Social Media and Human Design - A Conversation with Mari Smith
Facebook Queen Mari Smith
I recently had the opportunity to Interview Mari Smith, an accomplished social media marketing entrepreneur and author as well as International Human Design School Professional.
In this interview, Mari shares her insights on how to succeed in business with a focus on tips for Human Design and BG5 Professionals. She also discusses how her early career experiences have shaped her approach to business.
I hope you find this interview as informative and insightful as I did. I have known Mari for a number of years, and I have always been impressed with her ability to build relationships, explain complex concepts in a detailed way, and identify and capitalize on opportunities. In this interview, she shares her thoughts on what it takes to be successful in with social media marketing to do online business nowadays, and how to overcome common mistakes and challenges.
The Art of Active Waiting Inquiry
Some writing to process my latest experiences and learnings as I share my discoveries with you.
In a previous article, I mentioned the show "The Magicians" in bringing up Depression.
I like to reframe Depression like this:
Imagine a fast-moving mountain stream.
Occasionally, there are spaces off to the side where water gets side-tracked (Uranus).
You know how water comes to rest in a depression in the earth?
Sometimes, we have mental or physical Depression as a signpost to take a breather, a time out, and enjoy some deep rest.
Wait too long, though, and your water stagnates and gets stuck (like how water does in a depression in the earth).
Going deep to rest implies Pluto to me, which can either bring death or lead to transformation.
Death is the ultimate transformation.
In Human Design, many newcomers mistakenly equate our waiting strategy with doing nothing. That is not accurate.
Waiting for Favorable Circumstances
Strategy, a concept defined initially by Aristotle as having the purpose of achieving victory, is not a passive endeavor.
In this context, waiting is an active and intentional action that empowers individuals, setting the stage for favorable circumstances.
In the Magicians, graduate students are taught about waiting for favorable circumstances for casting spells - circumstances controlled by the planetary bodies, particularly the moon.
Now link that to Waiting for the Pulse.
The timing of mood is not up to our mind. Every individual gate has a formatting of now or not; it's linked to our chemistry. Involving all centers, the Individual Empowerment Circuitry also carries the keynotes of Melancholy. This natural energy can be channeled into the fertile inspiration to be creative or create for creation's sake.
By experimenting with our Strategy of waiting for life to initiate us, we find that serendipity starts to abound in life.
It's one of the most consistent, common noticings of myself and others over years of experimenting with living our human designs.
Nowadays, it's natural for me to do things in alignment without knowing why I'm doing what I'm doing or how what I'm doing is actually in alignment; the action either prevents something drastic from happening or encourages something awesome to happen. My mind stopped questioning and acting from this place of knowing clarity. It's so common now following my body that ease is the norm, and the discomfort is unnatural nowadays and very noticeable.
Twelve years ago, before the Human Design experiment mutation took hold in me, discomfort was the norm for this body - back when the madness of the "normal mind" ruled.
For those of us categorized as one of the three waiting Types, the act of "waiting" involves attuning to the energy of the Aura specific to our Type. It means centering oneself within the Aura's energy, embracing its frequency and gifts.
Adopting an active waiting approach can be considered a strategic move, offering individuals the freedom to wait for "favorable circumstances," thereby profoundly altering the course of our lives.
This active waiting state represents one's authentic energy calm, despite the adaptive strategies imposed by the mind, so that our natural flow is undisrupted.
Like the mountain stream on its adventure from high vistas to shining seas, our bodygraph has enormous pressure, a gravity-like force drawing us from the head and root pressures to express at the throat.
This waiting state can be seen as a gateway to deep self-reflection and inner transformation. It is a pause where we can reconnect with our true essence, allowing authentic energy to guide our actions and decisions.
This state invites a sense of stillness, creating space for clarity and knowing to arise.
By consciously embracing this waiting state, we can become more aware of who we are and what truly matters to us.
It is an opportunity to shed the layers of conditioning and reconnect with the core of our being.
Waiting for life's initiation of us through the self-discovery of what we can respond to, gain clarity on, or be invited to can lead to a more fulfilling and purposeful life.
It takes balancing great concentration with letting go for effortless effort to flow.
As we still and align our actions with our authentic energy, free from external pressures and expectations - it becomes more readily apparent which are spoken for through conditioning that arises from within.
Have you ever tapped into a wellspring of creativity and intuition in this active waiting state? It is a fertile ground where new insights and awareness can blossom.
By allowing yourself to be present in the moment and tune in to your inner wisdom, you can uncover unique knowing and innovative approaches to your challenges.
This fertile, active waiting state enables us to transcend conventional thinking, and Inquiry helps us, "Waiting Types," tap into our inherent, innate potential.
In essence, the Strategy of active waiting inquiry serves as a step towards harmonizing with our internal energy and orientation. It narrates the inner journey of the "passenger within" as it reconciles with its vehicle in this life - our form.
"Form follows Function" is a term I've been using lately to explain that Aura is what builds the body.
Function is a critical evolutionary determinant, and form arises from the Aura.
In other words, your Aura is what builds the body.
Ra gave a lot of Human Design readings before creating a simple way to explain to his clients and students how to help realign the being to their form. Type, Strategy, and Authority arise from the Auric natal imprint (not just the conscious personality or unconscious design blueprint).
Like how magicians wait for the moon to reach the proper phase and position for casting a spell, Strategy serves as a way of waiting for life to move us into the correct circumstances for fulfillment.
The neutrino ocean is a program that, like an array of delicacies from all the galaxy's far reaches and beyond, cannot be digested in one meal; indeed, some are poison and will kill you.
Strategy reshapes life circumstances—engaging in active waiting leaves less time for unnecessary external initiatives that take you further off your path, down the road of regret.
Lashing out in Frustration, Anger, Bitterness, Disappointment, or doing things to avoid these states of being from those states of being are just going to create more of the same.
"We can't solve today's problems with the mentality that created them." Albert Einstein
Active Waiting helps to alter the energy of surrounding situations and circumstances. Reflective Inquiry partnered with this allows the mind to process the pressure while we wait.
Active Waiting Inquiry becomes a practice of reorientation toward one's natural auric energy internally while simultaneously becoming an energetic force that transforms interpersonal dynamics.
Exploring "the energy of waiting" represents a significant behavioral shift for us in this frenetic age, as many people move faster and faster to adapt to or try to keep up with the changing background frequency, while others fall into apathetic states.
Countering conditioned tendencies to initiate actions out of alignment is no easy feat.
Consciously embracing active waiting opens individuals to profound experiences, unlocking new dimensions of freedom and decision-making.
Consider the example of a design focused on reproduction through Channel 59-6, "Mating, a design focused on Reproduction." The active waiting strategy can drastically change circumstances and effectiveness.
For example, offering sex in response to a come-on differs radically from initiating sex without mutual attraction, avoiding misunderstandings and chaos, or, at worst, imprisonment.
The waiting strategy makes our Aura available for the right circumstances, to be open and enveloping (Generator), focused and penetrating (Projector), or resistant and sampling (Reflector).
This creates space for the asking, the recognition, formal invitations, or surprises in life that lead us to spiritual fulfillment - satisfaction, success, and surprise.
The waiting strategy Ra gave us allows for calming the not-self's desire to take, take, take, or, on the flip side, give from "Not-Self generosity" in an attempt to get.
Are you volunteering from the mind without a genuine recognition or need?
#EmpowermentCircuitry #ActiveWaiting #ReflectiveInquiry #Melancholy #LivingYourDesign #LivingYourDesign
The 'Science' of Differentiation - Being a Human Design 'Scientist' (Part 2)
This article is a continuation of an exploration into what it means to practice Human Design as a science. Part 1 can be found here:
https://www.humandesignlifecoaching.com/blog/2022/3/9/the-science-of-differentiation-being-a-human-design-scientist-part-1
Thanks for returning to this read, as we dive into the question of what it means to be scientific in our experiment of Human Design, and in practicing it professionally as ‘The Science of Differentiation’. In Part 1, I introduced the scientific method and connected it to our individual experiment with the Type, Strategy and Authority formula. I also mentioned the concept of ‘pseudoscience’ which is the main critique the Human Design system inevitably receives with regards to required markers for it to be accepted as a science. In Part 2, we’ll be exploring each of these criteria, namely ‘verifiability’, ‘falsifiability’ and ‘bias’, to see where our limitations might be at.
I could not locate the audios, but in one lecture Ra explained that he felt confident to move forward on his path because the system could withstand scrutiny and therefore he as a messenger could too. In another lecture, he also explained that Human Design could never be free from the pseudoscience label, because there are so many components (especially at the foundations) that could never be proved.
We would never be able to find the evidence necessary to substantiate them. This is the paradox we find ourselves at as practitioners. We have a formula we can empirically test (this is explained below), but we can never prove its origins, the underlying basis that explains why it works the way it does. And for strict scientific critics this is enough to categorically dump the whole thing.
In the previous article, I put forward an essential question to reflect on, for anyone who remembers nothing else from this article series: ‘Is what I’m saying true and how do I know?’
For scientists, it is necessary to investigate what the evidence is that verifies their claims. Not only that, but to consider if others can run experiments independently to test and verify these claims too. This is what would create an intersubjective consistency that allows us to agree on what the 'objective world' supposedly 'is'. It is what allows us to create a framework for how things function and how we can best cooperate within that mutual understanding.
Now if you've been in Human Design for a while, you may already sense that there is a catch in this. Human Design more than anything else is about your uniqueness - a realm that only you have access to experiment with in any meaningful sense. Nobody else can run independent experiments with your inner world. Only you can.
And there is another dimension to this: the knowing of the mysteries of existence, as far the mechanics of Human Design go, is contained within the Individual Knowing circuit, which is not directly about proving oneself. The only Individual circuitry that runs through the Willpower of the Heart Center is the Centering Circuit through the Channel of Initiation (51/25). It's part of the Mystical Way: the leaping beyond the mythology of the Tribe. Separating oneself from the existing belief systems and support structures that bind the community together in its ritual practices, in order to make direct contact with the Higher Self alone. Being the first to go beyond the horizon of what the Tribe can embrace and include, hurtling oneself into the unknown. Then potentially returning to the Tribe with innovation that is sourced from one's own mutative individuality, after having successfully contacted the Spirit that lives in Matter, having survived and integrated the shock.
This Channel is the only Individual Ego that has the will to prove oneself. Which is not something that can be demanded from the Individual Knowing circuit. If you're a mutative creative artist, you know what happens whenever your creativity becomes subject to the pressure to prove your worth: the magic vanishes - and it's not you anymore.
This is what I continue to observe in myself too writing these articles, and this series in particular. I rewrote and edited this article after posting it because it felt out of tune when I read over it again. I saw my own openness getting a bit too jacked up on 'Being an HD Scientist' to the point of distortion, though I didn't catch this when I published the article at first. I was coming at it from an angle that nobody had really asked for, and as I went through it, I didn't feel well held as a reader myself. The narrative didn't flow and it seemed I had blurted to soon.
Science is about proving the validity of patterns that explain reality. And to leverage those patterns in order to move safely into the future together. The Cross of Explanation is rooted in the (43/23) Channel of Structuring. This is the Life Force of rational explanation. It's my Cross too, and I suppose this article series is an attempt to get to know myself better more than anything else. To see more clearly this interplay between my Individual Knowing and Logical Collective Channels, the inner tension that is there between them, and to try to unpack it in a universalizing way. Key to this Channel is voicing yourself at the right time and not before...
And so let's move into the next concepts with that tension in mind: the scientists that confuses and conflates proving the pattern with proving themselves. This is another stepping stone in the discourse about individual vs collective truth.
"Science of Differentiation: Human Design is the study of our uniqueness, our differentiation; a science which is verified through our own personal experimentation with its tools for living; it is not a belief system."
(The Definitive Book of Human Design (2018): 435)
In light of this definition, we'll now cover verifiability, falsifiability and bias step by step.
Verifiability: for evidence to be verifiable, it is commonly understood as something that must eventually be measurable ‘empirically’. ‘Empirical’ evidence means that we can perceive it directly with our senses, confirming accurate predictions of noticeable change.
The importance of this is that the evidence has a causal ground in the material world into which we are physically embedded, by which we are affected and which we seek to affect - where ‘reality’ is most persuasive. Our explanations should not rest on something ephemeral or purely spiritual in such a way that our only option is to believe it or not. Otherwise this could be a basis for superstition, lies and deception or plain falsehoods leading to all sorts of exaggerations rooted in ignorance like witch hunts, etc. One example of this would be the claim that Winter is cold and deadly compared to Spring because a particular Goddess descends into the underworld during that time of the year. Though poetic and perhaps of metaphorical / mystical / spiritual value, or ritual value within a communal mythos, it isn’t empirically testable. Another example would be sensational rumours or hearsay that becomes a wildfire. We can see plenty of that in the misinformation age that we're in right now. We no longer know what external sources to trust.
“Empiricism in the philosophy of science emphasizes evidence, especially as discovered in experiments. It is a fundamental part of the scientific method that all hypotheses and theories must be tested against observations of the natural world rather than resting solely on a priori reasoning, intuition, or revelation.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empiricism
Ra Uru Hu emphasized that Human Design was an empirical science that needed to be verified through one’s own direct sense perception of life as they experiment with the formulas, observing and predicting change. And true enough, through the Type signposts and the shifting patterns in our relationships we can do that. We can test the proposed formula to see if it works. Though what we may not be able to verify empirically are the underlying ‘mechanics’ that are suggested to be the cause for why it works the way that it does. They were a mystical revelation, after all.
We’d need to be able to physically locate and correlate a neutrino produced by the sun moving through a Gate activating specific biochemistry in a body that leads to change in thinking and behaviour… Has anyone got the budget or means for that (ethically)?
Having said this, there is a power in Human Design that enables it to overcome this particular limitation in an intriguing way to still make it compelling. This is the power of the mechanical logic that underpins the accuracy of its keynotes. What's so compelling about it as a practitioner is that once you get skilled at the art of its poetry, you can invoke the logic to analyse or reflect upon any phenomenon in a way that describes it holistically and within a context that has direct implications for you as a unique individual. It can be used to understand the world around in a way that was simply never so accessible before.
What's compelling for both practitioner and client is that the accuracy of it is a felt at a physical level. The body recognizes what is being said in a noticeable way. Sudden shivers, sudden profound relaxation, crying, and other sorts of physical responses that can come in sync with a mental breakthrough as the keynotes are spoken. Which is strange because the language is generally speaking complex and far out. Yet it is intimate and capable of touching one's subjective perceptions about the world in a way that not only explains things that have always been noticed but remained mysterious before, but also that it touches the physical experiences of the body as it moves through the world. It describes mechanically the experience of being either physically at odds with or seamlessly in the flow within one's context. Moreover, it describes in detail how this functions precisely for the individual. It explains why copy-pasting strategies from other people into one's own life has very very little qualitative effect. And it provides something tailor-made to suit you instead.
All of these things can be verified as an individual measurement of 'what works' and 'what doesn't work'. That's basically the code hidden in every line description (not just the third line). And this to me seems more enlivening than trying to first verify if the whole neutrino business is actually true to begin with. If I can read a line from the Rave I'Ching and hear it come out of my friend's mouth, without them even knowing anything about Human Design; and I can ask them questions about that based on the chart in a way that helps us connect and understand each other... especially if it's about a trait that really annoyed me and felt like I wanted to change about them - then, hey isn't that neat? Making that available to people, starting with myself, is probably a much quicker and practical step towards widespread peace than the endeavour of building a new enhanced particle accelerator.
Falsifiability: Ra was a 26th Gate who loved to make bold claims rooted in what he individually ‘knew’ to be true in his bones. And this could alarm people into identifying his claims as persuasive and dangerous exaggerations. The falsifiability of claims means that they should be logically testable with available means. If we cannot verify aspects of the system directly, nor run an experiment that could contradict our predictions or hypothesis, then we have no scientifically meaningful way of knowing whether the claim is actually true or not. It’s fully untestable.
The main example used to illustrate this notion is Karl Popper’s statement “All swans are white.” This is a hypothesis that could be either logically ‘verified’ by observing all swans – which we do not have the means to do. But on the other hand, the claim could be ‘falsified’ by observing a single black swan.
A strong distinction is then made between what is considered to be ‘science’ and what is not on this basis. If claims made within Human Design cannot be technically falsified, if we cannot logically test their validity by finding contradictory evidence using available means, then it is not a scientific claim.
So if we think about that for a moment, we can see that many aspects of the Human Design system cannot be falsified. Ra knew this and therefore, as far as my interpretation of it goes, his focus was to prove at least the scientific validity of Type - out of which the Strategy follows, serving as the basis for the proposed decision-making formula. The next step then would be collecting empirical evidence for the Inner Authorities rooted in people’s personal experiments. These are things that could in a way be measured through sufficient statistical analysis, correlating and predicting patterns.
So ultimately, the scope is brought back to the individual, which is both the practical bottom line of the Human Design system as such, and also where the empirical evidence for any of it is going to come from. How we collect and evaluate that data could accumulate into a resource base for making scientific claims (or not).
For yourself, you can verify or falsify your proposed decision-making formula and evaluate its legitimacy by following it (or not) and checking the outcome against what it predicts. The limitation to this, however, is the all-pervasive ‘confirmation bias’ that each individual is hyper-prone to - and that scientific critics can hear almost instantly in the subtle shifts of intonation in your voice from many miles away with their acute sensitivity.
Bias: there are many kinds of biases, but one of the more prominent ones that we are concerned with when it comes to scientific experimentation is the so-called ‘confirmation bias’. This essentially means that we are prone to interpret our findings in a particular way that is most convenient to us and would serve to confirm pre-existing beliefs or what we’re already hoping to get out of it. There is an outcome we already have in mind, consciously or subconsciously, and we will warp information to conform to that outcome in order to bring it closer to fulfilment.
This can lead to distortions of evidence, paying disproportionate attention to that which seems to confirm and verify, while ignoring or even eliminating contrary evidence or attempts at refutation and falsification. This can lead to major mistakes in many professions, such as medicine or urban planning for example.
If you're reading this and you've already taken the Living Your Design course, then you're probably familiar with the concept of the Not-Self and how it works. You can probably see how it lines up with long-held confirmation biases. These are the strategies and ways of thinking that keep us stuck in life following the same mistakes over and over again. It serves the purpose to keep our system stable, which is adaptive in terms of not falling apart under constant survival stress, but it also prevents us from actually growing and developing as ourselves.
When this influences our interactions with others and impacts them, there's backlash eventually. And the tricky thing is that we're blind until suddenly we are not. We've all got our shadows and distractions out and about that help us cope with the uncomfortable intensity in the openness - and we don't get to sidestep their consequences.
One way of dealing with the problem of cognitive biases in science is that our experiments should be open to logical challenge - in particular by field ‘experts’. Investigation should be made in order to test how solid our explanations really are and whether the evidence is sufficient. We may say that we were frustrated because we didn’t trust and follow our perceived gut response, but does that explanation hold up when it is probed more deeply? And can it be probed at all?
Are there any other expert authorities on you and your decision-making process? If there are, how empowering is that really and what is their agenda? And perhaps the more relevant question: would you like to be probed?
Again we're getting in contact with this strange relationship between the collective logical process and the integrity of individuality. In order for something to be collectively accepted as a scientific truth, you need a panel of experts who all agree on a pattern due to its predictability, which they need to investigate and measure in significant detail within the context of existing knowledge. (Imagine a group of scientists deciding amongst themselves that you're wrong about your life...)
The individual in me is already sighing: 'Ain't nobody got time for that!' The Collective in me is saying: 'Yes, wouldn't it be interesting if we could reliably measure the gut responses of a whole batch of Generator's according to Channel variations?'
Nevertheless, biases and shadows are part of the game. I’m quoting one of my teachers in neurobiology here: ‘We’re biased to believe that we’re less biased than others!’ (Steve Hoskinson) And we have to come to practical terms with that. It is legitimate for a group of scientists to point out I'm wrong when my subjectivity has a significant sphere of influence.
If you take on the Human Design decision-making formula during a desperate and stressful time in your life (in the same way that many people turn to medicine or any other kind of ‘solution’ to their life problems that is being sold on the market), wouldn’t there be a psychological incentive to maintain a sense of security and mental stability by perceiving that ‘it works’ when all else has failed? Wouldn’t there be a bias to believe that you’re doing the right thing?
This is the kind of thing critics are afraid of and for good reason. In the end, we're all concerned with the consequences of decision-making and having the ability to see what we're getting into. For example, if you’re following Human Design’s Primary Health System, you are moving into pioneering territory - not a well-tested and scientifically proven miracle cure-all. Your experiment may end up on the list of 'things that didn't work'.
This modality is so counter to conventional dietary regimen advice and healthcare practices, that it can be a really radical step to take. If you’ve been experimenting with it for a long time and you aren’t really finding your health and wellbeing improving – but you persist anyway, then there may be a confirmation bias driving the process rather than careful attunement to your own body.
Quoting the Definitive Book: "Primary Health System (PHS): Discipline within The Human Design System that studies the Form's cognition; a dietary regimen which best supports each person's complex and unique brain development."
If anyone knows to what extent we have got brains scans or EEG readings that track someone's PHS trajectory, I'd love to hear about it.
Personally, I find PHS a component of the Human Design System where we need to get as scientifically sound professionally as we possibly can, collecting and evaluating data properly. And to my knowledge, this isn’t really happening currently. (If I’m wrong about this, someone please correct me.)
So having presented these three concepts, I’m bringing it back to the essential question of this inquiry:
‘Is what I’m saying true and how do I know?’
Knowing then that you and everyone else have certain biases at work might foster greater attention to what you and others express, or at least where it's coming from.
At whatever level you’re practicing the Human Design System, the points outlined above emphasize at least one major thing: it’s probably in your own best interest to be as scientific about your experiment as you can be.
And I'm breaking away here from what I had written in the previous version of this article because I was getting preachy. What I really meant to say with being 'as scientific as possible' is to pay very careful attention to your process, to consider the evidence you're really seeing versus what you think you're seeing, and how you actually come to know this mysterious thing called truth. To watch your mind distort things and bring that into the light. And perhaps, to document your observations following the scientific method if you feel inclined to make your experiment scientifically useful for others.
(Or, your know, 'Ain't nobody got time for that!' and enjoy your life.)
This is a simple orientation of mind to the unfolding of your life as it is, tracking what happens all the way through the cycle while the known and the unknown dance with you and things are revealed. I'm not suggesting you get your lab coat, read René Descartes and start dissecting your partner in order to measure their gut response from the inside in order to prove it.
Just as much, it's about evaluating honestly how you really move through life and being clear for yourself about where your authority is. To be scientific in this sense is to assume a direct relationship to truth, not externalising it to a third party who gets to plaster their 'expertise' across your life. However, this also means recognizing that you don't know what you don't know, and that well-founded expertise can be valuable information. It's a measured pattern that you can put into context, and that you can take or leave and see what happens. It's also about understanding that if you want to make claims that are scientifically applicable to the Collective, it's going to have to undergo scrutiny before it can have legitimacy.
So much of the work of understanding this term 'the Science of Differentiation' is disentangling the misguided personal proving from the logical collective process of establishing the patterns. What is a scientific pursuit in Human Design is to correlate scientific findings with what is described in the mechanics, given available means. Given the way in which the HD community is not very well organised around this, I don't see it as scientific by conventional standards. Right now, we've got individuals worldwide connecting the dots amongst each other in small groups and through online platforms as they share the patterns they notice in their lives. It's a myth-making in progress, which includes some really incredible stories that may point any one of us in a direction we could follow and check out for ourselves. And we'll live and die by that.
If at this point you're doubting about moving forward with it at all, I’d say that’s a good checkpoint to be at. It’s an opportunity to evaluate exactly what it is that has driven you and motivated you in this direction. This is an opportunity to get clearer with yourself that when you do make the decision to proceed, you are responsible for yourself, and that it’s time to really start paying attention to your decision-making process and its consequences. You won’t be the only one in the Human Design boat, but you’ll be the only one on your unique path.
For whatever it’s worth to you, my perspective is that each individual as a whole aligns with an underlying advantage that is deeper than their mental motivation. Even if it may be unsustainable and detrimental in the long-term or near future, whatever you’re getting involved with, however you’re getting involved in it - it serves you at some level of your being given your circumstances and conditioning; things you came by innocently and are not your fault.
Everyone's innately doing the best they can given what they've got.
In the previous version of this article, I continued to elaborate on the importance of 'bias' as a concept to understand, and I went down a thread of trying to get at the distinction between the individual decision-making process vs the collective logical decisions-making process. I then introduced Rupert Sheldrake as a perspective to explore so as to see if we may have a ground for relating to the Human Design system not purely as a pseudoscience, however appropriate that label might still be. There's another side to the story of bias in terms of how it accumulates into dogmatic power structures, which includes scientific institutions that get to dictate what is acceptable and what is not. But we'll get to that.
I think this is long enough now and will close Part 2 here. We can cover the other material in Part 3.
There's an open invitation for you to share your perspectives with me here and have a discussion.
Would you like to leave a comment below?
Thanks for reading,
Hagen
Have you had a Human Design Overview yet? Ready for the first step in awakening to yourself? Sign up with Hagen here.
The 'Science' of Differentiation - Being a Human Design 'Scientist' (Part 1)
In this article, we'll be exploring what it means to be scientific in our practical application of the Human Design system.
The topic of Human Design as a science is something that I’ve been walking with for quite some time and found meaningful to think about, given our context here on this network as a school, and then my own context as a Human Design professional. It’s too vast for me to contain in a single article, and I’ll take it as far as I can in this first part.
To start off, I’ve been hearing that Human Design is quickly becoming more popular and fashionable, with a risk of decreased quality of service due to many unlicensed and untrained ‘professionals’. Along with that, some critiques of the Human Design system recently crossed my feed in which the authors took issue with people who falsely claim to be scientific in order to sell things to a desperate audience.
It's common to find attacks masquerading as 'critiques', 'myth-busting', 'debunking' and so on while the authors seem more interested in ridiculing their target and describing them as con-artists scamming their audiences for their money. And while these dangers do exist and we should be alerted to them, sometimes it just seems like the venting of frustration to me. But this is a side track.
Anyway, I quickly checked out some Google Trends statistics (2004 – Jan 2022):
The results above are for the United States. In this graph we can see the red results indicating a notable increase for the term ‘Human Design’, compared to ‘The Human Design System’ (blue) and ‘Ra Uru Hu’ (yellow).
This second graph shows results for Brazil. Here we have a comparison between ‘Desenho Humano’ (red), ‘Human Design’ (blue) and ‘Ra Uru Hu’ yellow.
This third graph shows results for the United Kingdom. ‘Human Design’ (blue) and ‘Gene Keys’ (red).
Here we have Germany. ‘Human Design’ (blue) and ‘Ra Uru Hu’ (red).
India. ‘Human Design’ (blue) and ‘Ra Uru Hu’ (red).
South Africa. ‘Human Design’ (blue) and ‘Ra Uru Hu’ (red).
Globally then, we find the following results (2004 – Jan 2022):
‘Human Design’ (red). ‘The Human Design System’ (blue). ‘Ra Uru Hu’ (yellow).
And so we can see a global upward trend (almost 3 times as popular on Google than 10 years ago) that is likely to be driven by the US and Western Europe mainly, and some swelling in Brazil and the UK since the initial hype almost two decades ago, compared to other regions of the world. We can notice the difference between these terms, suggesting perhaps that even though people may be interested in ‘Human Design’ because they heard or saw it somewhere, they may not necessarily be interested in the source material from Ra.
With this in mind, the Human Design system also being called ‘The Science of Differentiation’ is important to consider. Though this term isn’t as search engine friendly, Ra Uru Hu on several occasions emphasized that the scientific validation of Human Design was very important to him, in part to distinguish HD from other belief based systems that incorporate new age spirituality. Having said that, just because we call Human Design ‘the Science of Differentiation’ does not necessarily make it a science, and I hope to shed some more light on that in this article series (hopefully we get there).
Firstly, because it is something that I wanted to check my own understanding about for myself, secondly as a call to professional Human Design practitioners – in particular to those who may be doing the system and the vocation a disservice, and thirdly to encourage reflection and evaluation of what we are doing here in this particular community together (and maybe what we are not).
This is an article that I found very hard to write because as I did so, many layers of my own conditioning emerged to the surface that I had not yet faced. It was a confronting process in which I could see my Not-Self tendencies emerge while putting words onto the page, distorting the narrative and its message with an underlying purpose in mind. I had to rewrite and spend more time than I originally thought I would. It was necessary to dwell in the uncertainty and unknowing for longer while watching the mind propose all sorts ridiculous angles by which I could try to prove myself as a scientist, or as a professional, through this piece of writing. There was a strong Not-Self structure my system was invested in preserving as if my life depended on it. I wanted to write about this subject sincerely, and yet it continued to feel contrived for a while.
The guiding question for this article is: ‘If you are a practitioner of Human Design experimenting at any level, are you being truly scientific?’
Originally I was driving a second question related to HD professionals who use ‘The Science of Differentiation’ as a convincing marketing trick in order to sell themselves, without necessarily understanding the limitations of that claim. (And then I took a whole wrong turn by reducing the rest of the article digging deeper into that.) Instead, I’m now reorienting us back to the beauty of science and the interesting crossroads we might find ourselves standing at as practitioners.
Personal Sharing:
In my Design, aside from my Individual Channels of Awareness (61/24) and Structuring (43/23) I have Definition in the Collective Understanding circuit, which includes the Channel of Logic (63/4) and the Channel of Judgment (58/18). Much of that is unconscious and formatted by the Experiential Abstract Cycle and Mutative Individual Pulse. And so at first glance you might expect or say that I’m scientifically inclined. Though a sincere interest in science was not really catalysed in me until the year I was introduced to Human Design while in my final year of university. I’d actually given up on mathematics quite early on in secondary school due to conflicts with teachers and had grown a general dislike for abstracting life into formulas that my senses couldn’t connect to. Then much of the modern sciences became increasingly unavailable to me from that point onward.
By invitation, I was encouraged to continue studying economics and began to develop a taste for logical patterns and thinking about systems. But I was missing a lot of essential foundations to understand complex mathematics and found myself slower than others, which I also allowed to discourage me in the conditioned striving for high grades. Meanwhile, what my attention was really preoccupied with most of the time were challenges in personal relationships (the 2/5 Profile in close relationships). I was more interested in understanding social dynamics between human beings, and this was not something I could grasp through abstract mathematics, nor could I solve my relational issues with the kind of scientific thinking that reduced real living complexity to abstract patterns and cold calculation. There’s a significant difference between describing a relationship as an equation and actually living one.
Eventually I went on to study Regenerative Economics at Schumacher College in Devon, UK. As a school this place has a different scientific lineage than most esteemed universities. In fact, the whole ethos of the school follows holistic principles that structure the college into a living community where the student body grows its own food, takes care of the communal spaces and learns to live together in a way that encompasses as many dimensions of life as possible. We were encouraged to really experiment and bring all of that into the classroom to reflect upon relative to the subjects we were studying.
If you’re somebody without any Tribal Definition in your Design like me, this may not necessarily sound appealing to you. And while I’m glad I had the experience, close community life like that may not be my thing (though I’m not so sure I’ll be able to escape it either). Nevertheless, what was very meaningful and valuable to me was the embrace of the totality of life as part of our classroom conversations. The body of the individual had a voice in the classroom setting and could shape how we would go about our day.
The intellect was not the only way of knowing that we appreciated. There was a deep scientific and philosophical inquiry into our relationship to nature, to the senses, to each other and to the complexities that emerge in the experience of living. Our focus, for most people, was much less on ‘getting the degree’ and much more on observing the mystery of what is actually meaningful in our lives and what connects us to each other. And especially, how we come to understand these things through scientific inquiry.
Scientists whose thinking I was exposed to, and some of whom I was taught by directly at this college include Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Alfred North Whitehead, Henri Bortoft, Brian Goodwin, Stephan Harding, Rupert and Merlin Sheldrake to name just a few that you might also be familiar with in one way or another. And though I’m not designed to be much mentally influenced by the thinking of others, by contrasting my own thinking with their essential concepts I found myself very enriched. I was given language for certain phenomena I did not have before, and I could question and evolve my own ways of thinking and knowing. All of this allowed me to expand what I could see and think about in my own way.
More importantly though, these scientists role modelled a different kind of relationship between the scientific observer and the observed than what you might traditionally find in academic institutions. Which is something I’d like to explore with you in this article series, as we think about practicing Human Design scientifically. But before we get there, let’s start with the basics. What is science anyway?
I think Wikipedia should at least be a good starting point for anyone beginning their inquiry into what science is conventionally understood to be. If we can’t trust at least that information to be accurate and reliable these days, then what can we trust right? 😉 …
The simple definition we find here is: “Science (from Latin ‘scientia’ ‘knowledge’) is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe.”
And then you can also find a concise description of some of the scientific human endeavour throughout history, piecing together an image of how scientific inquiry evolved to where we are currently. At the core of this pursuit we find several vital aspects of science: the ‘Scientific Method’, ‘verifiability’, ‘falsifiability’ and ‘bias’.
By understanding these concepts, we can get an understanding of how to approach Human Design scientifically ourselves, but also an understanding of where we are inevitably limited. By being able to hold both of these understandings side by side, we can practice from a place of humility and walk as closely to the truth as we can.
So before we briefly go into each of these concepts, I’d like to insert what I think is the quintessence of all of this. It is a question that reflects the scientific spirit, that I find helpful and necessary to bring myself back to continuously. And I invite you to remember this question if nothing else from this article:
“Is what I’m saying true and how do I know?”
There are many possible answers: 'yes', 'no', 'maybe', 'sometimes', 'I don't know', 'feels true enough but I'm not sure', ‘other people seem to think so’, ‘my gut makes an interesting sound’, etc. And all of those are fine - as long as we're aware of that and don't pretend it to be otherwise. There's nothing shameful about not knowing - that's where science begins.
Then there is the process of moving from ‘not knowing’ to ‘knowing something scientifically’, which is not the same as moving from ‘not knowing’ to ‘thinking that we think we know’. How you ask yourself this quintessential question and move towards an answer from there, reflects the kind of scientist you are (or aren’t). And there are many different possible kinds scientists who are prone to disagreeing with each other.
Ra Uru Hu in one of his lectures talked about Truth and Outer Authority, and that our process of getting there, sharing our awareness with each other, was not about agreeing with each other and seeing things the same way in the end. Rather, to be able to share peacefully how we see differently. I’ll elaborate on this more later on.
To answer this big question then, science proposes the ‘Scientific Method’ as a pathway to knowing:
.png)
1. You start with a curious observation.
2. You let your observation inspire or inform you with a question about its nature, 'what' it might be or 'how' it works.
3. You develop a hypothesis, a theoretical answer for what could be the case, projecting some anticipated results or predictions.
4. You find a way to test your hypothesis through experimentation, finding out how you would measure your results.
5. You analyse your findings about the observation to see if they meet your anticipations and substantiate your hypothesis or not, and what else they might indicate.
6. You draw your conclusions based on evidence and refine your process.
This then is the guiding logical framework for training the mind to conceptualize and see scientifically. When we as Human Design practitioners claim to be practicing the ‘Science of Differentiation’, we have to understand how it follows this method. If we don’t, we’re better off just dropping the pretence.
What connects the multiple threads I’ve opened up so far is the word ‘evidence’ in step number 6. All roads lead back to evidence. “Is what I’m saying true and how do I know?” – what’s my evidence? What do I consider to be the evidence for my conclusions and is it scientifically legitimate?
In Human Design the practice is a proposed formula for you to experiment with and start validating the mechanics for yourself. This is your Type, Strategy and Authority applied as a way to make decisions and observe the outcome. ‘Decide for yourself to engage in this experiment and watch carefully what happens’.
So let’s follow the scientific method in a hypothetical example for a Sacral Generator Type:
Observation: A feeling of dissatisfaction with one’s life, repeated struggle with decision-making dilemmas and feeling stuck.
Question: Can following my Type, Strategy and Authority make a measurable difference?
Hypothesis: If I follow my Type, Strategy and Authority formula, I don’t expect much will change or improve. If I simply wait for things to come to me without making anything happen, I expect nothing will happen. I’ll measure by observing changes in how I physically feel as a consequence of my decisions.
Experiment: At work, instead of going out of my office to initiate stuff to do with my colleagues which I usually do (I always think the quicker we get started the better - just do it.), I sat and waited for somebody to approach me with work. I felt nervous about what others were going to think of me but stuck with it. Eventually somebody actually showed up and asked me if I was okay and if I wanted to continue to work on yesterday’s reports. I felt something like a knot in my gut, and had the immediate urge to say no. But it was an important report and if I wasn’t going to do it, I don’t think it would get done properly and my supervisor would get upset with me. So I said ‘sure’ and started working on the report. I felt very bored doing it and really did not enjoy the feeling that ‘I had to do it’. I worked on it for two hours and noticed myself grinding my teeth until my jaw tightened up. My mind started thinking that I was stuck in a slave’s job and that I resented my boss. I was counting down the minutes on the clock so that I could quit it and go for lunch break. I felt very frustrated and could barely enjoy my meal because I was so uncomfortable in my gut.
Analysis: I can see that I ‘waited to respond’ according to the TSA formula, and that my expectations were incorrect because somebody did show up with work for me to do. When I felt in my body that I didn’t want to do it (the knots in the gut or stomach and the urge to say no) I continued anyway because I thought I had to and was afraid of consequences. When I went ahead with the reports, I felt very frustrated afterwards and this was physically noticeable.
Conclusion: This particular case example does show a pattern between my decision-making, the feeling of frustration in my gut and overall dissatisfaction with my life and what I do for a living. It seems consistent with what is being suggested by the TSA formula. I have to experiment further to see if following my ‘gut response’ more liberally makes a positive difference and if making my decisions differently can connect me to something more ‘satisfying’ and how that would be.
The evidence is mainly to be found in the signposts (Frustration and Satisfaction | Resistance and Ease) at first. If the formula says that you’re a Generator, can you observe that when you make your decisions one way it leads you to a physical feeling of frustration in the gut and dysfunction in communication with others? And when you make decisions the other way, can you observe a physical feeling of deep satisfaction in the gut and greater ease of communication with others?
This process may suffice for you, but scientifically what remains is weighing this ‘evidence’ in terms of ‘verifiability’, ‘falsifiability’ and ‘bias’, as mentioned earlier. And this is where we may run into the kinds of challenges that critics may then leverage as a way to dismiss the value of the system as a whole.
On behalf of ‘real’ science, one of the main tools that aggressive critics use is the label 'pseudoscience', driving an assumption that when something is called a pseudoscience it doesn't merit attention and is invalid for exploration by definition.
Wikipedia defines a pseudoscience as follows:
"Pseudoscience consists of statements, beliefs, or practices that claim to be both scientific and factual but are incompatible with the scientific method. Pseudoscience is often characterized by contradictory, exaggerated or unfalsifiable claims; reliance on confirmation bias rather than rigorous attempts at refutation; lack of openness to evaluation by other experts; absence of systematic practices when developing hypotheses; and continued adherence long after the pseudoscientific hypotheses have been experimentally discredited."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudoscience#Scientific_method
And so what do you reckon? Is Human Design a Science of Differentiation, or a Pseudoscience of Differentiation? Does this matter to you and why (not)?
And why is it worthy of exploration to you?
(Would you like to leave your perspective as a comment?)
I’ll close this first part on a cliff-hanger. The content so far may be good enough to start chewing on already as an introduction before we go deeper. In the next parts I hope to dive into what ‘verifiability’, ‘falsifiability’ and ‘bias’ are and how these things play into the scientific approach to practicing Human Design (or lack thereof).
I also intend to bring in some interesting perspectives from Rupert Sheldrake’s book ‘The Science Delusion’, also called ‘Science Set Free’, which turns things on its head by investigating whether the prevailing scientific worldview holds up to its own standards – or not. And this may open up an avenue for us to look at some of the alternative scientific role models I mentioned earlier, and how they might inspire the Human Design experiment.
Then finally we can get into the topic of individual truth vs collective or institutionalised scientific truth, which is what we’re gradually building up towards.
(To be continued when the energy shows up.
If not, then at least you know where I was headed and have a trail you could follow.)
Hagen
Have you had a BG5 Career Design Overview yet? Ready to align your design to succeed in the work world? Sign up with Hagen here.
Human Design & Mythology: The Tengu
Ever since I took Ra's Quarter by Quarter on the 16 Faces of the Godhead, I've been intrigued about the way in which we can find the themes of the mechanics woven throughout our human mythologies.
You can find the course on Jovian Archive here:
https://www.jovianarchive.com/Audios/40/The_Sixteen_Faces_of_the_Godhead
In the 16 Faces of the Godhead, Ra covers each quarter of a Quarter in the Human Design Rave Mandala Wheel. Each one of those quarters of a Quarter is comprised of 4 Gates, which together form a Face of the Godhead. He gave each Face a name based on a particular divinity he felt most closely resembled the essence of the programming that came out of those four Gates as a quantum - a whole greater than the sum of the parts.
Each one of those Faces represents a Personality crystal bundle, out of which each of our Personality crystals as individuals incarnated. The 16 crystal bundles together exist as a sheath around the Earth and filter the neutrino stream, as the planets move through the Rave Mandala Wheel. The themes of these 16 Faces create a global conditioning programming of our Personalities, following their archetypes.
In this course, Ra opened up the door to contemplate how and why human beings have been inspired throughout history to create particular gods and mythologies that are relatively consistent or similar across cultures, how certain archetypes emerge to the surface of human consciousness in relation to the higher forces that human beings have always perceived to govern the unfolding drama on the planet.
In this article, I'd like to take a look at the Tengu, a mythological figure from Japanese folklore and animistic religion and its potential connection to Gate 26, and the Channel of Surrender (44/26) A Design of a Transmitter, as well as its relation to particular Faces of the Godhead.
"Tengu 天狗 are mountain and forest goblins with both Shinto and Buddhist attributes. Their supernatural powers include shape-shifting into human or animal forms, the ability to speak to humans without moving their mouth, the magic of moving instantly from place to place without using their wings, and the sorcery to appear uninvited in the dreams of the living.
The patron of martial arts, the bird-like Tengu is a skilled warrior and mischief maker, especially prone to playing tricks on arrogant and vainglorious Buddhist priests, and to punishing those who willfully misuse knowledge and authority to gain fame or position. In bygone days, they also inflicted their punishments on vain and arrogant samurai warriors. They dislike braggarts, and those who corrupt the Dharma (Buddhist Law)." (https://www.onmarkproductions.com/html/tengu.shtml)
On the website above they are referred to as the 'Slayer of Vanity'. They are a breed of tricksters that come in two basic variations: the 'Yamabushi' or 'Mountain Monk' Tengu with humanoid face and long nose, and the 'Karasu' or 'Crow' Tengu with bird's beak and head. The Japanese government still made appeasement notifications and requests to local Tengu living in certain areas until the second half of the 19th century.
Adding a fun-fact here: the (44/26) Channel of Surrender is also our cross-specie bridge to the Design of birds, as well as part of the Stream of Instinct, corresponding to our sense of Smell (re: long nose and bird features).
So the first connection points we can already see here is the notion of pride, arrogance, boastful vainglory and trickster qualities that are also associated with the 26th Gate: The Taming Power of the Great - The Gate of the Egoist. This Gate sits within the Tribal Ego Circuit and as such it relates to hierarchy. It is the Gate of the braggart, the Gate of 'being the best', of exaggerating, and more importantly - manipulating memory.
"The maximization of the power of memory applied to the nurturing of continuity"
(Definitive Book, p. 245)
We can take a look at the Line Companion to understand the nature of this 26th Gate a bit better:
"The tribe expects to be exaggerated to. It is very important for the tribe. It likes that. This is the best refrigerator, the best car, the best country. Exaggeration is part of the way of getting the tribe to feel good. The 26: the strength or lack of strength to apply memory.
The whole thing to understand about the ego is that it is built on manipulation, and please do not think of this as a bad word. It is simply the ability to manipulate things. There are very few gates that are called 'taming gates': The Taming Power of the Small (the 9th Gate), to be able to take the broad spectrum of energy and to focus, tame it, to tame the root and its pressure by focusing it; and, here the capacity of the ego to manipulate instinctive memory." - Ra Uru Hu
(Line Companion, p. 165)
In the Line Companion Ra continues to explore the various Lines of this Gate. He explains that this manipulating ego conveys that they are the best by making sure that they are remembered in a certain way - using all tricks at their disposal, such as lies and exaggerations. Paraphrasing Ra: it's the sales person who is on the golf course smooching the client, rather than actively doing the sales in the way the 1/8 Channel of Inspiration would do. Telling the boss over the phone that the deal has been made when it may not even be true yet.
These things are a function of the Willpower of the Heart as a Motor energy that is expected to get things done, but is weaker compared to the Sacral. These tricks are a way of handling that pressure and expectation of the Tribe that is dependent on it, with a Motor than cannot actually work consistently and needs to be able to recuperate frequently in the midst of all of that.
"Sometimes, too, the Tengu would abduct human beings, only to release them later, but the "lucky" survivor would return home in a state of dementia (called 'Tengu Kakushi', meaning 'hidden by a Tengu').
(https://www.onmarkproductions.com/html/tengu.shtml)
As trickster goblins the reputation of the Tengu transformed gradually from evil to protectors, however dangerous still. As time went on, they were being culturally remembered differently. Once feared for a certain attribute, they were eventually beseeched for protection against the exact same thing:
"The character of tengu gradually changed over the centuries. For instance, tengu were long thought to abduct children, but by the Edo period they often were enlisted to aid in the search for missing children."
In the 16 Faces of the Godhead, the 26th Gate is located in the Face of Prometheus: the Greek trickster Titan who stole the original fire from the Gods and gave its power to humankind as a benefactor. Prometheus is comprised of Gates 9, 5, 26 and 11.
9. Taming Power of the Small - Energy for Detail
5. Waiting - Fixed Patterns
26. The Taming Power of the Great - The Egoist
11. Peace - Ideas
Within the context of Prometheus, the 26th Gate acquires additional archetypic characteristics that we may also see reflected in the Tengu - especially in constellation with the 44th Gate of Alertness in the Face of Minerva, as part of the (44/26) Channel of Surrender.
Here's a blog post by Laveena from 2017 that goes into the 16 Faces of the Godhead and what kind of conditioning forces they represent Quarter by Quarter:
Prometheus is located in the Quarter of Mutation, where purpose is fulfilled through transformation, which carries an underlying thematic of embracing death with the potential for rebirth. The movement through the Quarter of Mutation is a programming for accepting that the glory is behind us, that we are now preparing to leave life behind and move on. And yet as we scan over the Gates that are in this Yang/Yang Quarter we can see that all of them are fundamental to the creative spectacle of life. All the varieties of juice that are at the source of what makes life interesting, as it is expressed through the other Gates, Channels and Circuits.
It's funny that whenever I consider this I always think about the stereotypical 'accomplished' male who has just realized they are past their prime. They've 'peaked' and there won't be a next level for them to take it to. Their performance is on the way down, and they are on the way out. And the Quarter of Mutation represents everything they may be clinging to in this crisis, everything they may seek to reinvigorate, keep alive, immortalize or be remembered for. And I imagine how this stereotype acts out in their fear of dying, the denial and overcompensation that emerges - the pretence that they're still as vital and potent as ever. This is not an uncommon sight in homogenized society. It is this suggested or displayed vitality and potency around which their lives have been built. What has made them desirable and needed. It's their life's currency, and in this Quarter of Mutation - it's fading.
When we think about the 26th Gate, its ego and the way in which it manipulates how we remember things in order to establish control, we can connect some dots to the overcompensating masculine principle which clings to its own glory.
"The long nose relates to the Tengu’s hatred of arrogance and prejudice. Priests with no true knowledge, prideful individuals, those attached to fame, and those who willfully mislead or misuse the Buddhist cannons are turned into the long-nosed Yamabushi Tengu (or sent to Tengudo, the realm of the Tengu) after their deaths."
(https://www.onmarkproductions.com/html/tengu.shtml)
Whenever I look at any Face of the Godhead in the Wheel, I study them within the context of the Wheel and Bodygraph as a whole. (My PTL1 classmates know this from the Mad Labs I was hosting in which I introduced some of it.) It's way beyond the scope of this article to go that deep, but for anyone interested I would just like to mention that as a rich journey you could undertake.
When it comes to Prometheus as a particular programming agency, the main archetypic expression of that I see expressed in society today is the technocracy. This Face embeds the 26th Gate into focused and concentrated Logical Patterning in pursuit of an Abstract Collective Idea. On the other side of the Wheel, as programming partner to Prometheus, we find Lakshmi who carries our notions of Progress and glamour. And so what comes out of this is the vain and arrogant idea of technological progress that is supposedly the pinnacle of evolution, that is our conquering crusade across the face of the Earth and into the far reaches of space - which has also led to the termination and extinction of so many as a sacrifice. We think metropolitan cities are a magnificent erection - look at the luxurious size of that thing! Until suddenly the supply chain collapses.
Prometheus as an archetype is a force you'll encounter in the psyche of everyone who is actively participating in that flow. The promising scientist, scholar, CEO or philanthropist who wants to be remembered for their greatness. The debunker who persuades you to forget about the quacks you've been following and would love to teach you real science instead. Benefactors who bestow their gift, their particular kind of fire, onto humanity in their benevolence. Rallying the soldiers and the masses behind them in their cause - blind to what's on the other side.
"Corrupt Buddhist monks and corrupt Buddhist monestaries were in fact a major concern throughout Japan’s middle ages. Tengu are thus seen as protectors of the Dharma (Buddhist law), and punish those who mislead the people. Over time, the folklore of tengu and yamabushi become intertwined, and even the crow tengu (karasu tengu) begin wearing the robes and caps of priests."
(https://www.onmarkproductions.com/html/tengu.shtml)
Back in the middle ages the clergy were supposed to be the vanguard of the future, stewarding the afterlife as the mediators between the divine and the people. Today that's supposed to be the scientific institutions that guide governmental policy. The Tengu wear the clothes associated with these particular roles that carry the promise of protection, which can suddenly turn into misleading at any given moment. The security and resources that are there to be found in positions of authority and power within the Tribal hierarchy may corrupt. In particular when we move from the lower trigram into the fourth line. Those with influence may start to use it for their own advantage rather than their duty.
I mentioned earlier the termination and extinction that exists on the other side of the 26th Gate. This is something we find in the 44th Gate of Alertness - Coming to Meet, it carries the fear of the Past and the fear of extinction. The 26th Gate is biologically correlated to the T-Cells that are part of our immune system, who protect our wellbeing by eradicating threat. What comes out of that at the level of human to human interaction is soldiers of many kinds - as well as censorship and elimination of certain lineages of information. The 44th Gate carries ancestral and cellular memory that goes way back into our evolutionary past.
In my slice of life over these last few years, I've seen the dynamic between the 26th Gate's censorship and the 44th Gate's ancestral memory play out between the many indigenous communities who are fighting to keep their lineage of vital knowledge alive, protecting the ecosystems they are embedded in, while industrial technocratic forces are coming in violently to exterminate them and take hold of the natural resources. Co-opting the narrative along the way. Indigenous ways of knowing and seeing are labelled as 'primitive' or 'savage', while modern intellectual ways of knowing under the banner of science are 'superior', 'civilized' or 'sane'. A story is spun to give military troops an excuse to invade and kill people who do not comply and who stand for a different way of living in the natural world. And this is then called 'development' and sold to the citizens who consume vast quantities of beef and soy grown on these lands, after the forests and communities have been destroyed.
Minerva is the last Face of the Quarter of Duality, where purpose is fulfilled through Bonding. She is associated with strategic arts and crafts, such as trade and war. She carries Gates 32, 50, 28 and 44. As a conditioning force in the Program, she represents what Ra called the School, the Rules, the Way and the Promise. Here's what you need to learn in order to survive, here's where you can learn it, follow these rules and apply yourself - and everything's going to be fine. Go to school, get the degree, get the job, get the money, get the house, get the family, get the pension - happy retirement. Oh and don't step out of line or it's all gone.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tengu#Martial_art)
"During the 14th century, the tengu began to trouble the world outside of the Buddhist clergy, and like their ominous ancestors the tiāngǒu, the tengu became creatures associated with war. Legends eventually ascribed to them great knowledge in the art of skilled combat.
...
Two stories from the 19th century continue this theme: In the Sōzan Chomon Kishū, a boy is carried off by a tengu and spends three years with the creature. He comes home with a magic gun that never misses a shot. A story from Inaba Province, related by Inoue Enryō, tells of a girl with poor manual dexterity who is suddenly possessed by a tengu. The spirit wishes to rekindle the declining art of swordsmanship in the world. Soon a young samurai appears to whom the tengu has appeared in a dream, and the possessed girl instructs him as an expert swordsman. "
The (44/26) Channel of Surrender, A Design of a Transmitter, is the life force capable of handling Tribal ego and selling or transmitting to the Tribe what it needs for its continuity, safety and wellbeing. Whether this is a product, a service or a strategic art. This Channel has the ability to match-make potential. For example, connecting a talented young samurai to the art of swordsmanship and the right teacher that will bring out his gifts so that he becomes of value as a protector of the Tribe. This Channel has the potential to sniff out what you need before you're even aware of it, then massage you and set you up for the purchase. Telling you whatever it is you want to hear in order to allow it in.
I attract this Channel into my life very frequently, though most of the Transmitters I've come to know more closely are involved in some kind of creative enterprise. Some kind of arts and crafts related field in which they produce products and services that carry an essence of Tribal Support, care and learning. Products and services that reflect a particular set of values by which we are educated (and potentially indoctrinated) into a manifesto, mythos or ideology. The premise is that, by all appearances, they've got something we really need in order to live well, to thrive and continue thriving into the future.
What I also see in my particular environment is the Alertness in the 44th Gate about our enemies, the threats of the past that may still be lurking, or the conditions that gave rise to the creation of enemies and war in the first place. We have ongoing and continuous reminders of WWII in Europe all over the place so that we do not forget. At the same time, we grow our crops with toxic pesticides that were rebranded death chemicals from the concentration camps, thanks to the dextrous manipulation of the 26th Gate.
In the Channel of Surrender, where these Gates come together as a greater whole, we are held in the surrender to life as it sets us up to exchange value and resources. To participate in the flow of converting the living natural world into resources for sustaining our lifestyles. And we are trained and educated in schools to do so, we are taught the way and the rules by which we keep the whole thing going. Markets are grown and cultivated through education.
What is truly vital here is the recognition of life and hierarchy. Many indigenous people who live embedded in the natural world say something along the lines of "We live amidst relatives, not resources." And this is a perspective civil society has lost. It's an ancestral memory that has been censored and eliminated from our ideological pursuit of progress.
In the Not-Self, it's a small step to take in the 26th Gate from 'being the best' to 'being superior'. There is natural tribal and evolutionary hierarchy, and then there is the vanity of thinking we're 'better than'. The blindness of reducing what we see to a diminishing label that removes from view the fact that we're looking at a conscious living entity. As we do with trees, animals and the inanimate. As we do to each other in our racism and fanaticism. Something alive becomes potential resource to subjugate to our personal agenda. No permission needed.
I'll end this article with a short Tengu Zen story:
“One day a hunter was in the mountains when he happened to see a snake killing a bird. Suddenly a boar appeared and began to devour the snake. The hunter thought he should kill the boar, but changed his mind because he did not want to be a link in such a chain, and cause his own death by the next predator to come along. On his way home he heard a voice call to him from the top of a tree. It was the voice of a tengu. It told him how lucky he was, for had he killed the boar, the tengu would have killed him. The man subsequently moved into a cave and never killed another animal.”
Something to contemplate as a metaphor.
I hope you enjoyed this experimental article.
Take care,
Hagen
Have you had a Human Design Overview yet? Ready for the first step in awakening to yourself? Sign up with Hagen here.
Cheers to a 2022 Without Expectations - Human Design Rave New Year
In this article we'll be taking a brief look at the Human Experiential Way, the evolutionary process of our species and how our human experience on the planet is changing, including a big picture perspective from Ra and some personal experiences from me.
As every Rave New Year begins with the Sun in the 41st Gate, it kickstarts what is called 'the Human Experiential Way', an emotional stream of feeling running from the Root Center to the Throat Center via the Solar Plexus. It brings forth our burning desire to manifest new experiences and feel.
RA URU HU (Line Companion, 271-272):
"Transit: Uranus in 41.6
The Human Design System is a Uranian system, and wherever Uranus goes in the wheel is significant for humanity. Every 84 years, Uranus comes to the 41st gate. This time that Uranus is there, it is going to initiate an 84 year cycle that will culminate with the beginning of this transition. It will take well over a thousand years for humanity to get to this sixth line. It will not happen tomorrow or in the next century. Evolution on the human scale is a very slow process. This emotional spirit consciousness has already been with us for thousands of years and yet, we did not have any tools to really be able to look at it until very recently.
In the children that are born with Uranus in 41, particularly those who are born with Uranus in the 41.6, they will begin the pull-back in this experiential way. They will be the first generation of abstract children (it is depending on the design) who do not seem to function that way. These children, in our time, over the next 20 years [Uranus left the 41.6 in January 1998], will be clinically looked at as repressed. "No, my Johnny does not want to try to ride a bicycle. I do not understand it. I can't get him on the bicycle. I think that he is afraid of bicycles." It is simply because this is beginning to work and Uranus is initiating this new experience, especially in the sixth line. Uranus will bring that out in the children, so that there is already this genetic field that is beginning to operate and the children who are born with the 41.6 will be alive deep into the next century. They carry this energy with them and keep the aura of this energy alive in the world. They are setting the foundation for this transition.
You can see some of that now in what people call the AIDS epidemic. One of the things about the stream 41 to 35 is that it is the most sexual of all the streams. It is literally rooted in sexuality for the experience and that experience can be anything. In that sense, you can already see that this repression of those things is something that will come very strongly.
You will have a reaction to this in the environment until all of the experiences, the feelings and desires that we acquaint with being human will slowly be repressed, be restricted, so that we can become more and more organized without constantly being dragged out of the organization by the need of the abstract person to have a different kind of feeling. "You are designed to be an architect". "I know but I have this feeling that I want to be an astronaut." The planet has to eliminate this other side that automatically pulls you to say, "Yes, but wouldn't it be great if...?"
For us, nothing that I am describing is particularly pleasant. For us, we are part of the aura of the fifth line where we give authority to experience. Without experience, you do not know. That is why we have virtual reality. Nobody gets the experience. We already have vast movements at work to take us out of needing to physically have the experience ourselves, and yet, we have come into the world in a time where it still has its authority. We will have its authority for hundreds of years. There will be a great reaction to that. In your work over the next years, it is important to recognize that, as these children are coming on a stream, particularly children that come with the 41.6, they cannot be pushed into the experiential way by their parents. They will become very ill because they are the first generation that is there not to get pulled into that. They have to be aloof from it.
The experiential drive is coming to an end. The whole experiential nature of being human is coming to an end. In other words, we are at the flourishing of that. We are getting so many experiences. We are collecting so much data. We will now go down the other side. Ever since Neptune left 61, we are going down the other side, the other slope. Everything is being reduced. We start to pull things back. We are not driven into new experiences anymore. We are locked into old experiences, trying to stay alive and survive and flourish. We will not look for something new, but we will go back to the basics.
The deepest event in the next century will be that the fertility capacity in humans will be devastated. We have to go back to basic things and be very well organized in order to keep the species alive. We will not be able to tolerate all kinds of drives for different experiences when the species itself is threatened. These are all mechanisms that will come into work in the next century.
From: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/jul/11/richard-branson-virgin-galactic-space
It is like the project to Mars. They spend 256 million dollars to get there. They are spending about 1/2 million dollars a day tracking it. When somebody comes along in the next century and says, "Okay, now that we have gone to Mars, why don't we go to Pluto?" There will be people who say, "Wait a minute. Why? We could take all of this money and give it to starving children and poor people." We have to stay with the basics of what we need to have to be organized properly. It is not to say that we won't do things, but the pragmatism of what it is to keep humanity alive will restrict the way we use resources. That is what the 41 is all about. It is wonderful to look at the pictures they took of Mars, but we come to the point where people reject that. Resources have to go back into our hands to increase our fertility."
In a recent HumanDesign.Live post, I shared with you the animated video called 'Game B'.
If you haven't seen it yet, I invite you to check it out here and share your perspectives with me: https://www.humandesign.live/posts/20075916/comments/53671731
In this video, the creators are exploring a narrative of who we are as a collective in this moment in time, and what would be needed for us to navigate safely into the future. They offer their big picture overview and how an individual who has 'woken up' can find purpose and meaning in keeping the species alive during a time of ecological collapse.
There's plenty to be discussed about that, as I'm sure many of you are feeling the changes and are seeing a whole spectrum of conditioned propaganda about this fly by your information feed on a daily basis.
What is an ongoing puzzle for me is the disentangling from moralising crusades, naïve idealism, and all sorts of homogenized spiritual ideas that still have a rooting in the mind, but have no grounding in my actual Design. I notice in me the urge to pull away from many 'movements' and networks I would have identified and associated myself with before in the fear for my survival. At the same time I still care about how we navigate into the future together and understand we need to get organized, I get splenic hits all the time when I see people engaging in regenerative initiatives and experimenting their way into bioregional organization and maintenance of ecosystem capacities.
The dilemma for my mind is how to be connected to what I see unfolding correctly. The Not-Self wants to get deeply involved in order to 'lead the change' (my Colour Motivation Transference from Innocence to Blind Desire). I would love for my work to connect to the soils in a regenerative circle - and I'm not there now. My Not-Self mind judges this and does its best to compel me to do something about it, using all the pain points it can possibly find in my psyche, constructing a false image of myself as some kind of parasite. There's a blind desire in me to be part of something 'good', but it's a misguided mental distraction.
Letting go of morality is a heavy one. Lately, this is something I've been noticing in my students with an Undefined Solar Plexus as they mirror my own process. Being 'good' is part of having a social persona that won't be emotionally challenged or confronted. We get around by playing nice as people-pleasers. And it isn't just about getting everybody's seal of approval because you comply with their conditioned moral standards. It's also about not getting bullied by the Not-Self voice in the head for being a schmuck whenever you're facing a mirror.
Underlying this behaviour can be various kinds of amplified emotional fears of conflict (like the fear of nature in the 49th Gate, for example). The source of all of them is being revealed for who and what you truly are. And the Not-Self does not want to be exposed, especially in its misidentification of being secretly a 'bad' and inauthentic person underneath all of the facades (which is just as false as being a 'good' person). It is ready to blame others but does not want to be blamed for the crash of the wave itself. The outcome is a mountainous weight of expectations about being or not being 'something' that can allow conditioned desires to be fulfilled. And this finally translates into carrying the burden of experiential guilt on one's shoulders and inside our shared emotional field.
As long as there are expectations relative to the Human Experiential Way and in our relationships, as long as we are attached to getting something out of it, as long as we are trying to strategically manipulate our way from the desire through the crisis and into the manifestation of our fantasy of progress, as long as we're trying to lock in the next experiential orgasm or the feeling of finally being free - in other words, as long as we're trying to control what happens next based on whatever we think 'should' happen, then experiential guilt will be our fate.
I was contemplating these things yesterday, inspired in part by my interactions with my LYD students, and then finally had an epiphany about my own process in relation to this Not-Self strategy of running away from emotional confrontation. There were things that really needed to be seen and expressed, but that I had been too afraid of before. And I could see this was creating a duality in the psyche. On the one hand it left me trapped as a 2/5 to endlessly keep up with everyone's expectations, internalizing them as my own. And on the other it bound other people to my unreasonable expectations.
There was an additional curiosity here that I had been wearing old winter clothing from the brand Spyder. I was not actively pursuing that as something to identify with. I was not looking for a spirit animal or an expensive brand to show off with. But eventually it did capture my attention and I walked with it in awareness. Then when I finally sat outside to reflect on the transition into the Rave New Year, and whether or not I had any unfinished business left, I noticed a spider weaving its web not too far away from me.
And I recognized the web of expectations I was caught in, and how deep that rabbit hole went. It was beautiful to be taught by nature directly through its archetypal symbolism and fractals. Layer after layer the whole complex disclosed itself to me. I could see the Not-Self spider trapping people in my network in the hope of getting something out of them. Keeping track of everything through disturbances in the field. And on the other hand, I could see myself as being the one who was trapped by all of that. I could see how all my other Undefined Centers played into it and how it was detracting from my health and truth in relationships, setting me up for abuse.
(I could have read this on a divination card somewhere, but it probably wouldn't have done the trick. I had to come to that conclusion through my own reflection.)
Eventually this underlying drive of putting myself under the pressure of expectation dissolved for a while and I felt the peace of simply allowing things to be no more and no less than what they are in the here and now. Then also felt an aching body that had been carrying the pain of that for a long time, grateful to finally just be held in its own nature. There was an enjoyment of being able to feel the pain as opposed to resist and futz with it.
And in this I found the empowerment to speak up according to what felt instinctively correct and necessary for me to address.
The Rave I'Ching suggests that freedom on the material plane is an illusion (No Choice, we're not in control, etc.). From my perspective then, this freedom that I yearned for was to be free from expectation and blame. And to just let the experience of life be what it is. It already is in perfect accordance with my Design - it can't be anything else. I don't need anything extra.
So to close this chapter, I encourage moving through this Solar week of fantasizing without expectations, without the mental shenanigans to try and 'make it so' - however beautiful or morally just it may all appear to be.
If you're here to take care of the soils and steward the future, life will bring it your way and your body will resonate with it.
Thanks for reading and I wish you well in this new year,
Hagen
Happy 1st Anniversary HumanDesign.Live!
The Design of Forms via Jovian Archive
Our aim: connect and enhance our Fractal Family virtual communion.
We provide an online home for sharing multiple websites' information divided into interesting Topics you can subscribe to, engaging social media interaction, online teaching, virtual events, and video streaming/watching, all in one place!
This place is valuable because of YOU and your sharing so that together we have a connection with those who value learning about and experimenting with HD.
When I first started studying this system ten years ago, there weren't many options for talking about HD in a safe place except live classes. I dreamed of having a place like this to continue the journey for so long!
My first attempt was creating a Facebook page in 2013 and then the Human Design System Facebook group as a Projector class in 2014 which changed to a general group in January of 2017. I started new groups for each of the classes I was able to teach; ABC, Cartography, BG5 Foundations, Analyst Training, and a handful more sub-interests!
Of course, it became too overwhelming (enough was enough!). I kept getting further and further behind private messages - too many people asking for guidance. Especially as a Jovian Archive social media PR representative with so many 5th lines, lots of strangers came to me with all kinds of HD questions.
When I no longer worked there as the social media rep, I knew it was time to spread our wings and fly into our own private space here, where we can experiment together and share our experiences.
Here, there are no privacy issues of your private information and data being sold and shared to third parties.
Here, we can focus without being distracted by ads (whew!).
It was a challenging decision to leave Facebook, but after a year, we truly have a thriving home of our own to learn, share and grow together!
I'm so happy we took the risk.
To recap, here are a couple of the core benefits here:
To leave behind ads and unrelated posts, by being in our own space away from the distractions of social media.
To make it easier to access different Human Design topics that interest you, by having them all gathered in one spot for perusal and discussion.
To have a place that allows us the freedom to express our discoveries and share our journey along the path of celebrating our unique awareness!
Privacy and Visibility
New here?
Think of this special virtual space as a combination of our traditional websites, in-house social media, learning platform, and now a video streaming/sharing site with recent upgrades.
As with each of these other places (which are usually separate spaces) our virtual Human Design Home offers different visibility and capability to members than to the general public.
Here's a description of what can be seen and done by whom in the different places in our virtual Human Design home, so you know how to choose the privacy/visibility that you want.
Why
After a year of experimenting with this platform, we are clear on renewing our subscription and having both public and private areas as an intentional choice in building this virtual Human Design home.
Public visibility allows people who are looking for human design system knowledge, support, and information offered by our certified Human Design Professionals to find and benefit from it.
Think of the public areas here as a place to help bring together everything that has public visibility on our many Human Design websites, social media groups, pages, and channels. No more having to log in everywhere else to focus on the learning adventures with your Human Design fractal family (and being distracted in the meantime)!
This allows for us to coordinate stepping you through the information in our programs, topics, and events in ways that allow you to discuss with the people here who are on a similar journey of deconditioning and awakening to being their own Authority.
Private areas allow deeper connections around a specific level of time, interest or experience in the Human Design experiment. Online programs, workshops, virtual or in-person events, and our Facebook groups are examples of this type of private space outside of our Human Design home, that now we coordinate here instead to deepen our support levels, to offer comradery and a safe, distraction free continuity so precious in this increasingly challenging day and age.
Being a member of this site gives you full access to the public spaces and the opportunity to join the private spaces that interest you.
Most importantly and valuably: our feed is YOURS to populate with the people and topics that interest you.
Who
Public - anyone who is not signed in
HumanDesign.Live Member - someone who is signed in
Private Course Member - someone who is a member of a particular course program here (private course members are always regular members too!).
Where
HumanDesign.Live member area - These are places in our Human Design Home that can be seen without having to pay or to request permission to enter.
Member profiles are public. If you prefer more privacy, you are welcome to use initials or a pseudonym for your name. If you are a small business owner, you may want to leverage the visibility by including links to your website. Please be aware of this when choosing what to include in your profile.
Do you want to go here to view and/or edit your profile now?Any courses that have a Join Us button (not a Request Access, Buy, or Subscribe button) are public areas.
Home is a public area specific to the person viewing. If you are using a browser, you don't have to sign in to see posts.
Course areas
These are places here in our virtual HumanDesign.LIVE home that you can only see if you are a member of that particular course.
When you click on a member's profile, you'll see at the bottom what courses that person has also taken here. This allows you to know where they are at in their learning journey and us to check who has taken what here for certification purposes.
Resources and programs that have a Request Access, Buy or Subscribe button (not a Join button) are private spaces. Depending on the space, membership comes by paying or by requesting access and being approved.
What
The public does not have access to our private course and group spaces.
Others cannot see inside or act on anything inside a private course area. This means they cannot RSVP to events, comment, like or share anything there.
General public (this includes search engines) has read-only access to our public spaces.
Without a login, others cannot access our home here using the phone or tablet app. From a browser, others can see what we post and they can read replies (comments) on posts in the general areas. People who are not logged in cannot add comments, RSVP, or engage with us.
General members do have read/write access to public spaces.
When logged in, you can access our site using the Mighty Network phone app, tablet app, or any browser. General members can see what the admin team posts and act on the posts. They can also share comments, RSVP to events, and click links in posts.
Other benefits of being a general member include being able to privately chat with other members and to be notified of specific activity they choose.
Please note: direct soliciting privately is not encouraged nor allowed, and will result in removal from our site. Please respect the privacy of people's message inbox!
Please consider reporting anyone who is spamming you, to us at the email below.
General members do not have access to private areas, unless they are a member of that area.
This means course members can see what is posted, post, and act on posts within their private areas. They can see who the other members are and chose to be notified (as desired) about activity in that area.
Private course members have the same access as general members AND they have read/write access to the private resource or program that they belong to.
We trust you will do with this information whatever is correct for your Authority.
Warmly,
Laveena B. Archers, DDP
Professional Human Design System Teacher Trainer
Happy Human Design Holidays!
Dear Fellow Human Designers,
Our entire HumanDesignLifeCoaching.com and HumanDesign.Live team wishes you all the very best this holiday season, however is correct for you to celebrate it!
In these times of change, there is one constant - your design. It is through our resilience and determination to grow and develop, as well as our resolve to support each other in this most radical (to the outside world) experiment of living our designs.
This year has seen a number of shifts within your awareness if you were observant and dedicated to living the truth of your human design.
Each of you is making the world a brighter place through this important personal and professional work that you do.
Thank you for joining us in our mission to focus on the most important thing there is - authenticity with Self. In doing so, we raise global consciousness through our own personal experience and dedication to honoring our individual processes. In supporting each other to do the same, we have created a very special community here over the last year, and I'm so grateful for your contributions.
I know for me personally, dramatic changes have been afoot and I’m delighted to have adventures in learning Human Design with others who are as passionate about living their individual Truth as I am about collaborating with them to discover it.
Now more than ever, we are thankful to have such an incredible community supporting and celebrating one another. It's been so delightful to see you connect and engage with us and each other.
Here's to an authentic and fulfilling 2022!
Love Yourself!
Warmest regards,
Laveena Archers
Living Your Human Design Isn't Always Easy
Living Your Design Isn't Always Easy
During a profound shattering it may seem like you're never going to come out on the other side. Each of us have layers and layers of past conditioning that is neutralized, as cellular transformation is realized.
In my HD experiment I've been experiencing an ongoing Shattering, mutating in pulses throughout the last few years and would like to share it with you all. This transformation is centered around my Undefined Splenic Center (survival recognition function) and completely Open Heart Center (willpower function).
My Story
For years, on and off for decades, I actively avoided looking at my face in the mirror. It was too triggering for me to me to endure, spiraling me into unhealthy excesses to avoid feeling. I would go days without seeing my reflection. Most of the time only taking momentary glances to make sure that I was semi presentable to the outside world. At various points throughout my life, I’ve encountered others telling me how pretty they thought I was. They often confessed wishing they could go without makeup too. I just didn’t see what they saw and was skeptical of their complements. They never knew the truth of why I hardly wore any.
I don’t remember what my face even looked like before the scar was there. I was such a small child when the incident occurred that left that gash above the corner of my lip. But I remember the moment it happened, reliving the horror in my dreams and, often, while I was awake. The terror, the lack of security, unable to defend myself as I cowered in fear. I still feel the aftershocks when my emotional wave is low.
My mind taunting me with a persistent, lingering false belief that I wasn’t worth protecting.
That I wasn’t worth it, or anything.
Tainted Self-Love
That voice in the back of my mind has tainted my entire life since. Destroying any hope that I would actually find happiness within, always looking outside myself to fill a void. Neediness encompassed most of my decisions and actions. Proving I was “good enough” was a norm. Always looking for someone or something that would allow me to grasp a “love that would fix it all.”
I dulled my senses just to be able to look in the mirror and “doll” myself up. At times I abandoned my natural gifts to conform to what others thought I should be. Trying to prove that I was good enough for them. Holding onto things that weren’t good for me because I wanted to be ‘loved’.
At the time, I didn’t know a better way.
I do now.
Now don’t get me wrong, I tried. I’ve not just been sitting on my hands for decades. Starting when I was 7, I began my quest to self-heal. By the time I was 13, I could comprehend more complex ideas and started intense research in the fields of healing, self-help and psychology.
I’ve studied so many systems. Shadow-hunted the hell out of my deep-rooted fears and unhealthy conditioning. Sat through countless hours of meditation and self-hypnosis in an attempt to unlock self-love. I’m far from that terrified little girl I was 36 years ago, and yet I was still triggered by the memory, especially when it came to embracing my self-worth.
My Worth is Not Determined by the Actions of Others
And now, years into my Human Design experiment, I confidently say that when I look in a mirror, I LOVE what I see. All of it. Even the messy bits. And sure, the memories are still there, but the pain. The pain has gone.
I didn’t get to this point alone. I have the best entourage a gal could ever dream up. A wolf pack of the most empowering humans that are deep into their own HD experiments. Including a mentor who is not afraid to share the messiness of her past to help us forge ahead through the trenches.
As a Projector, this is exactly what I need. I learn about myself through learning about others. Each of us radically living our own experiments while empowering, sharing, and supporting each other.
The other day, I looked into the mirror and declared, “I love you.” It wasn't the first time that I had reflected those words back at myself, but this time it felt different.
I Felt Cool, Calm & Emotionally Clear
While gazing lovingly at myself, a Flaming Lips song stole the scene. It’s been one of my favorites since I was a teen and completely encompasses what self-love feels like to me.
I’d like to share the lyrics and their official video with you.
“When You Smile” by The Flaming Lips
It’s like I never had to see it in your eyes or feel it I could tell
When you smile.
It’s like I didn’t need to say anything or do much, I could tell
When you smile
All of the subatomic pieces come together and
Unfold themselves in a second...
Every single molecule is right, when
All of the subatomic pieces come together and unfold
Themselves in a second.
written under the Cosmic Influence of
ⵙ 43.5 ⴲ 23.5
I originally published this article with no expectations on HumanDesign.LIVE, the safe space that was lovingly created by Laveena for our Fractal to learn from sourced based material and support each other as we continue on with our personal Human Design Experiment.
I would say that I am surprised by the number of responses I have received when I shared my story, but with my design, I often draw in those who need someone to listen to what they're going through. Each message has been rich with stories of similar experiences.
One of the greatest joys I have uncovered with Human Design is the ability to not only more clearly see myself, but also see others and where their struggles may come from.
Thank you to all of you that have trusted me with your personal stories. I adore your courage to share.
Sometimes it helps to be able to share what you’re going through with someone who just plain gets it.
I invite you to reach out to me if you are looking for support for your own Human Design Experiment and deconditioning process.
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
A Fresh Start - Coming Back to Your Senses
Thoughts from a 2/5 Splenic Projector in the Human Design Experiment
The great thing about being Splenic is that any moment you can just start over.
I’ve been ‘in the experiment’ with Strategy and Authority for a number of years, and this morning I let go of my imagined linear track towards the 7 year deconditioning marker. I just started over with a beginner’s mind. No answers, only questions and curiosity.
What does it really mean to follow my Splenic awareness moment by moment as a Projector?
I was recently interviewed by Jelena Legcevic to provide some insight into questions like this for newcomers to Human Design. And I had a thing or two to say about it. But having had some time to ponder all of that, I’m considering that the question is more powerful than the answer.
I recall some things I wrote in my original introduction to this network, which more or less includes one of the most alive questions I have today:
How can I live more closely to the contact surface of awareness with its body and the environment - here and now?
Metaphorically speaking, in front of me I can see a fork in the road. Paying more attention to the simple signals of the senses and how the external world is contacting me, or getting predominantly absorbed in the wonder of my defined Head and Ajna, and whatever the mind thinks it knows or hypothesizes.
I can’t get rid of that mind, but perhaps my attention can be much more anchored in the sensory world than it currently is.
Much of my habitual attunement to the body signals have reinforced a way of sensing inside the body. But I think the real place for me to be is at that contact surface with the environment - the exterior world. Primarily noticing the external, then recognizing how the inner speaks about that sensory world and its qualities, rather than first digging into the inner sensations in order to get a perspective on the outer.
But I reckon that I still often get caught in a mental trap where the mind insists on being the interpreter of sensory data, moving from physicality to symbolic meaning and back, rather than simply from physical signal to responsive impulse.
Having a mind that is incredibly loud acoustically and visually, it presents a major psychic hurdle. Reinforced habits that keep my attention stuck on the mental plane, such as episodes of triggering memory flashes, leaving me dangling desperately in the unresolvable questions of my undefined Centers.
It’s a curious thing that there is this assumption floating around that we can somehow ‘remember’ our true self, our authentic individuality. Perhaps you experience something similar in your process that prevents you from staying present to the body’s life. This sudden overwhelm that opens Pandora's Box and out comes a flood of memories and past conditioning, pressuring you to find some kind of anchor in the truth of who you are amidst the confusion. Then the mind interacts with the memory and creates an endless loop of overthinking, pretending it is trying to see something new that finally resolves the 'issue'. And in the meantime you go back to some routine coping habit rooted in a Not-Self strategy.
If any of this sounds familiar, you’re not alone!
To at least open up a pathway out of this, in order to have a fresh start and not get spellbound by these psychic episodes of mental resistance to transformation, we can take a look at some particular mechanics for insight:
The Memory Circuit
If you look at the image above you can see something straight away: memory is not about the Empowered Knowing of Individuality.
For those of you who want to study this in greater depth, you can find resources on this as part of Ra's Rave Anatomy Courses.
Without going into too much depth on the memory circuit in this short article, I just want to point out one obvious thing: there are no Individual Channels that are part of the memory circuit.
So this leads us to a crucial insight: whenever you have memory flashes in which you’re seeking to find your individual truth in order to overcome life's oppression – you won’t. It isn’t mechanically possible. Yet in the hypnosis of that experience, the bait is that if you just dig deep enough, you can figure it out. At least, this is what keeps me endlessly tunnelling down the rabbit hole – dissociating away from my sensory contact with the external world. And it's this external environment that I invite you to bring yourself back to.
A fresh start in your experiment is all about gently coming back to your senses in the present. The simplicity of how the outer landscape is contacting your various sense organs here and now. After all, the intelligence of your Authority is rooted in your sense perception.
Sense perception is part of the substructure beneath the level of the Line, called Tone. You can learn more about this by finding relevant material online, and you can also be guided into how it works for you by Laveena in one of her Radical Transformation Clinics.
The mind may find this boring, addicted to the intensity of turning life into a problem to solve and coming up with many stimulating strategic ideas and revelations, but this boredom can be a refuge for your self-recovery that eventually opens up into the simple pleasure of being.
Reattuning to the external world, its simple physical features and many qualities - in whatever way they are available to you without forcing anything. Without seeking the next sensory orgasm for the mind to get high on, but simply dwelling in the contact with the environment, allowing your attention to freely wander and trace the textures of the landscape with ease and curiosity.
Letting your eyes go where they want to go for a while, and just noticing what it’s like to be where you are.
How are your senses letting you know that you’re in this place, here and now?
What does that knowing smell like? Does it have a flavor? A color or texture? A warmth? What else?
And while you’re here, you might as well notice how your body is enjoying that for a while.
Soft snowy vibes amidst misty mountains,
Hagen
We Now Accept Cryptocurrency!
Are you into Crypto?
Last summer I began using crypto to move money, and to invest earnings from my Human Design work into the blockchain world.
It began slowly at first, a little here, a little there, whenever I could, dollar cost averaging into the cryptocurrency market. Then last November I did my first trade successfully and truly got on board, feeling comfortable enough to let my online tribe know that this was the direction I was going personally.
This experience reminds me of my early days in HD, years before Pluto moved into the Gate of Mystery. HD wasn't nearly as popular as it is now! Those of us with strong 5th lines tend to recognize the new trends coming before others do. My 5/1 husband knew about HD a few years before I did, and his embrace of crypto is what lead me in this direction as well.
As a 3/5 Cross of Contagion, I'm always trying new things and seeing what doesn't work and what does. I'm not scared of making a fool out of myself by experimenting with weird and wacky or out-of-the-norm things. More and more, crypto is going mainstream and I feel comfortable with buying, holding, and using it.
In this article, I'd like to share an announcement that...
We Now Accept Crypto!
A couple of weeks ago I got to pay one of my team members in crypto, and it felt awesome.
Right now, when I accept digital fiat dollars from a client, I pay a processing fee from Stripe or Paypal, depending on what they choose at checkout on one site (this site only accepts Stripe). Getting the remainder to the bank takes about 5 days unless I want to pay a fee. Then, to get the money from the bank to my team/teachers, I have to pay another fee, and then they have to wait to get it to their bank accounts. When there is an alternative like crypto, this process is really inefficient, expensive and S L O W comparatively.
With crypto, money takes seconds, not days, and costs pennies, not dollars to send.
Yes, there are challenges, but together we can learn, share, and grow. I feel it is time to let go of the old, and embrace the new.
Not into Crypto yet? Here's the online blockchain exchange I personally recommend thanks to a recommendation by Rok Sivante (thanks, Rok!):
Nexo Blockchain company
It is free for any Nexo member to send payments to any other Nexo member (that is my personal invitation link to you, so you can join and get started with $25 of BTC in your account).
I use Nexo because they offer security, convenience, and excellent interest rates on fiat and crypto savings, which is currently 4% minimum, up to 17% for AVAX and DOT right now until the end of this month. Also for borrowing cash or stablecoins, it is between 13.9% and 6.9% (I just laughed out loud, because I had to add the word stablecoin to my personal dictionary because it didn't recognize it).
There's a convenient exchange right on the platform to buy, sell and swap between 100 different crypto and fiat pairs, with 21 solid crypto offerings.*
We also get a governance vote as community members. The app is simple and easy to use, with built-in news.
And, they have been the most responsive to emails asking for the help needed in learning the ropes of this nascent asset class. When compared to any of the dozens of crypto exchanges/wallets/trading platforms I've tried over the year since last summer, they shine the most. With INSTANT credit lines based on your account value and not your credit score, and low fees, high interest-bearing savings, great security, and being insured, I feel comfortable recommending them.
Did you know that you actually don't own your money in a bank?
What is Nexo?
Earn $25 in Bitcoin
"Nexo is the world’s most advanced, regulated digital assets institution offering instant crypto loans, daily earning on assets, exchange, and the only blockchain company to provide its services in 40+ fiat currencies and in more than 200 jurisdictions.
Nexo gives digital asset holders the best of both worlds - instant access to cash and high-yielding interest on idle assets. Not limited to that but also sophisticated trading and OTC capabilities.
The company’s mission is to maximize the value and utility of cryptocurrencies and this translates into $30+ billion processed for 2+ million users across the globe.
Nexo’s instant lending platform combines seamless user experience with military-grade security with 256-bit encryption and 375 000 000 USD insurance. Clients' assets are stored and protected in individually assigned multi-signature wallets in cold storage with Ledger Vault and the only qualified, audited, Goldman Sachs-backed custodian - BitGo.
BitGo is Cryptocurrency Security Standard Level 3 as well as SOC 2 compliant.
To learn more about security, please visit: https://nexo.io/security" From Nexo.io
Want to Pay for your class in Crypto?
I'm game if you are. So, if you would like to pay for any classes or services with crypto, I'm happy to accept stablecoins.
Simply send your request to office (at) humandesignlifecoaching (dot) com with the name of the service or class you’d like and the coin you'd like to use.
幽玄, Melancholy, Waiting, Art and Noticing
photo by Mitchell Hartley
For me, following Strategy & Authority is not the Main Stream, it is not the highway everyone uses to get most efficiently from point A to point B. It's that little path off to the side that disappears around the bend, leading who knows where - perhaps to 'the' place, perhaps not at all.
It's an experience that holds a lot of melancholy for me as an individual, and it's in this sad emotional mood that I find a transcendent kind of beauty that I wouldn't trade for the world.
I have always been drawn to oriental philosophies and arts because these traditions have a certain way of dwelling in nature. A way of stopping all the doing doing doing and instead, residing with awareness in the present as the trees wiggle, as the clouds drift along, as the waves ripple across the surface of the waters, and as the sun and stars wheel on by.
Out of this awareness and mode of perception, many beautiful concepts have emerged that touch on qualities of experience the productive busy world has no attention for - especially in the 'West'. Japanese aesthetics have always captivated me since I was a child.
There are many particular Japanese aesthetic qualities that I'd like to write about within the context of the mechanics, but we'll focus on just one of them today which is called:
Yūgen - 幽玄
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_aesthetics)
Yūgen (幽玄) is an important concept in traditional Japanese aesthetics. The exact translation of the word depends on the context. In the Chinese philosophical texts the term was taken from, yūgen meant “dim”, “deep” or “mysterious”. In the criticism of Japanese waka poetry, it was used to describe the subtle profundity of things that are only vaguely suggested by the poems.
Yūgen is said to mean “a profound, mysterious sense of the beauty of the universe… and the sad beauty of human suffering”.
Yūgen suggests that beyond what can be said but is not an allusion to another world. It is about this world, this experience.
(Ortolani, 325). Ortolani, Benito. The Japanese Theatre. Princeton University Press: Princeton, 1995
My favorite description of this concept so far belongs to Alan Watts in his lecture on Japanese aesthetics called 'Unbleached Silk'.
Here you have a short audio clip in which he describes Yūgen specifically:
Alan Watts - Unbleached Silk_cut_part 3_cut.mp3
"Little sounds emphasizing silence, little motions emphasizing stillness"
"Suggestiveness"
There are many things Alan speaks to in this lecture that would merit pointing out and discussing - perhaps we'll get there sometime.
At the end of his explanation of yūgen he begins to describe how it flows over into another concept called 'sabi', which as a quality reflects the essential solitude of being in our own nature.
In the next few paragraphs, I will connect the concept of yūgen with the melancholy and solitude of Individuality as we know it in Human Design terms, using the medium of art.
Yūgen in Art
I love having conversations with artists and those deeply immersed in the arts who have an acute eye and feeling for the creative self-expression of individuality.
Had I been a Generator, or carried any of the Channels of Creativity connected to a Motor Center, I'd probably spend my days drawing, painting and sculpting away. My talent for art is sporadic and in hibernation most of the time. So I'm very glad to have connections with very vivid artists who bring their world into my life.
In a recent exchange with one of my friends, the artist Andrew Wyeth was mentioned, along with some of his incredible pieces:
Artist: Andrew Wyeth
As I observed these paintings, the quality of yūgen seemed at once all-pervasive to me. I wrote to my friend:
"The atmosphere and awareness suggested by each of these paintings is defined by what isn't there. We don't know if it isn't there yet, or if it isn't there anymore. Whatever the 'it' might be.
This is the quality of yūgen that accentuates at once every small thing and subtle nuance that is there. The blades of grass, the texture of the fields, the gradients of colours, light and shading. The placement and posture of bodies and objects interacting with the wind. It evokes the melancholic emotional mood of anticipation and loss, as we wait for 'it'.
And in this waiting there is only the noticing of the beauty of all that is there. All that isn't 'it'. All that isn't 'it' yet. All that will never be 'it'.
If we can accept the waiting and be with that, we won't miss a thing."
Yūgen, Melancholy, Waiting, Noticing
It is difficult to wait at first, when we are in our early experiment with our Strategy and Authority. In the end, every Type must wait - even the Manifestor. Each of us waits for the right time to be moved by life in one way or another. Though most of us have been raised with the conditioning that we should make it happen, that we should do it in order to be it, or achieve it, or experience it, or have it,...
It is a challenge for the mind to let go, and we can find ourselves addicted to action, and to the generating of the sacral. When we look at the busy-ness of modern society, and have conversations with people who are in that productive flow day-in day-out, then the compulsion to do, and the negative association with non-doing, are very much on the surface.
I did some research at university regarding people's perspectives on 'not doing' or 'non-doing'. And often people who struggled with not keeping themselves preoccupied reported similar fears:
Gate 55 The Fear of Emptiness
Gate 22 The Fear of Silence
Gate 28 The Fear of Death
Gate 57 The Fear of Tomorrow
Gate 24 The Fear of Ignorance
Gate 43 The Fear of Rejection
You can read more about each of these fears in the Definitive Book of Human Design, or by participating in one of the courses such as Living Your Design, Rave ABCs or Rave Cartography.
Each of these fears is part of our circuit of Individual Knowing, the central pathways that run throughout the Bodygraph. Because they are Individual, they are formatted by the frequency of the Pulse in the 3/60 Channel of Mutation, which is a timed release mechanism for the profound mutation that Individuality can bring.
The Pulse fluctuates and initiates suddenly and seemingly out of nowhere. But until it does, it isn't there. Nothing is happening. Nothing is happening. Nothing is happening. Until there is the sudden spark of mutation that can create a new order out of chaos.
This is the process that also underlies the chemistry of melancholy: an emotional mood of sadness that is present in these empty spaces between pulses. And when you look at many artists, you'll see that their creativity and art contains this sadness. It is what can be most attractive about them to their audience. This touch of melancholy gives their work poetic depth and augments the beauty that they have managed to channel into form.
The artistic skill that could appear to elevate them far beyond the crowds of people who would never dare dream of being so creatively inspired or capable, is somehow balanced by the mood of melancholy that pervades their art. It reminds everyone that the artist is human too, that they too have suffered existence in form, in one way or another. And it can be a point of connection, when they can recognize their own individual sadness mirrored in the sadness of the artist. The spectator can feel known, can recognize in themselves what they are otherwise too busy (or afraid) to see: the solitude of their individuality - and its uniqueness. This is what gives art its empowering potential.
You can notice the power of melancholy in Andrew Wyeth's work. Even though it isn't the only quality noticeable in the figures, landscapes and objects, you can see how each of them are held in this emotional sadness. This waiting in between the pulses of change. Also notice the quality of loneliness or aloneness (depending on how you want to look at it). This sense of 'there's just me now...' is part of the melancholy of individuality.
The Gates I listed above are awareness gates that belong to the Solar Plexus Center, the Splenic Center, and the Ajna Center. These are the fears that we confront in the solitude of our individuality and they each reflect the absence of something.
Gate 55 The Fear of Emptiness, reflects the absence of passion.
Gate 22 The Fear of Silence, reflects the absence of attention.
Gate 28 The Fear of Death, reflects the absence of purpose.
Gate 57 The Fear of the Future, reflects the absence of truth.
Gate 24 The Fear of Ignorance, reflects the absence of certain knowing.
Gate 43 The Fear of Rejection, reflects the absence of acceptance.
And it's in this absence that we struggle to dwell in the waiting, because the Pulse does not let us know when change will come. We don't even know if it will come at all. We're just suspended in the here-and-now.
To me, it is this absence that marks the quality of yūgen, the emptiness, the silence, the not-knowing, the purposelessness. In the Westernized busy world, we have no cultural frame or appreciation for this, and so it freaks most people out. When I interviewed people about this, it seemed that these fears tend to be too much to handle. I wondered if that's because you can only venture through them alone, and most people do not dare, so they cling to a mental preoccupation instead of their own unstimulating company.
And yet here you have artists like Andrew Wyeth who remind people there is something mysterious and profound about the absence of something. He reminds his audience to reside in the waiting, to move through the sadness of being in between that which has been and that which is not yet.
Through his art, it is the quality of yūgen that reveals something extraordinary: that if you can just be with the waiting, all of a sudden - everything that is there, all the subtle nuances and details that would go unnoticed in busy doing, finally there is the space for all of that to permeate awareness and stimulate consciousness in a supreme yet peaceful way. This is the power of suggestiveness that absence holds.
Suddenly, in the sadness of being, beauty is everywhere in the most dull and boring of places. One can see the whole universe contained within the absence of anticipation, disclosed by the wiggling of a decaying leaf - like 'little sounds emphasizing silence'. And this deep silence being more profound and meaningful than anything that could ever be said.
Suddenly there is something to pay attention to, something to be passionate about, there is purpose, there is life, truth, knowing and creativity. And it's all right here and now. It emerges as naturally as anything else, without us needing to 'do' anything to bring it about. Then we are called by our creative muse to channel the sadness of our own unique individuality into art.
It just required waiting, waiting, waiting and then noticing.
The acceptance of the absence.
The path that disappears in the fog, not needing to know where it may lead.
Yūgen.
Enjoy your movie,
Hagen
Everything has a Successful Design; in Being Itself
Human Design Gate 25 Innocence, Spirit of the Self
I'd like you to meet Athena (image below). I am one of her new humans. =) She is a Border Collie puppy, and she has a Mammalian Reflective design. Her only activation is Uranus in 27.6, and thanks to Gate 50 coming up in Analyst Discussion class this past week, I realized I'd named her after the godhead of my Dreamrave weak point, which is Gate 50 (oops! Oh well!). Minerva is what Ra used for that area of the Mandala wheel, and Athena is another name for Minerva. Interestingly, my Analyst Teacher trainer, Lynette told me she "had a dear friend with a Border Collie named Athena - smartest dog she ever met!" Yep, they sure are.
Everything, everything, everything in our Maia has a Design. Even our individual cells in our bodies. Even inanimate objects (Gate 25, Innocence; the Spirit of the Self).
We are all objects moving in space, with our own gravitational pull—to encounter people, places, and things our Magnetic Monopole draws us towards, whether we have a planet in Gate 2 (home of the monopole) or not.
Ra described the Monopole like the arm of a streetcar, pulling us along our path in our trajectory in space, choicelessly.
"Choicelessness is our grace." Ra
The further away you are from walking your path in alignment, the more resistance (anger, frustration, bitterness, disappointment) you feel in your life.
The closer you are to your own Spirit which is the essence of one's Signature (Peace, Satisfaction, Success, Surprise) the more these things shine through us, and are expressed in the important areas of our lives that make us feel alive.
Even our homes have a form, energy, and a Spirit we can feel, sense, touch, or know; imbibed with a consciousness all its own. Anything inanimate has gate 25; the design of a single cell has gates 3, and the channel 5-15. Here are the rest of the Design of Forms (introduced in our Rave Cartography class):
Human Design System, the Design of Forms. Credit: JovianArchive.com
My husband and I are both Mountain Outer Determination (our Primary Health System Environment) people. Mountain people tend to prefer less densely populated areas, with broad expansive views from on high. He is passive, I am active. Within months of when we first met, without even knowing about our PHS yet, he invited me out of San Diego and up into the high California mountains, where we lived both together and apart for most of my Human Design experiment. We recently bought a home out in the high desert (around 4,000' elevation) countryside, our first house together, with escrow closing after the lockdowns.
Our previous mountain home was in Mount Shasta, California before we moved to Sedona, Arizona
Because he is a 5/1 (they are very private people), I'm honoring his request to not show interior photos of our home. So I'll do my best to describe the feeling of it. Feeling is my cognition. =)
From the road, its unassuming structure is perched on a hill with sweeping views of a lush, verdant valley thanks to a winding creek, vineyards, green pastures with horses, cows, goats, chickens, dogs, homes, and their people. It is s two-story structure built into the ridge of a hillside. The lower level, (his) floor has west-facing windows with the exception of one south and one north, bringing in the warmth and light to heat the coolness of his Earth-facing walls on the east.
It's perfect, really. He's a Hot and I'm Cold Inner Determination Primary Health System (see playlist below for an overview of the Radical Transformations in Human Design). We prefer vastly different temperatures and humidity levels, especially since I'm living with Hashimotos. So he not only gets his own floor and living spaces, this means thankfully he gets his own climate controls and so do I! To learn more
It's really nice to have my husband and I have the same Channel of Recognition, a Design of Focused Energy (to Feel) also known as the Strength of Imagination, as our authoritative channel. When we walked into this house, it was easy for us to feel the call of how it had sat empty for over three years, just waiting for us, its next family to care for, protect and love. Yes, love. Inanimate Objects have a design with a Trait of Innocence, the Gate of the Spirit of the Self. This is the transcendent love of All-That-Is, which provides a place to Be Love, and is the life-blood of our design. Literally, Gate 25 is correlated biologically with the blood in Human Design.
From driving by in Fall to visiting several times over winter to feel it out and photograph repeatedly (I love taking pictures!), and closing escrow in Spring, it rightly took us more than several months from finding it to getting clear on buying it. This is correct for Emotional Beings. He is Outer Vision, I am Feeling cognition. I knew the fourth and last time we went to visit as I caressed the carefully crafted custom surfaces that I loved this house; I could feel this was "it" and that it loved me back.
Homes or objects innocently Be, providing the place for us to discover our own identity in partnership with what Ra called the "bi-verse" that is us and is seen all around us.
Time spent in places affects our spirit. The buildings we inhabit affect the quality of our health, not just because of the materials they are created from. They have a design all their own. They are extensions of one's body; the mind as we know it depends on the structure of the brain to provide its sensory cognition. So too, our body depends on the structures of our world to give us sensory experiences and space or opportunity to be our differentiated selves within our lives.
Human Design System Gate 21
With Venus in the Gate 21, I have always loved houses and homes of all kinds. One of my favorite jobs was staging, photographing, and showing homes when I was a Real Estate Broker in California.
My father was a plasterer when I was growing up, and I enjoyed that so much about the homes he built for us to live in. So when I walked into the house I immediately fell in love with its earthen-colored plastered walls, the natural smoothed texture so pleasing to feel and touch. Splashes of light teal and yellows contrasting with creams and reds pleased my eyes and lifted the corners of my mouth in delight.
Space is an incredible resource and a precious kind of wealth in this heavily-populated world we now live in. Being able to have and spend my time in a way that works for my physical limits as I mature feels successful. Projectors who have not yet deconditioned are addicted to the Sacral world. My most common noticing of Projectors in my observations of what they say is how much smaller their world gets, when they aren't out there chasing others and initiating going places to attract attention.
Space and time, two intangible gifts that give based on the interaction of our form within them. Gifts I have ever so much of thanks to my Human Design Experiment.
When this home first captured our attention, I imagined facilitating private and small group retreats here. With Channel 1-8 as part of my Incarnation Cross, I am designed to successfully lead a small group (3-5 people). One of Ra's fantasies he shared in the Differentiation Degree program I took over the past three years was to have a retreat center that offered services and lodging based on a person's Primary Health System, and before I knew about how truly private my husband is (it was a no to strangers coming over), I imagined this home could serve for that. As soon as I accepted his boundaries and had no problem with his wishes, he changed his mind! Now, it's a matter of right timing and people, as I must protect my body and energy levels as much as I protect my Aura. Until then, that daydream remains happily experienced in the realm of fantasy.
We often joke that our house would make a great human design sitcom. That's definitely a fantasy best left in the daydream category! When they are together my husband and 1/3 daughter often have me in stitches (a phrase used for laughter so hard it makes your sides hurt as if you'd just sprinted), and it is so much fun to live in a household filled with tons of fun, instead of the screaming, yelling and crying I remember growing up as a child. In this house, if I scream because I get startled by a bug or something, my husband can't even hear me on his floor!
I can't tell you how healing it is for me to live this way; if you experienced a broken household where people were yelling at each other when you were growing up, I imagine you know what I mean.
Although I loved the Sedona townhome (pic below) we rented before, the proximity to neighbors and busy streets never felt truly comfortable. Nor was it nearly as peaceful as the quiet solitude this place provides, far enough away from freeways to never hear interstate vehicle noise. All kinds of little birds and big ones like hawks, ravens, owls, roadrunners, desert cottontail bunnies, coyotes, javelina, and deer are heard and seen more often than neighbors here. The vast open space here with its cyclic and dramatic Monsoon weather feels free from the hectic pressure of societies' pulse and flow I can feel in any city.
In early 2018 during an intense time of shattering the old constructs of what I thought myself to be, I spent some three months living on the road while teaching Human Design, mostly online. As I journeyed through America, I wandered to explore the artistic communities and spiritual people and places that invited me.
GeJay invited me to her Human Design sanctuary in 2018
I stayed with a Human Designer in Santa Fe who is a Living Your Design Guide and audited the very first LYD I ever taught, and runs her own one-on-one Human Design study vacations. She was wise enough to know that inviting just one person at a time over was the right way to mutate them with her design, which on the surface looks strikingly like mine.
Hokoji
Taos, New Mexico is not far north of Santa Fe and was another place Ra spent time in here in the states that I longed to experience. I housesat a beautiful home there and was invited by a fellow Human Designer I explored the area with to stay at an empty monastery named Hokoji. Another solitary sanctuary that invited and taught me the blessings of privacy and aloneness.
Earth Ship in Taos, New Mexico
In Taos, there is a community of what is known as "Earth Ships." An Earthship is a state-of-the-art, off-grid, eco-friendly building with all the luxuries of a conventional house and more. I stayed in an Earthship there with a skylight over the bed, and the home had curved adobe walls and slanted windows that let in the sun to grow indoor gardens, and the night sky to nourish indoor inhabitants with its spectacular sky bursting with countless stars.
"The Grass is Always Greener..."
One of the things I know to be true is that the conditioned mind is never satisfied for long in terms of material accomplishment. Once an achievement is made (X money made, X amount in the bank, X certification, X relationship, etc) it's off on some other grander desire.
When you awaken, the very first sign is that of acceptance of the life you have, not the one you thought you should have had.
The truth for me is, the point is not the accomplishment, it is the feeling of SHARING the experiences lived along this path on this journey. And many of those experiences I daydream of having are best lived in fantasy, as I've learned along the way, the hard way in true 3rd line style (my Recognition channel has 3rd lines at both ends of it!).
Though my mind always fantasizes
about what could be
if things were different
(my conscious design strength, 41-30),
until the invitation, recognition,
and clarity of energy show up,
this windswept world is now home,
where my fur babies are,
where my family is,
and it is a private palace
filled with healthful things to do,
places to play,
with time and space
enough for each of us
to be ourselves when away.
The establishment of this new way of Being Yourself as your own Authority, in your own Aura, changes your body at a cellular level. Your senses are heightened, your sensitivity to energy is refined and awareness expands. For me, life feels so much freer, and my road to health another journey of the awakening process. If abundance is there for us in any form, it is there for us because of the nature of this life experience in our current life cycle, not because of anything "who you think you are" did. Watch the movie, surrender to your design, and your life is perfectly financed. If you’re interested in my Human Design Professional Guidance, check out the year of coaching below!
We are all enthralled so deeply in the Maia, as it is the most entertaining thing there is. And sometimes, we get to peek our head through the sky, see the mechanics of that which is beyond and thank our lucky stars that we are fortunate enough to be here now.
Be you, for you, and get the life you need for the fulfillment of your highest purpose. Whether your Spirit is designed to shine with sweet success, satisfaction, peace, or surprise, I wish you the discovery of the truth that is already right there inside of you, just waiting to be experienced.
Love Yourself,
Laveena
Where the Spirit Can Be Broken: A Human Design Learning Story
There are many secrets that the bodygraph holds in coming to grips with and accepting our evolutionary process. Over the years as I mentor professional students in unlocking their potential, I know I explain so many little-known bodygraph secrets that need to be shared more broadly so that we as a community can learn and grow together.
One of those is the state of a complete lack of the Lunar Nodes' definition in a natal chart, which I implement the analysis of in my deeper chart readings and teach you how to do as a professional analyst. Personally, I am one of these people whose nodes are in undefined Centers.
What is the nature of your Spirit? Put simply, it is the highest vibrational expression of the frequency of your being. In this duality of Being consciousness embodied in form, we all have a Signature of our Auric Type. That Signature is the essence of your Spirit shining through. Converse about it (and see all the accompanying pictures) on our private learning platform, HumanDesign.Live to learn how I overcame...Living with a "Broken Spirit"
Where the Spirit Can Be Broken: A Nodal Lesson
From HD Teen to HD Adult
In Human Design, we have a very different view of what constitutes maturity age-wise when it comes to our life cycles compared to the homogenized world, henceforth known here on our site as "sheep."
Have you ever lived next to sheep? Obnoxiously loud creatures. And the smell!
In Human Design, Ra trains us to be wolves. Welcome to the pack, my friends.
The end of our 9-Centered childhood is 30, when the most intense aspect of our Saturn Cycle kicks in, which is what I like to call our growing pains.
The beginning of our 9-Centered maturity is 38-44 depending on our Uranus Opposition date. We know this collectively as the "mid-life crisis" as things really shift in our lives. I happen to be stepping foot into this magical time.
The flowering of our full 9-Centered potential begins at age 50, during our Kiron return. Ra jokingly said, "human beings are useless before 50." How's that for a heretical perspective? More on the Kiron Cycle in this video.
In sheeplandia, 50 is idealistically thought of as a time to retire early, if you're really lucky, to quit work and enjoy life.
In wolflandia, 50 isn't anywhere near over the hill, but the beginning of a new Cycle when the fun really begins! Especially for those of us lucky enough to be living lives in alignment.
In Human Design, a Kiron Return reading is recommended for anyone who has completed a 7-year deconditioning Cycle; most especially it is highly recommended for all 6th line beings. Your natal chart combined with your Kiron chart explains what the highest flowering of your potential is. The Kironial activations shows the good conditioning required for you to fulfill your life's work.
Our current human vehicle is Uranian (unusual) in nature, a transitional creature between the 7-Centered Saturnian body and the coming RAVE mutation of our human species. Uranus dictates when we finally end the cycle of taking in the experiences necessary to set the stage for the rest of our lives. Between 38-44, we finally become adults, at a mature stage where we begin to breathe out our gifts in preparation for planting our life's work (Incarnation Cross) in the fertile soil of our Kironian Phase (beginning at age 49-50).
There is an important SHIFT that happens from before your Uranus Opposition to after your Uranus Opposition. You leave behind the South Nodes (Ketu) and enter into the world dominated by your North Node (Rahu) themes.
To remember which is which, think "Ra Uru Hu developed Human Design for our future" Ra - Hu or Rahu is the direction we move towards into the future, the North Node. Rahu is a term Ra borrowed from Vedic Astrology.
We can liken Nodal Oppositions to those really long roads you find in big cities. Where the name of the road changes, the scenery changes, but you are still going in the same direction as you are on the same road. Nodes are the path populated with people where you be (unconscious design) and frames how you see (conscious personality).
As I enter into my Uranus Opposition to finally become a 9-Centered Adult (age 44 for me) I am transitioning to fulfilling my purpose in a radically different environment. Instead of the mind's Tribal Defense environment and Collective Abstract view, I'm entering the realm of bonding through an Individual Knowing environment and donning Capitalistic Tribal Leadership Support glasses.
My physical environment is designed to be populated by highly selective Risk-Takers who want to know what makes life meaningful beyond survival, colored by being at a higher vantage point to intuit what others cannot (28.2.4.2). My conscious perspective is maturing to one of having a Conservative, Objective, personal viewpoint of what can endure despite fear of financial failures (32.6.6.1).
I have many family members, acquaintances, friends, students, and clients in my life with the 27-28 and 42-32 sun/earth axis. When that happens to match the exact line value, that is an indicator of a Karmic Relationship.
In my design, I have a host of important memory circuit gates discerning what information is of relevance to us. If you don't know what the memory circuit gates are, it is an advanced area of circuitry; I teach them in the first year of our Professional Analyst Training classes.
I found as I got closer to my Uranus Opposition, I have a lot more energy and inspiration to write you stories of what I remember as an HD teaching tool. This is especially true right now as my throat is too sore from Hashimotos to speak as much as I would like to communicate with you, my beloved HD family!
The Aura carries information, it is what creates the form, not the other way around according to Ra. Any information we take in and what we are designed to breathe out forms the foundation of our 9-Centered Outer Authority, or the modern Awakened Life.
Enlightenment is our normal state of Being, and it is uniquely experienced by each of us.
Living with a
"Broken Spirit"
The Human Design System describes all four Nodes in an undefined state like mine, as where the "Spirit can be Broken."
What is the nature of your Spirit? Put simply, it is the highest vibrational expression of the frequency of your being. In this duality of Being consciousness embodied in form, we all have a Signature of our Auric Type. That Signature is the essence of your Spirit shining through.
There are many secrets that the bodygraph holds in coming to grips with and accepting our evolutionary process. Over the years as I mentor professional students in unlocking their potential, I know I explain so many little-known bodygraph secrets that need to be shared more broadly so that we as a community can learn and grow together.
One of those is the state of a complete lack of the Lunar Nodes' definition in a natal chart, which I implement the analysis of in my deeper chart readings and teach you how to do as a professional analyst. Personally, I am one of these people whose nodes are in undefined Centers.
Another way we can say this is that my environment is tremendously influenced by the people in my life who define them—an echo of the theme of a Projector, who is deeply dependent on others to recognize them.
Stories from my past,
an environment for the nurturing of growth
I've gone through extreme cycles of extremely poor and well-off thanks to my Fate my whole life. The success and bitterness cycle does not correlate with the bank balance, I can assure you. Born and raised mostly on the Big Island of Hawaii, I've lived in cars, on travertine, or concrete, to plywood floors or rotted wood and dirt floors alike.
As a kid, I remember building two of our own houses (my dad was a plasterer so I got to help). One of them was a Hawaii-style "coffee shack" hanging off a cliff off Highway 11 (a two-lane road that was the only one circling the entire island) we rebuilt and added on to. The other was brand new construction and felt luxurious with each of us kids getting our own room, its jetted master jacuzzi tub in the upstairs master and a rec room below, in addition to the giant living room with open beam ceilings. The neighbors had peacocks that were so very loud!
After my mom disappeared on us when I was 11 life got really hard. The house we'd built with our hands was sold, and I lived with many close or distant family members and friends of the family, boyfriends, and alone renting rooms, moving 17 times over the next 6 years alone.
When the nodal environment is completely undefined, the life path can through dramatic changes depending upon who is in your life.
When I was young we used to tent camp on a piece of remote, rocky shoreline property about four miles south of Kealekekua Bay. It was 100-year lease land that my paternal grandmother had the right to use. There was a tin shed with a pool table and on Saturdays, there would be "chicken fights" where the locals would attach curved knives to the legs of the cocks and bet on the winner.
This was just one of the many places I later lived as a teen, as I had a fight with my Dad's wife here and left that home to live with others, including an aunt, a grandmother, my sister's godmother, and my mom until I emancipated myself at 16 and dropped out of high school to go to work.
There was an outhouse up the hill that was super scary for this non-defined splenic center child to walk over the rough lava rocks at night, despite the flashlight. Stories of "night marchers" the ghosts of ancient Hawaiian warriors filled my imaginative mind.
There was no electricity; we had an ice chest filled with ice from the gas station 20 minutes up the winding tropical road, batteries for the radio, and kerosene lamps with the glow of mosquito coils at night. My dad would take us fishing in a tiny boat and he'd gut the colorful reef fish we caught to cook on the lava rock firepit he built to cook our dinner.
We washed our dishes in the tidepools across the dirt road between us and the rocky lava rock shoreline. I remember loving to watch the fierce-looking moray eels come up from the depths of the ocean to thrash about while they ate our scraps.
My years spending summertime down there were mostly sweet childhood experiences; jumping off cliffs, swimming, fishing, tubing, playing in tidepools, reading. As a high school teenager years later, I found myself living there in this three-room padlocked beach shack built from job scraps with my dad, my 15-year-old sister with her baby, and later my Dad's new wife. The unpainted plywood windows we'd prop open with sticks to the salty breeze during the daytime, without screens blocking the epic expanse of a glittering ocean view.
The thunderous crash of the waves through the lava tubes was so strong it shook our little shack on stilts and the bed I shared with my generator sibling and niece when the ocean was rough. Salt spray covered everything, and a daily shower was necessary to sleep comfortably.
The shack had a small closet with a hole in the floor for water to pour out onto the ground where we "went au'au" or bathed ourselves in the lightless, windowless room and no door, using a bucket and a cup with water heated over a propane camping stove. We got our water lugged in 5-gallon buckets from a public faucet near the Captain Cook monument down mostly unpaved dirt and rock roads several miles away.
My dad drove a roaring F-150 red Ford pickup from the 80's with a black rack he'd strapped giant bull horns to the front of, and this hard-working vehicle was nicknamed the Red Bull. I smile when I think of that truck, as it took us down the steep Waipi'o Valley road (where the end of Waterworld was filmed) for our other summer family vacation adventures.
The way you discern who is supposed to be in your life is utterly unique to your design, as Projectors are quite complex. The simplest signpost is the sweetness that can be felt in the relationship. Is it sweet, do you feel the glow of success? Or is it bitter, leaving a sourness to the experience? Remember these keys, they serve us well as signposts of alignment or not in this Projector movie.
When you have nodes
that are in undefined centers
as I do,
your life path
is deeply conditioned
by the others in your world
who define them.
If you are a Projector
like me,
this adds a deep
dependency.
For Projectors, there is aninherent imperative
to have the right people
in your life to
fulfill your birthright of success.
DISCERNMENT OF WHO
BELONGS IN YOUR LIFE
IS THE MOST IMPORTANT SKILL
FOR US PROJECTORS TO DEVELOP.
For this reason, I am happy to announce a new Projector group "Future of Human Design" and if you are under 30, you're welcome to join, just post in the comments below this article on HumanDesign.Live for an invite.
Needless to say with a childhood experience like this, I had an interest in personal finance and swore to myself that I would have a better life for my child than what I'd experienced.
I started around eighteen by studying mail-order real estate investment programs and learned from mailed newsletters, cassette tapes, and books about personal finances. There was no internet back then, so I'd done mail correspondence courses to keep learning until I got my GED around the time my schoolmates would have been graduating.
I often worked multiple jobs, sometimes from an hour before sunrise till well beyond the sunset. I started contributing to a Roth IRA at 21, working my way to what I thought would bring me the security of a good life, earning money, and self-educating with the goal of being a millionaire by the time I was 30.
I made it to my childhood goal, living what many consider a rich lifestyle thanks to my dedication to hard work and security a few years before the 2008 real estate crash. The millionaire status I thought would bring the success that I'd worked so hard to get to vanished in a series of unfortunate events many of us here in the states are familiar with.
After the crash, it was all I could do to keep myself from hurtling off the balcony of the 17th floor Little Italy condo in downtown San Diego. My mind certainly imagined it constantly. My then-husband and I had owned a real estate and mortgage brokerage in the East San Francisco Bay Area that went belly-up; losing three California properties, and all our retirement when the real estate market tanked nearly crushed us.
I found myself homeless, living week to week in a motel, carless, scrambling for a job (creating my own online as a social media marketing manager), eventually taking on random and fetish modeling gigs to get by, living in an RV, and then 5th wheel trailer with a toddler, a disabled and deeply depressed husband, and we were in bankruptcy court. I was incredibly ashamed to be on welfare and going to group therapy to battle suicidal thoughts.
Read the rest of the story under the storytelling topic on HumanDesign.Live
Love yourself,
no matter what you see,
what you think,what you do.
It's so easy
when You can be You.Being yourself
is weird that's true,and it is utterly,
brilliantly
perfect for you.Because ONLY
YOUCAN BE
YOU.
~Laveena
Love Yourself, beloved Human Design Tribe!
HumanDesign.Live goes LIVE! Happy New Year 2021
Happy 2021! 2020 is finally behind us. The Sun is in Gate 38, bringing a bit of deafness and stubbornness. Got the Gate 28? There may be a bit of struggle to this week. Focus on being empowered and aligning to your individual knowing.
Gate 41 is the start codon in our genetics. Every year when the Sun enters gate 41, we begin a new cycle around the wheel. Below are the Gate themes of our Human Design Rave New Year coming up on 1/21 (thanks to Mark Germain for creating this handy reference image every year). Download to blow up larger for study this year, as it shows the year's themes, we'll encounter.
Here in America, we're going through a LOT of turmoil. Our social fabric is being torn by censorship and power struggles, and our society is going through a significant shift. We are in an economic war, and things are getting heated with increased forced lockdowns.
With manipulating our private data on social media and the increased need for privacy, security, and empowerment, we decided it's time to plan an exit from Facebook. More and more people have asked for another way to interact with our class content lately! This year, frankly, burnt me out too on FB with its increasing stress, pressure, and censorship. After having spent 9 years building a business on Facebook, I'm ready for a change too.
Therefore, we're excited to announce it's TIME for our own social networking space! Would you like to be a part of building our NEW HD community?
The Human Design System COMMUNITY
Imagine a virtual space that is private, safe, and solely dedicated to our Human Design deconditioning and growth experience. This space is unique to what YOU want! No more censorship in your feed - you control what you want to see. Here you can customize your own experience based on your interests: your passions, your needs, your desires for connection, community, and empowerment. Get in on the ground floor of shaping this space based on your design.
HumanDesign.livePlease set up your free account and profile at HumanDesign.live! We hope to co-create the space built around YOUR requests, so be sure to let us know what you would like to see in this space. We someday aspire to make it an app so you can stay connected to learn, share, and grow with the HD friends you've made in our fractal family!
Personally, I feel immensely grateful to you. I have to thank you, my HD community, for our thriving HD business. My lifestyle allows me to respect my design, which needs to spend my time and energy wisely, especially with immune system challenges. To have a supportive team that can help me take on something as big as creating our own space is a blessing. It will take time, and there will be mistakes. Still, together I know we can have a better experience than what's been happening with the increasing chaos out there now.
Thank You for being a part of our wolf-pack and helping us thrive! I hope you can join our virtual retreat, away from the influence of the homogenized society.
My Human Design Analyst Teacher Training PTL 1 Experience
A Human Design Professional Teacher’s Journey
Learning to Train Human Design Professional Analysts
I entered into Human Design during my Saturn Life Cycle.
In 2020, I entered into my 8th year of deconditioning journey and my first year as a Professional IHDS Analyst Teacher candidate this year. I’d like to share my Human Design Analyst Teacher training experience with you here.
I began studying Human Design from Jovian Archive’s in 2012 when I was invited into it. My success as a guide and teacher over the past 6 years lead me to commence my Professional Analyst Teacher candidacy at the International Human Design School at the beginning of 2020. It felt amazing to get new Ra material of him teaching Analysts himself! I felt as excited as I was back in 2015 when I began my Human Design analyst training with Darshana Matthews at Human Design America and as thrilled as when I took Alokanand Diaz Del Rio’s Incarnation Crosses in 2016.
I’m a wife, mother, and entrepreneur currently going through the fight of my life on the health front. Having bought my 9th and 10th real estate properties over my life this year, right before our economy was shut down by COVID-19 (becoming a property owner again for the first time since the real estate market crash in 2008) it was vital for me to engage with the Human Design education material on my terms. I’m a lifelong learner and feel it is vital to the health of my brain and my professional endeavors as a Human Design Teacher to follow the path of professionalism. I go where my students invite me to go when the availability of finances and my clarity makes it possible.
Listening to Ra initiate new Analysts to do the empowering work as an Analyst Teacher, one of the most important things I learned was to see how each person would be a different kind of Analyst and cultivate them towards their strengths. No surprise, we are all so very different! But it was an eye-opener to me to hear him say that it was my responsibility to discourage people from Analyst training if it was apparent that they were not cut out for the work of being a Human Design Analyst.
As a consciously abstract collective Projector with a totally open Ajna, I often feel like tuning into another frequency for a new experience or exposure to a different way of looking at things. Being 3/5 and Emotional, having learned so much from other Manifestors in our industry, like Ra, Alok, and Genoa Bliven (mostly from recordings) I knew that Manifestors I resonated with had the power to impact me deeply.
Lynette Hagins, IHDS teacher
Considering my IHDS Analyst Teacher training options, I personally wanted to see how Lynette, a 6/2 Manifestor on the Cross of Obscuration with the Sun in 62.6, would impact me with her profound awareness. Personally, my Saturn Cycle that I am ending now is also the same 6/2 Cross of Obscuration 1, so I’ve always been interested in what she had to say and enjoyed hearing from her in the community. I felt reassured by Lynette's complete acceptance of my uniqueness and where I was at emotionally and physically during the bumpy movie of mine.
I am in the beginning of my Uranus Opposition, interestingly the 61.6 common to my Saturn Cycle shows up again, this time in Pluto fixed in the Exaltation.
I chose Lynette Hagins at the International Human Design School for my first year of auditing (repeating) the three semesters of the Human Design Analyst Professional Training Level 1, which is three semesters long over one full year.
Lynette makes learning professional, engaging, exciting, and fun! Her experience as an experimenter and teacher of the Human Design System is extensive. Lynette has a profound grasp of this obscure yet life-transforming knowledge. In her no-nonsense way, she goes above and beyond to ensure you are empowered to master this System. I really enjoyed her entertaining teaching style, her compassionate understanding of having been through her own human design journey, and her willingness to be straightforward about her process through sharing signposts of the evolution as a Human Design Professional.
Lynette and the IHDS give you everything and precisely what you need to know for mastering how a bodygraph can be analyzed. I felt delighted to discover the flexibility of opportunities they gave for engaging with the material in a way that addresses all learning styles and strengths. She encourages you to practice while leaving it up to your own authority regarding how you participate in the classes in a way that works for you.
I often found myself nodding in recognition, smiling, or laughing when listening to her teaching. Usually, I would listen again to classes while keeping my hands busy (I have a receptive brain and active environment) to make sure I got clarity on the concepts. Lynette very logically described things and was delighted to increase my understanding of this vast System. I felt such a level of deep appreciation for her keynoting style. As a Human Design Projector and total geek, it is so much fun to continue the learning through immersion in different teacher's learning styles - and being able to hear not only from Lynette but also from other Human Design analyst teachers this IHDS course provided access to, like Ra Uru Hu, Becky Markley, and Cathy Kinnaird.
I can attest that Lynette has the consistent willpower to initiate her tribe and empower other individuals on the road to awakening with her mutative energetic influence. She empowers with her energy to seduce you to fall in love with Human Design even more profoundly than you already are. Hard to imagine for me, but at the end of a year, it is true! Her love of sharing the profound keys to mastering this obscure yet logical System and her understanding delivered to you with an inspiring educational style is grounded in her wealth of experience.
Suppose it's correct for you to learn from a 6/2 Manifestor like Lynette. Personally, with my nodes being in the 6th lines consciously and 2nd lines unconsciously, I could really see where she was coming from. Her examples and life stories she shared to illustrate different points of awareness resonated deeply. When you decide to embark upon this transformative journey with her in classes, I know you'll be pleased with your decision to pursue the path of Human Design Professional training because of its power to transform you profoundly. I highly recommend Lynette as someone who is making a tremendous impact with her lived example of professionalism in our industry and as this System's teacher. She stands as an authentic, genuine role model who lights the way for her students' professional lives.
Our ability to shine a light into the gathering darkness of this planetary shift we are going through is needed now more than ever as Human Design Professionals. This world needs us to help align our personal truth's strength to light a better way forward into an uncertain future. I know you can trust Lynette to empower and support your efforts to breakthrough disempowering old patterns and bring about a new order within yourself and the lives of those you touch as a Human Design Analyst.
You can learn more about Lynette if correct for you at her site Authority in You.
What is a Chiron (Kiron) Return Human Design System Analysis?
SMITE Chiron by Scebiqu
Kiron is a planetary asteroid that takes about 50 years to come around to where it was in your birth chart when you were born.
In the Human Design System, we recommend anyone who has completed a deconditioning cycle to get an analysis, especially all 6th line beings. A Chiron Analysis shows the flowering of a 9-Centered Human's potential and is suggested once you have completed a full 7-year cycle in Human Design. It is highly recommended for all 6th line profiles (4/6, 6/2, 6/3) as a priority to know about.
"Chiron, in Greek mythology, one of the Centaurs, the son of the Titan Cronus and Philyra, an Oceanid or sea nymph. Chiron lived at the foot of Mount Pelion in Thessaly. Unlike other Centaurs, who were violent and savage, he was famous for his wisdom and knowledge of medicine. Many Greek heroes, including Heracles, Achilles, Jason, and Asclepius, were instructed by him.
Chiron frequently appears in the legends of his grandson, Peleus, and his great-grandson, Achilles. Accidentally pierced by a poisoned arrow shot by Heracles, he renounced his immortality in favor of Prometheus and was placed among the stars as the constellation Centaurus." ~Source
SMITE Chiron by Scebiqu
Personally, my Kironian return Cycle brings me the costume of a 1/3 Cross of Explanation at the age of 49. We generally start to feel the effects of a larger Life Cycle about 3.5 years before and after the Cycle date. However, the Chiron is an element of positive conditioning that reverberates throughout the life; I think of it like echoes from the future. This cycle affects you throughout your lifetime and is particularly present when you’ve made it to the age where Chiron has made a full cycle around the sun. Like all Cycles, it doesn’t change your Human Design Type, Strategy or authority, but it does show us, like a crystal ball, the themes at play, some people you’ll encounter and the movie that speaks to the flowering of your true self.
