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Seeking Support in a Quarter Where Nothing Correctly Answers

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Seeking Support in a Quarter Where Nothing Correctly Answers

As a changing line, six in the second place counsels a querent against soliciting support from a quarter that has no proper obligation to supply it. The two rejected directions, downward to a station beneath the querent's own and upward to a height with no answering connection, describe the same error twice over: an approach made because help is imagined to be there, not because any real relationship makes it available. The text's word for the result is misfortune, and its explanation is that the subject acts contrary to his proper class.

What makes this reading uncomfortable is that nothing about the querent's own position is wrong. The stroke is yielding in an even place and central in its trigram, which by the standard rule is correctness itself. The difficulty is relational. The fifth line, which would ordinarily answer the second, is yielding as well, so there is no complement to draw on, and a request sent upward finds nobody obliged to receive it. A reading landing here often marks a person entirely justified in needing help and entirely mistaken about where to ask for it.

The changing line turns the lower trigram Zhen into Dui and produces Decrease, King Wen 41. That figure names the outcome without softening it. What follows an approach made in the wrong direction is not the support that was sought but a reduction in what the querent already had. The instruction is to establish a genuine correspondence first, and to leave the approach unmade until one exists.

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