Where do we go to get knowledge? How do we use it? And how do we determine what knowledge we choose to take in and share with the world? The Human Design System points us in the right direction.

Last week, we explored Gateway 18, which was all about improving the systems that we rely upon in our lives. Now we move into Gateway 48, which is called “The Well,” because it is essentially a source that can provide things of interest to us.

Like a water source, it offers freshness and depth, and we can expand this into knowledge. It tells us that replenishment comes through establishing and reestablishing access to the unending source of knowledge.

Throughout our history, the well is where we would go to get the water that sustains us. And while you’re at the well, waiting for your turn to draw water, you’re having a chat, you’re talking with the other people there, finding out the news, the gossip, the latest info. So, it can be a great exchange of information, an exchange of knowledge. And of course, depending on which well you go to, there’s going to be a different group of people and different news, different knowledge, different things of interest.

So, this is what the 48 is concerned with: the source of knowledge. It’s about where we go to get knowledge, and how we decide which knowledge can sustain us and bring about a sense of improvement in our lives.

Let’s see how this plays out in the Human Design System line by line:

First Line: Finding Significance

The first line here is called “Finding Significance: Quick recognition of relevance or irrelevance in your life.” If you’re standing next to somebody at the well, and they’ve got a great story to tell, you’re going to listen. But if you keep hearing the same old stuff all the time, what’s the point?

In essence, the 48th Gateway comes down to determining relevance or irrelevance in the moment. You see something, it catches your attention, so, you look into it a little bit further, but if it’s not engaging, you lose interest. It really wasn’t worth your attention.

You either adjust to each fresh moment or find life distasteful and become distracted. As you know, when you’re really engrossed in something and really focused on it, it’s easy. It’s engaging. It’s fresh. It’s interesting. It holds your attention. But if it starts turning a little bit dull, you start to wonder, “why am I doing this?” It might be time to put your attention on something else. Life is full of amazing things, if you’re not finding them where you are, it’s better to move on and find them elsewhere than to push and force things.

Second Line: Deteriorating

The Second line has a very natural approach to life. But this naturalness can have a quality of deterioration. Which is why this line is called, “Deteriorating: The need to constantly refresh your gifts.” You have a tendency to get stuck in a rut. You can reach a point where it feels like there’s no room left to grow, no need to extend your vision any further.

When this happens, things tend to get dull. Your talents deteriorate when ignored, or if you are distracted by comparing yourself to others. So, if you don’t keep refreshing your gifts, sooner or later, they’ll start to slip away and you won’t be able to use them anymore. 

So how do you move forward? You refine your abilities by growing in and around the challenges that life brings. All of us face challenges, and the challenge here is to keep upgrading. When something is so difficult that it causes you to want to lose interest and give up, the real challenge for the second line is to keep going, maintain your interest, do not get distracted, and certainly don’t start comparing your own gifts to those of other people.

Third Line: Acknowledging

Third lines always have commitment issues. You’re never quite sure if you want to get involved or not. And the third line here is called, “Acknowledging: Trusting in your evolving gifts.” The more you practice your gifts, the more you indulge them, the more you get out of it and the more your gifts increase.

Being fearful and worried that you may be overlooked can contribute to being overlooked. You have a tendency to overthink things a little bit. You can get so distracted thinking about what might happen, and worrying that you might not be seen, heard, and recognized, that you lose focus on what it is you’re actually involved in, which is enhancing and re-enhancing your gifts.

Sooner or later, you will be appreciated for your talents and abilities—If you trust and persevere. However, perseverance is a tricky thing for the third line. There is a tendency to say “oh, I’ve been there, done that. It didn’t really get me anywhere,” and you move on to something else. So, the key here is to keep building on the gifts that you have. To keep on expanding your knowledge base, expanding your practice.

Fourth Line: Refreshing

The fourth line has a quality of wanting to engage. It wants to bring everybody in and get everybody involved. Here the line is called “Refreshing: All your gifts benefit from regular reevaluation and refinement.”

You have an influential effect on people. However, it’s important to continue to reevaluate whether or not you are channeling that influence in the right direction, with the right people and projects. Are you up to date? Are you drawing from a fresh source of knowledge? Essentially, the key here is to find out if you are indeed still interested in what you are doing. Life moves on. Patterns change. So, sure, be influential, but be influential with the latest and greatest input available.

In rest, refreshment and reevaluation, your inner depth and clarity are explored and expanded. So, this is a time to take a moment and reevaluate what it is you are doing, and why. If not, you’ll find yourself exhausted. You’ll find yourself so focused on what you’re doing that you fail to realize it’s going nowhere and totally draining you in the process.

Fifth Line: Utilizing

The fifth line always has a leadership/teacher quality about it. And here, the line is called, “Utilizing: Recognizing that you have many gifts, but also the need to apply them.” We all know of people who stop using their gifts. Great musicians who, for one reason or another, put down their instruments, or child prodigies who lose interest in their talents as they grow older. The fifth line is telling you to pick out the gifts that really work for you and go into them.

Our gifts have the ability to bring so much joy into our lives, but they wither away if they don’t get used. So, it’s not enough to realize that you have the gifts you’ve been given. You also need to have the resources to be able to enhance these gifts, the time and space to hone and practice them.

Utilizing your gifts towards great benefits requires that you remain clear to each moment. This is very much about being and staying in the present tense. By savoring each moment, each precious moment, you appreciate the gifts that most easily benefit everyone. However, if you question your own clarity and adopt others’ ways, you’ll be unfulfilled by your deeds. If you’re not honoring your gifts in your way, in the moment, it all falls a bit flat. It comes down to you as an individual to find your own self-confidence, your own engagement, your own frequency.

Sixth Line: Replenishing

The sixth line is called “Replenishing: Fulfillment comes through sharing from an overflowing source.” What are we going for in life, if not fulfillment? And fulfillment comes from having the openness to share your extensive gifts with others.

This is what I call the “artesian well.” The knowledge base is so substantial that the water just comes gushing out. You have so much to share, so many different things to say, so many talents to offer the world. And isn’t it amazing when people respond? When an audience, large or small, really resonates with what you’re putting out there, there is nothing more fulfilling.

Harmonizing your world through sharing your source of understandings and talents. It just makes for easier going, an easier world, when everybody is on the same page. We can see this play out in the world around us, as the media landscape becomes more fractured, more politicized, more polarized. No one can figure out where the fresh source is anymore, instead they feel they have to choose a side and dig in, rather than responding to what really resonates with them. And as a result, there’s disharmony everywhere.

Moodiness and uncertainty can cause you to be coaxed by other people to share your gifts. Sixth lines can be a little bit aloof. Sometimes you don’t want to share your gifts, you don’t want to be involved. So, sometimes it takes a bit of coaxing for you to really open up and share. And afterwards you’ll generally see that it wasn’t so bad after all. In the end, this is how humanity gets along. We coexist together through sharing our gifts, through accessing, sharing, and using knowledge that comes from that natural source.

That’s the 48th Gateway. We’ll check in again soon. To learn more about the Human Design System, and to discover how your own Design informs and shapes your life, get your Free Human Design Report today.