Beautifying

Next week I’m going to a Mediterrean island. It will (I hope) be warmer than England, and I am anticipating the possibility of exposing bits of my body that don’t normally see the sun.

So I went to see Kaye, who does for me when I feel the need for some beautifying. I had in mind a bikini wax. But Kaye is an artist, and her art form is the human body. I not only got my bikini wax, but an eyebrow tidy and tint, and a pedicure.

Kaye doesn’t just attend to external beauty. She is a sort of therapist in her own right, like I imagine an old-fashioned barber was for men – the kind of barber that appeared in an episode of Northern Exposure, and got Chris to pull up his socks in the etiquette department. A conversation with Kaye always leaves me feeling more beautiful, more feminine, more happy that I’m a woman – that is, shinier on the inside as well as the outside.

That’s what Hexagram 22 is all about. It’s called BI, which is variously translated as Decoration, Adornment, Elegance. The character is made up of two parts: At the top is a flowering plant. Flowers are beautiful, but they don’t last long. Below that is a cowry shell; a shell is the exterior of something. Cowries have been almost universally used both as currency and for adornment.

Bi means brilliant, ornate, intricate, refined, elegant: something beautifully decorated. But a simple translation does not do justice to an implied meaning: in the China of the I Ching, adorning meant refining one’s social behaviour.

The key to this hexagram is whether the beautifying -- whether of one's appearance or one's behaviour -- is merely a superficial show or represents an expression of inner quality.

The hexagram is formed of Mountain over Fire. At its most positive, this is the clarity and consciousness of Fire on the inside, and the stillness and stability of Mountain on the outside. But a weakness of Fire is that it seeks ephemeral beauty, which is gaudy but insubstantial:

Welcome to the land of flame and fizz
Where you will learn that packaging is all that heaven is…
We got the little black car, the little black dress

Got the guru, the trainer, the full court press

We got the software, hard drive, CD-ROM

We got the exploitation.com

We got the pager, cell phone, bootleg methaqualone

The media, the message: you are what you own
(from “Working It”, Henley/Simes/Lynch)

Hexagram 22 asks whether the adornment -- the packaging -- is merely an external ornamentation, or an expression of inner beauty.

During my early years as a therapist, I practised a form of facilitated meditation in which I often sat with someone for an hour or more in silence, day after day. I learned that if you just look at anyone for long enough, they become heart-wrenchingly beautiful. It’s a person’s uniqueness, their naked authenticity, that is the greatest beauty of all, and if you look long enough, you see through all the layers of packaging, right down to their gorgeous core.

If people were more aware of how beautiful they really are, this might be a different world.

Trouble in River City

Last weekend my Sweetheart and I went for a walk along one of the high tributaries of the Dart, at Shipley Bridge on the edge of Dartmoor. The river rushed past foxgloves and buttercups, banks of magenta rhododendrons and clouds of hawthorn blossom. It was breathtakingly beautiful. We clambered over the slippery stones along the river, and at one point I nearly had a nasty fall.

A rushing river and a nasty fall. Two of the images associated with Hexagram 29, KAN.

The trigram KAN is formed of one yang line enclosed in two yin lines. KAN is water, but not still water, like a lake. It is moving water, rushing like a river. In ancient times, crossing a river was a dangerous prospect, and not undertaken lightly.

Doubled, it gives us the hexagram XI KAN – danger upon danger.

XI is the image of the rapid, repetitive movements of the wings of a bird in flight. It means repeating; or skill; or learning something by repetition.

KAN can mean exhausted; to have run out of breath (or money). More commonly, it means a pit, or to fall. The ideograph is formed of TU, Earth, on the left. On the right is a very old ideograph depicting a person standing on one foot; directly underneath him is a vertical line symbolizing a falling movement, and a pit.

Thus the meaning of KAN is either a pit or falling. And it’s doubled! You get out of the pit and fall back into it, or into another one.

Huang translates KAN as ‘Darkness’; LiSe as ‘The Teaching of Darkness’. Blofeld calls it ‘Abyss’, and Wilhelm, ‘Abysmal’ – both terms which carry the sense of a bottomless pit. Kan is a pit; you may be exhausted and out of breath (or money), but it is not a bottomless pit. You are, as Huang puts it, “falling, but not drowned, in danger but not lost”.

KAN signifies Danger and Darkness, and how to deal with them. It’s about how to get out of the pit.

The inverse trigram/hexagram is LI – Fire – the radiance of solar light. KAN is lunar power, the reflected light that shines in the darkness – and that is the key: to keep your light in the darkness.

Trouble upon trouble can make you crazy. Time and again, in working with clients who have survived – but been traumatized by – some overwhelmingly harsh or terrifying experience, I have heard the story of how troubles can make you crazy, and that craziness leads you into more trouble. Or maybe you’ve just survived some horrendous violation or injury, and the people you turn to for help tell you to pull up your socks, or that it was your own fault. When you are in the middle of such a vortex, it can seem that one disaster leads to another, and everything you do, everything that happens, just makes matters worse.

So what can we learn from Water, about how to get out of the pit? What would Water do? Water goes with the flow; it has no form, no plan, and it reflects whatever light there is. The nature of water is to surrender and flow. It fills up the pit, entirely conforming to the limitations dictated by the circumstances of the moment, and then moves on. The Commentary on the Decision tells us: “Water flows and fills, not accumulating but running. Pass through dangerous places; never lose self-confidence”.

It is sometimes difficult to be right where you are, to stay present with profoundly distressing experiences. But there is a part of us that is not shaped or altered by even the gravest misfortune; it is never injured, never compromised. If you can be present in the moment of distress, and still stay with that eternal part of you – your own Essence, the yang line, shining pure and bright at the centre of the Darkness – then it can move you through even the most distressing situations.

Kan is a teacher, and double trouble gives you a second chance: if you don’t get it the first time, you might get it the second time. The Commentary on the Symbol tells us that “The Superior Person cultivates and practices virtue constantly, and responds through teaching”. If you can master this situation, you will also have the potential to help others through it, like former addicts who can help others through, or indeed any of us who can offer to others the hard-won fruits of our lessons learned.

Waiting for Rain

I spent the middle two weeks of March in Los Angeles, visiting my parents. It hadn’t rained for a week when I left, and didn’t rain here the whole time I was away. It then continued to not rain until last week. Every evening, I watered my garden, anxious and pessimistic, until the water butt was empty.

‘The drought has started early this year’, I said to my Sweetheart.

‘How long have you lived in this country?’, he replied. ‘It will rain. Don’t worry.’

‘It’s global warming’, I grumbled. ‘It will never rain again.’

But I was wrong, and as is so often the case, he was right. It’s been raining in the Southeast on and off for a week, the garden has exploded into growth, and the water butt is full again.

All the while, I kept thinking of Hexagram 5, XU, which is variously translated as Waiting, Needing, Attending, Calculated Inaction. Some interpret it as ‘Waiting for Rain’, others as ‘Waiting for the Rain to Stop’ – in either case, you are waiting for circumstances outside your control to change.

The overall message of the hexagram is that you need patience, confidence, steadfastness and faith to wait until the time is right for action. Just as you wouldn’t take a cake out of the oven when it’s half-baked, or pull up your radishes as soon as they produce leaves, you need to wait until the situation has matured and ripened, and the time is right to act.

It’s funny how the same message often comes through on different channels. Last week, while reorganizing my filing system, I came across some old journals, written during a time when my life felt cramped and blocked. No matter how I tried to get out of this situation, I couldn’t shift it. Meanwhile, I was doing all kinds of inner work: prayer, ritual, therapy, the lot – in an attempt to overcome my own desperate impatience and frustration, or my own inner blocks to change. The journals recorded one attempt after another to transform both my inner and outer situation, but nothing worked – until one day, it all changed overnight. The time was right, and suddenly everything worked – the garden of my life exploded into growth, and the water butt filled up again.

One of the stories behind this hexagram is that when King Wen was planning to overthrow the tyrannical king of the Shang, he looked for a suitable place to establish his capital. He considered many possible places, but all of them had some fatal drawback. Eventually he chose Feng, a name meaning ‘safe place’, where his army were able to wait calmly, enjoying good food and wine, strengthening themselves while waiting until the time was right to overthrow the Shang. (The story of King Wen’s victory over the Shang is an epic tale, a ripping yarn with many twists and turns – but suffice it to say he was successful in the end.)

This hexagram shows the capacity of humans to follow the Dao. Waiting does not mean idleness. In the time of XU, waiting is a positive act. It’s a moment of creative tension, of gathering force and energy before acting. Its shadow is timidity, fear or needless striving – and my journals were certainly full of all three, though all that inner work was a way of strengthening myself. But the agonized fretting was such a waste of energy, when I could have been “eating and drinking, feasting with joy”, which is Confucius’ advice in this situation.

Next time I’m in a time of XU, maybe I’ll be able to wait calmly and patiently, with confidence and faith…

Meanwhile, I’ve installed a second water butt. Best to be prepared.

Dancing like Elephants

This weekend my Sweetheart and I went for a walk along the River Wandle, to Merton Abbey Mills. It was a beautiful day, and a beautiful walk.

When we got to the Mills, there was a hot five-piece band playing on the bandstand. They were good enough that people were dancing. Toddlers were bopping around. A woman shimmied across the square to the café. A father jiggled a pushchair in time to the rhythm. A young man – a terrific dancer – boogied with uninhibited enthusiasm, cranking up the volume of the smiles on everyone’s faces.

This phenomenon, of something moving people in an easy and pleasurable way, is described in Hexagram 16, YŰ. The character YU is formed with the image of an elephant, standing on its rear legs, on the right. On the left is an ideograph showing two hands, with something between them; it is an image of giving and receiving, of passing back and forth. Taken together, it’s a dancing elephant! It’s heavy and solid, but at the same time light and active.

This is a happy hexagram. YU means happy, easy movement – joyful, lighthearted enthusiasm. It can also mean pleasure, to be at ease.

Wilhelm translates Yu as Enthusiasm, Huang as Delight; Wu as Easy Movement, Pleasure.

The hexagram is formed of Thunder over Earth. Earth is stable and strong, but it can get too stable – heavy and stagnant. It’s the archetypal feminine, fertile and receptive and responsive, but it can also manifest as weakness and servility. Thunder, on the other hand, is always about activity: something bursting out, opening, releasing.

Here, the active, stimulating power of Thunder is awakening the Earth. It’s like Spring, when life bursts out of hibernation and rediscovers the joy of movement. The hexagram contains references to music and sacred dance; there is surrender internally, and expansive power externally. It’s about enjoying your own Earth, which is your life.

In the context of business or government, this is a hexagram of motivation – someone who can lead through inspiration, sweeping people up into his or her enthusiasm. The lines warn against short-term joy, getting excited and flaring brightly, but not being able to sustain it…or of falling into smugness and self-satisfaction. There’s an implication that such pleasure is fleeting.

But this weekend at Merton Abbey Mills, no one seemed to be concerned. They were just frolicking like elephants to jazz on a Summer’s day…