The 3rd line is the culmination of the lower trigram. It’s a very receptive line that is here to adapt. This is the line of trial and error. People with the 3rd line learn by learning what doesn’t work. They may have to try something 50 times – making 49 mistakes along the way - before they find what works. If you want to know what doesn’t work, just ask a third line who’s figured something out! This is where real discovery takes place.

The 3rd line can have a tremendous perseverance. It can also happen that 3rd line people become deeply pessimistic. It’s as though when the world changes and they have to adapt to something new they say “Oh no, here we go again – nothing I try is going to work.” It’s important they understand that this is their gift of adaptation and they simply need to persevere. That doesn’t mean, by the way, to simply keep trying the same thing that doesn’t work. The 3rd line is not transpersonal. It knows that others are out there but it only knows that because in the course of its adaptive trial and error process it is always bumping into them.

The 3rd line in Gate 62 is the perfect example of what the 3rd line is really all about. The line is called Discovery. The ability of the 3rd line to look for the detail in so many different places and in so many different ways, results in the possibility of a great discovery. A scientist seeking the details of one thing may “make a mistake” that results in a breakthrough discovery.

Alexander Fleming (who had a 3rd line profile) discovered Penicillin (the precursor to all modern antibiotics) through a mistake. A culture plate of Staphylococcus had inadvertently been contaminated by a blue-green mold. He “noticed” that colonies of bacteria adjacent to the mold were being dissolved. This 3rd line is not just making mistakes, or doing trial and error in a mindless way, he is using the haphazard 3rd line energy in a creative way.

Of course when dealing with this line you have to understand that the detail you get from them depends upon where they are in the discovery process. They might just have made the mistake and not realized anything more, in which case all they can tell you is that they just screwed up.

If they are not able to get past that point then they can have a difficult time in life. You'll hear them say, "I'm such a screw up!" This is true in a way :). But it does not have to be a negative thing.

Self Study: Look at your third lines and combine the third line keynote with the keynote of the gate. Another cool thing to see is if you work by trial and error in that gate. e.g. Gate 48 Depth, finding depth through trial and error. Share your thoughts in the Forum.