Hexagram 51 Keeping Still Mountain

Still your emotions through meditation

Receiving this hexagram is a sure sign you need to quiet your “emotions” and impulses as they are preventing you from seeing clearly.    This is the EGO talking and clamoring for a quick and “easy” solution** ..   To answer the Ego with hasty actions will invite misfortune.   This hexagram is a very specific instruction to meditate. Sit quietly in a room by yourself.  Non action is called for in the face of a very significant challenging obstacle  or person.  In our fast paced must have RIGHT now world this is heretical advice, I realize.   The I ching has been around for 4000 years through many periods of tumult and change.  Our era is the culmination of all that came before and a bit of re tried cinema.   Very difficult indeed to sit and listen closely to the silence today, I realize.

It is in the nature of having a body to have strong feelings and impulses.   The problems or people we entangle with are not easily solved by impulsive action, rather this often leads to further difficulty.

Three things are advised.  First sit quietly in a self supporting position.   In the Tibetan tradition, find stillness of body, silence of speech and stillness of mind.   When you establish the aforementioned meditation pose, observe the flow of your bodily emotions.  Do not judge or resist them, the simple practice of watching them come, linger and then go without acting on them allows you to gradually separate them from your thought processes. Third, turn your inner conflicts over to the Higher Power (God, Diety, Universe) for resolution.

How easy is this to resist the body’s impulses towards resolute action?   How easy is it to give in to impulse?  Think for a moment of whatever problem you’re beset with and how it came into your life.  Was impulse or Ego a player in your entrapment?   Did you have a strong inner voice telling you not to do it?  Did impulse or ego win out?   Now the I Ching is giving you a very important life lesson.   What if you settle your mind, through meditation.  Observe the impulses as they naturally arise allowing them to sit a while in your mind, then observe in silence as these impulses go away; dissolve.   How valuable is this lesson?  Imagine having this opportunity before you die?    Imagine applying this valuable lesson in every interaction and life choice?    How potent and aware you will be, how free from entrapment and habituation.

Now remember the most important advice of the I ching after meditation take the next step, ask the Higher power for assistance.   Open your heart to the universe and ask with humble heart for help with your problem.         There is a solution but it may not be immediate and it may not be Jerry Springer Histrionics either, rather something unusual and harmonious.  There is a solution to most problems and it starts with us.  Managing the unsettled mind, a flurry of thoughts like a glass of water swirling with sediment.  What happens to this glass of water when placed on a level surface?  Does the sediment fall to the bottom of the glass and clear the water on top?   This is very much like our minds with the sediment like our thoughts.  When we sit with a still body, silence of speech, and allow the thoughts and emotions to rise, watch them linger and then leave.  The key is to not attach to any thought, rather, watch them fall gently to the bottom of the glass. When or if you attach to a thought or emotion, watch yourself through the clinging process, notice how you latched on, and see how easy it is to let go.

The universal ordering principle, the mind.