In the depths of challenge, guard your inner light; through perseverance, you will find the seeds of new beginnings.
From
36
Clouded Perception
To
3
Difficulty
Becoming a mercenary
One sells their time to collect wounds. taoscopy.com
Clouded Perception36
Stay resilient amidst adversity. When in challenging circumstances, maintain inner clarity and integrity while concealing your light from those who may not understand or appreciate it. Patience and perseverance are key.
↓ Line 3
In challenging times, patience is required. Immediate success is unlikely, and one must be prepared for setbacks.
↓ Line 5
Even in difficult times, maintaining integrity and perseverance will lead to eventual recognition and success.
↓ Difficulty3
Embrace challenges and uncertainty; growth is difficult but necessary. Encouragement and persistence lead to success.
Other titles: Darkening of the Light, The Symbol of the Appearance of Clear Intelligence Wounded, Injury, Wounding of the Bright, Brightness Hiding, Calling Pheasant, The Darkened Light, Concealment of Illumination, Injury of Illumination, Light Obliterated, Intelligence Unappreciated, Censorship, Hiding One's Light, The Dark Night of the Soul, Ignorance "Not necessarily as bad as it sounds, may just mean being restricted or restricting yourself." -- D.F. Hook
Judgment
Legge: Under the conditions of Clouded Perceptionbe aware of the difficulty of your position and maintain firm correctness.
Wilhelm/Baynes: Darkening of the Light. In adversity it furthers one to be persevering.
Blofeld:Darkening of the Light. Righteous persistence in the face of difficulty brings reward.
Liu:Darkening of the Light. It benefits one to carry on through hard times.
Ritsema/Karcher: Brightness Hiding, Harvesting: drudgery, Trial. [This hexagram describes your situation in terms of intelligence hidden or harmed. It emphasizes that deliberately concealing your light by entering what is beneath you is the adequate way to handle it. To be in accord with the time, you are told to: hide your brightness!]
Shaughnessy: Calling pheasant: Beneficial to determine about difficulty.
Cleary (1): In concealment of illumination, it is beneficial to be upright in difficulty.
Cleary (2): When illumination is damaged, it is beneficial to be upright in difficulty.
Wu:Light Obliterated indicates that it is advantageous to be persevering in time of danger.
The Image
Legge: The sun enters the earth -- the image ofClouded Perception.The superior man manages his subordinates and shows his intelligence by keeping it hidden.
Wilhelm/Baynes: The light has sunk into the earth: the image of Darkening of the Light. Thus does the superior man live with the great mass: He veils his light, yet still shines.
Blofeld: This hexagram symbolizes light hidden within the earth. In governing the people, the Superior Man, though taking care to conceal his light, nevertheless shines.
Liu: The sun sinking under the earth symbolizes the Darkening of the Light. In approaching the people the superior man veils his brightness, yet still has glory.
Ritsema/Karcher: Brightness entering earth center. Brightness Hiding. A chun tzu uses supervising the crowds to avail-of darkening and-also Brightening.
Cleary (1): Light enters into the earth, illumination is concealed.Thus do Superior people deal with the masses, acting unobtrusively while in fact illuminated. [When practitioners of the Tao are among the masses, if they use their illumination too much, they will startle the ignorant and amaze the worldly, easily bringing on abuse and slander.]
Cleary (2): Illumination goes underground, in concealment of illumination. In dealing with the masses, true leaders act unobtrusively while in fact being illuminated. [What sages learn is to become daily more illumined unbeknownst to others.]
Wu: The light enters the earth; this is Light Obliterated. Thus the jun zi uses the spirit of dimness in place of brightness to administer affairs of the populace. [By “dimming” his internal strength, he would make people feel that he is one of them.]
COMMENTARY
Confucius/Legge: The image of Brightness entering into the midst of the earth suggests clarity that has been wounded or obscured. The lower trigram shows Clarity, the upper Docility. King Wen had both of these qualities, yet he was involved in great difficulties. The individual concerned should obscure his brightness. Thus was Count Chi able to correctly maintain his mind and intent amidst the difficulties of his situation.
Legge: This hexagram shows an able officer going forth in the service of his country, notwithstanding the occupancy of the throne by a weak and unsympathetic ruler. Hence the name Clouded Perception or Intelligence Wounded -- that is, injured and oppressed. The lesson of the figure is to show how such an officer will conduct himself and maintain his purpose.
King Wen was not of the line of Shang. Though opposed and persecuted by its sovereign, he could pursue his own course, till his line came in the end to supersede the other. It could not be so with the Count of Chi, who was a member of the House of Shang. He could do nothing that would help on its downfall.
NOTES AND PARAPHRASES
Judgment: Recognize a difficult situation and use your willpower to cope with its restrictions.
The Superior Man manages the situation by subduing his need to speculate, meddle, or call attention to himself. (Alternate: When in the presence of arrogance, the wise man plays the fool.)
The thirty-fifth hexagram shows the trigram of Clarity progressing over the earth -- an image of advancing awareness. The thirty-sixth hexagram is the inverse of this -- it shows the trigram of Clarity swallowed up by the earth. If the image of Advance of Consciousness symbolizes noon, when the sun is at the midheaven, then Clouded Perception symbolizes midnight, when the sun is at the Imum Coeli, or undersky. It is a time of maximum darkness, maximum ignorance; a time when the dark forces of the unconscious are at their strongest. We are reminded of the Dark Night of the Soul, an inescapable and inevitable phase of the Work:
When, at length, they have practiced themselves for some time in the journey of virtue, persevering in meditation and prayer, wherein, with the suavity and relish they have found, they have become detached from worldly things, and acquired some spiritual strength in God, so as to be able to curb the creature appetites and in some small degree suffer for God some slight load and dryness, without turning back at the crucial moment; when, to their thinking, they are proceeding in these spiritual exercises to their entire satisfaction and delight; and when the Sun of Divine favors seems to them to shine most radiantly upon them, God darkens all this light, and shuts the door and fountain of the sweet spiritual water, which they were wont to drink in God as often and as long as they chose ... and thus, he leaves them in darkness so profound that they know not whither to direct the sense of the imagination and speculations of the mind. St. John of the Cross
The Dark Night of the Soul is the universal experience of everyone who follows the way beyond the tried and true paths of the spiritual dilettante. It is an archetypal filter for determining the survival of the fittest in psychic evolution. For those who have entered this phase of the Work, it is good to remember that no one is given a test that they can't pass if they sincerely want to.
The situation in line five of this hexagram means little to one who is unacquainted with Chinese history. In its essence, the story of Count Chi concerns a superior man who was imprisoned by an evil emperor. The only way that he could survive this dark time was to feign insanity. Thus the message in the Image counsels us to show our intelligence by concealing it. There is a wide range of applications for this rule, and perhaps Lao Tse gives us the best paraphrase of the idea in his famous aphorism: He who knows does not speak; He who speaks does not know.
In terms of the Work this can mean that one must firmly understand that there are some things which cannot be shared with just anyone. Inner work is very fragile until it has had time to crystallize, and to expose its truths to the harsh light of unsophisticated intellect is to risk severe damage to the process of individuation.
One must not tell people of things they cannot grasp. There are mysteries that cannot be shared with everybody ... Some things can be told to no one and a secret told to a wrong person is destructive and even irresponsible. M.L. Von Franz -- The Feminine in Fairytales
This hexagram can symbolize many situations, but sometimes it is a suggestion that you are ignorant or "in the dark" about the true state of affairs now prevailing.
Line 3
Legge: The third line, dynamic, shows its subject in the condition of clouded perception, hunting in the south, and taking the great chief of the darkness. He should not be eager to make all correct at once.
Wilhelm/Baynes: Darkening of the light during the hunt in the south. Their great leader is captured. One must not expect perseverance too soon.
Blofeld: Wounded while on a military expedition in the south, he still managed to capture the rebel leader. Persistence amounting to madness should be avoided.
Liu: The southern expedition of the darkened light captures the leader. Act without rushing. Continue.
Ritsema/Karcher: Brightness Hiding tending-towards the South, hounding. Acquiring its great, the head. Not permitting affliction. Trial.
Shaughnessy: The calling pheasant is wounded in the southern hunt, getting its great head; it is not permissible to determine about illness.
Cleary (1): Illumination concealed, going south hunting, catching the big chief; hasty correction won’t do.
Wu: A royal hunt in the southern country bags the head of the chieftains. It is correct to go without haste.
COMMENTARY
Confucius/Legge: With the aim represented by hunting in the south a great achievement is accomplished. Wilhelm/Baynes: The purpose of the hunt in the south has great success. Blofeld: His willingness to undertake the expedition to the south symbolizes determination to achieve great results. Ritsema/ Karcher: The South: hounding's purpose. Thereupon acquiring the great indeed. Cleary (2): A big catch. Wu: The goal is to make big gains.
Legge: Line three, dynamic in a dynamic place, is the topmost line of the lower trigram of Clarity. He responds to his proper correlate in line six, emblemed in this hexagram as the seat of the weak tyrant. The solar light is found in the south, to which we turn when we look at the sun at noon, and hence the subject of this line is seen as a hunter successfully pursuing his quarry. Although successful he should not be overeager to put all things right at once.
NOTES AND PARAPHRASES
Siu: The man encounters the chief of disorder and captures him. Despite swift victory, he is not overly eager to put all things in order in one fell swoop. Only gradualness is effective in correcting the long-standing evils.
Wing: You come face to face with the perpetrator of wrong thinking. Circumstances are such that you can effortlessly seize control of the situation. Proceed carefully. It is dangerous to attempt to abolish an old and ingrained pattern all at once.
Editor: The south is where the light is found, and to hunt there is to seek enlightenment in the matter at hand. To take the "great chief of the darkness" is to apprehend the source of the problem. To "not be eager to make all correct at once" can be a caution about imposing intellectual reasoning on emotional forces. (Line 18-2 is similar in this respect.) In its most neutral interpretation, the line suggests the comprehension of a problem.
Filling the conscious mind with ideal conceptions is a characteristic of Western theosophy, but not the confrontation with the shadow and the world of darkness. One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious. Jung -- Alchemical Studies
A. To understand a problem is easier than to correct it. Don't expect instant success.
Line 5
Legge: The fifth line, magnetic, shows how the Count of Chi fulfilled the condition indicated by clouded perception. It will be advantageous to be firm and correct.
Wilhelm/Baynes: Darkening of the light as with Prince Chi. Perseverance furthers.
Blofeld: Prince Chi suffered injury, but his persistence along a righteous course was rewarded.
Liu: The darkened light of Prince Chi. Continuance benefits.
Ritsema/Karcher: The winnowing son's Brightness Hiding. Harvesting Trial.
Shaughnessy: Jizi's calling pheasant; beneficial to determine.
Cleary (1): Concealment of illumination in a basket is beneficial if correct.
Cleary (2): The concealment of illumination on the part of a just scion of an evil ruling house is beneficial and upright.
Wu: The way the Viscount of Qi handled the situation of Light Obliterated is advantageous only through perseverance.
COMMENTARY
Confucius/Legge: His brightness could not be quite extinguished. Wilhelm/ Baynes: The perseverance of Prince Chi shows that the light cannot be extinguished. Blofeld: His was a light which can never be extinguished. Ritsema/Karcher: Brightness not permitted to pause indeed. Cleary (2): His understanding cannot be suppressed. [This represents being outwardly flexible while inwardly strong, remaining balanced in the middle, appearing to be ignorant while actually being illuminated.] Wu: The perseverance of the Viscount of Qi made it impossible to obliterate the light.
Legge: Line five should be the place of the ruler, but in this hexagram line six takes that position. The officer here, in the center of the upper trigram, just below the sovereign, is modeled on the Count of Chi, an historical personage.
NOTES AND PARAPHRASES
Siu: The man recalls the manner in which Prince Chi preserved his convictions by feigning insanity when trapped in the court of the tyrant Chou Hsin. In coping with danger during times of darkness, he exhibits an invincibility of spirit, coupled with unusual caution.
Wing: You are in an obvious and important role in this situation, yet you are not in accord with it. You are not in a position to struggle against elements that run contrary to your principles. Conceal your ideals and acquiesce outwardly to the powers that be. You will ultimately be rewarded.
Editor: Count Chi "hid his light" by feigning insanity to deceive the tyrant holding him captive. Basically, the idea is that you are "imprisoned" by the situation at hand and powerless to do anything but adapt to it. If you don't surrender your integrity you can persevere through a dark and difficult time. As so often in fifth lines, the image is an echo of the ideas in the Judgment and/or Image of the hexagram as a whole. This particular predicament reminds us of the Biblical story of David:
David ... became very frightened of Achish the king of Gath. When their eyes were on him he played the madman and, when they held him, feigned lunacy. He would drum on the doors of the gate and let his spittle run down his beard. Achish said to his servants, "You can see this man is mad. Why bring him to me? Have I not enough madmen without your bringing me this one to weary me with his antics?" I Samuel 21: 13--15:
A. In the presence of arrogance, the wise man plays the fool. (Now is the time to hide your light.)
B. The Dark Night of the Soul.
C. Clarity in the matter at hand is concealed for now.
Other titles: Difficulty at the Beginning, The Symbol of Bursting, Sprouting, Hoarding, Distress, Organizational Growth Pains, Difficult Beginnings, Growing Pains, Initial Obstacles, Initial Hardship
Judgment
Legge: Difficulty indicates progress and success through firm correctness. Action should not be undertaken lightly, and it is wise to seek help.
Wilhelm/Baynes:Difficulty at the Beginning works supreme success, furthering through perseverance. Nothing should be undertaken. It furthers one to appoint helpers.
Blofeld: Difficulty followed by sublime success! Persistence in a righteous course brings reward; but do not seek some new goal (or destination); it is highly advantageous to consolidate the present position. [The fundamental idea of this hexagram is that of birth and growth amidst difficulty, as with a sprouting seed becoming a young plant and forcing its way through the earth. Our affairs, being still in their early stages, are vulnerable; we must not wander forth, but attend to them until they ripen; then, with proper care, the seed will bring forth a splendid tree. The upper trigram, a pit, suggests a need for caution; but, if we heed these omens, our success is assured.]
Liu: Difficulty in the Beginning : great success. It is of benefit to continue without planning to go someplace. One should find helpers.
Ritsema/Karcher: Sprouting . Spring Growing Harvesting Trial. No availing-of possessing directed going. Harvesting: installing feudatories. [This hexagram describes your situation in terms of beginning growth. It emphasizes that collecting potential in preparation for arduous labor is the adequate way to handle it...]
Shaughnessy: Hoarding : Prime receipt; beneficial to determine. Do not herewith have someplace to go; beneficial to establish a lord.
Cleary(1): In difficulty, creativity and development are effective if correct. Do not use. There is a place to go. It is beneficial to set up a ruler.
Cleary(2):Creativity is successful. It is beneficial to be correct. Do not make use of going somewhere. It is beneficial to set up lords.
Wu:Distress is primordial, pervasive, prosperous, and persevering. The subject should proceed with caution. It will be advantageous to establish marquisates.
The Image
Legge: The image of clouds and thunder formsDifficulty. The superior man, in accordance with this, adjusts his measures of government as in sorting the threads of the warp and woof.
Wilhelm/Baynes: Clouds and thunder: the image of Difficulty at the Beginning. Thus the superior man brings order out of confusion.
Blofeld: This hexagram symbolizes lightning spewed forth by the clouds -- difficulty prevails! The Superior Man busies himself setting things in order.
Liu: Clouds and thunder symbolize Difficulty at the Beginning. The superior man makes order out of disorder.
Ritsema/Karcher: Clouds, Thunder, Sprouting. A chun tzu uses the canons to coordinate. [Canons: standards, laws; regular, regulate; the Five Classics. The ideogram: warp-threads in a loom.]
Cleary(1): Thunder in the clouds is held back; the superior person orders and arranges.
Cleary(2): Clouds and thunder – Difficulty. Thereby leaders organize.
Wu: Clouds and thunder form hexagram Distress. Thus the jun zi plans and organizes.
COMMENTARY
Confucius/Legge:Difficultyis experienced as Heaven and Earth begin their intercourse, but correct action succeeds in the face of danger. By the action of thunder and rain, which are the attributes of the lower and upper trigrams, all between Heaven and Earth is filled up. But the conditions of the time are irregular and obscure. Authority should be delegated, but the feeling that rest and peace have been secured should not be indulged in even then.
Legge: The written character for Difficultyis pictorial, and shows a plant struggling with difficulty as it rises above the surface of the earth. This initial difficulty is a metaphor for how struggle is the condition of a state which is emerging from disorder after a revolution. The author saw his social and political world in great disorder and difficult to reform, yet he had faith in himself and the destiny of his House. Let there be prudence and caution, with unswerving adherence to the right. Let the government of the different states be entrusted to good and able men -- then all will be well.
According to the arrangement of the eight trigrams, Heaven and Earth are the parents of the other six, who are their children. The first-born son is the lower trigram of Movement, and the second-born son is the upper trigram of Peril. McClatchie renders here: "The figure of Difficulty represents the hard and the soft beginning to have sexual intercourse, and bringing forth with suffering."
The power to move in the lower trigram is likely to produce great effects; to do this in perilous and difficult circumstances (symbolized by the upper trigram) requires firmness and correctness. Good princes throughout the realm will help to remedy the political and social disorder of the times, but the supreme ruler should not trust his subordinates to the point of relaxing his vigilance.
The lower trigram represents thunder, the upper represents rain clouds. The hexagram therefore places us in the atmosphere of a thunderstorm -- a metaphor for the situation of a political state in difficulty. When the thunder has pealed, and the clouds have discharged their burden of rain, the atmosphere is cleared and there is a feeling of relief.
Anthony: This hexagram means that we have not yet found the correct path.
It also means confusion: too many possibilities. Nothing is clear. This lack of clarity is the “hindrance” referred to in the first line of the hexagram. In the second line, the remedies that come forth are inappropriate. In the first stages of dealing with a problem, we are tempted to grasp at solutions, whereas we should wait until the proper actions become clear.
NOTES AND PARAPHRASES
Judgment: Under the conditions of Difficulty it is best to mark time while seeking assistance.
The superior man uses careful analysis to separate order from confusion.
Wilhelm’s title for this hexagram is Difficulty at the Beginning. I prefer Difficulty, because it is a situation encountered at any phase of the Work, not just the beginning.
Difficulty is experienced because confusion and multiplicity prevail during the initial phase of any creative activity -- thoughts and feelings proliferate and threaten to overwhelm the mind with infinite complexity. The only way to proceed under such circumstances is to carefully sort out the components of the situation and arrange them in categories and in order of importance. To "sort the threads of the warp and woof" is to weave a tangled mess into a tapestry.
The Orderly Sequence of the Hexagrams gives us an image of what takes place under the hexagram of Difficulty:
When there were Heaven and Earth, then afterwards all things were produced. What fills up the space between Heaven and Earth are those individual things. Hence the Dynamic and Magnetic are followed by Difficulty. Difficulty means filling up.
"Filling up," is rendered as "fullness" in some translations. This is the exact meaning of the gnostic term: "Pleroma," or "Fullness" which Jung correlates with the Collective Unconscious or Objective Psyche. These are interior dimensions from which emanate the archetypal energies which we experience as instinctual drives and emotional complexes. This is the "hyperspace" from which the Self, via the oracle, responds to our queries and directs the Work.
Thus we see that the third hexagram, following the creation of the cosmic pair of opposites in the first two figures, represents a dialectical progression. Lao Tse, who wrote the Tao Te Ching some six-hundred years after the I Ching was committed to writing, describes this unfolding process:
Out of Tao, One is born;
Out of One, Two;
Out of Two, Three;
Out of Three, the created universe.
The created universe carries the yin at its back
and the yang in front;
Through the union of their pervading principles
it reaches harmony.
The identical idea is found in many traditions, giving it the status of an archetype within human consciousness. It is not necessary to be familiar with the technical terminology of Kabbalah to recognize that the same idea is being discussed in the following passage:
In Chokmah and Binah we have the archetypal Positive and Negative; the primordial Maleness and Femaleness, established while "countenance beheld not countenance" and manifestation was incipient ... It is between these two polarizing aspects of manifestation -- the Supernal Father and the Supernal Mother -- that the web of life is woven; souls going back and forth between them like a weaver's shuttle. In our individual lives, in our physiological rhythms, and in the history of the rise and fall of nations, we observe the same rhythmic periodicity. D. Fortune --The Mystical Qabalah
This idea has been stated very simply:
All things are a single form which has divided and multiplied in time and space. W.B. Yeats -- A Vision
Is not the sky a father and the earth a mother, and are not all living things with feet or wings or roots their children? -- Black Elk
And also with poetic complexity:
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was a formless void, there was darkness over the deep, and God's spirit hovered over the water ... God said, "Let the waters teem with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth within the vault of heaven." And so it was ... God blessed them, saying, "Be fruitful, multiply, and fill the waters of the seas; and let the birds multiply upon the earth. Genesis
There are some profound ideas in these images about the structure of human consciousness and the contents of the unconscious psyche. The basic idea is that of Emanation -- the creation of physical reality from a supreme principle in ordered hierarchies of increasing complexity. This concept is essential for a full understanding of the Work.
The involution of man was his descent from the sphere of the spirit, developing bodies of a mental, emotional and then physical nature until he manifested upon this planet. His evolution is to civilize this planet and to develop mastery of the physical, emotional and mental planes and relink himself in unity with God once more, thus completing the cycle. He came from God as an inexperienced Spark of Divine Fire and returns to Him, with all the experience of manifestation, as a Lord of Humanity. Gareth Knight -- The Work of a Modern Occult Fraternity
In many systems of thought, the proliferation of forces is seen in sexual terms -- the cosmic parents produce entities in male and female pairs (gnostic syzygies), which in turn produce offspring. Hence, Confucius says: "Difficulty is experienced as Heaven and Earth begin their intercourse." That this has an explicit sexual connotation is confirmed by McClatchie: "The figure of Difficulty represents the hard and the soft beginning to have sexual intercourse, and bringing forth with suffering." Thus we see that the correct and incorrect correlation ("intercourse") of dynamic (male) and magnetic (female) lines in anyI Ching hexagram symbolizes the favorable (life-enhancing) or unfavorable (life-negating) combinations of thought and feeling within the psyche.
SUGGESTIONS FOR MEDITATION
The sexual intercourse of Heaven and Earth is also described in hexagram number eleven,Harmony. In terms of these sexual metaphors, what does the term "adultery" imply in regard to the Work? See hexagram number forty-four, Temptation, for further insight on this theme.