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◈ Primary hexagram: 27—Choice from the flow.

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Name from “Language of the Lines”

Choice from the flow.

Lines

Image created from the lines

Our intuitive feelings are active and are accepted (lines 2 and 5) and the outer world also (lines 3 and 4). The inner is not active in providing new energy so we are acting out energy already in our outer identity. This hexagram is commonly called “nourishment”; our inner being is nourished by the experience of identity in relationship. The outer is food for the inner and the inner is food for the outer in continuous cycles of experience.

Image created from the trigrams

The emerging energy is very active (Chên) and flows freely in the outer world and our outer being, identity, (both K’un). This is only seen distantly by our inner being (Kên).

Here is a flow of energy that is freely out into action and the experience is viewed widely by the stillness of our inner being. This expresses outer experience nourishing the inner.

The Chinese Oracle

> Nourishment.

> Persistence in being correct

> brings good fortune.

> Watch how people nourish others and themselves.

Comments

Nourishing requires the supply of what is lacking; to nourish others we often provide what we have in surplus regardless of what the other needs. It is necessary to persist in seeing widely and witnessing ourselves (being correct) to see what is needed.

Manifestations

The pattern

All action has results in form.

All growth towards the archetypes.

For humans

From what has passed through

we are made.

From what we choose

we are nourished according to our need.

In nature

Storm and torrents flow.

In every crevice watered something grows.

Every crack eroded shows

what has passed,

each hollow filled, another shape.

In forms we make

To provide what others need

to fill their form,

follow the pattern of their choice.

For our own we follow ours.

Moving lines

Line 1 goes yin — life force shows more change

Where new energy is becoming available we may look for nourishment in some new experience from the life force rather than that available in our present circumstances.

> You let your magic tortoise go and look at me with drooping mouth.

> Misfortune.

Tortoise shells were used for divination, and divination is the link between the outer and inner knowing; without the link we lose the thread of what experience is about—nourishing the inner self from outer experience. What is needed is in our experience now.

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Line 2 goes yang — intuitive feeling less active

Intuitive feeling is necessary for us to know our circumstances and if we cannot feel our circumstances we seek nourishment elsewhere.

> Seeking nourishment from below

> is not proper.

> Seeking nourishment from above

> brings evil.

Both below and above identity in the hexagram we come to the inner, and this hexagram is about nourishing the inner through outer experience; so to seek the emerging life force is to look to nourishment coming to identity in the future, which is not correct or proper, not existing. To look to the inner being for nourishment is to look to what is already formed so it is narrowing or evil.

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Line 3 goes yang — outer world changes less

In this tao outer activity is the source of experience and is essential to nourishment, without our taking part in outer experience the tao is useless to us.

> He refuses nourishment.

> Misfortune.

> For ten years there is no progress.

When we avoid outer experience at the time it is offered in our circumstances it is lost and the nourishment of it cannot be had until such circumstances come to us again; this is symbolically the complete cycle of ten years.

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Line 4 goes yang — accepting the outer state less

Outer activity in the world is an essential part of this tao from which we gain nourishment; we do not, however, benefit from owning that activity and so nourishing our separate ego-being. Here in this line we diminish our owning of outer activity and so can participate more because with less desire we have a wider view.

> Nourishment on the mountain top.

> Good fortune.

> He glares like a tiger looking down.

> No error.

A hunter which has perfected the art of being alert; the tiger. Looking down he has a wide view. On the mountain we also have a wide view which comes from a vantage point of disinvolvement.

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Line 5 goes yang — less awareness of intuition

We normally accept ourselves to be as we feel ourselves to be (which is the interpretation line 5 puts upon line 2). Here we are less aware.

> Leaving the usual ways.

> Perseverance, keeping still,

> brings good fortune.

> Do not cross the great water.

Without a feeling of ourselves in our circumstances action becomes hazardous so it is inadvisable to instigate changes.

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Line 6 goes yin — our inner being accepts more

The inner being accepts nourishment and is the source of outer nourishment while doing so. The position has a fine balance and so has a danger of imbalance; either way it is the producer of a flow of nourishment.

> The source of nourishment.

> Peril but good results.

> Crossing the great water brings good fortune.

Crossing the great water is changing our way of being, and experiencing without choice makes this change, but if we choose we are fed from past experience, not from the source of nourishment, the present.

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