Simply a matter of work.

I learned about this tool from my Irish friend because she put up a link to an online version of it on her blog.

I like tools like this, though I don’t often pick them up. Like much of what is available to me to grow spiritually. I seem to have been so desensitized to pain that I only notice that it is pain when it becomes overwhelming. I don’t work for growth until growth is the only option. I think about it a great deal, but I rarely work for it in earnestness the way I did in the beginning of my recovery.

Therein lies a problem: staring monocularly at any situation affords a singular and often useless view. For anything to change a change in perspective is desired. Messieurs Eno and Schmidt’s Oblique Strategies offer a kind of simple starting point for meditating on change; a way to do what Forester described Cavafy as doing, to stand “absolutely motionless at a slight angle to the universe” and thereby to see the universe more clearly. The Eno/Schmidt cards represent actual solutions they have used to solve actual problems.

My most troublesome “stuck point” today is the state of my finances, my living quarters, and my education and career. I visited with my whatever she is, case manager or something, at the Idaho Department of Vocational Rehabilitation yesterday. I left her office feeling so worthless that the fast way out of it was simply to become angry. It seems that I have been their client because “mental illness poses a significant barrier to employment” and while my stated objective going in was to overcome the larger barrier to real employment, my education, their only objective was to see me have a job. Any job. Even if it won’t support me.

To that end, over the last 16 months they bought me a bicycle, a new pair of glasses and a  pair of shoes.  My mental illness has only ever been addressed by me and at my own expense. And while they send, in my judgement, knuckle dragging troglodytes to college all the time, they have no interest or intent to help me with that. The $10/hr job I got on my own is good enough for them and a reason to close my case.

I have tried on my own to return to college and on my own I have failed. I obviously need guidance and practical support in learning to be an adult, making choices, rather than an adolescent trying to survive. Once something like survival is learned, particularly by addicts and particularly when learned at a very early age, it is very hard to transcend. A 16 year old addict hustling Santa Monica Blvd. may have mad skills, but not the skills that are useful in navigating a successful adulthood.

So I checked in with the Oblique Solution today about my state today and the card read, “Simply a matter of work.” No kidding. The state of my floor, my kitchen, and my laundry basket can all attest to that. Could it be that the same answer applies to the other things I want to improve in my life? Could it be that I am entirely capable of that? Am I willing to go to that length to get it?

C. S. Lewis said, “We are what we believe we are.” Can I believe, in contrast to the opinion of Voc Rehab, that I’m worth the effort?

Carl Jung was fascinated by the I Ching as a means to access the unconscious and I decided to consult that as well. I asked, “Shall I go back to college in the spring?” Parenthetical remarks are my own, but the answer was:

4. Mêng - Youthful Folly

—–
– — above Kên Keeping Still, Mountain
– –
– –
—– below K’an The Abysmal, Water
– –

The Judgement:
Youthful Folly (my desire to go back to school) has success.
It is not I (education) who seek the young fool (me);
The young fool seeks me.
At the first oracle (my intuition) I inform him.
If he asks two or three times (looking elsewhere for answers), it is importunity.
If he importunes, I give him no information.
Perseverance furthers.

The Image:
A spring wells up at the foot of the mountain:
The image of Youth.
Thus the superior man fosters his character
By thoroughness in all that he does.

Changing Lines:
Changing yin at the bottom means:
To make a fool develop
It furthers one to apply discipline (simply a matter of work).
The fetters (mental/spiritual/fear of economic insecurity) should be removed.
To go on in this way (fettered and uneducated) brings humiliation.

Changing yang in the second place means:
To bear with fools (those who don’t think investing in my education is a good idea) in kindliness brings good fortune.
To know how to take women
Brings good fortune.
The son (me) is capable of taking charge of the household (determining my own course).

Changing yin in the third place means:
Take not a maiden who, when she sees a man of bronze (pay no attention to the woman who thinks a dead end job),
Loses possession of herself (seek nothing more - closes the case).
Nothing furthers.

Changing yin in the fourth place means:
Entangled folly (fighting her decision) brings humiliation.

Changing yin in the fifth place means:
Childlike folly (education) brings good fortune.

Changing yang at the top means:
In punishing folly (my dropping our of school)
It does not further one
To commit transgressions (against myself by not trying again).
The only thing that furthers
Is to prevent transgressions (by trying again, and finishing).

I’m no expert, of course, but it was a good meditation. Perhaps I can do this. Perhaps it is simply a matter of work.