676687 · 4.1.3.4Hexagram 4

Out of young ignorance.

Line image

When our intuitive feeling is not active (line 2) we do not have a gut knowledge of what the life flow is doing, and yet in this tao we are involved in outer activity (lines 4 and 3), without this feeling and without our inner being having awareness (line 6). The effect of this pattern is that we have to act in ignorance and learn from direct experience of the world by our “mistakes” when we take the world to be other than it is.

The common name for this hexagram is “youthful folly” because the young learn in this pattern; it has a spontaneous and dynamic flavor which is sadly lost when folly is not allowed.

Trigram image

There is no flow of our emerging energy (K’an) but a great flow outside (Chên) which continues in our accepting identity (K’un) while our inner being is watching (Kên) This trigram flow shows that our inner being is not merely unaware but is contemplating what is going on without involvement; the learning of our situation is out in the world, finding out what happens, not applying rules from our accumulated experience. We act, and learn from our actions, we may be clumsy and make mistakes but unless we act in this way, we cannot learn about an environment unknown to us.

The Chinese Oracle

Youthful, immature growth.
Good fortune.
I seek not the immature but if they come to me I answer them; if they continue with immature questioning I am silent.

Comments

The oracle wisdom is, like all religious exercises, about the sentient outer form of our being keeping in touch with its inner non-manifest counterpart. In this tao we face outwards (and are identified where we face) so that the wisdom is held in abeyance as we make a foray, so to speak, into this outer mode to fully experience it. We will be puzzled by the oracle and continue to try and make sense by further questioning, but it is not the time for making sense, it is time for trusting our senses. Few religious exercises allow us to be foolish and consider it to be good fortune.

Manifestations

The pattern
To reach from the fluid and unstable
for the heights
comes to a barrier,
or perhaps a peak.
For humans
Assuming ground beneath the feet.
Treading with confidence into pitfalls,
sometimes succeeds
with a grace and sympathy
it usually lacks.
In nature
Kittens catch shadows
knowing their solidity,
and learn.
In forms we make
Assumption of power
without humility
closes the gate of sympathy.

Changing Lines

Line 1 goes yang

life force shows less change

In this tao our inner being is not influenced (line 6 is yang) and our intuitive feeling is inactive (line 2 is yang) so we cannot be aware of the life force (this moving line 1) and it appears to dry up. We are being over-sensitive to the tao and we allow it to inhibit our impulse to experience; we should allow ourselves more curiosity and freedom; there is no advantage in being so cautious that we cannot move.

The Chinese Image
Youthful growth requires disciplined experience.
Fetters should be removed.
Too much restriction is harmful.

Line 2 goes yin

intuitive feeling more active

The opening of feeling in this tao means to become more sensitive to our immaturity in some respect; this makes for less errors of judgement, makes us more able to understand what is “other” to us, and by feeling our ignorance (this we have been ignoring) we become receptive to the experience we lack. By all this, we increase our dynamic experience of the tao.

The Chinese Image
To be gentle with the developing brings good fortune.
To understand the woman brings good fortune.
The son is able to run the household.

The son, elemental male offspring representing newly growing idea, takes over from the woman, elemental female representing our being in the flow of feeling. If he is to be successful, he needs to take account of feelings which he may not understand too well. In this tao, idea is growing out of experience but in this line feeling is opening, so gentleness and understanding is required.

Line 3 goes yang

outer world changes less

Our outer activity is necessary for learning the ways of our environment, so if our outer activity is lessening, what are we putting in its place? Perhaps we are thinking there is someone or something that will do it for us. In this tao about young growth, _doing_ is essential, and nobody can do it for us. It is our personal growth; if somebody else provides, we shall have missed learning how to provide for ourselves.

The Chinese Image
Do not marry a girl who cannot resist a strong, wealthy (bronze) man.
No advantage comes.

To marry is to be become one with. We should not become one with this feeling (girl) who needs someone to protect and provide for her—there is no development for us in this way.

Line 4 goes yang

accepting the outer state less

Outer activity is dynamic in this tao and necessary to the movement of learning. Here we are taking our interest away from this because it is not being attractive (pleasurable). In a sense, we are not accepting that we need to experience what our circumstances have provided—we are not accepting our ignorance and so do not see the paramount need to learn.

The Chinese Image
Bound by ignorance. This is harmful.

We are bound by our ignorance when we are not aware of it.

Line 5 goes yang

less awareness of intuition

In this tao our intuitive state is not active. Our identity is more free to experience its life if it does not worry about this at this time because it needs to face its experience outwardly. This line shows us free to experience as separate identity, which is what the tao asks for.

The Chinese Image
Immature experience brings advantage.

Line 6 goes yin

our inner being accepts more

Here the inner being accepts, and this is “learning from experience”; it is also applying past experience to our learning. In this tao learning is by folly, which is by exploration and needs risk; we need to act without working out the consequences. By applying past experience to our present activity we perpetuate our errors.

The Chinese Image
Committing folly to learn control of his folly brings no advantage.
Advantage comes from separating him from his folly.

Applying past experience interferes with our dynamic witnessing of the present. Only by witnessing as we act do we have a dynamic learning experience without the need for regretful afterthoughts and promises to do it better next time.

Secondary HexagramHexagram 14

Fulfilment.

Line image

The only activity here is the acceptance of feeling (line 5), not even of active feeling but of the potentiality of feeling and also the feeling of potentiality. This hexagram is called “great possessions” and we always possess things for something we expect from them—peace, security, pleasure, or power for instance—and this is their potentiality. Having a lot of potentiality is about having a lot of possibilities.

Also this acceptance (by line 5) of the inactivity of intuitive feeling of the life force (line 2) can be expressed as accepting that we “make nothing of” the life force, meaning that we let it be what it will.

Trigram image

Here we observe potentiality through the hesitant attentiveness of the trigram Li. This makes it a tao of many outlets, for by accepting the feeling of potentiality without trying to bring it to manifestation we will next move into activity through the natural flow of the cycle. Because of this the moving lines of the hexagram do not lead us against the flow, as in many hexagrams, although they do lead us out of it. Potentiality becomes manifest because it is its nature to do so, not because we ourselves do anything.

In a wider view of this tao, our potentiality is to express what we have kept out of our view (this is our karma) because the power of identity rests upon its ability to be ignorant of “the other”; then this tao becomes a recognition of the reality of feelings we are not having (recognition of line 2 which is yang). This is recognition of the whole reality and so is great possession indeed.

The Chinese Oracle

Great possession.
Greatest success.

Comments

Possession of what is great; it is wide awareness that creates this success (possession of a great lot of meanness does not). This is about the greatness of what is possessed, not its great quantity, and as we know that identity narrows its spectrum of reality as it grows and becomes more specifically itself, this possession of wide awareness shows a maturity of identity where the attention is again turned to the whole.

Manifestations

The pattern
Creative power
comes from the inner reaches
to shine on the returning tide
which possesses the day.
For humans
The energy now comes
as the flow is inwards.
It is a gift of beauty,
of power mellow from experience.
In nature
The sun shines all day,
setting in glorious moments
for which it has prepared.
In forms we make
The wise ruler becomes sage
whose certainty of touch
knows the outcome
after living the pattern.

Changing Lines

Line 1 goes yin

life force shows more change

The emerging energy moves out naturally, in this tao we do not have an activity-seeking attitude.

The Chinese Image
No involvement with evil.
No error.
Being aware of difficulties
he remains free of error.

That our own activity would create problems is evident, so evident that we are able to follow the tao and do not get involved with these difficulties.

Line 2 goes yin

intuitive feeling more active

In this tao where our attention is open to feeling (line 5 is yin) if our feelings are active, as they become here, there is no blockage to the flow.

The Chinese Image
Large waggons for transport.
If there is a direction
it can be taken without error.

Open feeling is very versatile and will carry our lives in whatever direction is suitable. Directions are suitable when they are there in our circumstances, if we need to create them with our desires there would be error but here we can follow and the tao contains all that we need and think we need.

Line 3 goes yin

outer world changes more

The potential feeling becomes manifest activity. We are not manipulating the energy into activity but accepting what it does, going with our circumstances; thus we are in direct communication with whole reality.

The Chinese Image
A prince in an exchange with heaven; something a mean man could not do.

When we are identified narrowly (the mean man) we cannot be aware of whole reality by the very nature of identification.

Line 4 goes yin

accepting the outer state more

Our involvement in the lack of activity of the outer world (line 3) in this tao is not because we are worried by it, we can see the difference between our ego-activity and that of the life force; we see that if our activity is not that of the life force we become separate or out of phase with it, and being out of phase is full of effort.

The Chinese Image
He restrains his great resources.
No error.

This also implies that realizing that others have different needs, we do not impose our way upon them.

Line 5 goes yang

less awareness of intuition

Here we become less aware of a feeling of stillness and one of two consequences may arise: either we become still as our actions come directly from our centre of stillness, or our disinterest in stillness shows itself in an interest in activity. In this tao the first of these is indicated, but our activity-seeking identity may also be active.

The Chinese Image
He who shows inner truth and dignity has good fortune.

Inner truth and dignity are attributes that come from the still centre of our being; acting from there we remain whole during action instead of becoming polarized and identified.

Line 6 goes yin

our inner being accepts more

To become more involved in the emerging energy of this tao is not to be in possession of it but to be possessed within it.

The Chinese Image
He has heaven’s blessing which brings great good fortune and success.

He is blessed by heaven because the experience comes upon us like a gift, not by effort. What occurs is the achievement of the life force—but we are a part of this and in no way left out.

Nuclear HexagramHexagram 24

Return and make new.

Line image

Our whole personal self is accepting and active in this tao where the outer is fully active but its source, line 1, is inactive. We are fully acting out and experiencing a phase of the life force which has now ceased to provide new impetus—we are carrying through something we have already begun. This heralds the end of a cycle of activity because all of our activity comes from the inner and is expressed outwardly. The hexagram is called “return” or “turning point”.

Trigram image

The impetus from the inner life force is great (Chên). It flows freely in our outer world, in our identity, and in our inner being (all K’un). The flow is fully outwards and fully accepted, a clearing out operation in which energy returns to its source, the inner, which makes it also a turning point in the cycle, an emptying out which makes room for the new to appear.

The Chinese Oracle

Return. Success.
Going and coming without distress.
Friends come without error
and he returns in seven days.
All directions are advantageous.

Comments

Here the cycle is pictured as a coming and going, its free flow being the success and harmony. He relates for the full cycle of identifying (7 symbolizes the cycle as seen in consecutive steps like the days of our week) and then returns to his centre, the inner, the non-identified state. When we go through the outer experience and allow it to finish when it has no more energy all directions are favourable because none are selected or grasped.

Manifestations

The pattern
That which arises
returns to its source.
For humans
To the place where we have been
we return.
To the mood we have lived
we return.
But returning is arising anew.
In nature
The nature of nature in the earth
at the moment of interchange.
In forms we make
Returning to a form we reform it
and make it new.
By this the form of society evolves.

Changing Lines

Line 1 goes yin

life force shows more change

As the top line of the hexagram is accepting this line, it is not we who see the life force as becoming active, it is itself returning to an active phase already and we do not have difficulty in making things anew.

The Chinese Image
A return from a short journey
No regret.
Great good fortune.

Life force activity returns from a short journey, a short time away; there was not a great trough of inactivity to cause us regret and our normal urge to activity is in keeping with the tao, which brings harmony to our actions and is the great good fortune.

Line 2 goes yang

intuitive feeling less active

When we do not interpret the life force in feeling we are not separated from it by our selection; this is in keeping with the free flow we are in.

The Chinese Image
A quiet, blessed return.
good fortune.

We react to the tao without fuss or stress. Whenever we can be one with the tao we are blessed with good fortune.

Line 3 goes yang

outer world changes less

In this situation of finishing off a cycle of activity it is necessary to completely finish or there are remainders, karma is made which will still need expression; these retained forms are habit.

The Chinese Image
Many returns. Danger.
No error.

The cycles come and go and if we are slaves to our habits we repeat ourselves; this is the danger. No blame because in habit we cannot see ourselves.

Line 4 goes yang

accepting the outer state less

Here we project ourselves less into outer activity in a tao which is the end part of a cycle of the life force; this has the effect of centring us, making us more one in ourselves.

The Chinese Image
He moves in the midst of them
and returns alone.

By choosing the middle way, not identifying in the outer nor the inner, the multitude we are becomes a whole, returning alone is returning as one.

Line 5 goes yang

less awareness of intuition

At the turning point where old activity of the life force is spent and new is about to arrive we remove our involvement from the old, now silent and gone. This is in preparation for a new cycle.

The Chinese Image
A noble return. No regret.

The nobleness of this return is symbolic of the withdrawal of self interest, of priority to the way we are feeling, allowing it to die away with a readiness to take on something new. As this opens out into new activity in the coming cycle there is no regret.

Line 6 goes yang

our inner being accepts less

If we become less involved in the emerging tao when it is in an inactive phase we are likely to miss the next emergence of activity and be out of phase with it.

The Chinese Image
Confusion about return.
Misfortune.
Armies marching bring defeat.
Disaster for the ruler.
Ten years without return to order.

It is self-evident that if we do not recognize that we are at a turning point of the cycle and press on, we shall miss the changes that are taking place and all our responses will be inappropriate. We will be ruled by desire patterns of our already formed identity, so disaster is stated for the ruler (the identifying process is the ruler of identity). If the turning point of the cycle is completely ignored nothing can be done about it until the next turning point, a complete cycle away and symbolized by ten, the whole, and year, the cycle.