The Human Caste System
Since I last wrote here more than two years ago, I’ve been accommodating a thin but steady flow of people inspired to check out this original Human Design System that I offer with Zeno's online classes, my sessions, the book and the ephemerides. That’s encouraging. Although I keep myself strictly free of any "social media," I know through the grapevine that the antidote is sowed.
While most students at least in theory agree with my guidance to forget all the prevalent jargon, purge their minds, and start from scratch with the original premises as an experiential scientist, 1. it’s not all that easy if the sneaky virus already took hold, and 2. a number of them seem to think that Zen Human Design may offer an extension to their beliefs, some aspects to further the depth of what they’re already convinced they know.
That’s a reasonable expectation, given that Zen Human Design grew out of the mechanics presented as the original revelation, before Ra invented and subsequently then insisted on his "Four Types" and their attendant attributes in 1997. Of course, the "Four Types" are based on the original mechanics as well. They’re Ra’s selective interpretation of the original, four catchy memes picked from what in reality are unlimited possibilities.
And that's the fundamental difference: Zen Human Design sees you as unlimited and free, while Jovianism sees you as limited to one of four "Types." As long as you agree to these limitations, there's no way your perspective can encompass the whole picture. Zen Human Design does not offer an expansion to the "Types," but the "Types" are a restriction on it. To understand, you need to clear these blinders from your vision.
Original Human Design, as relayed by Ra from 1992 to early 1997, knows nothing of the “Four Types.” At that time we were looking at Definition Type – no definition, single, split, triple, quadruple split definitions – and Mode – to do or to wait: Ra’s a single definition to do, Zeno a triple split definition to wait, and I’m a single definition, to wait.
  
With these basic mechanics in hand, you actually knew already quite a lot about the dynamics of an individual design and its relationships, but of course you needed to actually look at the body graph to begin to discern the subtleties: which motor makes Ra a design to do and how exactly does it get to the Throat? Which gates would bridge Zeno’s splits? What conditioning would make me a design to do?
This was all in tune with the original notion that Human Design was to be taken in a scientific manner, as a hypothesis, and that we would be evaluating it by observing and testing it against our own experience, past and present. Of course, experience needs the benefit of time and none of us early students actually “got it” in the first few years. And Ra wasn't particularly helpful, either, not fully understanding Human Design himself and vastly overestimating his quality as a teacher. As the quintessential Doer with dreams of expansive riches resulting from being on top of an ever growing pyramid of clients, analysts, and teachers, he was incapable of waiting and attempted early to come up with clever shortcuts to speed up the process.
It was in a small and barely attended class called “Chart Reading Seminar” in Taos, New Mexico, on May 17-18, 1997, when he launched his trial balloon of the “Four Types” and their attendant attributes of “Authority” and “Strategy.” Like everything Ra uttered, no matter how thin the essence upon closer examination, it sounded great and convincing and felt like a breath of fresh air.
I edited the audio recording and released a batch of three tapes titled 4 Types of Raves, which turned out to be our first audio best-seller. Mea culpa. Everyone in the still small Human Design community took to it and for the first time felt they could expertly talk Human Design. Ra had given them the exact thoughts to think and the exact words to say. He had reduced the confusing unlimitedness of the Definition Types/Modes into just four manageable "Types."
By that time, after four years of our efforts to spread the word, the Human Design audience grew exponentially for the remaining two years of our tenure and in that swell the "Four Types" got carried away and finally enshrined in the extending Jovian codex. The first of the future high priests of Jovianism, Lynda Bunnell, Genoa Bliven, Mary Anne Winiger and others, appeared on the scene during 1998-99, and with the "Four Types" all the rage and Definition Types/Modes all but forgotten, that meant the loss of the original in the fog of their ascent. Forgotten was the scientific approach and religion was born, for who needs doubt, experiment and experience when there is a ready-made form into which, with a little twisting and a few amendments, almost anyone seems to fit?
Zeno and I went along with it, too, for quite a long time. Even after our split from Ra, our Course in Human Design featured the "Types" for another few years. But the mirage had already started to unravel at the tail end of the entire construct, with our unease about “authority” and “strategy,” since to us, life required openness, curiosity and courage, not a strategy, and authority was the result of this life examined.
From there the unraveling rolled backwards to the recognition that the whole concept of the "Four Types" was a dead end. Not only is it misleading, but labeling you and imposing your life’s strategy is an inherently violent act, to define you, to dominate you, to manipulate you, to have power over you. Such is the mettle of the showman, the politician and the priest, sleight of hand, to distract you, to dazzle you, to limit your vision to his screen so that he can do his magic tricks behind it, beyond your attention. 
By 2008 we were back to the original, with Ra’s interpretations purged from our literature and our education program, and mostly also from our minds, at least as concerns the application of Human Design. What a relief and what an ongoing revelation! Pun, of course, intended.
Every good lie has a kernel of truth, as the saying goes, and the "Four Types" are not without merit. There’s just enough truth in them to seduce and hide the lie, which is the pretense that this is all there is, that this is the last word, the actual revelation of Human Design, when in fact it is just one man’s interpretation of the original Definition Type and Mode, representing just a slice of the spectrum of their meaning, limited by the perceptional capabilities of that one man. I know, he did his best to present his views as infallible and has a crowd of adherents and admirers who agree with him, but if you care to look behind the magic show, you’ll notice that neither is the lady sawed apart, nor is all that glints gold.
Consider this: A design to do is always a design to do. There’s no conditioning that could ever make him experience the reality of a design to wait. In addition, a design to do conditions everybody he encounters to be a design to do as well, so he never even truly meets a design to wait. From birth to death, he is in a perpetual echo chamber of doing.
Would you trust that man to have to say much of value regarding your being a design to wait? Why would you? And there land three quarters of the Jovian doctrine on the garbage heap of useless distractions. Which leaves the “manifestor,” misled and flattered by his one-dimensional and disingenuous name. Manifestation is only one aspect of a motorized Throat, after all, very much dependent on the rest of the design.
Seems to me that Ra liked that term to describe himself and in his typical shoddy presumptuousness decided to name the whole category of doing after himself. And ever since, there's a bunch of little Ras running around, putting their shows on, confusing their designs with his and perceiving themselves as the crown of creation.
And so it is with all of the "Four Types" and their pretentions. They’re Human Design remade in Ra’s image and that’s particularly ridiculous when it comes to designs to wait. Even if they’ve caught the virus and regard themselves as "generators," "projectors" or "reflectors," there remains an unease. Deep down they know that this is not really covering the totality of their experience, that they have to pretzel themselves to fit the castes.
By prescribing his “strategies,” he’s trying to turn even waiting into action plans. He can’t help himself, can't imagine anything but himself. My “strategy” for access to action has to be to “wait to be invited”? Invited by whom? You don’t think I could ask if I needed to? Why would my ultimate goal be to gain access to action in the first place? I’m designed to wait. Action is not my imperative.
And so on. His cages are so blatantly ignorant, self-serving and self-centered. He literally has no idea of the vastness of my existence, of the joy of loving my conditioning, of the thrill of never being the same on my ride, of the confidence in every moment being exactly right, of the right thing falling into my hands at the right time. Why would I limit myself to his crude, confining crutches and his schemes to beat life? Yet plenty do and excuse themselves by calling him a genius. And in so doing they abandon their own genius, their own responsibility, their own authority, and the infinite, glorious uniqueness they actually are.
Instead of boxing you in by draping you with labels and assigning you to a caste with specific rules of behavior, Zen Human Design’s starting point is your life experience. You have been living your design from the moment of birth and every moment hence, after all, whether you knew of Human Design or not. Your chart is a dynamic whole of 64 gates, unique to you, forever changing. There’s no artificial strata you fall into, but infinite individuality.
Instead of letting yourself get shelved, you embark on an experiential scientific endeavor, comparing your past and current life with your body graph, recognizing the dynamics governing yourself and your relationships. It’s a process of self-discovery and growth, of becoming aware, often painful and lengthy, but enormously liberating.
In awareness there is freedom and there is love. If you are aware of a mechanism in your life that consistently hurts others, for example, this very awareness will make it impossible for you to continue being a victim of that mechanism. It doesn’t change the mechanism, but it does change how you are affected by it and by extension how you are affecting others with it. Awareness equals responsibility.
This is what Authority is in Zen Human Design.
Love
Chaitanyo
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About Our Secure Shopping
When our website came online in 1997, it cost less than $100 a year to host it. Over the years, though, as the internet expanded and became a major playground for corporate greed, more and more businesses inserted themselves to carve out a cut for themselves, which of course raised the prices. Meanwhile it costs literally thousands to keep Zen Human Design online.
The latest scheme is “security,” the encryption service that changes the prefix of a web address from http to https. Not so long ago, browsers started warning users that a site isn’t secure if that prefix isn’t https. They do this indiscriminately, regardless of whether the particular site actually requires encryption to protect sensitive data transmitted between the user and the site.
In the case of www.humandesignsystem.com, there is absolutely no need for encryption except in the shopping cart. We pay a premium for using a third-party shopping cart that is encrypted with 256-bit SSL security so that our clients can confidently place their items in the cart and pay for them. This worked perfectly well for more than a decade.
Recently, though, the latest browser versions started to insert deceptive messages into the shopping process that warn about supposed security flaws. When you now click on “Submit order” in our cart you may get a message warning you that “The information you are about to submit is not secure” and invites you to “Send anyway” or “Go back.”
Let me assure you that by the time you receive this message your order is actually already securely submitted.
The browser incongruously complains about having to serve up the “Thank you” page (see the address bar), which is not secure anymore and certainly doesn’t need it, since all the personal and sensitive information is already safely transmitted and stored on the secure server of the shopping cart provider. Plus, since we use PayPal as the payment processor, there isn't even any payment data involved, which has remained with PayPal.
If you now click “Go back” because you are made "not secure" by that message, you’ll miss out on the information we want to convey about what happens now with your order. You can confidently click on “Send anyway” and nothing will be sent, except a command to finally release that harmless Thank You page.
Adding encryption to the entire site so that this message no longer appears will add hundreds of dollars a year of extra cost for absolutely no benefit to anyone except the shareholders of the service provider. At some point soon I’ll no doubt have to give in, since the search engines now started to punish sites that are “not secure.” It's nothing but legal coercion and robbery.
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