The central idea of the I Ching is that we are continually 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 work 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).

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See the patterns of the everyday world.

This card draws your attention to the possibility of the outer world paralleling the inner world of the psyche in ways that we cannot explain in terms of cause and effect.

Jung called such acausal connections "synchronicities." Especially in the past, these parallelisms were often called "portents" or "omens." In many cases, people projected too much into them, their conditioning causing them to interpret such events rigidly, based on superstition. 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.

This card draws your attention to the possibility of your unconscious mind manifesting in the external 3D world.

Jung said, "Psychology is destiny." Conflicts in our unconscious may emerge as bodily symptoms, as interpersonal conflicts, or other parallel phenomena. The psyche is the core level, and what happens there will tend to reflect in various layers of manifestation.

This parallel linking of layers may or may not be mediated by cause and effect — it can be an acausal connection — what Jung called "synchronicity." 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 your psyche manifesting in the external world where your computer monitor resides.

The collective unconscious of the species also manifests in the outer world as the unfolding of history. Climate warming, for example, (assuming the manmade CO2 hypothesis) can be seen as the collective unconscious of a species bound to short-term thinking and greed, manifesting (in this case causally)as a symptom in the physical world.

We tend to analyze the external world superficially, mistaking outer symptoms and situations for causes. The cause of what is manifesting in the outer world usually lies in the individual and/or collective psyche.