Let’s continue our Journey through the Centers of the Human Design Bodygraph with what is at the very core of your being, playing a central role to your identity in life – your G Center.
As the Center that provides your unique direction so that you can experience correct love in life, it is also the location of your magnetic monopole. Your monopole pulls the illusion of you together as a being separate from the totality, as well as drawing you along your path in life (or “trajectory in space” as Ra would put it).
Your higher self is here, attracting beauty and love to you. When you surrender to living your design, you can experience the bliss of oneness without looking for love outside of yourself.
Your G center is positioned right beneath your sternum energetically. Imagine the pain of losing a loved one -heartbreak- where you feel it? That’s your G Center, which biologically, governs your liver and blood. It is imperative to respect and love yourself enough to be correct with the use of alcohol, as this particular substance can damage your liver and, therefore, affect your sense of self and ability to love.
Undoubtedly the most extraordinary Center you have regardless of definition or lack thereof, your G Center is home to eight gates that divide the wheel of your Human Design Mandala into eight equal parts. If you take a look at each of those hexagrams of your G Center, you’ll notice that they establish the foundation of the hexagram for the following seven gates. In other words, you can see in the wheel how the eight sections of the mandala share the same lower trigram.
Not only is your G the only Center that touches all quarters of the wheel, it also has all the gates of two crucial Incarnation Crosses within it. These are the Cross of the Vessel of Love and the Cross of the Sphinx, which is how we’ll look at the G Center gates later in this article.
When your G is defined, you have a fixed and reliable identity, and you have the ability to love yourself and others without feeling dependent on them. Depending on your definition, you may try to lead or direct others incorrectly to follow your direction (imposing your direction on them) if you don’t follow your Strategy and Authority. Alternatively, rejecting your personal direction can lead to loss of self-love and fulfilling your unique potential. Being able to see clearly when it’s time to follow your own path and letting others follow theirs can relieve you from the suffering that comes from trying to hold on or change the things you cannot control.
G Center Authority (Self-Projected Authority) must be honored if you have that yellow diamond defined but do not have your Solar Plexus, Sacral, Splenic and Heart Centers defined. Your G either empowers or shares your self-identity when defined to your Throat Center. To make decisions, wait to be recognized and invited first. Then, it is essential that you pay attention to what you say when you talk things over with another person that you trust. Find a good listener (perhaps invite another Projector like yourself), who you can request to reflect back what they heard come out of your mouth to help you to recognize your truth. Observe and honor what you find yourself saying with your unique voice (see article on the Throat Center) as this is your authentic energy being expressed. Be sure to pay no attention to your mind’s manipulation or distortions of how it wants or thinks how things should be.
The most critical aspect to know about your G center if it is undefined within your Human Design bodygraph is that place is incredibly important to you. If you are not in the correct place, you cannot thrive. You cannot be correct in relationships, career or family if you are in the wrong place – even if you are with the correct people. Things just won’t work out. So following your Strategy and Authority is key for your life to unfold correctly, and not fixating on finding direction and love. Making your decisions about where to go using your unique inner guidance system can be an incredibly life-affirming and life-changing benefit that Human Design can bring you.
As you read about the G Center gates below, have your bodygraph handy to take special note of the ones imprinted in your Human Design. If your G Center is defined, those gates you have activated are the very specific ways you are designed to consistently experience your identity, direction and sense of transpersonal love.
If your G Center is undefined, the gates waiting to be activated are themes you are genetically programmed to experience when your G Center is activated by transits or people in your environment. Remember, this energy is not consistent and cannot be relied upon to make decisions, but provides a consistency in the lessons to be learned when you go to school in the world of love and direction.
As always, remember that Human Design is a dualistic system; the “this and that” of it all means that every gate can express as it’s opposite as well.
Gates of Love (Cross of the Vessel of Love)
The Gate of the Spirit of the Self
This first, original Love of Gate 25 “Universal Love” is not loving the universe but being loving in the universe; having a place to be loving towards what everything is. The archetype of the Priest/Priestess represents this non-personal love. Initiated into being, it is a romantic, individual, unrequited love for the great unknowable force. If you have this gate defined, you can be very loving, not necessarily loving of the other specifically. Your quality of loving sees everything deserving to be treated lovingly because, through loving, you experience your unique form of transcendent love. This love is often mutative and melancholic; as well as innocent notwithstanding the circumstances.
The Gate of Extremes
The Love of Humanity is characterized by Gate 15, “Modesty,” a very specific transpersonal quality of love with the potential to care about humanity. This love of being human and humanity has a collective vision of how human beings are supposed to behave. When operating personally in the not-self world it can cause atrocities to organize society in the name of love for humanity. A politician characterizes this gate; sharing their logical moral standards, rules, and schooling so that humanity has the potential to be more loving to each other.
The Gate of the Determination of the Self
Carrying the determination to follow through, Gate 46, “Pushing Upward” is the Love of the Body. Your body is a magical temple and accepting its perfection comes with the territory when you live as yourself – then you naturally love yourself. If you have this transcendent gate defined, you are looking to discover the beauty of everybody’s form. Massage therapists often have this gate defined, to share with others this wonderful love of the body. Remember this is a transpersonal kind of love.
The Gate of the Behavior of the Self
The love of being alive as yourself is the theme of Gate 10, “Treading” which is the gate of behavior. As the most self-absorbed, individual and melancholic aspect of the bodygraph, this is both transcendent and mundane loving of the world as it is, as what can be considered both good and bad. Surrendering to acceptance of everything and everyone, and grokking here that we are not in control of it is where you wake up. The underlying code of behavior of the self in humans are used as the Profile names in Human Design. These are:
Gates of Direction (Cross of the Sphinx)
Hexagram 1 – The Gate of Self-Expression
At the core of empowering our present direction in life, Gate 1, “The Creative” individually pulses with a mutative spark that needs to be expressed and requires correct timing that you have no control over. If you have this gate defined, your self-expression can shine forth with the yang energy to manifest creativity without limits and has the potential to attract society. Like all individual circuitry, melancholy (the happy and sad cycle of your chemistry) here can inspire your muse, and knowing can come for you through patience, objectivity and being yourself.
Hexagram 13 – The Gate of The Listener
One of the two Collective Role Gates, Gate 13 “The Fellowship of Man,” is about having a past perspective, directing by looking back to accumulate and remember past experience to be advantageous for society. If you have this gate defined, a strong theme in you is listening to others’ pasts (often, their secrets) shared with you in order to gather and learn from experiences. Lessons are only learned completely when that particular experiential process is finished and are shared. You can provide an empathetic ear when others recognize you as trustworthy, enabling their learning and memory by sharing. Gate 13’s are collectors of reflections of the past, storing experiences that, when recognized and invited, can inspire humanity’s perspective.
If you take your Personality Profile number and match it to the line in this gate, you can find your limited perspective role (aka the mask we wear when taking others in) which is:
Line 1 Empathy
Line 2 Bigotry
Line 3 Pessimism
Line 4 Fatigue
Line 5 Savior
Line 6 Optimist
Hexagram 7 – The Gate of the Role of the Self in Interaction
As the other Collective Role Gate, Gate 7 “The Army,” is about having a future perspective, directing by looking to forward, and is home to the six ways humans are designed to lead with influence and foresight. If you have this gate defined, your role of leadership is recognized by others according to the variation of the line you carry. It is important for humanity to establish secure, logical patterns for the future, which need to be tested and experimented with in order to find what works, and tested further to ensure reliability and security.
If you take your Personality Profile number and match it to the line in this gate, you can find your projected attitude role which is:
Line 1 Authoritarian
Line 2 Democrat
Line 3 Anarchist
Line 4 Abdicator
Line 5 General
Line 6 Administrator
Hexagram 2 – The Gate of the Direction of the Self
The home of the Magnetic Monopole, Gate 2 “The Receptive” is the origin of your direction in life, enabling individual vision. The functioning of your Monopole is two-fold; holding the illusion of our separateness (what we call love) together, as well as pulling us along our path in life. This is the only gate that gives us our direction in life, which is fundamentally mutative in nature and has the perspective of the movement in the now at it’s core. If you have this gate defined, look to see what line it is as there you may find your theme of receptivity that determines the primal root of action through which your response is designed to originate. These are the core origins of direction in life:
Line 1 Intuition
Line 2 Genius
Line 3 Patience
Line 4 Discretion
Line 5 Intelligent application
Line 6 Fixation (fixated on a higher knowing)
If your G Center is defined, your identity clearly shines and is sharply defined compared to someone with an undefined G. It is important to recognize that your path is your own, and you and you alone can walk that path. Despite what you may think, you have no control over where life takes you, so allow others to go their way even if it means forging on alone. Following your Strategy and Authority to enter or leave things correctly can help you resist conditioning or the expectations of others.
Undefined or Open G Center
If you have an Undefined G Center, you can be considered a consummate chameleon and make a remarkably talented actor; trying on other identities is natural to you. Likely you’ve already felt how important the right environment is to your well being, as you are sensitive to places and people. Making sure that you are comfortable in your surroundings can make all the difference in your life, so be clear about following your Strategy and Authority when deciding on things. Trying to find direction and love is a “not-self” theme you’ll likely recognize.
From where to go out to eat, where to sit at school/work, to where and what direction to park your car or place your bed, place is everything to you. Watch as you decondition how you become ever more attuned to and relaxed in your correct environment. You are a collector of correct places – finding them makes all the difference between thriving and merely surviving.
Also, if you have an Open G (with no gates defined in that white diamond), not knowing what to be is a strong theme when you are not operating correctly. More than most, it is very important for you never to give authority to anyone else – the moment that you do that, you are deeply conditioned, and you cannot live out your unique potential.
The depth of conditioning, when your G Center is open or undefined, can be quite troublesome when operating as not-self, especially with regards to career and relationships. Always questioning whether you are on the right path or with the right person can undermine your sense of identity and self. Constant upheaval in your life due to continually changing directions and chasing after what (or who) your mind thinks it should have can cause instability that leaves you and others confused about who you are.
It can be destabilizing to initiate change regularly (and out of your design unless you are an aware Manifestor who considers carefully their impact and chooses the correct moment to initiate) considering the big picture. If you allow yourself the possibility of letting go of your need for direction and love, you can encounter the correct love and direction for you if you follow your Strategy and Authority. Gradually you can begin to rest in your undefined sense of self by making decisions correctly, with less fretting about where to go, what to be or who to love.
Questions for Inquiry: Have you noticed you tend to question your relationship or your direction in life? Do you morph yourself by looking for direction in others and love from others? Making decisions from a place of searching for these things can make you feel lost and unsure about your identity. What examples of the thoughts below, which may come up on behalf of your deeply conditioned mind, do you recognize in you?
Who am I supposed to be? What am I supposed to do with my life?
Where can I find my soul-mate? Who are they and how can I find them?
Why don’t I know who I am or where I am supposed to go?
Who do I need to ask or
where do I need to go to find where I belong?
Should I do this or that for a career? What is my correct path?
I need a relationship (love) to know myself; maybe if I go to this (event/place) I can find “the one.”
No matter the configuration of your G Center, you are perfectly designed exactly as you are. Remember everyone has everything present and functioning in the bodygraph. You have certain areas that are strongly energized and fixed while others are open to experiencing the myriad possibilities and potentials that you can learn from and hopefully grow wise about over time.
You were born unique. Following your Strategy and Authority is the key to releasing the mind’s conditioning and control over your life, which expands your awareness, eventually transforming your physical body’s chemistry and your experiences.
Living your Human Design helps you to move through life with more grace and less suffering. Would you like to share any of your G Center epiphanies or feedback with the Human Design Community below? You’re invited to ask questions as well.
