Gate 30 ⌇ The Gate of Feelings

It begins with the foundation, in the 1st line which is ‘Composure.’ Hardly what you would imagine. The reality is that the nature of feeling is to go into the process, delve into the process, this is the nature of introspection in the 1st line. Balance in the phase of disorder.  Sun exalted,  The maximization of limitation in all cases.  Jupiter in detriment,  The ability to maintain composure but at the expense of progress. This gate burns with feelings. This is a gate of yearning and longing. In that feeling comes an intensity. This is where desire is. It is driven by desire. The key to that is the composure. Most people think of this gate as being the burning gate. One of the keys is the recognition of composure. The rising of the intensity of the feeling and waiting for the opportunity to be able to actualize.  Stability through feelings, no matter what the situation. When you move from the 30th to the 36th gate, you are going to the gate of Inexperience that demands the experience. But the 30th gate is living out the feeling in the wave, up and down in that wave of feelings. These are people that carry what we call feelings.  Balanced through feelings but unable to let go of them. This is one of the keys to understanding the nature of the 30th hexagram: this is obsession. It is all about obsession. Even if one can be composed, the obsession is there and the longer the intensity develops in the 30th gate without the capacity to fulfill that, the deeper the obsession becomes. This is a deep hunger that lies inside of the human being. That hunger longs to be fulfilled. The nature of this gate is to have composure in spite of obsession. The experience can be in the feeling itself without any consummation.

When we get to this second line of projection, and consider the mirror at the other side in the 18.2, where you have ‘Terminal Disease.’ Here the feelings are projected outwards in the almost desperate need not to simply feel it, but do it. This is one of the keys in this line. The balance between extremes. Sun exalted, The productive application of energy without wastage. These people are not going to release their feelings when there is nothing they can do with them. They release them the moment they can do something. Everything they do suddenly gets imbued with this power of feeling. No wastage means they do not get lost in all kinds of feelings. 

Mars in detriment, Over-aggressiveness that chafes against limitations. The moment that they cannot get their feelings out they become aggressive, because it is very frustrating for them that they can’t get it out. The Book of Letters says,  Not wasting energy on feelings.  They don’t waste the energy on feelings. They are pragmatic. They want to waste the energy on the experience, not on the feeling. The feeling for them is, "Yes, Yes, but what is the experience." Their feelings are always waiting for the opportunity of experience. Feelings which demand energy. They are demanding the opportunity to get out, to release the feelings and if they can’t, they build up a lot of tension. This line in relationships can be very explosive, particularly if they are with somebody who just suddenly turns on their emotional system. The 30.2 in an undefined emotional system and someone comes along and pumps up their emotional system, this can be a powerful thing. There is a great deal of emotional energy that is locked up in here waiting for the opportunity to burst out. With predictable results in terms of what happens with other people. It often is simply a feeling overload. 

I knew someone like that and he dropped by my house every time I made some music. He immediately made me so emotional that I had to stop. The moment that he had an outlet for this emotional feeling he was just pouring them out. It would not matter if it was a dead dog, he could have his opportunity to release his energy crying, laughing, and if you are open to that you take that in. This is uncomfortable because it carries this feeling intensity. These people are great for sannyasin therapies.

When you come to the 3rd line, you come to a deeply spiritual line. It is an extraordinary line. I am always amazed that it is there in this gate. The nature of this line and what this line will represent later in our process, in our development, will become more significant. The line is called ‘Resignation.’ It says, The acceptance of what is. Pluto exalted, The awareness and manifestation of the law of regeneration. The laws of Karma, reincarnation and resurrection. Jupiter in detriment, The tendency by its very knowledge to encourage or avoid despair. Think about the nature of this line. This is an adaptation line. It is the end of the trigram. It can be inherently irresponsible. We know it is about bonds made and broken. We know that the wave here is allegiance and rejection. What is in that wave and what happens to these people - it does not happen right away. It takes them time, after all there is no awareness here, until they do recognize that what is, is. “I am up, I am up. I am down, I’m down. I feel that the world is beautiful. I feel that the world is shit.” This is just what is, and out of that recognition - after all this is the channel of Recognition - comes an acceptance of the nature of the wave, the acceptance of what it is to be emotional. 

These people grasp the nature of the emotions and can be in despair about that, because out of that recognition does not come awareness. Out of this recognition can come emotional clarity. The highest level that this stream can attain is emotional clarity. To recognize that what is, is. It is an irresponsibility to the process of the feeling. If the feeling cannot result in change or progress, it is not about becoming obsessed with the feeling. It is about surrendering to: this is what is. At the high end of the wave it will be acceptable and at the low end of the wave it is full of pain, but nonetheless this is the nature of the motor. Here in the Book of Letters, The feeling to accept what is. Not the awareness, the feeling to accept what is. This comes only from experience. This is one of the deepest things that we recognize about the nature of the emotional environment. We all know this. People in our lives and people that we love, we watch them as they grow older, and emotional people as they grow older generally they mellow. They mellow with experience. They have made a fool out of themselves so many times, they have been hurt so many times, they watched others get hurt so many times, that slowly they begin to recognize the nature of what the wave is. 

The greatest gift that can come to anyone with a defined emotional system is the recognition that the wave is there and there is nothing one can do about it, other than just let it be what it is. This is the beauty that lies in this line. The positive or negative feelings that come with acceptance. You don’t have to like it - this business about having to like your life. You don’t have to like it. You have to accept it. It is not about liking. You can love people that you don’t like. We all know that. You can like people you don’t love. You don’t have to like your life, you can love it and not like it. But you will never love it unless you can accept it. Everybody thinks that they are here to improve their lives. They are not. Your life does not need any improving. It is exactly what it is supposed to be, and nothing else. And what is, for the emotional being to accept the nature of the wave, to survive life, otherwise they can’t. Otherwise they are always in pain, always full of hope and projecting that onto others. This is a very beautiful hexagram. People who have this are very interested in reincarnation. They have this as a theme. This line is very mystical. Once you accept it, then you see the whole pattern, you see the wheel, you see the spiral.

The 4th line, the beginning of the upper trigram and the process of externalization. These people make other people sick. They make others emotionally unstable. They are less likely to show evidence of this themselves, but they can have deep impact on the people around them. The line is called ‘Burnout.’ An unrealistic pace that begs misfortune. These are experience junkies. These are people who must have experience. They can only develop their feelings through experience and they must share their feelings with someone else. Pluto exalted, A compulsive and hyperactive nature that carries all the earmarks of burnout but doesn’t necessarily arrive at it. A positive outcome is often assisted through analysis. This is a classic situation. You have a parent that has the 30.4 and they have a child with an undefined emotional system. The child becomes hyperactive and it gets sent into analysis. The 30.4 really impacts on other human beings much more that on themselves. 

Jupiter in detriment, Uncontrollable expansion with the inevitable bursting of the bubble. In this hexagram you have three different situations in which Jupiter is in the detriment. This emotional field is enormously expansive. Highly energized feelings that may lead to emotional collapse. I have the 41.3, so my resonance is not to the 4th line. I have a friend of mine who has the 4th line. Whenever that person visits me it is so uncomfortable for me, because I notice that after they have been there for ten or fifteen minutes, I get up and go to work. I start doing something - an experience. I suddenly have the feeling that I have to do this. These people can be really obsessive about living out their feeling in that sense. But it is what they do to others that is so powerful. Remember, that by the time you get to the 4th line, you get to a line that by its very nature is there to externalize a single track. And it is a collective circuit and it is about sharing, and the very next step is to penetrate somebody. When you see this, particularly in couples or parent-child relationships, this is something to talk about with them, because this can always lead to a great deal of problems and misunderstanding about the nature of it. The person with the undefined system who takes that in becomes deeply vulnerable to that, because they become twice as explosive.

When you get to 5th line, you get to the universalization. The line is called ‘Irony.’ It says, Recognition and dedication to transitory goals. Jupiter exalted, The strength derived from knowledge and experience that two steps forward and one step back is still one step forward. Understand what happens to these people. This is all about sex, food and experience. They have an interesting love affair and they leave their lover because they find something more interesting. They are a 30th gate. They have a yearning and a desire and they see a new lover and they go ahead and have a new love affair. It turns out to be terrific. Six months later, they go shopping and go into a cafe and there is their old lover. There is a feeling inside of them that says, “Maybe we should try it again and see if that was really what I thought it was when I left." What happens to them is that the whole experiential process is about gaining experience and not repeating it, because it is not worthwhile. But there are many situations in which you cannot know that until you have had the experience a few times. They will go through that process where they will take their step ahead and will have their new experience, but there is always a holding on to the feeling from before. That can pull them back to that feeling. They can often feel very funny in that situation where suddenly they thought that they were through with something and then they have to come all the way back and deal with it again. The whole thing about that line is that everything is the same, except how you handle it. 

Pluto in detriment, The anger engendered by the irony, frustration with its limitations and a desire to eliminate the entire process. "I will get rid of both of them because something is wrong. Why should I go back, shouldn’t I be satisfied with where I am.” They have to learn that this is the only way in which they will come to grips with the experiential pathway. They are double checkers with their feelings. They go back and check it out one more time and then they walk away and say, "Yes, I was right. I got that on my way, but now I get rid of that feeling and now I can go on to the next experience." In the Book of Letters, Each new feeling brings back an old feeling before progress can take place.  That new feeling brings back an old feeling which lingers in there and you think, "Well, I don’t know if I am doing the right thing." 

Frustration and anger with the old feelings brought into the emotional awareness with each new experience. "Why is it still there with me? Does that mean that I am not in the right experience for me now?" This can be a real torment. These people get torn in their feelings. They have the new experience that they are participating in and the old feeling that is still lingering there, and the two of them fight with each other in the emotional system. Depending on their wave, that struggle can either be full of hope or full of pain. Eventually, they get rid of that old feeling because the new one is okay. In the low end of the wave, "Oh, my god. This new feeling must have been a trick. I better check out the old feeling again." These are, by the way, the most seductive of these people because they simply do have the experience.

We come to the roof of the house, the line of transition. Remember, the mirrors in Design because they are very funny. The 18.6 is ‘Buddhahood.’ The 30.6 is not ‘work on what has been spoilt’ but it is ‘the spoilt one.’ In the 30.6 we find the emotionally spoilt one. They only want the best experiences. They only want to have the thrill of the emotional life. This is what is so important to them. It is called ‘Enforcement.’ The discipline to maintain right action. Mars exalted, The assertiveness to purge the inferior while accepting to lead the weak. And The strength to eliminate negative feelings.  They don’t want to have negative feelings. They are looking for the feel-good in life. They hope that somebody will bring it to them. Because of that, these are some of the cleverest people in knowing exactly who to yearn for. They are very good at this. They are good at looking exactly for that energy that is going to give them the kind of life. The same is true for the 18.6, finding someone who will spoil them. This is one of their gifts. This is somebody who needs to be spoilt emotionally. Moon in detriment, An inherent peacefulness that all too often will abide the presence of inferior forces. Now, think about this: both of these lines in the Rave I Ching are talking about dealing with inferior forces and remember, that every hexagram when you get to the roof, is looking to the next hexagram: in this case the 55.1, which is all about finding the spirit through cooperation with superior forces. 

The whole thing about the experiential path is that is seems like it can be full of all kinds of inferior forces. That is what you learn along the experiential path. What works, what does not work? Who can do it and who can’t? Where the progress is and where it is not. The deepest thing the 30.6 is looking for is the real superior force. It is interested in people, and this is very unusual. This is a collective circuit and it is not personal. It tends to be the kind of relationship that is simply for the experience itself and yet the 6th line says, "I know all that. I want more. I want the superior experience. I want a superior person in my life because I know that I have to share it with someone."