I was inspired to write about this middle channel that connects the Ajna and Throat centers in a mental awareness expression because Kim Gould wrote a text using an old interpretation keyword phrase “Genius to Freak” saying that when she says this to people with this definition in their charts, they so readily identify with it “Oh that’s me!” so that she feels it is a valid descriptor.

Where does your attention go with this kind of validation? In my ears, it has a taint of egoism, of specialness, and of permission or an excuse for being a little radical, a little freaky, but also possibly unrecognized for genius. I don’t think it helps a person understand the dynamic of why the person with this channel  can be brilliant or ignored.

It’s just a fun label the person recognizes and then that’s as far as the Human Design analyst needs to go, the thinking of the “analyst” doesn’t explore much further. Part of the reason I don’t use the word “analyst” is because it implies a conclusion of meaning, a certainty of perception. I prefer the word “practitioner” which is far more inclusive, namely, to practice, probe, explore, question, to be in a discipline, on a path.

When you look at this particular channel, I think it’s illuminating to start with 23 in the Throat. 23 is Erosion in Hua-Ching Ni’s I Ching and describes the five yin lines and one yang line at the top as an image of the base of the mountain eroding  (hexagram is Mountain over Earth), and since the yang line is in the top place, it’s rising upward, while the five yin lines are descending, therefore they are “splitting apart” (the Wilhelm translation of Po - Chinese hexagram name).

This then is the basis for the advice, or what is the necessity of virtue in the practice. On pag3e 338 of The Book of Changes and the Unchanging Truth, Master Ni writes, “Never compete with persons of inferior virtue, because doing so gives them the opportunity to undermine you. Also, when interacting with them, remain detached from personal credit or merit. There is no need to broadcast what you have done. By claiming credit, you only create enemies and eventually harm yourself.”

There are two more paragraphs especially illuminating that describe what it means to live the integral path. This is so helpful to start by mulling on the weakness of expressing the mind without remaining connected to the awareness.

Observe people with the channel to see whether they are impatient or demanding, whether they let the other person in, the pace of conversation, the balance between listening and talking. Those Throat gates, 62, 23, 56, that connect to the Ajna, share the advice of caution, cluing us into the fact that just because the Throat can connect to an awareness gate doesn’t necessarily mean it expresses awareness.

43 is about insight, in-sight. It’s only when looking in that you touch the awareness.

I have really tried hard to find the cover photo from Newsweek this past November 9, just last week’s edition. The caption was so perfect for the 43-23, I just wanted to use it. The headline is The Thinking Man’s Thinking Man. The magazine article is about climate change, but Al Gore is so exactly a lesson in design.

He is an example for the planet, a model for educated, measured, profound and inspired thinking about the state of the earth. The Thinking Man. Here’s Al’s chart: http://humandesignsystem.com/archive/charts/GoreAl.pdf

He has something to say. When you listen, it’s like he’s opening a thinking furrow in your brain, a new path that can bring you to a kind of awe, certainly respect for how much he knows, how clear and insightful he is and incredibly able to alter and enhance your own mental understanding on a very important issue.

The reason I felt it was so cosmic that Al Gore was on the cover of that Scorpio issue was because the Sun now transits those degrees of Scorpio that activate gate 43, forming the channel with Earth in opposition, gate 23.

Kim Gould, www.loveyourdesign.com, recently wrote about the transiting Sun Earth channel, using key phrases that are popular, Genius to Freak. You can certainly agree that Al Gore gets his share of that polarity. She said people with that channel really identify with it.

I began a correspondence with her on what I think gets completely ignored and is much more important than registering recognition (though that’s important, too). The 43 is an Ajna gate, meaning it’s an awareness gate, and has an expression gate in the 23 that can weaken the insight, the breakthrough, the revolution by not listening.

People with this channel need to study to really know their material and benefit by truly turning inward to gain the awareness aspect of this expression. It’s Al’s North Node in 23. Kim asked, “what about this evil yin, the growing of the dark force? Is there anything good about the 23?”

The receptivity to the awareness and to allow the insight to be heard, to make a radio groove, a record, recording what inspires. Kim has the 63-4, like Al and then the 23. She studies, follows her own muse, is inspired, then maybe that’s the erosion, to be like the tiller, making the ground fertile for innovative ideas to come out into the world and grow.

I lie down now in the early afternoon to take a sun bath and soak up that radiant heat into my bones. Today, while lying down, I heard  a loud inner clanging, very energetic. Not terribly different from the Gong bath sound intensity. It felt like a higher frequency, extra-terrestial broadcasting or something.

It happens more frequently all the time. It feels like time is coming to a climax, a crescendo. Something coming ever nearer.The astorological community consensus is that we’re on a huge wave of transformation. Consciousness takes its evolutionary reckoning.

The jump from the third dimension to the fourth is like the step from the third to the fourth chakra. This is the step  imagined and prepared for a long time. The time of the Osho’s New Man and Eckhart Tolle’s New Earth. Don’t you feel it, too?

Does it feel like you have to stay clean in your practice?

Take your place, be exactly you with love, appreciation and joy that you’re alive. These are times of tremendous change. The key is turning. Let it unlock your own understanding of what it means to be emotionally aware. That’s where we’re going. We heal the collective Heart center by loving. And understand what it means to be emotionally defined.