䷉

Your reading

◈ Primary hexagram: 10—Becoming real.

▶ Select a secondary hexagram

Name from “Language of the Lines”

Becoming real.

Lines

Image created from the lines

Here, the only yin or active line is in the place of the outer world (line 3). Our response shown by line 4 is inactive which both means that we are not manipulating it and that we are not very aware of its nature. This unawareness is accentuated by the other yang lines in the top half of the hexagram to make a situation where we have to learn by experience of what happens, to handle the unexpected. The common name for the hexagram are “treading” and “conduct”.

Image created from the trigrams

In this flow the life force is tentative (Tui), our activity hesitant (Li), and our personality reactions are structured (Sun); so we are using our previously acquired experience to deal with new forms of experience and so we treat warily. This is an outer learning tao and the inner being (Ch’ien) is not affected.

The Chinese Oracle

> Treading upon the tail of the tiger.

> It does not bite him. Success.

Comments

Walking into new situations. Wondering if it will turn out all right. All this is necessary to gain outer experience, and it is only by treading on the tiger’s tail that we can discover that it does not bite us. Without risk there is no success, everything is a foregone conclusion; so outer success is here as part and parcel of risk, not because in all cases we shall achieve it. Our personal self has success anyway because it increases its experience.

Manifestations

The pattern

Life force shines through,

linking the outer with inner.

For humans

A knowing of inner knowing

gives a realization.

Making this firm in ourselves

increases potential.

Each realization takes a liberty

with the reality of the one,

but is also a link with it.

In nature

The fire of heaven

draws the water in the earth.

In forms we make

To enter where power is

can easily be confused

with being that power.

To enter gently is not dangerous.

Moving lines

Line 1 goes yin — life force shows more change

The top three lines of the hexagram, being yang, show that our responses are withheld, so this return of activity in the emerging life force is not our anticipation but the natural turn of events.

> Simple energy.

> going forward blamelessly.

❧

Line 2 goes yin — intuitive feeling more active

Here we open our awareness to a quiet inner energy (line 1), we feel quiet and in tune with the tao. In general it is more difficult for our acutely identified form of identity to feel something inactive, for the quieter it gets the less there is for identity to do, but here it is beneficial to learn about this quietness and to persevere with these feelings.

> Treading a smooth level path.

> A dark man perseveres and brings good fortune.

In an inner interpretation the dark man is an unconscious element in us, a feeling (as this is the line of feeling) that has not been defined in consciousness.

❧

Line 3 goes yang — outer world changes less

The way in which we are ignorant of outer activity in this tao (line 4 is yang) leads to its decrease; in a sense, we are controlling outer activity and miss-seeing the tao, which is to learn from the tao rather than manipulate it. We may think that we are awake but our ignorance makes it more like dream-walking and this not-quite-seeing in the outer world leads to mistaking our situation; we learn, but through making mistakes.

> With one eye he can still see.

> With one leg he can still walk.

> He treads upon the tail of the tiger and it bites him.

> Warriors act thus in service of their overlord.

This is symbolic of identity out there on the battlefield of the outer world to learn the lessons needed by his greater self (the overlord). In this greater sense our errors are inevitable and so no error at all.

❧

Line 4 goes yin — accepting the outer state more

In this tao the outer state has the only manifest activity. As we become more absorbed in outer activity we lose sight within (insight) and are liable to lose contact with the tao. The third line is yin and to accept the natural activity of the tao is in keeping with it, but to accept it as _our_ activity is to lose the experience that the tao can give us.

> Great caution is required when treading on the tiger’s tail but the outcome (of treading with caution) is fortunate.

The distinction between action and self-involved action is not always easy to make while we are in activity; here we need the caution.

❧

Line 5 goes yin — more awareness of intuition

Our direct knowing is inactive in this tao and being aware of this quietness is different to being involved in it and making it our way of being; there is no dividing line to make this difference distinct so we need to be very wary of being absorbed in the quietness until we lose the witnessing of events and also of stimulating feeling into activity.

> Treading with care and attention to danger. There may be trouble.

The trouble would arise if we were not attentive enough and think we were being bold or if we become afraid and fail to tread at all.

❧

Line 6 goes yin — our inner being accepts more

Inner change is not yet manifesting in this tao, so it is about being with quietness inside and activity outside. In this moving line we accept learning this by a balance of witnessing with participation which provides a very effective living technique. The balance is dynamic, it is constantly modified and never made into rules to live by. This becomes the art of riding life, responding to its every movement yet never falling into the role of mastering it.

> Watch your conduct and be alert to signs and great good fortune will follow.

Riding life, never adrift and never entangled is the greatest good fortune.

Permalinks

▶ 778777

▶ 10