In this tao our inner being is not influenced (line 6 is yang) and our intuitive feeling is inactive (line 2 is yang) so we cannot be aware of the life force (this moving line 1) and it appears to dry up. We are being over-sensitive to the tao and we allow it to inhibit our impulse to experience; we should allow ourselves more curiosity and freedom; there is no advantage in being so cautious that we cannot move.

The opening of feeling in this tao means to become more sensitive to our immaturity in some respect; this makes for less errors of judgement, makes us more able to understand what is “other” to us, and by feeling our ignorance (this we have been ignoring) we become receptive to the experience we lack. By all this, we increase our dynamic experience of the tao.

The son, elemental male offspring representing newly growing idea, takes over from the woman, elemental female representing our being in the flow of feeling. If he is to be successful, he needs to take account of feelings which he may not understand too well. In this tao, idea is growing out of experience but in this line feeling is opening, so gentleness and understanding is required.

Our outer activity is necessary for learning the ways of our environment, so if our outer activity is lessening, what are we putting in its place? Perhaps we are thinking there is someone or something that will do it for us. In this tao about young growth, _doing_ is essential, and nobody can do it for us. It is our personal growth; if somebody else provides, we shall have missed learning how to provide for ourselves.

To marry is to be become one with. We should not become one with this feeling (girl) who needs someone to protect and provide for her—there is no development for us in this way.

Here the inner being accepts, and this is “learning from experience”; it is also applying past experience to our learning. In this tao learning is by folly, which is by exploration and needs risk; we need to act without working out the consequences. By applying past experience to our present activity we perpetuate our errors.

Applying past experience interferes with our dynamic witnessing of the present. Only by witnessing as we act do we have a dynamic learning experience without the need for regretful afterthoughts and promises to do it better next time.

With our life energy moving into an inactive phase, and having the feeling of difficulties we wish to get out of, we may be persuaded to push some activity to make things better; this is not going to be useful when we are in a state where we do not see our way very well.

The gossip comes from all those parts in us which think we can get out of difficulty by doing something but do not realize that the difficulty is an unawareness that we cannot help at present. Good fortune comes eventually because this state is itself part of change.

Here we become free of involvement in difficulty by a re-awakening of our intuitive feeling about our circumstances instead of trying to sort it out with our conflicting ideas.

Resolving a conflict of ideas is not the only way of dealing with it, although when we are in conflict it may seem so. We can simply return to our observing centre and cease to project any idea on what we experience. Kin are those who are related, and within our personal self the related parts which were in conflict do not blame each other, instead they change their way entirely (symbolized by the number 3 for change and hundred for the entirety).

Not taking sides in a conflict is sometimes quite difficult. Initially it is a hard course because participants within us wish to join in, but eventually it is rewarding as we understand more widely.

The middle way is the ancient virtue; it attains its ends because conflict is always temporary and fluctuating. If we are ruled by some identification (in service of a king) it is better not to further it now.

Here we are accepting a world active in conflict. As we accept it, we do not fight to resolve it.

Here we can see the conflict from outside and so do not take sides. We see that the argument is fruitless.

In this tao our feeling is closed to the “other” so conflict arises; here we recognize this closed feeling and see it as causing the conflict or as an important element in it.

There can only be conflict when views are narrow—when they are wide they overlap.

The active life energy emerging into this tao becomes conflict due to lack of insight. Here we accept this as the tao, as our way of inner being, but conflict as a way of being resolves nothing and pushes identity further into its identifying isolation. In a wide sense, we lose when in conflict, whether we win or lose the contest.

The situation in contest changes all the time and this (the number 3) takes our advantage from us. The gains are superficial and transitory.

As the top line of the hexagram is accepting this line, it is not we who see the life force as becoming active, it is itself returning to an active phase already and we do not have difficulty in making things anew.

Life force activity returns from a short journey, a short time away; there was not a great trough of inactivity to cause us regret and our normal urge to activity is in keeping with the tao, which brings harmony to our actions and is the great good fortune.

When we do not interpret the life force in feeling we are not separated from it by our selection; this is in keeping with the free flow we are in.

We react to the tao without fuss or stress. Whenever we can be one with the tao we are blessed with good fortune.

In this situation of finishing off a cycle of activity it is necessary to completely finish or there are remainders, karma is made which will still need expression; these retained forms are habit.

The cycles come and go and if we are slaves to our habits we repeat ourselves; this is the danger. No blame because in habit we cannot see ourselves.

Here we project ourselves less into outer activity in a tao which is the end part of a cycle of the life force; this has the effect of centring us, making us more one in ourselves.

By choosing the middle way, not identifying in the outer nor the inner, the multitude we are becomes a whole, returning alone is returning as one.

At the turning point where old activity of the life force is spent and new is about to arrive we remove our involvement from the old, now silent and gone. This is in preparation for a new cycle.

The nobleness of this return is symbolic of the withdrawal of self interest, of priority to the way we are feeling, allowing it to die away with a readiness to take on something new. As this opens out into new activity in the coming cycle there is no regret.

If we become less involved in the emerging tao when it is in an inactive phase we are likely to miss the next emergence of activity and be out of phase with it.

It is self-evident that if we do not recognize that we are at a turning point of the cycle and press on, we shall miss the changes that are taking place and all our responses will be inappropriate. We will be ruled by desire patterns of our already formed identity, so disaster is stated for the ruler (the identifying process is the ruler of identity). If the turning point of the cycle is completely ignored nothing can be done about it until the next turning point, a complete cycle away and symbolized by ten, the whole, and year, the cycle.