One discovers the light in darkness, that is what darkness is for; but everything in our lives depends on how we bear the light. It is necessary, while in darkness, to know that there is a light somewhere, to know that in oneself, waiting to be found, there is a light. -James Baldwin

Each of the gates in the body graph corresponds to a hexagram in the I Ching.

The hexagrams are a combination of two trigram forces, one stacked atop the other with the lines starting at the bottom and moving upward. The trigrams are formed from a combination of broken and unbroken lines.

Yin Yang

— - -

The trigrams are:

These combine into 64 hexagrams of upper and lower trigrams.

In my body graph, gate 51, thunder over thunder, The arousing force of thunder, is activated three times and has been a defining theme throughout my life, particularly since one activation is in my Personality Sun.

A gate activated in Personality is consciously experienced while a gate activated in Design may exist beneath awareness but others will perceive it.

Gate 51 is located in the Heart/Ego center, one of the motor centers and representative of courage, willpower, love. Expression can range from healthy to unhealthy, light to shadow.

On the other side of gate 51 is gate 25, heaven over thunder, Innocence, unexpected happenings. In my HD, gate 25 is activated twice for me, once in my Design and once in my Personality.

The 51-25 channel is intrinsically complete for me, requiring no need for planetary transits or activation through proximity to others, so I experience both gates simultaneously and my Heart center and my Ji center are defined.

My Heart center is my only defined motor center. Without access to the renewable energy of a Sacral center, I accomplish through willpower, but that energy source has limits.

When I’m with others, I can feel the Sacral centers thrumming with vitality. They flit around like hummingbirds and condition me, allowing me to ride their current of self-sustaining energy while we’re in each other’s auras. It can lead to over-extension and an aftermath of burnout, if I’m not aware and careful about preserving my output.

From birth, my life has been a continuous flow of shocks or disruptions that catalyze change (the only constant in life,) break through stagnant energy, and alter the course of my path. The arousing force of thunder, whether internally or externally generated, serves as an alarm or a dismantling of systems that no longer suffice.

The activation of gate 25 allows me to meet these shocks with innocence, and my faith in potential, beauty, and balance is never shaken for long.

In the Vedic astrology framework, my Ascendant is Libra, and its ruling planet, Venus, is exalted in Pisces, though there is some combustion from the Sun. Its Nakshatra is Swati, represented by a blade of grass bending but not breaking in the wind. My Navamsa Lagna is Aquarius. I’m an Aquarius soul.

As interpreted with a poetic filter by Coleman Barks, Rumi said:

Don't turn your head. Keep looking at the bandaged place. That's where the light enters you.

I once confided in a therapist that I’d had a lot of unusually painful experiences but those experiences put me in the privileged position to help others. Our wounds become our gifts of service.

My life path number is 5, which is a meandering, adventurous route and allows me to relate to a wide variety of people. It brings to mind a quote from Steinbeck. He talked about the Spanish term, vacilando, that had no English equivalent but roughly meant “If one is vacilando, he is going somewhere but doesn’t greatly care whether or not he gets there, although he has direction.”

Two years ago, I received information that allowed me to start dismantling self-limiting beliefs and maximize my potential to flow with the continuous expansion and contraction of being.

Examining many different frameworks provides confirmation through overlap, while edges of new information allow the manageable growth of self-knowledge.

I expand and contract. My Enneagram is 4 (Dr. Dan Siegel’s work is a wonderful reference for this framework) and I vacillate between the 3 and 5 wings. My Myers-Briggs flips between INFP and INFJ; though, I would say I also experience shifts between N and S, and F and T. Choose the response you experience most often, they advise, but like Whitman said, I contain multitudes. Those contradictions are what make us human and multiple truths can coexist. Sometimes the tools for understanding ourselves are boxes.

The ADHD filter allows me to grow and bloom without limits while the autism narrows my focus to make sense of the smallest of details, constantly forming connections and identifying patterns. The only thing constant is change so I’m learning to not cling so tightly to any one belief. The data is always in motion.

My Moon is in Mrigashira, represented by a deer—the endless seeker. I’ve always been hungry for knowledge, considering it the most valuable asset. Experientially, I try to learn through osmosis. I look back on the myriad of dates I went on in my twenties less as a search for a partner and more for the assimilation of new knowledge from their skill sets and tales of work and lived experiences.

Know thyself. The more self-knowledge we gain, the less willing we are to mask. Conditioning is strongest from birth to age 7, and our lives are an unending task to individuate, unmask, find our way back to our authentic inner core.

I experience shocks to open my heart. To ground myself, I visit the Salish Sea and dip my hands in the water in greeting. The rocks and the shells and the driftwood feel like friends and cedar trees call with fronds outstretched. Rose hips gather round to share their energetic healing. I offer peanuts and eggs to ravens and crows and observe the orb spider that’s woven the most beautiful web over the large window above my bed. It teaches me industry and patience and the art of solitude.

There's an authenticity to nature that comforts in a way that few human connections can—our selves a finely tangled mess of roots and ego and social conditioning. Just when you think the unraveling is articulating your experience in a way that is true and freeing, you realize that the mask lifts to reveal another mask in a matryoshka-esque way of self-protection.

Were I to allow my core to resonate outward through the painstakingly cultivated layers of defense, could it pierce through your hard shell of armor to reveal that our light is the same and our shadows just an illusion? Would we create a safe space together? Would we see each other’s reason for being then?

Gates

Open Centers