March/April 2011 Featured Stories
The New Astrology? Human Design Reveals DNA of Your True Nature
by Chetan Parkyn
Imagine, at the exact moment of birth, being handed a piece of paper.
“This information is for you and you alone,” whispers a messenger sent by the universe. “It is your reliable guide — and secret — to carry through life.”
Before being welcomed into the outside world, you look down at this document — a map-like illustration full of diagrams, shapes, colors, lines and numbers. Your soul, about to embark on its journey, is curious.
The messenger smiles and says, “This is your design for life — all you need to know about yourself for the years ahead is in here.”
If only life were as simple as being handed all the answers at birth. Yet this imagined scene explains the essence of Human Design — a new system that breaks down and details the DNA of your true nature.
The New Astrology
Does Human Design Really Work?
Human Design is being touted as the new astrology, but does it really work?
I signed up for a free reading with Chetan Parkyn, author of Human Design, hoping to find out if the system works.
The verdict: This system so accurately described me that it was a little eerie, but ultimately, it was an enlightening tool for understanding my life’s path.
There are three keys to understanding the Human Design chart:
Type. There are five types, and knowing which is yours provides the basis for living in alignment with your nature.
Authority: We each make decisions in different ways, according to our authority. Through the Human Design process, you discover which of the six authorities is yours.
Profile: The 12 profiles describe the ways you interact with others and how to effectively relate with the world around you.
My type is a manifesting generator (MG), which Parkyn describes as someone who needs to listen to her gut response before taking action. Then I can go from zero to 60 mph in four seconds and leave rubber burning on the road. It’s nice to be understood. Other famous MGs include George Lucas, Salman Rushdie and Mother Teresa.
My authority key is emotional clarity, which means that when something feels right, intuition will guide me. My decision-making process hinges on finding that still point that Buddha calls “the middle way.” My mantra: Feel it, don’t think it.
My profile is a 4/1, which means that I have a fixed fate vibration — I have one path, one purpose, one perspective. I need to stick to my path and follow my heart. What is my fixed fate? Power, and I’m here to speak my truth, just like Mary Queen of Scots, Gianni Versace and Peter Sellers (so walk like a queen, dress like a queen and most of all, keep my sense of humor on my path of power).
Using my intuition as my power base, I now realize that it’s right for me to be so spirit-driven in what I do. I seek inner guidance for all of my actions and plans.
What did I take away from the Human Design chart? It’s good to be me, standing strong in my intuitive power.
— Vicky Thompson
This system is, in my mind, the successor to astrology because it works in a similar way — making a calculation based on birth data — but that's where the similarity ends.
With Human Design, two calculations are made — one at the moment of birth and also one for three months prior to birth when, it is said, the neocortex in the brain is turned on. That is a fundamental addition that brings with it a fascinating dimension.
The system produces a life chart, which is a literal map of your inner-being, but instead of creating a one-size-fits-all star sign, it pin points your precise make-up — the secret ingredients of your individuality. Whereas a Pisces is a Pisces and a Libra is a Libra, your Human Design creates a personality blueprint as unique as a fingerprint.
It is not primarily predictive — instead, it shows you how to be the author of your own destiny. Human Design takes the torch from astrology and carries insights to the next level because it is more individually specific than astrology. That's why we say: Forget your sign, what's your design?
This information is the buried treasure that lies deep within each of us, and it finally helps answer the age-old question: Who am I? It is a system ripe for a new age — the Aquarian Age — when individuals, and especially women, are reinvigorated and empowered in discovering their unique groove in life.
Four Traditions
First discovered in 1987, Human Design fuses the four ancient wisdoms of astrology, I Ching, the Kabbalah and the chakra system to become an entity on its own.
In 1973, researchers found that there is an established link between the 64 hexagrams of the I Ching and the 64 genetic codons in DNA. Therefore, the direct correlation between the 64 hexagrams of the I Ching and the 64 gates contained within Human Design represents the DNA of your soul as intended for this lifetime. This system is part science, part spirituality.
Working from your time, date and place of birth, it reveals gems such as how to successfully direct your life, how you make winning decisions, and how to ensure fulfillment in life and relationships. In a word, it reveals your true potential.
It is the first system of its kind to reveal unconscious elements of our personalities — that hidden side of your personality that influences so much of your behaviors. It is about character and identity. It informs you how you best operate, think, function and respond.
Personal Blueprint
It is a blueprint because your design is as unique as your fingerprint, created at your exact moment of birth. It determines the kind of person you were born to be and how you are designed to interact — socially and intimately — with others.
It captures your true nature long before it was influenced or shaped by outside conditioning, so you really do get to see the most authentic version of you. From birth, and through the years of childhood, adulthood and love, the people around us tend to impact our behaviors and so we cut our cloth accordingly to be fit in, be liked or accepted, to live up to expectations or avoid judgment. Consequently, we become someone not true to ourselves and can live out of alignment with our intended design.
Human Design is multilayered because it shows what type of person you are, what your particular way of being is, and what decision-making strategy works best for you. It is multipurpose because this self-knowledge can then be applied to your work, love relationships, family interactions and friendships.
Once you rediscover your true nature, and decide to honor it, the more authentic and fulfilled you feel. It is as if the search ends and you start making better decisions and meeting your kind of people. Self-knowledge becomes self-power.
Chetan Parkyn is the author of Human Design: Discover the Person You Were Born to Be
. Visit www.humandesignforusall.com. Reprinted with permission by New World Library at www.newworldlibrary.com.