When feeling awakens it awakens to the tao, feels the difficulties that we still have to pass through. Feeling the tao, the way through, will hasten the experience but feeling for escape will delay us.

Small matters are those to which we are not attaching importance; what seems to be important here is to change our circumstances, but to change our circumstances when we are unaware is dangerous.

To decrease activity because of difficulty disconnects us further from what is going on, yet to identify ourselves in the struggle of decisions makes us less aware of possibilities; either way there is a problem.

The only way out of the gorge is by flowing on; activity is necessary for movement but attaching importance to our activity, always choosing, creates always further polarity, not less. The art of flowing through an abyss is not to attach ourselves to either side.

Here we become less involved in outer activity and this is a relief of stress; being less involved in activity means that we go with it and do not manipulate, thus we get relief and thus we follow the tao as well.

This offering from the greater open reality into ours enclosed by polarity is for our basic needs; when we stop trying to manipulate our reality to get what we think we need, our basic needs are found to be there; if we do not manipulate there is no blame.

Here we are able to involve ourselves in the feelings of this difficult time without being overwhelmed (when we shut off feeling).

If we feel too fulsomely we are carried away in the overflow; if we empty ourselves of feeling, we are in a great empty chasm (abyss). Here there is a balance.

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.

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.