Hexagram 29 and 30

HEXAGRAM 29, XI KAN Xi is repeating, skill, routine, learning something by training or exercise.    Kan is a pit or a danger, crisis, a burial pit, physical deficiency.

  So the time of 29 is the opposite of 30-time. It is 'repeated pit', or getting used to danger. Learning to cope with danger. As long as you have fear, then danger, or anything unknown, mysterious, different, is a very strong enemy.

  Innumerable people let their lives be ruled by fear. 
  When someone has a disease or even dies, they point at the victim and say it is his own fault. Eating wrong, living too lavish, taking risks. Or maybe having done wrong things in a previous life, causing a bad karma.
  Even the nice people who do not point with accusations, point with pity. They put him apart from the normal healthy people and label him ‘patient’. Help with pity, talk to him with pity, and don’t realize they take away his pride and feeling of belonging.
  It is all because they are afraid. If the other one is 'different', not like them, they will be safe from what he suffers. 

  Another field where fear is important is authority. Many people obey out of fear, and that is very understandable. But the other side of it is, that they cannot listen to advice any more. It becomes a habit to do something out of fear, and when there is no fear, automatically they resist. In the long run, every relation will be dictated by ‘who is boss and who is underdog’. They cannot have real friends anymore, only people above or below themselves.

  Hex.29 is double water. Within limitless and formless, which gives the ability to accept and endure. To go on living despite any hardship. Outside water, which passes on this acceptance as wisdom, courage and unconditioned love to the surrounding world, and the ability to move through and around all obstacles.

HEXAGRAM 30, LI    Li: a bird and a bird-net: to catch or having caught a bird. In the Mawangdui YiJing: a snare.    Meanings: name of a bird, Oriole. Loan for leave, depart from, to be dispersed, distribute, arrange, vis à vis, meet with, fall into, fasten, attach, pass through, droop, hang down, light, brilliance, to be separated from, differ from, to defy, to go against, paired, hedge.

   In 30 there should be no thought of danger. Not the denial of it, but a mind which is so clear, that the idea of anything lurking in the dark cannot even enter it. There is no absence of fear, but it has no point of application.
   Do what you can, and don't be afraid or timid or too modest. But don't exaggerate either, stay in a calm and easy way of acting, self-assured and natural, so everything will be clear and ordered.
   Fire brings motivation or enthusiasm. This fire chases all fears away, all doubts, all ghosts of darkness. Hex.30 is double fire: within the fire of motivation, and outside the radiance this fire brings in all your deeds, in your face, in everything which emanates from you. Motivation can come through faith, love, creativity, every cause one can live for, forgetting oneself.
It is not about wanting to catch the bird, or having caught it, or maybe missed it. It is the act itself of catching, like a log 'catching' fire. It happens outside of time, in the magic space of eternity. The name of the inner trigram says it: zhen, the divination vessel, the contact with gods and spirits.

  In Chinese the most common meaning of 'li' is separate, or a fence. Separate yourself from everything which is conditioning your feelings, your life. Make them shine by themselves, or be aware of your dependency, and give it its rightful place. Not as your master, but as a helper at most. As the wood which feeds the fire.
  The meanings of li include both dependent and independent. The fire depends on the wood. But when it burns, it makes your mind independent. Shining far beyond its reach, or kindling new fires in others.

  When the young man of hex.32 (see story there) went on fishing year after year, without ever catching eel, he became part of the harbor. Not part of the people living in the harbor, but of the harbor itself. The other fishermen never spoke to him, but often, passing his boat, they emptied a basket with tongue on the deck. They saw the fire, and revered it.
  When he watched them selling their fish, he felt how he grew himself in size far beyond their human lives.