Deliverance

or you can't let go while you are holding on

Week of 26 May 2025

Guidance for staying centered this week, staying in the oceanic flow of giving and receiving with all that is going on around us

Like the parting of the sea in the bible, this week we are to be released, delivered from the knots of our own making. How will such a thing happen? Mostly by not doing anything, by letting the natural movements of heaven reaching down to earth and earth reaching up to heaven move through us without hindrance. Much easier said than done.

This week in response to our inquiry we received Hexagram 40 - Jiě - Deliverance. The image for this hexagram is that of untying or loosening a knot. Deliverance or Loosening is premised on letting go, however, if you try too hard to untie the knot, you’ll find it tightening instead. Strangely, and somewhat frustratingly, the process of letting does not require effort, in fact, effort distinctly obstructs letting go. Instead this week, you are being asked to relax your grip, to simply open your hand, letting something go, relaxing effort altogether. For most of us, this is not easy even if it sounds simple.

Hexagram 40 is a combination of thunder and rain, a very Spring-type weather pattern which is happening in many places at the moment. The thunder comes to shake us loose from our stuckness, even our stillness and the rain comes to wash away whatever might be blocking the flow of new energy. What blocks this cleansing and freeing force is the way we hang on to ideas, objects, people, animals or experiences. Part of this week’s investigation, then, refers to our process of identifying where we might be hanging on, how we might loosen our grip. Loosening your grip could be called forgiveness.

Forgiveness is impossible to manufacture. It is, instead, the result of letting go. To enable forgiveness, you must first relax your grip, and be willing to investigate your own experience. Both deliverance and forgiveness involve the will. There are two kinds of will that you can experience. You could call these two the will of heaven and the will of earth. The will of heaven moves through you as a force beyond your intellectual reckoning. It is something you know unequivocably is necessary and right. The will of earth, on the other hand, is tied to your form, your body and psyche as it is currently manifesting in your experience. The will of earth is tied to the ways you have forced yourself upon your world, or tied yourself in knots to manage the experiences that have come to you. When you stop willing the body and psyche to conform to your expectations or projections, then the will of heaven can move through you. Without the balm of forgiveness though, this cannot happen.

Hilary Barrett in I Ching: Walking Your Path says:

Forgiveness frees us from the bonds of inevitability: a line crossed need not mean there must be retribution; punishment doesn’t have to follow from crime. It’s rare that we’re truly ‘forced’ to respond in a certain way, or ‘obliged’ to make up for our own past mistakes or omissions.

So once again, you are being asked to find your center within your experience and to look and care for that experience with the kindness and insight that you would offer to a friend in order that loosening can occur. If you can begin with forgiveness, deliverance can follow. If you begin with accusation or force, this movement cannot take place. This is, of course, counter our cultural injunction to take upon ourselves responsibility for the things that happen in the world around us. This is the desire for control, an always fruitless effort from the point of view of self-cultivation. Control prevents you from seeing the way things want to move, the way they will move to the natural state of balance or harmony if you let it. Such a control mindset arises from the belief that we know best for our world, when actually we are subjects in the larger world, subject to heaven and earth, thunder and rain.

Can we then, let go of our mindset that we are in control or that we should control the events of our lives? Can we forgive our lost moments, our lapses in attention, and instead allow harmony to be restored through letting go?

The essential oil that will support your letting go, your reckoning with grief or loss, your opening to the will of heaven is Eucalyptus. Eucalyptus is an evergreen, it is always there for you, opening your lungs, letting you take in more newness, more molecules of heaven-sent radiance to enlighten and release you from the past. Eucalyptus will bring a sense of alertness, allowing deep breath to open the diaphragm and give you access to your lower belly, the seat of your will. As you open and access your innermost connection to this body, you will become privy to the things that might be blocking your sense of freedom and lightness. Here then, is the moment where forgiveness rolls in, just bearing witness to your own blockage, your own baggage is enough for the power of heaven to unwind all that lies inside you. Use Eucalyptus this week to relax into the winding and unwinding, the reckoning and the release of your very body and heart.

We are perpetually winding and unwinding, moving toward heaven and embodying earth. This is the way of both individual will and divine will, the harmony and expression of precious human birth, something you can simply enjoy!

See you next week!

P.S. If you can’t make the live sessions, you can always listen on the Podcast. Recordings of the Monday morning sessions are posted before the end of the day on Monday so they are available for the week.