Imagine that we are riding around in this life in a vehicle: a beautiful, shiny, incredible, mechanical vehicle with a binary consciousness. This vehicle is both body and personality. The personality is what we tend to identify with, the aspect of our being that we call “me”. This construct of 'who I think I am' is the sum of all the personality aspects in the BodyGraph interpreted through the mind. The form is the sum of all the design aspects in the BodyGraph displayed through the body. The vehicle is essential to getting to the destinations, to making the journey.
The Magnetic Monopole is the driver, and the driver knows exactly where to go, how to get there, how long to stay, and where to go next. We don't need to get caught up in driving the vehicle at all, our vehicles all come equipped with their own driver.
Imagine that there is a passenger quietly sitting in the back seat looking out the windows - this is our consciousness. The role of the passenger is to sit in the back seat and observe the journey. To look out the windows and enjoy the view. This is our life, when we are living uniquely as ourselves. The journey becomes an incredible ride.
Now most of us, before we come to Human Design, believe that the personality is what is driving the car, and that the personality is an extension of the mind. Unfortunately, this error in judgment leads to disaster. The mind driving the life leads to improper decision making – usually at cost to the vehicle. Now think about this, if the mind does not properly understand the needs of the vehicle, and it makes decisions which run it into the ground, you can die. The mind literally does not care. It will run the body until it is diseased or broken down and then at the point of death, it turns to the personality and says “How could you have let this happen?”
Misunderstanding The Mind Our conditioning as children has made us into mental decision making adults. “Use your intelligence”, “Think before you speak", "You have the answer in your head", or “Use your head”…All of these are different conditioning techniques to build a life in thrall to the mind.
Using the mind as the authority for decision making is denying the intelligence of the being, of the form itself; for every cell in the body has innate intelligence. In Human Design, you will discover your unique inner authority for making decisions, for aligning the consciousness with the path way for the life. When the inner authority is honored in the decision making process, the life meets less resistance, less failure, less anger, less frustration, less bitterness, less disappointment. Human Design teaches you a way of decision making that respects the intelligence of the body, that allows the personality to be at ease and detached, and then the beauty of life unfolds.
Not only does the mind make decisions that are unhealthy for the body, it makes decisions that are unhealthy for the personality as well. Sleeplessness, stress trauma, anxiety, depression, nervousness are all natural chemical reactions that the body experiences. The mind then creates a “story” about these chemical reactions, and the mind creates suffering. “I felt upset because…” “I’m anxious about this because…” All of these are stories that the mind creates about our chemistry. Common self-help teaching tells people – identify your feelings, understand why you feel the way you do – and so on. This perpetuates the suffering, and gives the mind more power.
In Human Design, people discover that their feelings are just chemistry, and like all chemical reactions, they come and they go. From hope to pain and back again, like waves in motion. When one learns to use the mind to observe the feelings – without judgment, without attaching a story, the mind does not turn chemistry into suffering.
The Little Dictator
Think for a moment about the mind and its nature. The mind is the most highly advanced, technically versatile computer that has ever been built. Most brain functions take place below the level of consciousness, at the unconscious level of the body. The heart is instructed to beat, the lungs are instructed to breathe, and the legs are instructed to move, the muscles to contract, and so on. The ears listen, the eyes see – all of the sensory organs constantly feedback information from the outside world back to the brain where it is processed by the mind for interpretation and filing.
The mind is the great great measurer – of determining this or that. It is an amazing processor, and it files information according to its own unique filing system called the memory. But it can only reference what has happened in the past, and then project onto the future what it thinks should happen. The mind cannot successfully be present – it looks and shows us the past from our memories, or it projects and anxiety onto the future.
When faced with a decision, the mind does a very interesting thing, it makes it up. It makes up a solution or a decision based on the filing system, and the past experiences of the being, and what it thinks it wants, or what it imagines might happen. It not only makes it up, but it then convinces the personality that this is what it should want – or else. The mind then makes up a scary movie to show the personality – what will happen if this occurs, or if that doesn’t occur. It literally tortures the personality with its projected images until the personality decides that it should go along with what the mind is telling it.
Imagine that the mind was a file clerk that suddenly became the dictator of a small country; and that this dictator wants to control everything that goes on in this country, even to the point that it will torture and even kill its people. It does this all in the name of 'the good of the people'. "It is for your own good”, the dictator says. The Little Dictator tells you how you should look at the world, at your self, at your relationships, at your career, at your finances, at your body, or your desires and needs – and over time you begin to believe it. The mind tells you - "After all, everyone else is listening to their own Little Dictator, why not you?"
The Mind Has No Power
Now if you look at the Body Graph, you will see the Head and the Ajna Centers at the top of the graph. The mind is the juxtaposition of these two centers. And from these two centers the circuitry passes to the throat. The throat then connects to all of the rest of the centers, either directly or indirectly through gate circuitry. The key thing to notice is that the mind is only connected to the throat. There is no real power here. The mind can get to the voice – and there are a lot of people out there speaking their minds. You might even call them “talking heads”. But the mind has no connection to the power centers of the body – the Heart, the Sacral, the Solar Plexus and the Root. What does this tell us about the nature of the mind? It tells us that although it can talk, it literally has no power to move us in our lives, to make things happen in the world. It is not the place designed for decision making, but rather a very sophisticated computing tool.
The mind as a computing tool is excellent for inspiration and thoughts, for questions and answers, for realizations and ideas, for inner truth and knowing. The mind is a wonderful tool for sharing with others. It makes a great outer authority, for making suggestions and developing projects and experiments for people to explore together. The mind is for reflecting, not for doing or acting. It isn’t a good decision maker for our own lives. In our own lives, it wants to turn into the Little Dictator and completely take over control. When we allow this, we are living only a fraction of the life that is available for us. Plus, things seldom if ever turn out the way the mind projects it will turn out. After all, how can it? The mind is literally making up a story, and then insisting that we believe it, without any real power to make it happen.
