When experience comes to us we taste it with our feeling and then we follow this with decisions about how to behave in our circumstances. Here the stilling effect of the tao is in our feeling so that our usual flow or zest for life lessens; this is only a problem if we resist being still.

The calf muscles lift the body so that we fall into the next step; keeping them still we take no step. If we, identified self, follow something we cannot be still, we cannot assist the stillness by doing something.

Here we are no longer concerned about outer stillness, we just allow it to be still.

It is the whole body, not a part, that we keep still. If we concentrate on keeping this or that part still the other parts will move unnoticed by us. It is the whole that is still when stillness is achieved.

Our intuitive feeling is active in this tao. Here we, as identity, are less involved in these feelings so we do not project them on to our circumstances. We project when we express what we feel about things.

The words are not said, yet they are in order. Our words are the outflow of our meaning and if our meaning is in perfect order it cannot be said—we only speak out of incompleteness, then there is something to be said. Here there is no care or regret because there is nothing left over, nothing to be said.

When we accept stillness into our inner being the next expression of that being is perfectly still although in activity.

Where new energy is becoming available we may look for nourishment in some new experience from the life force rather than that available in our present circumstances.

Tortoise shells were used for divination, and divination is the link between the outer and inner knowing; without the link we lose the thread of what experience is about—nourishing the inner self from outer experience. What is needed is in our experience now.

Intuitive feeling is necessary for us to know our circumstances and if we cannot feel our circumstances we seek nourishment elsewhere.

Both below and above identity in the hexagram we come to the inner, and this hexagram is about nourishing the inner through outer experience; so to seek the emerging life force is to look to nourishment coming to identity in the future, which is not correct or proper, not existing. To look to the inner being for nourishment is to look to what is already formed so it is narrowing or evil.

In this tao outer activity is the source of experience and is essential to nourishment, without our taking part in outer experience the tao is useless to us.

When we avoid outer experience at the time it is offered in our circumstances it is lost and the nourishment of it cannot be had until such circumstances come to us again; this is symbolically the complete cycle of ten years.

Outer activity in the world is an essential part of this tao from which we gain nourishment; we do not, however, benefit from owning that activity and so nourishing our separate ego-being. Here in this line we diminish our owning of outer activity and so can participate more because with less desire we have a wider view.

A hunter which has perfected the art of being alert; the tiger. Looking down he has a wide view. On the mountain we also have a wide view which comes from a vantage point of disinvolvement.

We normally accept ourselves to be as we feel ourselves to be (which is the interpretation line 5 puts upon line 2). Here we are less aware.

Without a feeling of ourselves in our circumstances action becomes hazardous so it is inadvisable to instigate changes.

The inner being accepts nourishment and is the source of outer nourishment while doing so. The position has a fine balance and so has a danger of imbalance; either way it is the producer of a flow of nourishment.

Crossing the great water is changing our way of being, and experiencing without choice makes this change, but if we choose we are fed from past experience, not from the source of nourishment, the present.

When beset with polarity we are in stress, choosing yet unable to make a choice and changing our choice even before putting it into effect. Here in this line the life force becomes quiet and this gives choice a rest.

It is the life flow emerging more quietly and lessening the stress, it is not our doing and cannot possibly be an error, but when beset by choice we are always overconscious of error.

Greater activity of our intuitive feeling enables us to find direction in the life force.

Yellow is an active colour (almost in the middle of our visible spectrum), applied to an arrow which indicates a chosen direction—we have chosen an active direction; this direction is between extremes, being given as “one” which is the whole or middle way of unchoosing. This direction ends the vacillation of choice which deprived us of identifying, in the same way a fox deprives man of his nourishment (three foxes because continual change of choice was the problem).

To obtain freedom of flow identity needs to act out without identifying itself in the movement. Here in the line we seem to be confused about this and expect the life force to carry us out of stress without our taking part at all.

We want to be carried yet we do not want to let go; not allowing activity is still controlling it.

To become involved in outer activity is to make it our own; this gives entanglement, not deliverance. Only when we take ourselves out of the equation do we see that it balances.

The toes lead our steps and our steps are our personal way. The friend with trust is the life flow itself; willful activity causes the flow of circumstances to appear untrustworthy.

We are no longer trying to discern the life force and so in a tao of release we allow it to be what it will.

We cannot be released by following something, for we are attached to what we follow. It is necessary to be alone and open to be free; separating from attachment enables us to be free.

Here identity chooses not to choose, which is release as the stress was in the choice.

The hawk sits on a high wall choosing what he will catch. High up is symbolically the head and a wall is a boundary and barrier, so we have been choosing from our position of defining which confines the choice; here the prince (identity) takes a direction (shoots an arrow) which kills the chooser.