Chinese Fortune Stick Reading of the Day

TRADITIONAL INTERPRETATION
While you seem to have suffered a great loss at the moment, some kind of reconciliation will occur, although it may only be a partial and unfulfilling one. Things will set themselves right but not for a while. Your professional prospects are better than your personal ones, so it may be a good idea to take some time off work to attend to your private life. Maybe you have been neglecting the spiritual side of your personality.

REFLECTION
What is gone is gone and you must now learn to live with that. Recall and enjoy the best of what was, but also move on. You will never get over what has happened because it is now part of you, but this can strengthen and guide you rather than hang around your neck like some sort of curse.


TRADITIONAL INTERPRETATION
Like a reflection in water, your safety is not certain.  You should take precautions against possible dangers, and not embark on any risky endeavors.  In doing business, you will probably meet with many obstructions, and it is not a good time to put new plans into effect.  Generally, things are likely to turn against you unless you keep tight control.  On the positive side, you should recover from illness easily, and people missing from your life are likely to return soon.

REFLECTION
Chinese notions of fate and fortune set a clear line between that which is fixed and that which is changeable.  Certain aspects of fate, like your date of birth or the kind of family you are born into, are fixed.  The rest is up to you.  However, if there is some aspect of yourself that makes you behave in a way you dislike, it is up to you to change.  Otherwise you will 'fate' yourself to be like that for the rest of your life.  Fate can keep you trapped.  Your choice to change can set you free.


Each day I sit down, take up the cup of sticks and ask the same question, “What does the Keen community need to know or hear today?”  I shake the cup until a stick (or 2 or 3…) falls out.  I then post the stick number and the meanings for you to get what you can out of them.

The sticks themselves are a form of I-Ching.  There are a total of 64 sticks in the set that I use* with a poem and small interpretation/story to go along with each stick.   The poems, meanings and reflections are meant to be read and (as a good friend of mine once said) marinated in.  In our culture, we’ve grown accustomed to getting instant gratification.  In other words, we’re used to everything being given to us with little or no work on our parts.  These readings are the exact opposite of that type of attitude.

Chinese Fortune sticks are meant to make us slow down and reflect on what is being said.  As each sticks’ meaning can be profoundly personal to each person who reads them, it’s more important for you to read them rather than have someone give you a watered down version.  These readings are meant to sing to a level of your consciousness and bring you a measure of peace, or at least enlightenment.

The best way to get the most you can out of these readings is to approach them with an open mind.  Before sitting down to read that morning’s reading, make some quiet time for yourself.  Sit still for a moment and clear your mind.  Silence the chatter in your head and take a few deep breaths, letting them out slowly.  Once you feel yourself slow down a little (or a lot), read through the reading of the day.  Go over it a few times if you feel the need.  Then take a moment, sit back and think about what that reading means for you.  Some will be very straightforward; others require a bit more thinking.  Either way, let the reading from the sticks guide you that day on the decisions or experiences you have.  These aren’t meant to tell you what to think, but rather to help you look at things in a different way or to allow you to access truths you already have.

If you have any questions, feel free to email me!!


* written by Zhao Xiaomin & Martin Palmer