Hexagram 27.3 — Nourishing (Third Line)

Original Text & Translation

「拂颐，贞凶。十年勿用，无攸利。」 — Turning away from nourishment brings misfortune even if one is otherwise correct. For ten years, do not act. Nothing furthers.

The image is stark: someone who rejects proper nourishment in favor of what contradicts health and growth. This is not a minor dietary lapse but a fundamental violation of the principles of sustenance. The counsel is severe because the consequences are severe. When you nourish yourself wrongly — whether physically, emotionally, intellectually, or spiritually — you create a deficit that takes years to repair. The "ten years" is not literal but symbolic of a long, barren period where efforts fail because the foundation is poisoned.

Core Meaning

Line three occupies the top of the lower trigram, a position of transition and vulnerability. In Hexagram 27, this line represents someone who has access to nourishment but makes the wrong choice about what to consume. This is not ignorance but willful contradiction — choosing junk over nutrition, flattery over honest feedback, shortcuts over sustainable methods, or toxic relationships over healthy ones.

The severity of the judgment reflects the cumulative nature of wrong nourishment. One bad meal is forgiven; a pattern of consuming what harms you creates systemic damage. In modern terms, this line addresses addiction, enabling relationships, information diets of outrage and gossip, financial choices that mortgage the future for present pleasure, and career moves that sacrifice integrity for advancement. The oracle is unambiguous: these paths lead nowhere beneficial, and the recovery time is measured in years, not weeks.

Practically, this line is a mirror. If you have cast it, examine what you are taking in — food, media, advice, company, habits — and ask honestly whether these things genuinely nourish your growth or merely satisfy immediate cravings. The line does not condemn pleasure; it condemns the substitution of poison for food while calling it nourishment.

Symbolism & Imagery

The Chinese character 拂 (fú) means "to go against," "to contradict," or "to brush aside." Combined with 颐 (yí), "nourishment" or "jaws," the phrase evokes the image of turning one's mouth away from proper food or, worse, consuming what should be rejected. The ancient commentary compares this to eating spoiled food or feeding on what is fundamentally opposed to life.

The imagery extends beyond the physical. In relationships, it is choosing partners who drain rather than replenish you. In work, it is pursuing roles that deplete your energy and integrity. In learning, it is consuming information that agitates rather than clarifies. In finance, it is feeding short-term appetites while starving long-term security. The "ten years" symbolizes the long shadow cast by poor nourishment choices — the decade lost to recovery, repair, and the slow rebuilding of what was undermined.

This line also addresses ego and self-deception. Often, we turn away from true nourishment because it is plain, unglamorous, or demands discipline. We prefer the exciting, the novel, the flattering — and we rationalize these choices as sophisticated or deserved. The oracle cuts through that rationalization: wrong nourishment is wrong nourishment, regardless of how you dress it up.

Action Guidance

Career & Business

• Audit your inputs: Are you consuming advice from sources that genuinely understand your field, or from those who merely sound confident? Reject the latter.
• Examine your projects: Are you working on initiatives that build real capability and value, or are you chasing vanity metrics and short-term wins that erode your foundation?
• Assess your network: Are your professional relationships reciprocal and growth-oriented, or are you surrounded by people who flatter, exploit, or drain your energy?
• Review your compensation model: Are you being paid in ways that sustain long-term security (equity, skills, reputation), or are you trading future health for present cash?
• Stop the wrong work: If a role, client, or project fundamentally contradicts your values or depletes you without building anything, exit. The "ten years" warning means the cost of staying is compounding daily.
• Return to fundamentals: Prioritize work that builds skills, relationships, and systems. Boring and nourishing beats exciting and depleting.

Love & Relationships

• Identify toxic patterns: Are you in a relationship that consistently drains, criticizes, or undermines you? This line says the cost of staying is a decade of misfortune.
• Distinguish excitement from nourishment: Drama, intensity, and passion are not the same as mutual respect, safety, and growth. Choose the latter.
• Examine what you tolerate: If you are accepting behavior that contradicts your well-being because you fear loneliness or change, you are turning away from nourishment.
• Seek reciprocal care: Healthy relationships involve mutual nourishment. If you are always giving and never receiving, the imbalance will exhaust you.
• Be willing to be alone: Sometimes the most nourishing choice is solitude rather than a relationship that poisons you.
• Rebuild slowly: If you have been in a depleting relationship, recovery takes time. Do not rush into the next connection; focus on restoring your own foundation first.

Health & Inner Work

• Literal diet audit: Are you eating food that nourishes your body, or are you consuming processed, inflammatory, or addictive substances that create long-term harm?
• Information diet: What media are you consuming? If your daily intake is outrage, gossip, doomscrolling, or comparison, you are poisoning your mind.
• Sleep and rest: Are you honoring your need for recovery, or are you burning through your reserves with stimulants, late nights, and chronic stress?
• Emotional nourishment: Are you processing emotions healthily, or are you numbing, avoiding, or feeding them with substances and distractions?
• Spiritual practice: Are your practices genuinely centering and clarifying, or have they become performative, rigid, or another source of stress?
• Withdraw from harm: If a habit, substance, or practice is clearly damaging you, stop. The "ten years" is the time you lose if you continue.
• Rebuild with basics: Whole foods, clean water, sunlight, movement, silence, and sleep. These are the foundations. Return to them.

Finance & Strategy

• Examine your financial diet: Are you investing in assets that build long-term wealth, or are you speculating, gambling, or chasing hype?
• Debt and leverage: Are you using debt to build productive capacity, or are you borrowing to sustain consumption? The latter is turning away from nourishment.
• Income sources: Are your revenue streams sustainable and aligned with your skills, or are you dependent on sources that could vanish or that compromise your integrity?
• Spending patterns: Are your expenses funding growth and security, or are they feeding short-term desires that leave you weaker?
• Advisors and information: Are you getting financial advice from competent, ethical sources, or from salespeople, hype-mongers, or those with conflicts of interest?
• Stop the bleed: If a financial habit or commitment is clearly draining you, cut it off. The sooner you stop wrong nourishment, the shorter the recovery period.
• Rebuild reserves: Focus on building cash reserves, reducing dependencies, and creating multiple streams of sustainable income.

Timing, Signals, and Readiness

The "ten years" in the oracle is not a countdown but a warning about the duration of consequences. If you are currently turning away from nourishment, the time to stop is now. Every day you continue compounds the damage. The signal that you are in this pattern is persistent depletion despite effort — you work hard but feel weaker, you consume much but feel emptier, you pursue relationships but feel lonelier.

Readiness to change comes when you admit the truth: what you have been consuming is not nourishing you. This admission is difficult because it often involves acknowledging that you have wasted time, energy, or resources. But the oracle is clear — continuing the pattern is far more costly than admitting the mistake and changing course.

The path forward is withdrawal and return to basics. Stop the wrong nourishment immediately. Do not taper; do not negotiate. Then, rebuild slowly with what genuinely sustains. The recovery period depends on how long you have been in the pattern, but it begins the moment you stop feeding yourself poison.

When This Line Moves

A moving third line in Hexagram 27 signals a critical juncture. The movement indicates that the pattern of wrong nourishment is reaching a breaking point. You are being given a clear warning and an opportunity to change course before the "ten years" of misfortune fully unfolds. The resultant hexagram (which depends on your casting method) will show the path available if you heed the warning and return to proper nourishment.

Practical takeaway: treat this line as an emergency signal. Identify immediately what you are consuming — physically, emotionally, intellectually, relationally, financially — that is harming rather than helping you. Stop it. Replace it with what genuinely nourishes. The moving line suggests that change is both urgent and possible, but only if you act decisively.

Do not wait for external circumstances to force the change. The oracle is giving you the information now so you can choose correction rather than endure collapse. Use this moment to audit every area of your life and ask: "Is this nourishing me, or am I turning away from what I truly need?"

Concise Summary

Hexagram 27.3 is a severe warning against self-sabotage through wrong nourishment. It addresses the moment when you reject what genuinely sustains you in favor of what depletes, harms, or poisons. The oracle is unambiguous: this path leads to prolonged misfortune, a decade where nothing you attempt will succeed because the foundation is compromised. The guidance is to stop immediately, withdraw from wrong nourishment, and return to the basics of what truly sustains. Recovery takes time, but it begins the moment you choose correctly. This line is a mirror and a mercy — it shows you the truth before the full consequences unfold, giving you the chance to change course now.