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.

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.

Here we have not changed our role, we see activity diminishing and our tiredness will not leave us until we can change. Resting is not for the purpose of allowing new efforts of the same sort we have been making, it is to empty ourselves of that effort so as to become new again; re-newed.

The leafless tree is a winter tree and a dark valley is a night-time valley; the activity has gone out of the life force and until this changes, nothing can happen (the symbol three is of change and the year is a complete cycle).

When we are very tired we seek not only rest but also relief from tension and this leads us to relax restrictions that we normally impose upon ourselves—we indulge. When we open our feeling in this tao this is probably what we do.

Compensating ourselves for our circumstances is indulgence. If we are to benefit from the next turn of events (the man with the scarlet sash, an important one) this activity should be sacrificed or we miss, which is misfortune, but if we have not eyes to see it, it cannot be an error.

Here we withdraw from outer activity, but as our outer activity is our contact with the “other” we isolate ourselves; when we do this our circumstances appear to oppose us.

Exhaustion by rock; rock underlies the surface soil as truth underlies appearances, and truth represents “what is”; here we are exhausted by battling against what is, not accepting our circumstances, and so pain ourselves unnecessarily. In our personal self, our house, we are not aware of our intuitive feeling (the wife) and so do not see our circumstances as the truth would see it.

We turn our attention to outer activity to find something new, recognizing that what we were doing is exhausted.

Gold is an outer value and here we are carried by outer values, always looking for the new within these same values and so always exhausted; but continually looking for the new will eventually lead us to new values, a change in _us_. This is why the arrival is slow.

Here we come to experience our exhaustion of feeling; if we can witness this without trying to act upon it we may see that it is our chosen tao that is exhausted, not our being which belongs to the great tao and is never exhausted.

The nose leads the direction we face and the feet lead the direction we take; both are frustrated, cut off. We are in opposition to a greater truth, our truth is too small and when we cease our attachment to it, joy, flow, will return.

If we had let go earlier we would not be exhausted; here we are too exhausted to accept the energy of the life force.

The creeping plants hold us only because we entangle ourselves with them (we say of habits that they grow on us). Not knowing how our desires creep into actions we cannot act with decision to dissociate ourselves from them. Feeling the regret genuinely is to feel the actual situation, not just regretting the discomfort we are in.

It is the deep emerging life force that is showing activity, so it is not yet time for us to manifest this—that will come in due course. Having deep knowing that this activity is there helps us to restrain our impatience for action, and holding this like a secret love in our heart is part of the richness of this tao.

The dragon is an ominous symbol, it is a dynamic expression of the life energy which, here, is still hidden from conscious manifestation.

Here, activity begins to show in our feelings, which are our earliest manifestation of the life force, but we need to avoid narrowing this down to action too soon; keep it open and feel, for this is the tao of creation itself and if we do not interpose with our own pattern, we are privileged to know ourselves as part of the inevitable. In practice, we keep our options open.

The life energy is in the open because it is manifesting in our feeling and it benefits us to experience this widely; to see the great man is to attend to our greater awareness. In terms of the oracle greatness is always wideness, including more—it is not power.

In the tao of the creative there is great power and when this comes to manifestation, we may feel overburdened by it if we think it is we who are doing it. This only brings on unnecessary worry, but if we remember that taking part is not taking possession, there is no danger in this line.

The day symbolizes the activity in the world and the night a withdrawal of activity to the inner. The superior man is the one who follows the tao, and the danger to him (to our following the tao) is over-involvement, yet we have to be involved. There is no dividing line here to observe, hence the danger.

Here we interest ourselves in the inactivity of line 3 and we may be tempted to be intentionally inactive, but this is _doing_ and not in keeping with this tao of the creative doing itself. It is necessary to fall effortlessly into the activity of the creative, which is neither being active nor withholding activity.

The chasm is this void that happens when we discount ourselves, trying not to _do_. Here we hesitate to relax because we feel the need to control even our inactivity. Identity feels threatened by not _doing_ and this is part of its nature, not an error or failure on our part.

Here we are identifying ourselves with unchanging feeling (line 2). We have difficulty in identifying with the non-active as there seems to be nothing there.

Dragons are the flow of earth energy—things we normally identify with—and here our identifications are out of place unless heaven itself (Ch’ien) can be felt.

To accept ourselves as the life force and tao is to confuse ourselves with the whole—in the tao of the creative we then think we are the creators.

It is particularly contrary to this tao for us to take charge of things. We are then deprived of the experience of the creative itself; we only experience ourselves.