Joy and Oppression

Meditation, recovery meetings, work on the dissertation, fucking around on Facebook and a little bit on Instagram, meeting with sponsees (when they don't disappear), dealing with committee members who seem to take their gatekeeper role just a tad too seriously. 

Today's I Ching, hexagrams 58 and 47, Joy (or Pleasure) and Oppression. One of the great mysteries of the I Ching is how to relate the two hexagrams when there are changing lines. Many people think of the first hexagram as the present and the second as the future, but this never or rarely works for me (unless, of course, I like the second hexagram, in which case I tend to prejudicially hope it is a symbol for the future). 

It's more informative for me to not try to assign relative time to either hexagram. In fact, a lot of the time, the second hexagram feels a lot more like the present and the first one seems like an ironic commentary, or even a joke, or at least a tease. Or the first one might feel causal and the second one the effect. Or the other way around. Or inner and outer, so to speak, or hidden and obvious, or absolutely complementary and unified. 

It makes sense of course that a symbolic "oracle" would not really have much to do with time- after all, to what degree do our dreams have to do with time? Or the unbidden and sometimes upsetting or at least surprising unfolding of our hidden psyches? No time involved there- all at once time, or not at all time, or now back to then, or just present and that is all there is. 

The first hexagram today was Joy or Self-Indulgence, and it often rankles me just how unrelentingly Confucian the existing interpretations of the I Ching usually are. In Confucian philosophy, restraint and self control are very high virtues. Connected with this emphasis on proper action and control over one's emotions is an inherently misogynistic duality, where yin is called a "dark force" and is associated with "the feminine" and yang is "light" and associated with "the masculine." I think one of the only ways to translate Jung and many of the white European male perspectives on the I Ching (not to mention many other symbolic systems) is to abandon the conceptual framework of "feminine" and "masculine" as symbolic realms. Certainly there's plenty of ways to characterize a duality that are completely divorced from biological or cultural concepts. Light and dark are enough, probably, with the wisdom that also sees light as blinding, burning, drying, exposing of the rightly private, intrusive, loud and rattling and the dark as spacious, nurturing, restful, mysterious and intriguing, honest, healing and exalted. 

The judgments in symbolic systems say more about the all too human creators of those systems than anything resembling reality. The generally "negative" interpretations of the swords in the tarot is another example. 

Regarding this hexagram, since both top and bottom trigrams are symbols for a lake, the idea is naturally connected to whatever a lake represents- calm, fresh water, openness, reflection, re-creation, "safe waters." Lakes, as far as aggregate waters go, are twofold though- on the one hand, often somewhat human scale, a bit more majestic than a pond, but much more scaled to human activity than a roaring river or ocean, or even a stream, seemingly innocent but ominously often populated by nixies. But lakes are also places where many mysterious events occur- mythical creatures, spells, all kinds of magic, both constructive and destructive. I never spent much time with lakes, preferring either streams or the ocean. Movement has always appealed to me more than stillness. 

But the dual traditional reading here- Joy, or Self Indulgence, is typical of this persnickety I Ching- the crotchety old sage who knows that pleasure is unreliable and contingent on an outside source and joy is a reliable and nourishing spiritual experience. The old idea of pleasure in moderation and joy only being edifying is all in line with both Confucianism and white male priesthood. 

"In light frivolity, the center is lost; in hasty action, self-mastery is lost." -Lao Tzu

"Each of us is equipped with a psychic disposition that limits our freedom in high degree and makes it practically illusory. Not only is "freedom of the will" an incalculable problem philosophically, it is also a misnomer in the practical sense, for we seldom find anybody who is not influenced and indeed dominated by desires, habits, impulses, prejudices, resentments, and by every conceivable kind of complex. All these natural facts function exactly like an Olympus full of deities who want to be propitiated, served, feared and worshipped, not only by the individual owner of this assorted pantheon, but by everybody in his vicinity." 

Jung -- Psychology and Religion

For the consciousness that values "self mastery" and clarity above all, Joy would indeed be very dangerous, although probably grudgingly admitted to the "necessary" moments of spiritual or moral development, "as long as it doesn't go too far and as long as it comes from within." 

The changing bottom line in this reading comes with the attendant interpretation of "cheerful self-sufficiency," or "inner joy and calm acceptance." But, as it is the only changing line, it leads to the related hexagram, Oppression. 

I absolutely resonate with this symbol much more than I do with Joy. Is it only what is, with Joy as a suggested skill in which to endure? Or is it the past? Is it the future? We want our oracles to give us information! The only information this gives me is information I already had- I am in fact exhausted, depleted, worn down, depressed and feel stuck in a situation that is entirely in the control of other people who are not generously disposed toward me at this time. By contrast, as is often the case with this oracle, Joy seems like a sarcastic comment. 

A more linear reading might suggest that self indulgence has led to the situation where I am oppressed, and there would be some truth to this. Yesterday, for example, I worked on the dissertation from 5 am until 3 pm, and then hit a wall and decided I needed to take a nap. But the nap turned into what it often does these days- an unproductive, hardly restful anxiety fest where I rolled around groaning and thinking about how cool it would be to not exist. Essentially unproductive in a way that even reinforces itself and piles on. It feels like a miracle, in retrospect, that I got up, took a shower, and went to my Refuge Recovery meeting, after all of which I felt "better." 

(which brings me up against the A number 1 pet peeve I have lately, which is shallow motherfuckers trying to tell me how to feel "better" or offering rainbow unicorn fucking bullshit as a way out of my wretchedness. It flames me so intensely because it is a fucking *betrayal* of trust, a juvenile abandonment of paying attention to suffering, a form of rejection. But I'll write about that another time). 

My pal Wm Blake reminds me that "One Law for the Lion and Ox is Oppression." Oppression of the lion, I always immediately think, but probably of the ox as well. The superficial and cowardly idea of fairness or of cheerfulness is oppression, since both indicate also a lack of trust and a lack of the wisdom that knows that wretchedness is normal and does not have to have a purpose or lead to wisdom or any other thing. It amuses me when even heroes of mine, such as Pema Chödrön, want to "rescue" wretchedness as a gateway or opportunity of some kind. It may well be, and one can hope all one likes, but sometimes it is just fucking wretchedness period and is not productive or instructive in any goddamned way at all. 

“Life is glorious, but life is also wretched. It is both. Appreciating the gloriousness inspires us, encourages us, cheers us up, gives us a bigger perspective, energizes us. We feel connected.

“But if that’s all that’s happening, we get arrogant and start to look down on others, and there is a sense of making ourselves a big deal and being really serious about it, wanting it to be like that forever. The gloriousness becomes tinged by craving and addiction.

“On the other hand, wretchedness–life’s painful aspect–softens us up considerably. Knowing pain is a very important ingredient of being there for another person. When you are feeling a lot of grief, you can look right into somebody’s eyes because you feel you haven’t got anything to lose–you’re just there.

“The wretchedness humbles us and softens us, but if we were only wretched, we would all just go down the tubes. We’d be so depressed, discouraged, and hopeless that we wouldn’t have enough energy to eat an apple.

“Gloriousness and wretchedness need each other. One inspires us, the other softens us. They go together.”


- Pema Chödrön, Start Where You Are: A Guide to Compassionate Living

Yes, they go together- by necessity. But we can soften in many ways without being wretched and we can experience the gloriousness of being without craving and addiction. Chödrön gets very close to the idea that wretchedness has a purpose (to make us "better" people), and while that may or may not be true, I am exhausted by the framework. "I got into recovery when the misery got too bad to bear," a lot of people experience and it's a phrase you hear in recovery a lot. I identify, of course, but it seems like One Law for the Lion and Ox to me. 

At any rate, of course, there is wisdom in passing through Joy with equanimity, by relying on inner resources and reducing an emphasis on outward pleasure, and passing through Oppression with forbearance and ferocious strength. There is wisdom in self mastery. But to get there, it's not possible to bypass. It is a rip off and a cowardly failure of opportunity. 

"Cheer up, man, you're just going through Hades is all! It could be worse."