Navigating Your Human Design Journey

Human Design is not always the easiest thing to conceptualize. Then, when we begin to understand in our minds, it can be even more difficult to put it into practice and begin the experiment in real life. An example came to me— a metaphor for the journey. This is the Human Design Road Trip. As you move through this article, my hope is that something might finally “click” into place for you so you can apply a piece of this information more quickly or easily. 

This same map can be applied to a day trip, a long road trip, or your entire life.

Here are the individual pieces explained.

First there is you. You are the driver. When I say you – I mean your Soul Essence. Some call this your soul purpose, it is made up of all the energy inside you and it extends around you.   It’s your authentic desires and the essence of you.   If you want to look at it in terms of your Human Design chart, a good starting point, look at your conscious sun gate. It might be something you can’t really name at first, but it’s the essence of you and what you desire.   Your conscious earth gate is part of it as well, this is what grounds and supports your sun to live out its highest potential. 

Your vehicle is your life path, also called your life purpose. This takes you on the journey of your life. It’s not your physical body, it’s the unconscious part that is taking you where you need to go.

If you want to look in your Human Design chart, this would be your unconscious sun and unconscious earth gate.

As you may have realized already, if you put together the “driver” and the “car” it equals your incarnation cross which is made up of your two sun gates and your two earth gates.

The type of car you drive is similar to the Human Design Type. 

This example has nothing to do with the environmental impact of a car – it’s more about how you get fuel and continue on your journey.

  • If you are non-sacral being— a Projector, Manifestor or Reflector— you may feel like an electric car. You need to plan ahead when you are going to stop and re-charge. Or, sometimes life will tell you that you need to if you haven’t planned ahead, no matter how inconvenient it may feel.  Sometimes you can stop at charging stations that have a turbo boost. That’s like when you borrow energy from another, but you can’t hold that boost forever. You also have the opportunity to plug in overnight and re-charge. 
  • If you are a sacral being, a Generator or Manifesting Generator, you are more like a hybrid car. When you are going downhill (this is when you are doing things that light you up, you are filling up your tank), if you are constantly going uphill (doing things you don’t love), you are running out of fuel at a much faster rate.  Of course, you still need to sometimes fill up with gas – that happens every night when you rest.

Your Human Design Strategy is your navigation system.

It tells you which way to go. It gives you warning signals when you may want to choose another path. It does this in the form of the “not-self” emotions. It may warn that there is traffic on one route giving a Generator a feeling of frustration or a Manifestor the feeling of anger.

When you use this correctly, you smoothly turn onto the alternative path and still arrive at the same destination, but with more ease and likely faster than if you had pushed through the route with traffic, where you may just get stuck and feel your emotion even stronger.

Your Human Design Authority is how you are navigating your car.

It’s the decisions you make about what road to take, if you are going to take the path with traffic, or if you want to take another path. 

Either: you are utilizing your authority to help you decide authentically, aka using your personal authority to make decisions will allow you to go where your Soul Essence desires…

…Or you are allowing the back-seat drivers tell you where to go. When you let other’s voices, ideas, thoughts and beliefs condition or cloud your own authority, you may go places that you didn’t actually want to.  Maybe you thought you should (conditioning in the Ajna), or maybe you wanted to avoid their emotions or confrontation (conditioning in the ESP)

Your Human Design Profile is about your personality and your preferences on your trip. 

How do you want to go on the drive? Do you like to travel alone? Do you like to plan or wing it?

You will have a combination of the two lines, so you may prefer more than one at different times. Line 6 may also prefer different things at different times in life based on the phase you are in.

  • Line 1: Investigate your trip (something like google maps, online research, printed map)
  • Line 2: You may prefer to drive alone at times, until your friend asks you if you want to come with them on a trip.
  • Line 3: You may like to wing your trips and see what adventures they take you on.
  • Line 4: You may prefer to drive with friends or go to places your friends recommend to you. You might stay with a friend of a friend along the way.
  • Line 5: You may be blogging or posting anonymously on an online forum about your trip along the way, sharing the most practical tips for taking a road trip and making the best shortcuts known to all of your followers who think they really know you.
  • Line 6: You may like different drives at various points in your life. You may prefer to wing it when you are younger in your experimentation/exploring phase, to do some solo trips when you are “on the roof” and to be more like a tour guide when you are in your role model phase.

Your Human Design Energy Centers tell you how the weather outside you will affect your driving.

Your Centers are affected by energy around you and outside of you. Your awareness of how the energy works is how you react to outside forces.

If your center is defined, you will react a consistent way. If your center is undefined/open, the elements outside you (and your control) may affect your path. For example, if you live in a place that is consistently sunny and dry and your trip takes you into a rain or snow storm it’s going to feel very unfamiliar to drive there.

The Human Design Gates may tell you a little about the flavor of your road trip.

They tell you what makes you feel more grounded, or why you are even taking it in the first place. My favorite gates that play out in tangible ways to help your soul activation: This includes the conscious sun gate that is the driver and the unconscious sun gate which is the car that we looked at above. Here are a few others that I think are an important starting point.  You can look at all the planets/gates, but start with a few to avoid overwhelming yourself.

  • Earth is what grounds you.  On a road trip, it might be playing music or an audio book, or maybe it’s rolling down the windows or stopping at a rest stop – or pushing through without stopping. It’s totally personal.  In your chart, whatever gates are next to the earth symbol might make you feel the most grounded and supported along the way.
  • Moon is what drives you.  It tells you why you are taking the trip in the first place. Are you visiting someone? Are you going to a concert? Or are you just going to see the sites?   In your chart, the gates next to the moon symbol tell you what your driving force might be.
  • Saturn is your challenge or catalyst for growth.  On a road trip, this would be something major like a natural disaster, a car accident, or a construction area that requires a huge detour. In your chart, the gates next to the Saturn symbol tell you what energy might be trying to align you back to your authentic path.

How do you navigate your journey? Did you get an ahas! from what you just read?


Want to learn more about the Gates? Get Activation Deck

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Want to dig deeper into Human Design in General? Go here

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5 thoughts on “Navigating Your Human Design Journey”

  1. I am only about two months into HD and your analogy was really helpful. It has been a STRUGGLE to really dive in, begin to learn what all of it means and how to apply it. Thank you for taking the time to put this out in the world for those of us who are looking. 🙂

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