Hexagram 2 - The Receptive

Receptive.

All virtues of the Receptive belong to the Earth.

A sage possesses directed going.

Beforehand delusion, afterwards wisdom.

A sage moves toward what benefits all.

Manifesting the spirit within the world[1] requires partnering.

Coming to the end of a cycle requires solitude.

            Peaceful trial, significant.

 Structure: 

·          Yielding lines only.

·          The open lines represent the Receptive’s primal power of yielding.

Time:  In the Chinese calendar, the hexagram marks the 10^th month (November – December), when the dark powers of nature bring an end to the year.

Manifestation

The Receptive seeks only to complement the Creative. It yields fully to the ways of the Creative, fulfilling and completing the ways of the Creative by giving them form and appearance. This union of the Creative and Receptive manifests as arising experience. 

We apprehend the ways of the Creative through its manifestation in experience: every way we turn we see the face of the Creative. The experience of the cosmos, the sacred universe reflects the Creative. The Creative becomes spatial through the Receptive.

Endurance

The Receptive not only endures the Creative flux but embraces it. Like the Earth, the Receptive carries and supports all experience and serves as its enduring foundation.  Each life form has a fixed law of existence, according to its being, and develops in unchanging ways.  The Receptive’s holding quality allows all life to realize their potential.  The Receptive selflessly fulfills the potential of all and keeps them within the fundamental laws and principles of the Tao.

Freed from self-cherishing, sages selflessly follow the spiritual path, possessing the inner strength, virtue[2], and breadth of view to hold whatever arises in experience in mindful presence. Staying fully and lovingly present to experience marks the capacity to bear the Creative’s flux of energy. 

Yielding to the Spirit

The Receptive does not act on its own but constantly remains open to the influence of the Creative.  The Receptive accommodates itself to the ways of the Creative and makes them its own, taking away nothing, adding nothing. The Receptive has no need for its own special purpose, yet everything turns out as it should.

Within the human realm, we have the power of will. What we intend, we experience. We make plans, act on them, and then live the results of the plan. People have the free will to choose how to respond to arising experience. How we respond to what we experience depends upon our intentions. 

We learn from the Receptive how to use our power of will to benefit all, achieving the height of wisdom when what we accomplish follows the ways of Receptivity.  All life naturally serves the sacred. The sage serves the spirit and brings to life the ways of the spirit.

We lose the path of Receptivity when we choose to self-benefit and act in ways that manifest our self-cherishing and hostility for others. Taking the lead, one goes astray.  Pursuing worldly concerns[3] obscures the spirit.  When we abandon our devotion to the spirit and hold ourselves equal in power to the sacred, when we seek to rule and serve ourselves or our group alone, we conflict with the Creative. Our opposition to the Creative causes a struggle and great harm for everyone, including the Earth.

Choosing to align the choices we make with the ways of the spirit imbues our being with the spirit.  We learn from the situation how to serve it in ways that benefit all. Life is in its proper place only when we open to the influences of the Creative and yield to it.  When we follow the spirit, our actions manifest the ways of the spirit.

The sage looks deeply into what arises to understand the situation discern a response that will reduce suffering and deliver us from our selfishness. We let go of our struggles to have our way and by so doing free ourselves and others from the harms caused by our self-cherishing and hostility for others. The virtues of a loving interbeing, moral discipline, justice, and wisdom inform the intentions of the wise.

When faced with difficulties within the world that requires a collective response, the sage first retreats into solitude to learn from the spirit how to move through the difficulties. Once the path forward is clearly seen, the sage needs partners to bring the spirit’s way into the world. People mobilize all of their powers to overcome the problems caused by those whose self-cherishing and hostility for others have caused great harm. At the end of this effort, the sage once again retreats into a spiritual solitude to concentrate what has come to be into the seed of a new beginning.

The Receptive has no need of a purpose and spontaneously actualizes the spirit. When acting in obedience to the ways of the spirit, we experience an inner quiet and fulfillment of duty within the world. We find our place within the cosmos, the sacred universe, by yielding to the spirit.

 

Line 1:  In the beginning, unless the line remains firmly resolved to yield to the ways of the spirit, subtle external influences cause the line to waver and seek self-benefit. The wise, aware of the dangers of self-cherishing, make timely precautions by heeding the first signs of decay and checking them in time. Left to itself, the harms of self-cherishing increase inevitably. 

Line 2:  The line aligns itself with the ways of the spirit. Abandoning what harms others and the Earth lead to what benefits all.  Great works in this way are achieved.

Line 3:  The line embodies virtue and the ways of the spirit. Acting within the world when conditions allow, it has no purpose of its own but accomplishes the great. The line knows the radiance of the great purpose.

Line 4:  Dangerous times calls for strictest reticence.  Any degree of making known one’s merit leads either to enmity or to unwanted recognition. No blame; no praise.

Line 5:  The line keeps to the middle course. The selfless line understands that leaders serve and avoids arrogance.

This line represents the right place sought by sages, who yield precedence to others and stay in the background.  The sage manifests the sacred through its influence, unseen yet present in all movements and deeds.  Its virtue naturally shows outwardly, the manifestation of the path of receptivity.

 

Line 6:  The line ignores its responsibilities to serve others and Creation.   The line imagines itself greater than the sacred, and a great battle ensues that injures.

 

People cannot dominate Creation but must remain submissive to it and serve it.  When people disregard natural limits and assume unfettered control over the Earth and all life, the power of nature comes forward to assert its power against those who have violated its ways.  In this struggle, humans and all life, nature and the Earth suffer.

 

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[1] World does not refer to nature but to how people live within nature.  The world –  civilization, culture, history, society, beliefs, worldly influences – is embedded as a subsystem within the natural system.

[2] Virtues shape our behavior and align us with the spirit.  The Tao brings forth the good and great, which we experience as love. The Tao causes all life to develop and flow within natural limits, regulating and organizing love, which we call a moral discipline that benefits all.  The Tao transforms life so that each attains its true nature, a power that we call justice that ensures that all life has the means to achieve its potential according to its being.  The Tao harmonizes all life within interbeing, which we call wisdom, and separates what endures from what perishes.  The completed sage uses these virtues to shape the world.

[3] Worldly concerns are the amoral ways in which the selfish willingly harm others for self-benefit and then ignore the suffering they cause.  Selfish individuals seek power and domination over others and willingly use violence to do so.  The selfish accumulate wealth through the unlimited exploitation and ultimate destruction of people, other life forms, and the Earth.  The selfish seek the attention of others.  The selfish consume as much as they can and seek constant distractions from facing the harms they caused others, all life, and the Earth.