The Travails of the Ego

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In this edition, I’m discussing the ego and how it can serve you.

Enjoy - Johanna.

How determined are you to achieve the things you set out to do? Meh, goals?!? Like a pitbull that won’t let go of its bone? If you say you do it, you will irrespective of the cost?

If you’re the latter, this newsletter is especially for you.

Determination, willpower, and achieving goals are influenced by the Heart Center in Human Design. This small, triangular center is associated with willpower, ego, and the material world. It’s often also called the Ego/Will Center.

The defined Heart Center can drive you to achieve unimaginable things, to compete and win in any area of you life that is aligned for you with ease, and to inspire others with your unyielding commitment to a cause, career, partner or friendship.

On the flipside, the defined Heart Center can be incredibly egotistical and willful to the point of being brutal to yourself and others. I know several people whose lives, health, relationships, and families have been severly damaged - even destroyed - by the brute force of their defined will.

To wield this power sensibly makes all the difference between a splendid life or a life of struggle and obstacles.

Where to Find the Defined Heart Center in Your Chart

If you’re unsure whether you have a defined Heart Center, look up your chart. If the triangle below is colored in in your chart, you have a defined Heart/Ego. If not, yours is undefined (no color, but with a gate activated) or open (white with no gates activated).

The defined Heart center is an interesting piece of a chart. The Heart Center rules will power, resources, and self-worth. If you have this defined, you’re here to prove yourself. You’re driven by willpower and ego power.

Only 37% of people have this colored in. If you’re among them, you might find that you’re frustrated with everyone else and how flaky and not driven they’re are.

Healthy Competition and Expression of Your Willpower

You, on the contrary, like to be in control of your life and resources, for example where you life, when and where you work, what you wear, and which demands on your time and by others in general you will respond to. You’re good at making promises and keeping them. Being competitive and willful in a healthy way comes natural to you.

Values and the worth of things, I’ve noticed, are often very important to people with defined Heart Centers. So is money as a visualization of things that are of worth and your own worth to the collective.

You’re here to prove yourself. The defined Heart Center can carry you up Mt. Kilimanjaro in a handstand if that’s what your heart truly wants.

Challenges of the Defined Heart Center

On the contrary, the defined Heart Center can lead you astray like no other center in my experience. If you’re living in your not-self, meaning your mind is running your life and you don’t know or ignore your inner authority, the defined Heart Center will run rings around you.

It will get you to double down on things that are bad for you and lead you down a path your mind has decided on without compromise or consideration of the cost.

It will whisper in your ear that you’re right and everyone else - those flaky losers - are wrong. It will have you bury your hooves in the ground like a bull in the arena ready to go after the red rag time and again. You may be harming yourself or be engaging in a fight somebody manipulated you into - you will very likely not see it.

At least, that’s been my experience observing people with an imbalanced expression of a defined Heart Center. Your willpower will lead you right into ill health (mentally or physically) and/or self-destruction of varying intensity. It can also lead to putting financial and monetary interests over everything.

How to Manage the Power of the Ego

The defined Heart Center has immense power. When engaged correctly, it either is your authority and you follow what it says OR it is an acompanying factor in your design that has to yield to your authority, for example your gut (sacral authority), your intuition (splenic authority), or emotions (emotional authority).

When you’re acting from your authority, it’s 100% correct for you to be (within reason) competitive. You’re here to prove something to yourself. It’s more than okay for you to do things your way or the highway. When you follow the energy of your Heart Center, you may notice you have a natural rhythm of work and rest. Your heart, literally, will tell you when to be active and when to take a break.

What you should avoid at all cost is to pump others up, push them to perform beyond their capacity, or extort commitments from them their unable to make or keep. Just like you’re driven by your will and maybe have been shamed for it in your past (the old dreaded accusation of being “bossy” for exmaple), the others with undefined or open Will Centers just don’t have the willpower bone in their body. Goals and commitments are not part of who they are.

Whenever you feel the instinct to bury yourself into a position or a goal and especially when others from the outside suggest to let up, it’s a good moment in time to check in with your authority on whether you’re still on the right track. Sometimes, that’s the case and it’s one of those instances where you’ll block out the naysaysers. Other times, you’re far off from what is good for you and it will do you tremendously good to check in with yourself and reconsider.

The biggest lesson of the defined Heart Center is to learn how to manage this powerful driving force in your life, so it propels you toward your signature (peace for Manifestors, satisfaction for Generators/MGs, and success for Projectors). Wherever you feel a need to be rough, brutish, brutal, extrahard, or willful, you’re very, very, very likely on the wrong track.

Be careful to avoid the defined Heart Center from ru(i)n(n)ing your life. If it costs you your signature - peace, satisfaction, or success - whichever goal your after is too expensive. 

Have a lovely day,

Johanna

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