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Damage to the Ego: The Movement through Hexagrams 35,36,37 and 38
Frank O'Shea hermesweb@hotmail.com
This paper considers the problem of advancing which permeates the I. Advancing can take different forms, for example, advancing with ones toes, with the feet, advancing from the mind and so on. In general there is a strictly correct way of advancing ( which is not clear to this reader) and most advancing leads to reversal or calamity. Western society only knows how to advance, repeatedly to despair, in the form of wars, economic recession, destruction of the environment etc.
The four hexagrams I have chosen are consecutive and form a natural sequence. hexagram 35 symbolises progress in the form of a young officer who is successful in securing employment represented by his acquisition of many horses. I suppose in a modern sense the analogy is to the early career of a top graduate. He is welcomed to interviews i.e. he is on the up in life. He is distinguished from the unemployable, the invalid or the otherwise socially outcast. In this sense he embodies social progress and is very successful. The manner of his coming difficulty is not yet apparent and he is in the throes of advancing. What the I makes clear however is that he is not, perhaps unlike how he views himself, infallible or fully competent. He does not yet know his own faults. His advance therefore, in the view of the I, must of neccessity lead to injury. The following hexagram, Hexagram 36, brings this injury. Hexagram 36 is one of the darkest hexagrams in the I. The injury it describes leads to the loss of the former progressive activity. The officer encounters misfortune which compromises his position. This in turn implies that he must forsake his ambitions for a more steward like role. The difference between the actor and the stage manager. This loss must be entirely traumatic, such that the individual recoils from the progressive, socially out going mode that he formerly adopted. He returns to identity with his family. Hexagram 36 is followed by 37 which denotes the family. Identity with the family is considered by King Wen and his son to be a path to regret. The family is narrowly defined society, a place less of repose than of bottled and stifled ambition and development. The time with the family is a time of seperation from the affairs of the wider world, as it is a time of recovery, rest and the re-establishment of regulation. When a re-emergence into the world of men and affairs happens it cannot be on the same terms as it was with the subject of hexagram 35. After the decline of the light, an unease, a loss of innocence is inevitable; this in turn implies a loss of raport with others who have not the experience of setback. Thus the hexagram which follows the family is one for alienation. Alienation is a much despised modern sociological term. Here it means a diversity of opinion in society, such that a general rule cannot always prevail. It marks too a time of keeping aloof from others, especially those who bear ill will.
Ther is no kingdom in the I Ching which cannot be moved, no condition that does not give way to its opposite. Throughout the book there is constant setback and reintegration (with lessons learned), mirroring the calamity and anxiety that had befallen its authors (their imprisonment). In this sequence no. 36, the hexagram of the darkened light, has meaning in a modern context in that it shows that the outward display of competence and erudition at a young age may be unsustainable in a world of exchange values. On the other hand, a lack of care in a progressive person may be a greater flaw than a careful and entirely conservative way of living. Injury can lead to the destruction of the entire person or an important part of that person, and perhaps the realization that it was not worth it to begin.
Injury may lead also to the complete loss of oppertunity. When the officer fails he shows that he has failed to become what he promised. Thus the I states in 36(line 6):
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he had at first ascended to the top of the sky: he
might have enlightened the four quarters of the
kingdom; his future shall be to go into the earth: he
has failed to fulfill the model of a ruler.
One of the salient features of the I is that there is no actual point of death, perhaps because it is as much concerned with inexaustable nature as with any one individual. Death is everywhere. To have all the misfortunes of the I fall on ones head and survive is very unlikely. The text suggests the absolute and real perils of ordinary life, most of which are ignored in a world of imitative behaviour, where an easy and successful life are said to be possible and indeed normal, despite the huge list of casualties. Wouldnt it be better to adopt the opposite view (that is the view of the I) that failure and damage are far more likely, and that the source of injury may be what we treat as benevolent or benign. This would be the position of the alienated, a position not particularly liked in the modern world, but a position put forth by the French existentialists following the dark experience of European war.
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