My son is home from school thanks to having puked out everything he ate yesterday over the course of the night.

This is obviously a normal part of having a kid, yet my mind keeps going in circles: of course this is happening to you now, after you finally wrote something that could become something for a change, after you did nothing for so many months (or years, depending who you ask). Of course this is happening now so you have another excuse to do nothing, again.

My mind can be such a little bitch. My mind will take these completely unremarkable, completely normal situations and make them 1. about my worthiness as a human being, and 2. about whether my emotional reaction to them is “the correct one” or not, and 3. whether my body deserves to feel okay in them, or not —

And then it starts asking these questions about what it all means — and what for — and heaves and retches and wonders why it’s heaving and retching while running around in endlessly recursive loops on loops on merry-go-rounds.

Last week I asked you to look up your chart on mybodygraph.com and just... look at the white areas. I more or less purposely left you in the dark on what this chart even is and what the areas mean because I sorta wanted you to check that out for yourself, if you don’t know anything about this yet. I guess I figured that if Human Design is for you, you would probably just do that (check what the fuck the areas are slash are supposed mean slash symbolize) without anyone telling you. If you didn’t check anything out but did look at your chart, maybe because you knew I would explain this stuff at some point, fair enough.

The white spaces in your chart are what we call undefined in Human Design, or, if they are completely white with no colored lines attached to them at all, open. Both of these mean that you are flexible here to varying degrees, that there is no fixed way you process life in these areas. It also means that, in contrast to defined centers (areas that are colored in), here, you take life in. It’s as if you are a small 18th century manor with nine rooms, and these are the rooms in which the windows have no glass. The air inside is always, more or less seamlessly, in an exchange with the air outside. Noise and smells make their way inside. There’s nothing really holding the outside outside, is what I mean.

Now, you may have some furniture in this room, or even a sheet of varying thickness you can hang in front of the window. The furniture, or lack thereof — maybe a fireplace? maybe just a chair — influences the way the air sits and moves around inside the room. The thin (perhaps colorful? maybe quilted) sheet influences the way the light shines through and perhaps even filters smells somewhat.

But. If, say, outside it is raining heavily, and there are gusts of wind or even thunder and lightning? Even several sheets hung up in front of the window won’t stay dry. And judging by the sound, you might as well just be outside.

You need glass to keep out the rain entirely. Or something they probably didn’t have in the 18th century — a very heavy duty ventilator that blasts air from inside to the outside through that open window with such force that the air and the elements outside cannot make their way in.

I’m just noticing, it’s actually a pretty funny joke that this system is uses astrology, but, when you really look at it, in a hilariously backwards way. In astrology, you are the things the planets imprinted upon you at the moment of birth. In Design, you have these imprints, plural, because it’s not just about the moment of your birth, but also the moment about 88 days before your birth ¹, AND the places where the planets DID NOT imprint their shit onto you at all are impact your life MOST OF ALL. More or less anyway. Some people have it harder than others, etc. In other words, what sets Human Design apart from plain ol’ astrology is that the spaces in between are what make you, you the very most, in a way. At least this is true for the vast majority of people on the planet.

The thing is that these, the places where the planets gave you... nothing, actually, at birth, this is where the Universe (or God, or, well, we call it The Program, hehe) “wants” you to become wise.

But to become wise, you must learn some stuff and to learn some stuff you must Go Through Some Shit. To go through the shit you need to go through so you will learn from it, you must be susceptible to shit, and you must be able to really, really Feel It. To be susceptible, you must be Open. Get it? This is where you are open, this is where you Live your life, because you can experience pretty much anything here, whereas in your defined spaces, you are, sorry, but kinda blind? No air coming in. At least not much, laughably little compared to those undefined or open spaces.

Let’s talk again about the rooms with no glass in the window frames. They are rooms, yes, and sometimes they contain furniture, sometimes just a chair or a bed, sometimes the full fucking works, heavy curtains, a giant fireplace, etc. Sometimes nothing at all, except you and the air you’re breathing. But this is the thing — the room is never empty. It is always full — with life. The air is always moving. You breathe it in, your lungs metabolize it into CO2, and you breathe it back out. You experience it, you take it in, and it can feel enormous within you, much more enormous than it will feel for those who have air blowing out of these rooms. You Feel It, but you do not become it.

You do not become it. The air, the rooms, they are not you. Who you really are, you’re wondering? Tbh I wonder that too. I was listening to Why Buddhism Is True the other day (newly Buddhism-curious here) and, according to the Buddha, the real you doesn’t actually exist? And according to Ra, You are your Definition, aka the places, or, the rooms in your house that blast air outside instead of letting it in.

Idk, maybe? Aside, though this isn’t really Openness-specific — the Buddha got at least one thing right in my opinion, and Ra agrees and pretty much everyone who has ever studied consciousness in some way does too: your thoughts are not yours, you are not the thing who thinks them. Not even if you have a defined Head and Ajna. In that case, the way you process them and go about making sense of stuff swirling in your mind is always more or less the same, but the contents of the thoughts themselves you have zero control over, just like you have no control over your beating heart.