A Prodigal story by Devon Martin

My de-conditioning process started in December 2012 when I took a leap of faith to leave my corporate job in New York City. There was a shift in awareness and a depth in my suffering pushing me to search for a better way.

I asked myself the question - what’s missing? I looked around me in confusion; I had everything I thought I ever wanted. The job, the titles, the salary, the boyfriend and I was living in one of the most fabulous cities in the world. But something wasn’t right and I felt like I was dying inside. My soul was screaming out for my attention. I learned that forgetting self is one of the most painful things we experience in this life. I knew I needed to make a shift.

I made a courageous and terrifying decision to leave my livelihood, sell most of my things, get a one-way ticket, a backpack and travel across the world. I dedicated my journey to Transformation & Adventure. For over a year and a half I traveled through 6 countries, volunteering, trying to give back, learning and exploring on a pursuit of healing. Radically trusting my sense of direction and beauty along the way.

At the very end of my journey in Bali, Indonesia, I stopped and asked myself the same question - What’s missing? Human Design was introduced to me at an auspicious time in my life. I was coming to the end of a cycle and on the outside, everything appeared perfect. I was living in paradise and in an amazing relationship, living the dream right? Then why was I suffering so much on the inside? Something wasn’t right and my inner worlds started to spiral. I was hitting resistance, going into debt, feeling overwhelmed and knew I needed to return home and re-set. But wait, I was just told I’m NOT here to work and I need to wait for invitations, which was literally the opposite of my go-getter lifestyle.

I landed home in the United States utterly exhausted, confused and feeling radically forced to dedicate myself to this experiment. I enrolled in my first Human Design course at IHDS and went into deep hermit retreat for over 6 months, trying not to initiate anything, which was insanely difficult. My friends and family were confused as I tried to allow the space for myself to de-condition all of the layers that weren’t me. I felt like I’ve been fighting my whole life, I couldn’t fight anymore, I needed a new way to navigate with less resistance.

I remember listening to my first audio from Ra about projectors. I felt like I was smacked in the face with the truth about my own suffering. I sat in awe with a slight tear in my eyes with the inner knowing of - this is it. After all this searching and attempting of mastering and trying to understand the human condition, this is it. I’ve found it. I knew that this information needed to be shared with the world. It was in that moment that I dedicated my 7-year mastery to Human Design.

I had never experienced somebody that could describe my suffering so accurately. If he knew and understood my inner world, it could be transformed with these tools. Maybe this could help me learn to trust myself. You can’t really love yourself if you don’t trust yourself, and if you're not making choices as yourself, how can you really love yourself? When we're not really listening, we’re really dishonoring our true essence and power.

At these two pivotal points in my life when I asked myself what was missing - what was missing was me and my true relationship with myself.

Human Design speaks to your cells and the very truth of your being. It provides the codes that unlock our essence and purpose on this plane.

The de-conditioning process can be dirty, and uncomfortable. With 7 open centers screaming for my attention, I dove deeply into the horror movie of the not self mind. How distorted the emotional center can be avoiding confrontation and truth and how painful my completely open heart center felt in the undercurrent of unworthiness. I started to realize how much this was plaguing my life and my decisions. Sometimes we need to be shaken up to start really listening or move in a new direction.

Early in my experiment I realized that the not-self strategies of the open centers are like shields we hold up to protect ourselves. As we begin to trust inner authority and start to put down the shields, we are freed up to a new life force energy that has always been available to us. It can be a deeply uncomfortable and lonely process to battle in this tug of war tango with the mind over inner authority.

I witnessed the many layers of my openness purging as I allowed space and awareness around my strategies. I continued to recognize how painful my completely open ego center played out in over committing and promising my limited life force incorrectly. In my eagerness to prove myself, I kept over extending and over pushing to prove I could keep up with energy types. Always leading to burnout, exhaustion and feeling unworthy that I could not follow through with my commitments.

Seeing how clearly I felt unworthy despite pushing my whole life to over achieve, I finally learnt to give myself a rest and learn to say NO; which has been one of the biggest blessings. Saying no has freed me up, allowing space for the correct invitations. The process is slow and deep and requires gentleness and self-compassion.

What I’ve experienced is that at first I had the intention of experimenting with Human design, but then it begin to live through me. Bringing me to a point of no choice. Surrendering into a deeper relaxation in my own skin and body. After hitting wall after walls of resistance for so long, I finally allowed myself to relax into being instead of doing.

At first I looked at the 7-year de-conditioning process and practicing strategy and authority as something to achieve and strive toward. As time has healed, I’ve learned that this process is something to sit back and rest into. Letting inner authority hold and nurture us, protecting us from the madness of the mind and the chaos of the maia.

With this new awareness comes the beauty of re-alignment. Preparing us for moments of perfection in our unique dance. This feeling is no short of magic on every level and the extremes of these alignments helps our body navigate with a cleaner lens and perspective of

Devon Martin is a 2/5 Quad right Self- Projected Projector on the Cross of the Four ways. She worked at Jovian Archive as their Customer Relations & Sales Manager.