This morning I threw #51 Shock, in its static form. The image, thunder over thunder, is pretty straightforward, and the traditional invocation from the sage is don’t fear the storm that is needed to clear the air. Shock is thrown as a precursor to major life events–losing one’s license, one’s job, etc–and is designed to disrupt the narrative the ego tells itself about the world’s design and one’s place in it. In its static form, there are no mediating or specifying factors, just BOOM. Thunder over thunder.
The last time I can remember throwing Shock was about a week after The Professor got fired, when I finally pieced together why, and realized it did not really have anything to do with his sleeping with me. At all.
An email from d: Well, I do prick up my ears when I get 51, but it is not necessarily cause for alarm; its a cause for attentiveness. And sometimes the unexpected arriving can be a lovely thing! Also: this hexagram could be speaking to a shocking thing that happened in the past and wants current attention…so I think in this case: meditate on if anything happened recently to induce anxiety/unease, if shocks from the past have risen up from mind/body/world, and to walk in the world today slowly and with vivid attentiveness in case a shock/surprise is zigzagging towards you.
I asked the I Ching to clarify the nature of said current or oncoming shock, and I threw 20.4 (Contemplation) –> 12 Stagnation.
These are both fairly straightforward hexagrams, and in terms of the clarification I requested, seem to suggest something moving within; as today is a quiet at-home day, maybe d is right: something large and painful I have been carrying might shift, moving me out of a space in which I have been stagnating, today. Though why that shift would be shocking, again, gives me tremendous pause. I would rather not end the day sobbing and barfing (or you know, spend any part of the day doing that.)
The fourth line in Contemplation is especially inscrutable. From an email to d: The 4 was “Those who understand proper principles will lead others with respect, tolerance and gentleness (from the walker)” and in the Anthony a rather long discussion of total receptivity and social invisibility (“we must behave as if he were king and we his guest”) it, interestingly, warns against using the I Ching to selfish ends, IE expecting that events will transpire on one’s timetable, thinking “well, I’ll TRY this I guess but I doubt it’ll help” or accept readings that are encouraging and reject those that imply criticism.
d writes back: I think you should go back to your fine relationship with the Sage, be ready for anything, expect nothing. Move slowly. See friends, eat well, love your animals, don’t worry.
I expect she is right. Death, natural catastrophe, illness, sudden disruptive events (surprise! I don’t love you anymore!) [by the way, right after I wrote that parenthetical exclamation I burst out laughing, which was awesome] just happen. The pain is inevitable. It is inevitable that at some point I am going to be back on that bathroom floor, sobbing and barfing. I accept it. In the meantime I will keep trying to practice humility, innocence and attentiveness, in hopes that I might, as Dana suggested, spot the Shock zigzagging toward me and be prepared to care for myself and take moral and emotional inventory as soon as it comes.
I think I’ll start by doing dishes.
