaries who translated the book to Latin and English,

•••• to Mystics who saw magic in it,

•••• to psychologists who write about it as a therapeutic tool in Psychology Today,

•••• and to this engineer, who the more he understands about Western science, the more he has to admit that there is more to the human experience than the answers delivered by current science.

My purpose is to introduce what I have learned about the I Ching, honoring all of the ways of approaching the Sage — and I am sure there are at least a thousand of them.