Delight in Heaven, Know Your Lot

First: delighting in heaven and knowing your lot are two different things. “Heaven” here is the great tide: the era, the economy, the weather, other people's decisions, the part you cannot change. Your “lot” is what happens to you personally within that tide. Meet the tide gladly, without resentment: it is the same for everyone and is not aimed at you, and resenting it changes nothing. As for your own lot, ask why this happened to you and not to someone else, work out the answer, then adjust your character and your methods. Keep the two apart and the mind stays clear. That is why “one does not worry”: not because one feels nothing, but because worry no longer swallows you.

So a bad stretch is an opening. When a reader of the Changes draws a hard hexagram, or hits a hard month, the first move is not to blame luck. It is to ask three things of yourself: is my character good enough, is my judgement good enough, is my ability good enough? Then start with whichever falls short. At such a time the Changes is like a good teacher and a good friend: it offers advice, and it turns you back to look at yourself. And when things are going well? That is the other half of the old summary: in safety, think of danger. The Changes is, as its name says, about change, so a calm day is the time to remember it.

Third: gather the four steps of reading. Ask: don't cast what common sense can settle; ask “what should I watch for?”, not “will it work?” Cast: one sincere reading for one question. Read: getting a hexagram is easy, reading it is hard; look at the time, the position and the conditions behind “good” or “bad”. Reflect: as with a wise elder, listen, check the facts, then make the decision yourself and own it. Heaven's way has no good or bad luck in it; good and bad come from human choices and desires. Once you see that, you see how much is in your own hands, and worry shrinks.