Entering The Empty City

onward and upward

The Inquiry: Guidance for identifying what is alive and what is real in our interactions this week.

The Response: Hexagram 46 - Shēng - Pushing Upward, Ascending, Line 3 Changing, Becoming Hexagram 7 - Shī - The Army, Legions/Leading

Here, as the week begins, we find ourselves challenged by the growth process found in Hexagram 46 - Shēng - Ascending, Pushing Upward. The movement in this hexagram, moving upward and toward the light, is natural and powerful but equally can be disruptive and disturbing. Think of how plants move up through the earth as they reach for the sun. It takes strength and even singlemindedness for such a movement. It is necessary but also necessarily disturbs, even destroys, things that block its way. The power here is the power to create mountainous change, even to move mountains; the character Shēng- Ascending can be used to mean ascending a mountain, climbing, moving beyond one’s limits.

Times such as this moment are times when it is important to step out, take the leap, push on, move, even as it is not known where you might end up. The idea here is that you will only know what is alive and real for you when you finally step into the interaction itself. You will have to stop projecting, controlling or otherwise trying to “know” what is happening. Instead, you must be the leader who cannot see the future but who has confidence in their own immediate perception. The secret of knowing that you can succeed lies in your inner knowing, your most valuable reference point, a knowing that exists beyond all the small voices of doubt or hesitation that simultaneously clamor for your attention.

The growth here is tempered by the earth, by the field it finds itself in. The inner movement of change erupts onto the field of your community, your world. The field is populated with your community, the people in your world, and they will temper your growth, but in a perfectly wonderful way, they will keep your growth from being excessive or out of bounds. The circumstances here are hospitable, even conducive to growth, so much so that in many ways you are assured of success. This is not success from luck. It's success from your persistent devotion to what is true and important to you, something you can only know through your consistent and earnest inquiry into your own experience. Then when you have an accurate relationship with the forces of heaven and earth i.e. yourself as you are, your growth is assured and will be healthy.

Authenticity or presence without fabrication or projection is the prerequisite for this kind of growth, yielding a presence that is true and unabated, a presence that is natural. For this kind of movement to remain natural and full of positive energy, you must maintain yourself in the face of a lot of input, a lot of crosstalk, a lot of story or projection that might be offered to you. No doubt this can sometimes be difficult, but here you are virtually assured that no harm will come from remaining in this growth process.

At the moment of challenge it will be useful to look at what you may be contributing to the situation at hand. Did a disconnect occur? Did it occur based on a physical limitation or did it occur as an energetic limitation? For this we can look at our changing line, Line 3. This changing line has an interesting text:

One pushes upward into an empty city*

What does it mean to enter an empty city? It means that you must confront your own fears and projections. The image for this line is that of an army entering a city they have conquered and finding no one there, nothing to salvage or destroy. You could say this means you might want to enter into the movement of growth without expectation, prediction or fears from the past. Instead, you would like to enter open and upright, willing and able to meet the world in presence rather than in projection.

To return for a moment to the notion of your limitations. You have a body therefore you have physical limitations; limitations of strength, height, weight, etc. You have a heart and therefore you have energetic limitations; limitations of hope, fear, endurance, etc. If you can enter into an “empty city” these limitations will not have any negative consequence. Instead they will form the basis of accurate and timely movement, growth that can sustain and inform you.

Following our changing line, we are led to Hexagram 7 - Shī - The Army. Here you are in leadership, you are in command. You are beginning to exercise your command over your own psyche, your own domain of experience. You are willing and able to identify what in your experience that might be tended to as you would a wounded child and that which might be tended as a grown warrior at home on the battlefield. These are all images of internal fields that often play out on the literal fields of your life. Can you come to be so familiar with your own internal dialogue that you can recognize when you yourself have brought the battle to the field or when the field you find yourself in has brought the battle to you?

This week’s essential oil is Thyme. Thyme is a common spice but please remember that the essential oil made from Thyme leaves will not be simple and benign like the spice. Creating an essential oil concentrates many aspects of the plant and intensifies its activity in and on the body. This is why you never need to use more than a drop and why it is best to inhale for the purposes offered here rather than to experiment with putting the oil directly on the skin which can cause harm in some cases.

Thyme essential oil will support you in taking a stand for your own knowing. It will encourage and enliven the part of you that is beyond thought and concept. You might even find yourself taking a stand on something you hadn’t even considered before but feeling excited and invigorated to express yourself in your community, your “field”. On the battlefield this is called valour, courage in the face of danger, a danger that is by definition both immediate and unknown. This might be a “you” that even you haven’t met before, a you that will enter the empty city with delight and determination to move forward with the business of life.

This week looks like a week to appreciate the energy of growth and change and to allow your own energy to take you for a bit of a ride, to find the empty city and to enjoy the journey. I hope you’ll send a postcard!

*This translation can be found in the Wilhem/Baynes translation and in Carol Anthony’s translation.