When the life force is still and we are impatient to make it move, we shift our experience towards some activity and so miss the experience of actually waiting.

The “outer edges” are the boundaries of our personal self beyond which we project our pattern into the world. When we are awaiting outer events we should not project new activities but be constant in our waiting or we miss the experience of the tao. We live for our experience, not for our achievements.

We are trying to feel the tao here, either looking for a flow or to feel the stillness. This is certainly not intentional inaction but it does absorb the energy of our impatience and keeps us alive to our intuitive feelings.

A river in this line represents a flow of feeling which, here, we stand beside and watch. Within us are urges to activity (the gossip against all this waiting) but as we are following the tao the end result is good fortune, which is the experience of what actually exists in the life flow.

Here we cannot wait and have to act, yet acting does not result in the outer flow we seek because it is not supported by the life force. This results in an unclear and worrying state in which our action becomes a stress between us and our environment.

Evil is always a narrowing of our reality, the outcome of unawareness. Mud is unclear and we get stuck in it as we also get stuck in these unclear and worried states of mind.

The emerging energy moves out naturally, in this tao we do not have an activity-seeking attitude.

That our own activity would create problems is evident, so evident that we are able to follow the tao and do not get involved with these difficulties.

In this tao where our attention is open to feeling (line 5 is yin) if our feelings are active, as they become here, there is no blockage to the flow.

Open feeling is very versatile and will carry our lives in whatever direction is suitable. Directions are suitable when they are there in our circumstances, if we need to create them with our desires there would be error but here we can follow and the tao contains all that we need and think we need.

The potential feeling becomes manifest activity. We are not manipulating the energy into activity but accepting what it does, going with our circumstances; thus we are in direct communication with whole reality.

When we are identified narrowly (the mean man) we cannot be aware of whole reality by the very nature of identification.

Our involvement in the lack of activity of the outer world (line 3) in this tao is not because we are worried by it, we can see the difference between our ego-activity and that of the life force; we see that if our activity is not that of the life force we become separate or out of phase with it, and being out of phase is full of effort.

This also implies that realizing that others have different needs, we do not impose our way upon them.

Here we become less aware of a feeling of stillness and one of two consequences may arise: either we become still as our actions come directly from our centre of stillness, or our disinterest in stillness shows itself in an interest in activity. In this tao the first of these is indicated, but our activity-seeking identity may also be active.

Inner truth and dignity are attributes that come from the still centre of our being; acting from there we remain whole during action instead of becoming polarized and identified.

To become more involved in the emerging energy of this tao is not to be in possession of it but to be possessed within it.

He is blessed by heaven because the experience comes upon us like a gift, not by effort. What occurs is the achievement of the life force—but we are a part of this and in no way left out.

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.