Inner Truth in Growth

The work here is to make the inside and the outside the same thing. Line 1 sends you searching your inmost thoughts for the hedge — the escape route quietly kept warm, the private exception, the activity you continue though you know it's off. Every secret reservation is a wall against the very strength this hexagram offers, and its cost is a low, persistent disquiet. Commit entire; your integrity is exactly as strong as it is clean. Then trust the crane's law (line 2): what you are at the centre calls out unseen, and is answered by its kind. Firmness of values is felt as strength, hollowness as hollowness — so tend the hidden tone, nourish yourself on correct thoughts, and stop performing what you could simply be.

The next step is to move your centre of gravity inside yourself. Line 3 is dependence in portrait — mood strung entirely to others' approval, elated at their warmth, desolate at their distance, drumming and weeping on their schedule. The line doesn't forbid caring about people; it forbids outsourcing your self to them. Let the measure of your progress rest on your relation to what's true, not on the weather of any other opinion. And watch line 4's nearly-full moon: when real growth begins filling, stay humble toward its source — the moment you claim the credit, the waning starts. Above all, avoid line 6's cockcrow: talk that outclimbs the life. Let your words return to their honest size — sincere, few, and backed.