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Your reading

◈ Primary hexagram: 40—Release from indecision.

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Name from “Language of the Lines”

Release from indecision.

Lines

Image created from the lines

Here is an absence of direct knowledge of the life force and an absence of interest in the outer world, lines 2 and 4 are yang while all the other lines are yin. Identity is aware of the quiet state of feeling (line 5) so we are not stressed either from inner feeling or outer activities.

Image created from the trigrams

The manifesting flow oscillates between K’an and Li and so does not have a direction; however the trigram about the inner being is Chên which has a decisive energy and great flow, this releases us from the indecision we have been in. The common name of the hexagram is “deliverance” or “release”; release comes from separating our being from the seeking and doing that was fuelling the see-saw.

The Chinese Oracle

> Release.

> The south and west are favourable.

> If there is no activity to be accomplished

> there is good fortune in returning.

> If there is activity unfinished

> a speedy end is favoured.

Comments

The south and west is where the sun traverses the sky as it goes from full activity to rest, so completing activity is favoured here if there is still something uncompleted.

Manifestations

The pattern

A new way leads out of

insecurity and vacillation.

Release from indecision.

For humans

Taking both.

Allowing tension through him,

not dodging it,

he comes to decision

and is released.

In nature

Torrential rain—mud.

Baking sun—rock.

Torrents again—mud.

Stress

between earth and heaven

flashes lightning and is no more.

Delicate tendrils, messengers,

can feel their way again.

In forms we make

Uncertainty of direction

is oscillation faster than complete action.

Taking both damps vibrations.

Moving lines

Line 1 goes yang — life force shows less change

When beset with polarity we are in stress, choosing yet unable to make a choice and changing our choice even before putting it into effect. Here in this line the life force becomes quiet and this gives choice a rest.

> No error.

It is the life flow emerging more quietly and lessening the stress, it is not our doing and cannot possibly be an error, but when beset by choice we are always overconscious of error.

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Line 2 goes yin — intuitive feeling more active

Greater activity of our intuitive feeling enables us to find direction in the life force.

> He kills three foxes.

> One yellow arrow.

> Continuance in the way

> brings good fortune.

Yellow is an active colour (almost in the middle of our visible spectrum), applied to an arrow which indicates a chosen direction—we have chosen an active direction; this direction is between extremes, being given as “one” which is the whole or middle way of unchoosing. This direction ends the vacillation of choice which deprived us of identifying, in the same way a fox deprives man of his nourishment (three foxes because continual change of choice was the problem).

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Line 3 goes yang — outer world changes less

To obtain freedom of flow identity needs to act out without identifying itself in the movement. Here in the line we seem to be confused about this and expect the life force to carry us out of stress without our taking part at all.

> Riding in a carriage and carrying property he invites robbers.

> Continuance brings misfortune.

We want to be carried yet we do not want to let go; not allowing activity is still controlling it.

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Line 4 goes yin — accepting the outer state more

To become involved in outer activity is to make it our own; this gives entanglement, not deliverance. Only when we take ourselves out of the equation do we see that it balances.

> Free yourself from your toes,

> then the friend will come with trust.

The toes lead our steps and our steps are our personal way. The friend with trust is the life flow itself; willful activity causes the flow of circumstances to appear untrustworthy.

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Line 5 goes yang — less awareness of intuition

We are no longer trying to discern the life force and so in a tao of release we allow it to be what it will.

> The superior man alone

> can free himself.

> Good fortune.

> Smaller men can only follow.

We cannot be released by following something, for we are attached to what we follow. It is necessary to be alone and open to be free; separating from attachment enables us to be free.

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Line 6 goes yang — our inner being accepts less

Here identity chooses not to choose, which is release as the stress was in the choice.

> The prince shoots an arrow,

> kills a hawk on a high wall.

> All is favourable.

The hawk sits on a high wall choosing what he will catch. High up is symbolically the head and a wall is a boundary and barrier, so we have been choosing from our position of defining which confines the choice; here the prince (identity) takes a direction (shoots an arrow) which kills the chooser.

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