Difficulty at the Beginning

"Hey Jude, begin...."
--Hey Jude (Lennon/McCartney)

Hexagram 3, Difficulty at the Beginning, in the I Ching Book of Changes (Wilhelm/Baynes), teaches about handling the "teeming, chaotic profusion" that arises as something new struggles to attain form.

Sometimes the challenge of getting started on a creative project comes from resisting this period of confusion, wishing for the work ahead to be laid out in an orderly fashion (more on this).

But at the beginning, you don't know yet. Countless pathways and possibilities swirl around in primordial soup. Which way to go? You're afraid of closing off some of the miriad options, maybe the best ones. The hexagram offers three strands of advice for times like this (in my interpretation, anyway).

1. Pause. Don't try to force advance. Consider the possibility that what you've been calling procrastination or avoidance might include wisdom in disguise, the wisdom of waiting until the next right action reveals itself. Procrastination with permission loses its self-perpetuating shame. It may become needed rest, or prioritising something that you really do choose to finish first.

2. Get help. "...it is very important not to remain alone." This might mean talking over the tangles that have you stymied, or simply being receptive to synchronistic prompts from the world at large: a few words overheard in a restaurant, a juxtaposition of colors in the produce section, the just-right quotation jumping out of a book. Also, for me, it means prayer, or invocation, or some form of reminder that the actual juice of creativity comes from a sacred source beyond my control, and a renewal of my committment to rely on that.

3. Persevere. The Creative Person "has to arrange and organize the inchoate profusion of such times of beginning, just as one sorts out silk threads from a knotted tangle and binds them into skeins." Untangling knotted silk requires a light hand and patient, engaged attention. You follow one thread until you see that you've reached a temporary impasse, then gently tease out another. Continue this way and watch order emerge out of confusion, like a miracle (perhaps a slow-motion miracle, but a miracle nonetheless).

As for the Middle, of a project, of a life, well, keep on keeping on. Thank you for your dedication. We need your creative work here. Meet one of my great teachers of creative perseverance in this article.