i heard from katie you’re losing it lately.

Bye-bye.

Burn down the Empire you've built.

I wanted to report on a synchronicity I experienced recently, relevant to our painful historical moment and perhaps good advice for many of us right now. An acupuncturist I worked with a few years ago emailed me out of the blue. He said he had been appreciating my newsletter. He felt I needed to check out the I Ching, in particular Hexagram 36, “the darkening of the light.”

The acupuncturist is a black American man. He felt positive about the future when he was a kid in the 1960s. He wrote:

"The options for a progressive life looked great, civil rights gains were kicking in…I felt equality was near by. I felt extremely hopeful that this world was awakening to a reality that would start to give more of us freedom, free white people from the box they were in as well as others.

Then the anti progressive forces kicked in the 70’s and things took a turn for the worse.

Mass incarceration, drug infestation, poor education, housing, job: all of that forced me into an existentialist crisis.

I turn to spirituality…explored Yogic and Daoist traditions, which eventually led to ancient Egyptian spiritual systems. However what turned me around was the introduction to the I Ching. This oracle system helped me weather the storm of apathy and depression. I have used it in my personal and professional life, it speaks to the Masses (ignorant), Followers of Wisdom, and Sages.

… I want you to remain curious and not give in to the madness surrounding us. There is a Hexagram 36, where we are instructed how to live in a time of darkening of the light."

I read my acupuncturist’s email and realized I hadn’t checked in with the I Ching for a while. I find it to be the most uncannily accurate divination system. Some thinkers have related the 64 Hexagrams of the I Ching to the structure of the DNA code. It might reveal a mathematical order built into the process growth, development, and decay of any living system or of life itself.

Martin Schönberger, in The I Ching and the Genetic Code: The Hidden Key to Life (1973) theorizes that the structure of the genetic code — the 64 codons formed from nucleotide triplets in DNA — is mirrored by the 64 hexagrams of the I Ching.

Schönberger takes this as evidence of a universal code uniting matter, mind, and meaning. Jose Arguelles also explored this subject in depth. He found fascinating connections between the mathematical model of the I Ching to the Mayan “sacred calendar” system, The Tzolkin, as I explored in Quetzalcoatl Returns.

For Schönberger as well as Arguelles, the I Ching is not just a divinatory tool but a integral system, based on life’s essential patterns. “What is involved here,” he writes, “is perhaps one universal code which was discovered 5,000 years ago by the Chinese — and 10 years ago by Watson and Crick.” The I Ching teaches us that we reach understanding by transcending Western dualism and embracing polarity — not opposites in conflict, but complementary forces in continuous interplay. “Polarity is born of unity and includes the concept of wholeness: the poles are complementary to each other, are indissolubly involved in each other, like the positive and negative poles of a magnet”

I decided I would cast the I Ching for myself in the laziest way possible, using an Internet site. I asked for insight about the future. I virtually cast the coins and Hexagram 36, “the darkening of the light,” came up.

According to the Wollheim/Baynes translation and exegesis of the I Ching, Hexagram 36 represents the time when darkness is in ascendancy, and a “man of dark nature is in a position of authority.” The text admonishes, “In adversity / It furthers one to be persevering.” The interpretation continues:

"One must not unresistingly let himself be swept along by unfavorable circumstances, nor permit his steadfastness to be shaken. He can avoid this by maintaining his inner light, while remaining outwardly yielding and tractable. With this attitude he can overcome even the greatest adversities.

In some situations indeed a man must hide his light, in order to make his will prevail in spite of difficulties in his immediate environment. Perseverance must dwell in inmost consciousness and should not be discernible from without. Only thus is a man able to maintain his will in the face of difficulties."

The Hexagram points out that this type of situation, also, cannot continue forever. During this time, it is best to be circumspect, to veil or hide one’s own light, and not expose yourself to unnecessary scrutiny or danger:

"In a time of darkness it is essential to be cautious and reserved. One should not needlessly awaken overwhelming enmity by inconsiderate behavior. In such times one ought not to fall in with the practices of others; neither should one drag them censoriously into the light. In social intercourse one should not try to be all-knowing. One should let many things pass, without being duped…"

Leaving the scene is well-advised:

"We find ourselves close to the commander of darkness and so discover his most secret thoughts. In this way we realize that there is no longer any hope of improvement, and thus we are enabled to leave the scene of disaster before the storm breaks."

The Hexagram also gives council for those who can’t escape from the darkness (for instance, if we live here, by escaping the U.S.): “Those who cannot leave their posts” … need invincible perseverance of spirit and redoubled caution in their dealings with the world.” The interpretation ends on a hopeful note:

"Here the climax of the darkening is reached. The dark power at first held so high a place that it could wound all who were on the side of good and of the light. But in the end it perishes of its own darkness, for evil must itself fall at the very moment when it has wholly overcome the good, and thus consumed the energy to which it owed its duration."

This last part reveals a spiritual truth — something I have been mulling on recently: The idea that darkness or evil sustains itself by consuming the goodness or light as its source, and must collapse on itself once the light is snuffed out. Many of the new Christian fascists despise Democrats, socialists, and so on. They wish to dismantle public institutions, privatize public lands, eliminate social services, keep the poor uneducated, use illegal immigrants as slave labor, support Israel’s genocide, and so on. But ethical principles, lawful rule, and “public goods” — along with the normal, decent people who care about the larger community and possess a conscience — make life bearable, even for them. Without the support of the light, you are left with nothing but sharks and pirhanas — assassins and grifters — swimming around each other, waiting to attack. That is not a situation that can endure for long. As it says in The Tao: “Non-Tao is short-lived.”

Sounds like joey or joe b or maybe both of them want to talk about project 40

Torturing me is their porn.

Well, you've outdone yourselves.

Sorry, they say it's cmk.

Notice that the minute changed on her number

Don't you worry. I'm committed to the world knowing.

so, I hear you knew about what they were doing.

Two more people are dead.