Gate 30 · Feelings

What it is like

Desire warms you from inside and won't let you rest, which is why you feel everything so strongly. Rush to satisfy it, and what is most alive in it often slips away.

When someone close has it

This person feels strongly and wants to live things fully. Accept their intensity without dampening it, and without promising it will all come true.

A question for today

What do I long for today, and can I stay with that feeling for a while?

The six lines of gate 30

1. Line 1 · Scattered Footprints

   This line begins desire in confusion. At first the footprints run in many directions at once and it is not clear which to follow, and you need to look at each one seriously before you set off. Care at the beginning gives you ground on which desire can later burn without fear. When there are too many directions, it is easy to pick the first one that comes along just to end the uncertainty, and close the desire before it shows what it wants.

2. Line 2 · Midday Warmth

   Here desire has its natural measure. You warm rather than scald, like the light of midday that does not blind, and it comes to you without effort. Others are drawn to this warmth and call it out, though you are best when nobody asks where it comes from. Sometimes someone wants more heat than you naturally give, and then it is easy to turn the flame up beyond your measure and lose what was alive in it.

3. Line 3 · Evening Glow

   This line comes to know desire through the fact that everything passes. When something ends, you try out two paths: to sing by the pot in the evening light or to mourn what is going. Each attempt teaches you which of them leaves warmth behind. When endings come many at once, it is easy to decide that since nothing lasts there is no point wanting anything, though it is exactly the passing that gives desire its taste.

4. Line 4 · A Straw Fire

   Here desire burns within the circle of people you know, and it can catch fire suddenly. Your enthusiasm carries friends along, warms a conversation, lights a shared plan in a single evening. It lasts best when the fire has something to feed on for longer than one night. When the flame leaps up too fast, it can die down just as suddenly, and those close to you are left with the ashes of the shared plan.

5. Line 5 · Rain of Tears

   This line makes others see you as someone who understands their desires better than they do. They come because around you it is allowed to feel strongly, sorrow included. Your practical strength is that you are not afraid of the sadness that comes when something important ends, and you let it pass instead of holding it down. When expectations grow, it is easy to carry others' grief as your own and forget that desire after tears can be reborn brighter.

6. Line 6 · The Precise Cut

   Here desire matures into the ability to tell what must end from what may stay. From a distance you see that not every ember needs putting out, and it is enough to remove what really feeds the blaze. You teach others by how you part with things: without revenge, by choice. Sometimes, from that distance, desire seems a matter for other people rather than yours, and the warmth begins to drift away.

The centre of this gate

• Solar Plexus

Channels through gate 30

• 30–41 · Recognition