My, myself and I Ching: My first experience with the Oracle

Inspired by an incredible new paradigm that I have been moving into for some time now, I have finally found a way back to both religion and magic, the mystical practices of both enchantment and divination, or prayer and prophecy if one happens to prefer more Christian terms, have both taken on new significance to me now that I understand the all encompassing importance of the nature of our perception and how we construct reality. Enchantment, or magic spells, can directly effect our perception of reality, or rather what we look for and how we shape the way we, respond and shape the meanings around us, by pointing us in certain directions. Magic spells and guided meditations appear to me now as having some kind of similar functional purpose. Both are willful attempts by the individual to send the mind off in a certain direction through the use of tools.

Divination, which at first might seem slightly less appealing, now appears to me to occupy a position of more significance than enchantment. If one considers the divorce or rift in every person that exists between the conscious and unconscious, or the masculine and feminine, or the above and below, or that which is perceived and that which is, than any practice that can mend, even somewhat, this rift will be a practice that imparts great wisdom and insight.

My first question put forth to the I Ching was this: What can you tell me about my relation to the music I make and what should I know about?

The hexagram the coins delivered to me on this matter was number 3 or Chun which means Difficulty at the Beginning.

The following is a more detailed description of Chun:


The name of the hexagram, Chun, really connotes a blade of grass pushing
against an obstacle as it sprouts out of the earth—hence the meaning,
"difficulty at the beginning." The hexagram indicates the way in which
heaven and earth bring forth individual beings. It is their first meeting,
which is beset with difficulties. The lower trigram Chên is the Arousing; its
motion is upward and its image is thunder. The upper trigram K'an stands
for the Abysmal, the dangerous. Its motion is downward and its image is
rain. The situation points to teeming, chaotic profusion; thunder and rain fill
the air. But the chaos clears up. While the Abysmal sinks, the upward
movement eventually passes beyond the danger. A thunderstorm brings
release from tension, and all things breathe freely again.


THE JUDGMENT


DIFFICULTY AT THE BEGINNING works supreme success,
Furthering through perseverance.
Nothing should be undertaken.
It furthers one to appoint helpers.

Times of growth are beset with difficulties. They resemble a first birth. But
these difficulties arise from the very profusion of all that is struggling to
attain form . Everything is in motion: therefore if one perseveres there is a
prospect of great success, in spite of the existing danger. When it is a man's
fate to undertake such new beginnings, everything is still unformed, dark.
Hence he must hold back, because any premature move might bring disaster.
Likewise, it is very important not to remain alone; in order to overcome the
chaos he needs helpers. This is not to say, however, that he himself should
look on passively at what is happening. He must lend his hand and
participate with inspiration and guidance.


THE IMAGE


Clouds and thunder:
The image of DIFFICULTY AT THE BEGINNING.
Thus the superior man
Brings order out of confusion.

Clouds and thunder are represented by definite decorative lines; this means
that in the chaos of difficulty at the beginning, order is already implicit. So
too the superior man has to arrange and organize the inchoate profusion of
such times of beginning, just as one sorts out silk threads from a knotted
tangle and binds them into skeins. In order to find one's place in the infinity
of being, one must be able both to separate and to unite.




I really could not have thought of a more appropriate answer based on what I already know about the relationship in question and this experience has left much food for thought.

Substance Without Form

My God I've found the Alchemist's Stone,
Sunlight on my windowsill turns marble into gold,
And yes, I know a trick of the eye,
It was always in that trick of the eye.

All tangled limbs and panicked thrashing in the sticky film of sticky time,
With swollen clumps of language gumming up gasping passages,
Some kind of disease and breeding festers in the murky waters of the eye,
It binds. It blinds. It multiplies. Cell windows crack and crystallize.

Secret knowledge, secret light, secret handshakes in hidden doorways.
Secret whisperings out of secret lips that ask secret questions like "Do you want gold?"
Yes there are secret codes and secret controls,
And they've always had secret operations manuals in vaults under Rome.
But what could these do for their fear of the unknown,
"We need more soldiers, more land, more control,"
A new kind of drug, an addiction was born.

Aged white knuckles grip the stone,
The structure cannot hold.


Piscean talismans adorn the Millennial Priesthood in their hallowed halls,
While outside, their sparkling jewels splash bluish light off their raised scepters,
Measured and calculating, declared by turning compasses within the precision of lines,
It's a beautiful day for a blood sacrifice.

Opposite reaction.

What slouches now toward Bethlehem,
The spiraled clock hands turning back,
Lost gospels rise up from the sands,
Released by Time as if by plan.
Hey Judas, Thomas, Magdalene!
Come out, don't hide your faces another day,
You're just in time for the Information Age.
Return, rejoin, with voice and visions.
Rejoice! Rejoice in new perspectives.
Did Jesus tell you something else?
The shattering of ice and bells,
Angelic songs and trumpets sound
Nerves numbed stiff twitch to awaken,
The rooster stabs through your dreams.

See the starry eyed man on the road with his clothes?
Pray that you might become like him.
You don't know the wealth that he carries and owns
Let him stop you a second, let him tell you some jokes.

Pray that you might be like the traveling man,
Electrocuted, shocked and senseless.
Forgetting always what you were doing,
With eyes like the moon in the afternoon.
Let your temples center star processions
Mother and Father's orbiting arms.
The center is where the center is,
Where is it that gravity's tugging you now?
That round shape in your mouth is pulling everything down,
Give birth with it, say "now", "now", "now".


But no? Such terror of the void and formless,
Do we always need someone to speak and fill the emptiness,
Our chosen: our Priests, Kings, Philosophies.
Speak, please speak, we beg of you, please.

On second thought, be silent.
You've been talking too long and you've said enough in your time,
There is a sound that was before you and a sound that will be after,
A sound we were always hearing behind you.

Young woman, young man,
The heavy heap of culture you carry keeps pulling you forward and backward,
It's so rare that you just let yourself be where you are,
You know it and and you drug it and sometimes you try to find a way to escape,
And so you run to the library to try and read your way out.

Look up at the sun and stop!
That blinding light is you.

Finger the scales that bind your perception,
There's no knowledge of trees if there's no one to listen
There is no up or down in outer space.
And the planets do not know their names.
The seasons and stars do not know the shapes that we have given them
Why are the animals pulling away?

Make love and remember, sing songs and recall
The rhythm in your dancing has been telling you all along.

Pray

I'm whispering prayers to a nameless god,
Because I know that all the names are wrong,
It's like a lightning bolt etched into the sand,
It's like the voice of thunder trapped inside of a glass
Can you hear it cracking?

When useful names begin to lose your trust,
And written words are fading from their parchments into dust
I will sit beneath the stars and speak in tongues
I will raise my arms to heaven in the way that a child
Asks its mother to be lifted up again.

You are my only hope.

I'm whispering prayers to the names of God,
Because I know how all the names are wrong,
Just like the love that's spoken breathes flame into the fire
If ever a spell be broken, what language is required?
I can hear it cracking.

My only hope.
You are my only hope.

May helpful laughter now collapse you into gratitude.
There's nothing softer than the touch that gives and gives and gives,
By its surrendering water flows through everything,
Carved canyons,rocks and stones they cry aloud.

Highway

The highway is a tired metaphor.
That I cannot bring my car to crash,
To sleep in a hospital bed
As storm clouds roll over each other in my gut,
Like morbid children scrambling up shoulders
To witness some sick event over the neighbor's fence
Fills me with a feeling of helplessness
Like I'm not really at the wheel
Like I mistakenly thought I had anything to do with
The person who steadily holds to the line.

An Other

There is an entity in your voice,
A cold frequency I can't recognize
Like nighttime air fastened to your breath,
A bad new static that slowly ascends.

Covert in these strained, hollow pauses,
A stanger's shadow extends,
Filling in the empty spaces,
Where love or trust have failed to tread.

Suddenly,
In a battle.
Home sweet home.
Subtly losing ground.

The wind
Inside a bottle,
Ghosts of ghosts
A sound is still a sound.

A thought becomes a thing once it is conceived.

Cloudbusting

When you told me about it I laughed,
But then I sat on the grass,
In the sun on the hill,
With my feet in the fountain,
Guitars and chatter bending in the breeze,
Swirling over my skin,
And I tried it.

Then everything was a little different,
Like after a protestant baptism,
When the riverwater dries,
And you actually feel like something died,
And was left in that river,
But it's good and you're lighter,
Like a freshly pruned tree,
That just realized it had been touching the sky all along.

"The Artist is the Brush"

Circumstance creates art.

The artist as a conduit, 
For the outlet of materializations,
Brief solifications,
Of the culmination of events, time and places,
Or a piece of that brief culmination.

The artist as a recorder,
Capturing the sound of a moment,
So in that moment they are that moment,
Embedded in the context,
So they and their works are a piece of that moment,
A tangible explosion,
A Pompeian shadow frozen on stone,
Sculpted in stone, carved in stone,
On canvas, paper, poem.

Look at that moment, the sound,
The color, the feeling.
The artist opened the gate and it came through.
Now that moment's frozen,
This moment touching that moment,
Time bending as moment touches moment,

Something clicks like the echo of wholeness
As the many, by the smallest degree, becomes a little more one.
A little less separation, touching in more places.