I Ching as a Way to Enlightenment

The purpose of this blog is to record my personal experience of Spirit teaching me, and anyone else who cares to follow us: how each of the sixty-four (64) ancient I Ching Hexagrams create a continuous and interconnected series of situations that each have their foundation in the manner in which we responded to the situation expressed in the previous hexagram, and that response and its consequences will co-create the foundation for the events that are developing in the current situation, as represented by the particular hexagram that has been chosen for us.

We draw the card but not as randomly as it might seem. There is a particular card that draws us to it. Whatever card we select is the exact card designed to teach us, or at least to provide us with an opportunity to learn, if we choose to.

How we respond to each situation that Life presents us with will determine, to a greater or lesser degree, our future options. It does not create the future. We do that for ourselves, with help. No two people will respond to the same situation in the exact same way. We each bring personal interests, abilities, preferences, emotional and intellectual development, skills and baggage to even similar situations. This necessarily creates different cause and effect sequences. But, the general pattern of development, Spirit tells me, is a required path, a Universal Law of Life.

Some teachers might start at Hexagram One and work, in an orderly way,through the connecting situations, to Hexagram Sixty-Four, but that is not Spirit’s way. He prefers to offer a daily reading that expresses the continuity concept by showing me how today’s reading developed from the previous number, which, somehow, seems to relate to my life, at the moment of the reading. How he does it, I don’t know.

The particular hexagram chosen for each day’s reading is drawn from a deck of 64 I Ching cards (similar to Tarot cards). I draw the card randomly, but I do not believe that it is drawn at all randomly. Somehow, I manage to draw the very card that Spirit intends me to draw. I’m glad that I don’t have that skill.

The purpose of His daily reading requires a specific card, that I am not aware of, at least until I have drawn it and looked up its general meaning, in the text we use for that purpose, only.
The text we use is: I Ching, The book of Change. Cheng Yi is the Chinese editor of this particular transcription (the I Ching is more than 3000 years old). Thomas Cleary is the English translator.

Spirit tells me that the explanations given in the text, for individual lines, are not applicable to today’s world. They were designed for a much earlier culture than our own and served a sacred, yes, He repeats (when my eyebrows involuntarily raised themselves), a sacred purpose for that society, much as Holy books of other cultures. And, the basic, general concepts expressed in all Holy books of the past, also apply now, and always will.

However, from general concepts passed on to us from wise teachers of the past, we must develop an understanding of what works and what does not work, in the culture in which we live, now. Spirit tells me that he has developed his understanding from many lifetimes of experience, and Teachers who, themselves, learned in a similar way. Spirit offers His explanations, not as a final word for all time and all people, but for here and now. I often find his explanations stressful and challenging to my very much less developed understanding, but I respect Him and feel blessed (for whatever reason) for having been accepted as a student and a channel, to assist Him, as much as I can to share his wisdom with whoever is ready and cares to learn from Him.