We know what we are but know not what we may be
– William Shakespeare
These rules, the sign language and grammar of the Game, constitute a kind of highly developed secret language drawing upon several sciences and arts, but especially mathematics and music…capable of expressing and establishing interrelationships between the content and conclusions of nearly all scholarly disciplines
– Herman Hesse
There’s an interesting article called The Yin and Yang of Creating, written by Robert Fritz. He’s known for a book called The Path of Least Resistance, and a structural approach to psychology. Creativity, he says, provides us with a model for change. He studied artists and found what they did, and how they did it, applied for general problems and goals.
In the article he introduces the central concept with cultural context: “Yin and Yang, the idea of opposite but complementary forces, has been popular in the West for many years now. Emerging from many Eastern traditions, it seems like a universal principle that is built into the fabric of the world.” That’s a fine description. The I Ching maps this fabric, identifying yin and yang for questions in a wider context. Act and advance, that’s yang. Wait or retreat, and that’s yin.
Fritz refers to Robert Frost. His poetry, he says, is where “the nature of things is always something in contrast to itself” which is another good description of I Ching philosophy. You enter a world you don’t initially understand then find the meaning intuitively. It’s there, somewhere, but can’t be approached with intellectual thinking.
The word poetry derives from poiesis, which is one of Heidegger’s philosophical concepts. He refers to it as a “bringing-forth” or emergence like blossoming flowers, and a falling waterfall when snow begins to melt. The I Ching is a system of poiesis. Lines, trigrams, and hexagrams are phases and qualities in a process of becoming. It’s worth remembering, it is The Book of Changes.
The fundamental yin and yang, white opposite black, black opposite white, correlates with known and unknown. Black is the complementary unconscious in relation to white consciousness. In simple terms, there is always something to learn and not what you expect. Similarly, creativity finds something new with divergent not convergent or predictable methods. You accept the unknown. The poet Mary Oliver found inspiration and meaning in nature and said “Creative work requires a loyalty as complete as the loyalty of water to the force of gravity.”
“Yin and Yang is a phenomenon” Fritz says “in which a whole divides itself into two contrasting parts of itself: winter/summer, masculine/feminine, vacuum/ that which fills the vacuum, sun/moon, forceful/yielding, and so on. Of course, the idea of Yin and Yang is found most often in philosophy and religions such as Hinduism, Sikhism, Taoism, Buddhism, the I Ching.” Metaphysical systems are an attempt to describe the universe, with an emphasis on immateriality and after life, but the I Ching is simultaneously grounded. Aldous Huxley said religions show us “the perennial philosophy” but that shouldn’t exclude mundane experience. We still must eat, breathe, and sleep peacefully.
Fritz advises how yin and yang understanding is an approach to creativity. It is “dimensional, not linear” so can’t be mapped out as developmental stages. Or rather it can, and you must do that, but as a map where new terrain emerges. This applies to the I Ching. A hexagram contains multiple overlapping layers. It is partly sequential, an initial idea at line 1, moving upward from beginning to end. But that’s one dimension, when there are others you explore.
Change occurs within simultaneous happening, just as multiple forces influence a human being at every moment. You might be hungry, thinking about a happy or fractious conversation, anticipating tea with a friend, dreading a meeting with another, while speaking with a student, teacher, spouse, or employer. Gestalt psychology speaks of figure and ground awareness, and where we focus. The founder of Gestalt Therapy (Friedrich or “Fritz” Perls as he was known) referred to yin and yang in his ideas. The neurotic, he said, is someone who doesn’t see the obvious. This means answers and information are available, but we need help finding and seeing them.
Focus is one way of describing an important part of hexagram interpretation. Lines have a different weight according to complicated factors, one of which is energetic emphasis. A moving line is where yin or yang is extreme and about to change. In Gestalt terminology that becomes figure against the ground, and you must attend to it. But remaining lines may be important. Books advise you ignore them, but I’m not sure this makes sense. It’s like the opening of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, then you ignore the next thirty minutes. We don’t know why I Ching rules were made for example by someone called Chu Hsi (1130-1200) although they are popularly accepted. He advised the following:
1 line changes: read that line.
2 lines change: uppermost is most important.
3 change: middle most important, with uppermost possibly confirming.
4 change: read second hexagram and lower two static lines from the first.
5 change: in the second hexagram read the line that hasn’t derived from the first.
6 change: this hexagram is past, read the second.
No change: read the ruling line; if two read the upper.
The yang force, Robert Fritz says, is the thrust of creativity where you want a poem, painting, or business achievement. Yin waits and does nothing, which can mean nothing is achieved. There must be yang focus, direction, and action; but it’s not the full story. The principles alternate and change. Popular psychology misleads insofar as action becomes the method. Anthony Robins for example (quite well known) advises you must take action. It inspires, the way he says it; but takes no account of the complex factors in everyone’s life. We are all different and a tree cannot grow, although it wants to, without light, food, water, and warmth.
Fritz is more subtle and nuanced because “the Yin within the context of this vigorous drive is a yielding open space, a vacuum, a kind of nothingness in which something may enter. It is non-directive and receptive.” Although singular yang can achieve, but precariously. The thrusting which occurs in the financial sector of London leads to reward. In the television series Mad Men, Don Draper is motivated and skilful. At the end of the series, he’s meditating (yin) and receives the idea for the 1971 Coca Cola advertisement where the world is singing and “What the world wants today / Is the real thing.” This illustrates creativity, whereby ideas can’t be forced, but he’s lived a false life with a fictitious identity.
Quite often, we need more than one hexagram for an adequate account of a subject. The ultimate thrusting yang is hexagram 1 called Heaven, Sky, Initiating, depending who you read. Hexagram 27 is called Nourishment. The I Ching advises “Pay heed to the providing of nourishment / And to what a man seeks / To fill his own mouth with.” Sugary water is not good nourishment or selling it a wholesome pursuit. Don Draper believes in his work, but also says “What you call love was invented by guys like me, to sell nylons.”
“When we create” Fritz says “we are doing two things that can seem opposite. We are actively focusing the creative process toward a particular aim, the full manifestation of the vision, while, at the same time, allowing ourselves to be aimless and non-directive.” He uses the example of a Rolling Stones performance as a combination of focus and relaxation. This is a repeating idea in books by Timothy Gallwey where he teaches an ‘inner’ method of success for golf, tennis, and music. It’s a balance of concentration and relaxation, not the excessive effort of mainstream methods.
“Too often people obsess on only one of the two parts of the Yin/Yang equation” says Fritz, comparing a power orientation to ‘flowing.’ The idea of flow has since been developed. Mihaly Csikszentmihályi, like Robert Fritz, became fascinated with artists. Total immersion in work (they forget to eat, drink and sleep) is a psychological phenomenon we all occasionally experience. If I have a good idea and want to express it I might write for ten hours without food, drink, or a break. Then I return the next day, several days or weeks later, refining and shaping the words. Csikszentmihályi described flow in terms of seven components:
- Completely involved in what we are doing – focused, concentrated.
- A sense of ecstasy – of being outside everyday reality.
- Great inner clarity – knowing what needs to be done, and how well we are doing.
- Knowing that the activity is doable – that our skills are adequate to the task.
- A sense of serenity – no worries about oneself, and a feeling of growing beyond the boundaries of the ego.
- Timelessness – thoroughly focused on the present, hours seem to pass by the minute.
- Intrinsic motivation – whatever produces flow becomes its own reward.
Drugs are a dangerous yin escape damaging body and mind. In Brave New World, Huxley says “there’s always soma to give you a holiday from the facts” but facts don’t disappear. Flow is a natural capacity. It’s built on stimulation but not too much, focus but not tension, stillness within movement, like a Tai chi exercise. “We need to have both elements” Fritz says “which means to narrow our attention on what we are creating, while, at the very same time, broaden our awareness to allow unimagined insight to surface.”
Society consists of noisy movement and meditation teachings speak of the opposite, stillness, which the I Ching refers to in hexagram 52: “Keeping his back still / So that he no longer feels his body / He goes into his courtyard / And does not see his people.” These are interesting lines interpreted differently. You might read for example, not seeing people means disrespect or arrogance. It doesn’t in this context. This is someone who has meditated, then entered society, with a spiritual awareness where the outward human is not the inner Tao. The hexagram applies differently in relation to whatever question arises. It could be mundane. Wilhelm, however, works with the deep philosophy of China.
Fritz refers to sequential systems where we are taught to focus, then release, then focus again. But “this type of system, while well intentioned, misses the non-sequential, multi-dimensional, and simultaneous co-existence of both active and passive. You need both control and lack of control to occur at once” which corresponds to yin and yang in balance. Meditation distils this reality into a practice where you concentrate but also release and relax. Fritz describes this in relation to creativity, consistent with Henri Bergson’s theory of evolution, which relates to the I Ching paradox of change. Change is constant, and yet something endures as the human dynamic, either stagnant or evolving:
The circumstances are not a mould into which life is inserted and whose form life adopts: this is indeed to be fooled by a metaphor. There is no form yet, and the life must create a form for itself, suited to the circumstances which are made for it. It will have to make the best of these circumstances, neutralize their inconveniences and utilize their advantages, in short, respond to outer actions by building up a machine which has no resemblance to them. Such adapting is not repeating, but replying, an entirely different thing (Creative Evolution).
Bergson writes about elan vital as the force of life where creativity expresses and organisms evolve. If we merely react to circumstances, nothing changes. If we respond to them, something does. I Ching hexagrams describe six layers of stimulus and potential response. In the Chinese system, the energy is qi or ch’i. The spelling is interchangeable, although qi seems to have mental connotations beyond the body energies developed in Tai Chi, Hsing I, and Bagua martial arts.
“The same principle is true when we are in the process of creating our lives” says Fritz, correlating artistic creativity with human living. Yin and yang apply everywhere. Day becomes night, eventually we must sleep, it’s either summer, winter, or in between. Spring and autumn have changeable weather because it’s not easy changing from one to the other: but it is inevitable.
There’s a well known story in I Ching culture where Confucius apparently said he wished for a longer life so he could study the book for longer. It’s mostly accepted, although some disagree he really said it or it meant something different. It hardly matters. The point is not Confucius, it’s the I Ching, and understandable as such.
I write like this is a magazine column. With research, references, and a lot of time. If you like it, perhaps you would support me.