Category: Living a soul-directed life

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The Darkening of the Light

On October 1st the planet Neptune entered Gate/Gene Key* 36, and will stay there until February 10th. For all of us Neptune is activating this frequency in our DNA, whether you have it in your design or not. Over the next three plus months, it will push us into emotional, mental or even physical turbulence to give us the opportunity to transcend our suffering and fear of an uncertain future—our fear that at any moment disaster could strike.

Gate/Gene Key 36 is located in the Emotion Center, so its quality is always related to emotions. During this time of inner turbulence and outer instability, understanding how to navigate Neptune’s influence can help guide you through.

Human Design and Gene Keys give us insight into Neptune’s influence and provide a path to transforming your fear and suffering into compassion and open-heartedness. Here is my understanding of Gate/Gene Key 36.

Human Design Gate 36: The Darkening of the Light

When facing a new experience, you frequently may feel a sense of crisis, causing you to pause and evaluate whether to move forward or retreat. Even though crisis can feel debilitating and discouraging, once you embrace the experience and allow all the emotions to flow through you, you will gain wisdom and an inner brightness that will serve you and support others. 

Gene Key 36: From the Shadow of Turbulence to the Gift of Humanity

Uncertainty about the future creates a deep sense of unease or Turbulence. When it becomes extreme, it can throw you into a “Dark Night of the Soul,” where you feel like life itself has abandoned you. But Turbulence has a purpose. It pushes you expand into a higher state, becoming confident in your ability to navigate uncertainty and discern what is truly dangerous and what is not. Gene Key 36 offers you the opportunity to transcend your emotional suffering and break out of a pattern of fear, overwhelm and unease that keeps you trapped reacting, shutting down or repressing your pain. 

Suffering has only one purpose: to crack you open. Until you look deeply into your darkness, you will be presented with suffering after suffering, being shown the same lessons, until you choose to evolve past your emotional turbulence.

Neptune’s function is to help you develop self-observation—an ability to witness what’s transpiring inside you. It’s asking you to identify where you are vulnerable to mistaking wishes and fears for reality. Neptune’s non-resourceful influence can create overwhelm, confusion, escapism and delusions. If you are feeling these, it is urging you to look deeply within yourself and transform your fears.

If you are feeling emotional turbulence and unease in your life, Neptune and Gene Key 36 are calling you to look deeply within and embrace your fears openly and honestly. It’s a perfect time to practice The Art of Contemplation**. This will begin to transform your suffering, helping you embrace your emotional healing. As you develop your self-observation, you will evolve beyond your self-obsession and open your heart to life, giving you clearer and more profound emotional experiences without being overtaken by them.

When you no longer fear uncertainty, trusting your heart, you will realize that life is full of pain and pleasure, but you no longer will be a victim of these. You will be able to remain open-hearted to everything and will find compassion for others trapped in Turbulence, establishing you in the gift of Humanity.

If you would like to understand specifically how this impacts your design, fill out the form below or send me an email [info (at) nancylynnmonson (dot) com], and we can explore your opportunity to heal and grow with Neptune and Gene Key 36!

* Gates are also known as Gene Keys, which is a companion system to Human Design that was founded by Richard Rudd. The Gene Keys system stands alone as complete, but is most powerful when used in combination with Human Design. 

References

** Rudd, Richard. The Art of Contemplation: Gentle Path to Wholeness and Prosperity. Gene Keys, 2018.

Rudd, Richard. Gene Keys: Unlocking the Higher Purpose Hidden in Your DNA. Watkins, 2015.

Parkyn, Chetan. The Book of Lines: a 21st Century View of the IChing, the Chinese Book of Changes. Harper Collins UK, 2012.

Parkyn, Chetan. Human Design: Discover the Person You Were Born To Be. New World Library, 2009.

Forrest, Steven. The Inner Sky. Seven Paws Press, 2012.

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Winter – A time for reflection and visioning

December marks the beginning of the winter season. The light wanes here in the Northern Hemisphere, and cooler temperatures dominate the day. 

It is a time of deep silence and retreat, when Nature stops, rests and gathers strength and wisdom for the coming burst of new life in the spring. In the silence of winter, is the opportunity to discover your own essence, deep in your heart. 

Many years ago in my spiritual guidance training, we learned that our soul lives in our deep heart—the area of our heart that is beyond our ego and everyday experience. It is the deep heart, where our soul lives, that whispers to us guidance on how to live our most fulfilling life, far beyond what our minds can imagine.

Each winter, Nature calls us to stop, go within, and reconnect with the wisdom of our own heart. It is there that our soul can share with us what we long to hear—the way to live a truly glorious life that allows us to bring out our full potential and live our deepest purpose.

Our soul follows the same seasonal rhythms as Nature. It goes through a rebirth just like most of the natural world. For our soul, winter is a time of letting go, clearing out all that has been from the previous seasons, and creating space for what wishes to be birthed in the coming year. If we take the time to go deeply within and cultivate inner silence, we will start to hear what our soul longs to create in the coming year.

The challenge that many of us face in December is the pull of many outward demands on our time: attending holiday gatherings, completing end-of-year work activities, entertaining guests, shopping for gifts, spending time with our families and friends. These demands can put us in direct conflict with the soul’s call to go inward. Very few of us can take the time to completely step out of our lives and turn deeply inward to commune with our soul.

And then January hits and most people scurry to set New Year’s Resolutions that, for the most part, don’t last much longer than February. When I was a gym member, I used to see the numbers of people at the gym spike in January, but wain by February.

Why not try something different this year?

There is a beautiful practice I am offer as a process to support your soul through this winter season. It has four steps, which you can do at your own pace, but ideally should be spaced out a few days apart to allow for time to distill the learning from each step.

  1. Harvest the seeds of the life you have lived
    • Take time to reflect on the past year and journal the answers to these questions.
      • What were your most important events and learnings?
      • How did those events influence and change you?
      • What are the learnings you will take forward into the New Year?
  2. Create space for the new life
    • Go through the different areas of your life and clean out everything that no longer has life or connection for you. You can do this literally by cleaning out your closets, desk drawers, files and cabinets. Unless you make space for a new life, there will be no room for something new to be birthed.
  3. Practice tuning into your deep heart—your soul
    • The birthing process takes time; it doesn’t happen overnight. Cultivate a daily practice of meditation, spending time in Nature, tuning in—whatever allows you to be in the silent space within where you can hear the whisperings of your soul. Practice patience.
  4. Sort out what is essential versus what is not
    • Evaluate all you are doing and identify what you can let go of. Simplify your life so that you make more time and space to support your inner process. Creation is a two-stage process. It occurs first internally before it occurs externally. The more you can support what is unfolding internally, the more you will start to see it occurring externally without effort. You will be attracting what is needed to support your soul’s unfoldment.

I encourage you to try this process and see how it impacts your life. In a time when there is so much pressure to “do,” the process will help you “be.” Being is a much more joyous experience and will help you attract what you need to live a fulfilling soul-directed life.

This winter season, I invite you to dive deep and connect with your soul so you can birth a more fulfilling life in 2024. I’ve created a worksheet that I share with my clients at the end of each year to help them create a heart-directed vision for the coming year. You can download it here if you would like to use it to guide you on creating your vision for 2024.

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The Wall

The fear gripped me; I could barely breathe. As I looked up at my white-knuckled hand frantically grasping the fraying root, I searched with hawk-like intensity the cliff wall for another handhold. A part of me knew that at any minute the root would snap, and I would plummet into the black yawning abyss below. Tears streamed down my face as I sobbed and gasped for air through my constricted throat. My chest felt as if 200 pounds were pressing down on it. I was sure that at any moment the end would come.

With my free hand I probed the cliff wall, desperately seeking any possible other handhold. There had to be something else I could grab to feel safe, but I was unable to find anything in the crumbling burnt-red cliff wall.

Below my feet dangled in the vast airiness of the chasm. I could feel the void calling me, pulling me down. The voice in my head seemed to be coming from the black abyss below, “Just let go. It will be alright.”

How often over the past decades of my life had I heard that voice deep inside, and how often had my ego-personality responded in terror and resistance? I believed that letting go would mean death—dissolution, like a snail in salted water…dissolved away into nothingness…to fall forever in the darkness and emptiness…to become the emptiness…to be nothing. I fought even harder and clawed at the cliff. Anything is better than nothingness, even terror.

Why was this voice so sure that letting go would be alright? My ego-mind was completely baffled. Surely I would die. With every slip of my hand on the root, I was more sure of that fate. The fear-ball in the pit of my stomach validated that outcome. And yet the voice persisted.

All these years the situation has been the same. I find myself clinging to a crumbling reality, my ego believing that death is eminent. And the voice has always been there telling me that everything is alright and to just let go. Insane. How could “falling” be “alright?” How could “death” be “alright!?” Yet something, some small quiet place inside me knew that the voice spoke truth. My grip relaxed, and I slipped just a bit. Panic. My grip tightened.

Why do we struggle against letting go and trusting that deep inner voice that is trying to guide us? Why is letting go into the effortlessness of “falling” so terrifying to us that we stay clinging to the most devastating situations that hurt and disrespect who we are? We think we are “safe.” But we are trapped on our cliff wall of illusion, forever clinging to the imagined safety of our cliff-reality.

The ego-personality seems be obsessed with clinging to something, anything outside itself for validation, safety and “love.” Yet, never is true fulfillment achieved from that endless struggle. The sages say that fulfillment and true liberation come from within, from that black “abyss” inside us that seems so empty. How can that be? How can fulfillment come from emptiness? My ego-mind reels from the paradox and clings more feverishly to my cliff-reality. I slip a little further.

In the end, I’ll fall, whether I let go or just give up. I know that without doubt. And I also know at my deepest awareness—that small quiet place inside me—that falling will be a relief…a letting go of effort and struggle and pain. How long can I hold on? How long will I hold on? How long will my ego-personality continue to struggle and toil away searching and grasping for the perceived safety and love on the crumbling cliff-wall of my reality?

Salvation only exists in the letting go and trusting that the void that lives at the core of my being will set me free. It’s up to me when I choose to let go and fall into Love.

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I Know I’m Meant for Something Greater

We are born with a profound purpose, but most of us lose connection with the truth of who we are not long after we are born. The challenges of parents and caregivers and society, even with the best of intentions, directing and reinforcing us to conform to some notion of who they think we are or want us to be creates a split in our psyche, typically in the first few years of our lives.

Then we spend the rest of our lives trying to unravel the acceptable persona that we have created to “fit in.”

That’s not what we were meant for. We are meant to be a unique expression of our soul’s purpose, buried in our DNA. In my 20-minute video, I share tips on how to reconnect with that purpose…your soul’s unique expression.

When we live our soul’s purpose, who we are meant to be, we experience joy, fulfillment, support and contribution. Our relationships are more loving and fulfilling. Our work in the world is more rewarding. Our health improves and we radiate a vital glow of joy that emanates from deep within.

Click on my image to watch my 20-minute video on the RHG TV network. I hope it will serve to connect you with the beautiful unique human being you are waiting to be born!

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Winter Is a Time to Go Inward

December marks the beginning of winter. The light wanes here in the Northern Hemisphere, and cooler temperatures dominate the day.

It is a time of deep silence and retreat, when Nature stops, rests and gathers strength and wisdom for the coming burst of new life in the spring. In the silence of winter, is the opportunity to discover your own essence, deep in your heart.

Many years ago in my spiritual guidance training, we learned that our soul lives in our deep heart—the area of our heart that is beyond our ego and everyday experience. It is the deep heart, where our soul lives, that whispers to us guidance on how to live our most fulfilling life, far beyond what our minds can imagine.

Each winter, Nature calls us to stop, go within, and reconnect with the wisdom of our own heart. It is there that our soul can share with us what we long to hear—the way to live a truly glorious life that allows us to bring out our full potential and live our deepest purpose.

Our soul follows the same seasonal rhythms as Nature. It goes through a rebirth just like most of the natural world. For our soul, winter is a time of letting go, clearing out all that has been from the previous seasons, and creating space for what wishes to be birthed in the coming year. If we take the time to go deeply within and cultivate inner silence, we will start to hear what our soul longs to create in the coming year.

The challenge that many of us face in December is the pull of many outward demands on our time: attending holiday gatherings, completing end-of-year work activities, entertaining guests, shopping for gifts, spending time with our families and friends. These demands can put us in direct conflict with the soul’s call to go inward. Very few of us can take the time to completely step out of our lives and turn deeply inward to commune with our soul.

However, there is a beautiful practice that stems from Advent that I am offering as a process to support your soul through this hectic and potentially challenging time. It has four steps, which you can do at your own pace, but ideally should be spaced out a few days apart to allow time to distill the learning from each step. If you are able to take a few days between Christmas and New Year’s, this is a wonderful activity to do in retreat during that time.

Harvest the seeds of the life you have lived

Take time to reflect on the past year and journal the answers to these questions. What were your most important events and learnings? How did those events influence and change you? What are the learnings you will take forward into the New Year?

Create space for the new life

Go through the different areas of your life and clean out everything that no longer has life or connection for you. You can do this literally by cleaning out your closets, desk drawers, files and cabinets. Unless you make space for a new life, there will be no room for something new to be birthed.

Practice tuning into your deep heart—your soul

The birthing process takes time; it doesn’t happen overnight. Cultivate a daily practice of meditation, spending time in Nature, tuning in—whatever allows you to be in the silent space within where you can hear the whisperings of your soul. Practice patience.

Sort out what is essential versus what is not

Evaluate all you are doing and identify what you can let go of. Simplify your life so that you make more time and space to support your inner process. Creation is a two-stage process. It occurs first internally before it occurs externally. The more you can support what is unfolding internally, the more you will start to see it occurring externally without effort. You will be attracting what is needed to support your soul’s unfoldment.

I encourage you to try this process in the month of December and see how it impacts your life. In a time when there is so much pressure to “do,” the process will help you “be.” Being is a much more joyous experience and will help you attract what you need to live a fulfilling soul-directed life.

This winter season, I invite you to dive deep and connect with your soul so you can birth a more fulfilling life in 2019.