My Emotional Life

No Choice Lessons

I have been riding my emotional wave, deciding whether to go to Ibiza this year for the 'Return to The Magic Island Retreat.' And, finally, this week I gained my clarity: I don't have the energy for this project this year, and it feels neutral - no further wave.

‘No Choice’ is the theme for me right now. There is such a relaxation into the deep surrender to Inner Authority for me. Perhaps it is the relaxation of my nervousness in the emotional wave, or it is that my mind has finally accepted that the body is in charge of this or that decision, which allows me to relax. Who knows, but I enjoy the feeling that comes with reaching that place of acceptance. 

Reaching this realization has not been a simple process. It took me a couple of months, as my mind and heart really wanted to go! As much as I would love to connect in person with our students, colleagues, and friends in beautiful Ibiza, it won't be this year.

I am very supportive of the 4% The Experiment Film project, and happy that a Human Design film is being made. I also think the 'Return to the Magic Island Retreat' is an excellent opportunity for people to connect and learn from outstanding Human Design teachers, and to have an in-aura experience of many fractals. However, it's not the right step for me to be involved in the event this year. 

My decision is not rooted in conflict or opposing anyone; it is about honoring my Inner Authority and surrendering to what is correct for my vehicle at this time. I realized that I liked the idea of going, but I didn't have the energy for all the things that came along with participating in an event halfway around the world.

I got to see how precious my time is, which is a somewhat amusing realization, considering time is such an abstract concept in the first place. It feels right for me to dedicate my time and energy to other projects, such as our health, family, and online Human Design initiatives.

Ultimately, there is no choice. I've realized, yet again, that my mind and heart aren't actually in charge of how my body lives its life. Instead, I'm here to observe the journey my body takes. Where it goes, what it does, and how it navigates this ever-changing world – it all unfolds with its own inherent wisdom. I'm incredibly grateful for every moment I get to consciously witness my life unfold.

I so appreciate our students and connecting with each of you in this life. Perhaps, someday, our paths will cross in aura. All we can do is wait and see. 

Why The 4% Experiment Film...and Why Now?

We're living in a time of significant decline, but we can take one decisive action: actively gathering and recording the transformative potential of Human Design. It is a legacy resource for future generations who choose to explore themselves through Human Design. It needs to exist so that future generations may have a unique experience of themselves and being alive.

Ra is gone; no one will be directly initiated into their Human Design experiment by Ra anymore. Many first-generation experimenters have already passed away, including Randy Richmond, Kathy Kinnard, Mal Brittain, Ilana Jagruti, Ed Stanton, Zeno, and Jurgen, to name just a few.

Those of us who were direct students of Ra share our experiences as evidence of the experiment, which has succeeded and continues to provide each of us with a life like no other. We each experience ourselves and life with greater awareness. We can view Human Design as a path for individuals to realize themselves as passenger consciousness, experiencing this human life with empathy, acceptance, and a profound sense of love.

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Mutative Times

We are undeniably living through immense global change, a mutation affecting everything from our weather to our societies. To navigate this, we must find inner stability and become the conscious observer, the 'passenger' within our own lives.

My personal journey, marked by emotional volatility and a triple-split awareness, was further complicated by conditioning, leading to fear and protective mechanisms that obscured my true self. However, by embracing Human Design, I freed my mind from its controlling role, allowing for a transformative shift. Just as I continue to mutate, so too is the world undergoing a profound change, shedding old patterns for something new.

Integrating my PHS (Primary Health System) into daily practice significantly enhanced my sense of stability, allowing me to fully experience life. Ultimately, the potential of Human Design is to empower us all to discover this inner stability, to live authentically as aware observers, not lost in the world's conditioning but present and engaged in the experience of being alive.

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The Challenge of Awareness, pt 2 By Leela Swann-Herbert

How do we enhance awareness?

We enhance awareness through the daily practice of being aware of our variables as we practice our strategy and Inner Authority. Awareness changes everything. It lets your vehicle live life fully while you relax and observe the experience.

 It is the body that lives the life.* Each of us has a vehicle that vibrates with life. It operates at a specific frequency. Daily practice of our PHS regimen is an experiment in attunement of the body’s frequency and enhances our awareness of our Inner Authority—whether center or process-based.

 Our PHS and Environmental variables enhance our experience of Body Consciousness. We can learn to observe and be aware of body consciousness. Our Perspective and Motivation variables allow us to recognize our personality patterns and why the mind is unreliable for making decisions. At the same time, they develop and enhance our capacity to experience the awareness of our true self, the witness within, the passenger consciousness.

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The Challenge of Awareness, pt 1

The not-self is the mind as the decision maker.* It is the 7-centered inheritance from our past. For centuries, everything—religion, culture, society—has taught us to let our minds lead.

This was somewhat controlled by the global cycle Cross of Planning background frequency, focusing on the 'greater good.' But those old systems were also deeply unfair, biased, and based on 'us versus them' thinking. Right now, we're seeing a lot of chaotic and irrational behavior from people acting on their individuality without self-awareness. As the guardrails of the Cross of Planning fall away, the warning from our future becomes clearer: Individuality without awareness is chaos.

We are designed to live as unique individuals and make choices based on our own Inner Authority, not by outside pressures.  The 9-centered potential is about being aware in the present, in this moment. Remembering that we’re here to witness life and experience consciousness while in form is crucial.

It's not about stopping conditioning entirely. It's a natural part of life. The question is: how do we respond to it? Do we blindly follow the crowd, living a life driven by our mind's conditioning? Or do we observe the mind’s reactions to conditioning, developing a new sense of self-awareness that is aware of the patterns of the mind?

 Each time we meet our conditioning, we can make a new decision. The challenge is enhancing our awareness of our Inner Authority.

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The Dark Night of the Soul and the Kamal Point

We have been raised to treat life as a problem to solve, a result to obtain. What action do I take next to get what my mind says is most important to do, be, or have? It is a shattering experience to give up the life of the mind’s conditioning. In that shattering, there is no going back to what was, but there can also be a feeling of aloneness and desolation, a sense of emptiness, an inability to see the way forward.

The mind has kept us distracted so we don’t feel alone. It has kept us busy, so we don’t notice the emptiness of its promises. It has kept us on the never-ending search for more, which is focused on the future and what to do next. When we no longer run our lives from this mental drive, it is a shattering of a deeply held illusion that has been projected outward as the way of life.

It is a kind of dark night of the soul. You know where you have been, and you don’t particularly enjoy where you are at the moment, with its great uncertainty and unknowns. There is no clear way forward.

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Love Yourself

One evening this November, a Bomb Cyclone - an unusual weather pattern, passed through our area. Very concentrated high-wind blasts swept through like a bomb went off. There was a storm warning, and we thought we were prepared.

When our power went out, we went to bed early, thinking life would resume the next day. However, the next morning, we were still without power, heat, internet, or cell phone service. Our car was stuck in the garage, and even if we had opened the door, fallen trees blocked the roads in our area.

We stuck it out for a couple of days, with no heat but plenty of blankets and no lights except battery-powered. There was no way to call anyone and no internet, but our power bank lasted a couple of days. We walked our neighborhood to survey the gigantic fallen trees, roots exposed to the sky.

Our cell service resumed on day three, bringing news that the power outage affected over 600,000 homes and that fallen trees in the mountains had damaged the main power cables to our area. Our area was one of the hardest hit in the city and one of the last to get power, resulting in a week-long power outage.

With our cell phones working again, we called our family, and our son came and got us. It was a thrilling escape from the cold—no working stoplights, downed trees, broken fences, blocked roads, and debris everywhere.

This contrasted deeply with our experience once we were out of our area—everything was normal as if nothing had happened. We stayed in a hotel for the rest of the week and were grateful for the warmth and hot showers.

We were only stranded without power or heat for a couple of days, but what a shock to the system—and exhausting. Although we thought we were prepared, we know now that we cannot be prepared for how it feels when systems fail. We never know when life can rapidly turn into a crisis.

It was an interesting experience to go through this adventure. On the one hand, there were not a lot of mental stories. I was comfortable with waiting and watching what life would bring us. There was the grace of being relaxed within, knowing my frequency, and being comfortable within myself. There wasn't any mental anxiety or attempts to control or direct the situation. It was what it was, and I was okay. That was enough to 'know'. 

Thinking back to who I was 20 years ago, I would have been trying to fix things, angry and frustrated with not being in control of the situation. I can see the difference that waiting and responding have made in my life. I know who I am in a felt sense of awareness. Loving myself is no longer a platitude or ideal, it is the breath and heartbeat of who I am..

My body went through quite a shock, though. Adapting to survival in cold and dark conditions took a lot of energy! My body needed a lot of rest, and I relaxed into the rhythm shift without judgment.

Adapting to uncertainty and a shake-up in routine felt okay; my emotional equilibrium felt balanced. There was delight in the creative process, joy in sitting by the window with light coming in, and savoring salad with Dharmen by twinkle lights. It was good to see that despite a crisis experience, there was a felt sense of enjoyment of the moment and the spaceousness that comes with it. 

Human Design is not going to stop the changes that life is bringing. Crises will still happen. What was interesting to me was seeing that I have naturally changed how I deal with crises. I can let it be and still be me.

Loving myself deeply allows me to stay within myself - observing, waiting, and being relaxed within; rather than getting lost in my mind’s imaginings and stories. I see my truth now - that I’m ok no matter what - and that it’s not a story I’m telling myself but a visceral experience of loving myself. I’m so grateful.

Love Yourself - Graffiti in the Innocent Railway Tunnel, Edinburgh, Scotland. Photo by Agnes Renusz

Chasing Shadows

The shadows that the mind thinks about and turns into internal dialog and stories arise from the openness in our design. In Human Design terms, this is called conditioning. Conditioning is neither good nor bad. It is simply a fact of life here on planet Earth. We are going to take in what we are not through our openness. When the mind gets involved in making the conditioning personal to us, making it into a personal story that we think needs to change, fix, or act upon, the shadows become ‘real,’ and we begin to live an imaginary life.

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Signposts for Our Process of Self-Awareness

Human Design offers us a strategy for becoming aware of our experience of our Inner Authority. We can experience our unique vehicle being in the flow of life, of our experience of inner alignment. The potential is our unique embodiment of awareness.

Who is observing that experience? Who notices?

The dilemma we all face is discovering the frequency of being ourselves – becoming aware of the essence of this vehicle, both body and mind, form and personality, and what it feels like to observe life through this vehicle.

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Being Here

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At the new year, at this time of new beginnings, it is easy for the mind to step in and create all kinds of expectations and projections. Setting goals or resolutions about what could be, what you should chase after, what you hope and dream will happen, what you think you want, all based upon the mind’s interpretations of life. The dilemma is that those interpretations never seem to deliver something of genuine value.

For those of us who are actively experimenting with the strategy of our design and our Inner Authority, the new beginning of the year can bring something quite different: the experiment of being here. What is my life like when I let go of projections about the future, and learn to be present? What is my life like when I wait and discover what life brings, moment by moment?

When we begin our HD experiment, for many of us, we cannot begin to fathom the fullness of waiting – it seems to the mind that waiting is boring, that It is empty. This is because the mind thinks that waiting is waiting for something specific, something that should be chased after, something that we want to have happen. That’s not waiting, that’s expectation. And, as we discover if we are fortunate, expectation is pretty boring and empty.

There is a luxury in waiting. Ra said it best: waiting as an active state of awareness. It’s a moment by moment relaxation into the fullness that life is – not what it could be or could bring, but what it is, in all of its infinite variety. Whether it is being present to brushing our teeth, or gazing out the window, life is full, it is breathing through us.

What holds us back at times, is fear. Fear of the future: What if this happens? What if that doesn’t happen? The mind can create quite a story to justify projections and expectations, swirled with a false-sense of urgency that can create anxiety. Then the mind can get busy trying to figure out how to avoid the fear and anxiety, and suddenly, we are off and running with plans about the future, rather than being present, here, now.

The key that Dharmen and I have discovered, is to come back to the body. Is the fear actually happening right now? Is that thing that my mind is scaring me with, actually taking place? And, if it is taking place, is my body ok? (mostly, it is not actually taking place…just a scary little movie that the mind is projecting…)

Is the body ok? Is the body relaxed and at ease? If not, is there a physical adjustment that can be made, so that the body feels relaxed and at ease? Is the body ok with not being relaxed and at ease? Can we observe the body’s pain, and not turn it into a story of suffering?

Something that not many of us have discovered: It begins with learning how to be present to the body. Not what the mind thinks the body should be or could be; but rather: what is the body’s experience right now? Each of us are trained to pay attention to our thinking, and to ignore the body. The dilemma is that awareness is not found in our thinking, but it is found when we connect with our body’s consciousness. And that is a moment by moment experience.

Not many of us may realize: each of us have a unique way to be present. It is built in to our HD mechanics, in our variables. This is why we offer the Transformation Course series, to help each individual access and become grounded in their unique way of being present.

The mind would like to think that awareness, that being awake, is one and done. That when we discover our way of being present, then we’re done. That one experience of awareness, should become always aware. That’s not life. Life comes and it goes, awareness comes and it goes. It is not a static thing, being here. It is a dynamic process of settling into the body/mind vehicle and learning our unique way of being present, and discovering the beauty of being here, moment by moment.

Leela & Dharmen

Leela - My Relationship With Human Design

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Since the moment of my reading in 1999, I’ve known that the search was over, and that I had found my path to myself. Human Design gave me a road map for my life, and I've been exploring my unique pathway ever since. I am a triple-split unconscious emotional authority Generator. 

I’d like to say that it was easy to integrate my strategy and authority into my life, but it wasn’t. Slowly, over time, I began to recognize that I only take in life when I'm silent; I’m a slow learner, and I have a slow frequency from which I operate best, waiting for that space of balance, of equanimity in my emotional wave. This was all a revelation for me. As a child, I was conditioned to be a quick learner, to always be at the head of the class, and to get my work done as quickly as possible, so I’d be ready for the next thing.

It was two years into my experiment before I realized how it felt to make an emotionally correct decision, and it was a decision that took over three months to make. It required a lot of slowing down, and a deep commitment to staying with the process, to take that much time in the gap of not taking action. 

Learning to not rush into doing, to really wait until there was no emotional disturbance in the decision, either positive or negative, was an enormous effort, and a long process. But the results continue to be incredible. To make a life-choice without doubt or fear, to move forward with satisfaction and no regret, to trust and surrender 100% to the decision, and not be excited or terrified of the outcome, and to meet the flow of life rather than resistance brings a spaciousness and relaxation in my life that I had never felt prior to my experiment with Human Design.

It’s been an amazing journey from there – to go from making one correct decision, to gradually becoming aware of my own unique frequency, the felt-sense of awareness of being present to my life. I can’t say the process has been easy, or that there has been a steady progress – because that’s not my way. My journey has been a process of plateaus, hitting walls and breakthroughs. Periods of time when my life was going along at a certain level and then hitting the wall, over and over and over; then another breakthrough, a long plateau and then hitting another wall, eventual breakthrough, and so on.

My Professional Background
I am a PHS Analyst and Practitioner, a Living Design Guide, Radical Transformation Variable Teacher, and a Certification Teacher in Child Development Analysis, and Family Practice Coaching. My Human Design education was exclusively with Ra Uru Hu, and I consider him my teacher. I completed the Variable Teacher Training Certification program with Ra in 2010, the only time he taught this particular teacher certification.

My professional skills are in business management, marketing, and business development. For 20 years, I worked primarily in the Natural Foods industry: from managing Natural Food stores, opening stores for a national natural grocery chain, training staff in everything from customer service to counseling customers in vitamins, supplements and herbs. I also directed sales for a homeopathic company, as well as directed operations for a chain of retail pharmacies with a natural wellness focus.

I have also been an entrepreneur my entire work career - starting diverse businesses such as a publishing company to training independent business owners in sales and business management skills.