“Calm”
Ah so, honorable ancestor teach Little Flower how to use I Ching. The I Ching takes a bunch of situations and looks at them from different perspectives. That lets me out. Why? The one-and-only-dude likes her one-and-only perspective. When did you say it was written? Over a period of centuries that began in the tenth century BCE. Well then we can forget about it. I only care about after I was born.
Then you’d be missing out on supernatural power capable of doing what I did earlier this month. Trained a bunch of pigs how to fly. Got sick, asked for Guidance how to get better, and got it. That’s what HMOs are for. First, I tossed the coins and got Hexagram 27. “Chopsticks.” I knew it! No. And not “Made in China” either. Out of sixty-four hexagrams this one directly addressed my situation. “Nourishment.” How odd! No, not how odd. I flip coins to pull up the hexagram that applies to me and over forty years of consulting the I Ching I’ve only misfired once.
It solved your problem? The I Ching addresses situations from the standpoint of building character. That’s the ‘problem’ it’s concerned with. Getting it right and doing it right, beginning with seeking Guidance when we’re moved to seek it. Just one detail from Hexagram 27: “Tranquility cultivates character.” Wisdom that guided me to what I needed to do not only to get well but to manage a long-term health issue. Much better than a Rx for aspirin, don’t you think?
There’s a connection between tranquility and character? I mailed something at the post office. And then what? The suspense is killing me! I hadn’t decided what came next. I stood in front of the post office not sure what to do. I had a vague idea that there was something to do at Manhattan Village, so I headed over there. See’s Candies. Ralphs. SuperCuts. The Apple Store. Macy’s. Don’t forget the Greenway trailhead. The Greenway Trailhead zzzzzzzzz. Which one of these exciting venues did you choose? None. What?? I drove on by and turned right on Rosecrans. Ah! Office Depot. Trader Joe’s. REI. Old Navy. Barnes & Noble. More excitement to enliven my day! I remembered that B&N had Easter Sunday gifts and maybe I’d find something.
And you found the perfect gift. Thank you, I Ching! No. There wasn’t an Easter display so I just went into a zone and browsed. Starting at the front of the store and working my way back through racks of “New & Notable” books. Novels mostly. Entertainment fluff. Until I found myself in the Romance section. Finally! Something important. Way to go! A woman was browsing there who’d dyed her hair green. You introduced yourselves, fell in love, and lived happily ever after. Thank you, I Ching! No. I wandered in a zone some more and found myself staring at one title. It was on the spine of a thin book in a rack of books. As if my eyes had been directed to it. The title was about my chronic health condition. One word caught my attention: “Calm.”
Made-up answers
Long story short, I bought the book, read it, and have been putting it and Hexagram 27 into practice. “Calm” plus “tranquility.” What my body has been needing from me since the third grade, and now it’s finally getting it without medications. It’s working? I wouldn’t be writing you if it weren’t. Why? Because my condition wasn’t letting me work at the computer anymore. I had to take the week off and hope I’d be well again. And you think the I Ching made it happen? By allowing myself to be guided by another perspective — by being thoughtful about who or what is doing the guiding — I made it happen.
Our lives consist of a succession of situations that test our comprehension and character. That we can’t pass without help from other perspectives. Why? We can’t know the meaning of anything if our context is broad and our perspectives are narrow. Especially when everything is in constant motion, carrying us along like leaves floating in a stream. We can stay on top of circumstances on our own but that only gets us so far. We need help.
My personality type is toward the extreme of Mindful and self-awareness. Questioning. It gets help from intuition. Not answers but Guidance. From intuitive sources like the I Ching. With practice I can access multiple perspectives and get a definitive view of situations. A broad, philosophical view. Long-winded. Insightful and, yes, long-winded. Defining. That helps me come up with my own answers.
The opposite personality type is toward the extreme of body-sensing. Where it gets help from I wouldn’t know, but my guess is make-believe. Which doesn’t want to be hampered by limits. Doesn’t want anything definitive, and so it dispenses with self-awareness. Why? Because we’re defined by what we see of ourselves in a mirror. Mirrors frighten make-believe for a reason. Self-evaluation = self-defining. Make-believe is elusive, evasive. Never to be pinned down because it has to be whatever it wants to be or it wouldn’t be make-believe. Never to subject, or be subjected to, questioning. Because make-believe is made-up answers. Every one but one perspective, as though it were the one-and-only Truth.
A life-saver
Hmmmmm. I feel a disturbance in the Force. What you feel is a disturbance in the way things are. Because make-believe is all about the way things aren’t. There are lots of terms for what comes out of its mouth, alluded to by Hexagram 27. When we aren’t careful with what we put in our mouths and what comes out. The British came up with “poppycock” and “humbug.” The Irish with “malarkey.” Can you think of American street slang for the same thing? You’re feeding me a bunch of baloney! Our government in Washington is feeding the whole world its one perspective. It’s all make-believe and it pays no attention to what anybody else thinks. Millions are taking to the streets today to protest. They’ve had enough of make-believe and its ‘answers’.
The I Ching may strike you as an amusement or of no use at all. That’s not how you see it? From my perspective – that could always be wrong – it could make a big difference for the better in your life. Because of what we’ve talked about before. A talent for writing needs to access different perspectives. Not good if it’s limited by a tendency or preference for seeing things from only one perspective.
Our behavior inevitably mirrors inherited tendencies, and yours may include tendencies inherited from personality types involved in make-believe. Southern California is a world citadel of the entertainment industry. Entertainment = make-believe = manipulation = resistance to limits. Resistance to definition that might be imposed by other perspectives. It’s not necessarily in your blood, but maybe it is. If I’m worth listening to then a source like the I Ching could be a life-saver. Each hexagram not only acquaints us with our situation; it views it from different perspectives. If we get the right hexagram, it can help us avoid mistaking what our situation calls for. It can even do what it did for me with my health condition: lead us to the solution to a serious problem.
Wisdom comes with age
How do I use it? The instructions are in the introduction to the Bollingen Series XIX (Princeton University Press) with an introduction by Carl Jung. You can use it as a source of wisdom, as I do, and / or as an oracle, as I don’t. It’s both. The friend who led me to it used it for an oracle. How will I know if it’s working for me? You’ll know if you’re “connected to the Tao.” That is, if you recognize and feel the need for Guidance. If you’re moved to seek it and relate to it. Respect and appreciate it when it’s there and don’t get frustrated when it’s not.
It’s the bluebird on Uncle Remus’ shoulder. To be welcomed always but never to be expected or demanded. Spontaneity isn’t willful, and it will keep its distance if that’s how we behave. If you do like Uncle Remus you’ll know the I Ching is working for you when you flip the coins and they take you to a hexagram that fits your situation. That acquaints you with its possibilities to pursue and pitfalls to avoid in the moment, based on the book’s (Tao’s) experience with each one.
You mean my experiences aren’t unique? Exactly. Neither our experiences with our situations nor what’s to be learned from them. It’s all been done before, many times over. And others are going through the same thing while we speak. Our experiences are unique in the sense that we’re unique, but that’s all. Otherwise, we’re passing through tests of character that have been evolving along with our species since the beginning of time. It matters that the I Ching wasn’t cooked up by a UCLA philosophy professor or a trendy motivational consultant yesterday. Wisdom comes with age. With experience and a lot of reflection.
Trusting to the right source
Did the Tao lead you to the book on the shelf at Barnes & Noble? I can only say that it was as if I were led. One can never say for sure if Guidance that’s spontaneous must be beyond our control. The circumstances told me I was led. What circumstances? I was in serious need of help dealing with my physical condition. Leaving the post office didn’t settle what I needed to do next. My mind was open to different possibilities, including returning home to rest. This gave Guidance an opportunity to help. My thoughts weren’t blocking the way.
It took over and decided for you. No. It would never do that. It nudged my awareness with a thought. What thought? Manhattan Village. I didn’t hear a voice that said, “Go to Manhattan Village.” My otherwise empty mind just took in a spontaneous thought. Manhattan Village. That took me in the general direction of the book store which was somewhere else.
Not finding Easter gifts like I thought I would opened my mind again to different possibilities once I was inside. Go somewhere else or browse? I didn’t really think about it. I was in a zone, letting intuition decide for me. I browsed for a long while, half aware that I might be wasting time. Unusual since my time is precious and I need reasons for how I spend it. Drifting isn’t my style, nor is being in a zone. These are states of semi-awareness that for some are invitations to manipulation. Guidance would never manipulate. But if we set aside Order of our own making so that Order from its Source can help, it can give us the help we need.
Which is? Help with Awareness. Our state is unawareness. If it weren’t, fields of inquiry — science, philosophy, psychology, theology, and all our others — wouldn’t be taking centuries to come up with answers. With the basics of who we are and what we’re doing here. We still don’t know how and why life started. How and why the universe started. Where it’s all headed except it will end. The closer we get to answers the farther away they seem. Beyond experimental science. Beyond theorizing. Beyond making sense.
Just ask physicists trying what Einstein tried to do and failed: to pull all the laws of physics together into one coherent system. Into one elegant equation. It can’t be done. Our ‘reality’ isn’t things the way they are in any rational sense. They’re irrational. We’re irrational. Which means trying to steer our course through a maze without help from another perspective is bound to fail. If you want an explanation why civilization is threatened today by mass extinction it would be because we’re not trusting ourselves to Guidance or to the right source of guidance.
Consume, digest, and eliminate
What source are we trusting ourselves to? The current occupant of the White House trusts his ‘gut’. What does that mean? Our guts consume, digest, and eliminate. The vagus nerve connects our guts to our animal brains at the top of our spines. The amygdala. So that the part of the brain that regulates bodily functions can communicate with the part that handles nourishment. When I practice what Guidance taught through the I Ching and the book, I get my gut to relax by relaxing the muscles in my head. Huh? I send instructions to my gut from my animal brain to relax by starting the process from the top down. It works?? Every time! The instant my muscles relax from on top my gut down below relaxes. As if it had been waiting for orders from headquarters. It stops being sore. It lets me do stuff without always being in pain.
You’re making this up! A mindful personality type like mine that has a passion for thinking and theorizing creates tension in the upper extremities of the body. That travels down to the gut and keeps it from relaxing. I read long ago that my type has trouble relaxing but didn’t connect the dots. Didn’t relate it to my chronic problem with my gut. The I Ching and the book the Tao led me to finally connected the dots. Made me aware of the vagus nerve and how to use it.
That’s not how the guy in the White House is using it? He’s doing the opposite. Not using his animal brain and its vagus nerve connection with his gut to tell it to relax. He’s using it to let his gut tell his animal brain to do whatever it’s doing. To consume, digest, and eliminate. To function not as human differentiating and empathizing but as animal preying, acting on instinct, and dominating. Like a willful two-year-old.
King Vagus at your service!
Stop right there! Why? You’re saying our country is a stomach and it’s trying to gobble up stuff and process it like it’s food. That’s crazy! Well, then complain to the president. Because whenever he defends his actions he’s “trusting his gut.” What else could explain a real estate mogul running the country like a real estate business gobbling up properties? Like an empire consuming the resources of its colonies, digesting them and leaving its colonies wasted. Eliminated like, you know, human waste. Ugh! What else could explain the state of planet Earth, being consumed, digested, and wasted by our species? One big stomach ruling its puny animal brain until it’s digested itself. The characterization of capitalism by theorists like John Kenneth Galbraith as “a stomach that digests itself.”
We’re failing at waste management. That or failing at nourishment, because what goes in certainly isn’t what’s coming out.
This is characteristic of Guidance and a good reason for talented young persons to think about it. Why? It doesn’t trouble us with superficialities. It traffics in roots. In essences, and that means ideas that can lead anywhere. I may have gotten practical guidance from a book about how to manage my gut but along the way I also learned about tranquility and what it has to do with character. Ideas. Principles and values. Bedrock stuff that isn’t entertainment fluff. Distractions. For someone who’s favored tension over relaxation over a lifetime, aware only that character requires effort, this was huge. It never occurred to me that effort needs to be balanced with moderation. That moderation requires wisdom and wisdom comes with tranquility. The name of the book is Calm Your Gut.
The lesson your mind learned was taught by your gut. Yes. My gut punished me until my mind learned the necessity of relaxation. Then it stopped punishing me. My daily routine now includes periods of relaxation designed for mind and gut both. And you’re feeling better? Much better! I’ve been weaned away from bad habits of mind and body both and it took Spontaneity to make it happen. Chronic pain + Hexagram 27 + intuition from Guidance + a book with practical advice. That’s all? No. + Character. Understanding that we’re here to earn and learn Character. Not to waste ourselves on make-believe. Not to let make-believe take over the government and turn everything into waste like itself. Because that’s what make-believe is. Waste. A land of appearances where nothing worth happening can happen. Humbug!
Hmmmmm. Vagus nerve. What are you thinking? What to call myself when trusting my gut lets me take over the galaxy. Oh. “Queen Vagus.” What do you think? At your service, your Majesty. Who is? King Vagus.