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ā Primary hexagram: 63āCompletion.
ā¶ Select a secondary hexagram
Completion.
6. - - yin (top) 5. --- yang 4. - - yin 3. --- yang 2. - - yin 1. --- yang (bottom)
Outer activity is quiet and this is accepted (lines 3 and 4), inner life force activity is also quiet and is accepted (lines 1 and 6); there is active feeling but we are not making this our sense of reality (lines 2 and 5). So here is a stillness which, in the Chinese oracle is called āafter completionā; it represents a phase where an activity has come to an end and in this phase we just exist in undefined feeling and there is no ongoing activity. It is the state in which we find ourselves after a change is completed.
The emerging energy clings to its source (Li) and is inactive in the outer world (Kāan); it starts again tentatively in our identity (Li) and is again quenched in our inner being (Kāan). We can hardly speak of flow here because the flow has been completed and is no longer accepted innerly or outerly; it is an end which signals a beginning. The change may be just a small part of our activity or it may involve our whole mode of experiencing, but it is a clear transition; it is expressed by hexagrams 63 and 64 together (after completion and before completion) and is a very useful concept arising out of these trigrams Li and Kāan which is discussed further in appendix one.
After completion.
Success of the small.
Continuing in the way is rewarded.
Good fortune in beginnings,
misfortune in endings.
The great movement of a cycle is over and we are re-born, we are small again in a new environment as we were small when born in the world. This is not an end so continuance is necessary and its success is the development of a new cycle of experience. We should concentrate on beginnings because the old, the ending, is in dis-order, dis-integrating.
Fire enters water.
Water enters fire.
Mutually they change
each otherās reality
forming what is different
after they have changed.
He may be surprised
to find himself
without the thing he has made
with such care.
He can rejoice in passing
from one reality to another.
Under the sun.
Through the sea.
The reality of rock
is sand.
Complete change is an end
and a beginning.
Here is new activity developing from the inside; we need to await its development so that we act outside in phase with it.
He brakes the carriage wheels.
The tail is in the water.
No error.
The general rule when going through transition is to keep going, but here we are just in āafter completionā and there are still parts which have not completed the change, or the tail is still in the water in the image of crossing the great water. It is no error to slow down so that these parts can catch up with the change.
ā§
In a new situation, after transition, there may be feelings of insecurity which cause us to feel over-exposed and withdraw our feelings.
The lady in a carriage loses the blind to her window.
It will return after seven days, she should not go after it.
She feels vulnerable as we do at this time, but as the cycle completes itself (the seven days) the protection of confidence returns. This vulnerability is actually an advantage if we accept it as natural to our situation and not an error to be corrected, it gives us additional sensitivity which we need in new surroundings.
ā§
If we have outer activity increasing directly after completion it shows that we have not yet changed our external mode of being; transition does not occur through making changes out there in the world, it is by change in the way we ourselves are.
The illustrious ancestor subdued the province of Kuei Fang (the devilās country) after three years.
Men of inferior ability would have been useless.
Three is the number of transition or change, so it is this that creates the success. A devil or evil one in a situation of change is the narrow view which will not change and allow enlargement, and this is also the inferior manāthe opposite of the great man so often referred to.
ā§
Our outer state (line 3) is inactive in this tao and we need to preserve that inactivity if we are to change out of our mind-desire mode of beingāthe mode of trying to make something ābetterā.
Amongst fine silks are ragged clothes.
Be careful all day.
Amongst our wide aspirations are narrow desires; all day is throughout conscious activity, and being always aware of them will itself change them.
ā§
Intuitive feeling is the basis of our knowing our circumstance and this line 5 is about the conscious interpretation of that feeling; when we become more involved here we consider how to use the life force.
Someone in the east sacrifices an ox with less benefit than one in the west who makes a spring offering.
The ox is the strength of outer activity and this is sacrificed at the beginning (the east where the sun rises).
The spring offering is the sacrifice of beginnings (a giving up before we start and so an offering, not a killing); this is made at the end of a cycle (the west).
So it is more beneficial to give up starting new things, which arises when the old are ended, than to kill off the outside activity after it has developed.
ā§
If our inner being does not accept the end of a cycle the transition cannot complete.
His head is submerged in the water.
Danger.
The head is the controller and here it is right in the liquifying process of change. For identity to emerge changed from transition it needs to flow in the momentum of being changed, not to get involved in controlling it.