“Stop your human design experiment” my inner voice whispered. “Pack away your oracle decks, stop your self-reiki, psych-k reprogramming”. My ego grew cautious, perplexed. Why would I stop using the tools that were the catalysts to coming back home to myself? I shrugged every message off. Then the emails came letting me know the two x self development trainings I had paid and looked forward to for months, suddenly cancelled. I could no longer ignore it, the invitation was clear. So I followed my inner voice and disconnected myself to the worlds I’d come so deeply to know, unsure of why.
Medicine can heal you or it can also be poisonous if you consume too much. My soul was calling for a self-development detox and a break from the human design rabbit hole I’d been in for the last six and a half years. What ensued was a time of really contemplating the healing and self-awareness tools and modalities I’d been using in my life and the way in which I was engaging with them.
Looking back, it came at the perfect timing as we transited Gate 10 Behavior of the Self whose shadow speaks to the field of self-development. How synchronistic lol. So today I’m taking you behind the scenes of my personal experiment and sharing the 6 Things I Wish Someone Told Me When I Started My Human Design Journey.
Hearing these words back in the beginning would have made the human design journey a little easier for the highly conditioned part of me. Knowing these things up-front would have helped me to find deeper trust in my own authority – which is ultimately the goal of any self-development tool. If you’re a newcomer to the system, this may be a read for you 🙂
Note: These lessons are shared through the current lense of my ever-evolving personal experimentation and conditioning. I am not a human design teacher, I am someone who has studied the system and it’s various syntheses of systems both personally and professionally, experimented with it daily for over 6.5 years and use the teachings as an energetic alignment tool within my client work. These opinions are my own and I invite you to channel all of the following musings through your own internal guidance system and remember, you are your ultimate authority.
1. Human Design will help you understand yourself deeper than you’d expect, but it does not hold the higher authority to tell you “EXACTLY who You came here to be”. You get to ultimately decide that.
Honestly, I think the Human Design system is one of the most incredible syntheses of work that’ll ever grace the planet. I’ve been deep in the self-development world for over a decade and this tool has been the #1 catalyst for healing and finding deeper harmony with myself. But can it tell you “EXACTLY who You came here to be”?
In the first 1-3 years of my experiment I unknowingly treated it like God and the readers and teachers as all-knowing authorities over what was best for me. When I found it, I was completely disconnected to myself at the rock-bottom of chronic illness burnout and was quite honestly in a very vulnerable place. When you’re in this place of desperation to stop feeling so much pain and have an absolute lack of clarity on your path you’ll listen to anyone who tells you they hold all the answers to help you feel better. You’ll take the words “You are here to be X” “You are here to do X” as gospel and begin to believe ‘surely this system knows me better than I know myself’.
Whilst Ra claims it to be an “experiment” the way the information was delivered to me in studies didn’t feel like I had a choice in it. It was not served with a side of: “here’s the information according to the system – try it out, explore a little over the next few months/years and if it doesn’t land for you or feel in resonance with you it is more than okay to drop it”. Of course all the teachers were absolutely lovely and amazing at sharing the teachings, but hearing this as an additional note would have supported me and other vulnerable newcomers to begin building a deeper sense of trust in themselves. *I’m sure with HD being way more mainstream these days, there are trainings that would include something like this.
At this point in my experiment, I know that my human and soul’s plan cannot be confined to a number of gates, channels or labels. No person or external system holds the authority to tell me what I’m here to do, who I’m here to be or what’s aligned or not aligned for me. They can be incredible portals for guidance. But ultimately, I hold the power and free-will to decide for myself, even if it goes against my human design strategy and authority.
I’m sure most people would say it’s ‘not a big deal’ but I believe messaging holds tremendous power. As a Marketing Strategist, I believe in communicating self-development modalities so that they awaken the power in the client over positioning the modality as the only messiah. Similar to the difference of “I’m here to heal you” vs “I facilitate a healing space for your body to heal itself”. The first unconsciously takes away the power in the client and the second awakens it. Here’s something along the lines of how I personally would have liked Human Design to be described to me in the beginning:
You were birthed into this earthly realm as your most authentic whole self. Yet with a veil of amneisa covered over your eyes, it is only natural for us to forget who it is we really are. As you move through the world, it is only natural to unconsciously abandon the pieces of you that do not feel accepted and to replace them with a collection of masquerades in order to feel safe and loved.
Human Design serves as a synthesis of the earths most ancient and modern energetic modalities to support you in reconnecting with the most authentic self inside you. A gateway to exploring the artificial stories you’ve taken on as your own and the permission slip you never needed to begin clearing what is no longer yours to carry. A self-enquiry tool to explore the archetypal energies that exist as potentials within your aura and an invitation to re-awaken the innate gifts you may have casted aside.
Human Design shall not exist as another rule book that burdens your load with a long list of shoulds and should not’s that has you walking on eggshells. It shall not exist as another higher all-knowing external authority you outsource your power to who tells you exactly what to do or who to be. The truth is you do not ‘need’ human design. Yet it may serve as a helpful aid and compass guiding you to explore and re-discover your own authentic wholeness and the wisdom that already lies within you — so that YOU get to choose for yourself and pave a path of your OWN making.
2. Your not-self theme is not something to detach yourself from or “get aligned” a.s.a.p, it’s an invitation to see it, feel it, understand it.
If you’ve been in the self-development world for a long while like myself, you’ve likely been through the whole law of attraction “only think positive thoughts” phase. That season where you try your hardest to be all roses and sunshine and avoid any ounce of “negativity” to manifest the life you desire – only to later realise you’ve caused your body more harm than good because you’ve avoided and suppressed all the anger or bitterness inside for fear you’ll attract bad things.
I experienced a similar season with Human Design in the beginning around the “not self”. I remember thinking this magical system would suddenly fill my life with a million rainbows lol. So whenever I felt any feeling of bitterness, I’d try to get rid of it a.s.a.p or quickly do something to make myself feel better.
When I started my experiment I wish someone told me: Human Design is a modality that will help you feel in greater harmony with yourself but it is also completely normal if it brings up a load of stuff that makes you feel angry. It doesn’t mean you are not aligned, it means you are on the right track. Let it sit there and feel it for however long you need. And if you’re not ready that’s okay too. It will pass. Every not-self trigger is a messenger and an invitation to look within at the stories you’ve been carrying and an invitation for you to let it go if that is what you desire.
Through working with so many clients in the coaching, healing, and self-development spaces over the last few years I notice there is often big resistance to talking about pain in a transparent and compassionate way. I believe ignoring it and not being upfront about the possibility of it as part of the journey potentially harms the client in the long run if it’s not addressed in one’s communications. Setting realistic expectations that there will be highs and lows ultimately honours them.
3. Alignment is more nuanced and complex than you actually realise. What if those moments where you feel “out of alignment” are actually part of your soul’s higher plan?
What is alignment? According to the dictionary it means to place or arrange things in a straight line. According to some spiritual teachers it means having your human self come into harmony with your soul self.
Back when I started my experiment I treated alignment as a black or white thing, not a million shades of grey thing. I felt like there was this imaginary line of being “in alignment” or “out of alignment”. I thought experiencing my not-self theme of bitterness was being out of alignment. Experiencing my theme of success was being in alignment.
But what if those seemingly ‘bad’ experiences are also part of our greatest alignment at a higher perspective. I love Richard Rudd’s Gene Keys body of work- he teaches us that the shadow of the gates serve as the portal to the higher frequency gift or siddhi. The shadow isn’t bad. It’s just an experience that gives us the wisdom we need to come into greater harmony with ourselves.
I wish someone told me back when I started my experiment: The ‘not-self’ will be a fantastic form of feedback to help you identify when you are not in your highest resonance but it won’t always hold all the ‘right answers’. That sometimes it’s best not to take it at face value and some deeper discernment may also help at times. That whilst human design will often lead you to many answers, our egos definition of bitterness or success may not be our soul’s definition.
4. Human Design is a system here for your self-liberation from rules and societal conditions. But you can just as easily use it as a tool for self-imprisonment if you treat it like a rulebook.
This kinda relates to the first point. Human Design serves as a deconditioning system here to free us from our own limitations and the rules we’ve been carrying for too long. It’s done an absolutely grand job of that for me – helping me release conditioning from my generational lineage, helping me transform my career and ultimately come to find a growing sense of acceptance within myself.
But I’d be withholding the complete reality if I didn’t also share that in my engagement with it, I’d also built a new cage for myself in my subconscious mind. I replaced the old book I’d been handed as a child and rewired my neural pathways with what felt like a new shiner rulebook of shoulds and shouldnt’s. Sure most of it was more empowering, but at this point in my journey there a few HD pieces I desire to decondition from.
Any subconscious expert will tell you reality often mirrors the subconscious beliefs we have about ourselves and the world. Although human design is a deconditioning tool, it is also very natural in the process of studying and living it that a whole new load of conditioning is mounted in our aura.
So I wish someone told me when I started my human design experiment: That human design is a tool that provides us with some guidelines on the archetypal energies present within our charts, but it is not a rulebook that must be followed. That you are invited to experiment as much as you’d like and use your critical thinking skills to discern whether a piece of information is in resonance with you. And if it doesn’t? It’s okay to let it go. You will not be punished, nor should you feel shameful for choosing to disregard the information and make up your own mind. *Despite, what any self-proclaimed HD policemen tells you lol 😉
5. Human Design can unite us, but it can just as easily be used as a tool for separation and disconnection.
One of the most incredible reasons I love human design is because it is here for us to not only understand ourselves but others better. It gives us a new language to understand the mechanics of our family, our clients and society as a whole. No other system or personality tool I’ve found covers as much depth as this. But it’s also worth realising our minds are meaning-making machines and may use the information as a way to unfoundedly judge others.
I remember in my early days looking up all of my work mates human design charts. Subconsciously, I started perceiving them differently and changing my behaviour or engagements with them to “honour their designs”. Whilst it came with heart-centered intentions, now the obsessive HD nerd in me no longer asks for people’s birth dates unless they are guided to the system themselves and engage me on it. I believe people find it only when they’re ready for it and sharing it before they’re ready may not be for their highest good.
It can also reach the other end of the spectrum, with people using it as a weapon of separation. I’ve heard things like “I’m not going to hire her as an assistant because she’s a projector and has no energy…I need someone who is going to work hard”. Or particularly in the space of business things like “I don’t trust my coach because she doesn’t have the same energy type as me”.
Instead of creating a deeper sense of understanding and togetherness in the collective, it’s usage can also be the catalyst for deeper separation and lack of trust in others. I wish someone told me in the beginning: That human design is a system here to help us understand others better but making assumptions or putting people into boxes based on their human design details isn’t what the system was born to do.
6. Engaging with a deconditioning system with conditioning isn't easy at times. Human Design isn't an all-in-one system, so seek help from other modalities to support you in your experiment journey.
Human Design can be an incredible map to bring us into greater harmony with ourselves, but it’s not the magic pill that does everything for you. Human Design can very much be perceived as an all-in-one self development system but it really is helpful to also harness yourself with some other professionals because the reality is we are engaging with a deconditioning system whilst having conditioning so having additional help can benefit.
I wish someone told me when I started my experiment that this journey will be full of amazing highs but it will not be “easy” for our human selves at all times, especially when moving through the darkest shadows. If you find yourself struggling with clearing limiting conditions seek out a therapist or mindset expert. If you find yourself struggling with the not-self theme, an expert in emotional regulation can help. In the realm of marketing – my speciality – it looks like equipping yourself with foundational strategies or eco-systems like choosing your niche, creating offers and creating a promotional plan – but doing so in a way that works in harmony with your human design.
There are plenty of professionals who are integrating this tool into their work now (yay for that), just take the time to find support that’s a fit for you (if you have the privilege to).
Human Design and all forms of self-development tools are ultimately here for our highest good. They serve as helpful side-kicks and conduits to open up a pathway for us to get to understand ourselves, to honour the differences of others and move towards a life that is more fulfilling. But it’s also okay to take a step back once in a little while and take a break from all things self-growth if that’s what your soul is really calling for 🙂
I’ll end this long email with some words about Gate 10 from none other than my fave, Richard Rudd as noted in his work:
“The more spiritual we become, the more achingly serious we become, and the more we think we know. We have to admit at a certain point, however, that we know nothing, absolutely nothing.
We all suffer from self-obsession. We worry about our lives, our future, our clothes, our food, what others think of us. And even if we don’t worry on the outside, we’re running from ourselves. We’ve completely forgotten how to relax and do nothing. We’ve forgotten how dreamy life can be. We’re obsessed with knowing where we’re going, knowing who we are, and finding our purpose.
You only need to see this pattern in your life to transform it – through you doing nothing – from simply seeing how manic you’ve become. By exploring this shadow deeply, and getting to know it intimately, your life will just change. You’ll slow down. You’ll begin to enjoy life. You’ll begin to experience life. So few of us really experience life – because we’re so obsessed with our problems and our challenges…
The 10th Gift of Naturalness can dawn only when self-obsession exhausts itself. The first great revelation coming from this journey into your true nature, is that you cannot be defined by any kind of label. Once you understand that you are neither your name nor your actions, feelings, thoughts or beliefs, you realize that human nature is something far greater and wider than you ever suspected.
The gift of naturalness is a softening of our edges. It’s a great allowing. It’s a great place of defencelessness. It’s a place of flow and playfulness. You have nothing to defend with this gift. You begin to realize that everything is natural. You can’t even say that the shadow is unnatural, and that the gift is natural. Self-obsession is natural at the beginning. And then it naturally dissipates as your heart opens…”
If you’ve made it all the way here, then I really thank you for tuning in and joining me on this crazy human design experiment journey 🙂