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◈ Primary hexagram: 23—Solitude.

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Name from “Language of the Lines”

Solitude.

Lines

Image created from the lines

The only yang line is in the place of our inner being where we are not accepting all the free flow of the other lines. Our inner being is standing apart, separated from outer experience. Outer identification is not accepted.

Image created from the trigrams

All is freely flowing (K’un) until we reach our inner being where Kên shows silence and meditation on events, not participation.

The Chinese Oracle

> Splitting.

> No objective is favourable.

Comments

It is not favourable to have objectives when identity is divided from the inner self because all the directions that can attract us involve us more in the separate outer reality which is not being accepted by the whole personal self; any identification we make causes us to split further. There are however important chances of change and discoveries to be made in this tao about the way we are identifying.

Manifestations

The pattern

When inner reality

forsakes all outer activity

We contemplate in solitude.

For humans

When there are no bonds

things do not remain together.

In nature

To spin a cocoon

heralds inner change

and chrysalis.

In forms we make

Each into himself,

each unto himself,

leaves nothing to share.

Moving lines

Line 1 goes yang — life force shows less change

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

> The leg of the bed breaks.

> Not continuing in the way

> brings misfortune.

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.

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Line 2 goes yang — intuitive feeling less active

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.

> The bed frame or edge is broken.

> No continuance in the way.

> Misfortune.

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.

❧

Line 3 goes yang — outer world changes less

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

> He separates from all.

> No error.

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.

❧

Line 4 goes yang — accepting the outer state less

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 bed and skin is split.

> Misfortune.

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.

❧

Line 5 goes yang — less awareness of intuition

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.

> A string of fishes.

> Favour alike to being at court.

> All is advantageous.

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.

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Line 6 goes yin — our inner being accepts more

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.

> A ripe fruit is not eaten.

> The superior man has a carriage.

> The inferior man loses his habitation.

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.

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