Standstill

Blocked; nothing is getting through.

The situation

Communication has failed and effort isn't converting into progress. Pushing harder confirms the blockage.

What it asks of you

Withdraw, conserve, keep clean. Wait for the channel rather than forcing it.

Where it leads

The six lines

1. initial Pull up one blade of grass and the whole clump comes with it. Hold still here. 拔茅茹，以其彙，貞吉亨
2. second Putting up with it and going along. That serves small people; the larger person stays blocked, and that is right. 包承，小人吉，大人否亨
3. third Putting up with shame. 包羞
4. fourth Acting under orders, nothing goes wrong. Those around you share in it. 有命无咎，疇離祉
5. fifth The blockage lets up. Keep saying it might all go, it might all go — and tie it to the roots of the mulberry. 休否，大人吉。其亡其亡，繫于苞桑
6. top The blockage tips over. Blocked first, then glad. 傾否，先否後喜

The line texts are the oldest layer of the book. They are pictures, not instructions, and they are meant to be held against your own situation rather than decoded.

How this one is built

Written out as six lines, bottom to top, this pattern is 111000 — a solid line is 1, a broken line is 0. Every relationship above is arithmetic on those six digits, not interpretation: reverse the order and you get the other side, flip every digit and you get the opposite reading, take the middle four and you get what sits underneath. Anyone can check the result, which is what separates a structure from a fortune.

The sequence is built the same way. The sixty-four are arranged in thirty-two pairs, and turned upside down it becomes Balance. The rule holds for all thirty-two pairs without exception — twenty-eight joined by reversal, four by inversion.

In the received order it sits between Balance and Common Ground. The order is not alphabetical or random: the old commentary reads it as a chain, one situation giving rise to the next.