Feel love. Speak love. Live love. Be love.

My daughter is getting married.  

I didn’t think that marrying off a daughter would be such a big deal.  But, in spite of my bravado, it seems to be sneaking up on me.  I have visions of my daughter in white making a life-long commitment to my soon-to-be-son-in-law, and I find myself all choked up.

My daughter asked me to give the toast at the dinner after her wedding.  I’ve been composing it in my head for a while and I thought I’d share parts of it with you.  (I’ll spare you the blubbering and sniffing parts...)

I want to talk to my daughter about what it means to love. 

As a mother, I feel like there are places in my life where I have become an expert.  I’m an expert at cooking.  I’m an expert at juggling all the crazy things in my life.  I’m pretty good at mothering a small child...still learning how to parent teenagers.  I’m an expert at working the internet.

In spite of my 47 years on the planet there remains a lot I have to learn about love.

I haven’t always gotten the love thing right.  I’ve been divorced and had several relationships, and even friendships, that didn’t work out.  I’ve wrestled with love for most of my life, even as a child.

I have come to, what I believe, are some important conclusions about love that I’d like to share.

I think that in our culture we are somewhat “love-challenged”.  Just go to your local book store and check out the personal growth section.  How many books about love are there?  

Look at the magazines when you check out of the grocery store.  How many stories are there about divorce, rejections, cheating, getting your man into bed, looking hot for your man or strange, unbalanced photo images of women leaning over their men as their men pump iron or stroke their motorcycles.

I’m not even going to talk about what we see on TV...

Somehow we are fed this idea that love is this zingy, hot, once-I-saw-Him/Her-I-just-knew, kind of emotional high that is supposed to sustain us for a lifetime.

We think love is a feeling.  

But if you look up the word love in the dictionary, you’ll find that love is, in addition to being a profound feeling, also a verb.

To love.

When we love someone, we are usually in a relationship with them.  Notice that the root of the word relationship doesn’t contain the word “love”.  It contains the word “relate”.  

Love is the foundation of relating.  Love can be just a feeling or even an attraction, but it’s also the verb form of love that creates a relationship.  I believe that you have to have three key elements to create a strong relationship; feeling, words and action. 

Some of our confusion about love lies in our lack of awareness of some of the basic “mechanics” of what love truly is.  I’m either a brave soul or a crazy woman for attempting to define this.

Of course, it all has to start with the feeling.  Nature is pretty smart.  Without that initial attraction that draws you to someone, we might not be so eager to leap into the mess that is love.

I find it pretty interesting that in Human Design, attraction is purely mechanical.  That energy that creates in us the need to blend our aura with another is usually just the dynamics of complementary energies connecting.  We often feel that people with whom we share these complementary energies “complete” us and, in a way, they do.  The more you share electro-magnetic connections with someone, the more attracted you may feel.

If you want to make it a little more interesting, attraction is also your aura recognizing energy that you are familiar with, like the energies of your father and mother, and that familiarity draws you from across the room.  If you run the charts of all of your previous loves, you’ll probably find that you’ve been dating the energies of your parents for a good bit of your life.  (Yikes, right?!!)

Electromagnetic attraction is the first place where we get bungled up in love.  Truth is, you can be wildly and electrically attracted to someone and they can be completely “wrong” for you.  They can be your electro-magnetic soulmate but married or dysfunctional or gay or...you get the idea...

While that “zing, zip, zap” of attraction is nice and it DOES pull people together from across the room, it’s not the only thing that makes a relationship.  It’s just the initiating spark and, good or bad, it’s not even personal.  It’s just mechanics.  You can have that same attraction with anyone who shares that same energy.  

(Now before I get all kinds of people who talk about souls recognizing each other and just “knowing” he/she is The One, etc., please note that I’m talking purely about the mundane aspects of attraction.  Of course, I do believe in soul mates, destiny, twin flames and all those things, too.  

I’m not so jaded as to think that there isn’t a bit of magic associated with love.)

But, usually I find that what people define as “soul mate” partnerships are often bound by strong electro-magnetics.  These are the energies that keep us engaged and circling in each other’s orbits until with time we get to go deeper...)

The second key element of love is what I will call the Language of Love.  The words we speak create the template for our intention in the material world.  

In Hebrew the word dvar is the word for “word” and it is also the word for “thing”.  In many ancient stories of origin, the world begins when G-d makes sounds which eventually give rise to the words which differentiate and define The Creation.  The words we use set the stage for the things and the experiences we intend to have. 

One of the reasons why I believe that marriage is such a sacred covenant is because the words we speak during a wedding ceremony set the stage for what we intend to bring into form in our relationship.  

Of course you don’t have to be married to create the intention for love in your life.  The simple words, “I love you”, sets a relationship up for loving action.  “I love you” says that you intend to act lovingly in your relationship.  It opens up the heart and raises a level of expectation that creates safety and acceptance.  

A relationship rooted in the words, “I love you”, is deeper, stronger and creates a foundation for growth.

Many years ago I worked as a psychic medium.  It was a deeply humbling experience and taught me more about love than I’ll ever be able to put into words.  When I connected with crossed-over loved ones, they always had a very simple message for their grieving loved one:

1. I’m sorry for anything I ever did to hurt you.  Please forgive me.
2. Don’t be sad.  Enjoy life.  
3. I’m okay.  Don’t worry about me.
4. I love you.

It was always the words, “I love you”, that brought healing to my grieving clients.  Those words were the final reassurance that what they had shared was deep, real and rooted in the heart.  That final “I love you” often gave my clients the will to continue their lives with the knowingness that they are loved eternally.

It’s not only the words, “I love you”, that carry that incredible power...ALL of the words we choose with our loved ones sets the tone for our experience of love.  True love calls for words that empowering, loving, uplifting, nurturing, inspiring, accepting, consoling, honest and deliberate.

I doubt anyone ever gets it “perfect”.  That’s why we also have the words, “I’m sorry”, and, “Please forgive me”.

I wonder how many souls on the Other Side wish they had had the courage to give words to the love they feel?

The third key element is, of course, taking loving action.  

Now, let me again remind you that I am not an expert on love.  I have made a lot of mistakes with love in my life and I am certainly not going to tell you how love should act.  

Personally, I don’t think this can be an absolute thing.  There are seven billion plus expressions of love on this planet and I think the big Adventure of Life is learning how to love all of them and, more personally, discovering how you can act lovingly with the people in your life.

And, as you know, life and love get messy sometimes.  People change, grow apart, grow closer together, walk around sleep-deprived with babies at their breast, worry about money, health, career, struggle with independent teenagers, struggle with aging parents and so, so many unscripted Life Adventures.  

Staying rooted in love during challenges is hard.  No matter how much love you feel.  You will make mistakes.  (See above for the “magic” words.)

I have raised five children full-time on my own for the last 12 years.  I have also run my own business out of my house for the last 12 years so that I could be home for my kids.  I figured out very quickly that stress, fear and exhaustion combined with too much caffeine made for some very un-loving mothering.  

For me to show up in my children’s lives, I had to have a map to show me, in the midst of chaos, how I wanted to express love in their lives.  It was too easy for me to parent in the moment and then be riddled with guilt later...which, by the way, didn’t make my parenting get any better.

I figured out that if I had a written long-term parenting plan, I would have a reference point for my parenting actions in those moments when I was overwhelmed and didn’t know what to do.  I sat down and wrote out all the qualities that I wanted my children to express and experience in life and posted it on my fridge so that I could check in with my goals daily and make sure that my mother-love-in-action was in alignment with the love in my heart.

If I ever get married again, I plan on writing a long-term plan for my marriage, too.  

I’m kind of chuckling at my hubris here...I have distilled love down into a few little steps...feel love, speak love, express love.  I’m pretty sure a lightning bolt is going to hit me any minute now...

So, just in case I can’t scramble under my desk fast enough to avoid being hit, I have to add one more very important key to good lovin’.  I mention this one last, but, it truly is an element that has to come first and has a category all on it’s own.

In order to live love and give love, you have to love yourself first.  

In Human Design, the seat of the soul is located in the G-Center.  The G-Center is also the center for love and direction.  We are hard-wired to be taken by life in the direction of Love.  

What we see in the G-Center is that when we love ourselves, our soul guides us into a life direction that is rooted in leadership, allowing us to make a unique contribution to the world and empowering us to take the lessons from the past and turn them into blessings.  When we love ourselves, by design, we can act only with love for others, a love that is rooted in the Love of Spirit.  When we love ourselves, we are designed to be healthy and to be able to fully express Spirit in form, to have all the resources we need to fulfill our life direction and, ultimately, to be driven by a love for humanity.

When we don’t love ourselves, our life takes us in a direction that helps us master self-love. (And sometimes we learn best when we’re face down on the concrete contemplating how to get up again...)

Sometimes acting in a loving way, means taking action that demonstrates your love for yourself.  Love yourself as you do others.  You can’t give to others what you aren’t giving to yourself.  If you try to, all kinds of messy things will happen.  

So, just to review, here are the simple steps to living Love:

Feel love.  Speak love.  Live love.  

And finally, since the G-Center is the center for identity...Be love.

May you always remember that you came from Love and that you are infinitely and deeply loved.  May you feel, speak and act with love and may the love you are and the love you give return to you tenfold.

Love,

Karen

Experiment and Explore

The Human Design chart is really a map for the entire possibility of what it means to be human. If you look at it from this perspective, it’s pretty amazing to see the potential of what we can be as a species and, of course, what is possible for us on a personal level.

We’re designed to love, be abundant, grow and evolve, take care of each other, create, experience, ponder and always sense our connection to Source. (And so much more!)

Homo sapiens has had a relatively short run on this planet. We are, in some ways, a big experiment. If you understand the mechanism for evolution that is revealed in the Human Design chart, that is absolutely true.

We can’t and don’t evolve without experimentation.

Our individual lives are really just short “blips” on the timeline of human evolution. And yet, as we continue to grow and evolve, what we do and create with our individual lives can have lasting impact on the future lives of others.

Sometimes the experiments we launch serve a specific function, but as we continue to grow and change, we outgrow some of our previous creations. We are a pretty complex creation and the only species that I am aware of that has the potential for deliberate conscious evolution.

This level of consciousness gives us the capacity to deliberately evolve how we organize and structure ourselves.

We are actually already doing this. Rebellion and revolution are symptoms of an internal sensing that our current structures are no longer serving us.

But awareness actually empowers us to construct and deconstruct in a very conscious way. We don’t have to destroy to recreate.

It’s so easy, when something doesn’t fit anymore, to react with anger and frustration. Human Design teaches us that anger and frustration are trigger emotions that indicated we are out of balance with our creativity. Time to wait for the next right step to reveal itself…

When we are experiencing anger or frustration (or both) towards a system, it’s not personal. It’s not necessarily about a “bunch of idiots” who have screwed something up (usually). The anger and frustration we’re feeling simply show us that the system isn’t serving our needs anymore and it’s time to begin the process of discovering our better options. We’ve “out-evolved” it.

This is also true of new ideas that don’t “work”. When you understand the process of how new ideas are integrated into the collective system, most new ideas don’t “work” straight out of the shoot. The anger and frustration we experience in the face of a “failed” experiment aren’t personal, just energies that show us that the experiment might need a bit more “tweaking”.

We are designed to tweak and experiment. Experimentation, mistakes and just plain being wrong are crucial parts of the creative process that ultimately lead us to the elegant solution, if we trust the process.

Starting on August 15, I will be teaching a new teleclass series, The Solar Plexus Mutation and 2012. Yeah, it’s kind of a woo-woo title and certainly, we’ll be talking about some esoteric and mystical stuff.  (Want to learn more?  Click on the link below.)

http://www.humandesignforeveryone.com/solar_plexus_mutation_.html 

But, evolution is also very practical and mundane. And, as I stated before, we are the only species who can consciously evolve.

During this class we are going to not only be discussing the energetic mechanics of evolution in the Human Design chart, we’re also going to be looking at evidence that we are evolving right now and what we can do to “midwife” this process of creating a new world, a world of sustainable peace and abundance for everyone. (It’s coming!!!)

There’s a lot of talk about 2012 and the “end of the world” and even the idea of ascension and shifting.

Personally, I believe we are shifting and growing and changing. It’s the nature of being human. Certainly, the Human Design chart shows us that we are designed to evolve. But we’re here in physical form and ascension and evolving isn’t about getting off the planet and living in a higher dimension.

The coolest part about being human is being HERE in 3-D, moving the proverbial mud, doing the work…

My friend and mentor astrology teacher Sao told me once, “People look up at the stars and they think they want to go HOME. If they’d just look around, they’d see that they are HOME.”

So, if we’re home and we’re here to have this very beautifully finite 3-D experience and we are standing on the brink of a shift and we have the ability to consciously evolve, what does that mean?

That means that if we feel called to be a part of deliberately sculpting the future of the world, we have to roll our sleeves up, get messy and make mistakes. We have to set clear intentions about what we want the new world to look like. And we have to dive in and be a part of creating it. 

That means we have to make choices and decisions about the kind of government we want, education we want, relationships and legal definitions we want, food and agriculture we want, resources we want, families and communities we want…

And then we have to actively experiment and play in the creative process.

Giving ourselves permission to experiment and explore is hard. While the Human Design chart shows us that experimentation and exploration are part of our nature, we’ve been deeply conditioned by an education system that does not value experimentation and exploration.

Our education system is a great example of a collective system that we’ve “out-evolved”.

When you look at the Human Design chart you’ll notice that the chart contains lines that connect the geometric shapes. These lines are called channels.

Within the channels of the Human Design body graph lie the secrets to human behavior and evolution. Much like the electrical wiring of a house, each channel in the Human Design body graph is part of a circuit, each having its own unique function, purpose and experience.

There are three major circuit groups, the Individual, the Collective and the Tribal. Each of these circuits has a unique function in the evolution and spreading of information, values and survival strategies.

When our Western education system was first created, it was in response to the need for factory workers. Factory work is deeply rooted in the “Logical Circuit” in Human Design. The Logical Circuit is one of the Collective Circuits. 

Logical Circuit

In Human Design, Logic is all about patterns that can be consistently duplicated in order to predict future outcomes. The Scientific Process is a great example of the Logical Circuit. Scientific Methodology starts first with doubt, formulates a possibility and, after experimentation, establishes a truth based on patterns that can be validated over and over again.

Factory work is simply a consistent repetition of a pattern that gives us a consistent outcome, a product that is relatively predictable.

The education system has beautifully evolved to fit a pattern. Current trends in education are attempting to move the system towards standardization. The current education system wants to be able to mold a child’s mind by applying a consistent process that will give a predictable outcome.

Many of you may be experiencing a gut-reaction to this statement. That gut-reaction is not about the system being “bad” or filled with control-driven people who want to crush or quell your individuality. Your emotional response is simply telling you that we’ve “out-evolved” the current education system.

It’s time to experiment and explore.

Human Design shows us that there are three very clear ways of “knowing” information. There is holistic thinking (right brain), logic (left brain) and simply just knowing (mutative ideas that initiate change).

The world is engulfed in an information revolution. Industrialism no longer drives the evolving economy (that’s a WHOLE other blog post…). We now need an education system that supports the expression of new ways of thinking and knowing. The current system devalues 60% of the ways in which we are hard-wired to “know” and children who aren’t designed to be Logical are suffering in the system.

About 20% of children in the US are diagnosed with a learning disorder of some type. There are probably others who are struggling without a diagnosis. These are often the kids who don’t fit into the standardized system because they aren’t hard-wired to be “logical”. 

 
A right-brain dominant child learns very differently from a left-brained dominant child and the current education system does not meet the right-brained child’s learning needs at all. In fact the current education system “squashes” the right-brain dominant child.

Evolution depends on diversity. If we standardize and homogenize the way in which we think, we crush the possibility of innovation and evolution.

I don’t have the solution. I’m not sure anyone has The Solution at the moment. But it is time to experiment with and explore what might be next. (It’s also time to stop hurting children who don’t fit into the system by labeling and medicating them. These kids might actually be the initiators of something fabulous and world-changing if we don’t squash them!)

It is time for us, as part of the conscious evolutionary process, to start dialoging about what we want and what we intend.

Everything is changing.

Everything.

I hope you’ll join me for my new class as we continue this very exciting conversation… 

http://www.humandesignforeveryone.com/solar_plexus_mutation_.html 

And in the meantime, if you want to fire up your brain, get excited and play with possibilities, here’s a link to a very cool interview with Sir Ken Robinson on Ted Radio: 

http://www.npr.org/2012/06/22/155225161/how-do-schools-suffocate-creativity 

Enjoy!

Love,

Karen

I haven’t written a good blog post in a while. I’ve been busy working on my new book (coming soon…!!) but the inspiration has been driving me crazy so I decided to take a break and write something a little different.

When I worked for Human Design America almost 10 years ago, my boss, Mary Ann Winiger, used to always talk about “The Program”. She said those two little words, “The Program”, with such reverence. She would almost whisper them with awe.

Frankly, I didn’t know what the heck “The Program” was. I was new to living in Sedona and if you’ve ever lived in Sedona (or someplace like it), you know that there are a bunch of secret esoteric vocabulary words being tossed around by people all the time and I just wanted to look like I fit in.

So, Mary Ann would whisper, “The Program” and I would muster up that same awed expression and nod knowingly. “Yes,” I would agree, “The Program”….

It has taken me until recently to figure out exactly what Mary Ann meant by “The Program”. As is my usual experience with Human Design, I was walking along like a normal person, thinking normal thoughts at the grocery store, when out of the blue the revelation of what Mary Ann meant by “The Program” smacked me out of my somnambulistic shopping stupor and knocked me back into hyper-inspired awareness. (Why does this always happen at the grocery store or in the shower???)

Let me try to translate the epiphany that I had at the grocery store into plain English.

We are born to be abundant. It’s how we are hard-wired. The circuitry of our Being is programmed to move us towards experiences and opportunities that support us in creating the perfect abundance for us. This constant potential movement towards abundance is the Program.

It’s kind of like this. We are like high-speed trains. We are designed to travel through life quickly, smoothly and steady on-course for our destiny with little friction. The Program is the magnetic rail for the high-speed train.

(If you want to learn more about this, scroll down and read my blog post: Human Design and the Promise of Abundance.)

The cool part about the Program is that we always have the option to “jump the tracks”.

As we experience life, we are influenced by other people’s beliefs, energies and collective consciousness. From these influences, we form our own thoughts and beliefs that create our life experiences. Sometimes these thoughts, beliefs and energies take us off the “high road” of abundance and make us feel like we’re driving our high-speed train on a gravel road. (Uphill. Backwards. With a blind fold on.)

The more off the Program we live, the more pain we experience in our life.

When we stop living the truth of who we are, the role we are designed to live out in the Program, we experience pain in our life. That pain is simply our Higher Self giving us a warning signal that we’re operating off the Program.

The Human Design chart is like a story board for your life. Your chart shows the character, the role and the plot for your life. In the chart there is drama, conflict and themes to consciously evolve. The chart reveals your unique path to a successful abundant life.

Your Human Design is your interface with the Program. Knowing your Human Design helps you find your way back to your natural state of abundance and restores your place in the Program.

Today is the Fourth of July. In America this is a day when we celebrate freedom.

One of the things that make us a truly unique creation on this planet is our ability to deliberately choose to evolve. Theoretically, we all have the ability to consciously choose to evolve and create in the world.

Of course, even though this is truth in theory, it is not yet a conscious and awakened possibility for many people on the planet. Many of our Divine Siblings are struggling to experience freedom of choice, safety and abundance on every level.

The Program promises that we will continue to grow and evolve towards this level of conscious awareness and freedom. The Human Design chart shows us that in the energetic blueprint of humanity, democracy is a highly evolved form of government, suffering is not normal and we are all designed to experience abundance in every way.

To me, Independence Day is about celebrating the steps we’ve taken to move towards expressing the highest potential for humanity. If you look at the span of the history of mankind, we’ve come a long way!

But we still have a ways to go.

Many people in my practice are seeking their Life Purpose. Because I am blessed to attract some of the most compassionate, caring people in the world, my clients want to know what they can do to make a difference in the world and how they can best be of service.

My answer is always simple. Get with the Program.

The first step you must take to make the world a better place is to fulfill your destiny in the Program.

(My students are probably sick of this analogy. If you’ve heard it before…bear with me….)

Humanity is like a beautiful puzzle. To make a complete and beautiful puzzle you have to have all of the pieces and they have to be in their right place.

There is a very big dog, three mischievous cats and five children living in my house. A complete puzzle with all the pieces intact is a rare and amazing thing in my house.

Every puzzle I have ever owned has had pieces mutilated by a frustrated child who forced a wrong piece to fit in the wrong space. Pieces go missing and turn up years later long after to puzzle has been thrown out. Dogs eat pieces and cats do unmentionable things to cardboard.

If you lose a piece to the puzzle or the edges of the puzzle get frayed and torn, the beauty of the entire puzzle image will never completely come together.

We are each like one of those pieces. When we do not fulfill our role, force ourselves into spaces that don’t fit and aren’t right for us, get lost and try to be someone we are not, we affect the total face of the Human Puzzle.

For us to fulfill our destiny as a species, we need to each first fulfill our role in the Program.

(Of course, this is only the first step. But our power to influence and transform the world is strongest when we play our part in the Program.)

Think about this for a minute. What we see in the world is a reflection of our conditioning and our perception of ourselves. The world is a mirror of our consciousness.

(How many times have you read that you can’t truly love another until you love yourself first, right? Same principle.)

Human Design teaches us to love ourselves. That self love gives our lives direction.

When we love and accept ourselves, we learn to love and accept each other. Our lives take on a direction of sharing love and acceptance for others. What we want and allow for ourselves is what we want and allow for our Divine Siblings.

Today as we celebrate Independence Day, I invite you to think about your role in the Program. And to take a few minutes to say a prayer affirming we can soon live in a world that is beautifully aligned with the Program.

A world where all individuals are consciously free to choose, have equal power and voice. A world where all people are free, valued, safe, well-fed, cared for, educated, healthy and abundant in every way.

Remember that what we focus on is where we create growth in our lives and the world.

I am so grateful for the freedom to be able to consciously choose. I am so grateful for a Program that has lovingly given direction to my life and blessed me with unspeakable abundance.

I am so very, very grateful for all of you who have graced me with the honor of helping you see your perfect and magnificent place in the Program.

And I am so excited to witness and support the continual evolution of humanity.

Let freedom ring!

Happy Fourth of July!

Love,

Karen

A Sneak Peek at My New Book....The Instruction Manual for Your Life

Here's  a sneak peek out of my new book.  (Please ignore the references to the other sections in the book.  They are being finished up as we speak...Yippeeeee!)  If you are new to Human Design, may I gently suggest that you get your free Human Design chart first, watch my free slide show and read the mini-report, The Parts of the Chart, that comes with your free chart.  Then come back and read this chapter.  It's pretty empowering stuff....

(p.s.  Here is the beginning design of the new cover.  We're not done yet, but it's a great start I think!)

Human Design and Conditioning 

If we are designed to be abundant, happy and loving, then why are so many of us struggling, suffering and feeling like we’re blocked or stuck in our ability to create a great life?

Most of the people I’ve worked with for over thirteen years as a Life Coach have been struggling in some way to make life work. All of my clients are very educated, enlightened and amazingly self-aware people, yet they feel stuck and trapped in old behaviors that keep them from creating what they really want to create in their lives.

The self-help industry has served many people by helping them identify their blocks and limiting beliefs. And while there is a tremendous amount of benefit to be had from self-awareness, many people still struggle with doing what they think they know they need to do to be successful. Self-awareness is certainly the portal to transformation.

But, self-awareness is only a doorway. Once you walk through that door, you have to know what to do next, otherwise you might just discover that you’ve added a whole other set of negative beliefs about yourself and your inability to “just do it” and make success happen for you.

Some of you may have sought therapy or coaching to help you work through some of your “problems” with loving yourself, hurtful or limiting behavior patterns or feeling comfortable expressing your authentic feelings. Some of you may feel like you’re broken or blocked on such a deep level that there is no hope for you.

What if you’re not broken? And nothing about you needs to be fixed? What if all you need is just a little bit more information about the unique way you operate and learn a new way to interpret the world and the energy around you?

You’re about to wake up to the amazing possibilities that are out here for you.

In order to understand why you get stuck in your creative process and sometimes feel broken, you have to start with learning some new vocabulary words and integrating some basic beliefs that will help you unravel the mystery of why you might be doing everything right and still not getting the results you’re hoping for.

The first vocabulary word you’re going to learn is “De-Conditioning.” In traditional Human Design, it is taught that once you see your Human Design chart, you begin a seven-year process of un-doing all the beliefs and actions in your life that aren’t really true to who you really are. This process is called De-Conditioning. (It takes seven years because that’s the length of time necessary to replace all of the cells in your body, with a few exceptions.)

But De-Conditioning isn’t just this magic process where you look at a piece of paper and ((poof)) seven years later, you’re deeply aligned with your authentic self and living an abundant life. It’s a conscious process that involves awareness, study and some time to recognize patterns.

De-Conditioning is the process of mastering your unique energy blueprint and learning how to choose your response to life rather than reacting to the energies that are constantly bombarding you. When you understand who you are, your unique strategy for processing energy and how to use that energy to make decisions and get what you want out of life, you become De-Conditioned. (Not to mention happy and abundant….)

Before you begin the process of being De-Conditioned, you have to first understand how you became Conditioned. You become Conditioned any time you step into the energy field of another person. Conditioning is the process of experiencing someone else’s energy and combining it with your own energy.

When we are around others, we take their energy into our open energy Centers. You can never escape conditioning. It’s the real music of the dance we all do together in relationships. Even when you live out the truest, highest expression of who you are, you will always experience other people’s energies.

Conditioning can be conscious or unconscious. Unconscious conditioning happens when you don’t understand the true nature of who you are and your unique energy configuration. When you are unconsciously conditioned, you can act in ways that don’t always serve you. You might even adopt limiting beliefs that are rooted in a fundamental misunderstanding of how you process the energies of the world.

When you are being unconsciously conditioned, you often mistake the energy of someone else as your own. And you act on it or react to it. This kind of lack of conscious awareness is exhausting because at a certain point, our own energy field struggles to hold on to and sustain an energy that is not naturally ours. Many people don’t realized that their “burn out” or exhaustion in life often stems from the energetic force necessary to manage energy that isn’t really their own.

Conscious conditioning comes when you are aware of how you process the energy of the world around you. When you get more experienced at understanding your Human Design, you will discover that you have more options than you ever believed about how you react to the world and the people in your life.

You begin to be unconsciously conditioned in your open Centers before you are even born. This is congruent with what the emerging science of epigentics tells us. Our beliefs and our energies are influenced by those around us as early as three months prior to birth, which coincides with the “birthday” of your Unconscious Personality in your chart.

Conditioning continues to come from your family of origin and the people who you were around consistently in your early life. This is the conditioning that often results in predictable behavior patterns and even influences your choices and attractions later on in life.

We are deeply influenced by the energies of our caregivers. Remember that where you are open in where you take in energy from the world and people around you and you amplify it. If your parents are defined in Centers that you have open, you are consistently exposed to those energies in an amplified way for your entire childhood.

This long-term exposure makes it easy to confuse the difference between your definition in your chart and your openness and the energy which is naturally yours versus the energy of your caregivers. When you experience the same energy amplified for your whole childhood, it makes sense that you think you have energies that you do not have consistently.

Here’s how it works.

When you look at your Human Design chart you will see that your chart is colored in certain places and white in others. Remember that what is colored in is “defined” in the chart, meaning this is your consistent energy, in essence the “truth” of who you are.

Where you have white in the chart is called “open” or sometimes you may see it referred to as “undefined”. Whatever is open in your chart is where you take energy and information in from the world around you. Because you are always around different people and energies, this openness is experienced or Conditioned in many different ways.

Not only that, remember that where you have openness you will experience these varying energies in an amplified way. You don’t simply take the energy in from around, you take it in and feel it even more. The openness in your chart is where you have the potential to become wise about others and the world around you because you “sense” these energies very deeply.

Openness in the chart can feel somewhat vulnerable. In our openness we sense and experience in intense ways. We also sense and experience in inconsistent ways. These energies can change for us depending on who we are with and where we are.

There are predictable behavior patterns that people adopt in response to the openness in their charts. A good Human Design Specialist can take one look at your chart and, with a quick glance, tell you the behavior patterns that may be keeping you “stuck” in your life.

You develop these predictable behavior patterns based on your long-term exposure to your families of origin. Your parents, your siblings and anyone you may have grown up with, consistently influenced your energy field with their energy field and you probably developed certain consistent responses to this powerful field of influence.

For example, let’s say you have an open Identity Center. 

The Identity Center is the energy center responsible for love and life direction in the chart. People who have this center open have the potential to be very wise about love and life direction. When this center is open you experience love and other people’s identities and direction very deeply. Ultimately people with an open G are designed to know others well and to experience many possibilities for the direction of their life.

But, when you don’t understand how this energy works, if you have this center open, you may have a tendency to question your lovability. You also may struggle to find the “right” direction in your own life. It’s easy to classify these patterns as dysfunctional and, certainly, they can be painful if you don’t understand them. With awareness, you can learn to use your openness as a valuable tool to help you become wise about what love truly is, about your unique identity and what makes you oh-so-lovable. You can also become very savvy about choosing the life direction that is right for you.

Understanding openness and how it works keeps you from being a “victim” of the energy surrounding you and gives you control over your life experience.

As you begin to live your Human Design Strategy and you gain a deeper awareness of your own personal energy, it begins to get easier and easier to break free from old energetic behavior patterns that you may have adopted over a lifetime and embrace your inherent wisdom. Sometimes the “broken” patterns you have simply disappear when you understand their root energetic cause and their origin.

Your openness ultimately becomes part of the gifts you bring to the world.

Let’s look at anther concrete example. Let’s say you have a child with an open Emotional Solar Plexus who is raised by parents who both have a defined Emotional Solar Plexus. The child is constantly experiencing emotional energy from her parents in an amplified way. 

 
Of course, a child doesn’t have as much impulse control when it comes to expressing herself. So, as she is taking in all this emotional energy from her family, she is manifesting the emotional energy of her family in her actions and behaviors. Her family believes she is a dramatic and emotional person and she has the reputation of being somewhat of a “drama queen.”

Let’s say that the parents in this family develop some challenges in their marriage and the emotional tensions runs high. This little girl is going to take all of that emotional energy in, amplify it and express it. She could easily become the emotional “canary” in her family.

Sometimes kids with an open Solar Plexus in a family with defined emotional energy will learn to be very “nice” and develop a lot of “pleasing” behaviors as a way of trying to control the emotional energy in the house. Remember, openness means you amplify your environment and feeling intense emotional energy, happy or sad, can be uncomfortable for the sensitive open Solar Plexus.

All of this foundational exposure to emotional energy translates to the possibility of a lifetime pattern for this girl. She may grow up into a woman who avoids conflict, defines her self-worth by how “nice” she is and never speaks her truth out of fear of experiencing someone’s emotional response. She may work hard to keep everyone in her life happy until she can’t sustain that illusion any more.

In later sections in this workbook, we will discuss the specific energetic behaviors of open and defined Centers and how they may be influencing your life. This will give you vital insight into your personal chart and your unique energy configuration. Each section contains affirmations and writing assignments that can help you grow in you awareness of your own conditioned patterns.

Once you become aware of your inherent energy, the energy of others and your conditioned patterns of response, you can begin to choose to respond to these energies in a new and empowered way. This is the crux of what it means to become De-Conditioned and it is a very conscious and active process.

As I stated before, the De-conditioning process will take some time. But you will begin to see improvement in your life immediately. Most importantly, you will see that many of your old patterns aren’t a result of you being “flawed” in some way, but merely artifacts of old energy patterns. This new perspective is dramatically empowering!

Energy Themes in the Chart

The Human Design chart is very much like the human genome. We all have all of the DNA that makes us human but each of us expresses our genes in our own unique way, with our own unique genetic combination.

We all have all the parts of the Human Design chart. It is a blueprint or the energetic map for being a human being. But, we each express aspects of the chart in our own unique way and with our own unique combination of energies. You can’t ever escape the full experience and expression of being human. But your energy will influence your interpretation of the human experience.

You can never “not have” certain human energies, nor can you shield yourself from them. We all experience the full range of being human, some of it in fixed, consistent ways, some of it in inconsistent and varying ways. Understanding your unique design can help you become a master of your energy

Centers, Profiles, Gates and Type represent different kinds of energy themes. There are nine Centers, twelve Profiles, sixty-four Gates and five Types. Also each Gate has six possible ways of being expressed. (There are actually even more factors that are part of a chart, but these are, by far, the most influential and relevant parts of the chart.) Each one of us is a magnificently unique combination of all of these energy themes.

The energies in the chart are thematic, meaning that when you have a certain energy in your chart, it will be a theme for you and your life in some way.

For example, let’s look at the Channel 59-6, the Channel of Reproduction and Mating. 

The Channel of Reproduction and Mating carries a theme of fertility. People who have this energy consistently can either be very fertile or struggle with fertility issues. Either way, if you have this energy in your chart, it will probably be a theme in your life. 

The energies in the chart are more of a continuum. For example, the Gate 25, called the Gate of the Love of the Spirit, can be expressed as either love or hate. But, none of us expresses only pure love or pure hatred all the time. The human experience of love and hate is more of a continuum of possible expressions. 

At the same time, when we are consciously experiencing life, we have the power to deliberately choose our response to life. In other words, you have the power to consciously express the highest possible expression of the themes in the chart. Understanding who you are and how your chart works, will give you the power to choose your response to life and the people around you.

Of course, when we are unconsciously experiencing life and we are reacting to the energies around us, we don’t often realize that we have a choice over how we experience the world. Knowing your Human Design teaches you how to never be a victim of other people’s energy again.

While there are many different subtleties and nuances to all the energy themes in the chart, in order to make the chart practical and easy to understand, I have related these complex themes to eight key personality traits that are the root energies for creating a delicious, successful life.

These eight key personality traits contribute to the full expression of your personal success, whatever that may entail for you. These eight traits, called Resiliency Keys, are influenced by your open and defined Centers in your chart and your unique energy blueprint. When you are fully expressing the highest energies in your chart, you will experience the positive manifestation of the Resiliency Keys.

The more fully you express the Resiliency Keys, the greater the satisfaction, success and joy in your life.

The eight Resiliency Keys are:

· Lovability

· Self-Worth

· Authenticity

· Courage

· Decisiveness

· Emotional Wisdom

· Self-Trust

· Knowing How to Leverage Your Energy

Think about this. If you feel lovable, have high self-esteem, express yourself authentically, have the courage to do what is right for you, know how to make good decisions for yourself, understand your emotional energy and how to interpret it, trust yourself and know how to use your energy in a sustainable way, you will have a pretty darn good life!

Of course, the opposite is also true.

When you understand your conditioned energetic and behavioral patterns, you can begin to slowly de-condition yourself and begin to lead a life that is a more pure reflection of the unique, magnificent human you truly are.

When you begin to discern the different energies that are flowing through you, become aware of your old energy patterns and your conditioned behaviors, you will start to develop new empowered ways of responding to the world. You will no longer perceive yourself to be powerless over the influences of other people’s energies and you will, over time, develop a new appreciation for the broad range of possible expressions of the human experience.

It’s kind of like this. When an elephant is first trained in the circus, its leg is chained and the chain is staked into the ground, limiting the elephant’s ability to move about freely. Over time, the elephant gets used to being chained and stops pulling and resisting the chain. When this happens, the elephant’s handlers stop staking the chain and the elephant no longer tries to escape, even though it could easily move about freely.

The energies of our conditioning are kind of like the chain that binds the elephant. Without awareness, we think our actions are hopelessly limited and we are stuck in perceived bondage to the energies of others.

When you learn about how your open Centers influence your experience of the world and you learn a new way to interpret the energy you take in and amplify, you begin to realize that the metaphorical chain around your leg, isn’t real and you can truly be free to be yourself in every way.

There is nothing keeping you from expressing your unique magnificence and perfect abundance except old energy patterns.  Section 2 of this book will help you learn to break these old energy patterns.

( I hope you liked it!  More soon!)

P.S. If you want to dive into the De-Conditioning process, check out my new class, De-Conditioning by Design

http://www.humandesignforeveryone.com/deconditioning_by_design.html

Suffering by Design????

(Short note today and some cool updates for you if you scroll to the bottom...)

The Human Design chart is an archetypal “map” of the possibilities of what we can experience in a lifetime. Every possible expression of being human is in the chart.

We have a choice, when we become aware, of what we want to create in our lives. We can react to our own energies and the energies around us, and live a life that lacks deliberation and consistent joy. Or, we can consciously choose our response to the world, fulfilling the promise of the possibility of humankind.

For example, when we look at leadership energy in the chart, we discover that we have a choice between dictatorship or democracy. Democracy being the highest expression of government in the archetype of humanity… Revolution and revolt are examples of our choosing to create something better, something more aligned with the highest potential for mankind.

In the chart we see that we have a choice to struggle or surrender, to love or hate, care or not care, feel enthusiastic or stuck and empowered or blaming.

(And, of course, so much more!)

The one thing you won’t find in the chart is the potential for suffering. There is no “Gate of Suffering.”

Yet, so many of us are suffering.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot while I’ve been working on my new book. I’ve been writing and rewriting a chapter on Human Design and Conditioning and it’s been kind of tough. I know what I want to say and it is so simple, but simultaneously so complicated.

For years I worked as a psychic, but all of my life I’ve been pretty sensitive to “B.S.” When I was little I could “feel” if someone had “good” or “bad” energy. I didn’t always understand exactly what the “vibes” were telling me, but I could just feel when people were “off”, somehow.

I still have that same awareness but a better understanding of the energy. My Dad worked in construction and engineering supply for most of my life. I worked for him for a couple of years. In the construction and engineering industry we use the term “integrity” a lot, but not in relation to morality, but to structural soundness.

I use the word “integrity” a lot, too. To me, when I’m referring to the integrity of someone, I’m talking about how close is a person to expressing the truth of who they really are, the “structural soundness” of their reality. An inauthentic life takes a lot of energy to sustain because it isn’t structurally sound. It’s weak and the Authentic Self always manages to squeeze in a horrified scream here and create some mischief here and there…

My psychic vibes about people are about this kind of integrity. When someone is living an inauthentic life or the life of the “Not-Self,” as we say in Human Design, they are out of personal integrity. It doesn’t feel good, to those of us witnessing it and to the person experiencing it.

It’s been my experience that the true root cause of suffering is not in the blueprint of humanity. There is a direct correlation between personal suffering and the lack of integrity in a person. The more inauthentic your life is, the more you will feel like you are suffering. The more aligned you are with the True You and all that the True You desires to create, experience and enjoy in life, the more harmony there is in your energy and the better you feel. (And the people around you feel better, too.)

That’s it. That’s all I have to say today except that I wish for you to release yourself from the shackles of suffering and set yourself free to unabashedly and relentlessly live a life that is a pure reflection of the Magnificence that is YOU!

Love,

 

Karen

P.S.  I've posted information about my new Life Cycle Analysis Training for Advanced Human Design Specialists.  Don't miss the Early Bird Special:

http://www.humandesignforeveryone.com/life_cycle_analysis.html

P.P.S.  Free Introductory Human Design Teleclass with Advanced Human Design Specialist, Evelyn Levenson on Thursday, April 19:

http://humandesignforsuccess.com/free-teleclass/

P.P.P.S.  Want to learn more about how to use Human Design in your business:

http://www.livingbyhumandesign.com/marketing_telecourse.html

How To Stay Awake and Do Your Algebra Homework without Falling Asleep in Your Oatmeal

I currently have two teenagers living in my house in addition to my almost three-year-old daughter. You’d think that on Friday nights I’d be up late walking the floors wondering where my party-animal teens are…but I’m not.

On Friday’s we’re usually all in bed by 8 pm. Weird, huh?

My kids go to a public high school that starts at 7:10 am. They have to be at the bus stop at 6:20 am. They are usually up at 5:30 am.

If they were farmers, they could follow the schedule of the sun and sleep in the dark and work in the day. But they’re not farmers. My kids are students and many nights they are up until midnight doing homework.

I’m also up with them. I like to make sure they get a good start to their day with breakfast and a nice lunch. Yes, I know they can do this for themselves, but they’re so tired, I’m afraid that they’ll forget.

Sometimes, if it’s raining or if they need tutoring, I’ll drive them to school. I’m a single mom. That means I have to wake up my toddler and take her with us. Then she’s tired, too…

I think our situation is unusually dysfunctional. Most schools I know of make sure the kids have an opportunity to get enough rest.

Chronic sleep-deprivation is a big problem for lots of folks and some of the cause is our lack of understanding about how to get good sleep.

(I don’t think it’s a coincidence that wearing pajama pants out in public is now kind of an okay thing. We are all longing for more sleep.)

Generally, sleep deprivation may result in:

• aching muscles
• confusion, memory lapses or loss
• depression
• hallucinations
• hand tremors
• headaches
• malaise
• sensitivity to cold
• bloodshot eyes
• bags under your eyes
• increased blood pressure
• increased stress hormone levels
• increased risk of diabetes
• increased risk of fibromyalgia
• irritability
• obesity
• temper tantrums
• yawning
• and symptoms similar to Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) and Psychosis

More than 10.4 million children are diagnosed with ADD in the United States, up 66% in the last 10 years. Ten million adults are also diagnosed with ADD in the U.S.

The symptoms of chronic sleep deprivation are identical to the symptoms of ADD. Not only that, when we get enough sleep, our bodies produce serotonin, a neurotransmitter that is responsible for “feeling good”. Chronic sleep-deprivation results in chronic low serotonin levels, creating depression.

I don’t want to depress you and talk about the rates of diagnosis and medication for depression in the U.S., but let’s just say it’s a lot….

My challenge today is to not slip into a crazy rant about ADD, serotonin and depression (Click here if you want to read more about ADD and Human Design)….remember, sleep deprivation can also look like psychosis (see above)….

Today I’m only going to talk about sleep, and most importantly, how to get good healthy sleep by Human Design. Specifically, I’m going to write about the Sacral Center and how it influences the way you sleep.

The Sacral Center is the energy center responsible for workforce and life force energy. Approximately 70% of the population have the Sacral defined. 

If you are a Manifesting Generator or a Generator, then your Sacral is defined and colored in red on your chart:

(Want to learn more? Click here to receive our free Introduction to Human Design slide show.)

If you are a Projector, a Manifestor or a Reflector, your Sacral will be undefined or white on your chart. 

Defined Sacrals and open Sacrals have different sleeping strategies. In my experience as a Human Design Life Coach and Family Coach, I have found that many of my client’s personal challenges and struggles can be resolved, or at least ameliorated when they get better sleep.

If you are a Manifesting Generator or a Generator, your energy is designed to “wear out”. That means that in order to sleep well, you need to expend your energy in some way every day. If you are struggling with falling asleep or insomnia, as a Manifesting Generator or Generator, it may mean that you need more physical activity to sleep better.

This is especially true for children. Sacral children need a lot of free play “run around time” every day to “wear down” their Sacral energy. I find that almost all of the children in my practice who have a diagnosis of ADD are Sacral Types and benefit tremendously from turning off the TV’s and computers and getting some solid outdoor playtime.

School, aftercare and even organized sports can often be short on the physical expenditure necessary for a Defined Sacral to sleep well. Of course, if a kid isn’t falling asleep, a parent usually isn’t getting enough sleep either and the whole family starts to run a chronic sleep-deprivation pattern.

(It’s amazing how much family dynamics can improve when everyone gets enough sleep for a few weeks…)

Many adult (and teenage) Manifesting Generators and Generators develop a habit of “pushing” through exhaustion at the end of the day and avoiding going to sleep while engaging in mind-numbing kinds of activities such as TV or computer.

Defined Sacrals are designed to do the right work. Of course, Defined Sacral people can usually “fake” their way through their work, even if it’s not ideal or correct. But that “faking” can lead to burn out, or at least a need to numb the frustration at the end of the day, so we avoid going to sleep, in the name of claiming our own “free” time.

For a Defined Sacral, it’s important to go to sleep when you’re tired. This helps you regenerate your work force and life force energy.

The Open Sacral is much more mysterious. Most Open Sacrals are conditioned to sleep like Manifesting Generators and Generators. But the Open Sacral needs to lie down and rest before they fall asleep and if an Open Sacral is waiting until they’re tired to fall asleep then they are waiting too long and they miss the opportunity for good healthy sleep.

The Conditioned Theme of the Open Sacral is “not knowing when enough is enough.” Many Open Sacrals get busy doing stuff at the end of the day and, instead of stopping and resting and then falling asleep, they push, trying to do more than is healthy for them…

Of course, the Open Sacral doesn’t get exhausted in the same way as a Defined Sacral and if the Open Sacral waits for the exhaustion, they might fall asleep for a short time but they’ll probably wake up again and have poor quality sleep with periods of wakefulness or insomnia throughout the night.

The Open Sacral takes in Sacral energy all day from the Generators around them. They need the “down” time (lying down and resting prior to sleeping) in order to discharge the extra energy they’ve picked up all day.

Open Sacral people should sleep alone and Open Sacral children should have their own room, if possible so that they can have their own auric integrity at night for better quality sleep.

The Open Sacral has another challenge, too. Transit energies from planetary movement can also influence the quality of their sleep. For example, over the last few months we had a long-term planetary transit that added the “flavor” of Sacral definition to the planet.

In other words, many Open Sacral people had the experience of having “too much” energy in the past few months, which ultimately burned out their bodies and made good quality sleep difficult. (I had tons of Projectors tell me that they’ve struggled with sleep over the past few months. My own Projector toddler has had horrible sleep challenges recently which only just improved as the Sacral transit went away….)

If you have an Open Sacral, it’s good to stay informed about the planetary transits. It can help you leverage your energy in a healthy way. (Same goes for the Defined Sacral although your sleep won’t be affected as profoundly.)

BTW, it’s not too late to receive your Weekly Human Design Evolution and Transit Report. The Human Design Weekly Transit and Evolution report is normally $120.00 per year. If you subscribe this week (until Friday, March 30), you pay only $97.00 for the whole year (until March 2013).

In addition, you will receive the following bonuses: 

• Soul-mates by Design MP3 ($47.00 value) 
• The Empowered Family Training Home Study Program ($198.00 value) 
• EFT for Parents E-Book ($25.00 value) 
• EFT for Everyone E-book 

Click Here to Subscribe

So, here is a challenge I submit for your consideration. Look at your Human Design chart and the charts of your family members. Assess your best sleep strategy and commit to sleeping well and enough for the next four weeks and see how your life changes!

I’ll see you in my dreams!

Love,

 

Karen