Repose in this tao means awaiting a new cycle of activity with calm confidence, but here in this moving line the life force produces inactivity that we do not like (line 6 is accepting activity).

Because we do not like the inactivity of this moment we become busy about it. The misfortune is that we miss the experience of peace in the present and are ill-prepared for the next movement of the life force.

As we become less aware of what our intuitive feelings are doing we are more likely to be unaware when there is change, when something new arises, so we are more likely to carry on with old feelings when they have lost their vitality.

This applies to the feelings, but physical illness often accompanies our identifying with stale feelings over a long period.

When we lose interest in a transition while it is happening to us we lose touch with the flow and become confused.

The transition is in us, it happens despite the confusion of identity because identity is not its cause but is what is being affected. As the transition completes itself we see more clearly again.

When we are fully accepting our situation this acceptance remains even when there is no activity; identity is naturally activity-seeking so accepting inactivity involves a faith that activity will return.

We feel the movement of inner energies by direct experience of intuitive feeling, so for this feeling to become more active is a natural outcome of the energies ascending within us.

To be in our feelings is to be genuinely involved, and the sacrifice in which we are involved is of the ownership of the ascent; we recognize that it is the life force which ascends and this is no error.

When ascending energy reaches outer action there is no longer any doubt even in a doubting mind, for there it is for all to see.

The life force moves outwards into the world and spreads out there. When this happens we in identity have a feeling of release, of enlargement we sometimes call our success; even if we do think of it in this narrow way we move with the life force.

When we concern ourselves less with an outer experience which is inactive (line 3 is yang) we are taking it as the manifestation of the life force and not our own creation. In this way we offer something to the whole by sacrificing our attachment.

Mount Chi was in the homeland of King Wên, who is reputed to have put the Chinese oracle images in their present form. If King Wên sacrificed up mount Chi it was on the height of his homeland; innerly the height of our homeland is our mind reality, our separated position or point of view, and giving up our separateness is our ultimate sacrifice and good fortune.

Here we no longer accept the absence of interpretation of the life force (the yang line 2), but the energy cannot ascend unchanged if we interpret it so the ascent is checked.

It is in steps if we do not continue in the way without stopping, as in the case of this line.

When we try to fix our reality, narrow it to something that we can grasp, we feel more secure in our identity but we become more unaware of our actual situation (the movement of the life force).

The energy of the life force ascends in us but we are not aware of it now so it is “dark”.

When the life force is inactive less activity is possible, especially when we are in the tao of obstruction.

Remaining involves being still, being alert, being aware; more being, less doing.

The natural reaction of feeling to troubled times is to become less sensitive; it is an instinctive move to balance sensitivity with aggravating circumstance.

The minister supplies the king with advice and information, as feeling does for identifying. Feeling is suffering under the stress of our circumstances but this is not a fault in the way we feel.

Here we act out to overcome our frustration although there is no path there; our objectives cannot be reached so we will then give up the attempt.

The unflowing state of outer action appears to us to be an obstruction. By becoming less involved in this we can be more aware of what is actually going on around us.

Connecting things together is a state of awareness, not of outer activity; here we try to understand our situation instead of battling against it.

The obstruction is so great that we turn to our intuitive feeling, which we have been ignoring.

Feeling our circumstances helps as a friend would, be relating innerly. Our ignorance of this feeling was part of the obstruction so this improves matters.

The obstruction in this tao is about our not being able to be still nor to act. Here our inner being becomes still, which is helpful.

Remaining is also keeping still and to see the great man is to see widely, not narrowing our view by choice; this is the good fortune.