The central idea of the I Ching is that we are always cycling through classic patterns of energy and change. Oracle consultations, especially with the I Ching, can be a way of seeing such underlying patterns of energy and change. Another way is self-inquiry — stripping away the details and asking yourself what essential pattern of energy and change is at play in your life right now? Examples of essential patterns of energy and change: a time to summon your will to bite through a tenacious obstacle and get to the core of what is happening (hexagram #21); a time when darkness has bottomed out and there is a turning point; the beginning of improvement (hexagram #24); a time of simplifying and letting go (#41); a time of expansive progress (#35).

This card draws your attention to the possibility of the outer world paralleling the inner world of psyche in ways that cannot be explained in terms of cause and effect. Jung called such acausal connections "synchronicities." In the past these parallelisms were often called "portents" or "omens," and in many cases people projected too much into them. Modern fundamentalist materialists assume they are "coincidences" if they notice them at all. The Taoists saw the paralleling of inner and outer as inevitable and worthy of alert observation.

The parallelism of inner and outer is also reflected in the alchemical motto, "As above, so below." If this oracle is working, your reading should be an example of an object in the physical world (your monitor) paralleling the inner world of your psyche.