Gate 5 ⌇ The Gate of Fixed Patterns

The first line always speaks for the essence of a hexagram and the first line is ‘Perseverance.’  If the captain must, he goes down with the ship.  Understand what that means: if you notice that every day at four o’clock you are fatigued, then you need to rest. You fix this as a ritual in your life. Nobody is allowed to telephone you, nobody is allowed to come and visit you, nobody is allowed to disturb you, you are in your nice apartment building on the 39th floor and all of a sudden, you hear a fire alarm while you are lying there on your sofa on your ritualized fixed time. If the captain must, they go down with the ship. Don’t break your ritual. You may die in the fire, but 99 times out of a hundred you won’t. Everybody else will have burnt apartments, but you will be fine and they say,  “Why didn’t you come out?”  and you answer,  “I was just lying down having my nap.”

If the captain must, they go down with the ship. Don’t let anybody interfere with your fixed rhythm and your ritual. If you need to eat at 8 o’clock in the morning and your lover says  “I eat at 11 o’clock,”  let your lover eat alone. Eat at 8 o’clock in the morning. This is the nature of this line. Mars exalted, here again the loveliness of what Mars can be. Courage in the face of adversity.  “I am not going to respond, I stay here in my ritual no matter what, and nobody will take me out of it.” This is the power that lies in this fifth gate.

The Earth in detriment. The premature and often disastrous urge to cut one’s losses. This is the moment in which - because there is no awareness, we are dealing with energy here - the ritual can be given up. I will leave the apartment. It is o.k. if it burns, but I want to save my life. They will die and the apartment won’t burn. This is the irony of these things.  The power to maintain one’s own rhythm  or Weakness in maintaining one’s rhythm when challenged. That is why  Mars is so powerful in the first half. Understand the basis of what this hexagram is saying, it is so important. No logical process can be a success without a fixed rhythm. You can’t just study 24 hours and then go and pass an exam. If you study 20 minutes a day for two weeks, you might. You have to establish the proper rhythm and fix what works for you. This is what logic demands and it is also what leadership demand - rituals. We have flags and people who salute, we have all these rituals of state. We need all these fixed rituals otherwise the understanding process does not work.

The second line has such a nice name, ‘Inner Peace.’ The second and the fifth line both have Pluto in detriment. That Pluto experience is coming up in the next four or five years. We will have a lot of children coming into the world who will carry this energy deep inside of them, and there is going to be an explosion of discomfort out of that. Second lines are always projecting outwards. This line is projecting outwards that they have their fixed rhythm.  “I have my natural fixed rhythm.” That is what they are projecting out into the world. It may or may not be true. The ability to ignore the temptation to take premature action. These people project outwards the ability that they will not take premature action and that they live out their natural rhythm. They are projecting out that natural rhythm to others.

Venus exalted. The gift of maintaining composure through idealizing tranquility.  Pluto in detriment,  Inner Peace experienced as stagnation.  It may be one thing to say “This is my natural rhythm,” but that rhythm in itself may not be producing anything. So many people that have the 5 and the 15 have to spend so much time in their life doing nothing. This is all the thing about being in the flow. Being in the flow does not mean that you are always moving. It means that you move, you rest, you move, you rest.... People who have the 5 and people who have the 15 go through periods where they can’t move; there is nothing to do and they suffer because of that, and then they run around like crazy and then they suffer because of that, there is nothing to do and then they suffer because of that and then…

In the white book, we have  The power to be comfortable with one’s rhythm. This is what is being projected outwards, this comfort and The drive for power that is constrained by a fixed rhythm.  In the moment that the fixed rhythm does not feel good, because they do not really know whether that is their natural rhythm and so they can be living out a projected rhythm which they take for their natural rhythm, but it is stagnating because it does not take them anywhere. They do not feel like it is productive and in that moment, they may start looking for some other kind of rhythm and break their ritual. “Yes, I used to have a nap everyday at four o’clock, but one day my apartment was on fire and I ran out.”  Now, I don’t do that anymore because it is bad luck. The reality is that they break from what they were projecting as their natural rhythm, and suddenly you find out that is not what they are at all. That is the child that says,  “Every night from 7 o’clock to 8 o’clock I do my studies,” and one day you go over there and you open the door; you find the window open and they have been gone for hours. Because that fixed rhythm was leading to stagnation and of course they don’t know underneath whether it is really their natural rhythm, there is this temptation to break that and try something else with predictable results.

When we get to the third line, it has a very intense name, ‘Compulsiveness.’ We know that this third line is about trial and error. One of the things to recognize about that is everybody who has the 5.3 is always convinced that their rhythm is a mistake. If they are lying flat on their back and they cannot move a muscle, they are sure that it is a mistake, they are sure that they should do something. If they are running around like mad and they cannot stop running around, they are convinced that it is a mistake because they are sure that they should be on vacation somewhere, lying flat on their back and doing nothing. They have a great deal of difficulty in accepting what their natural rhythm is because there is always this sense that there is something wrong with it.

The fear engendered by the sense of helplessness resulting in unnecessary stress and activity.  This sense of helplessness: I have this rhythm and I am stuck with it, and I don’t really like it. I want to be able to be busy or I am out being busy and I want to rest. I don’t really like this.”  Neptune exalted. Compulsiveness can be limited in its negative effects through flights of imagination.  This is the best therapy - I hate this word, I better say methodology - for somebody that has the 5.3. In those moments, where they assume that they their fixed rhythm is not correct, that it is a mistake.

I always tell them the same thing, “Well, imagine what it would be like to do something else.” This can be deeply imaginative. There is a great power in this that while they are flat on their back, they can dream or while they are running around being busy, they can dream about another fixed rhythm. It is better for them to imagine the vacation  while they are running around, instead of taking it. Better for them to imagine being busy  when they are lying down, instead of doing it. That is much healthier for them. Understand that logic requires an enormous amount of imagination. Logic, after all, is rooted in the talent process. Without imagination logic can never work. So much of the logic that we process in our lives  we process at the imaginative level, making imaginative constructs in our mind to see within our imagination whether logic resonates for us, or not.

This is an opportunity for these people in that moment of seeing  that their rhythm is not correct for them or is a mistake, in that moment to allow that simply to work out. It is the rhythm. Don’t change it, but go in your imagination to wherever you want to go. This is the healthy side of this process. Underneath is, Unable to surrender and at odds with one’s own rhythm. The other detriment, The Moon cannot stand still.  What happens to these people is that they will constantly break their rhythm, discover that it is not good for them either and they will eventually in their process come back, after repeating the mistakes over and over again about breaking their rhythm. They will go back to their natural rhythm and they will suffer with it. With the third line, there is always inside of it this sense of  “Is this really what it is? Or is this a mistake? I don’t like this rhythm, I want to change it.”

When you get to the upper trigram and you get to the fourth line, this is a line of externalization and we know that it is the resonance to the first line, Where the captain  must go down with the ship.  Here you have what is called ‘The Hunter.’ Waiting as a guarantee of survival. That is having your natural rhythm, fixing your natural rhythm. This is a guarantee of survival. There are very few guarantees in this life, here is one. The guarantee is that if you live by your fixed rhythm, your natural fixed rhythm, it is a guarantee for survival.

Uranus exalted.  The creative genius to transform the most passive experience into active achievement.  This goes back to something very basic about understanding how wonderful our form is. It goes back to the fact that we don’t have to do anything. It is built in. This is genetics, after all. If you are not struggling with your own rhythm, trying to change it, succumbing to group pressure, if you are not, this is the opportunity for a deep creative process to really see what comes out of you in your natural rhythm because it is you. Out of that natural rhythm comes the pure logical process that belongs to you and it is a guarantee that you will survive, not because of somebody else. 

Sun in detriment. The vanity of a personality so strong that, unwilling to hide behind a blind, threatens its very survival.  This is the other side of  The captain that goes down with the ship. This is just cutting your losses and off you go. Remember, that this line knows that there is another side. This is not the love of the body, this is the love of humanity. “I need to serve humanity.” The fourth, fifth and sixth lines of the 5th hexagram are there to serve humanity. In that externalization in the 4th line you have this fixed process where it says, “I don’t want to wait. I want to serve humanity now. I don’t want to accept this rhythm.”  The moment that they don’t accept that rhythm, their very survival is threatened. There are so many people who, out of impatience and pressure,  will break their natural rhythm and try to live another rhythm and become very ill. They become unhealthy because it is not for them.

Illness has its manifestation in many ways. It is not just simply chronic obvious illness. It is deeper. Psychological things and all kinds of emotional damage that can be done to them and the crushing of the Ego. All of that has a root in this line. One of the things to recognize about the fourth line is that it really needs to be able to express that fixed rhythm as a contribution to the totality, as a contribution to humanity.  ‘The Hunter’, in the white book,  The power to make the best of one’s fixed rhythm. This is the genius. And on the other side, The drive to deny one’s own rhythm with predictable costs.  If you go against your own rhythm  you will pay a price. Always. By the way, in your work with people, when you see somebody who has this side of the line, the detriment, my advice, my information for these people is: they must make sure that there is nobody around them who is trying to pull them away from their rhythm, because they will succumb. You understand. Mechanics protects you by giving you a way to work with that mechanical information.

If you have an aspect that can bring you into a detrimental field which is not healthy for you, you have to make sure that there are not those forces around you that will automatically do that. If you have the 21.3 and you are powerless with superior forces, then don’t work for superior forces, because you will be powerless. If you don’t want to be pulled away from your fixed rhythm, because that tendency is always in you if you have this detriment, don’t allow anybody to do that. Don’t allow people around you who do not accept your rhythm. Mechanics is a great teacher that way.

The fifth line. I love this line. It is a lot of fun for me. We know what the fifth line is all about, we know that this is universalization and we know that everyone who carries the fifth line is going to be projected on. Everything about the logic process is about the repetitive process. To repeat over and over again in your fixed rhythm, concentrated in order to produce out of that a corrective process to eventually, through experimentation, come to a point where after many years, mastery is the result. In the second line we had a projected field of inner peace going out and when we get to the fifth line, we have a projected field going onto the fifth line person and that projected field is called  ‘Joy.’

It says,  Waiting as an aspect of enlightenment. There are only two out of the 384 lines that mention the word enlightenment: the 54.4 which is enlightenment/endarkenment, which is another thing entirely. But here we have the aspect that we call enlightenment. Please understand something: enlightenment is a projection of those from the outside onto somebody else. Please understand that. Be very clear about that. Be very clear about something else, too: when Pluto comes roaring through into this fifth line and it hits the detriment, we are going to have a collapsing of this concept of enlightenment in terms of the nature of the so-called Master. Please understand that enlightenment is a projection. It is the outside turning on the light and focusing it on somebody else and projecting that light onto them. They may or may not be the master of what is being projected onto them. But it can look like that. 

Waiting as an aspect of enlightenment.  What they are projecting onto these people is that they have this fixed rhythm and because of that they seem so calm. The apartment building is burning down and you are lying there on the sofa and somebody comes racing in and says, “Don’t you hear all these fire alarms. This place is burning down,” and you look at them very calmly and you say,  “Please, don’t disturb me. I am having my rest. Close the door, will you?” Do you know what that does to your reputation later? They say, “That was unbelievable. This one really knew.”  To remain calm as the ultimate aesthetic - this is about beauty. This is not about truth, -  and thus recognize the inner meaning of being.  And when you get to that point you should get the joke. Pluto in detriment,  Joy dismissed as an illusion, waiting as a failure.  We will have a huge generation of children born with this line. Millions and millions of them will be born in the beginning of this next century carrying something that has not been in humanity for 156 years. Carrying this energy and bringing this energy out. It is the beginning of what people call the movement of towards Aquarian knowledge. That  projection is not enough. After all, this is all about logic.

In the white book, The power to be calm and to find one’s place  in the flow  or Disillusionment with recognizing one’s place in the flow.  Remember, because it is projected on these people that they are calm and a peace within themselves or enlightened, they better do not make any mistakes. I have friends of mine in America who are hosts for me when I tour there. They are guru chasers, so they get a lot of masters that come by and stay in their house, because that is what they like. The stories that they tell: somebody who has that projected field on them and you bring them into your own home and then you realize, “Oh, my god. What is this?”  Everyone who plays the spiritual master game knows that it is the projection coming from the outside and there is this deep fear inside of them, whether they can live up to the standard. And the key is: you better be calm inside. I love this line.

When we get to the sixth line, we find a very unusual sixth line here because it has no polarity. That is we only have an exaltation, so it is being fixed in a very special way. It is called ‘Yielding.’ Waiting is never free from pressure, physical or mental, and is often punctuated by the unexpected. This takes us back to the irony of logical energy. That is, that it is suffused with faith and belief. There is all this faith built in underneath because nobody really knows, whether the solution can ever be achieved and whether the leadership can ever take place. It says that waiting is never free from pressure and that it is often punctuated by the unexpected: the unexpected is illogical. This can be very disturbing sometimes. I was doing the step one, two, three, four and all of a sudden something happened,  something out of context, that out of context allows for the unfolding of the whole process. There is always this sense inside and this makes logical people even more determined to find out why the unexpected happened, so that they can make sure that it always fits into logic. It is like people who talk about coincidences instead of recognizing geometries. Coincidences without any kind of recognition. The geometry is clear. You know that these things are meeting each other.

Here, Accepting that in one’s fixed rhythm despite the pressures, growth will be empowered, and often through the unexpected.  Built into it is that through the fixed rhythm there will be growth, but. Neptune exalted,  The growth of awareness that comes with bending to the universal flow.  It is still a sixth line. It does not really mean that they are going to give their energy to humanity. They can, but that does not mean that they will. Again, they are looking at the whole circuit which means that this line is looking to the 31st gate at the end that says  “I lead with this formula that we have experimented with and proven, it is a value for us and reliable in the future.” You don’t know that in the fifth gate. You can’t, because it is just an energy. It has no identity. It knows that there is much more and because of that, it does not want to give its energy to anything that it cannot lead. That is a key for it. In other words,  “Will I be really able to take this energy and go down this road. Can I actually do it?” These are people that are pulled into the flow unexpectedly. They can be standing on the sideline watching the river flow and everything is fine and all of a sudden a boat goes by and catches them. Unexpectedly they find themselves in the flow. The logic process: they would love to kidnap all these people that have these energy gates for logic and hold on to them and keep them in the cupboard somewhere, so that they can really activate this logical process. It is very hard for the 5.6 to escape the demands of society. Society comes along and says, “Excuse me, I know that you do not want to get involved but we take you along with us.”

When you look at the logical process, you see that it does not involve the Ego. There is no Ego in logic. When you get to this sixth line and you get to this uncertainty about whether one can really lead or whether one can really go through this logical process and get to the solution and be able to do something about it. The very next hexagram, the very first line is the 26.1, which is tribal. It says, A bird in the hand. The Ego has a lesson for logic: be satisfied with what it is that you have and by the way, if you can’t be satisfied about it, lie.