If our increased involvement is with a sense of outer peace all is well, but this is likely to be a search for outer activity and if it is we will search and find none.

The tank which has or has not fish in it is our personal inner being and the fish are our personal identifications in this. Here there are no fish, the process of identifying is inactive in this tao, so if we expect something we are disappointed.

Here we react to shock immediately by stirring our inner peace into activity. We are alert and not taken much off our guard, or the shock is such that it is quickly recognized; either way it is quickly followed by relief.

This is the numbness reaction to shock. Feeling cannot co-ordinate and so does not function, creating a strange separateness but this will pass.

The danger of overload is a danger to our ability to distinguish what is happening to us, a danger to identity itself. When we cannot distinguish because of shock we lose all of value because confusion has no values.
Over nine hills is nine times up and down again, a vacillation about the number nine, which is 3 × 3 or symbolically change which is changing—all is confusion as we try to follow the change but cannot. But it all comes back again at the end of the process, the seven days. This symbolism just describes the shock syndrome.

With shock, action becomes confused; but it is action that leads out of shock so instinctive action is an effective outlet; it also involves acting without caution.

It is necessary to move to get out of shock and our lightning-like reflexes operate, knowing in their own way what is needed; but here we control this and do not move.

Here we are taking possession of the action of shock, using it for our purposes, conscious or unconscious. This is a misunderstanding; shock is by its nature spontaneous and although we may serve our purposes by this means we narrow our reality.

In mud we get stuck and here we get stuck in shock, using it, entangling with it. Allow shock and it flows out, try to define or use it and it stays.

This fifth line is our recognition of intuitive feeling. Here the shock to feeling causes withdrawal from it—yet we cannot withdraw successfully from something so evident.

The danger is that we are distracted from outer action needed in response to the shock, “things need doing”. We are wildly seeking but nothing is lost so we need not seek.

This line of our inner being does not accept the shock, it is a matter for our outer coordination to deal with it.

The outer boundary of self, the identified self which has many facets, are the “neighbours” who are disoriented, not the inner self, they look around with frightened eyes for some help but get none and feel let down.

It is the deep emerging life force that is showing activity, so it is not yet time for us to manifest this—that will come in due course. Having deep knowing that this activity is there helps us to restrain our impatience for action, and holding this like a secret love in our heart is part of the richness of this tao.

The dragon is an ominous symbol, it is a dynamic expression of the life energy which, here, is still hidden from conscious manifestation.

Here, activity begins to show in our feelings, which are our earliest manifestation of the life force, but we need to avoid narrowing this down to action too soon; keep it open and feel, for this is the tao of creation itself and if we do not interpose with our own pattern, we are privileged to know ourselves as part of the inevitable. In practice, we keep our options open.

The life energy is in the open because it is manifesting in our feeling and it benefits us to experience this widely; to see the great man is to attend to our greater awareness. In terms of the oracle greatness is always wideness, including more—it is not power.

In the tao of the creative there is great power and when this comes to manifestation, we may feel overburdened by it if we think it is we who are doing it. This only brings on unnecessary worry, but if we remember that taking part is not taking possession, there is no danger in this line.

The day symbolizes the activity in the world and the night a withdrawal of activity to the inner. The superior man is the one who follows the tao, and the danger to him (to our following the tao) is over-involvement, yet we have to be involved. There is no dividing line here to observe, hence the danger.

Here we interest ourselves in the inactivity of line 3 and we may be tempted to be intentionally inactive, but this is _doing_ and not in keeping with this tao of the creative doing itself. It is necessary to fall effortlessly into the activity of the creative, which is neither being active nor withholding activity.

The chasm is this void that happens when we discount ourselves, trying not to _do_. Here we hesitate to relax because we feel the need to control even our inactivity. Identity feels threatened by not _doing_ and this is part of its nature, not an error or failure on our part.

Here we are identifying ourselves with unchanging feeling (line 2). We have difficulty in identifying with the non-active as there seems to be nothing there.

Dragons are the flow of earth energy—things we normally identify with—and here our identifications are out of place unless heaven itself (Ch’ien) can be felt.

To accept ourselves as the life force and tao is to confuse ourselves with the whole—in the tao of the creative we then think we are the creators.

It is particularly contrary to this tao for us to take charge of things. We are then deprived of the experience of the creative itself; we only experience ourselves.