Last time, we explored the Life Themes with the Sun in Gateway 28, known as the Gateway of “The Game Player”.  Over the past several weeks, we’ve gone through all seven Gateways in the Spleen Center. We started out with Gate 46, which was the Gateway of recognizing love of the body, this amazing vessel that takes us into all sorts of places and experiences. And then we’ve gone through each one of these Gateways that are aligned with our sense of health and wellbeing, our sense of alertness, our sense of presence. Now, the Sun has moved into Gateway 44, which is the Gateway I call “Patterns”.  

 The 44th Gateway is often called “Coming to Meet”. And coming to meet is not the same thing as going to meet. Coming to meet is where things come to you and you get this instant hit, an instant sensation, an instinct of what it is that’s coming at you. So, I call this Gateway “Patterns” because from this single instinct, this one single thread, you can get the whole tapestry, the whole sense of what’s coming to meet you, in an instant.

So, with that, let’s have a look at the Human Design Life Themes associated with Gateway 44:

The Personal Life Theme: The Four Directions

First, we enter into the Personal Life Theme of “The Four Directions”. On one side we have the Sun in Gate 44, the Gateway of Patterns—that instinctual cellular memory that gives you an instant snapshot of the whole picture. And on the other side, we have the Earth in Gate 24, the Gateway of “Returning”, which is also the Gateway of the “Refining Mind”, which is the mental process of going round and round until there’s a resolution of some sort. If you want a really perfect answer to something on a mental level, Gate 24 will provide it.  So, Gate 44 gets the instinct, and Gate 24 then cogitates and ruminates and figures out exactly what sort of experience we’re walking into here. 

• Gate 44 – Patterns – Acceptance and mutual tolerance are essential in any meeting of likes or opposites.

• Gate 24 – Returning – Cycles of deep thought give way to innovation and transformation.

• Gate 33 – Retreat – Recharging and assimilating life experiences by withdrawing.

• Gate 19 – Approach – Reaching out to find how life connects us all.

The Unconscious Sun is in Gate 33, the Gateway of “Retreat”. It’s one of the storytelling Gates. It’s part of the oral tradition. And what do we want out of a good story? At the very least we want a moral, and we want a satisfying ending. So, Gate 33’s job is to sit with something until it all settles in.  If you have Gate 33 in your design, you’ll find that part of your life is to sit tight with things, to meditate on them until they ultimately make sense, or come to a natural conclusion of some kind, which you can then relate to others.

Next we see the Unconscious Earth in Gate 19, the Gateway of “Approach”.  The journey of Gate 19 is to reach out and discover what it is that people need, particularly on their spiritual path in order to move towards unification and find out that presence is what the life story’s all about.

People with this Life Theme tend to spend many years exploring the world, being extroverted, meeting everyone, playing with everything. And then, sure enough, they go back in and write a book about it. Or they just sit with it, feeling like they don’t have to experience anything more until everything has settled.

Notable people with this Life Theme: Marie Antoinette, Toni Collette, Aishwarya Rai, Tim Cook

The Fixed Life Theme: Alertness

The Sun moves on into the fourth line of Gate 44, which brings us into the Fixed Life Theme of “Alertness.”  So, 44 is the Gateway of instinct, patterns and recognizing how things are all threaded together. And Gate 24 is engaged in the process of working things out on a mental level—going round and round until it finds the meaning.

• Gate 44 – Patterns – Acceptance and mutual tolerance are essential in any meeting of likes or opposites.

• Gate 24 – Returning – Cycles of deep thought give way to innovation and transformation.

• Gate 7 – Uniformity – Finding common intent and promoting shared future interests.

• Gate 13 – The Listener – Pursuing common goals to expand all varieties of human experience.

Now, the Unconscious Sun has slipped into the Gateway 7. In the traditional I-Ching, this is known as the Gateway of “Army”. I call it the Gateway of Uniformity, because it seeks to find out how all things come together so that they can move into a secured future.

And on the other side, we see that the Unconscious Earth has gone into Gate 13, the Gateway of “The Listener”, also the Gateway of “Fellowship with Mankind”. And it’s in the first line there, which is always very attuned to whatever’s going on. It’s always listening into things on a profound level. So, people with the Unconscious 7th and 13th Gates in their Designs are really tuning into the environment, acutely aware of where things are going. Hence, the Fixed Life Theme of “Alertness.” 

The Interpersonal Life Theme: Incarnation

The Sun then moves into the fifth and sixth lines of Gate 44, which brings us into the Interpersonal Life Theme of “Incarnation”. To me, this is one of the most fascinating of all the 192 Life Themes.

The word “incarnation” means coming into the flesh, coming into a physical form. Goodness knows there are endless different forms of life in endless different dimensions in this and other universes. But here on Earth, we’ve got carbon-based life forms, we have this body that just somehow works for us, takes us through our life experience.

My experience of people with this Life Theme is that they’re all living a slightly different life than what I would normally consider a human life to be. It’s almost like they’re visiting. They may have existed in some other life form before, and now they’re here checking things out in this physical form. It’s fascinating, and I’m very delighted when I meet somebody with this Life Theme because I always get the impression that this is somebody who’s really trying out life on the physical plane. That’s what they’re here for. They’re constantly examining what the life story is all about. And as a result, they’re necessarily wise and able to give guidance in ways that will often appear novel or completely different. 

Notable people with this Life Theme: Laura Bush, Mathew McConaughey, Kathy Griffin

That’s the essence of the Life Themes associated with the 44th Gateway. If you want to learn more about Life Themes, you’ll find them all in the Book of Destinies, part of the Human Design Trilogy which is available in all good bookstores and audiobook platforms.

If you want to find out more about Gate 44, we encourage you to dive into our blog series on the Book of Lines.

And if you’d like to learn more about how your Human Design informs and shapes your life, get your Free Human Design Report today.