Gate 28 — The Preponderance of the Great — The transience of power and influence

Full breakdown

We're looking at the potential of awareness across all the gates of the spleen center, and I want to show you the harmonies at work here — to give you a sense that all three potentials are doing the same job, just each in its own way. We've already covered the instinctive potential (its natural flow, from gate 32 to gate 44, I'll leave for you to work through on your own), and now we move into the individual process, the Channel of Struggle, 28-38, the design of Perseverance. The Gate of the Gambler, the Preponderance of the Great. The potential here is the awareness to struggle or not to struggle. Individuality is acoustic, so this is, quite literally, the ability to respond acoustically. And in this existential response, which happens spontaneously, in the present moment, the awareness shows up as struggle or no struggle — not as transformation or no transformation. The potential for awareness here is to listen stubbornly, to keep listening to your own intuition no matter what, to be sure that by listening, you can take a risk — and that it will turn out to be the best possible choice.

All of this has to do with risk. Gate 28 represents our root fear, the fear of death. It has to be understood as the fear of whether life has any value at all. In the same way gate 32 fears that its work in this life will fail, will fall apart or be defeated, gate 28 fears that its life's path will be a failure — that its own life, and everything it's living for, has no real worth. This is one of the deepest themes of individuality: seeing whether life truly has value or not, and it all comes from right here, from gate 28.

As the subtitle of gate 32 says, the only thing that stays constant is change. The subtitle of hexagram 28 reads: the transience of power and influence. Sic transit gloria mundi. So passes worldly glory. It's the same idea. All of it has to do with evolution and change. It's an endless process. The Preponderance of the Great tells us that neither power nor influence lasts forever.