Line image
Our outer responses (lines 4 and 5) are quiet and so is our intuitive feeling (line 2), so although there is activity to be experienced shown in lines 1 and 3 we are not responding to it. This pictures the common name of the hexagram, which is “exhaustion”. Our inner being is accepting the activity of the emerging tao so activity will return, but for now we have exhausted our responses to our circumstances.
Trigram image
Energy emerges into manifestation in the image of K’an; low energy, low flow. In the outer world it is tentative (Li) and enters a structured identity (Sun); all this is a weak energy flow, although in the inner being there is an expectation of activity (Tui) for future outer action.
The direction in which we have been going has lost its impetus, has become exhausted. Identity itself only feels exhausted when it is identified with an exhausted activity such as this and is not able to let it rest.
The Chinese Oracle
Exhaustion restricts,leads to successthrough continuance by the great man.No error, but words spoken are not believed.
Comments
Continuing to see reality more widely and less restricted by the choices of desire is the way of the great man which opens to new ways where energy is flowing. We have identified ourselves in something where the life force is exhausted but words will not be believed because identification, by its very nature, restricts our sight in reality so that where we identify, that alone is real. Our conscious mind can understand but does not have much say in where we identify.
Manifestations
Basic forces of oppositionchange into the firmthrough exhaustionof their activity.
He misunderstands exhaustion,“building walls” is exhaustednot the builder.If he continues higherhe is pretending.
When the seas boilin fissures of firethis is too extremefor the delicate tissues of life;but when this force is spent,life begins.
The completion of a formis always the conditionfor the start of another.Exhaustion is its signal.
Changing Lines
Line 1 goes yang
life force shows less changeHere we have not changed our role, we see activity diminishing and our tiredness will not leave us until we can change. Resting is not for the purpose of allowing new efforts of the same sort we have been making, it is to empty ourselves of that effort so as to become new again; re-newed.
Entangled.Naked branches in a dark valley.For three years nothing happens.
The leafless tree is a winter tree and a dark valley is a night-time valley; the activity has gone out of the life force and until this changes, nothing can happen (the symbol three is of change and the year is a complete cycle).
Line 2 goes yin
intuitive feeling more activeWhen we are very tired we seek not only rest but also relief from tension and this leads us to relax restrictions that we normally impose upon ourselves—we indulge. When we open our feeling in this tao this is probably what we do.
Exhaustion and too much meat and drink.The man with the scarlet sash is just coming.Sacrifice furthers.Activity brings misfortunebut there is no error.
Compensating ourselves for our circumstances is indulgence. If we are to benefit from the next turn of events (the man with the scarlet sash, an important one) this activity should be sacrificed or we miss, which is misfortune, but if we have not eyes to see it, it cannot be an error.
Line 3 goes yang
outer world changes lessHere we withdraw from outer activity, but as our outer activity is our contact with the “other” we isolate ourselves; when we do this our circumstances appear to oppose us.
Exhausted by rock.Leans upon thorns.Enters his house and does not see his wife.Misfortune.
Exhaustion by rock; rock underlies the surface soil as truth underlies appearances, and truth represents “what is”; here we are exhausted by battling against what is, not accepting our circumstances, and so pain ourselves unnecessarily. In our personal self, our house, we are not aware of our intuitive feeling (the wife) and so do not see our circumstances as the truth would see it.
Line 4 goes yin
accepting the outer state moreWe turn our attention to outer activity to find something new, recognizing that what we were doing is exhausted.
A slow arrival, exhausted in a golden carriage.Some humiliation but he arrives.
Gold is an outer value and here we are carried by outer values, always looking for the new within these same values and so always exhausted; but continually looking for the new will eventually lead us to new values, a change in _us_. This is why the arrival is slow.
Line 5 goes yin
more awareness of intuitionHere we come to experience our exhaustion of feeling; if we can witness this without trying to act upon it we may see that it is our chosen tao that is exhausted, not our being which belongs to the great tao and is never exhausted.
His nose and feet are cut off.Opposition to the man with the scarlet sash.Joy come slowly.Sacrifice is needed.
The nose leads the direction we face and the feet lead the direction we take; both are frustrated, cut off. We are in opposition to a greater truth, our truth is too small and when we cease our attachment to it, joy, flow, will return.
Line 6 goes yang
our inner being accepts lessIf we had let go earlier we would not be exhausted; here we are too exhausted to accept the energy of the life force.
Exhausted by entanglement with creepers.Moves unsurely and says he regrets it.If the regret is genuinely felt his movements bring good fortune.
The creeping plants hold us only because we entangle ourselves with them (we say of habits that they grow on us). Not knowing how our desires creep into actions we cannot act with decision to dissociate ourselves from them. Feeling the regret genuinely is to feel the actual situation, not just regretting the discomfort we are in.