Here, in the tao where feeling alone is active and accepted, the life force emerges. It will emerge into active feeling which will either feel towards activity or towards stillness. The first of these is outwards and against the flow of the tao while the second is inwards to its heart—to feel the stillness as alive, not an absence.

Reverence and respect are attitudes we adopt towards those things we do not fully understand, recognize as something great but somehow beyond us. Our directions are confused because the tao is asking us to change direction; the confusion is no error, the unknowing respect is no error, they are simply factors in our situation.

Accepting the life force is accepting the tao most especially when the tao is about the inner flow of the life force. Here we overcome the separateness of identity in some way by becoming one with the flow—yet these words are not quite right, we include our separateness in the flow without rejecting it; only the separateness of our individuality is rejected. This seems odd to our minds because it is separateness that creates individuality; such paradoxes are common on the borders, where reality has two faces at once.

Rebels are symbolic of our divisive parts, or separate identification. Thus it is the separators and not the followers that are killed, it is the separation we are doing away with and this is no error.

The natural flow of the life force starts innerly with change that we cannot distinguish consciously, then we have awareness of it as feeling before it manifests outwardly. In this line there is inner activity soon to be distinguished and this is part of the harmonious manifestation of the tao, nature’s manifestation, not identity’s.

This line has very varied translations of which this appears to be the root meaning. There is worry when we think we are responsible for something that we cannot influence.

Feeling is our first and least specific awareness of the life force; in this tao our intuitive feeling is in the emerging pattern of Tui, the lake that has not yet quite overflowed to water the land, and in one of the most evocative of the Chinese images this is seen from the inner point of view, the life force offering to share with us.

The natural flow of this tao is halted if the giving out is withheld, the tao requires that we do not interfere with the life flow, we simply take part. When we do not take part there is some purpose, a desire to make something better or worse, and for these purposes we push reality this way and that.

The “other” that we meet creates polarity and the world of pendulum swinging from one pole to the other. When we do not remain centred but project our self into attitudes, this image symbolizes the experience we have.

Here our interest in outer activity diminishes as our outward-looking phase comes to an end.

This tao is carried by the two yin lines 3 and 4, one of which now goes yang; it was a team of activity and acceptance. Now inner energies are nearing their most effective phase (the full moon) and the identity is drawn away from outer participation; it is a natural effect and so no error.

Intuitive feeling is quiet in this tao as we quietly trust the life force, not separately feeling it. In this moving line we are involved in allowing the life force to carry us without distinguishing what we feel about it and so we become less separate (because line 2 is yang).

In this moving line the inner being accepts the experience of the tao into itself. This tao, however, is the experience of the way the whole flows of itself, which cannot be owned by any part of it.

The misfortune is that we take the whole to ourselves (which can only be a point of view of it) instead of giving ourselves up to it. We cannot reach whole by declaring ourselves, only by forgetting ourselves.

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.