PG18 post today. Well, who under the age of 21 learns BaZi anyway?

Now you might ask – what is mindf**k?

Well Urban Dictionary has one set of definitions but I think it’s one of those very open to debate terms.  quite like “a concept or argument which is fraught with contradictions, and is used as a control tool”. Wiktionary puts it more tastefully: “Something that intentionally destabilizes, confuses or manipulates the mind of another person.”

From motivateurself.wordpress.com

My definition of mindf**k is when the universe (or in this case, your BaZi chart) plays mind games with you. Which really means, you play mindgames with yourself.

How sick is that?

Mindf**k is what happens in the following scenarios:

1. You know what you are SUPPOSED TO DO. (also known as ‘The Answer’) But you hate that you have to do it. As a result, you constantly churn between a state of self-doubt and self-confidence, between confident knowing, and insecure not knowing.
2. You know the situation that you are about to go into will not have a good outcome. Your BRAIN tells you this. But the other part of your body (heart or the 卯 or 酉 depending on your gender) tells you to do otherwise. The result, you get into something that you know will never work out, but you can’t seem to stop yourself anyway.

Mindf**k is in essence, intellectualised hand-wringing. It almost always never involves stupidity. It almost always involves intelligence. And emotions. And it almost always certainly involves doing something destructive to yourself but which you have convinced yourself is otherwise.

Why is mindf**k important in the world of BaZi? Because there are many instances wherein a particular interaction appears in the chart, and the outcome of that interaction is actually nothing more than mindf**k.

YOU

vs

YOU.

Mindf**k is the worst kind of problem to deal with. Because well, it’s all mental. It doesn’t involve actual action a person can take, so much as making them change the way they think or perceive something. It involves forcing the person to accept the reality of the situation, and making a practical choice rather than what is the emotionally satisfying yet almost certainly also emotionally destructive path. What sucks about mindf**k is that it is not easy to overcome, and often involves a lot of circularity of thinking. The person thinks, and then ponders, and then constantly seeks validation, but then is uncertain even when they have received that validation. When they are given a clear path, they fight against that path because something doesn’t feel right (read: they didn’t LIKE that choice).

Mindf**k scenarios usually involve the Resource Stars because these are the Stars that govern thinking and feelings, as well as decision-making ability.  Typically when you see a Punishment or Destruction that involves a Resource Star, you can bet there will be some serious mindf**k that is the root cause of the person’s problems. To then determine what is the subject matter of the mindf**k, you just look at the Star that the Resource Star is interacting with.

Eg: Bing Zi 丙 子  Day Master, encountering a Mao 卯  in the Year. This creates an Uncivilised Punishment with the Spouse Star (Zi 子 ) and involving the Resource Star (Yi 乙 Wood inside Mao). Since it involves thinking (Resource Star) and husband or boyfriend (Spouse Star), the simplified interpretation is that there will be a mindf**k scenario emerging, that involves a romantic relationship (remember, Peach Blossom involved).

The mindf**k effect is usually higher with an Indirect Resource Star because Indirect Resource is the Star that governs paranoia, wild and unorthodox thoughts and of course, unconventional thinking.  But you can still get it of course with the Direct Resource Star.

Mindf**k effect can also occur when the Stars are in a Combination-Destruction relationship which of course, only occurs with two branches:

Eg: Ding Hai 丁 亥 Day Master  (Female) in a Tiger 寅 Year like 2010. There is a combination-destruction involving the Spouse Star (亥 Hai) and the Resource Star (寅 Yin). Now, you could say that the woman’s husband and her mother don’t get along with each other. OR, if the woman is single, you could say, she has issues making up her mind regarding a prospective Spouse or BF that comes along, eventhough she really wants to get married (effect of the Combo).

As I mentioned above, mindf**k is hard to deal with. A consultant can only do so much. And because the interaction occurs in the chart, the thoughts will gravitate in that direction. As such, the challenge is to redirect the person productively and get them to listen to the right voice, amidst the cacophony of voices.

Alternatively, tell them that mindf**k is part of life, and that since it is inevitable, let it happen. BUT, put a timer on it. Allow yourself only a limited period of time to agonise, hand-wring and be insufferable.

The greatest cure for mindf**k is maybe MOVE ON.

Today’s blog post inspired by that movie, Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist (which I have never seen – i just like the title)

It sounds corny but whenever I think about the songs that really uplift and make me feel better, I realise they have a theme.

They always have something to do with my Useful God (which is Bing btw).

Here are some of the songs that I totally and absolutely LOVE and which always give me a little buzz, when I’m down.

Sunny by Boney M

Walking on Sunshine by Katrina and the Waves.

Smile by Uncle Kracker looks like the sun right?

Through the Rain by Mariah Carey

Sunshine by Gabrielle

What’s on your Infinite Playlist?

Avatar = Rob Wealth. It is after all, the ALTER EGO.

The Tiger Month is finally over (we officially move in to Rabbit today) and I for one am glad to see it go.

I’ve been hearing a number of reports about a tough month from a number of people (and these are from individuals who’s charts contain Tiger, but also some who’s charts don’t contain Tiger) – many of the challenges are the equivalent of “shit hitting the fan” for lack of a better word.

Note: a number of the charts of individuals who have had a challenging month appear to involve either the Dragon (interacts with Ox) or Tiger/Pig. Interesting.

My fellow BaZi consultant at the Academy, Chan Chi Tim, was just commenting to me at the start of the month that the Tiger month this year is deceptive. Conventionally, we regard the energies of the year as coming into fore as the old year ends, and the new year starts to get closer. And typically, the energies of that particular year will PEAK the closer we are to the month which shares the Branch of the Year (and also which Clashes, Harms, Destroys the Year).

So the theory is that as we approached February 2010, and 2010 being 庚 寅 that logically, we would feel the breath of the Tiger, and the tail of the Ox would be perhaps at best a mere wispy flick.

It however has not turned out to be the case. Much of the issues that the people I know have faced, and which I myself have had to deal with this month, seem to have elements of Ox, but also Tiger. It’s a bit of a Hybrid month if you like.

(Ox 丑 and Tiger 寅 have a special relationship as well so perhaps that’s also of significance)

Ox in the sense that many of the problems that have arisen are of sort of a culmination of obstacles and problems faced in 2009 己 丑 (the year of Poop as I like to think of it). In other words, challenges related for example to delay, slowness or just downright stubborn obstacles/blocks that won’t get out of the way that arose in 2009, achieve resolution but with the sort of ‘crap hits the fan’ manner.

I cannot think of a better way to describe it that essentially, imagine unblocking a toilet, but blowing poop all over the walls in order to do so.

The channel has been cleared, but there’s also the messy problem of brown goo over the walls, and floor and of course oneself.

It is in some respects, a kind of ‘good’ version of excrement hitting the fan. If a good version can even exist of something like that.

Now, the overlap of Ox into the Tiger year involves something akin to a Harm – 庚 寅 is in essence, 申 － 寅 which is not just horrible and unpleasant because it’s hard vs hard, tough vs tough, but involves a sense of having been hit by a truck that came from nowhere. And because the arbitrating element is Water, emotions are invariably involved (which brings the Pig into play – Destruction now!) and become part of the equation.

Sidenote: wonder if this has any implication on why we’ve had Earthquakes this month,and Tsunami scares, when technically in Tiger, Water-related disasters shouldn’t really be the order of the day since the year lacks Water. But then again, this is the month of 戊 寅 which is earth being uprooted, and the Tiger is strong this month…although I sense the tail of the Ox is not entirely without involvement since 2009 did see a large number of Earth related disasters.

In hindsight, that’s a very good summary of the month I know a number of people have experienced. The air has been cleared, but one is left crying out of frustration because you’ve now got poop all over yourself. There is resolution and finality, there is conclusion, but the conclusion well – stinks. Or sucks.

The technical conclusion here is perhaps this: because the Ox year’s energies peaked in the Ox month of 2010 (as opposed to the Ox month of 2009, which thus lulled us into a false sense of comfort and security after the crap of 2008 – think about how the financial crisis unfolded and continues to unfold), and the energies of the 2010 Tiger are growing in strength in the Tiger month of 2010, there’s a clashing and mixing of the energies if you like.

And both these energies are very different – you have the Ox, which is smothering, passive-aggressive, Ultra Yin, death by quicksand and very still, and then you have Tiger, which is Sha driven (Geng on top, and Geng is the only one of the 10 Day Masters which ‘carries Sha’), aggressive, stubborn (both Geng and Jia are the generally obstinate DMs) and Ultra Yang in nature, and destructive.

Hmm, come to think of it, it is kinda like stucking a plunger into the toilet, and end up with crap all over the walls.

What this means is also that we may get the same ‘crossover’ effect at the end of 2010-2011 because those who have noticed the sequence of the Monthly Pillars for 2010 will see that we are effectively repeating on a monthly basis, the last 10 years worth of Pillars.

We will see a Ji Chou in Jan 2011. And a Geng Yin in Feb 2011. (and FUN, the month will Fu Yin the year in March 2011).

Further, this also suggests that the energies of the Tiger potentially have not peaked in February 2010, but will actually peak closer to February 2011. And because of the connected nature of Geng Yin to Xin Mao (it’s the same idea, just repeated in a more insidious fashion), we will see a lot of interplay of energies in the first three months of 2011.

In any case, hopefully this is truly the END OF OX. And perhaps some peace and uneventful quiet until we at least get to Monkey month.