It is sometimes difficult to remember what it was like in the beginning of my experiment. Who I was then is not anything like who I am now. The Human Design System is unique in the sense that it does not tell you where to go or what you will find or what truth is. It gives you the tools to live as yourself. Where you go, who you are with, what you do, what you discover – that will all depend on your strategy and decision making process and will be totally unique to you. The subject of Truth is the same. I used to think that we would all get to one universal truth and live that. Now I see that truth is as unique as each and every one of us is.

My articles are simply me expressing my truth – my unique seeing. It comes from who I am as I move through this world. I am unique. You are unique. What we “see” will come from that unique perspective. This is what can bring so much richness to our communications with each other. I remember being with Ra Uru Hu in my fifth year. He was touring America and I was the director of Human Design America back then and we travelled together. One night in a restaurant, as I was talking, he looked at me and said ‘You’re finally getting interesting”. I was not offended as I knew exactly what he meant. I was finally talking through my own uniqueness and sharing my seeing with him. I was no longer the homogenized person who began the experiment. What happened? Transformation. I was asked by a dear woman in Russia to write an article on this topic and I responded.

For those of you who are new to Human Design, there are two sets of information on each side of the bodygraph on your chart. The left side – all the planetary symbols and numbers are in red. On the right side, everything is in black. These two sets of information represent the Design (the Unconscious) and the Personality (the Conscious). It is the Design that is the form – the body. The Design dies. The Personality is Consciousness and it does not die. Part of the Rave Bardo in Human Design is to not disturb the body for 3 days after the body dies. It still houses the Personality (Consciousness) which needs up to 72 hours to complete the experience of being in form.

The Design and the Personality do not come in together. I love the metaphor that Ra used: The Design is our Vehicle and it comes in with its own driver. The Personality is the Passenger and it sits in the back seat. The difficulty is that because of the Mind and all the open centers, channels and gates, the Mind begins to take over the life – doing its best to “protect” us from this openness. The Mind ends up running the life and it continually “talks” into the ear of the Passenger. The Passenger then starts believing what the Mind is saying. It believes the illusion that it is the driver and that it is in control. When really the Passenger is sitting in the back seat – having no say really on where the vehicle goes. It can scream – like the worst back seat driver or it can relax in the back seat and look out the windows. If the Passenger is really lucky, it can end up enjoying the ride. Human Design gave me the tools I needed to enjoy my ride. It is a precious gift.

Transformation is the journey of the Passenger from thinking it is in control to relaxing in the back seat and enjoying the ride. Strategy demands that the Passenger surrender to the Vehicle. The Passenger is Yang. The Vehicle is Yin. The Yang must surrender to the Yin – the Form Principle. Ra would say over and over – “It is the body’s life”. But when the Mind runs our life, it pushes and prods and pulls the body to do things the body should not do. What’s the result? The body starts to fall apart. And with the advances of medicine - we can just pop a pill so that the symptoms are masked and we can continue to push the body. And the body never has its life.

Last week I wrote about my responding to living in a town in Virginia in the middle of nowhere that my mind hated. But the three years I spent there were for my body. My body needed to live there. Strategy and Authority are the only way I know of for the Mind to stop running the life and for the Passenger to surrender to the form – to the body. It was the only way I was able to get to this place of “enjoying the ride” from my view in the back seat. Before Human Design, I looked everywhere and nothing gave me that experience until I began my experiment as a Generator. It is an intense journey – one with pain and suffering and dark nights of the soul. But the breakdown does become breakthrough and the passenger does relax more and more each month and each year.

You see the Vehicle and the Passenger do not relate to each other. In fact much of the difficulty that we experience in our lives is because of this disconnect. Strategy and Authority are a way for them to unite. I spent my whole life searching for my soulmate. What I got to see was that my soulmate was within me. The sacred marriage is that between the Passenger and the Vehicle (the Design and the Personality).

The body goes through many changes when we live according to our strategy and authority but it is the Passenger that truly transforms. As it relaxes more and more in the back seat – it begins to “see” for the first time. The back seat windows get cleaner and cleaner until they are clear and the seeing is unique. No one can see what I see. I can never see what you see. When we share our unique seeing (or perspective) – we give each other a sliver of humanity. We give each other a glimpse into the universe. For me, this is Transformation.

A Visual Approach

When I first learned about these two aspects in Human Design, I “saw” images. I am not someone who can draw so I asked a friend who is an artist to create what I saw. Many of you have seen these images before – but for those of you who are new to Human Design – I thought you might enjoy them. For me it explains the metaphor as well as the process of the Passenger over the first 7 years of our Human Design experiment.

Mary Ann Winiger, a 6/2 Generator, trained live with Ra Uru Hu and has been deeply involved with Human Design for over 20 years. Personal site at key-to-you.com