Hexagram 9

Image:  The wind blows across the sky, restraining the clouds.  Ancients saw wind as the breath of the Creative.  The wind makes the clouds grow dense, but it does not have the strength to turn the clouds into rain.    Many clouds promise needed rain, but no rain yet comes. 

The gentle temporarily restrains and shapes the strong Creative force, which surges powerfully outward.  Wind, the least visible of all experienced phenomenon, acts to concentrate the strongest force to make it visible.    

Creative forces surge outward into experience.  At this turning point in history, we have the task to concentrate and shape human forces into new forms, a new era.  While we have this critical responsibility, we individually lack the power needed to manifest the new era.  No one person can create a new culture out of nothing. 

In our time, those who work for a new beginning are average people.  We feel the responsibility and know the necessity of the task, but no leader appears whom we can follow.  In our time, a great leader will not come forth to bring the new and creative era Instead, the new era will become visible through the cooperative efforts of many wise people manifesting in the world[1] what benefits all.

Restraining our selfishness and aversion for others while cultivating virtues[2] within ourselves and in the world shape the chaotic powerful forces of the Creative. This development of the spiritual path prepares the ground for the new beginning and serves as the fulcrum to move the world.  We must do this work to prepare for the new era ourselves as nobody else can do it for us.

The time has not yet come to give the new era a definitive form within the world that has the integrity to hold the powerful energies of the Creative.  Chaos has not ceased. Many seek the final shape of things to come.  First one vision emerges, then another.  A great strong movement arises, firing enthusiasm and hope but then collapses, and new shapes emerge from the chaos.  The wise continue to learn and share what their discoveries with others also engaged in making visible the new era.

Collectively, we still need to restrain and shape more Creative forces and substance.  We have to build a broad large form in which everything and everyone has a place.  Those excluded from active participation in creating this work would sabotage the process if the shaping prematurely concluded without them.  We must continue our shaping efforts until the maximum point of expansion is reached in a form so comprehensive and inclusive that all within the surging chaos finds its place therein.  Only from within such depths can the shape of the new era finally be known.

In these times, the most harmful aspects selfishness and aversion for others still have the power to stop and oppress the many.  The wise do not have the strength and capacity on their own to transform the situation. The spirit, the weakest force within the world, cannot yet prevail against the harmful forces and amorality.  While we can always tame and limit, we at this time cannot overcome the strong and powerful negative forces.  We can only try to prevent the worst so that at least a future remains possible.

Confronted by the urgent search for the great, all-encompassing form in which everything has a place, patience and faith in the Way of humanity[3]  alone prevents despair.  The inner certainty that our efforts will give shape to the new era gives us courage and resolve.  With a glad mind, we persist. 

This unresolved chaotic situation demands our gentleness and patience.  No benefit comes from forcing a resolution and harvesting prematurely the unripe fruit of our efforts.  We wait, but that waiting is not inactivity.  While it is not the time to conclude or perfect, we must pour our energy into the small efforts of shaping, which in themselves never reach greatness on their own.  The accumulated efforts of many will lead to the world we seek.

This work begins with our efforts to shape whatever arises in our daily experience.  We can refine our response to the new era by using the ways of that new era, the Way of humanity.  This daily work within this thin zone of freedom may not move the world, but it has a large influence in increasing our capacities to extend this creative shaping into ever greater complexities of experience.

Creative forces transform and surge outward.  They are never gentle and mild.  We must make the transformative forces visibly apparent in our world.  The only thing that can give these energies and power a shape is our gentleness and powerlessness.  Only these seemingly small and insignificant encounters with the moment can tame the chaos of creation.

This is not the time to cultivate the new era secretively and in isolation.  We must join with those who mutually share the understanding of what must be done and with whom we can openly make known to the fullest extent the force of our nature.

That which is inside must overflow to the outside.  In this way alone can we help prepare the new way.  New paths will appear, enabling us to manifest the spirit in greater ways.  Eventually the time comes when the shape of the new era will suddenly appear complete.  Our task is not to wait for that day but to prepare its conditions, to satiate the time with possibilities so that the spark of creativity will penetrate and ignite its completion.  This is the fruit of the slow preparatory work of small development.

The shapers of the new era have this thankless work, an effort that seemingly never succeeds but just tames.  These laborers never see the harvest.  We may glance only from afar into the promised land.  While others may gather the fruit, this vanguard plants the orchard.  The success of the harvest is prepared at the height of renunciation, at the time of small battles of resignation and taming.

A great and difficult task engages us.  No sphere of activity is too small.  Each sphere of influence that fate has allotted to us matures with us and serves as the ground where we work, where the small concentrates the creative.  Eventually, the winds change and the rain comes.