Standstill
Heaven and Earth Apart
Nothing passes between above and below: keep your principles, decline the tainted post, sit it out.
Standstill places the creative heaven of Qian above the receptive earth of Kun, and is the exact inversion of Peace. Heaven rises and earth sinks, so in this arrangement the two draw apart and no intercourse takes place between them. The Judgement puts it as the great departing and the small approaching: inferior forces are rising while the worthy withdraw. In the twelve sovereign hexagrams it holds the seventh month, when the dark lines are climbing from below. The Image advises retreat rather than resistance, the superior man falling back on his inner worth to escape the difficulty and declining to be honoured with a salary.
Light
Names a condition and prescribes conduct for it: principles kept intact, compromising office declined, and resources conserved until the obstruction runs its course, as the tradition holds it must.
Shadow
Signifies stagnation, misunderstanding between those above and those below, mediocrity in the ascendant, isolation, and effort that meets no answer.
