Sub-auxiliary
Position 4 of 8 · ☶ 艮 Gèn
Sha Wujing (the steady disciple)
One of the eight positions every type fills. A different function sits here in each type; below is what the position itself does, how it fails, and its eight possible hexagrams.
The Auxiliary's opposite-attitude twin, regarded with the same skepticism but less tolerance: admitted as garnish, never the meal. That the Auxiliary should be valued for its own sake seems odd to the type; that the Sub-auxiliary should be is baffling, even reprehensible. Its legitimacy depends on obedience.
Sub-auxiliaryHow to read it
Audible as the private register behind the public craft (the Te-executive's private Ti tinkering; the Fe-host's private Fi rulings): disclosed reluctantly.
The two failure directions
Every position fails in two directions: too much control (walled, refused) or too little (overrun, erupted). The two feed each other in a loop; the correction is always the opposite motion.
The eruption: The Understudy builds toward the Spill: a register rehearsed for years without a stage accumulates pressure until it leaks, and the half-formed part is passed off as the finished one.
The crackdown returns: The botched showing then locks the rehearsal room: embarrassed by the leak, the type withholds the register more completely than before.
too much control · correct by yield
the part learned cold and run privately, but the understudy never goes on; rehearsal perfected, performance never given
too little control · correct by hold
the private rehearsal register leaks out as though it were the finished public one; the half-formed passed off as proven
The arc
supports Arc 1 as private support for the Auxiliary position
The four arcs and sixteen conditions in full →
The eight hexagrams of this position
Each function that can sit here forms its own hexagram (function trigram over this position's trigram), shared by the two types named.
Present contact (Se) sits in the sub-auxiliary position for ESFJ and ESTJ. Like a mountain willingly placing itself under the plain, skepticism humbles itself beneath unvarnished reality, reducing over-reliance on the archive (Si) to augment simple acceptance of what is present.
