Treading (Conduct) in Spirit

Conduct in this hexagram is not etiquette but the discipline of moving rightly through situations larger than yourself. The tiger is fate: approached with sincerity and innocence it does no harm; approached with self-importance — intervening where you have no business, provoking what should be left alone — it bites. What obstructs you is mostly old attitude, and old attitude yields slowly — the outer situation refines at exactly the rate the inner one does. The superior person "distinguishes high from low" — accepting the discipline, the patience, and the proper order of things that repairing a life requires. Plainness is protection: advance quietly, wanting little, entangled in nothing (line 1).

Your inner worth quietly determines the outer conditions of your life — this is the hexagram's deep sign. The inner conflicts you carry, the lawsuits of the heart, arise from harsh, vindictive, or impatient attitudes, from not truly letting people go, from seeking to control their behaviour. Release them, and healing begins; creative relationship with life becomes possible again. Watch line 3's overreach — partial ability mistaking itself for full capacity, the one-eyed man sure he sees, charging where he lacks the strength to stand; the more correct your position feels, the humbler you must become. And at the end, line 6 asks you to look back over the path you have trodden, for the outcome of a life is simply its conduct, summed.