This is a question that can be so important in the beginning of the experiment… and even later. Ra used to say it’s a fundamental difference that most people don’t grasp. The more I observe myself and others dealing with our definition, the more I hear the truth in this knowing of his.

After 4 years studying the Human Design system, apparently it’s time I write about it.

The two columns on each side of the bodygraph are called crystal imprints. They are two of the filters through which we experience the world, “consciously” and “unconsciously”.

The black imprint : who we think we are

We all have 2 crystals, one is called “Personality Crystal” and his gates are usually drawn in black in the bodygraph. It represents a few things.

Black gates are usually part of how we define ourselves, identify with, we recognize them as “us” more easily. We have easy access to them, and it leaves the Mind more under the impression that we can “use” and manipulate the energy from this imprint. Ra used to compare black definition “roads”, we can see them from above. We can see everything that they look like, it’s out in the open.

It’s also the “personality”, not in the sense the Maya uses, the characteristics of our mind. It’s “who we think we are” and “who we think we are” has a major influence on how we see and conceptualize the world. It’s often referred as what we called “conscious” in our experience.

The red imprint : what we say and think and do

On the other side of the bodygraph, the gates are drawn, sometimes also written in red, they represent what’s called the imprint of our Design Crystal.

Red gates define a different experience for our consciousness. That energy is not as easily recognizable as ours, unless we’ve at least been pointed in their direction by others and then get to observe them regularly at play.

If the black channels are roads, the red channels are tunnels in Ra’s metaphor. Looking from above, we can’t see all of what they are, most of it is underground. The mind doesn’t know they’re there in the way it recognizes the black energy. The energy takes us much more by surprise and is easier to deny being “ours”.

It’s also the characteristics of what’s called our body, not just “everything physical”, that’s only the body in the mental sense. There can be intellectual, mental gates for example in the body, that will influence our thinking, just like there can be physical, motor gates in the personality that will influence our energy levels and physical movement.

The body represents all those things we do or don’t do or are concerned about or not and tend to not understand why we do them for example. We often experience the body as how we put ourselves in our own way. Others can experience those parts of us just as much as our personality, because people experience all of us (well, some parts in reality, but that’s too complex at this point). We feel more like the personality/mind who’s interfered with by the body. But we only experience parts of we are, until we know what to look for and learn how to do so with time.

A big difference : a big battle within us

“It is very different to have a Personality that speaks and to be consciously aware of that versus having your Design speak and not consciously understanding why or how all of that is taking place.” | Rave ABC “Red and black”

Not only are they different, but they also don’t connect, work or communicate together. “Your Personality doesn’t want to be connected to your Design, and your Design doesn’t want to be connected to your Personality. That’s why they’re on either side. It’s like two people who had a fight with each other with somebody in the middle [the Magnetic Monopole] saying “Wait a minute. Wait a minute. It’s okay. Through me, everything will be alright.” | Rave ABC “Red and black”

Ra actually often joked that both of our imprints are in a forced marriage with each other. “When you’re looking at the bodygraph, don’t get caught in the the Monopole’s illusion, thinking you are looking at your own whole. What you are looking at is the illusion of two very different things being held together when they don’t want to be. Until you can see these two things and the fact that they don’t want to be together but are stuck together, you can’t see the battle that is going on in you — between your Personality and your Design who don’t want to have anything with each other. But the Monopole has come along and is dragging them together through space, saying “Now, we’re going to live together happily ever after.”. [please note this is a metaphor, those things are inanimate, they don’t have actual intentions or wishes] | Rave ABC “Red and black”

Ra was saying that learning to recognize our red definition is one of the hardest things to do. Yet, it can be a very profound experience to start to observe who we are in that way, to live it. Especially when we do so through following our Strategy and Authority. Ra actually was often saying that our Design is actually our true soulmate, and our S&A were means to make that forced marriage an harmonious one.

Observing differences between my black and red energy

The mind will usually interferes a lot with our ability to see it through its filters (the black gates). It will explain from what it knows to be us instead. For example, my 43-23 is fully black and my Personality Sun-Earth. I’ve always known my mind, and intellectually that I’m quite intuitive, my mind is very much part of who I am, of my life.

I don’t have red channels. But my Design Sun-Earth are the 29 and 30. It’s taken me much longer to recognize how I can be emotional sometimes (undefined center), how much I can be experiential (both gates are from the Sensing circuitry, all they are about is getting into the right new experiences and when it’s done, taking out the meaning it had)…

My other channel, the 28-38, is half red, half black. I’ve always known I have fighter energy in me (Personality Jupiter in 38.4). But it’s taken a friend in college telling “you know how intuitive you are, right? And that is something precious and that grows when we listen to it?” or many people seeing me as a risk taker to realize that my 28.1 (Design Pluto) is defined. That I can know which fights are mine or not to take without thinking, that I actually know intuitively much better than I could ever think through which struggles, fights for meaning are mine or not. I used to be very concerned about whether some fights were worthy or not.

My mind is actually regularly “looking” for the energy of the 28, without knowing it’s right there, within me. Those couple of phrases are seared into my brain, it was so easy to notice how much it changed my experience of life and myself with time. This is what being pointed who we are by people can do to us when it’s the right time, the right person.

The “not-self” from the red imprint

There’s such a difference in that way between red and black that it’s very common that we present a form of not-self from our red imprint. Like, you’ve probably heard about the not-self strategy of our undefined centers. The mind doesn’t know that we are defined in the centers that isn’t in the black imprint. If you look at my black imprint, you’ll see my throat and ajna defined. My mind knows I am a somewhat mental person, that my mental world is a part of who I am, and that what I have to say is also part of who I am, a big influence in my life. The mind doesn’t know what a type or an authority is, both live in the quantum, so it doesn’t think I’m a Mental Projector, but as Ra put it “the mind likes to use what’s defined in black”. So my mind likes to talk, to think, to think about what to talk about, and to talk about what to think about.

But I’m a Splenic person. Which means for me my Splenic center and my Root center are both defined as well. And my mind doesn’t know that. Which means that I’m also regularly flooded by thoughts and impulses that are usually described by the not-self strategy of the Root center (my mind wants to get rid of the things I have to do and wants to rush certain things, or not do certain things that look like they might take long…) and my Splenic center (my mind hangs on to things and people that aren’t good for me, it wants to keep me close to people who feel good to be around in some ways, even if they’re incorrect for me).

The more I follow my Strategy and Authority, the less power those thoughts are, the less frequent they are too, but they’re here. And of course, it’s way easier for me to dismiss that it’ll ever be for someone who have them actually defined to not get swept away by them physically. It’s easy for me to notice how much pressure an undefined root is under physically, or how fearful they are, in ways I don’t experience. But still, my mind doesn’t know they’re defined, and somehow, it makes them more impactful than other thoughts sometimes.

If a gate is striped or half-red half black, it simply means it’s in both imprints, and then we get to experience the energy of the gate in both ways.

| Picture : screenshot of the Black book, the first book Ra ever wrote about Human Design, that goes a further in describing the foundation where both crystals belong.