2. ䷁K'an / The Receptive

I am learning to sense the yin and the yang energies in myself, purposefully moving from the masculine and feminine references of the text to the energies they represent in me. I am asking how The Creative gives rise to The Receptive in me. How the spirit becomes material. How my ideas, the ideas that move through me, manifest my world. That process is magical, like a dream becoming reality. I write my ideas down, they come true. I sketch them, then act on them. I talk about and undertake them. I turn them into practices, projects. They lead me where I have to go, away from myself. I work to stay open to what the project wants from me, despite what I designed it to be. This has been a troubling part of writing grants, promising things I cannot know, things change, become other things.

I walked my second hexagram, ䷁K'an, The Receptive, on Saturday. I departed Brattleboro, Vermont at 8:30am, walked through town, over the Connecticut River, into New Hampshire. I bore the seeds of yesterday's thought, yesterday's action, having removed the fears of change, beginning to practice patience, with the intention of taking right action at the right time. Instead of hiking on Tuesday or Wednesday, I nursed my burning toes for 4 days and waited for my gear to arrive. I wanted to begin, was anxious to begin, but stretched and read and waited. Yesterday is any day before today.

At last, I set out on my second long walk, hiking east from Mt Wantastiquet as far as I could go and back. I walked another 12-hour meditation. This time I didn't take the spur trail to the Pisgah shelter, but walked straight past Baker Pond. It was 38F and breezy. I carried 3 liters of water and a bag with cheese, trail mix, cookies and clementines. I passed 13 people, 2 dogs, 2 wild turkeys and one chipmunk. The frogs were not calling like last time.

I moved into The Receptive, the perfect complement of The Creative, six firm lines having moved to six broken lines Earth ☷ upon Earth ☷, the vast space in which time unfolds. The Receptive arises from The Creative. It bears what spirit generated, carries it into being. The Receptive calls for stillness. It asks us to move beyond the reactive to the responsive. Reactive defends the past against the future. Responsive observes, responds to the moment. The I Ching tells us the Tao is bringing what we need, despite what we want. We learn from what we cannot change. We cannot change the coronavirus. And so we must change, if we wish to move through it.

My toes hurt. They were already sore and I stubbed them numerous times. But I had a good mediation. I felt strong. I had enough to eat and drink. I stopped 3 times for water, food, rest. I am growing familiar with the first 13 miles of the trail. It felt shorter, more like home. I used a walking stick I found at the trailhead, a different one from last time. As I moved with it, as it moved with me, knowing we weren't going anywhere but tracing a path, I felt like a monk in meditation, very much in myself, in my time. Typically, in life, I am a few feet in front of where I am or lost in thought, not present at all. My walking stick seemed like a guide to me, the way I felt in relation to it formed a new sense of now, a new sense of space, a new sense of how I might move in space and time. This kept me on my path, despite and because of where the path was leading, nowhere in fact, or to a place I cannot know, despite my intentions.

Orange flagging removed from ground and trees

A 2-mile section of Mount Daniel was offensively marked with bright orange flagging (plastic tape tied to trees). Orange flagging! In addition to the metal markers nailed to trees! White markers are placed every 50'. The tape is tied every 20'. Let us go into the mountains and see them. I removed the flagging. In places it was on the ground already. I came home with a fat sack of bright tape I intend to make a pillow or tiny target out of for archery practice. Pffooo! Pffooo!

When my ideas take form, it is rarely in the exact form I imagined. When a work is realized, so much happens, so much changes, I could not have predicted. The work that blossoms from my desire becomes something else, something separate. I put an idea into the world and it comes back different, shifted, expanded. New information is always arriving. I remain the student.

View of Monadnock

Saying, "Yes this is possible," we find that it is. We are growing healthier. Our planet is growing healthier. We are choosing a better path. This requires optimism. We must put away our judgement. We have all had teachers. And each has made a profound impact on us. With their help, we learn that anything is possible. We can heal ourselves, improve, move past our fears. I can be a poet. You can be an artist. We can make something useful with our art. Walk, eat, live in awareness. The world can support us. We can support one another. Support artists and businesses making choices for a healthy planet. Support farmers and cooperatives making good choices. Join in creative communities acting for change. Celebrate difference. Support diversity. Become a part of the solution. Support the world we wish to inhabit, not the one in which we are center. 

How can we avoid reacting? Do nothing. Stay home. Think about it. Be still. In a world built on growth, we can see the cancer stopping. Here we all are, at the same time, in the same space, in a pause, at the center of the waveform, at the heart of the world. Soon we will unravel this energy and heal, undo all we have done. Breathe in, breathe out with the universe. The universe is breathing. There is nothing to change, but to embrace change. To observe. The universe breathing. The earth carries good and evil. Moving beyond judgement is observation. We are at the center now, approaching ourselves with love, approaching one another with love. We are the environment. Everything is connected. We are connected. We have a hand in everything. 

Vintage, brown, polkadot dress