Good morning!
This is what it looked like yesterday where I was walking here in the Blue Ridge mountains. Looks enchanted, doesn’t it? It was an enchanted moment before the day accumulated the usual overflow of heat and damp that characterizes August in the Northern climes. Things feel crazy, out of control growing right about now. And so, not entirely surprisingly, the theme for today’s notes comes from Hexagram 26 - Great Taming/Da Chu.
Some of you know that I work with the I Ching regularly as a source of both guidance and inspiration and today’s reading was perfect in both ways. Great Taming is all about how to manage the overgrowth, the accumulations that may have come about through natural events or through our own excesses. Either way, the situation has arrived when you are dealing with more than you might have imagined or more than you feel capable of managing.
It is a funny thing about growth that on the one hand rich growth benefits from a generous space in which to literally grow and on the other hand healthy growth also benefits from the right amount of taming, restraining or confinement. The question of when to allow space for growth and when to confine the growing thing for best results is often difficult to answer. In this most generous time of year up here, where there is much to be harvested, rain is plentiful and the days are still long, you could be overwhelmed by the “fruits” of your labor. So, the Hexagram advises us in Line 1 that “self-mastery is founded on the ability to stop.”*
It goes on to say in Line 2 “Perhaps your concept of yourself is no longer connected to reality, or inner essence is divorced from its expression”* I find this notion inspiring, not to mention a bit humbling. The idea here is that to deal with all this accumulation the thing to do is stop and reconnect with your own inner knowing, your own essence. Wouldn’t I rather just throw stuff out? That’s my question. Why would I want to simply stop and find my essence when it would seem to be far more effective to just start hacking away at all that undergrowth and accumulation?
Problem is when you begin to hack away at all that stuff recklessly and without much care, chances are you may injure the tender growing things underneath in the meantime. So, what then is exactly the meaning of this advice? I suggest that the practice of sitting with whatever we are experiencing, allowing ourselves to fully feel the growth and accumulation of our situation is what we are being asked to do to start with. Then, I think, the idea is to go even a step further.
More than just letting your experience be full of all the emotions, sensations and thoughts that arise, you are being asked to find the parts of that experience that constitute your precious essence. What in the wild mess of things is actually the sparkling source of your energy and inspiration? What is there that is truly of value? How do you recognize yourself in the midst of all that has accumulated?
This is truly the work that I love, finding and mining the essence. In this case, reckoning with and reclaiming what makes me who I am, getting very still, feeling the full weight of dampness, the nearing heat of day and spying the gleam of gold that lies beneath the rocks and dirt.
As I mentioned last week, this month on Fridays, I’m doing R & R, Renovation and Reclamation. This week’s focus is on the gold, the values that make me who I am. You are still invited to join me if you like for a day of mining the essence, reckoning with the overgrowth and reclaiming your treasures!