Feeling is a flow, and by feeling the life force more in this tao where it is difficult to manifest it we are defining by feeling, creating by feeling. This will create more of our own images and we will not reach the experience of the source which is the quite innocent and inconsequent experience the tao is offering.

Fish, our manifestations in the life force or water, are first defined by feeling; we are hunting them with our feeling, trying to find them. The water level has been raised to the surface by our feeling but it becomes filled with our images and our hunting for manifest reality. Our method is not sound so the pitcher is cracked and leaks.

Here we are concerned with our quietness of feeling (the yang line 2); we experience it. To experience the existing inner quietness is to experience the inner being as it is.

This is its natural condition and we taste it, experience it. It is pure because we have not put identifications into it. Here we experience without identifying, and this is what the tao offers.

Our concern in line 6 of this tao has been to experience the emerging life force because of a lack of flow or a lack of “depth” in our experience. The tao is about not being able to reach this inner depth and here in this moving line the tao is ending so we are no longer concerned because we have “found a way”.

What has made it difficult to experience the water was a lack of reach and an inability to hold it; our ability to reach the life force depends on our not turning it into something else that we want; our ability to hold it is our ability to hold our own identifying, our own self, empty.

It is easier for us as identified beings to respond to the active phases of the life force, and this is especially true in this tao where our attention is on the inner being. Joy comes naturally at this time because there is activity outside for us to identify amongst.

The life force becomes active and so supports our acting outwards. The inner being (line 6) accepts the life force and so we are centred and complete innerly so we act out without doubt.

Feeling the potential of the life force brings just that bubbling joy that knows that the outer form will be appropriate, so we are in harmony with it. This is spontaneous and unidentified feeling so it does not interfere with the flow of the tao.

Here we are not allowing the spontaneous flow of the tao into outer activity, because of hopes, fears, and so forth, we are holding activity for the future and the energy of joy is converted into that of worry. This is an internal and repetitive flow instead of a flow through identity and it blocks our receptiveness to the life force, this can only enter where there is an emptiness to receive it.

Joy cannot be in the future, it is existential or it is not at all. It cannot be planned, hunted and found, for then we have no room to receive it.

In this tao it is vital to the flow that outer activity is spontaneous, so when we try to distinguish, plan, and manipulate our environment, the joy is lost and planning takes its place.

Intuitive feeling is inactive in this tao. To become involved in this inactivity, whether it be to identify with it or to question it, stops the flow of the tao. It is always true that even to observe we stop the flow.

The existential moment is always fresh; the happenings in it then disintegrate, as they have to as it is a flow of change, so if we attach ourselves to these happenings we cannot have joy in the existential moment.

When the emerging life force is inactive (line 1) we tend to seek stimulation from the outer world; we miss the resonance between the inner and the outer when we do this, we own instead of taking part.

Here the source is changing towards active manifestation; if we wait peacefully it will reach the outside in time. It is the source that carries our activities.

Regret disappears because activity (the horse which carries identity) returns of its own accord. The evil company is the narrow frame of mind which demands that it gets what it wants, and now, but we do not tangle with that, we let the tao unfold.

When we feel the life force in this tao we feel opposition, the narrowness of a single-minded point of view. To become aware of such a situation within ourselves is not a mistake, but it is uncomfortable.

We come to realize something quite suddenly and cannot escape from it, there is nowhere to go (our lord is the one we must follow). We meet him coming the other way but it is good to see truth when, or particularly when, it is going the opposite way to the one we are facing.

Our present outer activity comes to the end of its energy and our attempts to proceed appear to be opposed.

The good end comes because we give up futile effort and allow the tao. The trouble comes because we were insufficiently aware.

Here we accept the outer world as our way of being. Participation is symbiotic relationship instead of opposition and this is no error; it does carry the danger of forgetting the tao and entering a narrow reality.

Here is a very inner act but it is occurring in our conscious identity. Our interest in the silence of intuitive feeling has been to enliven it, not to accept it, because no other activity was available. Now we cease this and so trust the life force even though it is not doing what identity wanted—it is a change in mind, a change of mind.

The one with whom he relates innerly is the “companion” (see section 1, page 2) but in outer life this may work through others. When the outer identity and the inner companion are not separated there is certainty and no question of error.

In this tao the emerging life force is unchanging (line 1 is yang) and we have felt opposed to this. We now see things differently.

The pig is nourishment but obscured by mud (confusion); the waggon-load of phantoms are frightening appearances. By ceasing to oppose we become unopposed, for the opposition in this tao is a misunderstanding of our situation which causes us to fear it.