This tao is full of care for the outside world so increasing our outer activity can be rewarding if it is done with sincerity and respect for this reality.

Soft, undemanding, attending to every little detail and adorning it like dew. Perseverance in this assists everything that is there and keeps our acquisitive aspect out of the activity.

The feeling of the tao, the love of small outer reality, is now being ignored.

The caring for the gardens and hills is there (in our intuitive feeling) but what we make of it (our roll of silk) is meagre; this limits our participation but the feeling is active (line 2) so there will be joyful participation nevertheless.

When inner energy does not flow we turn to something new in our environment for comfort, stimulation, food for identity.

His desire for continuation is for this identity-feeling to continue, it requires activity, demands experience, or it fears for its validity and existence. This makes it difficult for us to follow the tao when it is inactive.

Feeling is the link between our inner and outer selves (one self in larger terms, but we feel it as two). Persisting in feeling the tao is, here, to have faith that the life force is providing the nourishment we need; this is the continuance in following the tao of which the oracle speaks.

Following the tao is choiceless and when we make no choices we cannot regret them.

Here we cannot endure the inactivity of identity so we act out. Although this gives relief of the pressure to act, the outcome has no inner meaning and so is unsatisfactory.

Even when there is no one judging us, dis-grace is a fact for we have lost our grace, we are clumsy here, not graceful.

Outer activity is potential in this tao, not manifest, but now we are concentrating on this outer place for our sense of activity; we are looking in the wrong place.

We are searching outside for what is inside, but what we seek will come from the inner, from nowhere it will seem, it does not exist out there.

Here we are not awaiting the emergence of the life force so feeling is released from being interpreted; the distinguisher or definer, on the other hand, is less able to operate.

We do not simply remain open to everything, we take attention away from feeling, this narrows conscious identity in its ability to define our circumstance but allows intuitive feeling to be itself.

If we are not accepting the active emerging life force as the source of our next activity there is a tendency to prolong our present outer situation, especially in this tao of long duration.

To insist that activity must always flow tries to replace the natural cyclic reality with an imposed linear one; we distort the cycle to get something we desire. We miss the essence of continuing inner acceptance if we do this.

When beset with polarity we are in stress, choosing yet unable to make a choice and changing our choice even before putting it into effect. Here in this line the life force becomes quiet and this gives choice a rest.

It is the life flow emerging more quietly and lessening the stress, it is not our doing and cannot possibly be an error, but when beset by choice we are always overconscious of error.

Greater activity of our intuitive feeling enables us to find direction in the life force.

Yellow is an active colour (almost in the middle of our visible spectrum), applied to an arrow which indicates a chosen direction—we have chosen an active direction; this direction is between extremes, being given as “one” which is the whole or middle way of unchoosing. This direction ends the vacillation of choice which deprived us of identifying, in the same way a fox deprives man of his nourishment (three foxes because continual change of choice was the problem).

To obtain freedom of flow identity needs to act out without identifying itself in the movement. Here in the line we seem to be confused about this and expect the life force to carry us out of stress without our taking part at all.

We want to be carried yet we do not want to let go; not allowing activity is still controlling it.

To become involved in outer activity is to make it our own; this gives entanglement, not deliverance. Only when we take ourselves out of the equation do we see that it balances.

The toes lead our steps and our steps are our personal way. The friend with trust is the life flow itself; willful activity causes the flow of circumstances to appear untrustworthy.

We are no longer trying to discern the life force and so in a tao of release we allow it to be what it will.

We cannot be released by following something, for we are attached to what we follow. It is necessary to be alone and open to be free; separating from attachment enables us to be free.

Here identity chooses not to choose, which is release as the stress was in the choice.

The hawk sits on a high wall choosing what he will catch. High up is symbolically the head and a wall is a boundary and barrier, so we have been choosing from our position of defining which confines the choice; here the prince (identity) takes a direction (shoots an arrow) which kills the chooser.