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.

We have been concerned with the inactivity of our outer reality (line 3) but now we become unconcerned which gives more energy to the other yin line in our receiving experience, line 6; this is attentive to the life force emerging in line 1, so this movement is turning our attention inward to our reception of the life force.

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.

The natural flow of the life force starts innerly with change that we cannot distinguish consciously, then we have awareness of it as feeling before it manifests outwardly. In this line there is inner activity soon to be distinguished and this is part of the harmonious manifestation of the tao, nature’s manifestation, not identity’s.

This line has very varied translations of which this appears to be the root meaning. There is worry when we think we are responsible for something that we cannot influence.

Feeling is our first and least specific awareness of the life force; in this tao our intuitive feeling is in the emerging pattern of Tui, the lake that has not yet quite overflowed to water the land, and in one of the most evocative of the Chinese images this is seen from the inner point of view, the life force offering to share with us.

The natural flow of this tao is halted if the giving out is withheld, the tao requires that we do not interfere with the life flow, we simply take part. When we do not take part there is some purpose, a desire to make something better or worse, and for these purposes we push reality this way and that.

The “other” that we meet creates polarity and the world of pendulum swinging from one pole to the other. When we do not remain centred but project our self into attitudes, this image symbolizes the experience we have.

Here our interest in outer activity diminishes as our outward-looking phase comes to an end.

This tao is carried by the two yin lines 3 and 4, one of which now goes yang; it was a team of activity and acceptance. Now inner energies are nearing their most effective phase (the full moon) and the identity is drawn away from outer participation; it is a natural effect and so no error.

Intuitive feeling is quiet in this tao as we quietly trust the life force, not separately feeling it. In this moving line we are involved in allowing the life force to carry us without distinguishing what we feel about it and so we become less separate (because line 2 is yang).

In this moving line the inner being accepts the experience of the tao into itself. This tao, however, is the experience of the way the whole flows of itself, which cannot be owned by any part of it.

The misfortune is that we take the whole to ourselves (which can only be a point of view of it) instead of giving ourselves up to it. We cannot reach whole by declaring ourselves, only by forgetting ourselves.

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.