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I-Ching Hexagram · 坎 · Kǎn
29. The Abyss
You are in deep water. Keep a steady heart — depth teaches those who do not panic.
Keywords
Danger · Water · Depth
The field
The Abyss is water doubled — pit inside pit, and you are in it. The hexagram is unflinching about danger: this is not an obstacle to bite through but a depth to move through. Water teaches by example. It does not panic, it does not stop, it fills each hollow before it leaves. Your job is the same. The crisis you are inside has a shape; learn the shape. Keep your daily practice. Speak truthfully and economically. Do not pretend you are not in it, and do not let the depth become an identity. Repeated danger trains a particular kind of trustworthiness — the steadiness of someone who has stopped negotiating with the water and started to read it. The mood is sober, alert, almost intimate. The way out is through, in attentive sequence.
Stance
Keep moving in small honest increments. Do today what today requires — eat, sleep, answer the message, pay the bill. Stop bargaining for an exit that arrives all at once. Speak to one trusted person about what is actually happening. Stay close to a practice that does not depend on your circumstances. Depth honors those who keep their rhythm.
Shadow
The shadow is denial or drowning. You insist nothing is wrong while you sink, and others stop being able to help because you will not name the water. Or you collapse into the depth and call it your truth — danger becomes a costume. The hexagram asks neither performance. It asks for a steady heart inside a real situation.
Changing lines
Changing lines mean the depth is moving — a passage opens, a hollow fills, the water finds its next channel. Do not lunge. Step where the ground is firm; the route reveals itself a foot at a time. What you learn in this passage stays with you long after the water recedes.
Line pattern
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