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.

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

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 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.

In this tao the light, the identification, becomes inner so the Chinese image speaks of the increasing outer activity of this line as a rebel.

The hunt is for identification and the south stands for the high noon of activity, so we have this rebel identification in the outer place; what leads this is the desire to be in control of circumstances and the tao does not support this. If, however, we take outer activity itself as the evil this is excessive.

Our outer world is inactive. We withhold our identification even from this inactivity and experience something that is most inner.

Entering the centre of the instinctive there is no sense at all (no light of reason). Reason in the mind is the contained reality that we leave here; it is not that we become unreasonable but we enter a reality undefined, unfenced, outside the gate and courtyard.

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.

This tao of inner experience is supported largely by this line 6 accepting the quietness of the emerging life force in line 1. Here this acceptance goes and inner reality is inaccessible to us, the beauty is not seen and the tao takes on its aspect of a blockage to progress.

When our inner being fails to accept the implications of wholeness, which include the sacrifice of identifying, we go back to the identified state to start a new cycle of growth, like a seed falling from a flower into the earth. We still need that experience.

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.

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.

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.

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

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 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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.