22 May 2025 - Blog Entry
Anyone who knows me on a personal level knows that I am not very religious nor am I, what one might call, spiritual. This stance has not been born out of ignorance of spirituality or religiosity but rather the opposite, that is, too much exposure to such things. This stance is also not born from hyper-scientific ideas or positions, though at one time I did fancy the provable path brought to us via science.
As I have lived and understood my life through the lens of a creature known as human I have had to adopt fluid mindsets to guide me through my existence. I do not believe my current thoughts to be the be-all and end-all of what is or is not, but I like to think that anyone who does engage with me on such topics to believe that I have put a lot of thought into what I do and do not accept into my brain.
I once identified as atheist but now find myself leaning towards the agnostic side of the camp, but I hold these labels with a weak grip. In short, I have no idea if there is any divine force out there and likely will never know. The absence of one does not prove its existence though. If one such entity does exist and it did "speak" to a human to communicate its wishes then I take that as a possibility. What I do not believe though is the individual receiving such divine wisdom can accurately interpret it let alone codify it. Then they have the additional layer of complexity to transfer that divine communiqué to others and then those others have to pass it on for generations. Anyone who has played the childhood game of "telephone", where one person whispers a phrase to another who then whispers it to another and so on, understands that the transmission of information is prone to degradation. One could make the claim that a divinely inspired message could be reinforced with divine intervention to make certain the message is clear, however, anyone could claim to have received that knowledge and people that believe them will take their claim at face value.
Long story short, and I could go much longer, I do not trust humans that claim to have advanced knowledge of what is effectively unproven.
Why then would I invest my time in something like the I Ching? The I Ching is a book of divination along with various methods to achieve that received knowledge. The method of divination used is also known as "cleromancy" or using randomization to divine something or other.
I find use in the I Ching as, what could be called, a fidelity check, or a review to measure the accuracy and consistency of implementation for a particular practice. Its not so much that I use it to determine what I should or should not do nor as a predictive force to guide me. find it is most useful as a way to question what I hold true and allow myself the space to consider alternative ways of looking at a situation. Sure, one could do just that without using such tools, but I find that it is useful as a ritualistic process to make sure I hold that space in my mind and make sure I am not half-assing the time it takes to truly escape my biases and sit down in quiet thought about what I am trying to accomplish.
I don't particularly hold ill-will towards those who do seek higher meaning through religion or spirituality, life is complicated and our minds are only so capable of understanding what we come across from day to day. I do, however, take exception to those who try to push their beliefs onto others through the generational game of "telephone".
I hope we, as a species, can find a way to stop viewing complex subjects in terms of "right" or "wrong" and try to make an attempt to understand that we are all flawed and imperfect creatures trying to make the best of what we are given. In that regard I know I am no saint in that ability, but I do try to not let my biases creep in too aggressively. Bias will always exist.