Here we are no longer watching the feelings we have of the life force, we are trusting it and allowing it to be what it will.

Tortoise shells were used in China for oracle reading. When we are unconcerned whether we are feeling correctly, we feel naturally and flow in the tao; this is the same as having the oracle in abundance.

Widening our awareness requires the activity of the life force. Here, unfortunately in our experience, the life force goes into a tranquil phase and the tao of inner change is interrupted; outer activity is not a suitable vehicle for our energies in this tao so we shall do no good by trying to externalize. It is an experience of frustration we do best to witness rather than trying to correct.

Intuitive feeling is the vehicle of identity in this tao, so we miss the flow when this feeling becomes less active and concern ourselves with more personal, psychological matters, trying to distinguish what the blockage is.

The ancestor and mother are records of past things, old ways of defining and feeling his reality; the prince is a new way of ruling, a new way of experiencing and we cannot reach this without intuitive feeling; we can only reach the minister who is the organizer of practical matters. There is no error because the cause of all this is not within our control.

The tao (our circumstances) favours inner awareness and we avoid this by creating outer activity. When the pressure for change is from our inner reality yet this is transferred to a projection outside, there is a blockage of inner flow which shows itself in activity of our “personal unconscious” and this _will_ be heard, if we do not listen it will force its way into consciousness; accidents are formed in this way.

To become interested in peaceful outer activity (the yang line 3) gives direction without involvement but to become agitated about its inactivity would neglect the tao and deplete inner energies.

The danger of activity is becoming identified in it, making it important, we are aware of (we accost) this syndrome but identifying is a slippery customer.

We do not wish to feel something; this means there is no flow of energy although the possibility of it is there.

Feeling is the release and flow symbolized by rain; here it is not released because identity is not allowing it; it comes from the west, where the sun sets, showing it to be a dying activity. The prince, our latest identity, has aimed his identifying into the inner darkness, the cave, and has hit something there; he does not know what he hit but he was probably afraid of it.

We are now less involved in this tao of accepting the inner reality in which we only have a little show outside.

What we avoid meeting is the tao, the circumstances we are in; this splits our reality into outer and inner and the wholeness (the bird, which uses a polarity of wings together) leaves us. Inasmuch as we are aware of this it is an intended hurt, but our awareness is partial.

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.