Splitting Apart

Po is the hexagram of collapse in progress: five dark lines have risen, and the last light line at the top is about to be split away. Autumn deepening toward winter; the inferior in the ascendant; a structure eaten from beneath. The Judgment's counsel is absolute and brief — undertake nothing, go nowhere. This is not cowardice but the reading of the season: against a tide of this kind, action of any sort only feeds what it opposes.

Trusting non-action is among the hardest disciplines the I Ching asks. Have the courage to resist acting, to wait and observe, and to let the collapse complete what only its completion can begin.

Splitting apart is also how growth proceeds. Old patterns, habits, beliefs, and attachments that no longer serve must be stripped away — painfully — before anything new can stand. The image gives the mountain's secret: it rests on the broad earth, and only what rests on a generous, humble base survives the stripping season. Those above endure by giving to those below; the top line kept whole is the one that fed its foundation.

Stand firm in your principles, accept the nature of the time, and let what is falling fall. The natural law at work here favours, in the end, exactly what it now seems to destroy.

The dangers of collapse are the responses it provokes. Panic action — intervening, forcing, rescuing — which splinters against the tide and hastens the fall. Bitterness — nursing grievances against those who split from us, feeding the very darkness of the time. And despair — concluding that because the structure is falling, nothing is left; forgetting the large fruit that survives every winter uneaten. The season strips; it is our reaction that decides what it strips us of.