Daily Signet

The I Ching reveals that great ideas are not merely bright lightbulbs that go off in our heads occasionally, providing us with new efficiencies, streamlined methods, and quality assurances. Rather, created under yang, the eternal masculine principle, great ideas are regenerative; they shock us out of puny thinking and feeling, they point to the greatness around us in nature and the universe, as well as the potential greatness slumbering within each. Great ideas under yang confront us with our own profound ignorance and egoism and reveal that we are here to create new beauty, new life. These visions under yang are not the same as sweet dreams; they are wrought with danger, for as the Taoists tell us—heaven creates its ideas under the dragons, the unremitting energy, the seasons of sword and arrow, the fires of yang. Yet, without the baptism of fire, great ideas are like dry winds and consume with no boon. The I Ching says: “The secret of tao in this world of the mutable—the realm of yang—is to keep the changes in motion in such a manner that an unbroken coherence is maintained. He who succeeds in endowing his work with this regenerative power creates something organic, and the thing so created is enduring.”

Teri Martin                                                                                                                          

On This Day…

Independence Day for the United States

St. Elizabeth of Portugal: born in 1271 in Spain, became queen of Portugal and, when widowed, a Franciscan tertiary who cared for the poor and was official negotiator to prevent war between Castile and Portugal