I'm curious about how others see hexagram 60. Is the limitation something going on within a person or is it external..out there in the environment? My experience with it tells me that it's an external limitation rather than some sort of internal thing. However, I'd like to hear what you all think.

60 is either inner or outer limitation. In addition to what we commonly consider limitation here to mean, it refers to the separation, articulation or delineation between things, such as notes in a musical scale, or different drawers to organize your clothes. You can apply the same principle to mental and emotional functions, or anything, for that matter. Application of the principle depends upon circumstances in question.

Shake it once to dry the thing,
Shake it twice you've sinned again..

At some point Dispersion without Limitation changes the whole nature of the activity.

"CHIEH : seperate and distinguish, as well as join different things; express thought through speech; joint, section, chapter, interval, unit of time; regulations, limit; zodiacal sign; lit:nodes on bamboo shoots" ERANOS p630

60 covers the imposition of limits to allow for consistancy in precise communications - IOW it covers the notion of setting standards. Any 'emotional' aspect is context sensitive where the universal is grounded in some local event and so interpretable as negative or positive.

To flesh-out its nature we can get the I Ching to use self-referencing to 'tell us' about itself. Thus the infrastructure of 60, its 'raw' form, it skeletal form is described by analogy to hexagram 59 with its focus on dispelling illusions etc. making things 'clear'. I think you can see the notion of imposing of standards as an act of making things 'clear'.

Using self-referencing, getting the IC to tell us about itself, means that all hexagrams have 64 'harmonics' or 'parts' when viewed as hexagrams, or 4096 parts when viewed as changing-line hexagrams. However we do not usually require all of that detail and can work with the 64 ;-)

For 60 the trigrams read "with self-reflection [lake in lower] comes control [water in upper]".

Chris.