Lifebook, My Spiritual Journey, Structure, Planning with the Moon & Human Design Gate 5

This is a long title.... but it's a bit of a muddled topic where everything intertwines and comes together in the end. It all started with my spiritual journey in 2014, that let me to question so many things. Lifebook rescued me in many ways and gave me not just my life vision but also a structure that works for me. Human Design became my passion and combines all my interests - a deep understanding of life, analysing and helping, the more complex and the more layers, the better! While planning with the moon is my latest venture into more structure in my life. I know, it sounds a bit crazy but it will all make sense, I think :-) In a nutshell, with this blog post I am hoping to inspire you to think about what structures, patterns, habits and systems could support you. 

 

Every month I dedicate one of my blog posts to my Lifebook experience. I have written a blog post about what Lifebook is in the past. If you would like to learn more more about it, you can find here.

 

With these monthly Lifebook updates I am going to dive into that month's Lifebook theme. So this month it's spirituality. Every month I ponder how far I have come in the respective category, what I have learned, and if what I want in that category is still up to date, or if things have possibly shifted. I also get curious if there is something new that I could learn or use that would support me on my overall journey.

 

So May is spiritual month in Lifebook.... Spirituality and I have an intersting relationship. On the one hand I deeply trust and am totally rooted into what I believe in. On the other hand I am still questioning that.... But that seems ok to me. I still feel deeply supported. I think me and "it" have agreed that questioning everything is ok. That we can work together regardless. I am human and maybe don't need to know everything or be certain about everything. After all that is something us humans tend to struggle with in general and we seek to make sense of things. An endeavour we are sometimes more and sometimes less successful at.

 

Lifebook spiritual month picture

My Spiritual Journey

Becoming spiritual has been quite a journey for me. I have always contemplated the meaning of life and like diving deep into all of its mysteries. I sometimes even wonder if I might come across as boring as f*** as every conversation with me goes down a serious path very quickly, as well as deep. I seem incapable of fun, light and fluffy conversations.... I have managed to talk about death at more than one wedding for example.... Not with intention. It kind of happens. Automatically? I don't know. Anyway. While I have always wondered about life, its purpose and meaning, I wasn't always spiritual. My parents raised us in awareness of Christian values as atheists rooted in science and research. Spiritual people were considered a bit, well, dumb. So naturally I didn't want to be one of them. 

 

My spiritual journey started when I had a stillbirth in 2014, and for years I battled the question: am I just trying to give meaning to this experience? And to be honest, I still wonder about that. Am I just trying to give meaning to the events in my life and does spirituality not just fill that need? At the same time I am experiencing a lot of coincidences and synchronicities, and have done so for years.

 

After seven years of going back and forth with this question, I decided this for me: I believe in a higher supportive power, simply because there are often things I can't explain and where I feel supported. But whether it's true or not, I have no idea. I also don't feel the need to know or understand for myself. And I equally don't want to convince anyone of my ideas. For me, both, religion and spirituality, are very personal experiences. And for me, there is no right or wrong. 

 

But I want to share it here because being spiritual has had a profound impact on my life and as a Soul Purpose Coach and Human Design reader, my tools are derived from and rooted in spiritual concepts. Spirituality also allowed me to ponder the questions of life in a more meaningful way for me. I have always believed I have a purpose for example and allowing my experience of feeling guided and supported has opened a world that feels very expansive for me. My spirituality is something I contemplate about and work with daily, so it's not something I need to review during Lifebook spiritual month May. Nonetheless, a new concept floated into my life recently and I have decided to experiment with it: would it work well for me to live and work in accordance with the lunar phases? But before I'll dive into that, let me explain something about my Human Design.

Experimenting and my Human Design

I have yet to write a post on what Human Design actually is, but I hope for the sake of this article you don't need any further background information. My design has basically "experiment" tattooed all over it.... which is why I write above "I have decided to experiment with it".

 

From a Human Design perspective I have a 3/5 profile. Our profile gives us an idea of how we are meant to live life and generate possibilities for ourself. The 3 is the experimenter: The 3 is meant to try things out and share her experiences, the good ones as well as the bad ones. According to Human Design theory the 3s learnings are beneficial for others too. The 5 has often a different perspective to offer and paired into the 3/5 profile I can definitely relate to my learnings offering me a different perspective on a lot of things.

 

Additionally I have, what is called the Channel of Discovery (29-46), which is also all about experimenting. Human Design has an awkward terminology and the words it uses can be confusing. A channel is like a strength that we have. A trait that plays an important role in our life. When I learned about my profile and my two channels (I also have the Channel of Now (57-20)), I consciously decided to embrace the idea of trialling and erroring through life.

 

To a certain degree that is something we all need to do as there is no other way of going through life really. But I had always tried to play it safe and control the outcome as much as possible. Or at the very least, prepare myself for all possible outcomes mentally. But Human Design asks us to use the knowledge we gain about ourselves from it. To put it to the test. It's called the Human Design Experiment. And that is what I decided to do a year ago during spiritual month May 2023: to put Human Design to the test by living my design more. In a safe way of course ;-) 

 

I started to embrace the idea of being ok with failing more. The Channel of Discovery (29-46) has two interesting keynotes. At least they are interesting for me, because I could relate so well to them: 1. "A design to succeed where others fail and to fail where others succeed." and 2. "being careful to what you say yes to, because you are a committed person and get stuck in what you commit to". 

 

A design to fail where others succeed is my career life in a nutshell - and I didn't fail because of others or for lack of education. I failed because I didn't trust I was good enough. It's also my biggest pain point. The lack of knowing where my place is and the lack of confidence in myself, let to committing to the wrong things, which in turn drained my energy so much, I couldn't deliver the standard I know I am capable of delivering, which was terribly disappointing for myself and let to LOTS of self-doubt. Today I think that all my experiences were ok and that they let me to where I am now, and where I like being, but it didn't feel like that for the past 30 years. I felt lost. 

 

So last May, during spiritual month, I decided to start my Human Design experiment. To try it out what Human Design had to say about me and to put it to the test. Because I tend to question things :-) And that's another thing about the 3 profile: they are people who tend to have a need to find out for themselves. Now, when I say this.... again, this is something that is true for everyone, for some more and for others less.

 

And that's something I have noticed about Human Design in general: all of it is true for everyone. It's like this really cool holistic description of the human experience. What makes it individual again is that the parts that are defined in a person's chart, play a bigger part in that person's life than in other people's lives. 

Living in accordance and business planning with the moon phases

Anyway, let's go back to this spiritual month May 2024 and my new spiritual experiement: living in accordance and business planning with the moon phases. I think that sounds really weird :-) But I am equally excited about it!

 

I have tried doing it the normal way and it doesn't work for me. The reason I am interested in trying this are two-fold: First, I noticed the past few years that a lot of me seems to be cyclic - and of course it is, I am a woman with a cycle :-) But that didn't affect me that much in the past. However, the older I get, the more I notice re-occuring monthly patterns of more or less energy. And I can definetly trace them back to my cycle. But with the female cycle we have four different weeks if you will (menstruation, the follicular phase, ovulation and the luteal phase) and a weekly planning and working cycle simply doesn't work for me. It also doesn't correlate with my energy levels well enough.

 

Which is the second reason I am interested in trying out living in accordance with the lunar phases: there are 8 moon phases in a lunar cycle and now we have the length I can hold my focus onto something, including doing nothing :-) I will write a detailed post about the lunar phases and how I am working with it in the near future, but in this blog article I would like to focus more on the why I am doing this. 

James Clear quote

Structure & systems

So why am I intending to do this? I am someone who is very floaty. I can be here and there and everywhere. I get easily lost in all the things one could do all day long. And then feel that I got nothing done at the end of the day.... Which is of course not true, but I often don't get done what I wanted to do. A pretty good recipe for letting yourself down fast and THE invitation for your inner critic to slaughter you daily.

 

I am not a very disciplined person either. I have tried. And I have tried hard. But I fall off my own goals every time. I have considered the idea of them being the wrong goals but I don't think they are. I think it's more because discipline goes against my highest value: freedom. Whenever I try to be ridgid about something, it's kicking off an inner rebellion and more resistence than I can battle against successfully. So I have given up on discipline and me.

 

Another possible explaination might be my design: I am meant to experiment, my most defined centres are my throat and intuition and with the Channel of Now (57-20) being in touch with the present moment is essential for me. 

 

But just floating is not working too well either. I do need a structure. Lifebook gives me a monthly structure that helps me to focus on what I want from life and reminds me of my dreams all the time, but I struggle with the discipline required to do the things I should be doing and to create those habits.

 

So, due to lack of discipline and also because I get bored easily when I have to stick to something for too long (and to be honest, a week can already be loooooong for me....), I am looking for something that helps me stay on track. 

 

I had started moon journalling last July already and have been doing that ever since. Every new moon and every full moon I take the time to think about my intentions of what I want to create and achieve (new moon) and what I want or need to let go of in order to achieve what I want (full moon). Confronting myself twice a month with these questions is helping me greatly to notice what I want and need to do and to align the two.

 

Of course you can do the two any time of the month if that works better for you! I simply chose to follow the moon cycle because I feel its energies are supporting me. Again, whether that is the case or not, I am not here to prove that. It simply feels aligned to me. 

 

But I learned recently that you can go much deeper than just new moon and full moon. I learned that the moon's phases are like us who move through phases of clarity and uncertainty. That there are 8 phases in the monthly lunar cycle. Each having their own theme and emphasis, but building upon each other! And I feel that this might be the system and structure that works for me!

 

The lunar phases change every 3 to 4 days, a pace I love. Each phase has its own themes and most importantly energies. It's a system that helps you to pay even better attention to what is going on in your life. It invites you to notice, to flow between receiving and doing, in a structured and systematic way. But the moon phases are not all about doing and controlling. They are about resting and surrendering too. In a systematic and structured way! The way these phases build upon each other make perfect sense to me and I am curious if working with the monthly lunar cycle and the annual zodiacs are going to help me to bring to life the outcome I desire and hope for. I will let you know in a future post. 

Picture Lunar Living

A word of caution

Now, I am NOT proposing that this is THE system for everyone. This is the system I am hoping will work for ME. Ok, it seemingly works for others too. But I don't think there is only one system. The Funnel of Focus that Jon proposes in Lifebook Mastery for example, is genius too. It is simply too focused for me, which is why I gave up on it. But it's where I started and it has taught me the value of goal setting the proper way. 

 

And I think it's generally worth considering what systems support YOU. How you function best. I don't think there is necessarily a best practice and I often wish people would trust themselves more. Not just themselves. I think this is important for teams in businesses too. Or at least an amazing opportunity for teams for functioning better: to think about what is actually needed and suitable within a particular team or company. 

 

I have a long, long history of searching for structures and systems that work for me. I am always under the impression that other people find it easier than me to dial this in. Although I am not entirely certain that this is actually true..... I have learned to discern between what I see and what is actually happening in a person's life. The reason I am dedicating this blog article to this topic is because I suspect I am not the only one in search of a system that works for me. Plus, I have seen all my life that copying other people's systems. But based simply on "they work for someone else", doesn't mean they'll work for everyone. Worse still: we tend to beat ourselves up if and when we can't stick to a newly found system. But how about this: what if - provided you have really tried - it is simply not a good system for you? And that you are not an incompetent idiot as your inner critic likes to call you? What if you would benefit from trialling and erroring with a different system? Because we are all different. With different conditions, needs, experiences and beliefs.

 

One size fits all is always a bad idea in my view. With regards to business teams there is no perfect solution in my opinion, but there are ways that work better and others that work less well for individual teams. I think it's important to look at your needs, especially if you are trying to build long-term success. Good solutions often require some time and effort at the beginning. Later they sustain themselves. While one-size-fits-all solutions require little time at the beginning, but often lead to problems and resistance in the long-term. I depends on what you need. 

Gate 5 in Human Design - the Gate of Fixed Patterns

But lets go back to finding systems that work for you. It is interesting for me to look at this topic from a Human Design perspective too. There is a gate called the Gate of Fixed Patterns, or gate 5 in Human Design. The gates are taken from the Chinese I'Ching in Human Design and are a like a pretty comprehensive list of human traits and needs. Gate 5 is concerned with structures, habits, patterns and systems that support you. Or that don't support you. Because we are all familiar with structures, habits, patterns and habits and systems where we let ourselves down. Smoking, eating unhealthy foods, any addiction, lack of movement, being too this or too that.... the list is almost endless!

 

I have gate 5 defined in my conscious moon and through Neptune on both sides, consciously and unconsciously. The planets in Human Design come from Western astrology and add another layer to the meaning of each gate. The moon is all about our inner world, while the themes Neptune highlights are always a bit nebulus. And both of these perspectives describe my experience with structures, patterns, habits and systems really well. I am someone who needs to be able to flow but I also need a structure in which I can float. Otherwise I tend to flow too far away from my to do list.... I have always had a really hard time creating that structure though, to find structures and habits that support me. However, ever since playing around with what I need, I have started to function much better! It's when I stopped listening to others and started tuning and oberserving into what I need, that I have started to create supportive habits and structures for myself!

 

And the latest on that list of trial and error is living in accordance and business planning with the moon phases. I started this experiment at the beginning of May and so far it's been amazing. But things have to withstand the test of time too, so I will update you on how this is going for me in the future. 

 

I hope I can inspire you to think about what structures, patterns, habits and systems could support you. Have you ever wondered what could benefit you? How you would work better? As I mentioned in my recent blog post on morning routines: I don't think getting up at 5am is the productivity or happiness hack for everyone. It's one possibility. But what do YOU need? And that is really what gate 5 asks us to consider and do. Find what works for us.

 

Trust yourself x