17. The Ajna Center

Kelsey: 00:00

Part of the reason why Ra emphasized so much and why it's emphasized so much in human design, that it's about body not mind, body not mind, the mind almost gets demonized in human design, is because our place in the evolutionary cycle right now requires us to come into a whole new relationship with the mind that is passenger consciousness.

Welcome to the Living Your Design Podcast. I'm your experimentor, Kelsey Rose Tortorice. This podcast is an audio only release of the full length, in depth Human Design Foundations course I've been teaching over the last several years. It is a no bullshit comprehensive embodied introduction to the human design system that will challenge your ego mind and support you in your process of reuniting with the unique wisdom of your body. In episode one, I speak a bit about the process that led me to releasing this course for free in podcast form, and I offer a few notes that might be useful to contextualize and clarify what you'll hear in this episode and beyond. I recommend giving that short intro episode a listen if you haven't yet. The L.Y.D. podcast is part of a larger, living body of work, a growing archive of my teachings about consciousness through the languages of astrology and human design, hosted in an online community space where I stay in orbit with my students, mentees, alumni, peers, and collaborators. For more information about how to connect with me and tune into my archives and ongoing live teachings, including how to access the original LID course complete with videos and slides, stay tuned to the podcast or check out patreon.com/Kelseyrosetort. Thank you for tuning into my transmission of Living Your Design. It's a deeply personal and somewhat vulnerable share that I feel honored, humbled, and excited to release into the world. I hope that it helps you remember and come home to yourself.

The next awareness center that we'll take a look at and the final awareness center that we'll dive into is the Ajna Center, which is in between from an evolutionary perspective, the solar plexus, which was the first awareness center we looked at and the most sophisticated and evolved awareness center in the spleen, which we just took a look at in this unit and is the oldest and least sophisticated, I suppose you could say, or least complex, at least, awareness center. I don't know if we want to say the awareness that keeps us alive isn't sophisticated. It's sophisticated in a very basic way. The Ajna Center is the mental and conceptual awareness center. So this is a form of intelligence that is always seeking theory and rationale. It's seeking answers. If you remember way back when we talked about the head center, I talked about how the head center I sometimes think of as asking questions and the Ajna is seeking answers. It's formulating thought and conceptualizing and processing mentally in order to come up with answers and conceptualizations and reasons that can handle or speak to or answer the mental pressure of the head center. It deals with our ability to reason and entertain ideas and opinions as well as beliefs.

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If you have a defined Ajna, you have a fixed way of thinking and conceptualizing. You may or may not have a defined head. You can't have a defined head without having a defined ajna, but you can have a defined ajna without having a defined head because the ajna can also be defined in connection to the throat. So if you have a defined ajna without a defined head, you might have all sorts of mental pressures and inspirations and ideas. but you tend to deal with them in the same way according to your ajna definition and your unique way of reasoning and conceptualizing. If you have both a defined ajna and a defined head, you have a distinct way of receiving mental pressure and handling it. If it's ajna in throat, different pressures, undefined or open head, but a defined ajna, fixed way of dealing with those pressures of conceptualizing and processing mentally, and fixed way of externalizing and expressing through your throat definition from the Ajna. For people with a defined Ajna, being in a consistent process of thinking can be a line for you as long as it's not being used to overpower your authority. Remember, this is the awareness center above the throat. So it's here for the outer world. It's here to be an outer authority to others, not to be directed inwards to try to negotiate with or overpower your somatic knowing. If you have a defined ajna, you are designed to think in a particular way, and that means you're not really open-minded, and that's okay. You're literally not designed to be and not able to be easily influenced by others' opinions, thought processes, mental awareness, way of conceptualizing, or beliefs. So let that be the case. And in that being the case, with a defined ajna, you're probably gonna tend to chew on new ideas and insights, for a pretty long time before you potentially integrate them into your own mental awareness and mental conceptualization, because they have to fit your way of thinking and conceiving in order to be integrated, and that is okay. If you try to perform a sort of open-mindedness that's not correct for you, all that's doing is distorting the gift of your defined ajna and its potential to be a supportive outer authority for others. For a defined mind person, your mind can be a consistent and trustworthy resource for others, and it is more so a resource for others than for you.

If you have an undefined ajna, you have a changing way of conceptualizing and you're flexible in your thinking. You can likely relate to a whole bunch of different ways of thinking, of looking at things, of formulating thoughts and opinions and hypotheses and awareness around different concepts. You can probably relate to a lot of different ways of thinking with an undefined ajna. With an undefined ajna, you might be someone who enjoys and is comfortable with looking at sort of like universal questions and theories from the perspective of all sorts of different groups of people or religions or different modalities. maybe you enjoy, you can see something about yourself or the nature of consciousness, the nature of life. just as easily through human design as you can through astrology or tarot or Christianity or whatever it is. There's an openness to exploring all different ways of patterning and conceptualizing and framing information, opinions, concepts, theories. And you're impressionable. You take in those information, opinions, concepts and theories like a sponge. You amplify others' mental awareness. So you're sampling from other defined minds. You're sampling from other people's fixed ways of thinking. Undefined agenas may enjoy a lot of external mental stimulation because it's correct for you to sample this, let it go, sample this, let it go. Undefined agenas are not designed to be attached to any of the opinions, concepts, answers, or theories that we entertain. We're not meant to be rigid in our beliefs. Depending on what our inner authority is or our authority process, there might be things that come in through mental awareness that over time we establish a sense of trust with through filtering it through our defined below the throat authorities, whether it's an awareness center at the sacral or the ego or the G. So it's not that we don't ever know anything, it's that that knowing, that concrete knowing doesn't remain on a mental plane. The knowing that we can rely on consistently with an undefined ajna lands in our definition in the body, but it might come through the Ajna. The undefined mind, again, isn't meant to attach or fixate to opinions, beliefs, concepts, answers, theories, but is able to recognize which concepts, theories, and opinions are valid and worth thinking about, right? So you're not more intelligent whether you have an undefined or defined mind. You're intelligent in a unique, fixed way. that is your own, if you have a defined mind. And if you're an undefined in the ajna, have an undefined mind, you are talented at and intelligent about being able to sort of assess all sorts of different ways of thinking, concepts, theories, opinions, and know which ones are valid and worth pursuing, worth thinking about, worth expressing even. So it's a different type of intelligence that has more to do with like a synthesis than sharing a unique way of thinking or way of looking at something. A defined ajna in a healthy state, it can be healthy for you to always be thinking. The wheels are kind of always turning in the defined ajna. There's a consistency of mental awareness and mental processing. It's correct and natural for a defined ajna to be limited and fixed in your particular unique way of thinking. There's a level of comfort and trust in one's own mental orientation and one's own mental processing. And in a healthy, defined ajna, they're not succumbing to pressure from other undefined centers or conditioning from other undefined centers that are telling them that they should be more malleable in the mind. The defined mind is comfortable in its fixicity of thinking and trusts its own process of approaching and organizing thought and trusts that it's not meant to be influenced by others' mental orientations. The defined ajna that's healthy has ways of feeding and exercising the defined mind. So researching, exploring new ideas, doing math, doing Sudoku, whatever ways feel good, feel healthy, feel organic, feel fun and enriching for the defined Ajna can be really good to incorporate because then you're giving your defined mind something to conceptualize about reading, listening to podcasts, learning, whatever it is, rather than directing that mental, that consistent mental awareness. down into your body to judge yourself or, you know, get your more complicated, unique system for knowing that is your body stuck in the dualistic strategic process of the mind. So give your mind things to feed on and exercise with, or I should say the healthy defined ajna will be doing that so that the mind has something to fixate on that isn't your trajectory in life. in your inner experience.

A healthy, defined Ajna knows the difference between this consistency of mental awareness and the somatic inner authority or inner authorities if you have multiple authority centers defined. I sometimes think, I don't know if I think this way anymore. I think this was my condition to Ajna oh overly trying to create a dualistic understanding of defined versus undefined Ajna. But I used to think it must actually be easier to have an undefined Ajna. because I already know I can't depend on what my thought, my mind is feeding me. And a defined Ajna knows that they can depend on what their defined mind is feeding them, but that was a dualistic orientation. We don't really need to think about which is easier. What I've kind of come to understand is that it's really regardless of whether the mental orientation is one that is consistent and therefore can be dependent on, whether it's defined or undefined. No person's authority is their mind. The mind is above the throat. It's an outer tool mechanism. It's a mechanism for communicating and translating the inner authority in the inner world and the inner subjectivity. And so that's going to be regardless. And a healthy, defined Asha knows that. They know the difference between this gift of their consistency in their outer authority mechanism, in their fixed mind. and the difference between that and their body and whatever centers it is that are their navigation system in their body. A defined Ajna in a not-self state due to conditioning from other centers which will distort the orientation to their mental process has obsessive thinking with no relief, isn't able to detach from that mental agenda, gets caught up in it rather than watches it and understands that it is the passenger. will direct their mental awareness inwards towards the self rather than outwards as an outer authority and or will use the defined mind as a decision-making tool. And that's literally the opposite of passenger consciousness. Passenger consciousness is letting that fixicity of mind in the case of the defined Ajna just have sort of a familiar regular way of narrating the experience as passenger, not driver.

The not self-defined ajna will attempt to impress its conceptualizing onto others when that's not invited or not mechanically correct. All of the channels that go to the ajna are projected. So there's an element of needing that conceptual mental awareness to be invited in order for it to be correct. Or a defined mind, maybe from an ego, undefined ego place will try to prove how smart it is to prove its value or worth. which can look like the defined mind pushing its own mental agenda, its own mental awareness onto others. Remember, even though it's a tool for the other, it's still very subjective per your own experience, your own subjective reality. So it's not for everyone around you all the time. Strategy and authority are what will help you navigate when to share verbally, when to express your mental definition with others. The healthy state for an undefined Ajna is a fluid and flexible mind, a mind that is unfixed in the way that it conceptualizes, the way that it considers things, learns and relates, literally open-minded. And the undefined ajna in a healthy state is going to enjoy this flexibility in thought process. It recognizes its gift of being able to see what concepts are worth thinking about. And as I mentioned earlier, the undefined ajna will offer a holistic synthesis of thought as an outer authority. rather than a particular sort of strand of thought or way of thinking, which a defined mind would do.

A healthy, undefined ajna is open to many different concepts and ideas and enjoys playing in the realm of mental uncertainty. A healthy, undefined ajna is not concerned with appearing smart or consistent mentally because they enjoy and value the flexibility and inconsistency in their thought process. A healthy, undefined ajna allows thoughts, conceptualizations, and beliefs to come and go and to change shape in their process. The not self state for an undefined asana looks like obsessing over knowing and holding onto all the answers and mental certainty. So instead of letting the thoughts come and go, an undefined asana and the not self will try to hold onto it and maintain it and fixate on that way of thinking. This can look like being conceptually defensive, trying to prove, tend, usually when we talk about proving, we're talking about the ego, but. In my own experience with an undefined Ajna, I have a defined ego and in my own experience with an undefined Ajna, it feels and sounds a lot like trying to prove mostly to myself, but sometimes to others what I know. I know about this. a good teacher. I know the human design system. I know astrology, whatever it is, wanting to fixate and hold onto a certain formula for offering my knowledge when really my outer authority as an undefined mind comes alive and is most real and supportive when I relax it and allow it to just organically synthesize whatever's coming and going and mutating my own thought process rather than trying to fix on one way of seeing things or looking at things or computing things.

A not self-undefined Ajna is going to be highly concerned with morals and ethics because it's trying to figure out what's the right way. Remember the Ajna is so dualistic. It's obsessed with good or bad. What's right and wrong? What's good or bad? What's morally sound? What's in integrity? An undefined ajna will consider integrity in a very homogenized form. What's the ethical, moralistic way to do this or think about this or see this or talk about this with integrity? What's the right way to act? Who's right and who's wrong, obsessed with this kind of stuff, with an undefined ajna? And I wanted to point out that integrity is something that is massive in the human design experimentation, but it's about your differentiated integrity, which comes from the knowing of your body, stuff below the throat, not about homogenized integrity, which is the only way that the Ajna center is able to orient to integrity. A not self-undefined Ajna will try to convince self or others that you're right and that you know things, both in terms of like factually correct and in terms of like morally and ethically correct, which I mentioned just moments ago, a not self-undefined ajna will compensate for their lack of consistency in their mental knowing by fixating on opinions, beliefs, or ideas, and will use the mental amplification to make decisions. So like I've noticed in the last couple of years, I've gravitated towards a number of like teachers or mentors or guides with defined ajnas. And I really have had the ability to see how often sometimes the defined Ajna is a threat to my not-self mind because they have this fixicity with how they think about things, how they conceptualize, and simply the presence of that fixicity, my not-self mind will feel threatened by even though they're not doing this in many cases, they're not trying to impress their conceptualizing on me or put their trip on me. They're just being them and emitting this fixed mental energy. but my not-self, which is afraid of not being able to match up with that, will feel this defensiveness. It will feel like, oh, I'm being impressed upon and that's a threat to me and that's what launches me into this proovey place. And when I'm in that proovey not-self place, I might tend to use the mental awareness that I'm amplifying from the other to make decisions out of this need to convince myself or others that I know what I'm doing, which originated from this totally unnecessary feeling of feeling threatened by someone else's fixed mind. So important for the undefined mind, undefined Aajna people to realize that the mental amplification is there for us to sample, not to guide us. It's not our truth ever. The mind is never our truth. It's just this tool, this antenna for taking in so many different things and integrating it in our bodies according to our own strategy and authority. The theme. as I've been saying of the not self voice for the Ajna Center is I need to prove that I know for sure. And I'll say for me, it tends to show up more as trying to prove it to myself rather than proving it to others, but it does show up in both ways. Ways this might sound, I better be certain before I respond, before I trust my gut, sacral response or my splenic instincts, I need to know for sure that this is the right strategy, that this is the correct ethical, factual way of handling this. There's not mental certainty. There's not even awareness for sacral authority. For emotional authority, there's no such thing as certainty. There's no truth in the now. It's all gray. And for splenic authority, it's just these intuitive hits that our mind has no idea why, right? And so the moment we're in the process of rationalization, we're in the mind. That's the cue that we are not in our authority. We are not in our flow of our strategy. proving that we know the answers to ourselves or others. It can also be like, now that I figured this out, I have to remember it. So having like a hit of knowing something sort of gels in the mind and even lands in the body. And then this immediate compulsion once you feel like you have that lightning strike of knowing to remember it, to try to make it concrete and solidify it and write it all down and never let it go. You have an undefined Ajna, the shit's meant to come and go. You don't need to try to hold on to it. So when you are trying to hold on to it, trying to force remembering something that you once knew, you're in the not self. Now that I have figured this out, I will know what to do. Like having the same moments of knowing, putting a lot of stock in like, oh, now I'll be able to handle this forever. No, you won't. I can't move forward until I'm sure this is right or smart or ethical. until I'm sure this is the right strategy, the ethical strategy, the smart strategy, the ethical way, the right opinion, etc. I can't accept this invitation until I know that it aligns with the homogenized ethical values. I can't respond to this person until I know that they're not being canceled. know, all these homogenized ways of thinking that disrupt our differentiated ways of engaging. with life. So the question to ask yourself is, I trying to convince myself and everyone that I am certain?

About 47 % of people have this center defined, so close to half and half again, but slightly more people have an undefined ajna. The biological correspondence for the ajna center is the pituitary gland and the hypothalamus. And the ajna, I already mentioned this, can be defined through connection to the head, which means you have a fixed way of experiencing questions and pressures and fixed ways of answering and dealing with those questions and pressures or through the throat and or through the throat, I suppose, which means you would have a fixed way of externalizing the fixed mental conceptions that you have.

There's six gates in the Ajna Center and half of them are in fixed signs, which I find to be very interesting. That is a Taurus gate, a Leo gate and a Scorpio gate. And half of them with some overlapping with the first half are in fire signs, which are a Leo gate, an Aries gate and a Sagittarius gate. So just pointing out some of the patterns I see. I don't know that this is universal in terms of how astrologers approach the fire signs, but I often experience them and teach them as having to do with experiencing life from your vantage point, from your fixed vantage point, your personal orientation. And so. I see that in the Ajna with like how I conceive of things, how I explore the mental awareness plane. And then I also see that fixicity of your vantage point in the three fixed signs. There's no tribal gates in the Ajna center at all. So the mental plane is not at all about physical world support or dealing with the physical world. or the tribe, it's interesting to me, there's two individual gates and then there's four collective gates. So more heavily weighted on the collective side of circuitry, which is about sharing, sharing our understanding and sharing our sense of the world and of life. And so it makes sense because the ajna is above the throat. It is part of the mechanism for sharing awareness.

Thanks for listening to the Living Your Design podcast. Stay tuned for the rest of the curriculum. New batches of episodes are released every Tuesday. For immediate, complete access to the full course and to explore other perks like learning and community, extracurricular astrology and human design workshops, and meeting with me face to face, go to patreon.com/KelseyRoseTort. You can also listen to me on my other podcasts, The Maia Games and Conversations with the Zodiac, and find me on Instagram @Kelseyrosetort.

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