A Gathering of Spirit

March 19, 2020 - Spring Equinox 2020

A Gathering of Spirit - Free Online Gathering :: Wednesday, March 25 :: with Mary Ann Winiger, Dharmen & Leela Swann-Herbert

Link to download the recording from A Gathering of Spirit 3.25.2020 - https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/share/VoDdS0zLyW8WrxRzY3TP4byaMyI28eEDlgt1m2ZUrKO

We are living in extraordinary times, a cusp of a significant shift in human life. In response to this experience, Mary Ann Winiger and Dharmen and Leela have organized this gathering. There is no plan, nor is it a class, but purely a space and time where people around the world can come together in spirit. We cannot come together in form – but we can experience being together in the consciousness field.

We invite you to sit back, relax for a while, and enjoy seeing and listening to three very different perspectives from their experiments in living their design. Dharmen, Mary Ann, and Leela will be sharing their experience and perspective as a vlog or video podcast. For those who remember Jovian Radio – it’s like radio, but you’ll be able to see us as well as hear us.

For over 40 years, Dharmen and Mary Ann have been friends. In 1999, Mary Ann introduced both Dharmen and Leela to Ra and Human Design, and all three of us were his direct students. Currently, we are neighbors in Sedona, Arizona.

We have expanded our classroom to make room for everyone available to gather together. As this may be a large group, you will not have a microphone or camera access or chat screen capability.

The classroom will open at 18:30 UTC, and there is no reservation needed. If you are unable to attend, there will be a download available. It will be posted on our website, in our next newsletter, and on Leela’s Facebook wall. You are welcome to share this invitation with others.

Classroom Login: https://zoom.us/j/9482670879

Time Zone Converter: https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/converter-classic.html

Exploring Your Family Penta

Introduction to Family Penta is a course designed to help reveal the hidden dynamics of your birth family. It will help you recognize how internalized conditioning pressures impact your sense of self, as well as current relationships. By learning penta dynamics, and realizing how your family penta was structured, you can discover acceptance and compassion, and let go of conditioned shame and blame.

Penta dysfunction can sift down through generations to cause stress in the here and now. When we examine penta roles in our birth family, we can recognize conditioning patterns that we have become identified with, or identified as needing from others. Working through our family penta helps us to understand the way the mind has turned life into a problem, that must follow a pattern to achieve specific results.

Family is not inherently good nor bad, but for most of us, it is a significant part of our life. Family penta take us away from our individual lives, and yet the family is the foundation of raising children, our communities, our societies. Recognizing that who we are as individuals is different than when we are in our family penta, can be a shattering revelation. When we learn these dynamics and can recognize how they operated in our childhood, we can begin to see how they impact our present life as well.

FAQs about Introduction to Family Penta with Leela Swann-Herbert

·       I don't have my parent's exact birth time – can I still use this course?

Yes. If you don't have your parent's exact birth time, it still can be a valuable experience to take this course. If you have your parent's birth date and city of birth, you can use noon as general birth time. The truth is, if you don't have an accurate birth time, you'll never know their entire design.

The PentaGraph uses only 12 specific gates. If you would like, you can explore a range of birth times for their birthday, and see if anytime during that day one of these 12 gates is activated in their design. You will have an approximate chart using noon, that in most cases, is accurate enough for penta purposes.

During the course, we will be examining in depth the conditioning themes of these 12 gates, and their roles in the functional and dysfunctional family penta groups. Based upon your memories of your childhood, you'll gain a deeper understanding of the functions that were present or missing in your birth penta.

· I'm not interested in my past family, but my current family. Can I still use this course?

Yes. I recommend that you use your birth family as the foundation for understanding penta dynamics. Our birth penta is our formative experience, and most deep-seated conditioning, about family. It shapes and colors the way we function in our adult families, in our workgroups, and our social lives.

The desire to 'fix' your present family group is often rooted in an attempt not to repeat your parent's mistakes or to recreate your pleasant childhood experience within your current family. Neither approach will work, as every family penta is unique; no two group experiences are ever the same. The inner work of family penta is to realize and become aware of what is the family structure, not what it should be or could be if wishes come true. The work is to discover how you can function uniquely inside and out of penta groups. The value of family penta work is in the experience of awareness and acceptance, and the discovery of a deeper appreciation for your self.

· I'm not sure I'm ready to look at my birth family. Can I still use this course?

The value of looking at your past is in finding the threads of the fabric of your present. Many of our mental expectations and drives for results in our lives arise from our birth family conditioning. We often have big feelings about our formative family that we'd rather keep submerged. The difficulty is that when a situation is similar enough to our birth penta dynamics, those feelings will leak out, often in our present penta groups.

Designed to meet you where you are at in your experiment, this course structure provides six weekly classes with new material on the family penta structure. Following these lectures are weekly experiments that are exercises in self-discovery and awareness. Our live class meetings starting with Class 2, will be organized around the weekly experiment discussion, complete with student's family PentaGraph and family member charts. How you participate in these discussions is up to you: you can share in class with the group, or you can share by email that I read for you in the group. The students that participate in the discussion will receive personalized feedback and coaching. Or, you can listen to the experiment discussions and lectures, and work through the experiments on your own when you are ready.

· I'm new to Human Design. Is this course for me?

Yes. Active experimentation with strategy and Inner Authority is the basis for all exploration in Human Design, and the only requirement for this course. Are you ready to take this course? You've been asked, invited, initiated, and informed.

· I'm interested in taking the Family Practice Certification Course, and I see that Introduction to Family Penta Course is semester 1 of 2 for this advanced HD professional certification. How does this work?

Family Practice is designed to coach and engage family members with their process of self-discovery within the context of their family penta. To prepare for Family Practice Practitioner Certification, personal experience and training in family penta form the foundation provided through the Introduction to Your Family Penta Course. Also, learning to utilize the family penta analysis as a basis for coaching a family is vital. Learning how to coach families and how to design a coaching plan for a family is presented and practiced in the Family Practice Certification Course.

Family Practice Practitioner Certification is available for certified Human Design Analysts and current PTL students. Introduction to Your Family Penta and Family Practice Certification Course are both required before submission of a final exam for Family Practice certification. The final exam consists of the student's analysis of a family penta and a Family Practice coaching plan for the family.

For Course Registration and Information: https://www.ihdschool.com/courses/1262/introduction-to-your-family-penta

The Wisdom of Openness Experiment

This recording was an experiment for me to explore the podcast format for a question/answer session. Individuals sent me their questions and charts, and 5 of them were chosen for this recording.

What I learned from my experiment was that Q&A’s aren’t my format without the person being present, asking their questions. With no real experience of the person, I just get their words. Words are always mind; so, I got a lot of mind-oriented questions: how do I figure it out? What’s my future going to be like? What does this mean?

I get that people are struggling with the mind. People first learn about Human Design, for the most part, wanting their life to be different. But they have a particular way in mind of how that life should be, could be; if only this or that were different, then they’d get a result they think they want. At some point, there has to be the recognition that Human Design is about awareness, not about manifesting the mind’s persistent illusion.

What this experiment has shown me is that there is a lot of work to be done to help people recognize that Human Design is the mechanics of awareness. We’re here to be aware of our particular experience of living in our unique vehicle of body/mind. Not lost in its stories, not trying to push to make our life into what we think it should be – even if that ‘should be’ is what we think we understand about Human Design.  Human Design information is simply the generality, a finger pointing towards our individual experience, not the experience itself.

Wisdom of Openness Podcast 7.15.19

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Our Very Essence is Love

Our natural state is love; our very essence is love. When we are present to our experience of life, it is an experience of love. Love of our self, love of life – those are just labels to try to describe the felt-sense of awareness of being present, here, now.

The mind is very good at interpreting the body’s experience into a story, and that story repetitive in our internal dialog, can harden into a pattern – a neural pathway that can be triggered by a similar experience, a passing energy that the mind interprets once again – and into a story.

As 9-centered humans, we are capable of the felt-sense of awareness of love, while also capable of identifying with the story that our mind is telling us. The dilemma is that we have been trained to believe that we are our mind, rather than training the mind to be an observer of our experience. We believe the mind’s story that we should find love in a particular person, that love should carry us from one peak experience of excitement and happiness to the next, that there is something in particular life should give us as an experience of love – and if only we did this or that, we’d have it. Or, we believe the mind’s story that we are not worthy of love, we are broken and wounded, and will never find love if we don’t change this or that about ourselves.

Love is like an ever-shining internal light, showing us ourselves, as we experience the pure love of communion with our self. The dilemma is that we don’t see it at all. The internal dialog or mental stories are like blinds which block that internal love light. The blinds may be beautiful or ugly, but we find them captivating our attention, so that we never see the inner light itself. We don’t recognize love, because we are stuck looking at the obstacles, the blinds that we put in the way between us and our actual experience of life.

With the mechanics of Human Design, the path to self-love is a binary path. On the one side, we have to train the mind to observe the experience of the present moment, the life that the body is experiencing. In order to train the mind, we have to be able to see the conditioning blinds, the persistent illusion that the mind is focused upon. When we can see the conditioning stories, we can begin to observe what is beyond them.

On the other side, once we have begun to give the mind its correct job as observer, then we can begin to be aware of the body’s intelligence, the body’s awareness of its unique experience of the frequencies and energies of life. We talk about the body intelligence as being unconscious – it is only unconscious to the mind, not to the body. And, as we train the mind to observe, we can begin to recognize the body’s experience. Inner Authority is a process of observing the body’s intelligence at the surface. It’s always present, but we haven’t always been aware of it. Slowly we begin to recognize when the mind is trying to manipulate a situation, and when we are observing the pure inner recognition of the body’s correctness.

Over time, we can begin to realize that awareness comes and it goes, that the experience of self-love is not a constant awareness, even though that self-love is continuously available to us. It is our attention that moves between observing our internal stories and observing our internal experience.

We are a binary consciousness being – we have the potential for the self-realization of consciousness, while in form, while in a body. Pure consciousness is nice and all – but without a body, there is no way to be in touch with it, to recognize the experience of love that is who we are on this material plane, body and mind, design and personality, a quantum of both. 

When the mind begins to talk about things like how can I have a better love-life; there are layers of conditioned, internalized story that have become activated.

First of all, it is confusing the external experience with the internal experience. The outside world is going to come and go. People may travel on a parallel path in life, you may relate with them, but they are not you. Each of us are alone, all one in our vehicles. No one else will ever enter your vehicle. Even during sex, skin may touch, but the other person is on the inside of their skin. We can share our minds in communication, but the other never truly knows your experience of life that your mind is describing. They are simply translating what you are saying through their experience.

This first layer of conditioning of wanting a better love-life, is built upon: I need someone else to feel whole. Until that is seen as an internal story, then the life is going to be run by the mind trying to cover up or fulfill the story of: I don’t feel whole and complete as I am, I am scared to be alone, or, my life should be more, have more, do more…and the right person will bring that for me.

The next layer of conditioning of wanting a better love-life is the dilemma of wanting. Wanting is a cabal between the ego and the mind – the mind tells an internal conditioning story: this would be better if that would happen, and then the ego pushes to make it happen.

The dilemma of wanting is built upon the lack of experience of the present moment. The mind would rather imagine a pretend future result, and push the body to try to make that happen. Then, when it doesn’t turn out the way the mind imagined it, it tells you a new internal conditioning story about: how you failed, or didn’t do it right, or tries to sell you on the next thing that’s going to make your life better.

The question to look at is: Am I ok right now? If there’s no blood on the floor, and you are breathing, life is supporting you. And if there is blood on the floor, it’s time to get to the emergency room. Most of the time, the mind simply wants the entertainment of imagining.

Nothing wrong with that, but what it imagines, when it tells you an internal conditioning story; also brings a flood of brain chemistry. And that chemistry can be experienced as anxiety, fear, or nervousness, in the body. Or, it can be experienced as excitement, enthusiasm, passion, in the body. And every time the mind tells that particular conditioning story, the same chemistry is released. We can become addicted to feeling that release of chemistry into the brain – even the fear kind. The problem here is that instead of observing how the mind telling the story results in a body sensation, we believe the reverse is true. We believe that there is a body sensation, therefore what the mind is saying is real. And then, because we believe that what the mind says is real, we push with the ego to make it happen.

The transits of the Moon offer us a mechanical, binary path towards self-love: to begin to recognize the way the mind interprets the energies of the transits into internalized conditioning stories; and to begin to observe the way the body uniquely experiences the distinct energies that life brings, as the Moon moves from gate to gate. When we begin to recognize the mind’s internalized conditioning stories, we are no longer identified with them, they begin to lessen the release of brain chemistry, there is less of a push to try to get the life to fit what the mind imagines. When we begin to observe the body’s unique experiences of energy, of frequency, we find the present moment, which is changeless, our unique essence of love.

Being Here

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

Introducing The Path of the Moon Workbook

New Workbook, New Video, New Website!

Leela - My Relationship With Human Design

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.

Dharmen - My relationship with Human Design

Dharmen Swann-Herbert 1/3 Reflector on the Right Angle Cross of the Unexpected

My relationship with Human Design is simply my relationship with myself. As a 1/3 Reflector, I have a deeply investigative personality, which has translated into a profound and authoritative study of Human Design Analysis, Rave Cartography, Rave Psychology, and currently, The Wisdom of Openness.

Human Design literally saved my life. When I found Human Design, my life wasn’t working. It hadn’t really worked ever - my various careers, living in spiritual communes and communities, monogamous and non-monogamous relationships, raising kids, starting businesses that failed – you name it. I’d tried it, and it ultimately did not work. Since that moment of my reading in 1999, I have lived this life as myself, and I haven’t looked back. I truly discovered my true home – my true self. 

I am a Reflector. This knowledge was transforming. No wonder nothing worked in my life. No wonder I always felt I was living on shifting sand, and nobody ever saw the real me; and, I did not know the real me. Without the understanding of my strategy and authority, there was no way for my life to work properly. In my study of Human Design, I’ve investigated deeply, and have found for myself the truth of the experiment. What I can say now, nearing the end of my third 7-year cycle in my experiment, and having lived with cancer, heart disease, and diabetes, is that life works, and I am riding the wave of its beauty and grace as the unique being that is me.

Reflectors are the only type who can truly surf the daily transits, for whom the conditioning of The Program is correct. In this way, I take in the transits very deeply. This gives me a deep affinity to the work of coaching individuals. I literally observe my vehicle riding along the conditioning as we transit through the years, and I bring this depth of understanding to my work. It is my hope that as a coach and guide, that I am able to share with you the truth of this experience. For Reflectors finding themselves, I offer my mastery of the mechanics of awareness, if you want to go deeply into your experiment.

My Professional Background
I have a professional background in coaching, training and development, and have taught over 600 workshops world-wide over 40 years prior to becoming a Human Design Analyst and Teacher. I have been a student of Human Design for over 19 years. I am a certified Human Design Analyst, Human Design Color Analyst, Rave Psychologist, Living Design Guide, Certification Teacher for Child Development Analysts and Family Practice Coaches. Over the years of my Human Design education, I had the good fortune to have Ra Uru Hu as my teacher.

My work as a Human Design Professional Teacher and Coach 
My favorite aspect of working with individuals is to help them actualize the information, to realize the mechanics of Human Design in their experience. A reading is a finger pointing to the potential experience of the self; it is not the actual experience. I bring a unique viewpoint to my work: with no personal definition, I am wide open, and bring the depth of that wisdom of openness. What people get with my coaching and classes is their unique self, not me. I offer Partnership Coaching and Child Development Coaching with my partner, Leela. As a Reflector, I am particularly suited to personal coaching with new and actively experimenting Reflectors, but I enjoy working with any type.

Teaching Human Design Students
What is most important for me, is what the individual takes away from coaching or classes, and then experiments with, in their own life. I’m not interested in teaching for the sake of having people listen to me. I’m here to help people wake up to what their lives can be; how to enjoy living the unique being that they’ve been given in this life through Human Design. 

Having been an educator and trainer for most of my life, I bring many skills to the teaching environment that ensures the individual gets the most out of the experience.  Although I may have an outline of material that will be covered in the workshop or course, I work with what the individuals bring to the process as well. Workshops and courses, in order to be effective, must provide the opportunity for realization. Real learning is what excites me, not rote repetition of facts.

Teaching is dynamic – and being a Reflector, I have the ability to accurately reflect what is going on with the group, to know where people are at, and help guide them to where they actually want to be. Understand this, as it is an important distinction: I’m here to guide people, not to where I want them to be, but where they need to be. I’m here to help you uncover the truth that you are, not to tell you what your truth is, but to create an environment where you discover your truth.