Consider this scene.

I should use Fight Club scenes more to demonstrate any topic I want get into, just to prove it can be done. Hold on that thought about letting go of control.

Meanwhile... Over the past years I would occasionally sit through lectures (this and this) on I-Ching when the mood calls for it.

I've brought up I-Ching before but didn't give it real substance.

I-Ching is hugely inaccessible as a domain; it's deemed old-fashioned in the worst way possible. The fact that it started out a fortune-telling tool doesn't lend it credence.

His Dark Materials did demonstrate the use of it through the character Mary Malone. Juxtaposing it the Golden Compass is brilliant.

The first problem is describing what the hell is I-Ching. It's like a book that fit no shelf in a book store and therefore relegated to "fortune telling". If it's invented today it would gain zero word-of-mouth traction.

Without going into the long history, I-Ching is a psycho-technology for bringing out hidden inner voices of a person. Consider it a Rorschach test but on a conceptual level, much denser and carries a value system. That's true for me, you probably won't find that definition from another man.

The typical use of it would start with a tricky situation given by the user. With the element of randomness, I-Ching would proceed to give a symbolic interpretation of the situation. You as a user would have to apply your symbolic reasoning to what is said.

So why is this appealing? On a simple level, I-Ching acts as a mentor I never had. On a life-approach level, I-Ching is a crutch in the art of letting go of control.

In any given life path, it will take awhile for a person to come to terms with the fact that life is largely luck-driven. When that realization comes, there are two choices: fight it or surrender.

This is not a false choice. You could do both at the same time. It's also a good thing to be given this choice because before there is one, there was only the option of fighting-it.

Sometimes when you come to a point where everything is out of your control or you've sufficiently detached from the outcome, letting go and surrendering to luck make a good option.

The process of letting the chips fall where they may though can be discomforting. That's where I-Ching comes in to say whatever it has to say.

There is freedom in surrendering to luck. To be liberated from rigid values, outcomes and unexamined ideals.

But freedom needs to be earned. The price to pay are discipline and mastery of reason.

With them, freedom becomes a cohesive dance.

Without them, unrestrained freedom is only good for making chaos-monkey.