The Mysterious Difference which Makes a Difference
This article is a response to a question from the humandesign.live community:
“As a 6/2 MG with emotional authority, waiting is extremely difficult… Almost painfully difficult. If one is in a difficult place in life and has the urge to make a change, but there is no change to make, what should they do?”
– Joshua French
Human Design Sacral Center - Life Resource of the Generator
In one of my recent articles '幽玄, Melancholy, Waiting, Art and Noticing', I connected certain Japanese aesthetic principles to our experiences of Waiting and Melancholy, using artistic work by Andrew Wyeth to convey the simple profundity of waiting for correct enlivenment to emerge on its own.
Of course, being a Non-Sacral Projector, I write from a point of view that asks us to value non-productivity and patience. Not only as a safeguard against rash mental decision-making, but also in the awareness of being careful with the energy we have.
Life is not a simple formula of energy availability and its general application. The energy any one of us carries is specific. It isn’t to be used for just anything because someone out there thinks we should. It’s there to be used for what we love. Our context is what enlivens our spirit and enriches the world in turn. And in order for our forms to function they need a healthy balance of activity and rest, no matter what Type we’re talking about.
This balance is naturally something you can only find yourself. Nobody else can know when enough is enough for you.
Others can only observe your signposts and what you’re broadcasting. At best they can tell when you’re approaching or have passed your healthy limits and ask you some good questions to help you orient yourself according to your Type, Strategy and Authority.
Neither can your mind tell when enough is enough - until it has surrendered to the body. Only then might it be sensible enough to recognize when it is time to stop after registering the body’s intelligent cues. Learning the language of your own biology is one of the greatest gifts you can give to yourself, which takes a significant amount of time and feedback – especially if most of your defined Channels are unconscious.
Having said all of this, consider then the perspective of a 34/20 Triple Split Manifesting Generator with all Centers below the Ajna defined according to a DLL PLR Variable - including a fixed ‘sports’ Channel between the Root and the Spleen.
Don’t worry if the sentence above still reads like an alien language or total gibberish to you. What I’m saying is that we’re looking at a person whose body needs to be actively moving and physically exercising to be healthy. Someone who is designed to be busy with a tremendous amount of energy building up that is ready to engage. Someone with an energy resource that must be depleted in a fulfilling manner every day.
It isn’t necessarily the best advice to tell this kind of Design to ‘stop doing’, dressed up with beautiful Zen poetry or Taoist philosophy. It may be a tempting avenue in order to prevent Not-Self chaos. After all, for the Emotional Wave there is no Truth in the Now. But recommending they get into a habit of ‘non-doing’ may equally lead to aggravation.
The Way of The Generator
“Sacral Beings Have to Work. The Sacral is about work. It’s why I call Generators slaves; they’re workers. Sacral beings have to have work. They have to be able to use their energy. They have to use their energy effectively. They have to live through their work.
Everything about Sacral beings is about work. Think about the horror of life when you do not work the work that’s for you. Think about the horror of life of being busy working at something that you don’t like and don’t enjoy, and it’s not for you; it’s a horror.
Because everything about a Sacral being is about the beauty that’s possible for them in doing what feels correct for them to do. That they use their energy properly, that they use their energy efficiently. It’s about work. Are You Ready?
I have a joke, a trick, that I did for years when I was doing readings. A person would sit down beside me and sort of try to get comfortable. And before I would turn on the recording machinery, I would say, “Are you ready?” Most of the people that come to me are designed to respond in one way or another. When I met the Voice, the first thing the Voice said to me: “Are you ready to work?”
- So, are you ready?”
– Ra Uru Hu (The Way of the Generator)
It’s important that the Generator works, and that the Sacral energy is used in a regenerative manner. This doesn’t mean it can’t be correct for you to have a meditation and stillness practice – it depends on your Design, follow S&A, you know the drill - but one thing is for sure: the Sacral energy must be used to the point of satisfaction.
So let’s make an essential distinction here between waiting and doing nothing. The concept of 無為 ‘Wú Wéi’, popularly referred to as ‘non-doing’, is a Taoist term. To provide some continuity with my last article, I can invoke Alan Watts here for translation: ‘Wú Wéi’ basically means ‘not to force anything’. It is to act in accordance with the flow of nature. Not resisting it, nor trying to push it in a certain direction we think it ‘should’ go.
The dilemma is the mind’s fearful tendency of forcing life down a conditioned pathway.
“ … in the end, you have to see that the greatest enemy you have is your mind, because your mind hates your Sacral. It hates it. “How dare you, you grunting, groaning thing have control over my life. Here I am with my vocabulary, my education, and my wonderful knowledge, and here is this, “uh-uh” telling me what to do.” The mind wins most of the time because that’s the way you’ve been conditioned. You’ve been conditioned to believe that what you think is what is correct for you, and that what you think is how you’re supposed to live your life. And it’s all a lie—your mind isn’t going to accept that lie until your Sacral is living your life for you, and not your mind.
And your mind will be in there screaming; it doesn’t stop. It’s not like your mind is going to surrender to your Sacral and say, “Oh, isn’t it nice to be awake!” It doesn’t do that. It says, “You’re being an idiot, look at the rest of the planet. They’re all running around like crazy; you should be doing that, too.” Because that’s the mind. Your greatest battle is with the mind.”
– Ra Uru Hu (The Way of the Generator)
And so when we bring our mental decision-making to a halt in order to ‘Wait to Respond’, ‘Wait for Recognition and an Invitation’, etc., it can be disorienting at first. We can look to the 5th Gate for understanding the nature of this Waiting game a bit better:
Gate 5: Waiting – Fixed Patterns: Fundamental attunement to natural rhythms. Waiting as an active state of awareness.
Ra would say it is like a pregnancy.
This is not about doing nothing. It is about not betraying natural rhythms through forced mental initiative. The mind’s burden of decision-making is then transmuted into simple active awareness - our witnessing presence to that which is unfolding.
In my previous article I used the term ‘dwelling in nature’, and this is what I was referring to. If we could imagine for a moment a forest hermit dwelling in the natural landscape, immersed in the natural rhythms of the elements, flora and wildlife. No longer attached to ‘the world’, and yet in their attunement still waiting for ‘it’ - waiting for the call.
Dwelling in the form principle, there's this obvious mystery at work:
What’s the next response gonna be?
Which environmental input will evoke my body to respond?
It’s such a mysterious thing that everything we’re conscious of at any given moment is happening on its own. We don’t ‘do’ any of our sense perceptions. The filtering of that information is all done for us, and we can just enjoy the outcome. This kind of active awareness is not the same as 7 centred hypervigilance. There is the allowance for the unknown to remain unknown for as long as it likes, and at the same time there is curiosity about what is being revealed.
What am I noticing in this moment?
What are my senses bringing to awareness?
Where might my eyes want to go of their own accord, moment by moment, if I don’t force them down the same old tracks?
Love is our context for life and work.
And yes, to anyone else reading, I know Ra’s descriptions can sometimes be heavy to digest, especially in times of pain.
In your case, Joshua, as a 6/2 with the alienating change of scenery Saturn has recently brought to your life, while it's vital not to skip over any shadows, joining Ra in experiencing the mind as an enemy may not be the most supportive perspective either.
The mind may not be a friend at this point – and friends in general may seem hard to come by in a polarized and distracted environment. But there’s no energy to waste on battling the mind in isolation. Storms of the mind pass on their own eventually.
“..If one is in a difficult place in life and has the urge to make a change, but there is no change to make, what should they do?”
In our brief conversation you recognized the pain was coming from your gut relative to your current working environment. In BG5 career coaching we emphasize environment as being a vital point of intervention. It is your environment that determines the nature of the information you receive. In the ‘wrong’ environment, there may be nothing satisfying for you to respond to.
Scientist and anthropologist Gregory Bateson coined an amazing definition for information: ‘a difference which makes a difference’.
So much is changed by noticing differently. We fall into places and people according to where our eyes go and what they pay attention to. We can align to different information simply by turning our head (or not even that). We could be miserable in the shadows and just and inch to the left find ourselves basking in the sun.
The mind is great at imagining mountainous obstacles where the tiniest detail could make all the necessary difference. In times of pain and total overhaul of what we value, renewed appreciation for the small can shift our realities around.
Unconditioned Beauty
Bateson called beauty ‘the pattern that connects’, and I think that’s quite on point. Not only is Gate 5 the Gate of Waiting, it is also the Gate of Fixed Patterns, with which we connect into the wondrous world of plant life. It reflects the fractal patterning of nature that connects the microcosmically small to the macrocosmically vast. The Channel of Rhythm 5/15 is shared by all biological life and defines the aura of the biosphere as a whole.
One tiny moment of glimpsing unconditioned beauty is an information imprint that can scale up fractally across your life. It’s like that brief instant where you decide not to react and catch your breath instead of engaging in someone else’s drama. It can change the course of the rest of your day - and beyond.
In such moments, you may remember the difference between right and wrong, correctness and incorrectness, at a level the mind may not immediately grasp - but the body does. This isn't any conditioned idea of what is beautiful, but a deep impression of beauty in which the external world reflects your unique nature back to you.
Unconditioned beauty and love go hand in hand, and they are the hallmarks of our unique trajectory. This is the magic of the G Center and its Magnetic Monopole, the Center of the Higher Self, Transcendent Love, Direction and Creative Self-Expression. It is all already there.
Now, to answer your question, Joshua, I cannot tell you what should be done - that would be disempowering to you. I’d say this is a crucial time for you to discover for yourself who you really are and where your source of power and authority really originates from.
However, where is the unconditioned beauty showing up? As you wait for the next response, as your body processes the hope and pain of your emotional wave, how do your senses bring beauty to your active awareness?
And perhaps - has the time come to change your job?
Strength to you in your transition to the roof, brother.
Hagen
