Five myths about Human Design.
Channeled in 1987 to an unsuspecting Canadian guy, Ra Uru Hu, née Alan (Robert) Krakower, while living in Ibiza, Spain, Human Design has been gaining ground ever since as one of the most powerful tools for those in pursuit of their highest potential, where deep inner fulfillment intersects with worldly success.
Having met my unique Human Design two short years ago, I've witnessed first-hand how quickly transformation can happen when living in alignment with my authentic blueprint. The instant relief I felt when I recognized that all my suffering came from trying to be someone I'm not and then judging myself for those "inadequacies" was nothing short of life-changing. Then, to have a blueprint that was as unique and familiar to me as my own fingerprint, was empowering.
From personal relationships to professional success, the experience of living my Human Design has brought me a level of peace, joy, satisfaction, and freedom I had given up hope of ever attaining in this life. Meeting my Human Design gave me the permission I didn't know I needed to stop trying to be what I'm not, and simply lean into who I uniquely am.
When you meet your Human Design, it's a little like taking the red pill — you see yourself through a purified lens of your highest potential, which requires you to up-level your personal responsibility and accountability to your true self — the person you are underneath all the layers of other people's expectations and "should's." But even if you're ready to peek behind the curtain, there might be some limiting beliefs about Human Design that keep your otherwise curious and confident self from exploring the liberating potential of your blueprint.
As someone whose Human Design blueprint includes a healthy dose of skepticism in the Channel of Logic, I've already contended with these myths and the underlying fears that perpetuate them. It's my hope that what I've learned will benefit those who need a little nudge to see what they've been missing.
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Underlying fear: "I have to believe in something."
There is nothing "spiritual" about Human Design. Nothing. Spirituality is based on belief, and there's nothing to believe. There are more than 4000 religions in the world, and Human Design is not among them.
Human Design is the Science of Differentiation, and your unique Human Design is an energetic blueprint that tells you how your energy operates 24/7. It's operating whether you choose to believe in it or not — just like gravity. Gravity doesn't need your recognition or permission or belief for it to work — it just is. If you step off your roof or trip over a crack in the sidewalk, gravity will pull you down to the ground because that's just how gravity works.
When we know the natural laws of physics, we can work with them instead of being a victim to them. We can incorporate these laws into our plans, actions, and decision-making processes instead of feeling limited by them. When we know about the law of gravity and honor the way it works, we incorporate it into our decisions accordingly. It's how we engineer planes to fly, satellites to orbit, and rockets to land on the moon. It's how we expand our life and our world.
In the same way, we can work with our individual energetics — the unique formula or "law" that reveals both our superpowers and kryptonite — to amplify our gifts and work constructively with our limitations and vulnerabilities.
Your Human Design blueprint provides you with a deeply layered, energetic map that is wholly unique to you. It's always operating whether you believe in it or not. Description text goes here -
Underlying Fear: "I will be manipulated and controlled by others."
By definition, a cult needs a primary leader whose every word is law. Human Design is not a cult. In fact, Ra thought of himself merely as Human Design's first student and he actively cautioned students and practitioners against looking to him as any sort of guru.
In Human Design, you are your own leader, which means the only person you need to trust is you. If you've been living your life believing that everyone else knows what's best for you (what's known as "conditioning" in Human Design), then learning to trust your own voice, your own intuition, your own power can be really, really scary.
Human Design is an individual practice of recognizing your authentic self and honoring it with every action, reaction, and decision you make. You can stay at the surface of your design, focusing on your energy type and decision-making authority, or you can go ever deeper to understanding the nuances of every part of your bodygraph, from the profile lines to the planet energies to the line energies and substructure of color, tone, base and variable. You can even take it deeper when you layer in the shadow, gift, and Siddhi frequencies of the Gene Keys for each of the 64 Human Design gates that correspond to the 64 genetic codons.
You can do self-study, take courses, order an automated reading or a live reading, hire an experienced guide to facilitate a breakthrough or pivot — but there's nobody telling you what to think or how to be. In fact, quality practitioners will always encourage you to follow your intuition and trust your inner intelligence.
You are the guru of you. If there's a cult, it's a cult of one.
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Underlying Fear: "I won't be taken seriously."
I get it. I'm a Harvard MBA and I'm sitting here writing about the ancient Chinese I Ching and energy centers and mandalas and bodygraphs in a field where the thought leadership has largely been occupied by experts and practitioners in the esoteric and healing arts. In spite of my left-brain credentials, there are those who will still write me off as a bit of a kook. At the same time, however, there are those who will wonder why someone with my background that's so steeped in strategy and logic is devoted to making Human Design practical and actionable for others.
You've likely heard the phrase "like attracts like" or "as within, so without." Well, each of these describes the Law of Attraction that's embodied through energetic frequencies. When you investigate and realize that the quality of what you attract in your life — from people to relationships to opportunities — is a mirror of your own energetic frequency, where do you want your frequency to be?
At its core, Human Design is about energetics, and we all speak energetics whether we're in the habit of calling it that or not. Energetics is the bouyant energy of a stadium that rallies the underdog team to a win. It's also the passive-aggressive energy of a partner who's jealous of your promotion because they feel stuck in their career situation and powerless to change it. Or it's the stillness in a room after an angry outburst.
In other words, energy is a type of matter. It isn't inert, and it isn't 'woo.'
It's physics.
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Underlying Fear: "I'm locked into a destiny and have no free will."
While your Human Design blueprint tells you how you're built, it doesn't tell you what to build. That's for you to figure out.
Our collective humanity is currently awash in chaos and fear and despair, leaving many people feeling overwhelmed and powerless. It's tempting to tune out and numb out, but this only helps the forces that are sowing discord — in fact, that's their goal. When we're reacting, we're not thinking, and when we're not thinking we're easier to manipulate and control. The most powerful thing any of us can do, especially in times of chaos and confusion, is to get quiet and go inside. Become intimately familiar with the truth that lives deep inside of you and begin to live your life in alignment with what is authentically you, one small decision at a time.
As a strategist and corporate storyteller, I'm always looking for the Occam's Razor approach to understanding and solving a problem. Human Design is a rational, logical solution that allows individuals to take their power back from the systems and institutions that promised comfort and security while demanding conformity in order to reinforce the status quo. What the Covid lockdowns and backlash to returning to "business as usual" have taught us is that the status quo takes a whole lot more than it gives, it benefits only those at the very top, and it does it at the expense of everyone else's individuality and uniqueness.
When you learn the magic and potential of your unique Human Design, you feel expanded and empowered. Rather than feeling locked-in and limited, you now have a focal point and mechanics to build a bridge to the life you want from the life you have.
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Underlying Fear: "I will lose my identity — and everything I've created."
It's true that Human Design will change your life, so don't go knocking on that door unless you're feeling stuck, uninspired, and caught in familiar, dead-end patterns of self-sabotage or limitation.
Chances are, you've already been living in alignment with several elements of your design. It's also likely, however, that you've been twisting yourself into knots to become someone you're not, living up to some idealized version of you or someone else's expectations of you, and punishing yourself in the process.
In my case, I have a number of channels that favor strategy and entrepreneurship, and that's the life I've been living for 30+ years. But I also have a lot of definition, which meant I had a number of "fixed" elements in my design that always felt like they were in conflict. As a result, I lived much of my life with one foot on the gas and one foot on the brake, which limited both my inner fulfillment and worldly success.
Meeting my Human Design and learning to operate it with my own personal user manual has allowed me to not just be aware of these "competing" aspects, but to also integrate them in a way that serves and empowers me, accelerating my transformation. I've been living at a "10" on the happiness scale consistently for the last several months because I'm the one standing at the dial. It doesn't mean that my life is free of conflict or turmoil — it simply means I'm not a victim to it.
This is the power of inner alignment to your authentic self — an energetic that leads to increasing clarity and magnetism with every decision you make.
Yes, your life is sure to change when you meet your Human Design — but only as much as you let it. m description
The Power of Myth
In 1988, PBS released a 6-part series of interviews between Bill Moyers, journalist, and Joseph Campbell, professor, writer, and mythologist, on "The Power of Myth." In it, Campbell talks about a turning point in every hero's journey where the hero must slay the dragon.
If you're feeling ready to slay your dragon, your Human Design blueprint can serve as both your shield and your sword.
Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash
