The Superior Man Receives a Chariot

Hexagram twenty three line six shows the final hours of decay when the structure collapses upon itself. There are times in our relationships, in our businesses, in our personal lives, where, no matter how hard we have tried, we just can not shore up the structure of our lives, and things will not stand, but fall apart.

This is a law of nature. We find in hexagram eighteen that it is not simply a law of nature but the price we pay for negligence. But it is also the law of nature that everything in the universe ultimately breaks down. It does not maintain stability. Our relationships may indeed last a lifetime, and happily so, but given enough time, if we lived long enough, those too would eventually break down, unless an awful lot of care was placed in them, enough care that it would almost be a superhuman task.

But hexagrams twenty three and twenty four, as well as hexagrams sixty three and sixty four, and many other pairs, show the natural law of degeneration, regeneration, back to degeneration, then back to regeneration. The line teaches us that at the time of the greatest collapse, at the time when everything has failed, and there is nothing else we can do, we must simply trust and allow. As in hexagram forty seven line two we "overcome a disagreeable situation by patience of spirit." We understand that while when good times end they are met with bad times, so, when bad times end they are met with good times.

But it all depends ultimately on our poise and patience, our commitment, and our confidence in the higher self to work for our ultimate good. Only the superior man can do this. For this reason the superior man "receives a chariot." We is given a way out, and when the collapse is complete, he finds the good, the "fruit uneaten" in it all.

There is another reason and way the superior man receives a chariot as well. The superior man realizes through the circumstances of life that there is a deeper meaning, and is willing to work to discover that meaning, and find "purpose" out of misfortune. The chariot is a means by which the superior person finds a deeper meaning in the I Ching. The chariot is a tool whereby we can go from one place (intellectually) to another. We are given a tool whereby we can unlock deeper secrets of the I Ching. Fortune is found in misfortune, and misfortune in fortune. As well, there is no blessing without a curse, and no curse without a blessing. Have we found the chariot whereby we can unlock the secrets of the I Ching? Have we received the chariot whereby we can have a deeper understanding of our true selves, of how to make our lives work, to have more harmony in our relationships, and more power to mobilize ourselves and enrich our lives in every way?