sample the cloud nines and then dive deep and find your nose in the mud. Emotionally, it is your nature to experience the full spectrum of feelings, which, from time to time, may feel like chaos to you and everyone around you. Emotions never sit still for long. They are like the restless ocean, rolling like waves, rising and falling, peaking and dipping. When you feel happy, you want to capture that moment. When you feel sad, you wonder when the blues will end. But there is never a state of permanence to emotion; recognizing these emotional waves and allowing them to pass through you instead of owning you is all part of your evolution.
One lesson to heed is to not get attached to any particular feeling or the expectation of how something might turn out. Emotional decisions made in the heat of the moment are your enemy. So it’s all about allowing emotions to pass through you, disengaging from them and awaiting the calm – like a storm – tossed ship emerging from tumultuous seas spotting the steady beam of a lighthouse which guides the way home.
But here’s the main revelation about having this centre defined: you are responsible for not only your own moods but also for influencing the moods of those people around you. Your Human Design affects people within your aura and triggers their emotions. As daft as it sounds, your emotions are contagious! The moods you experience will be mirrored by the people around you. If you’re feeling bummed out, watch others gradually join the despondency. If you’re exultant, watch others’ exuberance rise. Your lifetime is all about learning to handle, appreciate and embrace your feelings and how they affect others.
If your Emotions are undefined
You will probably consider yourself an emotional person when, in fact, you are actually riding the emotions transmitted by others. You laugh their laughs and cry their tears. So what you must realize is that your emotions are triggered by the emotional impact of others. Your natural state, when alone, is to be cool, calm and collected.
What tends to happen when you step outside that personal space is that you get caught in other people’s emotional waves. This is a conditioning influence because your design isn’t made to cope with such intensity of feeling. People with this centre undefined have the greatest trouble in allowing themselves to feel emotions. If you’re not comfortable in your own skin at certain moments it messes with your nature, inducing confusion, temper or frustration. On the plus side, if you’re in the middle of a football stadium being swept away by an air of triumph, you’ll feel that glory and celebration. If you’re attending a religious ceremony, you’ll share the blessed uprising. But you are potentially subject to the emotions of those around you, whether healthy or toxic, so you must remain aware and watchful.
To transform this conditioning influence into impassive wisdom, learn to not react to emotions which are not part of you. Instead, reflect back your clear perception of what is going on, observed from the objective sidelines. Be a witness, not a player.
Put another way, if those with the defined centre are flailing in the sea of their emotions, you are someone on the shoreline, observing. This is where you have a choice: you can either dive in and magnify those emotions or stay out of the sea and reflect back to those people what is transpiring and how to be responsible about it.
The Spleen
Survival and Senses
To the left of the Sacral is the Spleen, another of the three awareness centres, which comes primed with an in – built survival mechanism, plus a feel – good factor which radiates from within. This centre is highly sensory, like an inner radar, scanning the environment moment by moment and responding spontaneously based on instinct, intuition and ‘taste’. There is no applied intelligence here – it is all about pure survival. This is where the red lights start to flash and the klaxons sound, providing instantaneous warnings of what is right and what might be hazardous in people or situations.
It’s also where our deep – seated fears can be found – and triggered. There is the fear of not knowing enough, the fear of the future, the fear of the past, the fear of taking responsibility, the fear of failing, the fear of death and the fear of authority. Recognizing fear, for both its alerts and limitations, provides the ability to survive and feel good about life in the moment.
So this is the centre of spontaneity and intuition. There is also an acoustic quality, a sense of whether something you’re hearing rings true or not. The centre literally scans the sound quality of someone’s voice or vibe to find out whether something resonates or not. Its theme is all about using its senses to assure survival.
Anatomically, this centre relates to the immune system, tackling any foreign bodies, viruses and potential illnesses. The Battle of Waterloo was nothing compared to what goes on within the body’s defence mechanisms. The immune system is fighting on your behalf – it’s all about your physical survival.
If your Spleen is defined
You are spontaneous and highly intuitive, designed to react to life on the spur of the moment, always on your toes. You also glow, lighting up a room with your presence because of a radiating feel – good factor.
A spontaneous sensibility scans your environment for any sense of threat or discord, always sensing what’s good or bad, but exuding warmth with your touch and manner. You are a curious mix of the alert and ever – watchful bodyguard and the well – being healer. There is a brightness to your presence, supported by a sense of humour which is often sharp and dry. Laughter is, after all, the best form of medicine.
But behind the smiles, you are designed to pay attention to your senses, to disengage the moment your intuition, instinct or taste warns you. Enter a party where the DJ is playing discordant music or where the atmosphere smells unpleasant, and you’ll be alerted. Don’t be afraid to turn on your heel and get out of there. These warning signals apply to any environment: someone’s home, the workplace, restaurants and shopping malls. They don’t necessarily denote danger; they merely mean there is something there that doesn’t fit with your nature. But heed them, however illogical they may seem to others, for they are your true guide. Otherwise, wrong environments can lead to you becoming sick because they put your immune system out of synch.
Your natural – and best – reflexes will come as rapidly as a click of the fingers. Your whole life is best lived in the moment because of this spontaneity. Yet it also means your antennae are always twitching and this can lead you to behave like a nervous Nellie. You’re liable to be watchful for any conceivable threat and to weigh up the risk around every corner. In fact, it is a wonder that you ever step out of the house in the morning! There is a tendency to fear this and fear that, because your survival mechanism is constantly on. This is the mother who is petrified of letting her child go out to play, or the insurance company’s dream – the person determined to cover every risk.
The specific fears that can be aroused within you depend on the gates that are turned on within your centre, and all this will be examined later in the book. But in order to calm this characteristic, you need to be aware of when this over – protectiveness kicks in and then adopt a more realistic attitude. The Spleen is fearful by nature, so stay alert, but don’t allow this to stop your life from happening. Also, a defined Spleen tends to mean a strong immune system, helping you battle illness. If you are constantly sick, it might well be the case that you’re ignoring your intuitive senses.
If your Spleen is undefined
Fears don’t elude you just because this centre is undefined. Indeed, it’s very easy for
