As someone who has dealt with melancholy all of my life, and spent most of my life not understanding the nature of melancholy, simply manifesting my way through it, Human Design finally gave me an insight into one of the most extraordinary processes that goes on in a human being.

That extraordinary process is the fact that practically all of us are designed to be creative forces in one way or another, and all of that creativity, or what I'm referring to as creativity, is mutated creativity. That is, creativity to bring about transformation and change. All of that is rooted in, what we call in Human Design, the Individual process.

You've all heard me talk many times about the relationship between Individuality and its specific chemistry within the body, and that that chemistry within the body is experienced as melancholy. I've talked a lot about how one transforms it by having a creative outlet, which allows you to move the energy.

I've looked at so many aspects of what people call depression. I can remember when I was a teenager, a lot of us have that memory, those moments of being very, very melancholic. And in those moments of melancholy, the response, at least on my part, was to turn down the lights, put on a favourite piece of music, and then I would find myself doodling; I like to draw, or writing, and writing poetry. So many teenagers experience that, writing of poetry, writing in their diary, or doing those (creative) things. This is the way in which melancholy is transformed and ultimately can be transformed into art, and it's one of the most beautiful things.

When I think back to that quality of melancholy, what I remember most about it was that it was soothing. There was a certain beauty to that sadness, there was a certain beauty to the feeling of something not quite being correct, and out of that the beginning of a creative process.

I've been a musician all of my life, I’m an acoustic guitar player, and I'm somebody without a defined Emotional system, or Sacral, or Root. The guitar became a place for me in which I could move all that melancholy out, and it was an extraordinary thing for me to be able to hear my songs cry, but not me, to hear the sadness in the music, but not me, and as a medium of all of that, melancholy was essential.

Now, I’m someone who is very unusual in terms of their Design. I have a very complex single Definition and every single Channel is Individual. I’m someone who has felt that chemistry very deeply in my process.

But even if you're someone that only has one Gate of Individuality, no Definition, just one Gate, that melancholy is there, and that creative force is there. And obviously it’s going to come out because it gets conditioned, and it’s going to come out for other reasons, but the reality is that all of us carry this potential within us.

What I'm going to do today (This is an excerpt from The Gates of Melancholy) is take you through all the different Gates of depression, and through all of those Gates within the context of their specific Circuitry, and within the context of their Channels.

When I did my first lecture in America, I was in a town hall in Taos, New Mexico. Before my lecture, this woman came up to me and said, “You're not smiling.” I said, “I don't have anything to smile about.”

She said, “Well… but, the… the advertisement… aren’t you an enlightened person?” This is a legitimate conversation, I said, “No.”

She said, “You're not happy?” I said, “No honey, I am not happy.” She left. I'm a depressed buddha. Some of them smile, and some of them are sad.

Ra Uru Hu was the Human Design System’s founder and messenger. Ra dedicated 25 years of his life to the development and teaching of the System around the world until he passed away in 2011.