A few years back, man, I was absolutely lost. My whole world felt like it was crumbling. I mean, a total disaster. Everything I touched professionally just turned into a steaming pile of nothing. I was in this rut where I couldn’t figure out if I was supposed to push harder or just completely bail out and change everything.
I remembered this old book my uncle had given me, the I Ching. I dug it out, figuring what the heck, maybe some ancient wisdom could sort this mess out that my brain couldn’t handle. I started throwing those coins every single night. I became obsessed, seriously obsessed, with those changing lines—the Nines and the Sixes.
The Mistake I Kept Making
I figured the line with the nine, that had to be the big message. The guaranteed future. I trusted it explicitly. If I got a hexagram and line nine said, “Walk away,” I’d start drafting my resignation letter or dumping the project right then. If it said, “Persevere,” I’d grind my teeth and double down, even if every fiber of my being was screaming at me to stop.
I got burned. Not once, but many times. I followed the instruction of a line nine from a reading, and things would just immediately go sideways. The promised clarity never came, or the expected outcome turned out to be the exact opposite of what the book description hinted at. I started wondering if the whole thing was just a bunch of nonsense. Why bother if the clearest sign, the nine, was so unreliable?
I went through a really dark period then. I was already struggling with the career stuff, and now I felt like I had wasted time on this ancient garbage too. It felt like another betrayal, just like that client who promised me a huge contract and then vanished into thin air, leaving me holding the bag on six months of unpaid work. That whole incident is what kicked off my initial panic attack and sent me scrambling for answers in the first place.
I spent weeks just staring at the book, reading the commentary, totally depressed. I felt like the universe was just messing with me. But because I’m stubborn, I didn’t stop doing the readings, I just stopped acting on them immediately. I started keeping a journal, really detailed stuff.
My Realization: It’s the Motion, Not Just the Snapshot
I started tracking not just the first hexagram and the line nine’s advice, but what the hexagram shifted into. That’s where the lightbulb finally went on. It wasn’t about that single line nine being the final answer. It was a sign of momentum.
Here is what I started seeing:
- I saw the Nine line not as the future, but as the peak tension of the current situation. It told me, “This is the absolute highest pressure point you are under right now.”
- The second hexagram, the one it shifted to, that was the real deal. That was the consequence of dealing with that tension.
When I’d get a reading with a changing line, I stopped saying, “Oh, the nine line tells me X.” I started asking, “Okay, I’m at this high-tension point (the initial hexagram and the line nine), and if I keep going down this path, I transition into this state (the resulting hexagram).”
My Practice Now
I don’t trust the nine or the six line as a prediction anymore. I trust them as a process indicator. It’s totally different.
Step one: I cast the coins and write down the two hexagrams.
Step two: I look at the line nine (or six). I read the commentary but only to understand the intensity of the current moment. Like, I’ll read it and mutter, “So I’m supposed to feel completely overwhelmed and unable to move? Got it. That checks out.”
Step three: I look hard at the second hexagram. This is the new reality. If I was asking, “Should I take this new job offer?” and the starting hexagram was full of difficulty and the shifting hexagram was something like Peace or Breakthrough, then the line nine wasn’t saying “The job is bad,” it was saying, “The decision process right now is hell, but the result is clarity.”
I started applying this to everything, even small stuff, like deciding who to hire for a freelance job. I tracked it for a year, and the results started lining up exactly with how I felt about the ultimate outcome. It wasn’t magic. It was just mapping where I was and where I was heading.
So, should you trust the line nine prediction? I say, stop thinking of it as a prediction and start seeing it as a mid-point pivot sign. That nine is just showing you the door. The destination is the hexagram you shift into.
It’s all about the transformation, man. Stop looking at the signpost and look at the whole trip.
