Our desired outer activity is identity-forming and here yielding is not desired by identity and is held up by our activity. Identity is too fixed in its ideas to accept retreat.

Our identity is served by our intuitive feel of our circumstances and our definition of these feelings; when we are focused upon a particular outer activity these servants are neglected sometimes, but it is they who distinguish our situation so that we do not act inappropriately.

Here we accept the inactivity shown by line 3, so we are recognizing our circumstances.

The superior man has a wider view and inferior is narrowing; following the tao by accepting our circumstances despite desire widens our view of our situation, but if our view were narrow we could not feel the sense of this.

Identity is looking for activity but our circumstances, the tao, provide none. The lack is so obvious that despite our natural urge to do something we have the possibility of restraining ourselves.

The toes lead our steps, but at present we should not be stepping, this activity is not sensing the inner truth but turning it into outer action. The truth of inactivity still remains to be discovered, but a leap in understanding such as this is not easily made.

Our feeling is of the life force and the life force is in its non-manifesting phase so we are feeling the great unknown. If we continue to open our feelings to the unknowable we shall find a sense of it that is not a definition, not even a defined feeling.

If we define what our feeling is doing, however, we will manifest it and lose the direction of the tao.

Where there are possibilities that are not yet manifest it is not the time to push ahead with action, it will not be supported by the life force so we will get stuck in a situation from which our own forcefulness will not allow us to escape. Action always lessens our awareness of possibilities for action and at present these are many and developing. This is a time for realizing the inactive as equally positive with the active and sometimes more appropriate.

When we use activity we centre ourselves on this; the oracle image for this is inferior (narrowing). The wide way to experience is in not choosing so that more possibilities remain open to us.

Here we recognize the stillness of the outer and can separate our identity from activity. In this way we are available to the possibilities that are arising.

The large waggon will carry many things at once. Our attention is not just at the rim of the wheel where action takes place but in the connections to the whole and so the entanglement with activity ceases.

Our intuitive feeling is inactive; if we were concerned about this we would be involved, but here we let it be what it will.

The goat in this tao is the one who gets entangled (moving line 3); here we are free.

In a tao of great possibilities yet to be realized we need to be aware of the emerging life force.

If we are not aware of possibilities arising we cannot move with them as they arise, so we get stuck, unchanged; awareness of this brings our awareness of possibilities back again.

Here the silence of identity (lines 4, 5, and 6 are yang) ignores the activity of the life force and it ceases to have influence.

The brake is applied; there is nothing we can do about it but follow our circumstances. Any attempt to get out of our circumstances will prove unfortunate so we need simply to experience where we are. A lean pig is an underfed pig and when we are under-stimulated we “leap about” to cause activity.

Feeling is our link between the undefined inner and manifest outer; here in this line new activity of feeling is occurring although identity is taking no notice.

Our present identifications (the guests) are not noticing the nourishment available, but this cannot be error, it is just circumstance.

In this tao we do not have a true picture of our circumstances and in this line we act out in circumstances of which we are ignorant.

If our increased involvement is with a sense of outer peace all is well, but this is likely to be a search for outer activity and if it is we will search and find none.

The tank which has or has not fish in it is our personal inner being and the fish are our personal identifications in this. Here there are no fish, the process of identifying is inactive in this tao, so if we expect something we are disappointed.

Our intuition about our circumstances as shown by line 2 is inactive; by accepting this lack of interpretive feeling, we allow life to happen to us.

The melons, the gourd family of fruits, have a multitude of seeds in the fruit casing, many possibilities. These possibilities are hidden within the fruit, the fruit is hidden in the leaves, it appears that nothing is there; then suddenly from this nothing (from heaven) there is a happening. This describes how life is when we do not anticipate it.

By accepting the energy of this tao which flows through emotional channels there is a forcing of their recognition.

The way emotion forces its way into recognition is often uncomfortable and causes regret, but it is necessary for it to be expressed so this is not an error.