The Book of Changes · Guan

Hexagram 20: Contemplation

Wind (wind, and wood growing) over Earth (the field)

Looking, and being looked at. The figure is a tower you can see from and be seen from, and the tradition treats the second half as the more serious: what is watched is what is copied.

The image

Wind over the earth, going everywhere. The reading is that the old rulers travelled the regions and looked at the people, and taught from what they saw rather than from what they assumed.

Wind, above

Penetration, patience, and what works by not stopping.

Earth, below

Yielding, carrying, and what receives without insisting.

The six lines

Read from the bottom up.

1. Line 1Looking at it like a child. Harmless in someone with no responsibility, humiliating in someone with it.
2. Line 2Watching through a crack in the door. Enough for a narrow life; not enough for this one.
3. Line 3Looking at your own life to decide whether to go on or turn back. The honest audit.
4. Line 4Seeing how a place is actually run, from inside it. A guest with real access.
5. Line 5Looking at your own life and judging it by its effects rather than its intentions.
6. Line 6Looking at the life from outside, as a stranger would. Freed of needing to be the one living it.

The same figure in Human Design

Human Design took its sixty four gates from this book, in this numbering, so hexagram 20 is Gate 20, The Now.