Solar Transit for Oct 25th - 30th
Gate 28: Tenacity
Hellooo! We are officially in Scorpio season!
How was Gate 50 for you? Any feelings of a guilt, re-establishing or questioning values or recalibrating your relationships and responsibilities?
Now, we are shifting into Gate 28: The Gate of Tenacity, also referred to as the Gate of the Game Player or the Gate of Struggle.
This is the second last gate in the Spleen for the season - as I mentioned before in previous newsletters, this season goes through every single spleen gate in a row! (I have highlighted all of the gates we've covered in the spleen thus far since September 27th.
So, what is the energy of Gate 28?
This gate’s energy looks at life as a game, assessing whether or not it is worth it to play.
This gate carries an instinct around knowing what is worth fighting for and what is not.
It is driven by a fear of life running out, or a fear of death. There's also a drive to find the purpose of your life.
Low expression of this gate:
Today I'm starting with the low expression which I might start doing for future newsletters as well.
The fear of purposelessness lives here. That you or life itself has no purpose and no meaning. You might fall into a victim mentality that life is unfair and you are feeling sorry that you haven’t found the meaning of life.
You might fall into drug abuse to cope (especially if this gate is defined in your Neptune) or perpetual inaction because you don't see the point of anything.
You may engage in the wrong struggles or challenges because you are avoiding the fact that you are afraid. In the low expression you are not using your strategy and authority to determine what are the right struggles for you to tackle in your life.
Embrace your fears, accept them as reality and know that working through your fears is the right way. Learn to see life as a game that you are gifted with the opportunity to play.
Without gate 38 defined, you may jump from goal to goal never accomplishing any.
In the Gene Keys system, the reactive shadow is: gambling. This behaviour is rash and impetuous in an effort to transform their fear into activity to give them a sense of purpose. This is about constantly taking risks, not being able to stop moving and sitting in their inner silence or stillness.
The repressive shadow is: hollow. This behaviour appears happy and easygoing on the outside, but on the inside they feel devoid of life, and feeling hollow instead. Without facing their fears, they live a half life.
P.S. I wrote a note about the low expression or not-self and how to work with it. It's an important distinction and nuance to understand about the low expression.
High expression of this gate:
Enjoying a good challenge and finding fun in it.
This gate gives you the comfort with taking risks to find the meaning of life. You take risks to seek out experiences that make you feel alive. As long as you follow your Strategy and Authority then you will not find yourself in danger even with the actions you take, which other people may think are too risky.
You know immediately what is worth fighting for and what is not.
When you find a life goal that you are really passionate about, you are willing to risk a lot for it. Whatever you struggle or fight through is meaningful, and you share your stories of overcoming challenges with others to help them understand what is meaningful in life.
In the Gene Keys system, the Gift frequency is: Totality. This is the ability to accept and embrace the whole of nature and life itself, which includes death. It is to live in the eternal present and be in harmony with all that life has to offer, including our fears. To live alongside our fears and still remain open to life.
“The state of totality appears to be a continual state of taking risks - not the unfounded risks of the 28th Shadow but the risk of building something that you cannot really see until it is complete. What you are building of course is the path of your true destiny. This is a path of deep trust in which the individual strikes out on their path, surrendering their whole being into the mystery of life and its hidden rhythms… In the resident vessel of each moment fear cannot survive and thus you experience a deepening calm and quietness growing naturally within.” - Richard Rudd, The Gene Keys.
The Siddhi frequency is: Immortality. This is the sense that to become completely immersed in a healthy relationship with the fear of death, is to become life and death, to become pure consciousness - to live beyond your physical vessel, and to live beyond time.
Systems change lens:
Richard Rudd brings up an interesting theory around this gate. That in earlier times our species was solely focused on survival, or at least as its highest priority. In modern times, food is easier to come by comparatively. He speaks about how in modern times, particularly in wealthier countries, we consider life purpose and our creative expression to be a higher priority than it might have been thousands of years prior. And with this, our fears of survival might be decreasing, where our fears of purposelessness are increasing.
Since the Industrial Age, and perhaps even prior, the emphasis on human purpose has turned into its ability to produce and create, not for themselves, but for those in power. For corporations, and for industry. Personal expression and how we each step into our destinies of devotional service for the collective or for higher spirit is more and more challenging to pursue in our modern world.
If the Manifestors of the world are falling prey to the shadows of this gate, the world does not benefit from their initiations coming from their soul, if for example they feel like there's no point.
If the Projectors of the world are falling prey to the shadows of this gate, their guidance and their insights about humanity are missing, if for example they fall into a fear of taking risks or of taking every risk.
If the same occurs for Generators and Manifesting Generators, our building and creation capacity in the world may flounder, if for example they keep choosing the wrong struggles to pursue.
If the same occurs for Reflectors, they're evaluation for how things can be better or their evaluation of the health of the world may become very cynical, if for example they are caught in a cycle of drug abuse.
Is it worth it for the butterfly to struggle to get out of its cocoon and spread its wings?
Artificial intelligence:
I recently attended a conference on the future of work. The keynote speaker was Dr. Vivian Ming who offered some wonderful insights about AI. One of which was her encouragement that the use of AI now and in our future can not only serve to make our lives easier, but we could leverage it to also challenge us. We could certainly have AI or robots that use AI to do menial tasks that most humans on the planet do not want to do, or that it does those tasks faster and more accurately than humans can. However, this is not where the potential of leveraging AI ends.
She gave an example of using AI to poke holes at one of the chapters in a book she's writing currently, to help her strengthen it against potential critical readers. She took some of it suggestions, and disagreed with some others. But it challenged her to be better as a human writer. This is the exact opposite of a scenario where a company uses AI to write 50% of its emails. Her argument being, that if an AI can write your email for you, perhaps that email does not even need to be written. That human to human communication is far more valuable and meaningful and our energy should be allocated for those types of communications.
How does this relate to this gate? It brings up an existential and philosophical question about humans and struggle. I do believe that challenge, pain and struggle are an innate and unavoidable aspect of the human experience. But what are we meant to be struggling in? That is the question that I think brings us more specific answers. On a related note, it brings up the question that I am eager to read more about in the coming years, about what makes us human, what is the meaning of life for humans, where is it moral for us to use technology to make things easier, and where do we gain invaluable life lessons and even joy as a result of our struggles?
Some human struggles are the greatest sources of valuable lessons, unforgettable experiences and potentially discovering the meaning of life. We have to have these experiences, it's baked Into the human experience of evolution and transformation throughout our years.
Bill Gates in his recently released Netflix series, “What's Next? The future with Bill Gates”, he tells filmmaker and director James Cameron, that if AI were to tell him that he no longer needs to address malaria, because the AI has figured out the solution and will take care of it, he would not know what to do with his life now having lost a major aspect of his life purpose. I shared this with someone I know at a dinner party yesterday. His response was that he agrees with Bill in the sense that he believes that humans do need a purpose, and that the feeling of accomplishment after a challenge or struggle is worked through, is one of the most important experiences a human can have. I agree and further hypothesized that perhaps an ideal future scenario is that humans always have the option to ask an AI to do a task, or for the human to do it itself. That if a human said I want to be able to grow my own food, I do not want the robot to do it for me, that they in fact do have this option.
Emi’s Personal Reflection:
I came into Human Design, looking for my life purpose. I wanted to figure out what are the ideal careers for me, and what kind of hobbies I should take up. As someone who has a completely open G centre, the options are literally endless, and all possible. Learning to follow my Strategy and Authority has helped and of course identifying particular gifts that I have in my design.
I have this gate defined in my conscious Pluto. I do not have its opposite, gate 38: the Gate of the Fighter. I have had man periods of my life where I fall into the hollow, repressive shadow of this gate. Wondering if any of my effort is worth it, including simple acts of self-care, such as going outside for a walk. For me it wasn't so much of the fear of purposelessness, I would word it more as the victimhood of purposelessness.
As I mentioned above, this gate is also referred to as the Gate of Struggle. Although I have my spleen defined, and it is my authority (therefore I should be letting my intuition guide me as a consistent resource), I sometimes face difficulty an identifying what challenges are worth pursuing and which ones aren't. I will say, but I do fear wasting my time and energy on something and discovering years later that it was pointless. However, when I reflect back on my life, nothing was ever truly pointless even if it didn't amount to anything practical.
I have a lot of 3-lines in my design. The 3-line energy probably helps me a lot, adopting the feeling that every experience, mistake and trial and error was worth it because I learned some valuable lessons and I grew. If you don't have many 3-lines in your design, falling into purposelessness might feel challenging to come out of.
Regarding the 2nd line in my profile (I'm a 2/5), I am designed to follow what feels natural for me, in other words what comes easy to me. It has been quite a journey of trying to figure out this process for the last 3 years in my deconditioning journey. It may seem that this gate and my second line profile would be at odds. But I think that having this gate defined means there are certain challenges and struggles that are worth it for me to pursue, and everything else that I engage in can be related to my natural talents. Uphill battles are part of the nature of life, for me the lesson here is checking to see if it's the right hill for me at the right time.
I see how this has shown up in my previous jobs as well. I question whether I'm going down a research rabbit hole, before taking action, questioning if all this research is worth it. Sometimes I question if all the preparation I do before a big meeting or presentation is worth it. I even question if informing about specific things as a Manifestor is worth it (since informing is the Strategy of Manifestors).
In these examples, you can see how other aspects of one's design interact with and influence your gate definition.
In this experience of starting my own business just over a year ago, I really appreciate Richard Rudd's quote about totality in the high expression that I inserted above. I feel that many entrepreneurs can definitely relate. There are times that I feel completely calm in situations where many people would feel anxious, and many do warn me that I should feel anxious. Knowing the information about this gate, helps me feel more confident about this calmness that I experience. Showing me that I do not need to second-guess myself despite what others are saying to me.
Reflection prompts for you:
Do I question if some thing's in my life are worth it? What are they?
Tune into your Authority and ask it if specific things in your life are worth it or not.
Have I ever not pursued something because I was concerned that it might not be worth it?
What is my purpose in life? What gives my life meaning?
Do I feel hollow about myself and about life?
Am I engaging in risky behaviour in the shadow or in the gift frequency?
(if you have this gate defined) Am I using my authority to help me assess what struggles are worth my effort in which aren't?
(if you have this gate defined) Have I ever shared my stories of struggle and inspired others as a result?
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If you use this newsletter for self-reflection or for general contemplation about life, please feel free to like it, share this or leave a comment below. Every little bit helps my business. 🧡
How to use this gate information - learn more here. I wrote a blog post so it does not take up space in this newsletter, for you to learn how to deeply work with the gates.
If you’d like to get a reading with me to learn more about your Human Design and how you were designed to work with these energies, find out more about my offerings here. I offer a reading with the call recording + a report. I also offer coaching packages where we can have several calls to support you in coming back to your most authentic self and living a life of alignment.