Hexagram #36: Censorship
Amaterasu In Hiding
Finding Peace While Under Attack ...
When you are under attack in a time of censorship, they only way to survive is to withdraw into the background, bide your time, and hold tightly to your inner convictions while appearing outwardly accepting of the difficult environment you find yourself in.
Speaking out about what you believe will only worsen the situation, and get you into more trouble.
Times of Evil
In the Universe, this is a time of coming to terms with evil ... and learning to deal with it as a part of the Universe. For evil to triumph, all good men have to do is nothing. But confronting it directly when the forces of the Universe are trying to teach a lesson in accepting that evil exists, and learning when and how to handle it ... can bring about disaster.
Times of evil are a call to develop your inner character, to learn patience and to study the evil that exists and learn why it exists and is active in the Universe. Every tool in the universe has its palace* and its purpose. Evil and evil times are no exception.
Use Your Time Wisely
Sun Tzu and Musashi both advise you to study your enemy or adversary well ... and this is the time to do it. While evil is a foot in the world, evil doers come out of the woodwork and are visible out in the open.
It is easier to sort out the ducks, the geese and the swans ... the easily led astray, the followers for following sake, and the truly evolved and mature ones who have principles and live by them even when everyone else does not. In modern terms you have the thieves, the mob who act out when everyone else is, and then the ones who behave with dignity and compassion whether or not anyone else is watching or cares.
Broken Upon The Rocks
When you want to know someone's true character ... you can fight them or watch them when they are under evil times of censorship. The stress will either break them upon the rocks expounding their convictions ... or have them retreating to safety. Both are strategies of the good ... but one lives to fight another day while the other tries to preach to a choir that is deaf to their Words.
You can not fight city hall when you are in a time of censorship ... but you can wait and watch it sow its own seeds of destruction.
These cycles repeat themselves ... over and over.
Learning More ...
This hexagram of Censorship gives you ideal conditions to learn more about and develop ...
- patience
- right timing
- holding your tongue
- inner convictions and virtues
- acceptance of silence and speechlessness so that ... "in that which is neither speech nor silence its transcendental nature {Tao} may be apprehended." [source: Chuang Tzu]
