Ra Uru Hu speaks to 4% of the 4% being able to actually live their design, to integrate it, to be it. If you look at this from an outside perspective, it may seem elitist in nature, but the truth of it is that, in this world, in this system, in this structure that we live in, truly living your design can be deeply challenging. While we may all be able to come away with something from this system, there are some who may have no interest in it at all. I shared some on my own experience with the challenges faced with my own experiment in my conversation on determination, found here. It can seem as if once we find bodily awareness, it feels as though it is impossible to turn back. It has seemed like a consistent piece of the journey, through that first seven years, many of us face about half way through this existential crisis. It feels as if you wish that you could go back to the way things were, to have a ‘simple’ life, to work those long hours, make that money, have a home of your own. But the truth of it is that, once we reach a certain point in our experiment, turning back, forgetting what our body now knows, becomes impossible without serious detriment to our well-being. The body cannot lose its awareness, and you must move forward with the understanding you have- the understanding that your open sacral cannot produce its own source of consistent energy, that your open ego can’t will you to do something you aren’t here to do, that your defined root moves at its own pace and not that of those set by others.
If I look subjectively at my own experience through this process, it’s easy for me to say that I was living kind of comfortably before design, all the while blatantly forgetting what my life looked like from an inside perspective. A life in which I was met with crippling anxiety and depressive episodes I would, at that time, call ‘functional,’ meanwhile actively losing my mind at every challenge faced, constant tearful breakdowns, dissociation, dysfunction. My life, currently, may no longer look comfortable, but I certainly meet challenge with much more stability and grace. I commented to a friend just today that it feels like a personal joke between the universe and I that one of the most common compliments people offer me is that I’m an inspiration, a beautiful example of how to keep surviving through limitation and difficulty.
If I had to actually choose, knowing there would be no physical detriment, I know I would still choose design, because I have chosen design time and time again in my process. It is my path, what I’m here to learn and experience. I truly feel like I am 4% of the 4%, and I say that with humility and complete awe of the ways in which ‘no choice’ shows up for me in my life, while also acknowledging that there are many who encounter alignment with their design without ever meeting the system itself, and meeting amazement in that as well. We don’t get a choice of whether we’re here to encounter and live by our unique design. It just is, no choice. Much of this year I’ve been met with a melancholy and a discomfort with what I’ve been watching unfold in front of me. In my process, I noticed meeting a theme of judgment earlier this year. Judgment of self, judgment of others, judgment of words and behaviors. As I took a look at my Seven Years on the Wheel spreadsheet I’d spent some time making last year, there it was, I had been meeting ‘initiation through judgment.’ I saw that word and allowed myself to take some space from where I’d been feeling so much bitterness, allowing myself to sit with what I was watching unfold within myself.
A dear friend has mentioned this sense of seeing ‘phoniness’ when describing his feelings of the world when in a melancholic state. Through much of this early part of the year I saw that phoniness in so much around me. This sense that something wasn’t quite right on a grand scale. It sat with me and created this endless agitation deep inside of me. A gnawing annoyance. Melancholy, itself, in action. Knowing where my own melancholy dwells within my chart, knowing sharing this may bring up some provocation for some, but feeling lighter these days, clearer, and feeling called out to share on this topic by a couple of sweet souls. And so, today, it feels correct when it felt far from that months before when I’d initially tore through the first draft of this.
Amidst this process, through the integration, through the melancholy, this year, I’ve felt a growing agitation to something I’d been watching unfold for several months. Something that makes sense in many ways, something I’ve had, both, small and large lessons in. Watching them all come together. Maybe an integration process for me at this time. I’ve felt the mutation moving within me as I’ve spent the time to sit with this concept. This idea of ‘no choice’ always ringing louder and louder. I see it making all sides of itself apparent in my life, whether that's through this process of surrender, or through becoming the witness to that which happens around me, in the Maia, in the collective, amongst the tribe. Things I sometimes, often, feel so outside of. Living as a pure individual being, while also being here to connect deeply with very specific people, has offered some, at times, perplexing paradoxes to mull over. I’ve realized that the mind can’t truly offer much in the way of answers, though. It all unfolds over time anyway. But, I do feel like this seemingly, counterintuitive combination offers me a perspective that feels reflective of the future of community as we move away from the tribe and towards a more individual, selfish, nature if you will. The way true individualism doesn’t toss aside the other in support of itself, but works with the other because it feels correct for them to, however that manifests in their life.
One of the things I’ve grown to love about human design has been this aspect in which differentiation allows us to find peace with others, as they are. We can move away from this ‘attachment’ to the other, always growing connection to the self, the one way through these relational wounds we all struggle with. The focus of our work with human design, as people who must decondition from years outside of living as ourselves, is on learning to live as ourselves, however we are designed to move to that place. Learning and continually integrating design has allowed me to offer more space, within myself, to allow others to express themselves however that looks, even when it is not ‘correct.’ Of course, a lesson I’m still taking in, learning to release the judgment, learning to see the surrender in each story. Knowing that true, clean judgment isn’t personal, that it doesn’t come with reaction, but is, instead, calm and collected.
Post melancholy, post months of watching, processing the agitation I’ve felt, sitting with and seeing the feeling fully form into a thought about how it isn’t ever the singular person. It is, wholly, a function of ‘no choice’ in that each person can’t see themselves until they’re ready. Just as the others being criticized have ‘no choice’ in what they can’t see, or are, maybe, not even here to externalize. To feel any sort of resentment toward the other feels like a reflection of the resentment they, themselves, hold. The undiscovered, unaware pieces of themselves that are cold, vile, pointed, shameful, incorrect. It’s been helpful to witness those around me who operate from a perspective of witnessing, being unbothered, sitting at a distance from the drama of it all. Slowly recognizing when my input will never result in change, and in turn knowing where to put my energy. Though, maybe that’s my movement toward the roof speaking. The reflective quality to this witnessing has offered this detached perspective, or at least, that’s what I’m witnessing in these people around me, never directed specifically at any one person. That’s what has felt correct, to me, in human design. It is never about where someone is, it is about the intention behind the expression and how they react, themselves, to the other, because at the end of the day, human design is about surrender and acceptance of what is, no matter what that looks like in this ever-changing moment. It is about connecting to ourselves, from our most authentic spaces.
When we hold people on some pedestal or look to them as an authority, above any other, I feel we do ourselves a great disservice. We must hold ourselves to a standard of integrity, to a level of discernment. To trust that our bodies are pulling us in the direction that is correct for us, that at the end of the day my purpose is entirely mine, and not to be judged by anyone else. The decisions I move through my authority with are correct for me, and no one can discern what’s true for me from the outside.
Some of us are here to never find the source, or hub, but to instead see the surface, bubble-gum version, these sugary syrupy systems. 4% of 4% is small. The people who are here to live their design will find the path they need to find, no matter the entry point. There is no sense in criticizing and peering through a magnifying glass, obsessing over what someone is teaching. As a member of multiple spaces that revolve around health and wellness, counseling, connection, I see how under prepared some are to hold healthy space for others, but I also witness the way these same people are placed in positions of authority because of what they ‘know.’ Intellect can become king in these spaces, but is there integrity at the root of the work?
Beyond even that, those who loudly shame others for working outside of the system or for spreading incorrect information without a solid foundation beneath them, even they can’t see themselves fully in all their knowledge and correctness. And I’m not here to pass judgment or shame them for what they aren’t ready to see. The thing I keep coming back to time and time again is that there is no choice. We see when we’re ready, and some will never see. There is no amount of shouting, showing, sharing that can force someone to see what they are not prepared to see. If it’s meant for them it will come in time.
Someone once shared with me, ‘within design, you can’t hide anything because if someone is truly living design, nothing can be hidden from them.’ Everyone can see through the not-self themes coming up, EVEN when we can’t see it within ourselves. Not until it's ready to come up. There is NO CHOICE. There’s growing humor in this to me.
We can’t know anything for certain. All we can do is to continue to live our lives and watch what unfolds.