The Book of Changes · Gen

Hexagram 52: Keeping Still

Mountain (the peak) over Mountain (the peak)

Stillness doubled, and the tradition means something exact by it: the back, which does not perceive. Keeping still where the self is not involved, so that a person can act without their ego being in the way.

The image

Mountains standing close together. The reading is that a person does not permit their thoughts to go beyond the situation they are actually in.

Mountain, above

Stillness, limit, and the place where a thing stops.

Mountain, below

Stillness, limit, and the place where a thing stops.

The six lines

Read from the bottom up.

1. Line 1Stillness from the ground up, before anything has been committed. No fault in stopping this early.
2. Line 2The legs are still and the one above is not stopping. Stillness that cannot save what it is attached to.
3. Line 3Stiffening the spine to force it. Dangerous: the heart suffocates.
4. Line 4Stillness that has reached the middle of you. No fault, and no strain in it.
5. Line 5The jaws still, and the words have order. The regret lifts.
6. Line 6Stillness with a whole character behind it. The top of the figure, and the good fortune.

The same figure in Human Design

Human Design took its sixty four gates from this book, in this numbering, so hexagram 52 is Gate 52, Stillness.