The Shattering: the Mind-Body War of the Not Self

This blog is my current reflection about the shattering that takes place during the deconditioning of the not self as understood by human design. You can watch a shorter reflection about this on my Instagram 👇👇👇👇

From the beginning of my Human Design experiment, the Not-Self was clear to me. The word "bitterness" landed as knowing in my body before "success" did, mainly because I tied success to outcomes the world defined.

But bitterness was a frequency I remembered from my first days in school, from family interactions, from the internal wars I waged against myself, from the jealousy of feeling ignored and undervalued by my perception. Even though I saw how deep the bitterness ran, I didn’t understand how conditioned I was. I doubted the "7 years to decondition" concept entirely.

Year 1: Awakening to the Not-Self

It took a year of experimenting with Human Design to gain self-reflective consciousness:

• Seeing bitterness as it happened

• Feeling the frequency of the invitation

• Watching the mechanics of my aura in a feedback loop with others during the process we call guidance

That first year, I obsessed over Human Design knowledge and readings. My analysts and mentors helped explain it to me, but I had to learn HD through the body so the mind could see it. As an emotional Projector with fear motivation, I began embodying Human Design in three ways:

1. Tapping into bitterness by studying my motivation (fear) and transference (need). In Not-Self, "need transference" created anxiety about survival. If my security felt threatened, I’d spin into an anxious, bitter loop fueled by emotional lows.

2. Tracking my emotional wave to recognize patterns. This enabled my mind to see the wave before it crashed, so I could stop fighting the undertow once I realized I was in it.

3. Pulling charts for family/friends to see the designs of others, and by proxy, I began seeing myself.

Year 2: Laying the Foundation

In my second year, I got serious with hiring certified human design analysts to give readings, coaching, and formal education. I wrote the Emotional Authority Tracking System to help others observe their waves the way I learned to see mine. Towards the end of year two,  I started to accept invitations to give readings to help lay the foundation for others, even though I was still very much just beginning my own deconditioning process. As I gave readings, my unconscious 23/43 running my vessel started channeling this system through my unique knowing, and I finally stepped into my projector guidance.

Year Three: Shock, Kundalini, and Karmic Quickening

In year three, I completed my IHDS certification to be a Living Your Design guide. As soon as I completed it,  my vessel was ready for the shock of a spontaneous kundalini awakening, the blessing of shaktipat, and the pain of karmic quickening (which I talked about here). Then I felt ready to start teaching this knowledge, even though I was deep in the shadows. 

Year Four: Seeing the Not-Self Monster

The pain is still here. I'm still surrendering ego, timing, and outcome. But I'm facing these fears now as my spirit places me in a chokehold to look in the mirror. I’ve stopped resisting the struggle. I’m curious about the Not-Self monster looking back at me.

I see it even more clearly now: the energetic war between my mind and my body.
One part holding on to conditioning for survival.
One part pushing me to evolve.
One part trying to protect me.

Human Design is the #1 tool to understand this dance: Not-Self vs. True Self, mind vs. body, consciousness vs. unconsciousness.

By clearly seeing the energetic dance between your mind and body, you can work with these elements and begin to free yourself from conditioning—from this life, past lives, and generational trauma.

This is the shattering.
When the mirror of the Not-Self becomes so vivid, it shatters your mind, and you're finally forced to accept that the personality you've crafted is just a shell of the true energetic being behind the veil. 

The reality is that nobody wants to look at the Not Self. Ra said over and over that the path requires loving your whole self, which includes your Not Self. Yet for some reason, the culture of Human Design shames the Not Self.

The best way I can explain how human design can be used to decode the Not Self is to explain my own. So I'm sharing my current reflections of my Not Self, to show how you can work with this system, to spot the patterns and love yourself deeper.

Aura & Centers

To understand the Not-Self, we start with the aura—the wholeness of your energy. Working against your natural electromagnetic field is the foundation of the Not-Self. For example, Generators are conditioned to act like Manifestors. Manifestors, Projectors, and Reflectors are conditioned to act like Generators.

The stories in the undefined centers start revealing the patterns your mind has created from those receptor points in our aura that match others’ frequencies. Your mind interprets those external energies as "you." But they’re not. That’s where we start to see the trap. Also, if you're a split definition, you would look to the bridging gates as heavy conditioning points that your mind uses to gain wholeness. 

The purpose of open centers and hanging gates is wisdom, a way to learn about yourself by process of elimination.

Aura and centers are the bedrock of Human Design's foundational understanding. There’s no bypassing this stage of embodiment before you can move into the next layers of understanding.

That’s why I teach Blooming Your Design, to help prepare you for what’s next.

Profile

When you're ready to start looking at Not Self in detail, a good place to start is the dance between the mind and body. 

The easiest way to explain this is in the profile lines of the mind and body. The profile lines summarize the mind and body placements, acting like shorthand to quickly explain how they are working for and against each other. The profile shows back and forth between the body and mind as an energetic tug-of-war between them.

I'm a 5/1 profile, which means I have a 5th line theme of my conscious mind, and a 1st line theme of my unconscious body:

• My 1st line unconscious body drives me to investigate for survival. This investigation happens choicelessly, diving into the deep end before I realize I'm even swimming.
• My 5th line conscious mind wants to share what comes up from those depths to the collective, to strangers, as the heretic.
• If I've investigated enough, if my foundation is strong, if my knowing is there, if I'm sharing with invitation, if I'm not trying to force my perspective on others, then I can share without fear of retribution.
• If not, then I'm burned at the stake. If the bridge has been burned, I'm forced to retreat and investigate even deeper or start a new investigation. The wheel turns. This process is true for every 5/1 profile.

How that process of your profile plays out is unique to each person, as we get into a more nuanced understanding of the mind and body as separate energies.

Unconscious Sun & Earth

I won’t go into a full mind-body breakdown here, but I want to explain the unconscious body, since it’s the most misunderstood and hardest to grasp by the conscious mind. I'll explain how I see it by explaining myself! Here's my chart for reference. 👇👇👇

My 1st line unconscious body is run by Taurus Sun in Gate 23.1 and Scorpio Earth in Gate 43.1. It is compelled to survive with a powerful insight that undermines established values, and a depth that eliminates resistance so that new forms can push through limitations.

Together, this forms the 23/43 Channel—the “freak to genius” channel that is structuring information and sharing it in a new way, often via spoken or written word that slips out before my mind realizes it.

I've talked about how the sun and earth work together like a lightbulb: the sun as the electricity to the lightbulb, the earth as the container and structure for the expression of that light.

• When my unconscious container is strong and the current is flowing, I become a vessel for powerful, mutative knowing that can enlighten, shake up, or transform reality.
• But if my insight is being pushed out before my investigations have been complete, if my expression has not been fully formed, if my impatience is overriding my depth, then the message may short-circuit or shock people.
• This creates friction for the spark that can burn me at the stake if I'm not aware of what's happening.

My sun and earth placements have one objective: transmission of insight when timing and delivery are invited without force, in order to guide others (and therefore myself) out of the old ways and dying values.

Unconscious Moon

 My unconscious Libra Moon in Gate 50.2 is a driving force that wants to protect the projection of values. It knows what needs to be protected during the process of evolution. It demands that my values are upheld even though they are very different from the tribe, which can create opposition and rejection. But it is willing to stand in the fire and face the flames for the survival of my values.

So my unconscious moon is driving the mutative insights of my 23/43 freakish knowing sun/earth, but it's not mutating for mutation's sake. This Taurus sun/Libra Moon body is a vessel to establish a new foundation of tribal values that agree with my individual knowing. 

The challenge is that my tribal moon energy is about support and cohesion, while my individual sun/earth energy is about differentiation. So my knowing may undermine tribal values, even as I'm trying to protect what I see as essential.

My unconscious body is a vessel to bring new insight into people's minds from a conviction of what's true and valuable. Always attracting new invitations that simultaneously dismantle and preserve. Always negotiating about what stays and what goes for the process of evolution without losing progress. Always giving my mind new insights and awareness to make decisions with.

• When I'm clear, patient, and can wait for the right timing, my transmission can restructure collective values.
• When I'm rushing in survival mode, in transference, moving out of ego instead of instinct, resisting the emotional low, wounded by rejection, my drive can lead to bitterness about what I feel is right and what others are ready to hear.
• When my words trigger discomfort, when I'm dismissed or resisted, my body will force me to withdraw to persevere, hold my knowing in the fire through self-reflection, to go back to the drawing board of investigations until my container is strong again.

Unconscious Nodes

The unconscious nodes show the background environment of your body—what your cellular memory absorbed before you even had conscious awareness. The south node shows the conditioning field in the environment, and the north node shows the resolution of that conditioning (most clearly seen after the Uranus Opposition).

My unconscious south node is in Pisces Gate 63.5, creating a projection field in my environment of being the one who can ask the right question and end the doubts. I absorbed the energy in my environment of needing to stay composed in my doubt while being silently tasked with ending everyone else's uncertainty. I absorbed the belief that my value came from providing certainty or asking the right questions, and when I couldn’t, something was wrong with me. When my questions were ignored or not accepted, the conditioning field doubted my insights and values, creating suspicion about who I am and my motives. I knew what was valuable, but I became conditioned to believe that nobody wanted to hear it. In my young mind, this resulted in the conclusion that nobody liked me.  This created a physical undercurrent of skepticism or a constant search for proof, shaping my behavior, posture, and survival strategies that created bitterness, and fueling the mental, not self energies that emerged later.

The resolution of that conditioning field is seen in my unconscious north node in Virgo gate 64.5 by embracing the juxtaposition of the confusion, which ultimately becomes the inspiration for others. As I matured into my North Node in 64.5, my body’s role shifted toward holding confusion as fertile ground for transformation, via the help of others who were able to inspire me with new realizations, ideas, and stories. I began to realize that clarity and stimulation emerged from the right human environment. Trying to continuously solve the puzzles while knowing the puzzle is never solvable. If I stay in the confusion long enough, something new and beautiful emerges. 

Because I embraced this confusion and the right human environment, my Sun started to shine more freely, no longer needing to provide answers but instead embracing mystery and nuance. My Earth found more stability not in certainty but in shared resonance and expression. My Moon surrendered to the knowing of the right values without trying to figure it out all the time. My nodal axis created the environment that allowed my vehicle to shift from needing to solve to being a conduit—not by thinking harder, but by surrendering into the right communal frequency where my truth naturally takes form.

The Rest of the Unconscious Planets

The rest of the inner planets reveal important features that add more nuance and confirm the unconscious body themes. The first thing to know is that I have an Aries stellium: unconscious Mercury 3.3, Venus 51.6, and Mars 42.6 are all in fiery Aries. 

Unconscious Mercury rules body language, tone, pacing, micro-expressions, and the subtle signaling we emit without realizing it. My unconscious Mercury in Aries, Gate 3.3, is mutating my vessel in chaotic or confusing conditions in order to survive, reorder, and find what works. It's pushing me into situations that confront the notself, sometimes awkwardly or impulsively, learning by doing, failing, mutating, and trying again.... testing the shape of what fits by intuitively feeling out the order hidden within chaos. It fuels my investigations with the courage to experiment, to mate with new ideas or people, and to keep adapting. It physically pulls me toward fertile experiences, whether or not they are emotionally comfortable, to find the right "order" for my evolution.

Unconscious Venus is the internal value system that operates beneath the surface of awareness, silently driving the architecture. This placement is also the SQ in the Gene Keys, how love was first received, and thus what the vessel defines as "valuable" or worth striving for. My unconscious Venus is in Aries Gate 51.6 Shock: Separation, enforcing the values of waiting for divine timing rather than chasing invitations or recognition. My body values solitude, inner initiation, and integrity, not performance or outside pressure. Ultimately, I value authentic individuation in myself and others, and I'm turned off by egoic comparison. This gives my body language a cat-like quality: appearing passive but always alert, listening for the invitation for guidance, which usually comes with a shocking divine push. When it comes, it brings the words that provide clarity and transformation. Until it comes, I walk alone. My values are not traditional definitions of success, love, or competition. The container from which my spirit driving has a value system of alignment, wisdom, and integrity.

Unconscious Mars is the inner child wound tied to the genetic trauma. In Aries Gate 42.6, my vessel is learning how to carry wealth and share it when it leads to mutual growth. My body is maturing by learning when and how to enter into cycles of experience, learning discernment based on past mistakes. I've been hurt by sharing my body and my insights, where my gifts felt unrewarded or led to disillusionment, and that pain creates hesitancy to make the same mistakes again. I don't want to share my internal wealth unless there’s a deep trust that it will be received and honored. Line 6 is the trauma of separation, being cast out from oneness, with the belief that maybe if I merge deeply enough, I’ll feel whole again, which adds fuel to my undefined spleen, sacral, root, and my bridging gates 22.1 and 51.6. This creates a paradox where I crave depth and meaning but fear vulnerability or futility. The wound lies in the inherited belief that merging, giving, or engaging will end in being unseen or hurt again, so I withhold my energy even if I'm not aware I'm doing it. Healing isn’t about doing more or pushing through, but about learning to trust my own cycles, to nurture myself first, and to reclaim the right to grow and share on my own terms. Through this process, my Mars begins to mature, evolving from a wounded child who withholds energy to a wise guide who shares growth as a sacred, earned offering.

Unconscious Jupiter is the foundational law the vessel lives by for protection. Mine is in Leo Gate 31.1 exalted, the only line called Manifestation: my vessel is demanding that I step into leadership and influence by expressing reliable patterns that will lead the collective towards more stability in the future. I can’t hide my light or the fiery flame radiating from my form, but my body deeply needs to feel safe. I create more safety by stepping into the role of servant leadership with guidance that provides direction and coherence. The exaltation creates a demand on my body to illuminate and guide with life-giving light, but creates a dependency on collective energy to sustain its influence. My aura naturally carries the potential to lead through the channel that is being delivered in my voice, but only when grounded in logical, practical patterns that are structurally sound and collectively relevant. My vehicle drives me into leadership when the collective is ready, it's not just a personal choice or talent.

Unconscious Saturn represents the discipline that the body imposes when we stray from the protective law of unconscious Jupiter. The discipline of my unconscious Saturn in Virgo Gate 40.2 comes when I ignore the law of Jupiter Gate 31, which demands that my influence and leadership are only expressed with logical, solid patterns found by my freaky genius investigations. If I overstep this law, my body stops exerting willpower to preserve my strength through rest. If my mind overextends my influence or lets projections pull me into situations that have not been cleared by my strategy and authority, my body recoils with aloneness. If I resist the aloneness, I get met with disruption and bitterness. Aloneness is mechanical, a necessary retreat to recharge my will. Honoring my need for solitude and recognizing how others perceive and pull on my willpower allows me to protect my energetic boundaries until the exchange is correct. True empowerment lies in choosing when and how to engage, not being pulled by projection.

I wont go into the outer planets Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto, since the gates are the same as the mind it requires a lot of nuance to explain the difference in lines. 

So, the summary of my unconscious design that shapes my body could sound like this:

• My body is the vessel of a mutative force that is designed to shock, mutate, and restructure outdated values through insight, timing, and resonance. It is not designed to follow the crowd or conform to the status quo. 
• My spirit moves my form to express truth that must be carried with precision, patience, and depth to avoid backlash or burnout.
• When in coherence, my spirit moves my body to become an instrument of divine disruption, initiating change that simultaneously preserves and mutates, dismantles and rebuilds.
• My body is the expression for new ways of guidance if my conscious mind will allow it to lead the way. If my ego mind steps in to take over my form, it stops moving and requires me to be still.
• My form is being moved in order to guide, survive, lead, nurture, and invent. I'm unconsciously creating strong boundaries and discarding anything that no longer holds value for evolution.

Summarizing the Dance between Mind and Body