Gate 9 ⌇ The Gate of Focus

When we were looking at the abstract process we saw that the 42 had resources. It has resources of energy. What we see in the 9th hexagram is that we have a resource for concentration, what we call attention. The attention is there. We don’t know out of this what the attention span is. Just like the 42 has to go to the 29 to find its commitment, the 9 has to go to the 5 to find out what its pattern must be. To be focussed and concentrated is never enough. This is the beginning of a process. It is a process that says in the first line ‘Sensibility.’ A balanced and responsible approach to problem solving. Pluto exalted, The ability to avoid frustration through the creation of new forms. The reality is that the focus here is not simply on the given which is, “I have the capacity for attention” - what is more important is that capacity for attention: how do I maintain it?

 Mars in detriment, After a hasty and frustrating search, the urge to kick in the door when the key is in your pocket. This is not recognizing what the pattern is. This is all about simply having this energy for concentration but not knowing where to concentrate, on what to concentrate. You think that if you concentrate on remembering where the keys are, somehow that will work. And when it doesn’t, when you can’t go in there and find it, you get very frustrated and kick in the door. 

In the white book we have, The power in focusing to create new forms  or The power to generate that will lose its focus.  Please understand this: this is about attention. The whole thing about attention - and we all know this from children - is that to maintain the attention of children, either you fix their pattern or you cannot hold their attention. Otherwise they will just move from this thing to the next, because they do not have an extended attention span in that sense. That is why we need, in the logical process, to have a codified system that develops our logic. We have to learn the patterns of logic. This is very important for us because if we don’t have the pattern, we can have the energy for the logical process but not know what to do with it. These people become deeply restless. They can focus their attention but on what? and how? and when? This is what they don’t know.

By the way, Pluto is coming in the 9th gate by the end of 1997. Pluto will transit this gate for three years. When it says, A balanced and responsible approach to problem solving here, it is not saying ‘a balanced and responsible approach to solving problems.’ It is the process that gets to eventually solving a problem.

What happens when you get to the second line ‘Misery loves company,’ the projection that is coming out of the second line is  “I can solve the problem because I can focus.” This is not how the problem is solved, but it is one necessary aspect in order to solve a problem eventually. But this is the illusion that is caught up in the projection. I know so many students of mine over the years, the typical 9.2 student, they study and focus all the time and they don’t actually learn anything. They study books all day and study the same thing over and over again and nothing really comes out of that. That is the potential in this. To solve the problem is not the same as problem solving. This is a process that this line projects out. ‘Misery loves company.’ Remember, we are in the collective here, so it is social.

Collaboration with others to temper frustration.  They are projecting out  “I can solve the problem. I can concentrate,” and with that they get the energy around them that others say “o.k., we will join in that process of concentration.” Remember, that the logic process is a collective process like a laboratory full of scientists all working on the same thing in order to solve the problem. Science generally is a collective process. Logic works in the collective field. Jupiter in detriment, The overwhelming need for expansion can lead to errors in judgment, missed opportunities and depression. The child that says, “But I study, why didn’t I pass? I stared at it all day. It got my full attention. I was focused on it.” That is the whole thing about the second line: What is projected out does not necessarily have the depth behind it. It is not introspective. It is just projecting out, “Aha, I can solve the problems because I can focus.” That is not solving the problem. That’s the way to solving a problem.

This third line is an archetype like the 42.3. Rather than it being trial and error, it is The overlooked minor element that always predetermines failure. Whenever you see the word failure or mistake in a third line, it is o.k., because this is exactly where it is supposed to be. It does not mean that there is anything terrible about that at all. It just means that for certain in this third line, this process of bonds made and broken, of trial and error, of learning from mistakes, is going to be accentuated. Earth exalted, The use of force to temporarily overcome impediments. That is the moment that something is not working in the concentration, to put even more concentration on it. On the other side we have, Persistent force that saps vitality and turns molehills into mountains. These people will always miss something. There is always a moment in which their concentration breaks. There is a moment that the concentration just simply is not there and in that moment you can take the wrong turn and go for a long detour. In that moment you can just miss, literally, what is there. What is missed can become an enormous thing. 

You see, it is the logic process that makes the word mistake ugly. The abstract people do not care about mistakes. Crisis is part of their way of life. But logical people get very upset with mistakes. “One and one is not two but three.” “No, two.” This whole process of  “that is a mistake, you have to correct that.” It has to be right because the logic process has to be consistently provable for the collective. So making a mistake in the logic process can create a lot of deep anxiety in logical people, because the very nature of logic is to eliminate the mistakes so that we can know for certain. “What is this formula: e=mc2 ?’ Let’s make it certain. We better check that out, otherwise we scratch this thing away because we are not going to put that into the world and predict naturally into the future with that, unless we can be certain that this foundation is correct.”

What happens here in the third line is the miracle of what logic always needs. Logic always needs the illogic of a mistake, because out of this can come so many wonders. That moment where there is something that is missed, that moment that everything breaks down and is a failure, that moment can turn into an enormous success. The classic example of the scientist who, in the moment of losing their concentration, allows something to get too hot and explode. Out of that explosion comes something wonderful and “Wow, that is amazing. How did that happen?”  It is illogical and that makes them very uncomfortable. The line is in terms of the white book, The loss of power through the failure to focus. It is gone. You lose it in that moment. The power is gone and you can’t focus, then something will be missed because the concentration was not there. On the other side of this, The power to turn a focus into an obsession. Mature 9.3 people have learnt a lot, like so many people that carry the third line themes in their life. They get to learn a lot because they make what other people consider a lot of mistakes. Out of all their mistakes they learn many things that others don’t get to learn.

We come to our line of externalization, our line of being fixed. These people are fixed on the resonance of the first line, they are fixed on problem solving, on providing their energy for the logical process. This energy is basically  the energy to be able to lead and to guide others through the experimentation with the logical process. This will eventually go all the way up to the leadership channel, the channel of being an alpha. So it is about the process of gathering energy in order to guide humanity through understanding. This line is called ‘Dedication.’ Regardless of the pressure or stress, the disciplined attention to detail. These people are fixed on being focused. These are people that must concentrate.

Moon exalted. Right action that leads inevitably to actualization. Right action being the action to concentrate. This is what these people are there for, to live out clearly this fixed one way. Concentration is their way. Mars in detriment, Persistent urge to want to skip essential steps. In other words, I have concentrated enough. Now, I want to act. This is not an awareness that can decide that. You have two sides of this in the white book, The power to act on the potential of the focus  or  The drive for action that ignores the details. This need to generate. Keep in mind that the logic process is under so much stress because it does not have easy access to energy. The people who carry the logical energy gates, they feel this enormous pressure on them to release their energy because the rest of the logical process wants it - so that they can do their experiments and can actually lead and guide.

So there is a great deal of stress in that sense on the concentrating field from others. Remember, again, collective and social in this context. The key in that is that they have this power and they are externalizing this power. These are the people that help other people concentrate. If you have five kids studying together and you have one of them that has the 9.4, the moment that one of them says, “Let’s take a break and listen to some music,” it will be the 9.4 that is saying, “No, we are here to focus and concentrate. We better get this done.” Logic is collective. They have that power to keep everybody focused on that logical process.

This fifth line is so perverse. It is one of the most perverse lines in all of the I Ging, it is  very bizarre.  We know that the fifth line is a line of universalization and we know that the fifth line, in the resonance to the second line, rather than projecting outwards is being projected upon. Look at the keynote of this line. It says ‘Faith.’ Faith has nothing to do with the logic process. This is a projection from the outside onto people who obviously have a concentrative skill. And the projection from the outside is “We have faith in them because they are concentrating. We have faith that the doctors will find a cure to... because they are concentrating on...” But like the student that does not learn anything, they may not figure it out either. Nonetheless, this brings in an element of the belief system into the logical process. It is in that sense that I call it perverse, because this is very strange.

As an overview, The trust that detailed adherence will lead to fulfillment. In other words, if you really concentrate, you will really get it. Well, may be. This is after all the projection coming from the outside. The people who get that projection put on them are under all kinds of pressure to be able to fulfill that. Jupiter exalted, Loyalty to the letter of the law. That is, “You concentrate. You do not take off from that.” And then this wonderful line in the black book, Earth in detriment. Like the mystery of God, doubt engendered through the perceived illogic of a process. How can I have faith that I will find the solution when all I know to do is how to concentrate. There is something bizarre in all these people putting their faith and trust in me; just because I can stare all day does not mean that I will come up with a viable solution. In that, it brings an energy of doubt: Is this all I have to do? Just concentrate? Of course, it isn’t. 

The power to focus and bring value to concentration  or  Where the lack of power to concentrate leads to doubt. This strange abstract concept stuck in the middle of how we universalize the energy to be concentrated. If you have two kids and one of them studies and the other one never studies, and you ask their parents which one do they think is going to pass and do well. The parent that has the child that studies says “I have faith that they will do alright. They are doing their work,” and the other parent says “No, I do not have any faith because they are not concentrating.” That does not mean that the one who does not concentrate fails and the concentrated one succeeds. This is the whole irony of this and this is why it brings doubt. It brings doubt because this is only an aspect in a very complex collective process of establishing logic in the world.

The sixth line is a very beautiful line because it carries with it a quality  that you do not often see, which is the quality of joy. There is joy that is clearly evident in the 9th and in the 5th hexagram as well. This is The joy which comes with accepting small rewards for small victories. The real beauty of concentration is that it is there to provide power to solve something, to bring something ultimately into a fact. Each step along the way that is really a value. As long as one is clear about what one is focused on, there can be enormous joy in that process. But we know the limitation of the sixth line which is: there must be more to all of this.

The greatest problems that sixth line logical people here have is that they are trying to look at the final solution, where everything has been worked out and the formulas have been established so they can say,  “I will work for that. I will concentrate on that and get my joy out of getting there,” but you cannot know in the logical process that that is where you actually will get to. This line in the black book comes from an old Chinese saying, ‘A journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step.’ If you take the first step in agony, in anticipation of the rest of that journey, if you think that you will only take that first step if you can go to the end of that journey, you will never start on that road. This is the essence for the logical process.

For the sixth line here it is not about whether or not I can get to that final, it is whether or not I can find joy in each step. They will not take that step, they will not concentrate unless each step is a joy. This is what it is all about for them. They have to have joy in this focus and concentration in their life. It has to make them feel good. Not the solution - the process. After all, this is what it is all about. This is all about providing essential energy for a logical process and not for the solution. Pluto in detriment, No single step is of value until the journey is over. If there is no joy in each step, they will not get into it. They just won’t and they learn that very quickly and then they start pulling back and they do not give their energy for the logical process.

In the white book, Moon exalted. The power to enjoy the concentrating process. The Moon is bringing that quality out. The moment you see the Moon connected to a line, you know that this line is going to have a cycle. It is rising from a low to a peak and back to a low in its cycle and you know that you will go through all of these aspects. Somebody who has the Moon here exalted: at the beginning of their lunar cycle that can be like the no-moon phase, they don’t really enjoy it and the next day they enjoy it a little bit more and so on, until they reach a peak and then they start sliding down the other end. Logic is about repetition, and it can get boring. 

The other side is,  The energy for expression that cannot find joy in the process until it is complete. In the logic process, here is the ultimate joke: it is never complete. There will be people who will check out the Human Design System for as long as there are people who check out anything logically. Whether or not, generation after generation says that logic works. That is my old joke about, when I was a student studying science, I had to do all these old formulas. Those formulas have been checked for hundreds of years, over and over again. Whenever I read my favorite scientific journals that some old formula that everybody thought was cast and concrete - somebody found a mistake. The other day, they just discovered that they think that light actually has two different speeds, depending on where you are standing. According to Einstein there is only one speed of light. Formulas never get trusted and of course that is the joke here. This is very deeply depressing.

If you really think that the only way that you can commit yourself to a logical process is if you know that it will bring about the correct answer: You never know. You cannot know and when you have it in your hand, you still can’t let go off the fact that it is always going to be open to what is natural in the logic process: Criticism, the need to correct, the need to make sure that it is perfect, the need to lead with it. All this is necessary for working in the logic process. The faith of the fifth line comes in here. You have to trust every single step, because it is never complete. It is part of that illogical process that lies here at the beginning of this. There is no guarantee of logic. There is nothing but this quality of faith which logical people, at their core, do not want to have to deal with. It is o.k. for a believer to say, “I believe that we will have a cure for Aids.” That is very nice, but that is not the same as a logical person’s attitude towards the very same phenomenon, because the logical person says that it is possible that a cure for Aids can be found. But we have to do our research and we have to check it out and do our experiments. The perfect joke is: when you get to the sixth line here, the next hexagram is the fifth hexagram, first line, and that is exactly where the 9 goes in the circuitry.