Consistency

Lasting through repetition.

The situation

Endurance, not intensity, is what wins this. The direction is already correct.

What it asks of you

Hold the line and don't keep reinventing the approach.

Where it leads

The six lines

1. initial Digging for permanence too early and too deep. Nothing comes of it. 浚恆，貞凶，无攸利
2. second The regret goes. 悔亡
3. third Not keeping steady in it, so shame keeps being handed to you. 不恆其德，或承之羞，貞吝
4. fourth Hunting a field with no game in it. 田无禽
5. fifth Steady in it and holding. Good for one who follows, bad for one who must decide. 恆其德，貞。婦人吉，夫子凶
6. top Permanence in a state of agitation. 振恆，凶

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 001110 — 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 Attraction. 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 Attraction and Retreat. The order is not alphabetical or random: the old commentary reads it as a chain, one situation giving rise to the next.