Alright, so I’ve been messing around with the I Ching lately, and I gotta say, it’s pretty wild. Today, I decided to focus on hexagram 58, which is all about joy and exchange. Let me tell you how it went down.
Getting Started
First things first, I needed to actually do the I Ching thing. I’m not gonna lie, I’m still a newbie at this. I used the coin method – you know, tossing three coins six times and noting whether they land heads or tails. It felt kinda old-school, which I dug.
I grabbed my notebook and a pen, because, let’s be real, I’m not gonna remember all those heads and tails without writing them down. I found a quiet spot in my apartment, put on some chill music, and started tossing.
The Coin Tosses
- Toss 1: Heads, Heads, Tails. Okay, that’s a broken line, a yang line with a change. Noted.
- Toss 2: Tails, Tails, Tails. Solid line, a yin line. Got it.
- Toss 3: Heads, Heads, Heads. Another broken line, another yang. Feeling a pattern here…
- Toss 4: Tails, Heads, Tails. Broken line, yang.
- Toss 5: Heads, Heads, Tails. Yang with a change, just like the first one. Interesting…
- Toss 6: Tails, Tails, Tails. Yin, again. Alright, hexagram formed!
So, I ended up with two changing lines, the first and the fifth. This means I not only got hexagram 58, but I also had to check out how it changed, which lead me to a second hexagram.
Deciphering the Hexagram(s)
I pulled out my I Ching book – it’s an old one I found at a used bookstore, and I felt pretty authentic. I looked up hexagram 58, Dui, The Joyous, Lake. It’s all about open communication, sharing good vibes, and finding joy in connection with others. Made sense, considering what I’ve been thinking about lately.
But then, because of those changing lines, I had to see what the hexagram turned into. By changing those two yang lines to yin, I ended up with hexagram 47, which is called Kun or Oppression/Exhaustion. Whoa, talk about a shift!
Kun suggest a time of feeling restricted, blocked, maybe even a bit down. So from open joy to feeling stuck…hmmm.
My Interpretation & Thoughts
Here I thought about all the ways I have been feeling lately. The good, the bad, and the ugly.
Putting together 58 and 47 felt strangely accurate. It’s like, yeah, I’m striving for that joyful connection (58), but there’s also this underlying sense of being held back or exhausted by something (47). Maybe it’s work stuff, maybe it’s just life in general, but it resonated. I feel a need to be open and find that joy, but also a caution of the obstacles.
The I Ching didn’t give me some magic answer, but it definitely gave me something to chew on. It was like holding up a mirror to my own internal state. Not bad for a bunch of coin tosses, huh?
I’m gonna keep thinking about this 58-to-47 shift. Maybe journal about it some more, maybe talk to a friend. It’s definitely not a one-and-done kind of thing. It’s more like a starting point for some serious self-reflection. And that is what I did today.
