I ching

I Ching Hexagram 64
Wei Chi (Before Completion)

Action: Prepare

Hu Gua (hidden influence) 63 After Completion: Renew

Zong Gua (underlying cause) 63 After Completion: Renew

You are always on the threshold of change; how you approach it will determine your success.

We sometimes get all of the information,
but we refuse to get the message. –Cullen Hightower

Reading at a Glance: Murphy’s Law states that anything that can go wrong will go wrong and your current situation can feel much like this. The word entropy is Murphy’s Law from a universal perspective and it is very much a way of life. Entropy captures the footprint of time and how it makes even the most organized structures crumble. It takes alot of energy to work against nature's predisposition for random disorder, chaos and eventual renewal. Human beings are self organizing systems like most organisms observed in nature. We are constantly attempting to make sense out of chaos. We prefer to classify what we see in terms of the past and this tendency can lead to a rude awakening. When we hear that the universe is moving toward entropy or disorganization this makes us uncomfortable. However, molecules moving inside of a box randomly are more dynamic than molecules locked in perfect order. Disorder increases energy and innovation. In Chi Chi, the situation had reached completion and order became apparent. In Wei Chi, the situation is in a state of disorganization or chaos but order will inevitably return. Better yet, because of the disorganization or unknown aspects of the situation, you will probably achieve more than you had originally set out to do. Such is the way of nature that it uses uncertainty to test all possible outcomes. You may need to live with the uncertainty because the situation is still in a state of evolution. Chi Chi as both the underlying cause and the hidden influence guarantee that order is on the horizon no matter how unsettling things appear now. In Before Completion disorder or a lack of security and ease can become quite pronounced but given time, energy will dissipate and uncertainties will gel into a clear picture of the way forward. We can say anything that can go wrong will go wrong but just as easily say that anything that can go right will go right. The Book of Changes is always teaching us that what we experience is a matter of perspective. The rules of the game that we can measure are what is observable in nature. Since disorder and uncertainty are its thrust into a purposeful future – trust that all is unfolding perfectly and the unexpected may still be on the horizon. Don't give up just yet.

When the end

unfolds,

open

to the new

beginning.

“Things cannot exhaust themselves. Hence, follows at the end, the principle of before completion.” In Chi Chi or After Completion, the highest order inevitably led to the onset of disorder, symbolized by the highest display of summer that transforms into swirling winds of autumn. Wei Chi embodies the opposite condition where disorder will lead back to order. Like the chaotic storms of early spring, the landscape of spring is being composed.

Disorder can suggest how circumstance appears beyond your ability to control. Left to develop as it will, life always works out. While uncomfortable not knowing where the changes are leading, disorder is the letting go, like leaves during autumn, which always precedes the springtime of your blossoming.

Within disorder, is a dormant seed, which will inevitably lead back to order. Where complacency often leads to stagnation, the tension of change is already at play and it is better to follow where the changes might lead you. There is great power in knowing how situations evolve, moving back and forth.

The master said: "Nature does not give up the winter because people dislike the cold." In Wei Chi, you are standing at the threshold of change and have the opportunity to learn from the past. How you approach the changes will determine your success.

Chi Chi presented Water over Fire, and as its opposite, Wei Chi portrays Fire over Water. It would seem that since Fire burns upward and Water flows downward, there will be no connection between the two and the situation is hopeless. The fact that these two elements are moving in opposite directions is what makes the situation interesting and new. Anytime opposites appear, there will be a transformation.

The image of Fire moving upward portrays how you can lose your sense of connectivity to your current situation, looking for answers in the skies, as if your fate is in the hands of something arbitrary. Since the Abysmal is releasing its profound wisdom below, observe how life is speaking to you daily, in a thousand different ways.

The master said: “How do we know that what we call heaven is not actually man, and that what we call man is not actually heaven?”

Fire below gets water moving energetically yet, even without heat, water will still form itself into perfect crystals. In life, at some degree, everything is in continual motion. Wei Chi is the image of outward disorder that can lead to a sense of hopelessness, yet within it, you can already see how order is pre-arranging itself out of apparent chaos.

Regardless of the form that chaos takes, life has a special predisposition for generating disorder; it is a prerequisite in its pursuit of a better way. At the same time, it has a fondness for generating order from disorder. Perhaps that is why everything always seems to work itself out, whether you choose to worry about it or not.

“Although the lines are not in their proper places, the firm and yielding correspond.” Like electricity, the firm or positive energy and the yielding or negative energy interact in force and fields that binds atoms, generate molecules and animate life. At all levels, life is regenerating itself from the chaotic dance of what appears to be disorder.

Since nothing can reach completion, the trend moves toward the opposite condition: renewal. Life reveals its enormous power to sustain and strengthen its creatures to those who would follow its ways. Although disorder ends the Book of Changes, we know that it is a necessary pathway to renewal.

As the transition arrives, we see the image of the tree before it begins to branch. In between the stagnation of winter and the great fullness of summer is spring: a rebirth. It comes from 'nowhere,' although we know it will come again, because it has come before.

The situation is strange and new, the past is a world away, and you are ripe for a transformation. Once things reach the end, you can approach the opportunity to blossom anew.