Everybody messes this one up. They read Hexagram 34, Da Zhuang, the Great Force, and they picture some monk sitting quietly on a mountain, just being powerful. They think it’s all about subtle, internal strength. About not overstepping, keeping things “firm and correct.”
Absolute nonsense.
I wasted a whole year trying that BS. I read every book, every commentary from Wang Bi to Confucius’s Ten Wings. I wanted to understand how to truly harness this power in my work and my daily mess. I structured my whole existence around studying the Force instead of using it.
My Stupid Initial Practice: The “Subtle Bull”
I started a journal, right? I dated and logged everything. My approach was what all the gurus suggest. It was about subtle cultivation. My log books from that time are just embarrassing to look at now:
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Month 1: I committed to silent meditation every morning. I visualized my spine as the solid line, the force rising. I tracked my anxiety levels. They went up. My work output didn’t budge. I was just stressed and quiet.
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Month 3: I tried the “Walking the Line” exercise. This ridiculous thing where you walk slowly, only using the minimum force required to move, trying to feel the root of the power in your feet. I practiced this in the park. I looked like a lunatic. All I achieved was pulling a calf muscle.
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Month 6: I focused on communication. I trained myself to speak in a calm, measured, “firm and correct” tone, believing this was the manifestation of controlled power. I recorded business meetings. Guess what? People just talked over me. They interpreted my quiet force as weakness. I lost a major account because I was too busy “cultivating” my tone to actually argue my case.
This whole practice was a spectacular failure. Six months of logging, tracking, visualizing, and meditating achieved zero results in the real world. I was still stuck. I was still broke. I was still letting people walk all over the boundaries I was trying to “firmly” set.
I tossed the books in a box. I decided the I Ching was just pretty poetry for academic nerds. I gave up on the whole idea of controlled, subtle force.
The Real “Great Force” Practice: The Explosion
You want to know what the best way to use the Great Force is? It’s when you have no other freaking choice. It’s when subtlety has failed and the only thing left on the table is the raw, ugly, unrefined power of survival. That’s the only time that damn hexagram ever actually worked for me.
I was neck-deep in a project, a massive deal that was going to pay off nearly a year of hard labor. My partner—let’s just call him The Snake—he decided to try and cut me out right at the end. Said my contribution wasn’t “valuable” enough. He pulled the money into an escrow account and refused to answer my calls. He thought he had me beat.
I went straight to his office. I didn’t prepare a speech. I didn’t visualize anything. I didn’t consult the coins to see if the time was right. I drove there. I bypassed the secretary. I walked straight into his glass corner office where he was meeting a client.
I demanded the check. Not politely. I yelled it. I used every cuss word I could think of. I didn’t care about the client he was with. I told that client exactly what kind of two-faced thief The Snake was. I used unadulterated, raw, ugly force.
He tried to call security. I snatched his phone right off the desk. I dared him to put a hand on me. I refused to leave. I made it clear that his expensive, quiet little empire was going to burn down around him if I didn’t walk out with my money. I pushed back physically, not a punch, but just by standing my ground and making my body a solid, immovable block in his doorway.
It was messy. It was wrong. It was everything the books warn you not to do. And yet, there it was. The solid lines of Da Zhuang, of the bull with its horns extended, right in front of him. I was simply an embodiment of unavoidable power that he hadn’t budgeted for.
The Recording of the Win
An hour later, The Snake sputtered and signed the papers. His client fled. I walked out with the full payment. It was the most brutal, embarrassing, successful practice of Great Force I ever performed.
I opened my journal that night. I tore out all the stupid pages about meditating and walking slowly. I wrote one entry, a simple recording of the experience:
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Practice: Forget “firm and correct.” Use raw, necessary power when everything else has failed.
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Observation: Great Force isn’t a choice of strength; it’s the unavoidable outcome of being pushed too far.
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Result: I got the money. I won the boundary. I earned the respect of someone who only understands the size of the stick you carry.
That’s the best advice I have about Hexagram 34. Don’t consult the oracle to figure out how to be powerful. Wait until life backs you into a corner, use the raw force you suddenly discover, and then consult the oracle to understand why that ugly, messy action was actually the most correct thing you could have done.
The books are wrong. The real practice is just survival.
