To be oneself

I hate to think of trying to navigate the minefield of relationships without the map of Human Design.

In 1997 in a tidy house on a hill in Sedona, Arizona I had my first reading. I emerged feeling light and full of relief: You mean it’s okay to just be me? I don’t also have to be all sorts of other things people, or the society, or my own interpretation of these influences; might want or expect from me? You mean I can just relax? (Back in 1976 Osho had told me, “Just relax,” but I had not been ready to hear it. Now I was.)

Human Design is a mish-mosh of several disciplines: astrology, the Kabbalah, the Hindu chakra system, the human genome, physics, the I Ching – but it is much more than the sum of its parts. It’s an amazingly accurate system of mapping the individual psychology, the purpose on Earth, and so much more – of the human being. It is called the Science of Differentiation because it supports above all how we each get to be ourselves; different from others, not having to be like them. We each have our own job to do, and it’s not going to be the same job as anyone else’s.

Naturally, this has a lot of repercussions when it comes to relationships – a subject that I have spent an enormous amount of time immersed in!

So when I began to slowly find my way with this new map, poking about, receiving more sessions, and eventually studying in some depth – I was very curious how many specific relationships were seen and illuminated – with lovers, exes, parents, friends, prospective lovers, siblings. And I found it wonderful to be able to shake off the confusion relationships seem to bring up in us, and be able to put my finger at a place on the map and say, “Aha, that is why it was like that….”

Eventually I began doing readings for clients, mixing Design with the psychic work I already did, and soon I was doing couple readings too. I found that each composite chart was an exciting mystery I just loved to explore. Couples tended to feel greatly relieved that whatever difficulties they were having were nobody’s fault; it was just the wiring.

Ra Uhuru, the founder of the system, said, “When I get to be myself, and you get to be yourself, that is love. Anything else is a kind of torture.”

One of the basic tenets of Design is that each person has a way to make decisions as themselves, i.e. coming from their real nature and not their conditioning, not the ‘shoulds.’

And so technically that should be enough – if you know what that way is and have practised it and are comfortable in it – not an easy thing even if it very simple, since the mind, the conditioning, will argue and insist that you do a thing because it is polite or nice or whatever – you should be able to navigate every minute of a relationship successfully without having to know the wiring involved.

My own experience is that this both is and isn’t true. Yes, I do need to keep coming back again and again to trusting what my body is telling me. But yes, I also am immensely helped by knowing what I am dealing with – giving myself the support again and again that this is right because the Design says so. It helps so much to find relaxation in the business.

An example: my own way to know if something is good for me or bad for me is to trust little quiet sensations and movements in my tummy and my heart – is there rising of happiness, or a clutching of dread? Does something shrink, or expand? Does my heart open, or close?

There was a particular situation a year or two ago where a man was courting me over distance, and being quite insistent that I should go to Florida to visit him. When he had first contacted me by email I had felt in my body – I’d watched it – a sense of unwelcome invasion. But my mind had immediately said, “Oh, but this is nice, somebody likes you, how can that be bad?” The correspondence went on and soon I got his birth info and did a chart (he himself was not interested in the charts.)

Now, all couple charts have a fatal flaw. I say all – and maybe really it’s 98% – so ‘all’ is really a valid way to put it I think! In other words, don’t look for a perfect relationship. It does not exist. Nature doesn’t care about it. Nature wants us to find our own natures; she doesn’t care that we think we want long harmonious marriages.

Sometimes such marriages might occur, but from the outside we can’t tell how much compromising the partners might be doing. You know the way old couples get to look more and more like each other? (And like their dogs?) Yes, there really might be happiness too – but that is going to depend on each person being able to be themselves. That’s just how existence works.

Anyway – I saw that the chart for me and that man was a very sticky chart. Once in, it would be very difficult to get out again. The emails already had that quality, and I found I didn’t really like it. I saw that it would be easy to get embroiled because there were many attractants – too many for comfort.

And I saw that for me – much more than for him – it would be hell. Because of the fatal flaw – which is too complex to describe here but if I can boil it down it would be: this man thinks he is attracted to me, but soon he will realize that he doesn’t approve of me at all – not of my real nature, not who i am, not what I love the most – these things will be meaningless to him; and when he realizes this he will feel cheated, and begin to dump his anger on me.

And I would not be able to bear it.

This is a quite horrible fatal flaw! And… even so my mind was arguing, for the man had offered me some nice goodies, and there were other reasons it might have seemed a practical arrangement, to go there. So that for some weeks a lot of space in my mind was taken up with the matter – even though I knew it was not going to work!

There was one day when I finally agreed to have a phone talk with the fellow – but as soon as I had written to him that we could make a time for the call, I saw very clearly a silent dark shadow pass over my tummy.

That was enough. It was so clear – although in such a silent and quick way – that this was all a bad idea.

That dark shadow passing came from what is called my Inner Authority; in my case it is what is known as splenic authority.

So I had the confirmation of my body and of the charts both. This was very good. I hate to think of how I might have conducted myself – how I did, in the past, conduct myself – when there was only confusion, plus the lust of the youthful body. A messy, messy soup.

I managed to cut the correspondence off and my whole body heaved a great sigh of relief.

Relief is good.

I also have a success story. I met a man online in 2004 when I was living in Switzerland. I knew his design before we even met in person, so I knew how to treat him – and how helpful that was! I knew to give him lots of time, I knew he would appreciate my oddness. We ended up spending 7 years together, in a relationship of such beauty that even now, many years after it has ended, I am full of gratefulness for it every day. In that relating I brought together Human Design and Tantra, and our regular meditations conferred on us such light and so many ineffable blessings that I still feel the connection as a silent rainbow bridge arcing over the Atlantic.

Why did the relationship end? Ah – that is another detail of connection charts – something called a Compromise, which is what breaks relationships. I knew about it ahead of time too, but I had to watch it in action, deeply and viscerally, to really get what it meant. To make a long story short, our Tribes were different, and my longing for my own finally overcame the pull of the comfort and practicality – and love – of that home we had made together. (He is now married very happily to a woman whose Tribe is the same as his own, and I am so happy for him – because my love is real; based on respect – not the using that lust is. I had outgrown that, thanks to menopause!)

So – it’s great to see the Designs before you enter. It’s great to see them during. It’s great to see them after.

We are attracted to someone because he is different than us, because he is going to bring something new.

The honeymoon is great, all is unknown, we are living in the moment and it’s expanding in such mind-blowing ways!

But once that has settled down, slowly slowly we start to resent the person for not being like us. We start trying to get them to be like us. And it doesn’t work; and then we start blaming.

And nobody likes to be blamed.

And so the hell begins.

Human Design can help us to simply not go on that ride at all. There is honeymoon, and then plenty of space so that each can come back to themselves; and each meeting is happening because it is the right moment for each of you – or it doesn’t happen. And when there is trouble – which there will always be – it can be used as a way to get more and more awareness: who am I? Who is the other?

For Human Design is an awareness tool.

But start with your own. And each of us has what can be called our Intimacy Style. This is seen in a particular area of the chart, but it also of course involves many other areas, once you start looking into the chart.

In that first reading I had on that afternoon in Sedona that is still so sharp in my memory – the analyst that day was Mary Ann Winiger – I was amazed to hear, “You are here to be cool, not hot.”

Wow! that too was an incredible relief! I had spent my whole sexual career trying as hard as I could to be a red-hot mama! I’d thought that was the only right way to be! And it had never worked; and I’d always been absolutely certain something was really wrong with me! And now I’m hearing that it’s fine to just be what I am! Amazing!

And so in that long Tantric love, I began to explore what ‘cool’ meant – and what I discovered was so beautiful, so thrilling, so esoteric really, so personal, that I remain grateful every day to Human Design for giving me the courage to claim what was always right under my nose – a gift in intimacy for seeing energy rather than for generating heat. For me, this seeing leads to loving feelings, because it is my own unfolding discovery, and so full of wonder! I had to completely forget the absolute rubbish (in my view) of how sex and intimacy are described in books and shown in movies. Even otherwise really well-written books get it so so wrong, and movies tend to go with what just seems to me soft-core porn; no understanding of the female.

And even if this is just me, and everybody else thinks it is realistic, it doesn’t matter – this is my truth and my experience.

I was also told that I would be happiest with a man who was friend first, lover second. This too I had always done exactly backwards, running after distant men and then going kind of nuts from their unavailability and inability to share their feelings. For the first time I now began to entertain the idea of something more platonic and companionable. Previously I would have thought that… not permissible! Not hot enough!

So, you will have your own way or ways too… and that will be what will bring you your real joy.

One last thing: love is a mystery. Charts are great, can’t do without them – but even the chemistry we see in a composite chart is not the final word. Out of billions of people on earth, these two ended up connecting. There might be something at work we cannot see – some greater serendipity, some greater scheme – perhaps from past lives, perhaps from some unknowable juxtaposition of stars and asteroids and galaxies – and so, if there is love, and you are together, for however long – we want to respect that fact. And then, within that mystery, look at what the wiring is, to make things as clear as possible, so that we don’t have to suffer in unnecessary ways – but just the necessary ones.

We are here to be challenged. We don’t get to go to sleep.

The joys of conscious connection can be incredible, if not eternal. Human Design brings a nice window-washing to it all, so that there is the possibility that relating can be done in the light of day.