Channels

IN BRIEF: You are born to be different from everyone else in your creativity. Your life takes courage — the courage to let yourself stand out from the crowd. Simply by being yourself, you will always get the recognition you deserve. These people have natural creative abilities and talents for expressing themselves in an inimitable way. They are individuals who empower others simply through being unlike anyone else and through their capacity to inspire. This is a creative channel.

These people can bring such unusual creativity into the world that they may become role models, inspiring others to be equally daring. Like 13-33 and 7-31, this is a channel of leadership, though these people are not particularly concerned about being followed. They simply present the example of a person who knows where they are going.

These people can have an impact on others by creating a remarkable sense of creative and unusual presence — for instance, they may stand out from the crowd by their appearance or the way they dress. For someone with the 1-8 there is nothing worse than being told they remind someone of somebody else. They are built to be unique. They need to be recognised and invited to express their singularity in order to receive the respect they deserve.

Inspiration is the central expression of the Individual theme of empowerment. As the life energy of articulation, the 8-1 is the Creative Role Model in how it expresses its Contribution, or in the Contribution it makes through its expression. Individuality is limited in its ability to influence society. To empower others through their Contribution, a person has to be highly skilled in how they express it.

IN BRIEF: Because you have both the ability and the power to always follow your own direction in life, you show the way to others, directly or indirectly. People with this channel defined have both the energy to do creative work and the gift of knowing how to use that work to empower others. These are people with an innate life mission. If, as they move through life, they wait to respond to what life brings, their direction will always unfold naturally. Where the 3-60 is simply a blind pressure to create change, people with this channel have the skill to steer change according to their perception of the wholeness of the world.

These people have a very powerful aura field that can directly influence the direction of others. At times that influence can be very subtle — you might walk through the aura of someone with the 2-14 and change your own direction.

This is one of the three Tantric channels. Here Tantra is bound up with the need to surrender to the inner direction of the Sacral Center, which generates Life in the microcosm. It can feel as though the person is not consciously taking part in the decision at all, but that life itself is making it. When these people trust life, they can have a profound experience.

In the end, Individuality empowers by example. Not bound to the Collective and without the stickiness of the Tribe, all they can do is be that example. Someone with the channel of Integration will simply save themselves and abandon everyone else. Someone with this channel (2-14) will, before abandoning others, gather everyone's attention and say: "I know the way. If you like, you can follow me." Then they will turn and go. And that is a big difference.

IN BRIEF: Wherever you are physically, there is always a chance of something new appearing in the world through you. The price you pay for this gift is accepting the limitation that you cannot know when the next quantum leap will happen. This is the energy of being aware of the mutation of the outer world and of the need to mutate yourself. It works in a pulse dictated by the outer environment. The principle here is "either it is there or it is not", and the sense of mutation does not depend on the person's own ego. In this channel the energy needed to carry out mutation accumulates.

As agents of evolution itself, these people are born to bring radical change into the world. They bring something new to everything they touch, and they are always under pressure to change the order of things.

These are people who can be entirely unpredictable and who may change direction completely at any moment. They force everyone around them to grow and to adapt to the changes they bring. Theirs are auras that generate innovation and/or instability in others. As long as they respond to what life brings and do not leap according to the wishes of their mind, they can always trust the influence they have on their surroundings.

The life force of this channel of Mutation is a Design of Energy that Initiates and Changes. It is a great pulsing energy. Mutation at this level — the deepest changeable mutative potential in humanity — is simply response, no more and no less. There is a remarkable illusion around initiation, all that untruth about initiation. And yet everything of value in this life is, directly or indirectly, the result of response. As beings we are not creative. As beings we are reactive. The confusion comes from the fact that we react so quickly. Nevertheless, we are reactive.

IN BRIEF: You will always be healthy if you use your mental abilities in service to others, rather than trying to make sense of your own life. If you wait, there will always be someone who needs your clarity and your inspiration. The mind of people with this channel is scientific and sceptical; it has to question the logical soundness of everything. These people are under constant pressure to find logical answers to their doubts.

Ultimately these people are born to bring inspiration by questioning and filtering mental patterns, finding the inconsistencies so as to protect us from faulty judgements in the future. The answers they find are not necessarily correct; ideally they should be tested and tried before they acquire any practical value.

Minds of this kind are always focused on the future, and so such people can be deeply anxious about their own future. The only way to avoid that anxiety is to use their mind to investigate subjects that will occupy them and leave no room to think about anything else.

These are people who ideally need to wait for an invitation before voicing their doubts and/or their solutions, otherwise they become a headache for others.

The presence of this channel is always the sign of people who are comfortable with the basic way in which the pattern of life operates. Both the doubt and the answer are combined in the nature of the whole. Above all, those with this channel handle mental patterns — and the way life can be interpreted through those patterns — with real ease. In other words, they have a very fixed, successful mechanism for mental processes.

IN BRIEF: You are a deeply magnetic person. You draw everyone you meet into your own rhythm. If the world seems chaotic to you, it is because you are. If you are in the flow, then everything you do is effortless. These people are born to bring us into harmony with the forces of life and with creativity itself, attuning us to the deepest patterns of life. They have their own inimitable rhythm, and their presence can be very attractive. They can adjust that rhythm to changing circumstances; they are timekeepers with an innate sense of time and a sensitivity to their surroundings. They cannot be late or early. They are always in their rhythm, and they automatically draw anyone within their aura into it. Responding to what life brings, these people are always in a remarkable flow with all of life.

A 5-15 connection between two people can bring a challenge into an intimate relationship, since two completely different rhythms of life are in direct conflict. The 5th gate needs unchanging rhythms; the 15th needs changing ones.

The Channel of Rhythm underlies our bio-life process. Being part of the design of every other life form, including the single cell, it is the essence of the Logical process and of how life moves into the future through patterns. The combination of a diversity of patterns and a spectrum of rhythms leads to the definition of this channel, creating the flow of life itself. People with this channel are deeply magnetic, carrying a Collective magnetism that draws others in. This channel shares its flow and its magnetism with others and is responsible for creating the pattern and the flow of life itself on this planet. As such, these are not rivers you could easily turn back.

Because this is a generated channel, a person with defined Rhythm naturally responds according to the pattern. But when the not-self initiates Rhythm, it creates a distorted flow that draws others into a flow that is not correct for them. When correct, the person creates a proper flow, and those drawn by their magnetism are drawn towards something of value. That provides a safe outlet, helping them move into the future.

IN BRIEF: This channel represents Reproduction, which is a basic genetic drive in human beings. The 59-6 is the core of human nature. The sexuality of the 59th gate and the emotional wave of the 55th gate bring people into deeply personal, penetrating and potentially fertile relationships. It is also part of the Tribal group, and the element of support is present here. This channel can lead to the conception of a child, so it is obvious that support matters a great deal in this case.

A person with this channel gives and receives support through intimacy. The image of a mother and father embracing and looking at a pregnant belly is the energy of this channel. In other words, two people supporting each other through intimacy.

Life together usually contains conflict (the 6th gate), and we know how unsettling that can be. The 59th gate reacts to emotional disturbance and seeks to dissolve it, thereby restoring the connection between people. This process works in various ways and is not limited to reproduction alone. We see it at work when we try to restore the connection between cultures or religions in the modern world. The ability of human beings to survive over thousands of years comes from the energy of Defence.

If you look at the mandala below, you will see that the 59th gate sits directly opposite the 55th. The 55th gate is undergoing a mutation that affects emotional consciousness. The same mutation is reflected in the 59th gate. We come together and we reproduce, and that too is being altered. The increase in infertility and in IVF children is also part of that process.

IN BRIEF: You are built to be singled out from the crowd one day as a true leader. The more you resist taking on that status, the better a leader you will be. People with this channel are leaders in the truest sense, because they understand patterns and directions and are able to present them in a way anyone can grasp. They are born to lead us into the future.

Such leaders have to be elected by their people. They are best reflected in leaders of the modern democratic kind, whose purpose is to represent the interests of the people rather than to rule them. If such leaders are attuned to the rhythms of those they lead, they can be highly effective. If they lose touch with the needs of the collective, they can just as easily lead us into disaster.

These people are not necessarily formal leaders, but they may be leaders in their field (artists, actors and so on), or they may be people who have reached mastery in something and gained influence through it.

The important thing to understand about the whole Logical Collective circuit is that they share patterns. When you think of the Alpha person, picture a pack of wild dogs. They all have the same need; they live by the same pattern together, but someone is built to lead them through that pattern. Throughout the Logical Collective, what they really share is the context, the ground, the pattern itself. So in order to be able to make a judgement, you have to be able to establish a pattern shared with others. It is like: "We are in the same pattern together, but you are doing it wrong. We share a pattern, but only I can lead. We share a pattern, but only I can judge. We share a pattern, but only I have the talent." The division comes out of one and the same pattern.

IN BRIEF: The ideal of your life is to use the power of concentration to improve something that will change the world. This channel is the foundation of a logical view of the world. It calls for concentration on details that can be measured. Noting small changes, it waits for a qualitative leap. There is no visible movement, but the small things speak of an explosion to come. These people are born to bring determination and focus to what they do. They are built to sustain any effort and to concentrate their whole being on a single occupation. They bring focus to any group they are part of.

Being one of the three format energies in the body, this is a very powerful energy, and if it is present in someone's design it strongly conditions every other channel in the Bodygraph.

These people hate having to direct their energy into several things at once. They need to respond to the pressure that makes them calm and still. Then they can enter a space in which they are able to concentrate all their energy into a detailed process.

The potential for depression here is: "Why can't I move?" or "Why can't I sit still and stay concentrated?"

This is the format energy of the Logical process. With this channel in your design, everything else in it is subordinated to the demand for focus and concentration, which is the power inherent in format energies. It is the resolve to stay fixed on the details and to obtain the facts. Any success of the Logical process begins with the details. Without detail, without facts, there is nothing to trust and nothing to rely on. Being a generated channel, focus and concentration can only be truly valuable as a result of response, not of initiation. Determination, and the ability to work through every detail and finally arrive at a concrete result, come through correct response.

IN BRIEF: Nothing in life matters more to you than being yourself. Every social system has norms of behaviour that are interpreted as "higher principles". Those principles arose out of the need for society to work in concert as a single, whole organism. But by their nature they are restrictions on a certain kind of behaviour. Using restrictions as the goals of a person's individual consciousness is a mistake.

The highest principle in any community should be the rule that each person's individual qualities are allowed to unfold within the accepted norms of behaviour. So the principle of "following higher principles" consists in becoming aware of, and realising, the individual qualities of your body and psyche within the frame of social norms. In this way a person strengthens, in themselves and in others, the drive towards a harmonious engagement with the universe. Realising this principle is only possible on the basis of love for oneself as a unique being created by higher forces.

People with this channel empower others simply by being themselves and by loving themselves. They do not need to know how they do it. These people are born to be an expression of self-love and self-acceptance. This is the verbal channel of the person able to survive in any circumstances through perfect self-expression. It is also the mystical channel of Awakening — or not. The measure of Awakening is how far these people can love or hate themselves.

As long as people with this channel wait to be invited to express themselves, their behaviour will suit the situation perfectly. If their self-expression is not invited (which is more often the case), they will always meet resistance from others. As with all direct connections between the Throat Center and the G Center, people with this channel identify deeply with what they are saying as they say it. By nature they can speak with real power, but at the same time they are sensitive to criticism. When their words are criticised, they feel it as though they themselves were being criticised.

IN BRIEF: Your purpose in life is to love yourself and love life enough to trust your inner convictions, however senseless they may seem to others. People with this channel are born to do only what they love, and when they can trust that, they can truly bring out their power. Since this is the creative channel of the Centering circuit, when these people follow their own convictions they become deeply creative. As long as they do not impose their own way on others, they are genuinely empowering individuals. Their rare ability to awaken inner strength in others comes from their own faith and love of self.

People with this channel are able to lift up those around them, helping them connect more deeply with their own essence. In other words, they can help people become more independent and rely less on others. That is what being centred means. At the same time, these people can be very selfish, always wanting to go their own way regardless of what others say or do. If they are living their design, they need not feel guilty about it.

These people do not need to understand why they behave in their own inimitable way. Nor do they need to question their own behaviour, even if others perhaps do. Surrendering to their own inner response to what life brings, responding in each moment, they will always be in the right place at the right time.

Exploration is the empowerment of behaviour. With this channel you will have a very fixed behavioural pattern in life, one that empowers others in defining their own behaviour. This channel expresses the essence of what Individuality would like to see in the world — the ability to behave as the true self without any interference, and to empower others to live as their true self without obstruction.

IN BRIEF: Your life is a canvas, and your behaviour is your art. If you follow your intuition, you will have an irresistible urge to create beauty through your actions. As soon as we begin to study the phenomena and objects of nature, we quickly become convinced that everything in them is perfect. The principle of perfecting the expression of your true Self is bound up with exactly that. The expression of an inner state always happens through form, and so the form must be perfect. Roughness and imprecision in expression are the causes of failure and even of death.

All the channels of Integration are concerned with the survival of the individual in this world. They must play their own role, using the promptings of intuition, applying the qualities of energy they have been given; and in acting, a person needs to achieve a perfected form of expression. When they act in time with the events of the cosmos, charisma appears. All of this creates the best possible conditions for survival.

Playing someone else's role, it is easy to end up in a difficult situation that does not belong to this person. Trying to apply a force or an energy that is not built into the body, one can be injured and fail to succeed. Acting out of step with the general flow of events, you will never catch luck.

People with the Channel of Perfected Form, whose behaviour is governed by their intuition, express it as the Channel of Beauty.

This is the creative channel of the Integration system, and the theme of this channel is the "art" of survival. When the 10th gate of Behaviour connects to the 57th gate of Intuition, the survival of the individual is guaranteed. These people need to perfect their form, whatever meaning they give to the word "form". They are born to make something beautiful out of their life (many architects and artists have this channel defined). They are built to love the art of creation simply for their own pleasure. Often they cannot survive if they cannot create something beautiful around them.

IN BRIEF: You are a seeker in the purest sense, which means that reaching any final goal is not part of the design. Only when you let go of the very idea of arriving can you rest and find peace in the journey itself. People with this channel are wonderful storytellers and can have a real gift for language. They take their life experiences and shape them into stories or anecdotes in order to get a reaction from their listeners. Those ideas and experiences serve as stimulation for others to reflect on and learn from.

These people are born to seek rather than to find. What matters to them is the process of seeking, not the final result. They feel an endless curiosity about new ideas and have to understand that their ideas are never useful to them, but can always be stimulating to others. They need to understand that the abstract mind cannot solve its own problems.

A person with this channel is locked neither into the need to express their idea, which can happen automatically, nor into the need to be stimulated by their own idea. But they are in search; they are always seeking. One of their dilemmas is that the point of seeking is not to find, but the seeking itself. Within this Abstract stream, mental activity and potential clarity are the driving force of seeking and curiosity.

The Abstract process is our ability to store and pour out the past. Without the past we are lost; without it we have no foundation to give us solid ground in the present and to carry us into the future. The essential thing about the Abstract mind is its ability to distil experience, to extract its essence. Abstract mental activity can lead to clarity and yet, because it is not certainty, it drives Curiosity to look for the absolute. The expectation is a dream — the dream of perfecting the human way. Many of those with this channel defined are in headlong search, and in most cases never truly acknowledge that what they are seeking is their own perfection.

IN BRIEF: Your life is a life of passion and of following your feelings. Your lesson, however, is to wait before you act or speak. The more patient you are, the clearer your emotions can be and the more powerful your influence. People with this channel are born to influence others through their inimitable emotional expression. They can be as charming as they can be cruel. This is a manifested channel, so in order to avoid a burst of anger and resistance, these people usually need to inform others before they release their emotions.

They are interested not so much in connecting with other people as in finding the chance to express themselves — by design this is a selfish, individual channel. Their deepest role in life is to have an effect on the emotions of others. Yet they can truly influence others only when they fully respect their own moods. Their creed: don't eat if you're not in the mood, don't go anywhere if you're not in the mood, and so on.

This is the Channel of Openness in a very limited sense. It is one of the three social channels in our consciousness. There are no specifically social channels in either the Logical or the Experiential processes, since every Collective channel is social in its essence. The other two distinctly social channels are part of the Tribal circuit: the channel of Mating (59-6) and the channel of Community (40-37).

The name of a channel can always be seen in its mirror image. That means the Channel of Openness can be the channel of Closedness; or the Design of a Social Being can be the design of an Antisocial being. It all depends on the mood. This channel can transmit an essential mutation of Individuality, and that is precisely why Individuality has a specifically social channel — either to transmit mutation, or to be open to it. So if you have this channel defined, you have to be open to the other in order to be able to transmit mutation, just as you have to be open to the other in order to receive it.

IN BRIEF: Every cycle of experience in your life will make sense at the end. That is what you will learn again and again. The more deeply you live that understanding, the more patient and relaxed you will become about how things are going in the present moment. These people are born to pass the wisdom of individual experience on to others. Their strength lies in drawing the lessons out by looking back at the past, and in handing on what they have learned so that others need not make the same mistakes.

For these people the past matters a great deal. Whether they are historians, playwrights or politicians, these people are natural chroniclers — and it can take many forms, from putting together photo albums to keeping accounts and diaries.

People with this channel very often hear and know more than they let on. They can have a good memory for particular kinds of information. In an organisation these are the people to go to when you need to know what is happening behind the scenes. Because of that quality, others often want them as leaders.

The Channel of the Witness requires recognition, because without it there is nothing to share in this Collective process. This channel is the natural completion of the ripening process in every cycle, since each cycle is completed by someone who is the Prodigal. Every cycle implies reaching a moment of Retreat so that the past can be made sense of. From that vantage point a person is then able to share their wisdom about the past. It is easier to do that where there is some common ground, some equal social standing — like workers doing the same job together in the same environment. If there are enough of them, you really can convey to them the meaning of what happened the day before, or over the last twenty, thirty or forty years.

This is the most essential voice of the Collective Experiential, because it is the one that insists we must both keep our memories and share them. We need both to store them as memory and to keep them alive as recollection, so as to pass them on. This is what allows bookshops to make money, because without the Prodigals half of any bookshop would be empty — there would be no biographies, no autobiographies, no histories. It is an enormous contribution made by the Experiential, but after the experiences have been had, not during them.

IN BRIEF: Yours is a design of talent, but that talent has to be built up through constant repetition and gradual perfecting. Wait to find the one thing you can devote yourself to wholly and completely. The creative channel of the Circuit of Understanding is bound up with mastery — these people are born to find something in life they can do again and again until they perfect it and reach mastery.

Logical creativity is different from individual creativity. This channel represents a talent that has to be built through hard work and devotion. If these people can stay in their process, recognition will certainly come. So mastery always depends on constant repetition, but ultimately, outgrowing technique, it becomes art. The body needs seven years to absorb any technique deeply enough to go beyond it.

Since this is a channel of the Circuit of Understanding, the talent of this channel has to be shared with humanity. Such a channel is most natural when it has a wider purpose that improves the world in some way. It is also the channel of the ability to care.

Logic hungers for direct energy, and that hunger gets in the way of preparing for the future, of supplying humanity with patterns that will be productive and efficient enough to let humanity meet the future in relative safety. There is an assumption that this channel holds enormous power, but in fact that power does not exist — it is only an illusion. When we think of Talent, we think of the force standing behind the Talent. It is a focused process that has to be identified with deeply and repeated constantly, since that very process of perfecting is the expression of Talent.

IN BRIEF: You have the rare mental ability to see the big picture without getting lost in detail. Yet if you do not give yourself time to look at all the essential facts and details, your long-range vision will inevitably be distorted. These people need to command every fact down to the finest point before they begin to speak. Their opinions have to be grounded in detail. If they wait to be invited into the conversation, they will always delight others with their detail and their knowledge. If they do not, they can just as easily wear listeners out with unnecessary particulars. Many people with the 17-62 have reduced vision in the right eye, because for most of their life they have tried to share their opinions with others without waiting for an invitation, and so have gradually undermined their ability to see patterns clearly.

These are natural organisers of other people, born to develop and improve logical patterns for the future. They are logical brainstormers and a repository of logical mental patterns with the abilities of a manager — though only on the mental level. Because these people are visually oriented, they work best with images. Their eyes have the ability to see all the working parts of any structure, to identify potential flaws, and to state their opinion openly as a possible solution grounded in detailed knowledge of the subject. Many organisations are looking for that collective gift.

Acceptance mentally organises information based on an Opinion already confirmed by Detail. That is not necessarily correct or right. The logical expression of a specific organisational scheme requires Acceptance if that scheme is ultimately going to be acted upon. It is impossible to argue about their opinions or their details with someone who has this whole channel defined. You can, however, talk to them about how things are organised, because that is what concerns them. This is the mental transformation of Opinion and Detail into the organisation of people.

IN BRIEF: As someone who loves to challenge everything, you are advised not to impose your criticism until you are asked. When you are asked, you will meet no resistance from others. These are people who strive for perfection in everything. They are people of logic, born to "bring judgement" in order to perfect the order of things for the sake of the whole. Their energy for perfecting is insatiable. The trick for them is to understand that their drive to find perfection is designed to be applied only in the public sphere, not in their private life. If they have nothing and no one to challenge, their sense of dissatisfaction can be turned inward, on themselves or on friends and family. If they constantly challenge their closest allies, they may end up with all kinds of family problems and difficulties in their relationships.

As with all channels between the Root Center and the Spleen, these people need constant physical exercise in order to burn off energy.

These people can show what is wrong and are ready to work on a potential improvement, but they do not know what to replace the established pattern with. In other words, their role is not to find the solution, but only to show where the flaw is.

They have to understand that for them the process of perfecting matters more than the result. In fact, for true perfectionists perfection cannot exist. There are only ascending levels of mastery.

Someone with this channel will take enormous delight in sharing with you how you need to be a better person. But do not even think about sharing with them what you feel they themselves need. You will see at once that Collective sharing is not exactly a two-way street. "I can share with you, but don't you dare share with me. I'll tell you what's wrong with you. There's nothing wrong with me. It's all about you. You have a problem, and let me tell you how to fix it. No, no, I'm fine."

IN BRIEF: Your life is a never-ending lesson in sensitivity — the need to balance your own requirements against those of the people around you, while holding to your own principles. Your potential gift is to be recognised as someone who can always find a solution that is both practical and fair. It is in this channel that the correct Strategy is the foundation for entering into any kind of relationship or contract with another person. These people are born to learn to be sensitive and to balance their own needs against the needs of others. They will put enormous effort into their relationships, and they can be acutely sensitive or insensitive, depending on their wave.

This is an emotional projected channel, which means that ideally, before entering into any relationship, these people need to be recognised by others. They have to allow enough time and space for the natural process of courtship to unfold, so as to reach emotional clarity before committing to anything.

Since this channel is the root of the stream of Touch, people with it need close contact with others. Depending on whether they are at the top of the wave or at its lowest point, they may want to embrace their partner or to hit them.

This channel is rooted in food, environment and community. Such people need to eat together with others regularly. Food matters enormously to them.

Sexually this is the channel of the bride and groom as archetype. It is the channel of the Tribe's basic need for shelter, for guaranteed resources (food, protection of children, safety) — for the fundamental resources. You can receive support with those resources if you "love, honour and obey", meaning: honour your Tribe, love the same things, pray to the same God. The support of this channel is the stickiest, because it is what holds the Tribe together. So sticky that if you do not value it, you will fall ill. The very first basic bargain of the Tribe is that you have to agree to support everyone else in the Tribe, and they will support you. If you do not, you will be ostracised and cast out. You will have no shelter and no food, so you had better obey — that is the essence of the bargain.

IN BRIEF: The healthiest thing for you is to be constantly busy in life — but what matters is that you are busy with what the universe asks of you. In practice that shows up as loving what you do. From the books "Spirituality and Humanity" and "The Awareness of the Universe" it is known that the governing of action and of the movement of energies in the world happens through the creation of thought-forms and their realisation through the Will of the universe. It is precisely this function that the Channel of Charisma is responsible for. Acting out of response to the real situation in the present moment, a person receives the creative power they need to fulfil their individual role in the general movement of the universe. But there is an enormous quantity of thought-forms in the air, generated by other people who have designs on this person and want to incline them towards actions that suit them.

In this situation, if the person waits for their response in the Sacral Center and acts in accordance with it, they will realise their potential for Charisma. If they are oriented towards other people's opinions, they will be forever busy carrying out the tasks of that stream of thought-forms surrounding them. And since most people act out of the not-self, their lifelong mantra will be: "I'm busy, I'm busy."

These people are usually unavailable to the outside world, because they are absorbed in constant activity from one moment to the next.

These people have a deep need to be busy and involved in activity. True charisma appears when they are busy with what they love. When they do what they love, they naturally empower others through their personal magnetism.

IN BRIEF: You bring an extraordinary gift into the world — the sharpness of your intuition. Yet the fact that you can see the truth faster than others does not mean you are here to share it. Wait until you are asked. This channel exists to ensure the survival of the individual who has it defined. It is a spontaneous voice with an extraordinarily sharp intuition, one that fires so fast that the brain can only make sense of it afterwards (hence the name — brainwave). It is an electrical wave impulse that arises in the lymphatic system and registers in the brain almost instantly. These people can adapt intuitively to any circumstances without thinking about how they do it. They are the greatest improvisers in the world, as long as they can overcome their fear of the unknown.

As a component of the Circuit of Knowing with its powerful key of empowerment, this channel is the core of empowerment. It is the completion of the stream of Intuition, which begins in the 28-38, where we seek fulfilment through purpose. Purpose in itself, the nature of purpose, can only be expressed through the intuition of the 57-20. The 57-20 becomes the way to share intelligence, to empower others to be intelligent. That is its deepest function, and that is why it is called the Brainwave. A person with this channel is deeply absorbed in strategies of survival.

Of all the channels, this one's name is perhaps the most confusing or misleading. In fact it is thanks to Individuality that we have the mutative or creative capacity for transformation. Human awareness has an evolutionary programme that began with the Splenic Center, which is our fundamental, primary awareness allowing us to survive. That ability to survive is driven by Splenic intelligence — an intelligence rooted in the 50th gate. Yet it is only through Individuality that the mutation and transformation of humanity happens: from beings dominated by the Spleen to beings dominated by the Ajna. The transformation into the world of mind that most people live in came about precisely through this channel.

IN BRIEF: In your life the material plane has to be accepted completely. You are born to earn money through your willpower. It is unnatural for you to work for anyone but yourself, since you will be uncomfortable if someone controls you in any way. People with this channel are born to perfect the material plane. They are born to lead and to control. The only way they can achieve material success is by doing everything themselves.

These people are a one-man show; they do not work very well alongside others, since they like to do everything themselves. As Manifestors they are the most active of all — unless they have the Sacral Center or the Solar Plexus defined, which forces them to follow a Strategy of waiting. As Manifestors, their natural Strategy is to inform people about what they need to control before they can exercise that control.

Since this is a very powerful manifested Ego channel, these people can be extremely self-centred. You cannot change these people. When they speak, they naturally speak about themselves. If their Strategy is not clear to them, they will meet enormous resistance, criticism and anger from others.

Generally this channel works better as an electromagnetic connection between two different people (where the 45 is the owner of the company and the 21 the director with the right of control). Impressive rows can break out between them, though, if the 45 tries to control or if the 21 tries to behave like the owner.

This channel is the only pure example of the Manifestor Ego. The 45-21 works best when only one side of the channel is activated in you and you meet the other side. That is, you have the 21st gate and you work for someone with the 45th, because then you depend on each other. But when both gates are embodied in one person as definition, there is a driving, manifesting force to control everything from top to bottom. This is the chief executive who has to be President, and the President who has to be chief executive. It is difficult only in the context of the not-self, since these themes of manifesting in life lead to punishment and to enormous anger.

IN BRIEF: If you cannot explain your insights clearly, you will constantly drive people away from you. If you know when to speak and when to keep silent, you will always get the recognition you deserve. These people are born to influence the way others see. At their best they can completely change our way of thinking about certain things. They have a real capacity for innovative thinking, one grounded in improving the efficiency with which energy is used. This is not about gradual improvement and the modification of existing functions, but about thinking capable of a quantum leap. In organisations these people can always bring the work to a higher level of efficiency.

The other side of these people is that they can also be chatterboxes, and very often they go through life feeling that nobody really hears them. It is essential for them to learn to control the timing of when to speak, otherwise they will shut themselves off from other people. Ideally this channel operates best when it waits for an invitation to speak.

These people have a deep need to talk their thoughts through aloud with others, so that they can hear for themselves what they know (which can often be a surprise to them). Moreover, when this channel is defined unconsciously (coloured red), it is a voice that speaks without knowing what it is saying. That can be a great gift, or it can lead to enormous misunderstanding. In childhood these people need constant encouragement to explain their thinking. If they learn to do it from childhood, it can spare them great difficulty later in life.

IN BRIEF: As long as you do not try to use this channel to solve the problems of your own life, your mind is always able to inspire others to see life in an entirely new light. The world's greatest thinkers. These people are built to inspire others to contemplate the mysteries of life. Theirs are minds that constantly need to explore new intellectual territory afresh. Such minds are able to create entirely new ways of thinking, and they need to be recognised for precisely that quality.

These are people who love silence and need it. They can also be people who hear the sound of a voice in their head. Since these people are acoustically oriented, listening to and playing music can be an extraordinarily calming way for them to release mental pressure.

These are melancholic minds to whom inspiration comes suddenly and unexpectedly, and which can neither be controlled nor predicted.

As an energy, the 61-24 is a particular channel that carries with it the potential of a melancholic mind. The melancholy is rooted in the fact that there is no change. Everything in the nature of the Thinker has to do with going on thinking about the same thing again and again. Working on an acoustic level, this unique mind sits in a pulse of waiting for mutation or for knowing. This mutative thinking is not discovery or research. Thoughts simply rush past — no more, no less. It is not thinking as an active state. Only in those extraordinary moments when knowing "switches on" out of that process does something appear that can have a mutative effect on the mental direction of humanity.

There are three aspects to knowing: What do you need to know? (that is, who you are). What do you not need to know? (that is, information with no bearing on your life). What cannot be known? Someone with this channel who does not know these distinctions can become obsessed with questions that cannot be answered, or be eaten up by insignificant trivia. That can be maddening and lead to madness. As with all mental channels involving the Ajna, if you give your mind inner authority, that is where the difficulty can begin — and in this case it can lead to madness.

IN BRIEF: Your life is a series of leaps into the unknown. You are born with the spirit of a warrior, and you are born to learn to go your own way alone. Gather your courage, leap when you must, and worry about the consequences afterwards. In everyday life people with this channel are naturally competitive. They are born to marvel at the singularity of their own spirit, moving into new territory, going beyond their limits, shocking themselves and others.

These people also love to test the boundaries of their endurance, and can move beyond their own sense of strength into an entirely fresh (even mystical) perception of themselves. (The 34-10 does not go beyond limits; it simply feels its strength and displays it to others.)

These are people who can initiate others into doing something they would not normally do. They love being the first to open up new territory, and they have a powerful design in the world of business, where they can empower organisations with their unique ability and their bold approach to getting what they want.

The Channel of Initiation is the empowerment of competitiveness. This need to be first, at the most worldly level, is a pronounced competitiveness — a deep rivalry. Not as we see it applied on the everyday plane, in the sense of who can get somewhere faster. It is an evolutionary competitiveness that allows us to make the leap and seize on the recognition of mutative potential. So the nature of Initiation is both to recognise the potential of mutation and, ultimately — since mutation can never exist on its own — to empower others through mutation.

If we as human beings did not have this drive to compete, we would never have achieved what we have. It is precisely that capacity for competitiveness that carried us forward and brought us to the summit of our development, and it goes on motivating us to hold that position. People carrying this channel are recognised as mutative forces that help sustain our evolutionary movement by Initiating others.

IN BRIEF: You are gifted at working with people. You have an instinctive knowledge of how to present anything to anyone in such a way that you and your message are recognised. In life you need to learn to wait for your market to find you, rather than trying to sell yourself and seek recognition. These people are born to sell a message, a product or a truth. Their gift is knowing exactly how to adapt their expression to a particular person or group in order to reach their goal.

As the creative channel of the Ego Circuit, it represents the creative art of enterprise — making a contract with the community in order to manoeuvre, to persuade someone to buy something. These people have the ability to convey information to others for their own ends, and since they have a strong Splenic Center, they can instinctively and spontaneously adjust their position to any shifting market or situation. Such people can make excellent directors, advertisers, sales agents and the like.

These people are always trying to improve the ratio between work and rest — in other words, they aim to get more and work less while remaining just as productive.

Historically it is very hard to truly conquer any Tribe. Within a Tribe there is a deep need to survive and not to be assimilated by a larger group. Even in the greatest experiments in national homogenisation, such as the United States of America, which is essentially a country of immigrants. And yet you see how stubbornly distinct Tribal roots and customs are preserved and maintained.

The Tribe changes most slowly of all, because it is deeply rooted in its basic needs. The Channel of Surrender is a deep genetic potential within the Tribe for overcoming the constant threat of disappearance, of extinction. In the context of this Stream of Instinct within the Ego circuit, that threat is overcome through material success. The Tribe has to remain materially independent and be able to defend itself, feed itself, educate itself and stay competitive in relation to every other Tribe on the planet.

IN BRIEF: These people are here to establish values and responsibility within a community, or to challenge them. These people carry an innate responsibility for the community and for the people around them. They are here to uphold, or to challenge, the laws that govern the preservation and wellbeing of the community. And since this gate represents a potential fear of responsibility, these people can also be the ones who break those laws and challenge them.

Without the 27th, these people are here to take responsibility for others without necessarily also having to look after them. The 50th needs the balance of the 27th and its gift of caring.

The Channel of Preservation — the 50-27 — connects the 50th gate of Values in the Splenic Center to the 27th gate of Nourishment in the Sacral Center. The biological basis for this gate is quite simple: human infants cannot survive on their own after birth.

Although it is a secondary scheme in itself, it is part of the Tribal scheme, and so support is still an important link. Human young need care. The 50-27 channel is not limited to supporting children; that is simply its root.

This channel works with the 50th gate in the Spleen, which acts out of its fear of responsibility. That makes it pay attention to what it is responsible for at any given moment. If it notices, in itself or in others, that it may be responsible for something, the 27th gate in the Sacral Center supplies the energy for it.

People with this channel feel a need to feel good in the present moment, and so they are willing and able to do something about it. But if these people do not realise that others are not attuned the way they are, that will be a problem. The 50-27 can be deeply hurt when it seems to them that others are not showing care, since they conclude that those people simply will not take responsibility and will not care.

IN BRIEF: Your life is the archetypal hero's campaign against difficulty. The aim is to remain yourself and follow your own path, regardless of what others think or say about you. It is the "I did it my way" mentality. Such people love a good scrap, and they are born to be tempered by life. They are also built to stand up for themselves, and as a result they often move through life alone. Since this is a projected channel, they need people in their life who allow them to struggle. It is a constant struggle between purpose and the absence of purpose.

The struggle in this channel is deeply individual and is interspersed with unpredictable periods of melancholy. The fear that time is running out drives them to get as much out of life as they can. Yet these individuals ultimately set the direction for society and can be of extraordinary value in empowering others. Their great strength is stubbornness — they will not give up on what matters to them.

Because of its connection to the Splenic Center, this is a channel of health. These people are healthiest when they push themselves, and they usually need to release their fighting spirit through some invigorating physical activity.

As the beginning of the Stream of Intuition, this channel has to do with the development of our intuitive process. It is very sensitive to sound, since Individuality has the ability to respond acoustically, and in that response we have the awareness of whether or not to struggle. This Struggle is an essential component of the ability to find purpose. Whoever you are and wherever you are, it is impossible to find purpose without Struggle. It is not a given; purpose is something to be reached by being yourself. This channel is the driving force that sets humanity apart from other species on this planet, because it leads to a self-conscious understanding of limitation. It is the force that brings us to the place of understanding something very, very fundamental: that survival on its own is not enough. There has to be some meaning in life that makes it worth living. In its essence, the Struggle is always about whether your life is genuinely of value.

IN BRIEF: Once you have clarity about an agreement, you must commit to it completely, freeing yourself of all expectations about its outcome. That way you will come to see that there is neither failure nor success, only unending discovery. People with this channel are born to lose themselves in their experiences until those experiences come to an end. If they commit only halfway, they will learn nothing. It is all about being in the Present moment of the experience of life. For these people the true meaning of any experience can only be known at the end, so they need to let go of every expectation.

These people need to learn to accept the cyclical nature of their life and to allow a potential unexpected discovery to happen. If they do not make correct and clear agreements, their bodies will suffer the stress of constant crisis, disappointment or genuine shock.

In this channel the experiential process finds either promise or chaos — this is the design of the person who succeeds where others fail, or who fails where others succeed.

This is really the core of the experiential process. If there is experiential definition in your chart, or even just experiential activations, they point you towards experience — but not for the sake of experience alone. What matters are the results of the experience. Where logic spends so much time on theoretical postulates, the experiential simply goes and tests it in practice. If they get hurt or die, well, others will learn, because it was an experience that was shared. But it is bound up with reflection; it is the study and analysis after the experience that matters most.

This is another generated channel, and everyone with it is automatically a Generator, whatever the nuances. The thematic strategy for such a person throughout their life is simply to respond. Although Individuality is mutative in the present, this Channel of Discovery is the only truly existential channel in the Design. The person lives wholly within the experience, without trying to distance themselves from it while they are in it. That is what creates success on the experiential level. Through response, immerse yourself deeply in the experience. You will not make the discovery during the experience, but you will get your chance to draw great value out of it — only afterwards. For the experiential person, the past is always the only teacher.

IN BRIEF: You are life's greatest dreamers. There are only two lessons you need to learn in life: 1. Do not try to make your dreams come true. 2. Do not expect any of your desires to bring you lasting peace. True peace lies simply in delighting in the dreams themselves. These people are born to gain wisdom by exploring feelings of every kind. They are natural dreamers, and at the same time very few of their dreams are destined to come true. Despite that, they have a deep ability to stir the feelings of others through the dreams and desires they share.

As a direct connection between the Solar Plexus and the Root Center, this channel carries an emotional pressure that is often felt as restlessness or nervousness (especially when it is disconnected from other defined channels). This channel is the mirror of the 18-58 (the channel of Judgement). Where the channel of Judgement endlessly wants to correct in order to improve, the 41-30 constantly craves to feel in order to learn something.

These people often need to learn patience and self-possession. They need to "work hard to get there" when it comes to decisions, allowing themselves to travel the emotional wave from hope to pain, so as finally to see which desires are correct.

The Channel of Recognition is a powerful link between the Root adrenal system and the Emotional wave of the Solar Plexus, creating Emotional Authority in anyone who has it defined. That means there is no truth in the present moment, and the person needs the patience to wait for clarity. It is the beginning of the Experiential Stream of Feeling, which could equally be called the Stream of Desire. This Experiential process really does define human experience, and it is what pushes us beyond what counts as accepted experience. It is the force that moves us towards Progress, and we move slowly from one level of technology — from the Stone Age — to the next level of technology, the Bronze Age. It is our movement along the human experiential path, and it is a cultural evolutionary process based on experience rather than a biological one.

IN BRIEF: You have the ability and the drive to reach any distant goal. Yet you cannot reach your goal without the correct allies supporting you in life. Ideally you need to wait for your allies to recognise you for a drive of real significance, rather than trying to find them yourself. People with this channel are born to transform raw energy into something lasting. It has to do with turning hard work into material success. These people have a sensitivity that allows them to balance force with limitation, creating an enterprise or a venture that will always be able to stand.

This channel has to do with time, money, values, business and deals. These people can always assess whether the time and effort spent are worth the money earned. Through that ability they know how to evaluate other people as well as themselves, and they are always ready to bargain with others in order to satisfy both their own needs and the needs of others.

These people have a deep need for material success. And they are willing to work hard for recognition. Ideally they aspire to climb the hierarchical ladder, and that usually happens through the right contacts. When these people do not value themselves or their place in the community properly, they can become workaholics.

This part of the Stream of Instinct is deeply bound up with the need for the material path to bear fruit, so as to look after the needs and demands of the Tribe. This material Transformation cannot happen without the support of all those with the ambition to rise. There have to be those who recognise this ability to grow and who help them advance. At the same time, those who rise must never forget the two-way street of the Tribe, the stickiness of the Tribe. They have to remember those who supported them and return that support as part of their Tribal debt.

IN BRIEF: Your body has a very sharp early-warning system that is constantly tuned to your immediate surroundings. If you can learn to trust your intuition consistently, you will become the true power of your archetype. There is a well-known formula: "Life is a play, and people are the actors performing the roles." The archetypal roles in the play of life were discovered by C. G. Jung in the first half of the twentieth century. From birth, by virtue of their individual definition, a person is bound to a certain archetypal role. They can only come to know that role by living it. And in order to play it correctly, a person is given promptings in the form of intuition. Where the 20-34 channel calls for the realisation of the quality of energy built into the person, the 34-57 is bound up with performing the archetypal role.

Intuition should not be confused with instinct or with foreboding. Instincts are the biological reactions of living organisms. Foreboding is the sense of a looming danger that has not yet arrived but has already begun to take shape. Intuition consists of promptings about actions bound up with performing your role. It works in the moment and is generated by the response of the Sacral Center.

People with the Channel of Power defined have an intuitive awareness that can keep them healthy through constant response.

These people have to let their body respond in the present moment. Only when they learn to trust their response from moment to moment will they be free of their fear of the unknown. This channel represents an intuition that is always working.

These people are constantly alert and on guard. They must always trust their archetypal role. They are always ready, in a split second, either to enter the fray or to run from danger. Their energy is based purely on their attunement to sound and vibration. For instance, they always hear exactly what was said from the speaker's tone, regardless of the words spoken.

IN BRIEF: Your life is full of experiences, though they rarely match the expectations of your own mind or the minds of others. Your deepest talent is meant for adventure. Your purpose is the wisdom that nothing lasts forever. People with this channel are constantly drawn to seek new experiences in life. It is a journey of gaining wisdom through experience. The experiences they live through are part of a wider plan that can ultimately bring them great depth. Yet it can often seem that they pay a high price in their personal life, if they do not understand how they operate.

Since this is the creative channel of the Circuit of Sensing, these people have a talent for adventure. They are driven by a genetic hunger for change. They go through one experience after another for the sake of wisdom rather than for the result of the experience. As they mature, they become more and more creative in sharing what they have lived through with others — the good and the bad alike. They can be wonderful storytellers, since they have so many gripping experiences. This is a very sexual channel; it is the "been there, done that" channel.

The dilemma of these people is that no experience is truly personal, because they are driven by a genetic need to experience something new. This is sex bound up with getting the experience rather than with the person, and it can become a great disappointment once the experience is over. The secret for such people is to give up every expectation and simply enjoy the experience — or not.

These people need to wait for emotional clarity. If they do not wait and something goes wrong, they can get caught in a repeating loop, doing it again and again. This is a manifesting channel, which means these people can be very inconstant when an experience does not meet their expectations.

If we look at the symmetry of this channel in relation to the Channel of Talent on the other side of the Bodygraph, we see an enormous difference between them. Instead of moving from the Throat to a non-motorised function of the immune system and its sole ability to articulate, we move directly to the most powerful motor in the body. Once we have this definition, we also have Emotional authority in the Design as a Manifestor.

IN BRIEF: The purpose of your life is to discover where your place is in the larger scheme of things, and then to live it. Rather than trying to find the place you fit into, wait to see which people or communities invite you. This channel represents the marriage contract and the family, and it is the foundation of any community. It has to do with finding the right allies, connection with whom will bring harmony into the community.

These people always need to see that every relationship in life has to be founded on the principle of fairness. If the agreements they make with their loved ones or colleagues are not established clearly and openly, the bond will be destroyed. These people need to maintain a natural balance in every aspect of their life: practical provision of food, a regular sexual life, time for enjoyment, and balanced working activity.

People with this channel always want to know where and how they fit into the community — and on the mystical level, where their place is in the bigger picture; in other words, what the true purpose of their life is.

Like the 19-49, this channel is rooted in touch, which means these people need to become friends with those they do business with. They need direct contact with others; telephone negotiations, for instance, do not suit them. They should not make any deals with people they have not met in person.

This Channel of Community is another opposition on the wheel; for the vast majority of people with the 40-37 you will meet, the definition comes through Sun/Earth or as an aspect of the Nodes. So it is a fairly widespread energy in humanity and very essential to the path by which we have developed as a whole. This channel is rooted in the "bargain". "I'll do the washing up and you take out the rubbish." These are the fundamental everyday bargains of support within the Tribe. Sexually it is the channel of the marriage contract.

IN BRIEF: The secret of your life is to learn to value the low moods as much as you love the highs. Only when you can let go of the wish to control love will you feel the freedom you are looking for. These people are born to learn the lesson that life comes with highs and lows, and to accept the endless cycles of sorrow and joy. This is the channel of being happy or sad, the channel of moving along the emotional wave and connecting with the extraordinary creative force that can arise out of the emotional system, and especially out of its lower spectrum. It is important to remember that an emotion has to be provoked from outside, whereas a feeling arises from within.

These people need to accept melancholy rather than trying to find a rational explanation for it or making an enemy of it. They need to enjoy the moments of solitude when they are at the low point of the wave as much as they enjoy company when they are on the rise. The emotional wave in this channel carries the pulsing energy of mutation, which can seem very calm until it suddenly soars or crashes. That is why these people give the impression of being very calm for long stretches, but can also experience sudden and unexpected shifts of mood. Those periods can even be measured in years.

This is a deeply romantic, acoustic channel with an enormous receptivity to music. These people need to talk and to listen to each other. They love to show their moods and express their feelings, and so they are natural actors, musicians, poets and artists of every kind.

As part of the Individual stream of passion and romance, the mood-swing quality of this channel affects us in many ways and can create a very distorting field. Whenever there is an Individual activation, whether as definition or not, you are dealing with the chemistry of melancholy and the potential for sorrow. But the mind of the not-self will very quickly find an explanation for why the person is in a bad mood. And it is never true. Someone with this channel has to accept their mood swings and not look for reasons behind them; it is simply a matter of chemistry, given in order to feed the person's creative process. When a person accepts that chemistry as simply part of their nature, they become open to the possibility of the creative process, which is the positive side and the mutative force.

IN BRIEF: If you have this channel defined, be very circumspect every time you begin something new. Once you have taken on the commitment to attempt something, you have a genetic imperative to complete that attempt. If you do not carry it through to its natural conclusion, you will simply meet the same problem later in another form. This is the format channel of the Circuit of Sensing (the Experiential path). It reflects qualitative growth or decline within yourself or in the outer world. It is a cyclical process of Maturation that passes through phases of rise and fall.

People with the Channel of Maturation defined live a life full of repeating cycles that gradually and steadily bring them to a state of maturity and wisdom. They are born to embody the wisdom that any life is a journey that never ends. They are built to orient themselves not towards the goal but towards learning to value the whole richness of the experiences of the journey itself. Such people can become deeply attuned to the cycles of life, planetary cycles, historical cycles and so on, and can gain a deep kinship with the past.

Whatever these people begin in life has to be finished. So they should begin any project, relationship or experience clearly and correctly, otherwise they will find that they either have to wait for the natural end of the cycle (usually seven years), or they abandon it early and meet the same pattern again in another experience.

This cyclical format energy governs the whole Circuit of Sensing, and this channel will condition every other definition in the Bodygraph to operate according to a cyclical process.

As the format energy of the Experiential process, the Channel of Maturation is the design of Balanced Development, and it is cyclical by nature. The Experiential process is not logical. It is not about step-by-step repetition; it speaks of beginning something different. It has to do with collecting experiences rather than with focusing on fact. This channel is about beginnings, middles and endings. It is the human cycle and the cycle for all things. In fact the experiential path creates in us the finiteness, the transience of our process, and quite literally brings completion — an ending — to the life process itself.

IN BRIEF: Your mind can be either deeply inspiring to others or a source of confusion in your own life. The trick is to use your mind only to resolve questions that do not concern you directly. These people are born to create something new out of the old. They bring abstract thought into the world through art, philosophy, history and culture. They alter the past in various ways — through cultural revolution, for instance.

The confusion these people feel on the mental level drives them to work the past over in new and creative ways. They need to accept confusion as part of their mental process, and if they are able to do that, they will always discover that everything becomes clear in its own time.

Experiential minds of this kind cannot solve their own problems, but they can tell stories beautifully and recreate experiences that will inspire others.

This channel is bound up with Mental Activity, since it is the busiest of all the Mental channels. It is busy, extraordinarily active and constantly in motion, and that is the potential for clarity. We usually associate "clarity" with the Emotional system and its Authority. Emotional authority, rather than guiding you through mental intelligence, directs you through emotional intelligence, which can never be 100 per cent certain about anything. But it can have acceptable clarity, or be certain enough, depending on how long it has waited out the wave.

This Mental Activity will turn the same thing over again and again, but it will never do it in the same way twice. As with the Emotional system, clarity only comes with time, through a spectrum of mental activity that circles, fixed on something, until some understanding appears. This activity is a very busy mind, but it is always fixed on particular points around which it circles. Ultimately all that mental activity can lead to clarity.