More on the family

Hi everyone

In Michelle's comments she made some good points. I was making my statements in reference to how the I Ching in every line is talking about itself, and itself in relationship to us. I hope to write more on this later, but for now, I might mention that when the text says, "the perseverance of the woman furthers, it is in many ways speaking about perseverance of the yin form of energy. The yin form of energy can refer to many things. It can refer to a receptive or yielding kind of energy, it can refer to a devoted kind of energy, it can refer to an indirect approach, or many things.

If one notes the structure of this hexagram, one will notice that the middle line in the lower trigram is yin and the middle line in the upper is yang. These are the proper places for the yin and yang lines to be respectively. The second line is centered and balanced, as is the fifth. Also, note, in terms of relationships, which I will talk about eventually, but not a lot because I am of no great authority on the subject, that almost always when the second line is yin and the fifth yang, the hexagram as a whole is structured to be generally positively geared toward relationships. (That doesn't mean though that every changing line is going to be positive.) If we look at the structure of hexagrams overall, the structure is that the lower hexagram is inner, and the upper is outer. In this hexagram, the second line, being yin, says, "She must attend within to the food." In other words, the properly placed yin energy stays within a given structure, and supports the family. While the yang, in the upper hexagram, supports the family through his work and his discipline.

Now, anybody reading this, let's do a little experiment. actually, you will have to do it more than once, over and over again many times, but in time you will feel it. Practice breathing, especially if you can get into a meditational state, practice breathing energy, or chi through your hands. At first, and for many many tries, this will be little if any more than imagination. But in time you will feel the chi. When you begin to feel the chi, you will begin to realize as you breathe in, that the hands turn cold, as you breathe out, the hands will turn warmer. This is because within is yin, and another quality of yin is that it is colder. These energies are real, but their reality can only be experienced with practice. lf you find a good chi kung, or qigong master, you can learn much deeper aspects of this energy. But you will also come to understand that the qualities attributed to yin and yang are not just arbitrary, Buddhist and Taoist monks spent centuries experimenting with these energies in order to describe them properly as to how they really work.