Today: “Keep with what you know.  Resist the temptation to follow unfounded or untested suggestions that can knock you off your course.  Stay human.” – from the I Ching

37 – Thirty-Seven  Chia Jên / Family Duties

Warming Air Currents rise and spread from the Hearthfire:
The Superior Person weighs his words carefully and is consistent in his behavior.

Be as faithful as a good wife.

SITUATION ANALYSIS:

One in this situation must be keenly aware of his influence on others.
Maintain a healthy respect for the ripple effect of your words and deeds.
To some you serve as a role model.
You can either help shape their world or tilt them into chaos.
Show temperance and consideration to all.

Six in the second place means:

She should not follow her whims.
She must attend within to the food.
Perseverance brings good fortune.

‘The milkmaid’ – Johannes Vermeer (1632 – 1675)
Rijksmuseum Amsterdam – Holland

The wife must always be guided by the will of the master of the house, be he father, husband, or grown son. Her place is within the house. There, without having to look for them, she has great and important duties. She must attend to the nourishment of her family and to the food for the sacrifice. In this way she becomes the centre of the social and religious life of the family, and her perseverance in this position brings good fortune to the whole house.
In relation to general conditions, the counsel given here is to seek nothing by means of force, but quietly to confine oneself to the duties at hand.

48 – Forty-Eight  Ching / The Well

Deep Waters Penetrated and drawn to the surface:
The Superior Person refreshes the people with constant encouragement to help one another.

Encampments, settlements, walled cities, whole empires may rise and fall, yet the Well at the center endures, never drying to dust, never overflowing.
It served those before and will serve those after.
Again and again you may draw from the Well, but if the bucket breaks or the rope is too short there will be misfortune.

SITUATION ANALYSIS:

There is a Source common to us all.
Jung named it the Collective Unconscious.
Others hail it as God within.
Inside each of us are dreamlike symbols and archetypes, emotions and instincts that we share with every other human being.
When we feel a lonely separateness from others, it is not because this Well within has dried up, but because we have lost the means to reach its waters.
You need to reclaim the tools necessary to penetrate to the depths of your fellows.
Then the bonds you build will be as timeless and inexhaustible as the Well that nourishes them.