We witness our life energy as being inactive and this inactivity is rather irksome to us, so at first our witnessing is not very fulfilling; we need to have confidence however because not only will our energy become active as the cycle moves but we will also find that witnessing the silence is something great in itself.

The good fortune that appears as a bonus is our realization of stillness; this happens when we have enough confidence in our inner being existing like a bowl that is full without overspilling into outer projections.

Our witnessing is about not acting on feelings, just letting them be there, and here feeling becomes less when it is not stimulated by interest.

The action of the life force in this lower half of the hexagram is from inner to outer, which is the process of distinguishing or manifesting; the normal channel of this flow is feeling followed by distinguishing the outer consequences. As we are forgoing these consequences we concentrate on their inner source, and even when this is inactive we need to continue to witness it, for witnessing is to see what exists without choosing to have or reject.

Here we stop outer activity in order to witness, and see through the distinguishing mind which stops experiencing in order to look. By stopping what we witness, we do not witness with our whole self and so we form a point of view, which is different from witnessing. Witnessing allows everything to be witnessed without consequence so we do not need a point of view.

Evil is the outcome of narrow awareness always, so here we are joining things together in a narrow way to make unity; externally we will join with people who do the same. It is not necessary to stop activity in order to witness the silence, which is inner, so we are looking in the wrong place.

This opening ourselves to intuitive feeling is the only moving line that also permits the freedom of witnessing, all the others are traps of the mind that are _doing_ witnessing. In feeling, we flow with activity and this shows that witnessing is not an observation of reality but a unity with it.

The king is the ruler, and our ruler is the identifying process. The process of identifying captures all the ways we try to witness by _doing_, but not this one which requires _no doing_, no trapping of the life force. The act of flowing without _doing_ requires that we take no precautions, so the citizens need no warning.

The ignoring of activity shown by lines 4, 5, and 6 results in silence; so the manifesting life force seems to disappear.

The activity of the life force is attached to our ability to react to it, or so it seems to our experience, so we need to keep going about our business. We have no way to directly influence the karma of our inner being; our ignoring needs to be as it is and will then change.

In line 2 we interpret the life force in feeling, and in this tao of ignorance of the life force, we easily lose our ability to interpret it. In this moving line this happens and our narrower desiring mode of being is favoured by it; we feel that reality needs to be made what we desire (better) and we work for this, but this means that in this tao of experiencing our separation from the flow of the tao, we replace this experience with our desire and striving.

Our wide-seeing (superior) aspect can see that experiences such as this which distress our identified aspect are necessary and also wholesome.

In this situation where we are not aware of the energy flowing from inner to outer we cease to act; this shows that we do not take account of activities outside our immediate awareness and we take the standstill as being our own responsibility—this in turn makes us feel blame for what is happening.

Blaming ourselves is a point of view we have adopted; blaming is not accepting.

Here identity opens itself to what is going on around it in the outside world and we become aware of the effects of our involvement there. We see that we act even when we are not aware, acting out of our greater self, and that we can simply follow this with our conscious identity.

In an inner interpretation the companions here are our separate parts of identity. The wider our view of reality becomes, the more our various aspects can take part and become a whole.

Here we become aware of our intuitive feelings, and as these are active (line 2) we become aware of the activity of the life force. The characteristic of this tao is our lack of flow due to a lack of awareness, so this move towards feeling opens the identity to possibilities of flow once more.

The danger is of taking the flow to be our own and so still not opening ourselves to wider reality. The image of mulberry shoots probably arises out of the habit of mulberry bark to form sprouting burrs which take the strength from the tree; these were then bound tightly to contain them. In the same way, we need to strongly contain the urge to define and take possession of our feelings now or we will remain as separate as ever.

As our being becomes one with the active emerging life force (line 1) the cycle is completed and we flow once again, released from our isolate position of unawareness.

Because our outer identifications are not being accepted by our inner self, the source, the emerging life force, withers away.

The bed is where we enter the great unknown and sleep. Here the leg of the bed breaks, which is its connection with the rest of reality. Our identifications, our conscious interests, are somehow at variance with the way or out of tune with our circumstances, too narrowly based.

Here we become separate from the flow by ceasing to feel it. Feeling is our meeting with the flow so if we lose feeling in this tao we do not identify in the whole but only in the outer part.

Here it is the bed frame, its structure, that comes apart. Our feeling of the life force is the base construction of our world reality; without a feeling of manifesting whole reality, our personal reality becomes isolated fragments. This feeling of whole reality we are lacking is the continuance in the way of the great tao.

By decreasing outer activity we become more in tune with our inner being which has rejected our identifications out in the world.

All our identifications are out there in the world, and here we discard them. In this way we separate ourselves from the factors that divided us.

The most obvious danger in this tao about how we identify is our becoming too externalized and here we seem to realize this and cut off our involvement outside. As our being is at present concentrated in identifying, however, this now slips into identifying the boundary of the inner and outer self.

The surface of the bed is the layer or skin between the outer reality—where we (identity) lie—and the inner; if consciousness penetrates this boundary it damages the function of identity in manifestation.

In this tao our identifying leads us astray and our intuitive feeling which is the basis of our identifying is rejected by our inner being. Here our identity gives up following the feeling, seeing it as being in error.

Fish are often used to symbolize our identifications (which nourish identity) in the uncharted waters of the whole reality. Here is a string of fishes, on a common thread and the fish are caught, so our identifications threaded together are captured. A court is where the ruler is ruling, and the ruler of identity is the identifying process, so here this act of catching identifications brings favour and advantage in every way.

Here is a change in the separation depicted by the tao. The inner self witnesses and we have a possibility of realizing the tao, the experience of our self as separate from any identification.

To see whole we have to leave what we were doing, our identifications, however incomplete they seem to be; this ripe fruit could be eaten but we leave it. Wide-seeing superior man is carried in this, and allowing ourselves to be carried in our circumstances we find that there is more order in our lives, not less; if we do not grasp at life our inner needs take care of themselves. The inferior or narrow reality of chosen identifications has no place to be after this realization, he is not needed.