Someone asked me, “Is the sacral as your inner authority, always, right?”.
If you are following your inner authority, whatever that authority is, yes, it is always right.
No one can be your authority.
It is for that one simple reason that self-sabotaging behaviors or addictions are coping mechanisms of the “not-self mind”. That is the prime cause of all self-sabotaging behaviors and addictions.
When you’re using your mind to make decisions, that is your “not-self mind”!
The mind is not designed to serve you. It is not designed to figure out your life. I will say that again, your mind is not for you!
The “not-self mind” latches onto the strategies of your open centers and whatever is undefined (white) in your body graph.
Last week I touched on the subject of smoking and asked you to reflect on some questions if you’re thinking about quitting smoking. Which of those questions resonated with you? What questions were the most difficult to answer? You’ll want to pay close attention to the questions you struggled with.
This week, I will take those same questions and show you how they apply to Human Design.
1. What is your motivation to quit smoking? Is it to have better relationships and to be able to express yourself - your true self? No more hiding behind a mask.
You will struggle to know who you are if you have an undefined G Center. If you’re not in the right environment, you will not meet the right people for you. You will tend to want to follow others. You will look to others to tell you where to go. You may even have a poor sense of direction. You will look to others to direct you on what to do for the little things in life like, what to eat, and what to wear to the bigger questions about life. You won’t be picky about who your friends are as long as you have people around you making you vulnerable to falling into the wrong crowd out of your desire to belong.
Being in the right environment is essential for everyone to operate correctly regardless of whether or not this center is defined in your body graph. When you’re in the right environment for you then you meet the right people.
The Throat Center is how we communicate and it has 11 unique forms of expression. It is the most complex center and it serves as the bridge between the mind and the body. Literally, “All roads lead to the throat”. It’s how you can or cannot manifest yourself in life.
When it comes to your unique individual expression, gate 1 is the “gate of self-expression” from the G Center and it links with gate 8, the “gate of contribution” in the Throat Center, forming the “channel of inspiration”.
When this channel is undefined the desire to express yourself is amplified and demands attention, especially if both your Throat and G Centers are undefined. As an individual, you cannot force your contribution onto the collective yet you deeply need the other to interact with, to express yourself.
Here are a few examples of how this may show up in your behavior; You can’t seem to control the volume of your voice. You interrupt others when they’re talking. You crack jokes all the time. You have to have the last word. It’s all about wanting to be seen and wanting to get the attention of others. The result is, people don’t value what you have to say and your relationships are superficial.
You have a choice here, to continue to hide behind the smoke screen pretending you’re content with superficial relationships even with your closest family members or so-called friends. Or you can learn how to communicate from your authentic self to create greater intimacy and feel the warmth of others’ respect and love.
2. What is the emotional need linked to this habit? You’ll have to take a long hard look at yourself on that one, to see through that veil you’ve been hiding behind.
Last week, I mentioned a possible lack of emotional warmth in your childhood that may be repeating in your adult life. Or having to grow up too fast which means you had to suppress your emotions and didn’t get to learn how to experience them and use them to inform your wellbeing.
Any time we’re talking about emotional needs, we’re talking about the Solar Plexus. In this case, it isn’t strictly people who have an undefined Solar Plexus that may be smokers.
Having this center undefined means you take others’ emotions in and these emotions get amplified within you. But that being the case, you are intensely aware of these emotions even if you may not know where they’re coming from. Without this awareness, life is a series of disappointments that become bitterness and eventually deep resentment. So, you may turn to smoking as a stress relief. To put distance between yourself and these feelings.
However, this may be true for people who have a defined Solar Plexus as well because they oftentimes are not aware of their emotions yet their bodies are experiencing them. Having this center defined automatically means this is your inner authority and you can’t trust your feelings in the moment. Can you imagine how stressful that would be to NOT be able to trust your feelings in the moment?
This is a lesson that is learned the hard way. These people, early in their lives, act on their feelings only to get burned later. Love turns to hate. Passion turns to despair. Desire turns to apathy. Their lives can be filled with bitterness and anger. That initial spark of life suddenly fizzles out and this happens time and time again until they no longer know how to trust their feelings at any time, making it impossible for them to follow their inner authority and they become followers.
They share a common bond with other smokers born out of their nervousness to make the right connections and desire for instant gratification.
Ultimately you will need to learn how to give yourself time and space with your emotions before acting on them. Time will give you clarity. Smoking only creates greater confusion because it clouds the truth.
3. Can you identify what you really want in life?
In this example you probably already resonate with the undefined G Center since you’ll struggle to know who you are. But it’s more than that.
You’ll probably also have an undefined Heart Center (also referred to as the Ego Center). This center is all about your Willpower. You know the expression, “When there’s a Will, there’s a way”. Well, you first have to know what your likes and dislikes are to be able to pursue them. When you don’t have this center defined it’s easy to follow the Will of others who do have this center defined.
It’s not a bad thing to have an undefined Will center. It allows you to explore life. You’re not set on what you like. You’re open to trying new things.
But if both of these centers are undefined your willingness to follow others and do things that you don’t like is out of a desire to belong, to fit in with a tribe. There’s an underlying fear of being the odd person out, the black sheep, or the outcast. This is where a one-time thing like smoking to establish a friendship becomes a habit to prove your loyalty to your tribe.
Smoking becomes a part of who you are. It’s part of your identity.
Not to sound like a broken record but learning your HD is the simplest and quickest way to break this pattern; you have to reclaim your inner authority and be willing to lose some friends along the way.
4. How can you comfort yourself when you’re stressed or emotionally disturbed? In essence, how do you “fill your cup” with self-love?
If you have trouble knowing how to comfort yourself, it may be because you have an undefined G center. This center is about learning to love yourself.
This is also related to your level of emotional maturity. How do you process your feelings? Do you suppress your emotions or project them onto others? Or do you try to avoid them, and sweep them under the carpet to never be looked at again?
Smoking helps you do just that, it helps to hide behind a cigarette when you’re uncomfortable with something or someone.
If you also have an undefined Spleen Center you have a deep insecurity. You don’t know how to trust yourself and survival for you is survival in numbers. You take comfort in having people around you.
Smokers band together and form their own community.
Who will you socialize with if you quit smoking?
It’s very difficult to quit a habit that gives you a sense of security and belonging. The challenge here is to learn how to be your own best friend, to feel safe being alone, and to take responsibility for your feelings.
5. How can you make yourself feel safe in the face of limitations - to allow yourself to develop at your own pace?
Here there is again the same element of feeling insecure within yourself and is the not-self strategy of the undefined Spleen Center to seek comfort from others. But that is not the whole story.
Here you also have an undefined Sacral. There is a channel of Maturation between the Sacral and Root Centers. You may have the centers undefined yet have one of the two gates defined, either the gate of beginnings (gate 53) or the gate of growth (gate 42). [The example below the Root Center is defined.]
This is about personal development. Life itself is about expansion. Expansion through cycles. When you enter into something correctly you know you can see it through to the end.
If you only have one of these gates defined and the fuel isn’t there, either from the Sacral or the Root Center you may start something but don’t see it through to completion. Your energy is scattered.
Or you may not know where to begin, or what the first step is because there’s always this fear of failure or fear of change or any of the other fears of an undefined Spleen.
It’s an odd concept to grasp that the decision process starts from the Root Center to the Sacral Center but it does! Part of knowing what commitments to make, or what to focus on, is knowing whether or not you have the energy.
Think of your energy the same way you think of money. Do you have the money in the bank or not? If you’re always putting everything on credit, you’ll eventually go bankrupt.
The Sacral is a fuel that naturally knows its limitations and it can say NO. But when you don’t have this center defined, you don’t know when enough is enough and readily say YES only to regret it later. Therein lies the challenge - how do you say NO to the next cigarette?
Smoking gives you that false sense of security, and of well-being even though it’s been well-established that smoking is harmful to your health. Your subconscious satisfaction comes with every cigarette you smoke because it is something you can focus on, that you can start and finish. While you’re having that smoke, your energy isn’t scattered and you don’t have any other decisions to make.
Are you willing to accept your limitations?
Are you willing to explore other ways to make yourself feel safe?
Do you have the desire to evolve and see yourself in a different light?
These are all samples of possibilities for the self-sabotaging behavior of smoking. There are many other possibilities.
For example, you may have the centers I’ve discussed above defined in your body graph, however, the connecting channel which is giving it the definition, may be in red, which means that it is outside of your awareness because it is an unconscious definition. Therefore, you should look at it in your body graph as if it were undefined until you are regularly practicing your inner authority.
You can let me know what you learned about yourself from this newsletter by leaving a comment or direct messaging me. I’d love to hear what your biggest takeaway was.
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PLEASE NOTE
The content of this newsletter is NOT strictly based on Human Design. I have other disciplines I am calling upon. Therefore, you will NOT hear the above information from any other HD professional.
And again, these were only a few of the possible “not-self”
strategies that the mind fixates on. It is impossible to cover all the possibilities as we are all unique.
More importantly, only you can be your authority and it is up to you whether or not you want to explore your HD.
Remember to check out my other articles! You’ll also find Human Design Resources with all the links you’ll need to start to explore your HD.
This was a great read Nicole - so interesting :-)