The Earth ䷁ Lies Asleep

The Law of Change that is ever-present in the I Ching is rooted in the relationship between The Earth, Hexagram 2 and the Heavens, Hexagram 1, The Creative. In addition to the 64 Hexagram Readings that someone casting coins will receive, the I Ching contains The Great Treatise, an essay which discusses the principles upon which the I Ching operates for example:

The Creative, Heaven knows great beginnings

The Receptive, Earth, completes things....

The Creative is easily understood.

The Receptive is easily followed.

When someone asked to describe Earth in as the solstice nears, this came to my mind:

Earth/Kun/I Ching Hexagram 2 — all broken/divided lines.

It is the Receptive, which can only be activated by The Creative, Heaven, Qian.

The heavens are mostly dark, giving its light only briefly.

Thus, the earth lies quiet, cold, resting, waiting

for the Yin-Yang cycle to turn toward sunlit heavens

knowing the time will come

when the Heavens activate it, wake it,

so, together they will renew.

So The Earth lies almost still,

its preparations for the wakening hidden from view.

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.