Amongst the forces acting upon the emerging life force is our selection of what we will recognize. In this tao we, as identity, are not recognizing emerging activity and this makes it inactive for us in this moving line. This selection of the particular from the whole is the natural course of growing identity but as it matures experience is gathered into its inner being and, if it remains open, the outer and inner resonate as one.

The superior man is one who experiences more widely, which is also less selectively.

Having a less active feeling about the emerging life force narrows what we can see of it; in this tao it is the best that feeling can do.

The door crack is the narrowing of our viewpoint by the lessening of feeling, symbolically female and hence the woman. Open feeling is at a disadvantage when identity is withdrawn from it (line 5) and especially in this tao of stillness and review.

Less outer activity tends to balance our outer-inner position and so is in keeping with the tao. By acting out less, we see more of what is going on around us.

This is an outer line and we vary our action according to changes in outer circumstances rather than allowing ourselves to be carried by the momentum of our involvements.

Feeling is of the life force and of its movements which are the tao, so the movement of this line corrects the imbalance that the hexagram pictures and brings our separated parts together.

Becoming aware of our intuitive feelings gives awareness of the flow of the life energy which is the “course of his life”. It is the superior man who does this because it is a widening view.

If the life force appears to falter here it is a temporary swing; gathering together is the prevailing movement and it will certainly manifest itself. If we feel insecure due to lack of present support we can gain confidence by looking overall, where gathering together has strength and confidence.

Gathering together has its ups and downs and if we have our being too acutely in the present this appears as gathering and scattering.

The change occurring in us is an inner gathering together and feeling turns inwards and becomes quiet. This moves with the tao, we await the change, we nurture it, but do not try to distinguish it even with feeling—we are allowing it to be itself.

Allowing involves the sacrifice of separate will, without this sacrifice feeling remains a feeling “about” experience and not a feeling from within it.

Although gathering together is internal, identity still needs a flow and action itself is not against the tao; a rhythm of activity, little things, keeps structure in place and feelings secure. Here we need to act but not to focus our being in the act.

The regret comes from the focusing, for the activity is a necessary part of our situation but will not carry our life flow.

Our outer reality (line 3) is in an active state and by identifying in this while the inner strength is gathering together we interfere less with the process; also we are then in the right place when the new energy is manifest.

Here we are identifying with active feeling which centres identity and gathers its elements together.

The regret we have is that some parts are unworthy, untrustworthy, wrong. Without acceptance of these parts we cannot be gathered together.

Our being is now less involved in the process of gathering together. We are not yet ready to accept the consequences of sacrificing our separateness (or what we think are the consequences).

It is not an error to continue in identity, it only means that we are not experienced enough yet to leave it; despite its problematic nature, its sighs and tears, we choose it.

Because our outer identifications are not being accepted by our inner self, the source, the emerging life force, withers away.

The bed is where we enter the great unknown and sleep. Here the leg of the bed breaks, which is its connection with the rest of reality. Our identifications, our conscious interests, are somehow at variance with the way or out of tune with our circumstances, too narrowly based.

Here we become separate from the flow by ceasing to feel it. Feeling is our meeting with the flow so if we lose feeling in this tao we do not identify in the whole but only in the outer part.

Here it is the bed frame, its structure, that comes apart. Our feeling of the life force is the base construction of our world reality; without a feeling of manifesting whole reality, our personal reality becomes isolated fragments. This feeling of whole reality we are lacking is the continuance in the way of the great tao.

By decreasing outer activity we become more in tune with our inner being which has rejected our identifications out in the world.

All our identifications are out there in the world, and here we discard them. In this way we separate ourselves from the factors that divided us.

The most obvious danger in this tao about how we identify is our becoming too externalized and here we seem to realize this and cut off our involvement outside. As our being is at present concentrated in identifying, however, this now slips into identifying the boundary of the inner and outer self.

The surface of the bed is the layer or skin between the outer reality—where we (identity) lie—and the inner; if consciousness penetrates this boundary it damages the function of identity in manifestation.

In this tao our identifying leads us astray and our intuitive feeling which is the basis of our identifying is rejected by our inner being. Here our identity gives up following the feeling, seeing it as being in error.

Fish are often used to symbolize our identifications (which nourish identity) in the uncharted waters of the whole reality. Here is a string of fishes, on a common thread and the fish are caught, so our identifications threaded together are captured. A court is where the ruler is ruling, and the ruler of identity is the identifying process, so here this act of catching identifications brings favour and advantage in every way.

Here is a change in the separation depicted by the tao. The inner self witnesses and we have a possibility of realizing the tao, the experience of our self as separate from any identification.

To see whole we have to leave what we were doing, our identifications, however incomplete they seem to be; this ripe fruit could be eaten but we leave it. Wide-seeing superior man is carried in this, and allowing ourselves to be carried in our circumstances we find that there is more order in our lives, not less; if we do not grasp at life our inner needs take care of themselves. The inferior or narrow reality of chosen identifications has no place to be after this realization, he is not needed.