The official name for Human Design Gate 22 is The Gate of Openness. But I call it The Graceful Gaze because its primary action is to offer grace and compassion, to yourself and others, in the presence of pain and suffering, especially in shame.
About Human Design Gate 22 – Gene Key 22
Archetype Name: The Graceful Gaze
In Action: offer Grace to yourself and others
Keywords: grace, beauty, and emotional understanding
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Official Gate Name: Openness
Human Design Definition: A quality of behavior best suited in handling mundane and trivial situations.
Core Theme: Fear of Silence.
Bodygraph Center: Emotional Solar Plexus center and connects to the Throat center via human design gate 12.
Tropical Sign: Pisces
(Want all of the correspondences and keynotes for the gates of your incarnation cross? The Human Design Map is for you.)
The Energy Spectrum of Human Design Gate 22
All energy in the Human Design chart exists on a spectrum of potential.
On the “positive” end of the spectrum, Human Design Gate 22 is the energy for offering grace to yourself and others. Gate 22 understands that the full range of emotions, from the heights of ecstatic bliss to the dirtiest darkest pits of shame, are simply human. Because of this understanding, Gate 22 is able to see the whole world as an astounding place of beauty, abundance, and love.
On the “negative” end of the spectrum, Human Design Gate 22 is the energy for believing that you do not deserve the beauty, love, or grace in your life. It represses emotions, lives from a place of emotional reactivity and ignores responsibility for it’s emotions through blame, victimization, and finding fault.
If you don’t like the results that the “negative” side of the spectrum is creating in your life, you can raise the frequency of Gate 22 with a number of boundaries, practices, and tools.
(I cover the practices for the gates of your incarnation cross in the Human Design Map.)
The most important thing to raise the frequency of gate 22 is to Feel your feelings and honor their wisdom, especially shame.
My personal contemplation of Human Design Gate 22 (Gene Key 22)
Oh, Gate 22, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I could write endless books about my experiences and love of Gate 22.
The energy of Grace has been such a significant part of my life.
Gate 22 is undefined in my chart, but my husband has the entire 12-22 channel.
(I dive deeply into all 36 channels inside the Human Design Map portal.)
From a Gene Keys perspective, my husband’s attraction sphere is gate 22, and I am confident that our meeting was Fierce Grace in action.
Then I laid my eyes on him for the first time; I knew that our rivers were meeting for a reason.
We had some beautiful mirror work to do together.
I was raised in a religious culture that perpetuated really toxic ideas about Grace. Things like Grace, Mercy, and God’s Love were used as weapons to control others and ensure that “the top” stayed at the top.
I spent many years rebelling against any idea that even came close to the “Grace” of my upbringing.
But that all changed shortly after meeting my husband.
My husband isn’t a “spiritual” kind of guy. At the beginning of our relationship, I asked him what he thinks about God, and he literally said, “I don’t.”
But he embodies Grace on a level that I can’t even describe.
Even in my absolutely “ugliest” moments, there is never a single doubt of his unconditional love.
He doesn’t use my “negative” states against me or as tools for manipulation.
He is deeply present with all of me – in my shadow and in my light.
I can honestly say that I’d never experienced that with a human being before him.
He opened me up to heal the wounds of toxic religion and energetically showed me how to receive the Fiercest Grace of all – the Grace of the Divine.
Shortly after we were married, I went to a Baron Baptiste yoga workshop in Dallas, Texas. I was in yoga teacher training, and he was all the rage in the vinyasa yoga scene.
So much so that I paid hundreds of dollars and flew over 1000 miles to practice yoga with him for four hours.
And it was an experience I will never forget.
There were hundreds of people, and we were mat to mat. Our sweat literally dripped on one another as we pushed through the incredible limits of our minds.
He guided us through 3.5 hours of vinyasa, ending with a very long savasana.
Krishna Das was blaring on the speakers.
“My foolish heart
Why do you weep?
You throw yourself away again
Now you cry yourself to sleep.
Cry yourself to sleep…
My foolish heart
When will you learn?
You are the eyes of the world
And there’s nowhere else to turn.
Nowhere else to turn…”
Krishna Das, My Foolish Heart, Heart as Wide as the World
There I was, my body completely vulnerable, sweat drying into a gritty mess on my skin, and deep, snotty sobs pouring out of me. Surrounded by hundreds of strangers.
There was no fear of judgment. There was no worry about what others were thinking of me. No part of me believed that I shouldn’t be sobbing like that.
But more importantly, there was this deep knowing that all of me was welcome.
My body knew that I am loved without condition.
No hoops. No hierarchies. No lovable and unlovable.
It was Grace. It is all Grace.
I’ve had endless experiences of Grace since then.
And, from this open place, I can even see the slivers of Grace in my early, though quite traumatic, childhood and early adulthood.
But this was the moment that made me aware that Grace is everywhere.
As I said, it is a moment I will never forget.
And it is that moment that I want to channel in everything I do.
Writing this post. Supporting my clients inside the Human Design Map portal. Going to the grocery store.
Fierce Grace in action.
Now it’s your turn to contemplate Gate 22
When you stand in the truth that the gifts of Gate 22 are available to you, whether it is defined in your chart or not…
What is your relationship with Grace?
Do you know, deep in your bones, that you are loved, even in the messiest places of your humanity?
How can you open to Grace right here and now?
I encourage you to take some time with these questions. Take them out into your world and let their answers reveal themselves to you. Intend for deeper levels of clarity about gate 22.
And, if you have gate 22 in your Human Design Incarnation Cross, be sure to check out the Human Design Map where I go super deep into each gate of your cross.