Life is a journey of growth and development. Just as you came into the world with a Divinely designed life purpose, challenges were designed into your Human Design to help you learn and grow. We call these your life lessons.
Every Human Design Chart has life lessons built into it, lessons you came into the world to learn just as you came into the world with a purpose to fulfill. If you find a theme in your life repeating, such as finding yourself in a particular situation over and over or falling for the same type of individual who has broken your heart in the past, you may be experiencing one of those lessons. It seems we are doomed to repeat the lesson until we learn what we are supposed to learn from it. Often our lessons are first presented by a little nudge from the universe which turns into a shove or something more powerful the more times we find ourselves repeating it.
Life lessons appear in many areas of your Human Design chart. Some lessons are based on where you are in your life cycle, some are fashioned by two or more of your “gifts” conflicting with one another, and others make it more challenging to live out your life purpose. Each one of us will journey through these life lessons. They are meant to be teachers and help us move into the highest expression of who we were divinely designed to be.
Life Cycle Lessons are the easiest to find in the chart. They are based on age and show up at certain times in your life. It is the same for all of us. Between age 28-32, the planet Saturn returns to the gate it occupied at the time of your birth bringing a lesson, big lifestyle changes and shifts. The planet Saturn is sometimes called the great punisher, but the lesson it presents is not meant to punish but to teach and help you master what you are here to learn. By looking at the gate that appears in Saturn in your Human Design chart, you can get a sense of what you are here to learn. Each gate’s energy has a high expression and a lower expression. The idea is to master the energy in that gate in its highest expression. For example, Conscious Saturn in my chart is in Gate 32 – Endurance. The challenge in this gate is to trust in Divine Timing, to prepare and then to be patient and hold my vision until the time is right, not push too hard, too fast, or too long against right timing. This has shown up in my business life multiple times because I wasn’t patient and launched something prematurely with little success or found myself ahead of my time only to see someone else come out with the same offering later and have more success. The theme of right timing can be found in other places in my chart and is one of the big lessons I am here to learn. With this information, you can look back on your life and find evidence of this lesson in action. During periods of difficulty throughout my life, it is clear to me now that I did not have awareness around right timing and that made some things much more difficult than they had to be. Right timing is a big theme in many Human Design Charts.
At age 38-42, Uranus in our chart marks the change from the youthful theme we live out in the first half of our life to the mature theme we are meant to live out later by putting more emphasis on the gate found in the youthful south node and the mature north node. This can show up as a change in focus or moving away from something that was an integral part of how you expressed yourself. Your partner or others close to you may notice this shift in focus and it may confuse them. It’s helpful to know this is coming or to be able to understand why your focus changed.
At age 48-52, a little known semi-planet called Chiron returns to the place in our chart at the time of our birth, marking our midlife maturing point and bringing with it a lesson to learn based on the gate it appears in. This is especially profound for people with Role Model or Line 6 as part of their Human Design Profile, but it applies to everyone. This marks the point in time when a Role Model profile finishes their contemplation of all the experiences they had in the first third of their life and begins the third phase of their life when they truly step into being a Role Model for others. For the other profiles, it marks a lesson to learn in support of living out your purpose.
Finally, at age 58-62, Saturn once again returns to the gate it was in at the time of your birth bringing the same lesson back to you that you experienced around age 30. If you are not in alignment and have not learned this lesson, this second Saturn return can be more intense than the first and the lesson can be a painful one.
These life cycle lessons are important and insight into these can help you navigate what feels like difficulties in your life. There are other conundrums in everyone’s chart. Some of these conundrums build character. Some are like road hazards put in our path to living out our purpose. All are meant to help us. The most important thing you can do around all these life lessons is to embrace them as an opportunity to learn and master rather than resist them. Resisting or ignoring them doesn’t make the challenges go away and can make the experience harder. Embracing the challenges and mastering what they are here to teach you can be rewarding and move you closer to living out the highest expression of your energy, of who you came here to be.
