Accepting Shock

You have drawn the Joker or Wild Card. I took this picture when I arrived around June 21 at the 2003 Utah National Rainbow Gathering and was shocked and dismayed to find that freak weather had brought a massive snowstorm. Many left. I stayed and soon the snow melted, the weather was beautiful and summery and people who came later had trouble believing the stories of snow. Accept the curve ball, and stay on your path. This too shall pass.

“ELE” is an acronym for “Extinction Level Event,” and this is meant metaphorically as a need for punctuated equilibrium or shock for you or some other system or process. Shock (which can be a surprisingly good thing) relates to the I Ching hexagram #51 entitled “Shock.” Shock was recognized by the ancient Chinese as such a fundamental agent that it is also one of the eight trigrams out of which all hexagrams are created. Shock is what often stirs up transformation, evolution, metamorphosis, both personally and collectively. Remember, if it wasn’t for the shocking impact of a giant asteroid 65 million years ago that flattened anything larger than a chicken, human evolution might never have happened.

The world is in a constant state of change. The change could be geologic, environmental, political, economic, or evolutionary. Perhaps the change could be to your world in particular, your outer circumstances, or the configuration of elements within you. While nothing visible is changing dramatically in the outer world it is possible to have recognitions, intuitions or visions powerful enough that you can feel the shift of your inner tectonic plates.

This may indicate a time of trial and divine misfortune. Shocks are crucial to development. It is crucial to allow the shock to create transformation and not to view it from a place of self-pity and victimhood.

“The fates guide him who will; him who won’t, they drag.” — Ancient Greeks One of the core, irreducible truths of human incarnation is being subject to the hand of fate, to forces outside of our conscious control. There is a recent New Age tendency to psychologize everything, to see every aspect of health, wealth and life in general as reducible to psychological causes. But the citizens of Pompeii didn’t share some psychological complex that required all of them to be enveloped in volcanic ash in 79 CE — some things really are best understood as the hand of fate. Even insurance companies recognize that some things are “acts of God,” and not anyone’s fault or subject to human control. Kamran Hamid said, “Fate is for those too weak to determine their own destiny.” I’m not sure who Kamran Hamid is, but one assumes he didn’t live near an active volcano. From a more mature perspective, Shakespeare wrote, “What fates impose, that men must needs abide; It boots not to resist both wind and tide” Another very traditional view of fate is reflected by Emerson: “Fate is nothing but the deeds committed in a prior state of existence.” But even [...]

Shock (which can be a surprisingly good thing) relates to the I Ching hexagram #51 entitled “Shock.” Shock was recognized by the ancient Chinese as such a fundamental agent that it is also one of the eight trigrams out of which all hexagrams are created. Shock is what often stirs up transformation, evolution, metamorphosis, both personally and collectively. Remember, if it wasn’t for the shocking impact of a giant asteroid 65 million years ago that flattened anything larger than a chicken,* human evolution might never have happened.

Shock (which can be a surprisingly good thing) relates to the I Ching hexagram #51 entitled “Shock.” Shock was recognized by the ancient Chinese as such a fundamental agent that it is also one of the eight trigrams out of which all hexagrams are created. Shock is what often stirs up transformation, evolution, metamorphosis, both personally and collectively. Remember, if it wasn’t for the shocking impact of a giant asteroid 65 million years ago that flattened anything larger than a chicken,* human evolution might never have happened.

Shock (which can be a surprisingly good thing) relates to the I Ching hexagram #51 entitled “Shock.” Shock was recognized by the ancient Chinese as such a fundamental agent that it is also one of the eight trigrams out of which all hexagrams are created. Shock is what often stirs up transformation, evolution, metamorphosis, both personally and collectively. Remember, if it wasn’t for the shocking impact of a giant asteroid 65 million years ago that flattened anything larger than a chicken,* human evolution might never have happened.

Shock (which can be a surprisingly good thing) relates to the I Ching hexagram #51 entitled “Shock.” Shock was recognized by the ancient Chinese as such a fundamental agent that it is also one of the eight trigrams out of which all hexagrams are created. Shock is what often stirs up transformation, evolution, metamorphosis, both personally and collectively. Remember, if it wasn’t for the shocking impact of a giant asteroid 65 million years ago that flattened anything larger than a chicken,* human evolution might never have happened.