Hexagram 3 – Water over Thunder – 4/16-4/21

Chun – Difficulty at the Beginning

Chaos – Innovation – Innocence .:. Codon Ring of Living and Dying

Water over Thunder evokes an image of water held back by a strong rising yang energy, much like a mass of water held back by a dam. The obstacle is unmovable by force at the moment and any action taken with impatience is sure to bring misfortune.

This hexagram is known as Difficulty at the Beginning in the ancient iChing. There is great potential success in this hexagram, but in order to bring this success to fruition there must be a great deal of patience and trust in the natural timing of life. In life, there will always be great obstacles in our path, or adversarial forces that make the way forward seem impossible. To rush towards conclusion now will only squander the great good that is in store. If we are able to stay the course no matter how chaotic and impassible the situation may seem, success will come in time.

The uncomfortable experience of chaos is a natural part of life, but too often we resist it out of fear. We attempt to force the hand of fate to bring the unsettled energy to close. Instead we are counseled to learn to stay present with changing energy, and know that chaos is how the mystery of the cosmos delivers new creations into the world. Trust in the unseen bounty waiting for the exact right moment to fall like rain from the thunder cloud.

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Deep in our subconscious there is a fear of nature and the infinite. The human psyche has grown to fear the unknown and the uncontrollable aspects of the mystery inherent in life. Science and Religion have capitalized on this fear of the unknown, and each system has become claimed great power over our understanding of the world. Religion has placed God between us and nature, while science has stripped nature of its mystery, reduced it to mechanical processes of genes and random chance driven by primal survival instinct. The word chaos shares its root with chasm, which means ‘primordial space.’ We in the modern world have reinterpreted chaos to mean disorder, whereas its true meaning is closer to the creative force of the cosmos. Life is pushing us evolve into embracing the mysterious interconnectedness of the cosmos. We are just now as a collective moving past the Difficulty at the Beginning, the survival instincts programmed from a past age. Now our quantum biology is coming online, where all life is interconnected like a community. The next phase of our evolution will be driven by collective effort and a drive to serve the whole. The Corruption (50) in our DNA from old fearful patterns is being upgraded and brought into Equilibrium and Harmony. Much of the past and current ages of humanity are driven by a deep fear of change. But change is all there is. To face and uproot this fear brings joy, laughter and swift change. The Shadow creates two polarities, Anal and Disordered. Anal is a repressive state where one tries to control all of life, and the fear causes us to clench our lower centers effecting our breath. Only by relaxing into the fears and trusting the cosmos can we feel held and supported by life. Disordered is reactive, where the fear of chaos is projected outward as rage, creating the very thing that we fear. This happens when we stop trusting life and start believing our fears.

We are currently evolving beyond random chaos and the selfish drive, into the Innovation of collective union. The competition that is so deeply seeded in the subconscious of humanity will eventually be seen as simply the Difficulty at the Beginning.

The evolution from Shadow to Gift to Siddhi in this key is modeled by the evolution of biological life in the cosmos. Life began as single celled organisms which needed to compete to survive, but as the cosmos evolved these individual cells began working collectively creating the multi-celled organisms which rule the world today. Likewise our individual awareness is in a process of Innovation, where we will begin to operate as individual cells in a collective organism. Our individual selfish genes are mutating to support collective consciousness. Life is either continuously evolving and transcending or it is dying. This gene is connected to the energy of a child at play, filling spaces with its playful vibration. This is how life mutates, continually adapting a new way through each situation. The trick is to stay open, playful and adaptive like the heart of a child. In this way we create pockets of coherence in the midst of chaos. As we let life change us it finds a new way to perfection, not mired in the old patterns and behaviors, but a fresh, new way in the moment.

As this jump into the siddhi of Innocence dawns, it will occur as the children of current and future generations never lose the Innocence of heart that recognizes the importance of play. A playful intelligence will work out a perfect graceful solution overtime. Einstein’s greatest discoveries happened in the playful side of his mind as he let it wonder about the spectacle of life, not from the serious logical side. That came later. There is a playfulness to genius that sings, dances and wiggles its way through the seemingly impossible tasks in front of it. This flexible, fun loving Innocence does not get bogged down in the impossibilities of life, it plays with the opportunities it sees in the cracks. Whole worlds can open in a creative mind that is allowed to play. A single particle of matter that escapes the boundary of this universe will become a new universe itself. So feel into the eternal exuberant energy of expansion built into the creative process of the universe and trust in its implicit order and perfection, through the chaos, for that is how new things are born. Our home is not the body, not the form, it is the feeling of love itself. There is youthful Innocence, and wise Innocence and we are, as always, seeking the middle path and finding joy in the play, the drama, the Leela of life. To jump up in the middle of the play and shout “its just a play!” would ruin the fun for everyone else. So sit back, trust the Innocence of life, and enjoy the drama.

Keys of the iChing – Jesse Chesnutt