This is the I Ching hexagram I got just one or two days before the shift into giving it all wholeheartedly over to the divine – any situation in my life, everything I take myself to be.
47 – Forty-Seven | K’un / Exhaustion
A Dead Sea, its Waters spent eons ago, more deadly than the desert surrounding it:
The Superior Person will stake his life and fortune on what he deeply believes.
Triumph belongs to those who endure.
Trial and tribulation can hone exceptional character to a razor edge that slices deftly through every challenge.
Action prevails where words will fail.
SITUATION ANALYSIS:
This is the realm of the Shaman.
You have exhausted every alternative, spent yourself completely, taxed body and mind beyond your former limits.
Survival and salvation lie beyond your reach now.
Only transcendence to a new existence — a higher plane of being — will see you through.
The Old You is just a dry husk.
You can’t return to it.
Metamorphosis is the only grace offered.
You can only return to your homeland as a New You.
It seems fitting and mirrors my experience closely. Towards the end of September, I asked to be shown what’s left. And some days later, in early October, I was dropped into a level of existential dread & terror I have not experienced before and beyond my capacity to relate to in a balanced way. I didn’t sleep for the next five days, and my sleep for the next several weeks was nonexistence to spotty. But I did find great support from friends, including in the form of five element acupuncture and phone sessions with Barry.
For the next four or five weeks, bubbles of dread and terror would surface once a day or every other day, each time stretching my capacity to its limits and sometimes going beyond. Although I did find more clarity around deep beliefs and fears, nothing I did really seemed to work. I was at the end of my rope, and wasn’t able to function very well in daily life (which was OK, my circumstances allowed it).
As I hit bottom in the first week of November, I started praying for inner and outer support to be able to give it all over to God. And one or two days later, I was able to give it all wholeheartedly over to the divine – the dread and terror, the core beliefs and fears behind it, all my relationships and situations in life, and all of what I take myself to be. There was a noticeable shift, a sense of grace, and of all of me being held within and as soul and spirit. There is also a sense of very detailed work and perhaps transformations happening throughout me at a subtle energy level.
Some prayers I have found helpful:
I give it all over to You.
Your will be done.
Let my life be in your service.
Let this (my plans) happen, or something even better.