Sun in Gate 44: How to Have Healthier, More Successful Relationships

The Sun has now entered into Gate 44: Alertness (Coming to Meet). 

This is the final gate in the Quarter of Duality, which we have been traveling through since the beginning of August. Purpose fulfilled through bonding. The cosmic weather has been influencing our attention towards relationships. 

(On November 6, we will transition into the Quarter of Mutation: Purpose fulfilled through transformation. The emphasis shifts towards the differentiated individual, and our unique potential for creativity and awareness.)

Gate 44 is the personnel manager with an instinctive awareness of the capabilities of others. It has a nose for people and their potential, it is alert to their patterns and how to successfully manage and manipulate them in order to ensure that its tribe stays healthy and well-resourced. It is particularly adept at managing big egos.

Gate 44 meets you and instantly it is trying to sniff out whether or not you have potential to succeed. It is trying to detect your place in the social hierarchy, so that it can effectively manage its relationship with you. 

This is a love gate. It’s the love of talent, and it says “I love you because we are successful together”. Love that creates an aura of health and success.

Success is ultimately about relationships. Remember, we’re still in the Quarter of Duality. You can be wealthy alone, but you can’t succeed alone. 

The subtext reads: “The success of any interaction is based on the absence of preconditions”.

If you have preconditions, you are not alert to what is actually happening in your life. If your mind has already determined the potential of an interaction, you are unable authentically meet the being in front of you.

And then we have the first line of the hexagram: Conditions. The first line always describes the foundation. Here it reads: “The establishment of frameworks as a result of interaction.”

When you come to meet the other with preconditions, you forfeit your ability to recognize the relational frameworks that will bring health and success. 

But when you are present to the truth of an interaction, you can then instinctively assess and skillfully establish the correct conditions for the bond to succeed. This is the key to interpersonal intelligence.

Gate 44 carries a fear of the past. It fears past failures happening again, or the past catching up with you. You’re afraid that your relationships will fail like they did in the past, you’re afraid that you’ll get fired again or fail to meet expectations. 

When you are alert to the signals your body is sending you in each moment, you can trust in your instinctive ability to avoid repeating past failures. When you’re paying attention to your mind’s fear-driven ideas about who you’d like to meet and how you’d like to meet them and the preconditions you’d like to impose on the meeting- this is when you’re ironically most vulnerable to the very thing you fear.  

And then we have the Earth in Gate 24: Return (Rationalization). 

“The natural and spontaneous process of transformation and renewal”

Your mind returns over and over again to the same thought, trying to rationalize the mysteries of life and arrive at a truly original realization about the nature of consciousness and inner truth. Gate 24 craves mutation, it longs to compose a melody that’s never been sung before, to know something nobody has ever known. 

In the not-self, your mind returns again and again and again to your preconditions, it’s driving you crazy. Stop that. What will it take for you to surrender? 

Gate 24 is deeply repetitive in nature, and benefits greatly from intentional meditative practice. If your mind has no choice but to continuously return to the same thought, perhaps you can at least try your best to consciously focus your attention on making said thought a healthy one. Instead of repeating over and over again in your head: “these are my preconditions. This is what I am afraid will happen if my preconditions are not met”- perhaps, try a mantra!

This week, pay attention to how you meet and interact with others. How present can you be?  The cosmic weather is ripe for spontaneous success, inspiration, transformation and renewal. 

Here are some questions to contemplate:

• What past failures am I afraid of repeating? 

• How might these fears be inhibiting my success? 

• What preconditions have I been trying to impose on my interactions? 

• What might it look like to surrender preconditions?