Here, in the tao where feeling alone is active and accepted, the life force emerges. It will emerge into active feeling which will either feel towards activity or towards stillness. The first of these is outwards and against the flow of the tao while the second is inwards to its heart—to feel the stillness as alive, not an absence.

Reverence and respect are attitudes we adopt towards those things we do not fully understand, recognize as something great but somehow beyond us. Our directions are confused because the tao is asking us to change direction; the confusion is no error, the unknowing respect is no error, they are simply factors in our situation.

Giving up our identification with intuitive feeling is to lessen the mind-reality side of feeling, the defining or imaging of it; when we give this up the feeling is left flowing for itself, the inner flows outwards unhampered by images of what it is.

The flow of feeling, an outflow of tears and signs, is dis-stress, this is seen by the mind as distress in its negative meaning of discomfort but for the feeling that is being expressed it is relief and good fortune.

Accepting the life force is accepting the tao most especially when the tao is about the inner flow of the life force. Here we overcome the separateness of identity in some way by becoming one with the flow—yet these words are not quite right, we include our separateness in the flow without rejecting it; only the separateness of our individuality is rejected. This seems odd to our minds because it is separateness that creates individuality; such paradoxes are common on the borders, where reality has two faces at once.

Rebels are symbolic of our divisive parts, or separate identification. Thus it is the separators and not the followers that are killed, it is the separation we are doing away with and this is no error.

As this tao is about finishing off activity, now the emerging life force becomes active again we are talking about the beginnings of a new activity.

The work is done, the outgoing breath is finished so there is a new breath coming. In practical life there are many breaths taking place together and out of phase so that they interact. Our breathing out in one respect is the breathing in of somebody or something else and if we leave suddenly this is a shock to the shared experience.

To feel for finishing off activity is following the tao, but if we feel for making a new course of action it would be out of place.

Translators do not agree on the last line, making different sense of this basic idea that they have in common. Our intuitive feeling is normally looking for how to act in our circumstances, so a simple warning that we may be facing the wrong direction seems in keeping.

The single aim of completing activity will make the way clear for a new flow.

Three symbolizes transition, change. Change is what the journey is about and during it we may become polarized in choice and so become two and lose our wholeness, one. So if we are trying to be empty, and so whole and symbolically one, as well as choosing, which is symbolically two, we are three and we lose our wholeness, one. If, on the other hand, we are alone in our wholeness and do not choose we have the company of all things.

The outer state shown by line 3 is active, so here we are accepting this activity less, identifying in it less.

When we are not always choosing our aims, our future, all the other futures we would not choose are available to us; these others arising spontaneously are happiness.

Here we are no longer watching the feelings we have of the life force, we are trusting it and allowing it to be what it will.

Tortoise shells were used in China for oracle reading. When we are unconcerned whether we are feeling correctly, we feel naturally and flow in the tao; this is the same as having the oracle in abundance.

Accepting the life force is genuine decrease of separate self; we do not choose and it is choice that separates the one who chooses.

When we choose we increase what we choose and diminish others, but this increase in acceptance does not do this. If we have a direction we have no need to choose one so it is easier for us. Our home is where we identify and here we do not identify and so have no home, but if we are just part of the life force this is where people identify and we will appear to have followers.

The stress in this tao is created by the force of the life energy from the inner acting upon rigid form in our lives (in ourselves). Here the activity is lessened and the stress limited.

This is protection by the inner being, rushes are put under something to soften the contact, they are white because there is no selection in this action (white light is all-coloured light).

Here the rigidity itself is loosening, we are starting to feel the life force again and this is the beginning of new feeling.

The old finds a way to flow again, and it was the lack of flow that caused the excess of pressure.

In this tao identity has excessively structured duality; to act out from this projects the stress into our circumstances.

The ridgepole giving way is like our giving out the stress from within us, we give way to it and the consequences to our environment are unfortunate.

What we are accepting here in this moving line is the inactivity of our outer world, so there is less stress because we are not struggling with our rigidity. This does not change the rigidity but makes it more manageable and may mask the basic problem.

Reliance on masking the stresses we have would be a weak support.

Becoming aware of intuitive feeling that is inactive is to be more aware but not to have more feeling.

This is widening awareness, opening up, flowering; then old feeling (from memory) comes to thought, to consciousness. These do not change things, the flowering does not change the tree and the old woman cannot have children, in other words there is no new growth.

Here we give up the struggle and become unaware of the activity pushing us towards change. When we become unaware of forces they overtake us.

To give way to the flow is no error, only uncomfortable; it overcomes the rigidity and so changes us.