Providing Nourishment

I is the hexagram of the open mouth — its very shape, two firm lips enclosing space — and it concerns everything that passes in and out of us: food, words, thoughts, influences. What we take in becomes what we are; what we give out nourishes or poisons those around us. The Judgment therefore offers its double diagnostic: to know anyone, watch what they feed on, and what they feed to others.

The care extends both directions through the mouth. Temperance governs what enters; carefulness of speech governs what leaves. Between them lies the whole discipline of the hexagram.

The subtlest nourishment is mental. Worry, doubt, and resentment are a diet as surely as bread is — a bowl of worms that weakens whoever feeds on it. Even idle fantasy is not harmless: what the mind rehearses, it becomes, and what it becomes shapes how it nourishes others.

Our dependence on the higher power for life's necessities calls for a correct receiving attitude, and the deepest means of receiving is meditation: it cleanses the inner vessel so the light force can enter with its healing effect. Calm and stability in all we say, think, and do — this is how we nourish our higher nature, and everyone near us.

The failures of nourishment are junk and greed. Junk: feeding on what does not feed — pleasure chased as happiness, recognition chased as worth, stimulation chased as life. Greed: the mouth that only takes, tracking others with a tiger's craving while contributing nothing. Both leave the feeder hungrier. And there is the quieter failure of the tongue: careless words, a poison we serve to others without noticing we have cooked it.