In a previous post, Snail Mail, I described a sense of relief, of letting go, when a voice within me said that the war I was fighting was not mine to fight, and I ended that post by saying I had more to write about what came to light through a deeper, longer and slower exploration of what ‘the war’ was about, and how messages delivered by Snail and Pearlyeye contributed to my process.

Since then, I’ve tried to write such a post several times. I haven’t been sure where to start. And then there were some interesting interruptions. Power failures here in the house and within the neighborhood. A frozen bathtub faucet valve thawing out in a December heatwave and discharging a continuous flow of water into (fortunately!) the bathtub. Intermittent failure of the house’s hot water system. An eastern wood rat – the only one I’ve ever seen inside my house in 25 years – somehow got in, scored a bar of soap from each bathroom, and got out again. I finally live-trapped a field mouse, a species that I’ve seen many times inside my house, and released it back to nature. Ants. Asian lady beetles sheltering in my house until…

Here came a thought about the message at the edge of the woods, about discovering new ways of relating to the space of the Holler and all members of its community. So I took some time to review all the ways I’d met the here and now events as they’ve unfolded since I moved into the Holler. The old ways that failed – again. The softer, joyful, spacious solutions that broke through. Coyote. Bear. Snail and Pearlyeye. Woody and Ants and the LadyBeetles. All of the birds, reptiles, amphibians, and literally hundreds of other members of the Animal, Plant, and Mineral Nations of the Holler over the past 25 years.

Sitting with this, feeling down into this today, I can clearly imagine the possibility for harmonious relations with everything here – not leaving any one of them in the ways of old, fear-based, disempowering separation myths and symbologies. The story I’d write about my evolving relationship with every one of these beings would have a common element: a moment of breakthrough – a moment of recognition that I’d been in ‘a war that was never mine to fight’.

But what set the stage for breakthough? A moment of remembrance keeps coming back to me – the first conscious experience of my body as a receiver and translator of cosmic energy, of universal information available to all of us.

Hexagram 43: Kuai / Break-Through

This first conscious breakthrough literally arrived through the “Break-Through” hexagram of the I Ching (Book of Changes).[i] Instantaneous deep knowing did not happen on my first reading, though I sensed that something worth exploring had touched me — something way down in heart and soul space.

Here’s the specific the specific paragraph where physical, mental and emotional walls eventually fell:

“In a resolute struggle of the good against evil, there are, however, definite rules that must not be disregarded, if it is to succeed. First, resolution must be based on a union of strength and friendliness. Second, a compromise with evil is not possible; evil must under all circumstances be openly discredited. Nor must our own passions and shortcomings be glossed over. Third, the struggle must not be carried on directly by force. If evil is branded, it thinks of weapons, and if we do it the favor of fighting against it blow for blow, we lose in the end because thus we ourselves get entangled in hatred and passion. Therefore it is important to begin at home, to be on guard in our own persons against the faults we have branded. In this way, finding no opponent, the sharp edges of the weapons of evil becomes dulled. For the same reasons we should not combat our own faults directly. As long as we wrestle with them, they continue victorious. Finally, the best way to fight evil is to make energetic progress in the good.”

I began to notice situations – mostly ones that I perceived ‘outside’ of myself, such world events, human relationships with the environment, national political discussions -- in which spontaneous associations to these words in Hexagram 43 would arise. It took on puzzle dimensions, like a koan. I became very curious. This brought me to a place of questioning, which opened space for the first sparkles of what living life from the inside out rather than surviving life from the outside in might feel like. And somewhere in all of that, there was enough sparkle to ignite a cellular-level shift into deep body knowing about the energy dynamics of war, struggle, self-doubt. Or handing over self-sovereignty to external authorities, ‘experts’ or institutions of education, health care or governance.

In most of my Substack posts I’ve shared how I recognize body messages, but I notice that I’ve often described physical, mental, emotional, intuitive or imaginal effects that actually come after the body message. I am very much coming to realize that as an embodied energy being, it truly is my body that knows everything first. So, when I notice sudden shifts in sensing or feeling that I might name as expansive, contracted, relaxed, tight, light, heavy, brighter, darker – stuff like that – I try to remember to stop, take a breath or two, and feel further into what was going on just before I noticed the change. Same thing for intuitive flashes, Aha! Moments, spontaneous laughter, sudden awareness of knowing something “all the way into my cells”, or maybe an answer to a question or solution to a problem that suddenly becomes clear.

I’ve also noticed that when a new, deep knowing emerges, old experiences where the same energy dynamic was present may pop up for review. In my Breathing with owls post, I wrote:

“My first recognition of what such new relationships might look like was more than 50 years ago when I read Loren Eisely’s account of meeting a young fox one morning on a foggy beach, and scuffling playfully with the kit over an old chicken bone. I still hold a deep body memory of that moment, a moment that changed me all the way down into my body’s cells. It opened windows and doors for discovery and exploration of nature in ways I had not before imagined.”

I could not have written that 50 years ago. However, it’s an example of a past experience that I could write in a new way after my breakthrough with Hexagram 43 (somewhere between 20 and 25 years ago) and experiences after the message from Light Beings at the edge of the woods (3+-years ago).

I’m also discovering that my understanding of ‘fighting wars that are not mine to fight” continues to unfold. There are parts of the Hexagram 43 interpretation that I cite in this post that I no longer resonate with. This past week I found an article I wrote 20 years ago (Fighting Like Cats and Dogs) that’s relevant today, in many but not all ways; at some point I may post something here on Substack about how I would write that article now.

Until then, may the wars that remain hidden within our Human Collective Unconscious — and the Souls of Nations — now be lifted into the light.

[i] The translation I was using in relation to this experience:

Wilhelm, Richard (1924, 1950). The I Ching or Book of Changes. Cary Baynes, trans. Bollingen Series 19. Introduction by Carl G. Jung. New York: Pantheon Books. 3rd edition (1967), Princeton: Princeton University Press; reprinted numerous times.