There is much gathering together during this time of Gemini season, at least here in the northern hemisphere.
Cookouts and parades.
School concerts and other end-of-the-school year activities.
Family reunions. Weddings.
Softball leagues, baseball games, outdoor pickleball play, and on and on.
So it seems appropriate that Hexagram 45: Gathering Together is the hexagram for this section of Gemini.*
Those of us who are introverts may feel out of sync with this.
Ironically, even though I have a stellium of natal planets in Gemini, I am an introvert, and sometimes wonder if I can just contemplate the people instead of gathering with them?
Fortunately, we can do both at the same time, as R.L. Wing describes it in his I Ching Workbook:
Note the quality of your interactions. Self-observation within a group can speed you toward an expanded awareness. The original Chinese text points out that ‘by observing the way gatherings evolve, we can perceive the inner tendencies of heaven and earth and of all things.’
Well then.
That almost makes going to a family reunion sound appealing.
We can’t individuate – or become more whole – on our own.
We can do this when attuning ourselves to the energy of the group consciousness without simultaneously being swept up in it. I like how Jungian analyst and psychiatrist Ashok Bedi describes this as “caring detachment:”
Caring detachment comes from living life fully, not from avoiding it. The caringly detached person is a very active participant in the affairs of self, family, community, and the spirit, yet detached from the outcome of his or her endeavors. Work and life then become God’s work, not a personal quest.
Path to the Soul by Ashok Bedi, M.D.
Strengthening the groups we are in, and being unattached to the outcomes, is a practical way to experience that ancient concept of “as above, so below.” Or, as Marion Woodman said, “The deeper you go into your uniquness the more you are connected to everybody else. At the profoundest soul level we are one.”
