996997 · 10.1.2.3.4.5Hexagram 10

Becoming real.

Line image

Here, the only yin or active line is in the place of the outer world (line 3). Our response shown by line 4 is inactive which both means that we are not manipulating it and that we are not very aware of its nature. This unawareness is accentuated by the other yang lines in the top half of the hexagram to make a situation where we have to learn by experience of what happens, to handle the unexpected. The common name for the hexagram are “treading” and “conduct”.

Trigram image

In this flow the life force is tentative (Tui), our activity hesitant (Li), and our personality reactions are structured (Sun); so we are using our previously acquired experience to deal with new forms of experience and so we treat warily. This is an outer learning tao and the inner being (Ch’ien) is not affected.

The Chinese Oracle

Treading upon the tail of the tiger.
It does not bite him. Success.

Comments

Walking into new situations. Wondering if it will turn out all right. All this is necessary to gain outer experience, and it is only by treading on the tiger’s tail that we can discover that it does not bite us. Without risk there is no success, everything is a foregone conclusion; so outer success is here as part and parcel of risk, not because in all cases we shall achieve it. Our personal self has success anyway because it increases its experience.

Manifestations

The pattern
Life force shines through,
linking the outer with inner.
For humans
A knowing of inner knowing
gives a realization.
Making this firm in ourselves
increases potential.
Each realization takes a liberty
with the reality of the one,
but is also a link with it.
In nature
The fire of heaven
draws the water in the earth.
In forms we make
To enter where power is
can easily be confused
with being that power.
To enter gently is not dangerous.

Changing Lines

Line 1 goes yin

life force shows more change

The top three lines of the hexagram, being yang, show that our responses are withheld, so this return of activity in the emerging life force is not our anticipation but the natural turn of events.

The Chinese Image
Simple energy.
going forward blamelessly.

Line 2 goes yin

intuitive feeling more active

Here we open our awareness to a quiet inner energy (line 1), we feel quiet and in tune with the tao. In general it is more difficult for our acutely identified form of identity to feel something inactive, for the quieter it gets the less there is for identity to do, but here it is beneficial to learn about this quietness and to persevere with these feelings.

The Chinese Image
Treading a smooth level path.
A dark man perseveres and brings good fortune.

In an inner interpretation the dark man is an unconscious element in us, a feeling (as this is the line of feeling) that has not been defined in consciousness.

Line 3 goes yang

outer world changes less

The way in which we are ignorant of outer activity in this tao (line 4 is yang) leads to its decrease; in a sense, we are controlling outer activity and miss-seeing the tao, which is to learn from the tao rather than manipulate it. We may think that we are awake but our ignorance makes it more like dream-walking and this not-quite-seeing in the outer world leads to mistaking our situation; we learn, but through making mistakes.

The Chinese Image
With one eye he can still see.
With one leg he can still walk.
He treads upon the tail of the tiger and it bites him.
Warriors act thus in service of their overlord.

This is symbolic of identity out there on the battlefield of the outer world to learn the lessons needed by his greater self (the overlord). In this greater sense our errors are inevitable and so no error at all.

Line 4 goes yin

accepting the outer state more

In this tao the outer state has the only manifest activity. As we become more absorbed in outer activity we lose sight within (insight) and are liable to lose contact with the tao. The third line is yin and to accept the natural activity of the tao is in keeping with it, but to accept it as _our_ activity is to lose the experience that the tao can give us.

The Chinese Image
Great caution is required when treading on the tiger’s tail but the outcome (of treading with caution) is fortunate.

The distinction between action and self-involved action is not always easy to make while we are in activity; here we need the caution.

Line 5 goes yin

more awareness of intuition

Our direct knowing is inactive in this tao and being aware of this quietness is different to being involved in it and making it our way of being; there is no dividing line to make this difference distinct so we need to be very wary of being absorbed in the quietness until we lose the witnessing of events and also of stimulating feeling into activity.

The Chinese Image
Treading with care and attention to danger. There may be trouble.

The trouble would arise if we were not attentive enough and think we were being bold or if we become afraid and fail to tread at all.

Line 6 goes yin

our inner being accepts more

Inner change is not yet manifesting in this tao, so it is about being with quietness inside and activity outside. In this moving line we accept learning this by a balance of witnessing with participation which provides a very effective living technique. The balance is dynamic, it is constantly modified and never made into rules to live by. This becomes the art of riding life, responding to its every movement yet never falling into the role of mastering it.

The Chinese Image
Watch your conduct and be alert to signs and great good fortune will follow.

Riding life, never adrift and never entangled is the greatest good fortune.

Secondary HexagramHexagram 52

A wider view.

Line image

In this structure neither the inner (lines 1 and 6) nor the outer (lines 3 and 4) have activity with acceptance; feeling (lines 2 and 5) becomes the dominant mode, it is the function linking the inner and outer and the primary distinguisher of the life force. We find ourselves feeling without acting inside or outside. The common name of the hexagram is “keeping still” or “contemplation”.

Trigram image

As the life force emerges it tends to become still (Kên) so there is little outer activity (K’an). This stillness causes activity of the identified self (Chên) which itself seeks stillness (Kên). So the flow of the tao is one that causes great change in our personal self, an activity directed at achieving stillness. This is a reversal of the role identity has in its growth phase which has been about action outside in which we identified ourselves and so built our point of view in reality. Here we internalize the identity we have grown, we seek that inner space which is neither identified outside nor inside, where we can be ourselves without noticing it.

The Chinese Oracle

Stillness.
Keeping the back so still
there is no feeling of body.
Walking in the courtyard
he does not see the people.
No error.

Comments

Stillness relates to the idea of an unmoving central core like the centre of a rotating wheel which does not move but is the essential reference point of movement. It is an element in activity which we cannot distinguish and tend to see as unreal. Our backbone is such a reference point for our body, if no message goes out from it no movement arises. The courtyard surrounds the house; instructions from the house cause activity in the courtyard; here we walk in the courtyard, our being is in the place of activity, but we see no people which is to say that we have no concern about what goes on there. It is no error to be with activity while being innerly still; it is the act of dynamic relaxation and perfect poise.

Manifestations

The pattern
Seeking to return
to a peak once known.
The completion
that contains the beginning.
The start that is the end.
For humans
Resisting movement
he avoids beginnings.
Knowing that in the beginning
there was no end
he seeks no end.
Thereby he arrives
at a wider beginning.
In nature
The low reaches upward.
The confines seek to spread.
The fruit of the seed
seeks to become seed.
In forms we make
Cycles begin and end.
Their beginning and ending
has no ending
and no beginning.
This has the form
of encompassing a wider view.

Changing Lines

Line 1 goes yang

life force shows less change

The emerging life force is the source of outer activity, so here we are stilling the beginning of movement. If we continue this throughout the flow, inner and outer, we will remain with our centre.

The Chinese Image
Keeping the toes still.
No error.
Continuance in the way
brings good fortune.

The toes lead the body when we walk, so this stilling of the toes is the beginning of keeping still, we stop the first part to move. This is the way to create stillness, right at the beginning before movement actually starts, so continuing in the way brings good fortune and there is no error.

Line 2 goes yang

intuitive feeling less active

When experience comes to us we taste it with our feeling and then we follow this with decisions about how to behave in our circumstances. Here the stilling effect of the tao is in our feeling so that our usual flow or zest for life lessens; this is only a problem if we resist being still.

The Chinese Image
Keeping the calves still.
He is sad;
cannot assist the one he follows.

The calf muscles lift the body so that we fall into the next step; keeping them still we take no step. If we, identified self, follow something we cannot be still, we cannot assist the stillness by doing something.

Line 3 goes yin

outer world changes more

Here we act out in the tao of keeping still, we are using outside means, outside ideas, to create stillness. When we do this it is like damming a stream; the flow is from inner to outer so outside action cannot create stillness except by restricting some flow.

The Chinese Image
Keeping the loins still.
Stiffening the sacrum.
The heart suffocates.

In our animal world the prime life priority is of the species, a great identity of which all its members are a part. Here we keep the loins still and sacrum stiff and this is the cradle of our reproduction; we stop the flow the “heart” creates. So our way of trying to create stillness from the outside prevents manifestation, the flow of life, and misunderstands stillness; stillness has no wish to move.

Line 4 goes yang

accepting the outer state less

Here we are no longer concerned about outer stillness, we just allow it to be still.

The Chinese Image
Keeping the body still.
No error.

It is the whole body, not a part, that we keep still. If we concentrate on keeping this or that part still the other parts will move unnoticed by us. It is the whole that is still when stillness is achieved.

Line 5 goes yang

less awareness of intuition

Our intuitive feeling is active in this tao. Here we, as identity, are less involved in these feelings so we do not project them on to our circumstances. We project when we express what we feel about things.

The Chinese Image
Keeping the jaws still.
Words are in order.
Regret disappears.

The words are not said, yet they are in order. Our words are the outflow of our meaning and if our meaning is in perfect order it cannot be said—we only speak out of incompleteness, then there is something to be said. Here there is no care or regret because there is nothing left over, nothing to be said.

Line 6 goes yin

our inner being accepts more

When we accept stillness into our inner being the next expression of that being is perfectly still although in activity.

The Chinese Image
The most genuine stillness.
Good fortune.
Nuclear HexagramHexagram 37

Nourishing relationships.

Line image

The activity here is in our intuitive feeling (line 2) and acceptance of an inactive outer world (line 4), so spontaneous feeling will be evident and it will be somewhat enclosed or protected. The common name of the hexagram is “the family” and it may refer to an enclosed unit of the external family or to our internal unit of different identifying parts in our personal self.

Trigram image

In the trigrams forming “the family” it is not surprising to find Li and K’an alternating and maturing at the top in Sun (Li is elemental female surrounded by elemental male and K’an is the converse). The energy flow is hesitant and with doubt as different elements try to merge together while keeping their separate identities, eventually maturing into a structure as a family does and also as our personal identity does.

The Chinese Oracle

The family.
The importance of the woman develops.

Comments

The central value of the female element is both growing and causing development in the whole, the family. It is the female attributes that become important, the feeling mode that creates the family as a unit, although of course the wife is central in the family also.

Manifestations

The pattern
Opposites alternate in harmony,
gently maturing.
For humans
The taming of fire made home.
The fire of opposites dancing together
becomes life rhythm.
The young and hesitant grow mature.
The fluid pattern of family life
grows firm, even rigid.
In nature
Sun and rain.
nature grows and ripens.
In forms we make
The ordering of things
so each plays its part
establishes order in the whole.

Changing Lines

Line 1 goes yin

life force shows more change

Activity from within is the essence and harmony in relationship, it comes from the shared reality and so is not in contest. Here it is activity that is shared and so helps to develop relationship.

The Chinese Image
The family is enclosed (regulated).
Regret disappears.

Enclosure separates the unit from the “other”, it creates the unit. The search for “the other” is satisfied so regret disappears in the relationship of complementary parts.

Line 2 goes yang

intuitive feeling less active

We are not looking for new feeling from the life force, not making feeling out of it but attending to daily matters.

The Chinese Image
She does not attend to separate matters
but to the preparation of food.
Continuance in this brings good fortune.

If intuitive feeling is active it is interpreting the life force to guide the growth of identity but here identity has all it requires within it (within the family) and attending to this brings the good fortune.

Line 3 goes yin

outer world changes more

Forming the whole, whether in family or personal self, requires activity to be within an enclosed structure. Here the activity tends to go outside.

The Chinese Image
When family members are at variance the confrontation may bring regret and danger but then good fortune.
If the woman and children do not take this seriously there is regret.

Confrontation comes when partners in relationship strengthen their separate role and relate outside. Only the separate can relate yet relating brings separate parts together, so confrontation is a basic need in relating; if, however, feeling does not take this fact seriously the structure of relationship is no longer enclosed and for the “family” this causes regret.

Line 4 goes yang

accepting the outer state less

Here we are becoming less concerned with a lack of outer activity, we are not looking for nourishment there because it already exists inside. This is to be centred.

The Chinese Image
Enriching the family.
Great good fortune.

The enrichment is from turning inwards so it is not about external wealth but the flow of internal relationships in feeling.

Line 5 goes yin

more awareness of intuition

Our intuitive feeling attracts our attention. There is a looking around for new identification which is threatening to the family.

The Chinese Image
The king’s influence comes to his family.
Do not be troubled.
Good fortune.

The king rules and holds the kingdom together, so here the worry of independent parts breaking up the unit of interrelationship is unfounded.

Line 6 goes yin

our inner being accepts more

The life force emerging into relationship (line 1) is yang, which is to say undefined energy, and here we are trusting in this, basing our being upon it. We trust the bonds which make the parts whole without questioning how or why, which lays the foundation for sound sharing of outer experience and makes it possible to share within ourself. It is necessary for sharing parts to recognize their common root—their part in it.

The Chinese Image
Sincerity.
Arrayed like a king.
Good fortune in the end.

Sincerity being within the family it grows an identity, we identify within it, and this is like a king because it rules the way we are; when the parts identify in the whole (in this case the family) they no longer need to be stating their separateness and this is the good fortune at the end of the formation of the family.