Is it beneficial – or harmful? What is good for me? What do I really want? These questions are not as easy to answer as they may seem. Because their starting point is this I – but who is this I really? Can I feel myself? Can I feel what defines me – including the boundaries that make me who I am?
This inner sense – the sense of myself – is essential. It is the basis of my ability to discern: to distinguish the clear from the unclear, what serves me from what harms me. In no2DO, I associate Li, the fire, with the small intestine – the organ that, according to classical Chinese medicine, separates the pure from the impure. And this ability to discern doesn’t just apply to the body – it also applies to thoughts and emotions.
So what is really good for me? What do I really want? The better I know myself, the sharper my judgment becomes. And the better my ability to differentiate, the more capable I become of taking meaningful action – because I can focus my energy on what really matters.
But things are not always clear. Sometimes, situations keep repeating themselves, and I don’t understand why. Or I make decisions to the best of my knowledge and still don’t get the result I was hoping for. Or what I thought would be “good” for me turns out not to be. Why is that?
Perhaps because every act of discernment is provisional. We make decisions based on limited information, carrying with us memories – pleasant or painful. We do the best we can, but we never have the full picture. So we form a first impression (Li, the fire) and step into the world, begin to act – alone or with others (Sun, the wind / tree). Until the world eventually responds (Dui, the lake) – through feedback, through mirroring.
These reflections can be painful. Because, let’s face it, we often fool ourselves. We look away, sugarcoat reality, and deep down, we often know exactly where we stand. If we allow it, the world can become a mirror – not to lecture us, but to reveal our blind spots.
So that next time (Li, the fire), we’re better prepared. Because we’ve tested, revised, and allowed new experiences to challenge what we previously believed.
In the end, every deep insight is the result of a long process – a persistent, repeated encounter with reality. We may cling to it, as fire clings to the object it burns. Reality becomes our personal resonance chamber, a place of reflection and comparison, where we gradually learn to discriminate more clearly. And through this process, we come to know ourselves better. We may even begin to change our inner attitude – the only thing we can truly change.
Case Study
A user has the following concern: “There is a colleague in my current job and and I am not sure how much I can rely on her support… Consulting the I Ching resulted in hexagram 30 – the clinging.”
How do we find out how – and if – someone relates to us? One way is to just give it a try. If the stakes aren’t too high, if the potential losses are bearable, then you can just give it a go. Otherwise, it might be worth thinking about it…
The colleague has obviously been around the user for some time. Is there a previous history? If so, what is it? One of well-being? One of discomfort? The answer to the question of whether the user can count on the colleague’s support lies in the distillation of all the experiences the user has already had with her.
The catch with this kind of analysis is that we often like to lie to ourselves. We close our eyes to reality; what cannot be cannot be. But if we are honest, we know what is going on.
Further Questions on Hexagram 30
- A user asks: “How do I get out of this?” The I Ching answers with 30 – the Clinging.
- Another user asks: “What will be the result of my conversation with K.?”
Excursus: I Ching and Psychoanalysis
Hexagram 30 – the Clinging
Keywords: Fundamental Structures of the Psyche | Symbolic Form of the Real | The Unspeakable, Trauma
In Jacques Lacan’s theory, the subject is embedded in a triadic structure: the Symbolic, the Imaginary, and the Real. These three dimensions are not inner psychic agencies, as in Freud’s model, but structural registers in which the subject is formed and through which it moves. The Symbolic includes language, law, and social order – it creates coherence and differentiation. The Imaginary refers to images, mirrorings, and self-identifications – to the illusion of wholeness. The Real, finally, denotes all that escapes both registers: that which cannot be articulated in language, that which disturbs, interrupts, eludes, and appears as traumatic.
The Real does not present itself as a “thing-in-itself”, but rather as a rupture, as an irritation – as that which does not fit, does not make sense, and resists integration. It never appears directly, but only in moments of disruption: where an image proves inadequate, where recognition falters. The Real marks those moments of experience where symbolization fails, language breaks down, meaning collapses, and a traumatic void opens up.
Lacan refers to the Real as “the unspeakable” or “the impossible”: a void in the symbolic order. The Real can be read as a disturbance of perception – a disruption that, by resisting symbolic capture, forces recognition. The Real functions like a foreign body in the field of meaning, challenging the subject to engage with what cannot be assimilated.
Light, difference, insight – these are the fundamental movements of psychoanalytic work. This is also how the Real can be approached: not despite the disturbance, but precisely through it, insight becomes possible. Not in the clear and nameable places, but where light and shadow meet – that is where thinking begins, where knowledge emerges.
This is where psychoanalysis begins: with the question of what resists interpretation. What returns without being understood? What symptoms emerge that defy understanding? As in Lacan’s theory, symptoms are traces of the Real, its symbolic imprint. They articulate a truth that cannot otherwise be spoken, yet nonetheless insists on being expressed.
For although the Real resists the symbolic order, it nevertheless seeks expression. Not as communication in the conventional sense, but through poetic, fractured, ambiguous forms of articulation. In dreams, slips of the tongue, works of art, poems, rituals – and in symptoms themselves: as cracks in the symbolic order, as traces, as indices, as manifestations of the ungraspable.
The overview page for this hexagram can be found here:
https://www.no2do.com/hexagramme_en/787787.htm
