The inner activity shown here draws our motivation inwards and the outer energy is depleted.

Motivated parts of our identity, the people, do not like the situation, but the wide view is that one must go with the cycle and experience all its aspects.

Here we feel the life force less and have some confusion, so we ride life, we ride on the acceptance in this tao which enables us to act without owning the action.

The left side of the body is controlled by the right side of the brain where immediate, whole action dominates; the thigh gives power to the knee joint as we run and leap. These together with injury show that our ability to move instinctively in our circumstances is impaired. We are helped by allowing ourselves to be carried.

Here we become less involved because the feeling is too painful. This tao has a transitory nature because outer expression cannot be held for a long time without stress developing from the essential need to manifest, and if this is blocked we must feel less or break through the blockage. This moving line indicates that we cannot easily experience the silence any longer but we have this way of withstanding it by withdrawing attention.

Prince Chi lived at a time of outer despotism and he hid his convictions in order to preserve them. Here we do likewise. When wounded we are unable to give battle.

It might seem that if the life force became active in biting through, our troubles would disappear, but the tao is the experience of being restrained by circumstances and there being no alternative. It is natural for identity to try to avoid this, so restraint is imposed by our greater being.

The toes lead our step so if they are hidden we see no way forward. We step with our feet so if they are shackled we cannot go forward. This is no error but intentional restraint.

If we cannot bear an experience we lessen our feeling of it; we should not try to take more stress than we can stand, yet we should not in these circumstances avoid experience or we lose our way in the tao. Here we are tending to avoid.

The tender meat is the “best” part, the most comforting, and by indulging in it we lose our directing sense, the nose. This is an instinctive reaction and so no error of identity.

In these circumstances where we are held fast by our ignoring of the life force no new experience comes to us and we use what we already have.

Old experience that we have in our identity memory is like old dried meat; it contains things we did not wish to experience and repressed, and so we come upon these, which is uncomfortable but helpful to our biting through.

We identify ourselves more in outer world activity as a way of biting through, we try to take the bull by the horns.

Trying to bite through outer circumstance is tough and not too rewarding, but searches for the core of the matter, the bone. We have taken a firm direction (the metal arrow) but the difficulty is not out there, it is inner, and realizing this brings us to the tao.

We are less involved in feelings of the tao; there is less interference from identity and also less compliance.

Nourishing ourselves on old experience (dried meat) we find the value (gold) of the middle way (yellow), in this case between interfering and complying with the tao; the danger is from being precariously balanced.

This top line represents our inner involvement in the flow of the life force, the tao. The tao shows our inability to understand what we are feeling and this line shows that we are accepting this as a way of being.

A cangue is a wooden board worn round the neck, used as a punishment in China at one time, so we bring upon ourselves a burden which stops us from hearing what the tao, our circumstance, is saying to us.

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.