Today: “Smooth the sharpness that keeps people apart from you” – from the I Ching

Allow yourself to be more approachable by smoothing the sharpness that keeps people apart from you.  You will enjoy awesome power and influence.

Read the text from Richard Wilhelm's and subsequent translations of the I Ching

#41, 34, line 4

To be frugal and content is to possess immeasurable wealth within.
Nothing of value could be refused such a person.
A man’s faults often prevent even well-disposed people from coming closer to him. His faults are sometimes reinforced by the environment in which he lives. But if in humility he can bring himself to the point of giving them up, he frees his well-disposed friends from an inner pressure and causes them to approach the more quickly, and there is mutual joy.
The Awesome Power available in this hexagram stems from what the Taoists call your Te, a term not perfectly translated into English.
Roughly, it is your Integrity — not in the Western sense of honor — but more in the psychological definition of a full integration of Who You Are.
This Awesome Power is achieved only by fully embracing both the good and the bad, the strong and the weak, the masculine and the feminine — all polarities within you.
Such self-knowledge spawns a Mastery tempered with the humility necessary to rein in and harness this Awesome Power.

Meditation

Tao Te Ching – Verse 68

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Author: harinam

Yogi, teacher, healer

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