The official name for Human Design Gate 36 is The Gate of Crisis. But I call it The Compassionate Sage because its primary action is to be compassionate with yourself and others.
About Human Design Gate 36 – Gene Key 36
Archetype Name: The Compassionate Sage
In Action: cultivate compassion for yourself and others
Keywords: compassion, being HUMAN, gentleness, and emotional wisdom
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Official Gate Name: Crisis
Human Design Definition: The rule of cycles in which decline is a natural but not enduring stage.
Core Theme: Fear of inadequacy.
Bodygraph Center: Emotional Solar Plexus center and connects to the Throat center via human design gate 35.
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 36
All energy in the Human Design chart exists on a spectrum of potential.
On the “positive” end of the spectrum, Human Design Gate 36 is the energy for being compassionate with yourself and others. For gate 36, compassion is the key to overcoming suffering; there is a willingness to see the humanity in yourself and others. From this empowered place, Gate 36 can harness empathy during emotional crises and sooth unnecessary suffering.
On the “negative” end of the spectrum, Human Design Gate 36 is the energy for lacking compassion for yourself or others. It can lead to beating yourself up, holding yourself to impossible (emotional or sexual) standards, and feelings of inadequacy. There can be an inability to relax and a tendency to create emotional drama.
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 36 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 36 is to practice radical self-acceptance and make space to feel and process your emotions.
My personal contemplation of Human Design Gate 36 (Gene Key 36)
Gate 36 is undefined in my chart. As such, learning to be compassionate, with myself and others, has been a key source of life lessons.
About 15 years ago, I’d been clean (from drugs) for a few years. But I was starting to see that I had simply traded drugs for food.
I was binging almost every single day and hated myself to the core. I deeply believed that I was inherently flawed and broken beyond repair.
Thankfully, through several synchronicities, I found myself in a group treatment program (outpatient) for eating disorders.
We were often given homework; the first assignment was to start noticing how we spoke to ourselves.
At that point, I hadn’t done any training in coaching or energy healing. I didn’t know how the brain worked, I assumed that thoughts and feelings were the same things, and I was in deep denial of my intuition.
I thought my emotions were “the truth” of who I really was.
To say that I was in for a rude awakening would be the understatement of the century.
When I started actually paying attention to what I was thinking about myself, I noticed that I’d regularly call myself a fat pig, lazy, and good-for-nothing.
That was illuminating. I had no idea how mean I’d been to myself for so long.
But the real awakening was realizing I had a choice in how I thought about myself—my thoughts are my free will.
And while I understand that traditional Human Design doesn’t “believe in” free will, there is absolutely no denying that we can choose and change how we think about anything. That is just a scientific fact.
(Showing you what to actually do to change the way you think of yourself is at the heart of what I do inside the Human Design Map portal.)
For me, realizing that my thoughts were a choice was a pivotal moment in my life. And the idea that I could infuse my thoughts with compassion for myself was nothing short of a miracle.
But, like most people who are steeped in the self-hatred tea, I didn’t really know what it meant to “be” compassionate.
And I honestly spent years trying to figure it out.
I can’t say that I have it 100% figured out. Because, well, the game of life is no fun without contrast.
But it is one of my key practices.
I’ve learned that compassion, whether for ourselves or others, is about having an embodied understanding that we are human beings.
We are all a mix of shadow and light, high frequencies and low frequencies, conscious and unconscious.
And we can choose that perspective for anyone at any time and in any situation – yourself and your darkest secrets included.
To be clear – choosing compassion isn’t about spiritual bypassing.
It is about embracing all your parts, being present with your humanity, and honoring who you must become to find the compassion that already dwells within you.
This involves a lot of shadow work (something I teach to my Human Design Map clients) and pulling out the roots of your compassionless stories.
And the ripple effects of that practice really are a miracle.
It automatically flows into the other side as we practice compassion for ourselves or others.
When I can be compassionate for your humanity, I surrender to mine. When I can be compassionate for my humanity, I surrender to yours.
It can only work that way.
And if you’ve read this far, I’m sure that you can agree that the world needs a little more of that.
Now it’s your turn to contemplate Gate 36
When you stand in the truth that the gifts of gate 36 are always available to you (whether it’s defined in your chart or not)…
Are you compassionate with yourself? Why or why not?
Are you compassionate with others? Why or why not?
How can you offer yourself deep compassion in the face of your humanity? How about for others?
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 36.
And, if you have gate 36 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.