Feeling the peace of the life force brings us to peace with ourselves; when at peace we have enough space to feel the unpeacefulness of others and may be tempted to withdraw with our peaceful feelings to guard them from the stresses around us. Feeling, however, exists only in relationship with something so this protection is counter-productive. Our feeling of peace should remain in contact, should be like a peaceful lake in the middle of a teeming forest.

It requires great fortitude to remain in peace amongst narrow attitudes, to achieve without knowing how (for if we know how, we have projected our own narrow attitudes), to stay in relationship when it threatens our peace, and so neither leave nor become entangled.

All the cycles of our experience have active and inactive phases; we have more difficulty in feeling at peace while being active. This dynamic peace is about harmony, like an orchestra, requiring full acceptance of the whole.

To be able to remain at peace through all the phases of the cycle of experience requires persistence, but this success is a great blessing.

This tao is at peace because of its balance (the silence of the lower half is balanced by the acceptance of the upper half). Here in this moving line our inner being rejects the silence and the balance is upset. There is nothing to do about it other than experience what we are doing and thereby strengthen the links between our inner and outer being.

Balance is the maintenance of a separation like the height of a wall and the moat, when balance is lost, the opposites come together. Nothing can be done but experience this.

The stress in this tao is created by the force of the life energy from the inner acting upon rigid form in our lives (in ourselves). Here the activity is lessened and the stress limited.

This is protection by the inner being, rushes are put under something to soften the contact, they are white because there is no selection in this action (white light is all-coloured light).

Here the rigidity itself is loosening, we are starting to feel the life force again and this is the beginning of new feeling.

The old finds a way to flow again, and it was the lack of flow that caused the excess of pressure.

In this tao identity has excessively structured duality; to act out from this projects the stress into our circumstances.

The ridgepole giving way is like our giving out the stress from within us, we give way to it and the consequences to our environment are unfortunate.

What we are accepting here in this moving line is the inactivity of our outer world, so there is less stress because we are not struggling with our rigidity. This does not change the rigidity but makes it more manageable and may mask the basic problem.

Reliance on masking the stresses we have would be a weak support.

Becoming aware of intuitive feeling that is inactive is to be more aware but not to have more feeling.

This is widening awareness, opening up, flowering; then old feeling (from memory) comes to thought, to consciousness. These do not change things, the flowering does not change the tree and the old woman cannot have children, in other words there is no new growth.

Here we give up the struggle and become unaware of the activity pushing us towards change. When we become unaware of forces they overtake us.

To give way to the flow is no error, only uncomfortable; it overcomes the rigidity and so changes us.

A change to greater activity of the life force cannot be fully used in this tao where we are without a feeling of it and not identifying in outer action.

She marries but not fully, he can walk but not fully; it is better to have this partial movement than none, it is better to participate in what is on offer than to live in our images of what ought to be on offer.

As the emerging life force is tending to become active in this tao (the trigram Tui) and everything is slow in our outer world, it is natural for our feelings towards activity to turn to this line which feels the life force. Feeling seeks the “other”, something to feel, but in these circumstances there is nothing available so we can only feel our own responses.

Feeling “looks” both inwards and outwards, but here vision is only on offer inwards so continuing in this is the way to proceed.

We do not properly take part in the outer activity of this tao; we long to share but we cannot (sometimes dare not) give ourselves up to it. When the activity decreases we are able to take some part in it, an entrance into a world we wish to share.

A servant does not participate, a concubine does; a servant has separate quarters, a concubine co-inhabits. Here we become a participator, we enter the world of others and our energies have some outlet.

In this moving line we are involved, we are interested or even dedicated to becoming involved; but this tao is a result of a long time of denial of outer flow and of acceptance of inner inactivity, so becoming interested in feelings of flow does not cause a torrent of activity, it prepares for movement.

In this tao we have been accepting that feeling is inactive; here we no longer accept this and so create a mind-feeling, a feeling stimulated by mind rather than the life force.

Our feeling is, in this symbol, the serving maid of our identifying, supplying the experience that is then identified, and this moving line 5 is about what identity does with feeling, how it dresses it up. The emperor is the ruler and our ruler in identity is the identifying process; this dresses up the experience in a way that is less beautiful than its original natural self. But the moon is nearly full, the growth of the feeling influence is waxing and about to reach its full radiance, so this opening to feeling will allow natural feeling to show itself again and this is good fortune.

Here we cease to accept the life force as it emerges into manifestation and act as though we could create activity; but the life force is not active so our actions become gestures only.

In both these images the action of the person is empty, nothing in the basket and no blood in the sheep. Whether we feel (the woman) or try to make identifying nourishment for identity (the man) there is nothing there and no direction we take, no action we make, will produce the result we desire at present. It is something to learn that we are not the creators.