Not Knowing
It might surprise most of my readers when I tell them that I actually know very little about Human Design.
Imagine, astrology has its roots way back in human evolution, when our ancestors in their struggle for survival finally found leisure enough to raise their gaze to the sky and over time started to discover the intricate regularities of planetary movement and wondered what it all means. By today, astrology has developed into a tool of astonishing pointedness, at least in the hands of a skilled and humble western astrologer. It took tens of thousands of years to arrive at this point.
By contrast, Human Design is a mere 37 years old. It would be sheer arrogance and delusion to assume that anyone would know everything there is to know about it. Not even a lifetime is enough, and since my lifetime is noticeably edging toward its conclusion and the past 31 years of intense research of Human Design have revealed only relatively little that I know for sure, I’m not expecting to be all-knowing by the time this body of mine dissolves. That’s alright. I have a design to wait and by now I know what that means.
At age 17, out of the blue, I fell into a state that let me live for a few peaceful, blissful months in truth, not intellectually, but existentially. There was no distance, no difference between me and the truth. I was truth. I wasn’t. Truth was. Words fail.
For whatever reason, I slowly slipped out of that state again and as the distance painfully grew, I realized one fundamental thing: This wasn’t an achievement, this was grace. I was absent, I didn’t know a thing, I didn’t do a thing, I had no presumption, there was nothing separating me from the truth. If I hoped for truth to ever find me again, I must accept that I don’t know.
Of course, I was very young at that time and life threw many curve balls in the following decades, making me forget and remember again many times over. Not knowing more often than not was painful, a longing so intense that at times it made me pretend that I knew to escape the pain.
Over time I realized that that’s what belief is, the avoidance of the pain of not knowing, a mollifying substitute for knowing, a painkiller, and I understood why so many people believe, why billions of people follow “spiritual” leaders and religions that the smallest rational effort would invalidate.
And deep down, every believer knows that they actually don’t know, that they pretend and that they cheer possible fiction, and therefore they seek company in their beliefs. Every religion, every belief proselytizes. Misery, even disguised as salvation, inevitably seeks company. Often this goes so far that those who believe something else are declared the enemy, like that passage in the Koran that states that a non-believer is better off to die by the sword of a believer than being left alone. Thousands of wars have been waged and many millions have died in promoting or defending or adhering to their beliefs.
Not only do bodies die, but intellects and spirits, too. The devastating result of a belief is that it gives the illusion of knowledge and the resulting complacency is a door that inevitably shuts out truth, for where is the incentive to keep seeking? I believe I know and that's as far as I go.
Not knowing is the root of every rational process and the rational, the scientific process is what leads to truth, whether it’s the science of the outer or the science of the inner. It is patient with itself. Shortcuts, jumping to conclusions is not in the interest of any science, except for the modern per-version that sells its soul to the highest bidder.
Human Design was originally presented as a synthesis of inner and outer sciences. What the voice meant, I’m sure, are not physics, genetics and so on, but the scientific process, the painstaking method by which one whittles away from a hypothesis what one finds to be not true. As a synthesis, Human Design is something new, not the sum of its parts, and to unravel its truth requires that the process is applied from scratch, starting out ignorant, not knowing, and not pretending to.
Instead, Ra set out to replace the scientific process with his declarations. He was in a hurry and filled in all the open questions with his answers. In his pathology, for the sheer sake of vanity, he felt compelled to present his appropriations and presumptions as the absolute truth, the last word, confusing the significance of the messenger with the significance of the message. The man got angry and cut you from his graces if you questioned his conclusions, thereby abandoning science and creating a belief system that is and will remain stuck in pretense. Yeah, yeah, his followers and army of missionaries claim salvation and sing hallelujah, but what else is new? We’ve had that for thousands of years in other disguises and none of it has ever lifted the veil. It can’t.
In 1993, I was willing to accept Ra’s original report of the basic mechanics as a hypothesis, but have always refused to take his assertions and conclusions at face value. Too much about that man didn’t smell right. Too much of what he said, his names and keynotes and videos and books, appeared conjecture, too much was hankering for nothing more than effect, sounds good, hollow in essence. When he started to slather it on thickly from 1997 on, I simply tuned out and stopped listening to him at all. I was lucky.
Honesty is truth’s assistant in the human realm, as I know since grace descended on that young man I once was, rigorous honesty to myself and everyone else. And so I'm far from embarrassed to say that I know very little about Human Design. Looking at the ten steps of Zeno’s Human Design education, I’m still predominantly busy with steps 1 and 2, even after all these years.
However, the long immersion in these fundamentals, starting from scratch and assuming nothing, not even Zeno's suggestions, has revealed depths I had no idea were there, insights often surprising and often diametrically opposite of Ra’s assertions and the beliefs of the Jovian cult, allowing me to see with clarity where it all went wrong, where it went from a science of self-discovery to a marketable, viral myth.
And slowly but surely, perspectives develop of what a Zen Human Design I Ching might be, of what the revival of chakra science might be, of what the true character of those entities might be that interfere with and condition the pure cosmic breath. And it's all so delightfully different from the foregone conclusions of Ra's world, so much simpler, so much more practical and real, so much more liberating, so much less of a mindfuck.
As I continue to question everything, including myself, I’ll likely penetrate deeper and more of the truth will show and I may be able to share more, but I’m not counting on it and I will not pretend. I’m no guru. I’m comfortable not knowing.
Love
Chaitanyo
|
Q & A
Answers to select questions from readers, clients and students.
Defending the Faith
"My partner is a 5/1 emotional manifestor with a single definition, while I'm a 5/1 splenic projector with a triple split definition."
I say it again: please don’t introduce yourself to me with Jovian jargon. I’m on a completely different wavelength. I’m helpless with your info. Simply provide me with your birth data and I will have an idea of the individual you are.
I had to laugh, though, when I read this, because it’s the first time (remember: I'm not part of the "social media" madness) I have seen the Jovian jargon extended with what I’m constantly saying it has missed: the definition type. As I did foresee, Jovianism, in its glorious tradition of appropriation and competition, had to finally add the original definition type into its creeds, just so that it can pretend that it was always there and no big deal and Zen is irrelevant.
No surprise. It’s bizarre, though: As long as they still believe in their 5/1s, their 2/4s, their “manifestors” and “projectors” and “generators,” they’ll never understand the significance of the definition types, no matter that they have added it to their list of labels. They’d have to abandon their beliefs to understand the definition types and in addition mature significantly to understand doing and waiting. Fat chance.
Mark my words: As I continue treading my path, the gurus, the "influencers" (what a disgusting term), will be unable to let me stand, they will compete, they've already started, and many more of them will come out of the woods and claim to know original Human Design and presume to teach you. They will write books and newsletters and "feeds" and give classes in “original Human Design.” Watch out! More unnecessary detours ahead, brought to you by those who believe they know.
It's unlikely to really arrive there, but nevertheless a word of comfort to the Jovian gurus who fear that by my presence their fake rubber duckies might go down the drain:
Zen Human Design will never be "big" and it is in no competition with you. Your defense, your effort to kill me off, to make me irrelevant by appropriating me, is a waste of time and not necessary at all. Stop decorating your catechism with what you think I’m saying, just to one-up me. Calm down and continue playing with your ducks, pretending that they quack and dive and fly. Ignore me. Unsubscribe.
I’m not competing with you. I’m no threat. I cannot possibly hope to wrench a lot of people from your cults. There will always be just a few and they’ll become my friends not because I try to convince them, but spurred by their own intelligence, integrity and sovereignty. You never had influence on them anyway. Neither do I.
I take my clue from history. Billions of people belief themselves to be members of some religion, yet I see no evidence that any of them live truth.
“Zen Buddhism” is an oxymoron. It doesn’t exist. It’s either “Zen” or “Buddhism” in its many variations. Buddhism believes that Buddha made rules as to how they’re supposed to live their lives, Zen knows that to be like Buddha one needs to follow one's own light. Buddha’s last word as he died, his ultimate teaching, was sammasati, be your own light.
That’s the case with every religious tradition. It’s a tiny minority that knows (and knows what it doesn't know). The Sufis know, Islam believes. The Gnostics know, Christianity believes. Zen knows, Buddhism believes.
Zen Human Design knows, Jovianism believes.
You’re secure in your faith. Don’t mind me.
|
Giant rubber duck on the Mekong. Jinghong, China. |
Mobile-friendly Auracle?
"Oh, my god!! I’d made a mistake… typical 3/5 …
I'm excited to try Auracle, and I hope that you're thinking about making it mobile-friendly too."
First, there’s nothing “typical” about you. You are unique. Those “profile” keynotes are a trap, a cage keeping you from genuine knowledge. Even the name, “Profile,” is part of that trap. In Auracle, the lines of your Sun/Earth matrix are easy to see, but it absolutely refuses to enslave you to the tyranny of any terminology and labels, to seduce you into the complacency that all is already known.
As regards making Auracle mobile-friendly, I have been thinking about it a lot and as a result made it deliberately mobile-unfriendly. I see no sense in bending to a technology that, like no other, has lead humanity away from deliberation, contemplation, self-reflection and participation in the present. Auracle is not made for people “on the go,” it is a serious, though joyful, tool that requires time and attention.
I would like Auracle subscribers to sit down and enjoy the intricacies and dynamics of the body graph on a large enough screen so that they are able to contemplate its depth and experiment with comparison. The structure of Auracle is rigid, it doesn’t adapt to the whims of hardware manufacturers and their shareholders. That rigidness, that consistent form, combined with the fluidity and speed of its operation, makes the dynamics of the body graph all the more visible and accessible.
Auracle: No pretense, no presumption - just facts
"It's the picture, stupid!" (Ra Uru Hu, 1993)
Explore the manual.
Watch a demo video.
Annual subscription
$55, includes all features and any updates
Sign up
|