GMTParenting Unique Children by Dharmen and Leela Swann-Herbert
One of the things about parenting and children from a Human Design perspective is to recognize that every child comes with their own unique path. And it isn’t our path—it’s their own. We feel that it is important for all of us to understand this concept of custodianship; we are the stewards of our children but they’re not here to fulfill our expectations, anybody’s roles, or anything else. They have their own unique path. And the parent’s job, at least from our perspective—and I just want to under-score that, we’re just sharing our perspective, our outer authority with you—it’s not that this is the way to raise children, or the way to interpret Human Design information…This is just our finger pointing towards what you’re here to examine for yourself.
This is an experiment. None of this stuff, any of the stuff that we talk about, or even the stuff that Ra talks about is laid in concrete, because each of us is going to experience it in our own different way. We’re just sharing some of what we’ve gained along the way, and if we stimulate some questioning for you, maybe stimulate another viewpoint that you can explore in your life, that’s great!
From our perspective, the parent’s job is to help children understand that they have their own purpose, which arrives out of living correctly as themselves. We each have a cross to bear, and a role, and a purpose to fulfill and that’s something that they will meet in their pathway. It’s not something that they necessarily know or we as parents know what their purpose is. I mean if we’ve looked at their design we have an inkling of it, but, we don’t know how that’s actually going to take place. It’s for them to discover. The best that we can do is to help them to get on their unique path. And then they will meet their purpose in the road ahead of them. The real challenge for the parent is to provide this message in ways that are appropriate to the child’s age. To work with them based upon the cycles of their life and where they’re at in their development.
Ra talks about this information being for children. And to us, what he’s saying is that this information is really just the map that you use in order to explore the territory of raising your child. And as a map, all you can do is point out the areas and there are certain times in the life when pointing out different aspects is appropriate. And when we say appropriate we mean that the timing is correct for that type of information to be shared in terms of the development of the child. With a two-year old, you’re not going to sit them down and say, well you know you have the 48th gate and it’s this and it’s that, but you shape the way in which you interact with them already even though they are two-years old. You know they have a defined spleen or whatever it is.
Human Design is not a “do as I say not as I do” program; in essence, the parents have to be living their experiment. You can’t be encouraging a child to be themselves if you’re not in that process yourself. Our children were in their late teens/early 20s when we met Human Design. They were not interested in anything we had to say about it. Dharmen did their readings for them. It wasn’t really until we were about 5-years into our experiment that they went: “Huh, okay; something’s different about these folks. And maybe I can listen to what they’ve got to say, and maybe I can try this out.” And now, to whatever degree, they are involved in their experiment. But it was out of seeing what we were doing, not what we were saying about Human Design.
With young people they may not even hear the words Human Design come out your mouth until they’re a teenager. But you can still address them and treat them according to your design and their design. Now, there’s a dilemma if there’s only one parent involved in Human Design. We realize this is going to be the case with most of the parents that we work with, as the norm in terms of involvement with Human Design is mostly women. Their husband’s are skeptical. Their children are like, okay, this is what Mom’s doing these days. But that’s the reality that those children are dealing with. We also have grandparents that are involved with living their experiment and are doing their best to provide some guidance for their grandchildren.
We also have teachers who are getting involved with Human Design. And they’re doing the best that they can given the environment that they find themselves in. So it is what it is, you know there’s nothing wrong with a child growing up with one parent involved in Human Design or just their teacher or just their grandparent. There is no wrong way to go about this. And in an ideal world, it would be a child who is born into a family of parents who are both involved in their experiment and they are respected by their design and their authority from day one. But we’re a long way from that for most children. There are more and more individual families involved in Human Design, but in general the thing to recognize is that we’re the pioneers. Human Design has only been around for 20 years. All of us are the early adopters.
So don’t be disheartened if you’re a parent in a family where you’re the only one who can really provide this kind of support to your child. Because it’s like water on a rock, eventually it has impact. It’s over time. It’s not this moment right now that the impact is necessarily going to be felt, if you’re living in a household where you’re the only one who is living your experiment; but over time, it will have impact. If nothing else, it will change your life. If you have a child in your life, then just by your very presence living out the experiment of who you are – you will have impact upon them.
And it is important to remember, that this child will also have impact upon you. When we’re looking at the body graph the thing to recognize is that there’s no age, no sex, no race, no hair color, no gender, no culture, no religion, there’s nothing there but the individual. And when the child is born, this is the purity of what they bring with them. They may lack experience and skills, but their full potential is present from birth.
Any parent who has given birth to a child can verify the fact that that infant has as much influence on the family as an adult. This is because of their aura and the way it interacts with others and the unique combination of where they are defined and where they are open in their design; their life has influence on everybody else. They’re taking people in, in their openness and they’re going to impact others through where they are defined from day one. And this is a radical concept—seems very obvious, but if we think about how society looks at children, they’re considered to be possessions, chattel. They are under the authority of the parent until they become of legal age, usually around 18-21. They are assumed to not be as intelligent because they are children and this is a big mistake.
Their potential intelligence is there from day one. And if we can make that shift to recognizing them from this, from the potential of their design rather than the limitation of their form, because it’s truly the form that is limited when they are growing up, not their consciousness, not their potential for intelligence.
It’s like they got the current model in terms of form but not in terms of their intelligence. And their authority is fully functional. The dilemma is that we’ve all been conditioned to assume the role of being the child’s authority. And it’s a radical step to not become their authority, but rather to assume the role of being their guide, and guiding their use of their authority. Now each of us arrives with our limitations. It is our limitations which shape our uniqueness, it’s what makes us different from anyone else who has ever lived or ever will live on this planet. And that is true for our children as much as for us.
The dilemma is that as parents there is deep conditioning to want our children to be perfect. To be what we were not capable of, to exceed our success, to want more out of life for them; it’s actually built into our programming. If you look at the archetypes, you’ll see how it’s built into our genetics to want our children to have a better life, than our life; this is conditioning because their life is totally going to be totally unique from ours. This whole mental judgment of good, better, best, right, wrong, this, that—it’s all mental judgment.
They are here to fulfill their purpose. And the difficulty for parents is to accept that the child has a different platform to work with, and that is worthy of respect. Because, you see, bottom line is that parenting is about awareness. Of being able to see your child as they are, not through the lens of our conditioning.
And that’s very difficult because anytime you’re with your child; your design is impacting them. You’re always going to see them with the overlay of where you’re defined. For example, Leela has the whole channel of the 44-26, she has this defined, so whenever she’s with our son who has just the 26th gate; the tendency for her is to see him through her capacities, her capabilities and she’s imposing that, so to speak, on him. It’s not that that is an intentional piece, but the reality is that our children will behave and act very differently when they’re around us, then when they’re around other people, and it’s just a fact of life. They are going to have a different impact on our behavior when they’re around; their design impacts us just as much as our design impacts their behavior. It is important to acknowledge that we don’t ever see them in the purity of who they are. In every interaction with our children, there is always us, that’s adding to the equation, our design.
This is the beauty of Human Design, it gives us this opportunity to step back. To actually get a look at how we work, you know. How we interact, what we bring, what is brought to us— and not in the sense of trying to correct it, there’s really nothing to change about our design. What it is is an opportunity to understand how the impact works for you, or doesn’t work for you. And it’s all about becoming aware of what it is that’s there for us individually.
This is an experiment. None of this stuff, any of the stuff that we talk about, or even the stuff that Ra talks about is laid in concrete, because each of us is going to experience it in our own different way. We’re just sharing some of what we’ve gained along the way, and if we stimulate some questioning for you, maybe stimulate another viewpoint that you can explore in your life, that’s great!
From our perspective, the parent’s job is to help children understand that they have their own purpose, which arrives out of living correctly as themselves. We each have a cross to bear, and a role, and a purpose to fulfill and that’s something that they will meet in their pathway. It’s not something that they necessarily know or we as parents know what their purpose is. I mean if we’ve looked at their design we have an inkling of it, but, we don’t know how that’s actually going to take place. It’s for them to discover. The best that we can do is to help them to get on their unique path. And then they will meet their purpose in the road ahead of them. The real challenge for the parent is to provide this message in ways that are appropriate to the child’s age. To work with them based upon the cycles of their life and where they’re at in their development.
Ra talks about this information being for children. And to us, what he’s saying is that this information is really just the map that you use in order to explore the territory of raising your child. And as a map, all you can do is point out the areas and there are certain times in the life when pointing out different aspects is appropriate. And when we say appropriate we mean that the timing is correct for that type of information to be shared in terms of the development of the child. With a two-year old, you’re not going to sit them down and say, well you know you have the 48th gate and it’s this and it’s that, but you shape the way in which you interact with them already even though they are two-years old. You know they have a defined spleen or whatever it is.
Human Design is not a “do as I say not as I do” program; in essence, the parents have to be living their experiment. You can’t be encouraging a child to be themselves if you’re not in that process yourself. Our children were in their late teens/early 20s when we met Human Design. They were not interested in anything we had to say about it. Dharmen did their readings for them. It wasn’t really until we were about 5-years into our experiment that they went: “Huh, okay; something’s different about these folks. And maybe I can listen to what they’ve got to say, and maybe I can try this out.” And now, to whatever degree, they are involved in their experiment. But it was out of seeing what we were doing, not what we were saying about Human Design.
With young people they may not even hear the words Human Design come out your mouth until they’re a teenager. But you can still address them and treat them according to your design and their design. Now, there’s a dilemma if there’s only one parent involved in Human Design. We realize this is going to be the case with most of the parents that we work with, as the norm in terms of involvement with Human Design is mostly women. Their husband’s are skeptical. Their children are like, okay, this is what Mom’s doing these days. But that’s the reality that those children are dealing with. We also have grandparents that are involved with living their experiment and are doing their best to provide some guidance for their grandchildren.
We also have teachers who are getting involved with Human Design. And they’re doing the best that they can given the environment that they find themselves in. So it is what it is, you know there’s nothing wrong with a child growing up with one parent involved in Human Design or just their teacher or just their grandparent. There is no wrong way to go about this. And in an ideal world, it would be a child who is born into a family of parents who are both involved in their experiment and they are respected by their design and their authority from day one. But we’re a long way from that for most children. There are more and more individual families involved in Human Design, but in general the thing to recognize is that we’re the pioneers. Human Design has only been around for 20 years. All of us are the early adopters.
So don’t be disheartened if you’re a parent in a family where you’re the only one who can really provide this kind of support to your child. Because it’s like water on a rock, eventually it has impact. It’s over time. It’s not this moment right now that the impact is necessarily going to be felt, if you’re living in a household where you’re the only one who is living your experiment; but over time, it will have impact. If nothing else, it will change your life. If you have a child in your life, then just by your very presence living out the experiment of who you are – you will have impact upon them.
And it is important to remember, that this child will also have impact upon you. When we’re looking at the body graph the thing to recognize is that there’s no age, no sex, no race, no hair color, no gender, no culture, no religion, there’s nothing there but the individual. And when the child is born, this is the purity of what they bring with them. They may lack experience and skills, but their full potential is present from birth.
Any parent who has given birth to a child can verify the fact that that infant has as much influence on the family as an adult. This is because of their aura and the way it interacts with others and the unique combination of where they are defined and where they are open in their design; their life has influence on everybody else. They’re taking people in, in their openness and they’re going to impact others through where they are defined from day one. And this is a radical concept—seems very obvious, but if we think about how society looks at children, they’re considered to be possessions, chattel. They are under the authority of the parent until they become of legal age, usually around 18-21. They are assumed to not be as intelligent because they are children and this is a big mistake.
Their potential intelligence is there from day one. And if we can make that shift to recognizing them from this, from the potential of their design rather than the limitation of their form, because it’s truly the form that is limited when they are growing up, not their consciousness, not their potential for intelligence.
It’s like they got the current model in terms of form but not in terms of their intelligence. And their authority is fully functional. The dilemma is that we’ve all been conditioned to assume the role of being the child’s authority. And it’s a radical step to not become their authority, but rather to assume the role of being their guide, and guiding their use of their authority. Now each of us arrives with our limitations. It is our limitations which shape our uniqueness, it’s what makes us different from anyone else who has ever lived or ever will live on this planet. And that is true for our children as much as for us.
The dilemma is that as parents there is deep conditioning to want our children to be perfect. To be what we were not capable of, to exceed our success, to want more out of life for them; it’s actually built into our programming. If you look at the archetypes, you’ll see how it’s built into our genetics to want our children to have a better life, than our life; this is conditioning because their life is totally going to be totally unique from ours. This whole mental judgment of good, better, best, right, wrong, this, that—it’s all mental judgment.
They are here to fulfill their purpose. And the difficulty for parents is to accept that the child has a different platform to work with, and that is worthy of respect. Because, you see, bottom line is that parenting is about awareness. Of being able to see your child as they are, not through the lens of our conditioning.
And that’s very difficult because anytime you’re with your child; your design is impacting them. You’re always going to see them with the overlay of where you’re defined. For example, Leela has the whole channel of the 44-26, she has this defined, so whenever she’s with our son who has just the 26th gate; the tendency for her is to see him through her capacities, her capabilities and she’s imposing that, so to speak, on him. It’s not that that is an intentional piece, but the reality is that our children will behave and act very differently when they’re around us, then when they’re around other people, and it’s just a fact of life. They are going to have a different impact on our behavior when they’re around; their design impacts us just as much as our design impacts their behavior. It is important to acknowledge that we don’t ever see them in the purity of who they are. In every interaction with our children, there is always us, that’s adding to the equation, our design.
This is the beauty of Human Design, it gives us this opportunity to step back. To actually get a look at how we work, you know. How we interact, what we bring, what is brought to us— and not in the sense of trying to correct it, there’s really nothing to change about our design. What it is is an opportunity to understand how the impact works for you, or doesn’t work for you. And it’s all about becoming aware of what it is that’s there for us individually.
posted on February 19 2011
If you want a Revolution, the only solution is Evolve...
“If you want a Revolution, the only solution is Evolve”
This is from a TV commercial for a sports drink that has caught Leela’s attention, not because she loves this particular sports drink, or the funky tune, but because the words strike a chord with what our life through Human Design is all about – How do we evolve?
So often we run into people who want to see a different world than the one we live in, or more specifically the world they see before them. On the mundane level, most people are deeply conditioned to want more out of life, to want their life to be different. Changing the life can be a powerful motivator for some people when they come to Human Design. Their life isn’t working according to their mind’s standards; or if their life is working, they wonder ‘Is that all there is?”
The thing to remember is that Human Design is not about changing the content of your life. If you follow the strategy for your design, and make decisions from the authority of your form you reduce resistance – in other words, you get the experiences in life that are correct for your vehicle. This can be very different than what the mind imagines it wants. This can be a dilemma.
People want a revolution, but they don’t really want to evolve. In essence, people only want the change that their mind imagines is going to be ‘good’ or ‘healthy’ or ‘beneficial’. Change remains a judgment based upon ‘this’ and ‘that’ – this change is good, that change is bad. And usually the change that the mind imagines as being bad is the one that carries with it the chemistry of fear. “If I lose my house, if I don’t find a new job, if my girlfriend leaves me (you can add in whatever change is the most scary here); If that something happens, then something bad will happen and I’m afraid of it, so I will do whatever my mind tells me will make it better.” And suddenly, the individual is back into mental decision making, without even noticing it.
When you follow your strategy, and trust in your own authority for your life’s decisions, then you can relax into the life that is correct for your vehicle. That isn’t to say, it is going to be an idealized version of what the mind wants your life to be. It isn’t necessarily going to be filled with champagne and roses, but the way you interpret that life is where your potential exists for evolving into your 9-Centered life, into your unique experience of awareness.
Change happens. It is what life is all about. These days, the options may be more limited as Neptune in the 30th gate completes its work, but regardless, some kind of change is always happening in our atomic world. By its very nature, atomic life is hot, creative, and mutative – always in motion. We live in atomic vehicles, so our very lives are going to be filled with hot, creative, mutative energy; life is constantly in motion in the atomic world.
Resisting change by trying to mentally avoid it, or trying to shape the changes that are taking place “I want this to happen, but not that”, are mental traps. Human Design is not here to make our lives into what the mind imagines is a ‘good life’. Human Design is here to help us become aware, through the correct life of the vehicle, regardless of the changes that are taking place. We are here to learn to wait for what life brings us (and that is true for all types, in one way or another). It is what we do with what life brings us that determines whether or not we evolve through the process or not.
Instead of expending valuable energy in trying to mentally manipulate the circumstances of life, what happens when you notice your life instead? Change is what happens on the outside, evolution is what happens on the inside. Humans are done with external evolution, now the evolution is to become in contact with our consciousness, to experience the state of consciousness in form.
We are in our twelfth year of experimenting with Human Design. Through these years we have experienced separation, reuniting, new jobs, being laid off, countless moves, job-ending accidents, physical limitations, bankruptcy, the death of our child, Dharmen’s near death (twice) and all kinds of ups and downs, ins and outs of life. Some people would look at the content of our life together and say that the trials of Job could compare. Yet, for each of us, there has been this “ok, this is what is happening in my life right now” moment through these experiences; this place of not only deep acceptance, but of curiosity, of wonder, of observing our lives through these experiences. We have compared notes along the way, which has been a great opportunity to get a different perspective and to share our unique view with each other.
The one thing that has been consistent for each of us – is that stuff is going on outside, but it is what goes on inside relative to the external events that really matters. Life happens – it will continue to happen sometimes with heartbreaking beauty; but, it is what we make of it, what we learn from it – about ourselves, about the way our mind works, about the way the vehicle operates, that brings us something new. It brings us the potential to evolve.
This is from a TV commercial for a sports drink that has caught Leela’s attention, not because she loves this particular sports drink, or the funky tune, but because the words strike a chord with what our life through Human Design is all about – How do we evolve?
So often we run into people who want to see a different world than the one we live in, or more specifically the world they see before them. On the mundane level, most people are deeply conditioned to want more out of life, to want their life to be different. Changing the life can be a powerful motivator for some people when they come to Human Design. Their life isn’t working according to their mind’s standards; or if their life is working, they wonder ‘Is that all there is?”
The thing to remember is that Human Design is not about changing the content of your life. If you follow the strategy for your design, and make decisions from the authority of your form you reduce resistance – in other words, you get the experiences in life that are correct for your vehicle. This can be very different than what the mind imagines it wants. This can be a dilemma.
People want a revolution, but they don’t really want to evolve. In essence, people only want the change that their mind imagines is going to be ‘good’ or ‘healthy’ or ‘beneficial’. Change remains a judgment based upon ‘this’ and ‘that’ – this change is good, that change is bad. And usually the change that the mind imagines as being bad is the one that carries with it the chemistry of fear. “If I lose my house, if I don’t find a new job, if my girlfriend leaves me (you can add in whatever change is the most scary here); If that something happens, then something bad will happen and I’m afraid of it, so I will do whatever my mind tells me will make it better.” And suddenly, the individual is back into mental decision making, without even noticing it.
When you follow your strategy, and trust in your own authority for your life’s decisions, then you can relax into the life that is correct for your vehicle. That isn’t to say, it is going to be an idealized version of what the mind wants your life to be. It isn’t necessarily going to be filled with champagne and roses, but the way you interpret that life is where your potential exists for evolving into your 9-Centered life, into your unique experience of awareness.
Change happens. It is what life is all about. These days, the options may be more limited as Neptune in the 30th gate completes its work, but regardless, some kind of change is always happening in our atomic world. By its very nature, atomic life is hot, creative, and mutative – always in motion. We live in atomic vehicles, so our very lives are going to be filled with hot, creative, mutative energy; life is constantly in motion in the atomic world.
Resisting change by trying to mentally avoid it, or trying to shape the changes that are taking place “I want this to happen, but not that”, are mental traps. Human Design is not here to make our lives into what the mind imagines is a ‘good life’. Human Design is here to help us become aware, through the correct life of the vehicle, regardless of the changes that are taking place. We are here to learn to wait for what life brings us (and that is true for all types, in one way or another). It is what we do with what life brings us that determines whether or not we evolve through the process or not.
Instead of expending valuable energy in trying to mentally manipulate the circumstances of life, what happens when you notice your life instead? Change is what happens on the outside, evolution is what happens on the inside. Humans are done with external evolution, now the evolution is to become in contact with our consciousness, to experience the state of consciousness in form.
We are in our twelfth year of experimenting with Human Design. Through these years we have experienced separation, reuniting, new jobs, being laid off, countless moves, job-ending accidents, physical limitations, bankruptcy, the death of our child, Dharmen’s near death (twice) and all kinds of ups and downs, ins and outs of life. Some people would look at the content of our life together and say that the trials of Job could compare. Yet, for each of us, there has been this “ok, this is what is happening in my life right now” moment through these experiences; this place of not only deep acceptance, but of curiosity, of wonder, of observing our lives through these experiences. We have compared notes along the way, which has been a great opportunity to get a different perspective and to share our unique view with each other.
The one thing that has been consistent for each of us – is that stuff is going on outside, but it is what goes on inside relative to the external events that really matters. Life happens – it will continue to happen sometimes with heartbreaking beauty; but, it is what we make of it, what we learn from it – about ourselves, about the way our mind works, about the way the vehicle operates, that brings us something new. It brings us the potential to evolve.
posted on January 2 2011
Winter Solstice 2010
We’ve reached the Winter Solstice of the year, on the Cross of the Vessel of Love with the Sun in the 10th gate, and the Earth in the 15th gate. This year, there is a conjunction with the North and South nodes, with the South Node in the 15th gate, and the North Node in the 10th gate. In essence, the collective conditioning is focused upon examining our behavior and extremes – and mentally caught up in trying to judge if it is worthy of love or not.
Here in the 10th gate, we have the love of being oneself, which is deeply individual in its nature. But what is it to love ourselves? To love being who we are? How much of our lifetime is spent not loving ourselves, caught in the illusion of the seemingly un-lovable not-self?
The Sun is in the 10th is opposed by the Earth’s Gate of Extremes, with its love of humanity, with its lack of fixed rhythms and tendency of accepting diversity. But what is it to love all of humanity? What is it to love being ‘a part of the symphony of humankind’; each of us marching to our own rhythm? How much of our lifetime is spent not loving our fellow humans, caught in the illusion that one way of life is better than another?
The dilemma of the transit program each and every day is: What is the impact upon my openness? Can I notice the stories of my mind and how I am influenced to act based upon this conditioning? Can I continue to surrender to the individual authority of my form and follow the strategy of my type? Or, is the conditioning pattern so irresistible, or so pervasive that I do not notice it?
This particular conditioning pattern is an interesting one – not only do we have this nodal view of the Sun/Earth theme, but the 10th gate is connected to the 57th gate transit of Saturn forming a global conditioning between the Spleen and the G-Center in the channel of Perfected Form, a design for survival.
Saturn brings the caution or constraint of the day, and here it is the fear of the future, of not finding the right rhythm or behavior that will ensure our survival. And part of this conditioning pattern is both the 10th gate and the 15th gate in the G-Center, and also Venus in the 44th gate with its 6th line aloofness.
How do I behave in order to survive? If I adopt this rhythm, this tribe’s behaviors, will it ensure my future? If I reject the behavioral norms of this family or that family, will my survival be in danger? Here is a tendency to try to resolve the confusion around the adoption or rejection of certain behaviors, and to see that decision as vital for one’s future.
Something critical to see here, is that the 10 and the 57 carry the melancholy of individualism. Depression and melancholy are the companions for the day. If one has not embraced the deep creative nature of melancholy, there can be all kinds of behavioral extremes displayed simply out of the desire to avoid the inner depths of melancholy.
And as a base note to all of these conditioning tendencies, is Pluto’s transit of the 58th gate, which entered the 2nd line of Perversion on Friday the 17th. Pluto brings the conditioned truth of the day, and here the illusion is that perverse stimulation is the key to joy – ‘eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die’ kind of debauchery, the degeneracy which can reduce the very joy of life into indulgence and decadence.
Here is a world that is being shown just how much they don’t love themselves, don’t particularly love their fellow humans, that can be confused about which behaviors will bring them survival for the future, and instead can bring a tendency towards behavioral extremes that can devolve into debauchery in the hopes that it will relieve the almost unrelenting sense of melancholy that has been plaguing them since around the 5th of November.
The beauty of Human Design is that we have a choice. We do not have to become lost in this conditioning pattern. We do not have to act out the behavior of self-loathing, of not-self hatred of ourselves and others. Instead, we can notice our lives. We can observe the mental conditioning patterns instead of acting upon them. And if we do find ourselves acting upon them – we can recognize the behavior for what it is – a mentally driven reaction to the transit weather.
It is hard for humans to find self-love. So much of the mental focus is upon what is missing in us, where we are open and vulnerable. The openness is filled with those parts of ourselves that the mind wants to protect or cover up, to fix it or fade it. Openness is where our attention is – ‘this is what is wrong with me’ ‘this is what I need to improve’ ‘this is what I need to change about myself’. And so much of our design is open…so much of who we are is mentally devalued, seen as unworthy and unlovable as it is. When a conditioning pattern comes along – from a person or a transit, it is so attractive to us. ‘Maybe this is what I need to do to fix myself’, ‘maybe this is the change that I need to make’ – and we are off and running away from who we are, chasing what the mind imagines will bring us fulfillment, or at least a sense of fullness rather than all that openness.
If we learn to accept our openness for what it is – where we take in the world in all of its variety, then we no longer need to fix it, change it, correct it, do something about it. We can simply notice it. We can look out the windows of our openness and see what life is bringing us. And when we simply observe our openness, we can love it in all of its variety and diversity.
Somewhere along the journey of experimenting with our strategy and authority, we can also begin to find a love of what is fixed and consistent about us, what is defined or activated about our design. When the life is no longer lived from the initiations of the mind, then we begin to get the life that is correct for the form. We start to experience the sensation of resonating to our uniqueness, to our design. When we notice our strategy and authority and can identify our unique sense resonance with all of life; we begin to find a life that we love. We also discover that we are a part of a greater whole, that we are a cell in the body of the Universe that is awakening.
There is a Secret One inside – it is the passenger, observing the openness and observing the experiences of the life of the body, being a witness to the quantum that is this unique life. The stars and all the galaxies run through our hands like beads – when we are no longer desperately trying to hold onto the small, manipulated life of the mind, we find ourselves in the flow of all of life, in the flow of love itself.
Dharmen and Leela are teachers in the IHDS and also privately coach. On Saturday, January 8th in the IHDS they are offering a Meet Your Design Clinic – Definition and Openness. Next semester in the IHDS, they are offering a wide variety of experiential workshops and clinics, including the Radical Transformation Clinic. They can be reached by email for questions and comments at www.secretofbeingyou.com .
Here in the 10th gate, we have the love of being oneself, which is deeply individual in its nature. But what is it to love ourselves? To love being who we are? How much of our lifetime is spent not loving ourselves, caught in the illusion of the seemingly un-lovable not-self?
The Sun is in the 10th is opposed by the Earth’s Gate of Extremes, with its love of humanity, with its lack of fixed rhythms and tendency of accepting diversity. But what is it to love all of humanity? What is it to love being ‘a part of the symphony of humankind’; each of us marching to our own rhythm? How much of our lifetime is spent not loving our fellow humans, caught in the illusion that one way of life is better than another?
The dilemma of the transit program each and every day is: What is the impact upon my openness? Can I notice the stories of my mind and how I am influenced to act based upon this conditioning? Can I continue to surrender to the individual authority of my form and follow the strategy of my type? Or, is the conditioning pattern so irresistible, or so pervasive that I do not notice it?
This particular conditioning pattern is an interesting one – not only do we have this nodal view of the Sun/Earth theme, but the 10th gate is connected to the 57th gate transit of Saturn forming a global conditioning between the Spleen and the G-Center in the channel of Perfected Form, a design for survival.
Saturn brings the caution or constraint of the day, and here it is the fear of the future, of not finding the right rhythm or behavior that will ensure our survival. And part of this conditioning pattern is both the 10th gate and the 15th gate in the G-Center, and also Venus in the 44th gate with its 6th line aloofness.
How do I behave in order to survive? If I adopt this rhythm, this tribe’s behaviors, will it ensure my future? If I reject the behavioral norms of this family or that family, will my survival be in danger? Here is a tendency to try to resolve the confusion around the adoption or rejection of certain behaviors, and to see that decision as vital for one’s future.
Something critical to see here, is that the 10 and the 57 carry the melancholy of individualism. Depression and melancholy are the companions for the day. If one has not embraced the deep creative nature of melancholy, there can be all kinds of behavioral extremes displayed simply out of the desire to avoid the inner depths of melancholy.
And as a base note to all of these conditioning tendencies, is Pluto’s transit of the 58th gate, which entered the 2nd line of Perversion on Friday the 17th. Pluto brings the conditioned truth of the day, and here the illusion is that perverse stimulation is the key to joy – ‘eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die’ kind of debauchery, the degeneracy which can reduce the very joy of life into indulgence and decadence.
Here is a world that is being shown just how much they don’t love themselves, don’t particularly love their fellow humans, that can be confused about which behaviors will bring them survival for the future, and instead can bring a tendency towards behavioral extremes that can devolve into debauchery in the hopes that it will relieve the almost unrelenting sense of melancholy that has been plaguing them since around the 5th of November.
The beauty of Human Design is that we have a choice. We do not have to become lost in this conditioning pattern. We do not have to act out the behavior of self-loathing, of not-self hatred of ourselves and others. Instead, we can notice our lives. We can observe the mental conditioning patterns instead of acting upon them. And if we do find ourselves acting upon them – we can recognize the behavior for what it is – a mentally driven reaction to the transit weather.
It is hard for humans to find self-love. So much of the mental focus is upon what is missing in us, where we are open and vulnerable. The openness is filled with those parts of ourselves that the mind wants to protect or cover up, to fix it or fade it. Openness is where our attention is – ‘this is what is wrong with me’ ‘this is what I need to improve’ ‘this is what I need to change about myself’. And so much of our design is open…so much of who we are is mentally devalued, seen as unworthy and unlovable as it is. When a conditioning pattern comes along – from a person or a transit, it is so attractive to us. ‘Maybe this is what I need to do to fix myself’, ‘maybe this is the change that I need to make’ – and we are off and running away from who we are, chasing what the mind imagines will bring us fulfillment, or at least a sense of fullness rather than all that openness.
If we learn to accept our openness for what it is – where we take in the world in all of its variety, then we no longer need to fix it, change it, correct it, do something about it. We can simply notice it. We can look out the windows of our openness and see what life is bringing us. And when we simply observe our openness, we can love it in all of its variety and diversity.
Somewhere along the journey of experimenting with our strategy and authority, we can also begin to find a love of what is fixed and consistent about us, what is defined or activated about our design. When the life is no longer lived from the initiations of the mind, then we begin to get the life that is correct for the form. We start to experience the sensation of resonating to our uniqueness, to our design. When we notice our strategy and authority and can identify our unique sense resonance with all of life; we begin to find a life that we love. We also discover that we are a part of a greater whole, that we are a cell in the body of the Universe that is awakening.
There is a Secret One inside – it is the passenger, observing the openness and observing the experiences of the life of the body, being a witness to the quantum that is this unique life. The stars and all the galaxies run through our hands like beads – when we are no longer desperately trying to hold onto the small, manipulated life of the mind, we find ourselves in the flow of all of life, in the flow of love itself.
Dharmen and Leela are teachers in the IHDS and also privately coach. On Saturday, January 8th in the IHDS they are offering a Meet Your Design Clinic – Definition and Openness. Next semester in the IHDS, they are offering a wide variety of experiential workshops and clinics, including the Radical Transformation Clinic. They can be reached by email for questions and comments at www.secretofbeingyou.com .
posted on December 21 2010
I am Emotional
This is a personal entry from Leela... With the season and the weather - lately I've been looking at my emotional wave and how much I accept it as a part of my life...and how it wasn't always something I accepted about myself. Originally published in the HD Chronicles, January 2010.
I am emotional.
What’s amazing to me is how many years I spent trying to avoid that very fact. ‘Being emotional’ was a label that somehow meant that I was difficult, unreasonable, irrational, touchy, over-sensitive. “What’s wrong with you? What’s the matter? Why are you upset? Why can’t you calm down?” and immediately I’d be thinking up reasons, trying to defend or justify whatever it was that I was feeling; and in the process learning that I had to have a reason for feeling whatever I felt.
And there’s the dilemma, the subtle conditioning that I’d internalized – that I had better come up with a reason, that there had to be a good story to go along with the emotions. Given that I have a strong, busy mind, simply having a story wasn’t enough. If I had a story, then it had to be right, it had to be convincing and others had to agree with it. Justification is a powerful mental drug that in my case, also led to self-righteousness: I had a right to feel the way I felt; I was right, and you were wrong.
And, as I had a strong tendency to blame everyone else for what happened in my life - you can probably guess what the stories were all about: “It’s because of you that I feel this way, and I’m right and you are wrong and therefore I’m perfectly correct in being angry/sad/frustrated with you. It’s you, you, you”. That doesn’t go over very well with people, especially when it is delivered in a strong, emotionally charged manner.
No wonder I wanted to run away from being emotional. It led to mental storytelling that I had to sell to everyone else in order to justify my feelings. When I met Human Design, I had spent years of trying to change who I was, trying to improve myself, make myself a better person, a more likeable person. I didn’t think that I was loveable the way I was because I kept ending up in situations where I was emotionally blaming others, and being rejected for it. I was burning down the very relationships that I so desperately wanted. What my mind told me, the thing I had to do above all, was to stop being so emotional. The mental message I had internalized was: “If I wasn’t so emotional, then I would be loveable”.
And the truth was, no self-improvement process ever really worked for very long. I’d try the self-help technique of the day, the latest book, the latest ‘thing’, and I’d vow that I’d change. The problem was no matter what the technique, no matter what I vowed I’d do, I’d end up in the same situation: Feeling emotional, making up a story about it, blaming the other for how I was feeling, and burning down everything and everyone in the process.
When I first had my reading with Ra, and he said “You’re emotional. You’re one of those people that can cry taking out the garbage.” And inside, there’s was a little “uh, oh…he really sees me…”
And he talked to me about the emotional wave, and how there’s no truth for me in the now, and that it takes time for me to reach clarity. It really hit me, “Oh, I’m going to have to find a way to not just accept being emotional, but it’s also supposed to be my place of decision making, this is my place of inner authority?”
Instead of pushing my feelings away or trying to hide them or change being emotional, suddenly I had to learn to embrace it? Not just embrace it, but trust it with my life? When I began, I have to say, I had no sense of the emotional wave. I understood what Ra was talking about, I got it intellectually, but I was so out of touch with my emotions, I had no experience of the wave. I had such a strong habit of mentally identifying and creating stories around my emotions, that I had no real experience of observing them.
I was a slow learner and I faced lots of challenges in my first 7 years of my experiment, which is one of the reasons that I work with people through Human Design. For me, it was challenging just to begin observing that I had an emotional wave; that within me was a subtle shading of feelings in motion all the time. I had such as strong life-long habit of trying to push away what I thought were ‘negative’ emotions through blaming and storytelling, and then desperately trying to hold on to what I thought were ‘positive’ emotions by manipulating circumstances and situations; but I had no experience of simply watching the waves rolling through.
It took me two years of experimentation before I made a decision where I experienced a sense of clarity in my emotional wave – where the ah-huh of my sacral didn’t set off any wave action, where the decision felt as calm and clear as moving from one door to the next. I had never, ever, in my life felt calm and relaxed about a decision; I had no reference place for it. It was something entirely new to embark upon something without fear, nervousness, excitement, or dread, and instead to just have life move. I cannot fully describe the sense of amazement and freedom that I experienced as that decision unfolded, but looking back I realize it was the moment that I knew that I had found my center. It took me much longer to simply trust that what I was feeling was enough, that my mind didn’t need to get involved in “he said, she said”.
I’m now in my eleventh year of experimenting with living my design. I honestly don’t know at what place in the journey I stopped feeling that being emotional was something to hide. What I do know is that I love the emotional process, that I love my wave, it is the deepest of the deep of who I am. It provides me with vast amounts of information that is non-linear, non-verbal, non-physical in nature. It provides me with a sense of that other 90% of communication that takes place between the words.
I am emotional, and I love it.
I am emotional.
What’s amazing to me is how many years I spent trying to avoid that very fact. ‘Being emotional’ was a label that somehow meant that I was difficult, unreasonable, irrational, touchy, over-sensitive. “What’s wrong with you? What’s the matter? Why are you upset? Why can’t you calm down?” and immediately I’d be thinking up reasons, trying to defend or justify whatever it was that I was feeling; and in the process learning that I had to have a reason for feeling whatever I felt.
And there’s the dilemma, the subtle conditioning that I’d internalized – that I had better come up with a reason, that there had to be a good story to go along with the emotions. Given that I have a strong, busy mind, simply having a story wasn’t enough. If I had a story, then it had to be right, it had to be convincing and others had to agree with it. Justification is a powerful mental drug that in my case, also led to self-righteousness: I had a right to feel the way I felt; I was right, and you were wrong.
And, as I had a strong tendency to blame everyone else for what happened in my life - you can probably guess what the stories were all about: “It’s because of you that I feel this way, and I’m right and you are wrong and therefore I’m perfectly correct in being angry/sad/frustrated with you. It’s you, you, you”. That doesn’t go over very well with people, especially when it is delivered in a strong, emotionally charged manner.
No wonder I wanted to run away from being emotional. It led to mental storytelling that I had to sell to everyone else in order to justify my feelings. When I met Human Design, I had spent years of trying to change who I was, trying to improve myself, make myself a better person, a more likeable person. I didn’t think that I was loveable the way I was because I kept ending up in situations where I was emotionally blaming others, and being rejected for it. I was burning down the very relationships that I so desperately wanted. What my mind told me, the thing I had to do above all, was to stop being so emotional. The mental message I had internalized was: “If I wasn’t so emotional, then I would be loveable”.
And the truth was, no self-improvement process ever really worked for very long. I’d try the self-help technique of the day, the latest book, the latest ‘thing’, and I’d vow that I’d change. The problem was no matter what the technique, no matter what I vowed I’d do, I’d end up in the same situation: Feeling emotional, making up a story about it, blaming the other for how I was feeling, and burning down everything and everyone in the process.
When I first had my reading with Ra, and he said “You’re emotional. You’re one of those people that can cry taking out the garbage.” And inside, there’s was a little “uh, oh…he really sees me…”
And he talked to me about the emotional wave, and how there’s no truth for me in the now, and that it takes time for me to reach clarity. It really hit me, “Oh, I’m going to have to find a way to not just accept being emotional, but it’s also supposed to be my place of decision making, this is my place of inner authority?”
Instead of pushing my feelings away or trying to hide them or change being emotional, suddenly I had to learn to embrace it? Not just embrace it, but trust it with my life? When I began, I have to say, I had no sense of the emotional wave. I understood what Ra was talking about, I got it intellectually, but I was so out of touch with my emotions, I had no experience of the wave. I had such a strong habit of mentally identifying and creating stories around my emotions, that I had no real experience of observing them.
I was a slow learner and I faced lots of challenges in my first 7 years of my experiment, which is one of the reasons that I work with people through Human Design. For me, it was challenging just to begin observing that I had an emotional wave; that within me was a subtle shading of feelings in motion all the time. I had such as strong life-long habit of trying to push away what I thought were ‘negative’ emotions through blaming and storytelling, and then desperately trying to hold on to what I thought were ‘positive’ emotions by manipulating circumstances and situations; but I had no experience of simply watching the waves rolling through.
It took me two years of experimentation before I made a decision where I experienced a sense of clarity in my emotional wave – where the ah-huh of my sacral didn’t set off any wave action, where the decision felt as calm and clear as moving from one door to the next. I had never, ever, in my life felt calm and relaxed about a decision; I had no reference place for it. It was something entirely new to embark upon something without fear, nervousness, excitement, or dread, and instead to just have life move. I cannot fully describe the sense of amazement and freedom that I experienced as that decision unfolded, but looking back I realize it was the moment that I knew that I had found my center. It took me much longer to simply trust that what I was feeling was enough, that my mind didn’t need to get involved in “he said, she said”.
I’m now in my eleventh year of experimenting with living my design. I honestly don’t know at what place in the journey I stopped feeling that being emotional was something to hide. What I do know is that I love the emotional process, that I love my wave, it is the deepest of the deep of who I am. It provides me with vast amounts of information that is non-linear, non-verbal, non-physical in nature. It provides me with a sense of that other 90% of communication that takes place between the words.
I am emotional, and I love it.
posted on December 14 2010
Noticing Your Life
Hello HD Friends -This week's post is a reprint of an article that Dharmen and I wrote for the Jovian Archive Newsletter. It was originally published August 8th, 2010. Enjoy! with warmth and love - Leela
Human Design offers an individual map of how each holistic being is designed to operate.
When you take this information beyond an intellectual understanding, often what is experienced is a period of cognitive dissonance – the internal experience of your life is different than what you have been taught is the ‘correct’ life based upon your design. “This is what my life is supposed to be. If that’s not what it is, then I have to do something to make that happen”. In this way life can remain a mentally driven exercise. Human Design knowledge can simply create a better informed mind which takes the design information into account to build a more secure 7- centered life. Understand that there is nothing wrong with going about life in this manner; however, it is like treating a Ferrari as if it were a horse and buggy: you miss all the benefits of the more advanced design.
You see, the BodyGraph and an understanding of how it is designed to operate is only the beginning of the journey. Becoming a 9-centered human, having the correct information is only where the process begins, but it is not the end. Staying at the beginning, at the information part, is to miss the potential of the 9-centered life, which is to experience self-realized consciousness in form: to be awake to one’s life while living it.
The most valuable gift that Human Design has provided is the potential for noticing your life. It seems like such a small thing – to pay attention to your life – and yet, it is something that most people rarely engage in. Seeing yourself, moving through space and time, noticing your experience, day by day is to live with self-awareness.
So often humans are too busy or too caught up in what their mind is telling them to actually notice what is taking place. What is happening in the body? Where does the body go? What is the mind’s internal dialog? What is the expression of the mind? The key is to begin to notice your life.
How does Human Design offer this gift? When you understand your design, you have a map to use to go out and explore your life. We are designed to take in the variety of life through the openness in our design, and for some through a fixed (or relatively fixed) way in which our designs operate in this life. It is in our openness that we are meant to become wise. But to develop wisdom means you have to be paying attention to your life in the first place.
One of the ways in which you can pay attention to your life, and more importantly what is coming in through your openness, is by paying attention to The Program. Most of the time when people talk about The Program, it is to describe it as the homogenizing pattern for the world, what makes up the fabric of the Maia; and for most of the people on the earth, this is true.
However, when we are living life from our design, we can experience what The Program brings through our openness, and we can learn about the infinite variety of flavors and nuances that we can take in through our experiences. When each of us discover our unique relationship with the movement of the planets through the openness in our design, it can show us the places where we can become lost in our past patterns of conditioning; but perhaps what has become more significant, it can provide us with the variety of experiences and tastes of life that will provide the foundation of our wisdom.
There is freedom in knowing what the experience of the 5th gate is for you. Not what someone has told you about the gate, or what is it’s chemistry, or its history – but what it means for you when the Sun passes through it, when another planet passes through it, or when an individual comes into your aura and brings the 5th gate…How does it impact your design? What do you learn about your Sacral Center? What do you learn about the way the world operates when it is under the homogenizing influence of the 5th gate? Each of these questions provides an opportunity to notice your life – and not just when the Sun is in the 5th gate.
People ask Dharmen from time to time when he is going to offer his Daily Neutrino weather forecasts, or even a monthly Neutrino weather forecast. The answer is “no time soon”. What has become apparent over the years is that the process of forecasting can only present the potential for The Program as a homogenizing influence. In order to discover how The Program impacts you, you have to be doing the noticing for your own life. No two people who are operating as their individual selves are going to experience the transits in the same way, but they can communicate their unique experiences, what they have learned about themselves and their openness with each other. It is through this process of sharing your Outer Authority, based upon noticing your life, which enriches the journey for us all.
Dharmen and Leela are teachers in the IHDS. Saturday, December 11th, they are offering a clinic in the IHDS - Meet Your Design - Your Individual Authority. They can be reached by email for questions and comments at www.secretofbeingyou.com
Human Design offers an individual map of how each holistic being is designed to operate.
When you take this information beyond an intellectual understanding, often what is experienced is a period of cognitive dissonance – the internal experience of your life is different than what you have been taught is the ‘correct’ life based upon your design. “This is what my life is supposed to be. If that’s not what it is, then I have to do something to make that happen”. In this way life can remain a mentally driven exercise. Human Design knowledge can simply create a better informed mind which takes the design information into account to build a more secure 7- centered life. Understand that there is nothing wrong with going about life in this manner; however, it is like treating a Ferrari as if it were a horse and buggy: you miss all the benefits of the more advanced design.
You see, the BodyGraph and an understanding of how it is designed to operate is only the beginning of the journey. Becoming a 9-centered human, having the correct information is only where the process begins, but it is not the end. Staying at the beginning, at the information part, is to miss the potential of the 9-centered life, which is to experience self-realized consciousness in form: to be awake to one’s life while living it.
The most valuable gift that Human Design has provided is the potential for noticing your life. It seems like such a small thing – to pay attention to your life – and yet, it is something that most people rarely engage in. Seeing yourself, moving through space and time, noticing your experience, day by day is to live with self-awareness.
So often humans are too busy or too caught up in what their mind is telling them to actually notice what is taking place. What is happening in the body? Where does the body go? What is the mind’s internal dialog? What is the expression of the mind? The key is to begin to notice your life.
How does Human Design offer this gift? When you understand your design, you have a map to use to go out and explore your life. We are designed to take in the variety of life through the openness in our design, and for some through a fixed (or relatively fixed) way in which our designs operate in this life. It is in our openness that we are meant to become wise. But to develop wisdom means you have to be paying attention to your life in the first place.
One of the ways in which you can pay attention to your life, and more importantly what is coming in through your openness, is by paying attention to The Program. Most of the time when people talk about The Program, it is to describe it as the homogenizing pattern for the world, what makes up the fabric of the Maia; and for most of the people on the earth, this is true.
However, when we are living life from our design, we can experience what The Program brings through our openness, and we can learn about the infinite variety of flavors and nuances that we can take in through our experiences. When each of us discover our unique relationship with the movement of the planets through the openness in our design, it can show us the places where we can become lost in our past patterns of conditioning; but perhaps what has become more significant, it can provide us with the variety of experiences and tastes of life that will provide the foundation of our wisdom.
There is freedom in knowing what the experience of the 5th gate is for you. Not what someone has told you about the gate, or what is it’s chemistry, or its history – but what it means for you when the Sun passes through it, when another planet passes through it, or when an individual comes into your aura and brings the 5th gate…How does it impact your design? What do you learn about your Sacral Center? What do you learn about the way the world operates when it is under the homogenizing influence of the 5th gate? Each of these questions provides an opportunity to notice your life – and not just when the Sun is in the 5th gate.
People ask Dharmen from time to time when he is going to offer his Daily Neutrino weather forecasts, or even a monthly Neutrino weather forecast. The answer is “no time soon”. What has become apparent over the years is that the process of forecasting can only present the potential for The Program as a homogenizing influence. In order to discover how The Program impacts you, you have to be doing the noticing for your own life. No two people who are operating as their individual selves are going to experience the transits in the same way, but they can communicate their unique experiences, what they have learned about themselves and their openness with each other. It is through this process of sharing your Outer Authority, based upon noticing your life, which enriches the journey for us all.
Dharmen and Leela are teachers in the IHDS. Saturday, December 11th, they are offering a clinic in the IHDS - Meet Your Design - Your Individual Authority. They can be reached by email for questions and comments at www.secretofbeingyou.com
posted on December 5 2010
