So here we are again at the great turnaround, when the length of the days finally bottoms out and starts moving back in the other direction. Of course this is technically the beginning of winter, not the end; but the end is in the beginning, isn’t it? Didn’t someone tell me that?

Personally I’m feeling good because I just got a horoscope that said “The mistakes you’ve made in the past are about to add up to something you can be proud of.” So I’ve got that going for me, which is nice. Having made so many mistakes, I should be in line for a big fat payoff, thank you very much.

I had a whole thing I wanted to get into about cycles, the idea of return, how a man never crosses the same river twice and yet, somehow, does. But it’s late, Eastern Standard Time, and I’m going to go to bed instead. (This is supposed to be a time of rest, after all.) Instead, please contemplate yet another translation of hexagram 24 of the I Ching, which should govern one’s actions at this delicate time.

Hexagram 24

FÙ

Return to your town

Returning – expansion
Going out and coming in without affliction
Friends come without fault
Coming and returning on one’s road, a seven-day cycle
Harvest: to proceed probing

The great image says:
Thunder in the center of the earth: returning
The first kings closed the frontiers at sun solstice, peddlers did not travel, the Hou did not inspect the region

Earth
Thunder

day 22 of a yang moon

Follow your own road, your own Tao. Only by being oneself over and over again, one fills in one’s place. Like the sun gets its meaning from creating day after day, year after year.

Who follows his Tao, can be relied upon. Everything he does has the same base, however diverse it may be.

A Tao can only be followed if one flows along with it. Trying to stick to one road all the time will not work. Every Tao always is a never-ending succession of days and nights, of coming and going, of cycles, endings and new beginnings. Moving in cycles, eternally, that is what Tao looks like.