Take a moment. Allow your presence, your awareness, to sink into your body. Feel your breath expand your chest and your being. Let yourself return to center. Welcome to Awakening the Phoenix in the New Human Design Era. With this podcast, we’re going to explore not just what we’re leaving behind, not just what the transition will be like, but what it will be like to awaken the phoenix within.
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Show Notes
In the new era, the lock of Gate 13, The Witness, asks: how do we store, share, and hold the memory of humanity? Starting in 2027, Gate 54, the Marrying Maiden, the Gate of Drive, answers that question. With its harmonic, Gate 32, it forms the Channel of Transformation, a tribal channel that connects the Root Center to the Splenic Center.
The Root Center is a pressure center and the seat of adrenaline and drive. It is never an Authority, yet it is only ever defined together with one, through the Solar Plexus, the Sacral Center, or the Splenic Center. It is also the only motor with no direct connection to the Throat. This episode looks at what it means to have inconsistent access to the Root’s fuel, which is less like lacking and more like the tides. It also covers how a defined Root can be lived in healthy and unhealthy ways. The Not-Self question of the undefined Root asks: am I letting the pressures of the outside world run my life?
The hexagram for Gate 54 is Thunder Over Lake. The lake holds still, deep potency, and the thunder carries it far and wide. Gate 54’s ambition is for the individual to rise and transform on behalf of the tribe, and it joins the most mundane mastery of the material plane with the most mystical. It is also associated with memory held in the water of our cells.
As part of the landscape of the new era, Gate 54 may draw us toward stories of drive and transformation that elevate the whole. That isn’t a message to push yourself harder. With two Root gates in the new landscape, some of the pressure you feel may belong to the ecosystem rather than to you. Simple somatic practices can give you the pause to return to your Strategy and Authority.
In this episode:
- Gate 54 as the new key for The Witness
- The Root Center: pressure, adrenaline, and its partnership with the Authorities
- Inconsistent access as tides, not lack
- The undefined Root’s pressure to hurry, and the defined Root’s capacity for obsessiveness
- Thunder Over Lake: deep stillness carried far by thunder
- Ambition on behalf of the tribe, and the meeting of the mundane and the mystical
- Memory held in the water of our cells
- Stories the new era may value most
- Practices: 4-7-8 breathing, Spirit Gate (Heart 7), and the Sea of Tranquility
- Why this era may be especially supportive of living your design
Reflection: When you feel driven to push harder, how can you tell whether that pressure is yours or part of the world around you?
Transcript
[00:00:00] Pause for a moment and allow your awareness to focus in on the core of your body. Notice any tightness, any constriction, any resistance. As you inhale, let your breath soften your core, expanding the spaciousness within the center of your being. And as you exhale, feel any tension, tightness, and resistance dissolve and lift from within you. Welcome to Awakening the Phoenix in the new Human Design era.
[00:00:34] I’m your host, Zette Harbour, and today we are going to be exploring the Key for the new era that fits into the Lock created by Gate 13, the Witness. The question asked by this Lock is: How do we store, share, and hold the memory of humanity, particularly for the collective? What is it that we find most valuable to remember and to share as a story for the ability for the collective to survive and thrive?
[00:01:05] In the new era, the Key that will bring the energies that answers this question for this Lock is Gate 54. It’s called the Marrying Maiden, the Gate of Drive. It’s located in the Root Center, and with its harmonic, Gate 32, it forms the Channel of Transformation, a Design of Being Driven. In our previous episode, we talked about the pressures that come from the Root Center.
[00:01:32] Gate 54 is going to bring a different quality of pressure, and particularly because it’s pointed toward the Splenic Center, it’s going to be very interested in existential questions of survival and thriving and the success of the tribe overall, because the Channel of Transformation is a Tribal channel.
[00:01:51] To review, about 61% of people have the Root Center defined, which means about 39% of people have it undefined. Those who have a defined Root Center have a consistent and reliable way of experiencing that fuel and drive for life. Now, it doesn’t mean that they’re going to always use their Root fuel correctly for themselves or for others.
[00:02:13] It just means whichever gates they have activated or whichever channels create that definition, they are gonna create the conditions, they are gonna create the influences, the flavors, the themes for how that person uses their fuel and drive. And the Root Center, as we’ve talked about, is never an Authority, but it is only ever defined in partnership with an Authority.
[00:02:35] For example, it can be defined by a connection to the Solar Plexus, which is the Emotional Authority. It can be defined by a connection to the Sacral Center, which is the Sacral Authority, or in this case, connecting to the Splenic Center, which is also an Authority. So even though the Root isn’t an Authority in and of itself, when it’s in collaboration with one of these powerful Authorities, it influences the way that person accesses their inner wisdom, and whether they have the fuel, and how that fuel arrives, and what that fuel feels like to them to move in the direction that they’ve chosen to go.
[00:03:13] The Root is a pressure center, just like the Head Center, and so these two pressure centers form what Ra liked to call a pressure sandwich. Another interesting point about the Root Center is it’s the only motor that has no direct connection to the Throat. According to Ra, that would just be far too much fuel and drive power being able to access the Throat directly.
[00:03:34] It is filtered through those three Authorities, as we’ve talked about. Because the Root is associated with adrenaline and all the stress chemicals that go along with that, it is the fuel for life to emerge. It does give us the fuel to move in the directions that we choose to move into, and therefore it’s an essential ingredient in manifestation.
[00:03:59] If you have it defined, you’ll access that consistently and reliably. If you have it undefined, you’re going to have inconsistent and unreliable access to this fuel. The phrase “inconsistent and unreliable,” I think, sometimes can be a little confusing. It’s not inconsistent in the sense of, oh, someone’s flaky, right?
[00:04:17] We—I think we think of inconsistency as lacking. I also think we think of unreliable as something negative. In this case, you can think of it more as the tides. They’re there, and then they’re gone, or that booster part of the rocket that I talked about in the earlier episode. It lights up to provide the absolutely essential power and force and fuel to push that rocket out into orbit so that it can escape the gravity of Earth.
[00:04:48] That’s the kind of fuel that the Root Center provides to each of us. So imagine if your, you know, the booster part of your rocket kinda sputters every once in a while or doesn’t light consistently or burn smoothly or evenly. I think we’ve all seen it, when that booster doesn’t fire correctly, smoothly, evenly, in a well-balanced way, the rocket goes off course and crashes and is destroyed.
[00:05:14] So when you have an undefined Root Center, it’s really valuable to remember you’re not designed for your booster to fire off in the same way every time in a way that you can say, “Yes, this is exactly how this fuel will rise up in me, and this is what I’m going to do with it.” Instead, it’s essential that you return to your Strategy and Authority when you feel the stress, the fear, or the pain of life that gets that adrenaline going, that gets the stress chemicals flowing, that gets that fight-or-flight sympathetic nervous system charged up and ready to either take someone down or get out.
[00:05:55] And if you have any gates activated in your undefined Root, they are going to be where you can reliably look to see how you are being pulled off course by stress, fear, and pain. The other thing I mentioned in the last episode: people with an undefined Root Center are here to do things fast because you can, but you’re not here to do things fast because you should.
[00:06:21] And so if you are trying to get things done as fast as you can just to get that pressure off of you, out of you, what you’re going to be doing is distorting your design, distorting your True Self in a way where you’re going to be squeezing energy out of you, trying to find a way to get that fuel just squeezed out of yourself in a way that’s very unhealthy for you.
[00:06:45] And long-term, it’s easy to see how that can be damaging to your adrenal system. Now, the majority of folks have a defined Root Center, and when they are living in a healthy state, they’re comfortable with that consistent internal pressure, and they’re actually able to notice when someone with an undefined Root is doing unhealthy things to push that drive and fuel out of them.
[00:07:09] And someone with a defined Root in a healthy state, they don’t let that consistent pressure drive them to take action or make decisions that aren’t correct for them. They let their Strategy and Authority guide them. A defined Root can also be used in an unhealthy way. It can create a quality of obsessiveness in one’s drive, one’s fuel, and allowing that pressure to push that person to initiate without consulting their Strategy and Authority, and therefore creating the wrong kind of stress in their lives.
[00:07:42] Those with an undefined Root can allow this fuel that may arrive and may also disappear, but they can allow it to serve them in accordance with what is correct for them. What it requires is that they are willing to feel the pressure, and the stress, and the fear, and even the pain, and be able to recognize that it’s okay to give themselves a little time and a little space to check in with what is truly correct for them.
[00:08:10] And I think what’s gonna be interesting is that if you haven’t tried this yet, and you have an undefined Root, and you feel so much pressure to get everything done as quickly as possible, and you don’t let yourself take time to check in and to follow your Strategy and Authority, and also to get to know what these dormant gates, if you have any in your undefined Root, are causing you to misperceive as the truth, then this fuel can be relied on in service of what is correct for you.
[00:08:39] And then when it’s gone, you don’t try to distort the other parts of you to somehow force it to be there again. It’s about accepting that if it’s not there, that’s good, and if it’s there, that can be good, too. But that you don’t try to manipulate, or push, or force it to be either one. And the ultimate Not-Self Conditioned Mind question of the undefined or open Root is: Am I letting the pressures of the outside world run my life?
[00:09:09] So Gate 54, the Marrying Maiden, the Gate of Drive, located in the Root Center pointing to the Splenic Center, is the Key in the new era that answers the question: What memories, what stories do we hold, do we store, do we share for our collective survival and thriving? So when we consider that the answer is coming from the Root Center, a center that has no awareness, a center that is never the Authority, a center that is purely here to provide the fuel and drive for life, that brings a very unique quality.
[00:09:43] Gate 13 is creating part of the landscape upon which human evolution for the individual and for humanity as a whole is going to occur. And so Gate 54 is influencing this landscape with its unique qualities and characteristics. The hexagram itself is represented by Thunder Over Lake, and these two energies give us a lot of insight into what this gate can bring.
[00:10:09] For example, the lake brings the energy of held stillness, depth, immense awareness, immense vitality and life, and yet most of it is held in the depths where you may never even see it. You may not even realize it’s there until the power of the thunder vibrates all of that into an acoustic awareness. And Gate 54, with its drive in this Tribal channel, so its drive to ascend, drive to elevate, drive to transform, can be felt in a very embodied way by imagining all of that potency held within those waters in the lake, and then the power of the thunder to deliver that potency in a way that reaches far and wide.
[00:11:05] Gate 54 is associated with ambition, and it’s easy to see where ambition could be interpreted as an incredibly self-centered approach to life. Ambition for one’s own achievements, one’s own success, one’s own transformation. But because this is in a Tribal channel, it is the individual who is transforming, who is driven, who has the ambition to become more, always, though, on behalf of elevating the tribe overall.
[00:11:39] There’s an interesting dichotomy held in this gate. It is described as one of the most mundane gates, meaning ordinary reality, material world, feet on the earth kind of day-to-day, “How can I master this material plane to be transformed, to succeed, to become more, to have more?” And at the exact same time, in the exact same measure, it is also described as one of the most mystical gates.
[00:12:07] And there’s this unique juxtaposition of the mastery of the material plane actually making possible a mastery on the spiritual plane. And so this is where the fuel from this gate, when lived in alignment with your True Self, brings benefits for the whole through one’s own individual transformation, through one’s own individual journey and willingness to be transformed, and to master the material plane.
[00:12:39] Where it gets kind of messed up, where, where it can go sideways, is when that ambition for material mastery forgets its mystical twin. And maybe we can even look to the hexagram again, and we see that potent, deep, still lake containing all of the information about life, how to survive, how to thrive, how to master the plane.
[00:13:02] If you only focus on the thunder, right? Which would be that person who is living only for themselves, for mastery on the material plane, regardless, they don’t care what happens to other people, that’s just the thunder part. When you combine both, you see that there is a partnership between these two ways of being in the world that is incredibly powerful and brings great benefit to those within their particular chosen community.
[00:13:31] Another interesting element of Gate 54 is that it is described as a very powerful gate of memory, and even directly described as the memory that resides in the water molecules in the cells in our bodies. And again, we can look to the thunder over the lake to see a beautiful synchronicity there. That still, potent, deep, rich lake holding all the memories of existence, of the fuel that got life going, that got life to transform on the material plane, all moving toward that mystical transformation and elevation, not just for the one, but for the many.
[00:14:15] And so now, being the Key that answers the question: What memories, what stories do we hold, do we store, and do we share? We’ve got this extraordinary, deep, potent, watery reservoir of ancestral memory about all of the stresses that made it imperative to overcome, to be transformed enough to be able to survive, and beyond that, to thrive.
[00:14:41] And so in the new era, in the landscape, as we look around, what we will be most likely interested in are stories that support this process. These themes of individual drive and overcoming and ascending and transforming because of pressures related to material success, material survival, and thriving that at the same time elevate the entire tribe and open the possibility for a mystical ascendance and transformation as well.
[00:15:15] And so in this new era, if you are starting to look around and maybe the stories of the old era simply don’t seem like the best ones to store, to share, and to hold for survival and the thriving of the collective, because Gate 13 is a Collective gate, then I think it’s gonna be helpful to understand why you might be drawn to a new kind of story.
[00:15:39] And also to not mistake this landscape energy, this background influencing energy, for something about your personal journey, your personal drive to transform and ascend, and to attain mastery on the physical plane. Because when you’re in survival mode, it can be very easy to think that only what is here in this moment, in this physical material world, is important.
[00:16:08] And Gate 54 has a much deeper story to tell us, which is that every step we take, every ambition we have to ascend, to transform, to attain this mastery of the material plane, is ultimately in service of this mystical transformation, ascending, and mastery for the group overall. And so it might be tempting to only look at stories of people who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps, right?
[00:16:37] Against all odds, didn’t let stress, fear, or pain stop them, right? Basically pushed and forced their way through any kind of obstacles to material mastery, but without any consideration or connection to this deep, potent ancestral memory, without any awareness that the process they’re involved in isn’t an isolated window in time, that it has its roots deeply, deeply sunken underneath the surface, the depths of that lake.
[00:17:09] And if they only focus on being thunder, making a big noise, sounding impressive, then they lose so much of the value of this gate. If you don’t have this gate and you have an open or undefined Root Center, you might feel a different quality of pressure to be more thunderous in life, you know? To, to really push through.
[00:17:31] Like, find a way to squeeze this fuel out of your body so that you can meet the challenges of the stress, the fear, and the pain so that you can transform, that you are driven by that. And that would not be the healthy message for you from this background frequency. The knowledge that this is going to be in the ecosystem around us, right?
[00:17:53] This is the old growth forest ecosystem in the new era, and the stories of this kind of drive to transform, of this balanced beauty between material mastery and spiritual mastery. Keeping your awareness open to all of that will allow you to receive the gifts of living in this particular landscape. And so we can imagine that the old ecosystem, the, the garden, the structured, ordered, rigid garden ecosystem, would say that this drive to master the material plane must serve the garden and its production, its communal sharing and distribution based on how much work everyone is doing.
[00:18:38] And whether they are worthy of being appreciated or whether they are worthy of being acknowledged as having mastery came from outside. In the old growth forest, those who experience this drive to transform and who correctly ascend and develop mastery over the material plane, allowing them to move into the most mystical of transmutations, will give us powerful stories to share and memories to hold. In the old growth forest, the water held in the cells of the soil and of every living being in this ecosystem is where this ancestral memory lives.
[00:19:21] And the water is absolutely essential for the drive for life to even begin to move up and through. According to everything we know, life began in the water on our planet. Without water, there is no life. And this water in the old growth forest permeates through all of the cells and even in the air of the old growth forest, the moisture in the air.
[00:19:49] And it’s the qualities of that omnipresent, deeply potent, deeply wise and knowing liquid found in every form, every shape, that is contributing to this landscape in which the inhabitants of the old growth forest can transform, can survive, can thrive, ultimately mastering the material plane as individuals, and always in service of elevating the tribe as a whole, the ecosystem as a whole, and in doing so, bring into living embodiment the transmutative mystical forces of life. Whether you have a defined Root Center or not, there are a number of practices that you can draw upon to support you in meeting the pressures of life, in meeting the pressures of the material plane, and in nurturing your own mystical self, your own mystical aspect of your being.
[00:20:48] As always, we can begin with the breath. It’s the most accessible, the most easily observable process that we have. And in this case, I recommend Dr. Andrew Weil’s 4-7-8 breathing practice. I will include the information about how you do this process in the description below, as well as a link to a video of him demonstrating this.
[00:21:10] It takes less than 30 seconds to do this practice. And while at first glance it might seem that the breath is unrelated to the water in your cells, in fact, every breath is filled with moisture. Every breath is bringing in moisture from your environment and is expelling moisture into the air. Another incredibly powerful practice, and so easy to do to bring your adrenal system back into balance, to give yourself the space you need to be able to take a moment so that you can consult your Strategy and Authority, so that you can look at what dormant gates in your undefined Root might be pulling you off course, or what other aspects of your Not-Self Conditioned Mind are trying to convince you to misuse your adrenaline, your pure fuel and force.
[00:22:04] You can do these anywhere. Now, there are many acupressure points on the human body, and many of them do help with stress. The ones I would recommend because of their ease of use and the fact that you can access them regardless of where you are. The first one has the English name Spirit Gate. It’s also referred to as Heart 7, and it’s found on the wrist.
[00:22:27] Find your crease, find the center point of your crease, move over outward toward your pinky, and you find a little space there, a little hollow that you can press. And you might even notice that it feels very connected to your pinky. You can press this straight on and allow yourself to breathe quietly, naturally, gently, and then you slowly ease your thumb back out, or you can tonify it by moving in a circle.
[00:22:56] And you can do this as many times a day as you would like. Another one that honestly is my absolute favorite is called the Sea of Tranquility. It’s found on your sternum, on your chest. If you take your four fingers, put this one right at the base of your sternum where it begins, and place those four fingers, pinky at the base, four fingers up.
[00:23:21] Then the easiest thing to do is simply replace that fourth finger with your thumb. The best thing to do is to keep your thumb at a right angle to your body so that it’s just going straight in. And in this case, you just allow it to sink into that spot. For almost everyone, this spot is going to be tender at first, and there are many reasons for that.
[00:23:42] It’s an incredible point for easing stress. I mean, just realize, of course, it’s kind of obvious, one of the first things we do when we’re stressed is tighten our chest. So physiologically, just from a mechanical standpoint, you are allowing your chest to open, and from a Chinese medicine standpoint, you are allowing the chi, the energy of your body, to move through you.
[00:24:06] And so you just hold it gently for a few moments while you breathe naturally and easily. Gently ease your thumb out of this point, and then you can, again, tonify it by massaging it in a circle. And if you’d rather, you can just do the circular massage rather than pushing in, ’cause a lot of people, the, the tenderness might be too much, especially at first.
[00:24:31] Both points can be done multiple times a day, no matter where you are. Something I’d like you to take with you today is the knowledge that this new era, this background frequency, the landscape of it, contains two Root gates, and this is very different from the old era. And so at first, you might not even realize that any stress, fear, or pain, or pressure, or drive, or ambition, any fuel that feels like it has to be pushed out of you in order for you to master the material plane, in order for you to succeed, to transform, is now coming through this whole ecosystem.
[00:25:15] And it’s neither good nor bad. It’s knowing that it’s present that matters, and understanding, number one, you can’t escape the ecosystem you live in. None of us can. However, when you feel that, it can be a signal to you to do whatever somatic practices give you the spaciousness to pause and to return to your Strategy and Authority.
[00:25:40] I know for myself, it’s only been in this process of creating this podcast that I actually came to fully appreciate the intensity of the conditioning of the old era on my specific design, and how I would have never known that, and how most of us don’t, and how it would have been unlikely for me to actually ever not feel that pressure from the ecosystem, the old garden ecosystem.
[00:26:09] What might have been different is that I would have had a different understanding of what those pressures meant, particularly about myself, because when we have these external conditions that are immersing us in energies that are making us believe certain things about ourselves or others that are not true, it severely inhibits our ability to enjoy our lives, to love ourselves.
[00:26:39] And so in the spirit of this new era that creates a container within which individuality and self-empowerment are prioritized, starting to build your own collection, your own awareness of what resources do you have that can support you in aligning with your True Self. Because if we don’t do that, then all these external conditions, all these energies that will be omnipresent, will be the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the light we see.
[00:27:13] They will just enforce what our Dutiful Self says we should and must do, be, and have. And what I love actually about this transition into this new ecosystem is that Human Design itself supports individuality and self-empowerment. And had Human Design come along earlier in the old ecosystem, in that garden ecosystem where everyone is supposed to follow the correct rules for the communal good, for what the community says is good and worthy and the best, the energies of that ecosystem would have made it incredibly difficult to actually follow what Human Design offers.
[00:27:58] And I guess basically I, when I think about the timing of Human Design coming to our awareness through Ra Uru Hu, because often you hear people wonder why it took so long. I mean, why, why deliver this system when, according to the system itself, our form of human is leaving or ending or diminishing, I suppose?
[00:28:20] And some people have even asked the question: Is Human Design relevant in the new era? And when I look at the new energies that we’re going to be surrounded by, immersed in, what I see is a container that is actually far more encouraging of following a system like Human Design to connect to your True Self’s design, to align with who you truly are and how you’re truly meant to be.
[00:28:47] And as you do, you flourish, which is what the inhabitants of the old growth forest each do. They live their design. They’re focused on their individuality and their self-empowerment, and as they do, it naturally ripples out to the wellbeing and to the good and the thriving of the entire community. So whether you’re new to Human Design or have been in it a while, my sense is that we’re moving into a truly empowering time.
[00:29:17] I’ll see you there.