That Time I Thought Hexagram 29 Was Going to Bankrupt Me
I’m going to lay this out straight: I am not one of those airy-fairy people who just sits around meditating. I get my hands dirty. I put cash on the line. And last year, I put way too much cash on the line on a project that went south faster than a cold front in December. That’s how I ended up staring down the barrel of I Ching Hexagram 29, K’an, The Abysmal. Everyone calls it the “Danger” hexagram. And boy, did I feel danger.
This whole thing started when I decided to buy into a renovation project with a couple of partners. We saw the opportunity, we crunched the numbers, and we started tearing things apart. The plan was solid—or so I thought. We hit the first snag two months in when the local city council decided our permits were insufficient. Fine, bureaucratic headache. I swallowed the cost and reapplied. That was the first pit.
Then, the second disaster slammed us. The contractor we hired—a guy recommended by a friend, ironically—vanished. Took the advance payment right along with him. Now we were stalled, permits delayed again, and down a significant chunk of working capital. This felt like quicksand. The panic set in. I remember sitting there in the half-demolished shell of the building, feeling completely defeated. I wasn’t just losing money; I was losing sleep, and my reputation felt like it was crumbling.
I’d used the I Ching casually before, mostly for philosophical guidance. But this time, I was desperate. I grabbed the coins—three pennies, cheap ones—and threw them onto the desk, asking, “What the hell do I do now? Am I completely screwed?”
The result came back: Hexagram 29, The Abysmal (Repeated Danger). No changing lines, just solid, terrifying 29. My stomach dropped. I immediately Googled it, and every description screamed: “Danger! Pitfalls! Repeating Crisis! Do not proceed!”
My first reaction was pure, unadulterated terror. I wanted to bail. Sell everything, take the loss, and just walk away clean, even if it meant taking a massive hit to the savings I had worked years for. It felt like the universe was flashing a huge red warning sign saying, “You are in too deep. Get out now.”
The Pivot: Diving Deeper, Not Escaping
But the core idea of this blog is sharing the reality of practice, right? So I didn’t just stop there. I kept reading. I kept pushing the interpretation beyond the scary headline. I learned that Hexagram 29 isn’t just about danger; it’s about water. And water, while dangerous when deep, also teaches commitment and stability.
The text talks about how water flows, finds its level, and fills every void. It survives repeated dangers by simply flowing through them with sincerity and inner strength. It hit me like a ton of bricks:
- I was trying to escape the water.
- I needed to become the water.
I realized that panicking and trying to dump the project was the least effective way to handle repeated danger. That action itself was superficial and lacked the sincerity required to navigate the crisis.
So, I shifted my strategy. I didn’t try to win big or escape fast. I focused purely on survival mechanisms:
First, I stopped the bleeding. I pulled back on all non-essential spending, no matter how small. I got meticulous with the spreadsheets. I acted like the project was already bankrupt and I was the liquidator, scrutinizing every single dollar leaving the account.
Second, I rebuilt the internal structure. The Abysmal means repeating danger, but the path is commitment. I found a new, smaller contractor who specialized only in framing and paid them weekly, ensuring they had zero reason to walk out. I kept the payments small and constant, building trust one week at a time. Slow and steady, like water filling a reservoir.
Third, I embraced the repetition. Instead of being frustrated every time a new problem cropped up (and they did, constantly, just like 29 promised!), I started seeing each new obstacle as just another opportunity to practice navigating the current. If the city demanded three documents, I submitted five. If the material supplier was late, I already had a backup plan in place.
The Hidden Opportunity Revealed
Did the project suddenly become a massive, overnight success? Absolutely not. It stayed hard. It stayed messy. We finished it late and the profits were slim—way smaller than projected. But here’s the thing: we survived. And more importantly, I emerged from that deep, dark pit with something infinitely more valuable than the lost profit margin: unbreakable internal fortitude.
That experience of wrestling with Hexagram 29 taught me that when you are in danger, the worst thing you can do is flail and try to splash your way out. You have to commit to the flow. You have to be meticulous and sincere in your actions. The “bad omen” wasn’t a warning to retreat; it was an instruction manual for how to survive continuous failure.
Now, whenever things get rough—and they do, every time I start something big—I don’t panic like I used to. I remember the feeling of that hexagram. I remember the cold water. And I start flowing. That danger wasn’t an endpoint; it was the exact, messy curriculum I needed to learn how to keep moving forward, no matter how deep the trouble is. Sometimes, the worst omen turns out to be the best teacher you ever get.
