Welcome to one of my most favourite corners of the world – our beautiful Greek island of Santorini. Ah, all I need is a beach and the sea!
So what better topic to talk about today than what is the thing that that we experience when we are not in our natural flow and we are going against our natural flow?
I often find that in the human design sessions that I offer to my clients, the not-self theme is one of their most helpful – because it essentially helps us understand ourselves more and be less self-critical and judgmental.
In human design the not-self theme is basically our first sign that we are not in our energy and alignment of self. It happens when we let our conditioning take over and drive our life forward instead of allowing our natural authority to make decisions. By aligning to our natural way of expression and unique energy, we begin to feel more comfortable within, and interact with life and with others in a new more peaceful way.
For those of you new here – human design is essentially a wellness map to align us with our energy and natural flow. Much like astrology, our human design charts are based on our exact time, date, and place of birth; however, the information also identifies your dominant chakras to create your personal body graph. It’s basically an energetic blueprint and allows us to understand how our body communicates with us to align us, so we lead a more fulfilling and healthier life.
There are five energy types – manifestor, generator, manifesting generator, projector, and reflector – and each has its own not-self to show us when we are out of alignment. For manifestors, it is anger; for generators, it is frustration; for for manifesting generators, it is frustration and anger; for projectors, it is bitterness; and for reflectors, it is disappointment.
Let’s go through some examples, discussing first projectors and bitterness, and then generators and frustration.
Projectors and Bitterness
If you are a projector, this means that you have an ebb and flow of energy. You derive energy from other people rather than generating it within yourself like generators or even manifestors; and many projectors are extroverts. What drives you in life is efficiency not quantity, and your internal need is to feel recognized for your success. Your so called strategy, or right way forward, is wait for the invitation.
People will naturally come to your and invite you when they see your unique gifts and talents and skills, as long as you are still putting yourself out there to be seen. However, when you try to force things and see that your efforts aren’t working, what begins to build up within you is your not-self theme: bitterness.
The moment you start to feel bitter is the moment you need to take a step back because this is your sign that you are out of alignment and no longer in your natural flow – so you need to re-adjust. In fact, as a projector yourself, any time you start to feel jealousy, envy, anger, comparison and bitterness, whether in subtle ways or not, it is time for you to regroup. With your deep ability to see into others, and mirror to them their own selves, you may often neglect yourself. Bitterness is just one of the flavours or cousins of jealousy and all these other emotions; and it will show up when you need to spend some time inside yourself.
You hold pearls of wisdom in your energy, and you have the ability to truly and meaningfully help people, even raise them up. But often times throughout your life, your well-intentioned advice towards others or even showing up to help them or support them, might have been met with resistance; or many times you might have felt that your life is so much harder than everyone else’s, and so, naturally and understandably, you might have felt resentful, angry or even bitter.
Your role in this life, based off of your natural flow of energy, is to manage, guide and direct the energies of others through your innate knowing and valuable accumulated wisdom. It is important for you to wait to be invited and recognized. Any time you offer advice, opinions or direction without being asked to do so, you’ll likely be ignored or misunderstood, or perceived as bossy, controlling or irritating to other people – because this is not the natural flow of your energy. You need to be asked and invited, and then follow that flow.
So the not self theme builds up easily towards bitterness in your energy because:
1) invitations don’t come often, 2) you may not have sustainable energy, 3) it is not correct or appropriate to initiate something, 4) feeling rejected or unappreciated deeply wounds you, 5) your sharp reactions towards new invitations or people reaching out to you, may push them away, which then make you feel even more annoyed.
So how can you minimize these effects? Wait for the right timing. Wait before you speak. Cultivate patience and try not to take things personally. Usually, 90% of how people act towards us has nothing to do us, it is just their own internal things. Invest in your own self-awareness and self-growth, and releasing any conditioning from thought patters etc., so that your own energy clears out and you are able to discern more properly in life what’s you and what isn’t. And find people who support you for you, appreciate you, and you feel yourself with. Also, self-esteem is an important area for you in your life, and you need to rely on your own inner self-value and self-confidence because often times, unfortunately, appreciation or external validation doesn’t always come in our life, so you need that inner stability to be built.
Generators and Frustration
As a generator you generate the life force for our world. You are magnetic, and things and people and all is naturally drawn to you so you don’t even need any New Age-y manifesting techniques. What you do need though is trust, patience and to allow yourself to do only what gives you pleasure. Sounds simple, but it’s hard. I know.
Your strategy is what’s known as waiting to respond – and one of your greatest lesson is discernment because as I already mentioned generators pull things in and so you need to wait and respond and discern what you want and gives you joy, and what doesn’t just push it away from you like a wave.
Generators have an abundance of energy within because they are essentially the vessel through which life force energy flows and is then spread around for others. This means that they need to feel good, otherwise not much else will work out and people around them may feel not that great neither. Generators are naturally inspired and very creative but what holds them back in life that we live in a world and society that doesn’t really respect these qualities of intuition, creativity and authenticity.
And perhaps the biggest problem is that we are told how we need to do, do, do because that’s how we make things happen, otherwise we are perhaps lazy bums. It’s hard to let go of narratives and beliefs we’ve had our whole lives, but we are all different and have different ways of being – and our bodies communicate with us in their unique ways and languages.
Generators need to wait to respond, and listen to your gut because you have sacral authority. This means that if you don’t feel something, or someone, as hell yes! it’s a no. And if it’s an hmmmm I don’t know, it’s a probably no but just wait and don’t do or choose anything yet. Waiting to feel this can be uncomfortable and we might get that urge or compulsion to act, initiate, and start things to relieve the pressure – and because naturally we are just full of energy anyway. This pressure to do something becomes even stronger when we don’t understand why or what we are even waiting for.
So we begin to force ourselves to “think” about what we “should” be doing and what “everyone expects” us to do. We begin to make decisions based on our mind rather than feeling and sacral joy, and we might even begin to feel influenced by others and their expectations on us. Many people feel uncomfortable around generators because they can’t really predict their behaviours and this challenges their own narratives and creates instability within them. As a result, they try to control the generators, and project on them their expectations, so be mindful of that. It’s not that they mean badly, it’s just human nature that we try to control things in order to soothe our worries about this unstable thing called life. The waves of life can be highly uncomfortable, and we all want to have some stability in the knowing – knowing where we’re going and whether or not things will work out.
You have to do things that excite you – because this is how all else recharges and get excited around you. Don’t initiate anything, just live your best life and the rest will approach you. Learn the feminine mysteries that there are times of quietness and times of action. In the times of quietness and waiting, you might feel restless and feel or be told that you have to do something – and this is where your not-self theme shows up: frustration.
As mentioned, generators generate the life force in our world. You are the air, the water, the food, you are the absolute fire, darling – and your inner engine is powerfully and constantly running. It’s like you are a Lamborghini, and sometimes you’ll drive through the little streets in a house neighbourhood and patience is what you’ll need to know – patience will be your best friend in life. Patience is a virtue. Patience opens the soul of matter. Patience is the mark of truest love. You’ll get to the highway, so don’t worry about that, just enjoy the views around you in the meantime.
Frustration happens in the times we need to wait yet we don’t because waiting requires a lot of inner trust – and trust in life itself. And in these moments we might feel like we have to do something, so we go against ourselves and we may even do things we don’t enjoy and we get frustrated. We bump into obstacles and we also feel restless because there are waves of energy constantly running through us, so we feel we need to do something. In these times, go out for a walk or just do something you love to do. Don’t be too hard on yourself and learn to trust your inner gut. And don’t compare yourself to others because their life isn’t yours; and the way Western societies focus on the masculine way of being and initiation and assertion is not your natural flow.
You have unlimited energy and creative inspiration – and abundance of stamina and passion for the work you love and can do it sleeplessly for days. You are the vessel for life’s creative spirit to be shaped into our physical, so the beauty you make just by your mere presence, words or gestures or movements, literally inspires others around you. Satisfaction is your go-sign, and frustration is not not sign forward.
Allow yourself be happy and joyful and ecstatic – if you want to go to to a beach overseas for a few days because you only have little money left – don’t worry about the money, don’t feel guilty, and just book the trip for as many days as you can afford. If you feel it in your gut, it’s right. The same goes for relationships. When you respond to these gut sacral urges, your life is in flow.
Remember that one of our hardest yet most important lessons for all of us in this life is trust. What this means is that the external doesn’t matter which is one of the key manifestation laws. Even when things don’t look like the way you thought or people act weird, even when it all seems messy and non-sensical, even when it seems like absolutely nothing is happening – it is happening, and it is making its way to you. Wait to respond. And to respond means responding to your sacral feelings and gut urges – whether it is responding to a person, an idea, a thought, a situation, an opportunity, a photo.
This period of waiting is often what causes the frustration to build, so know that it is on its way to you, whether an opportunity or person, and just enjoy your time now. Like the Italians say, learn the sweetness of doing nothing, live in love and joy and pleasure, dolce vita, dolce far niente!
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