The Human Design System's Ajna Center

Our Journey through the Centers of the Human Design Bodygraph takes us to the hub of mental awareness in your life - your Ajna Center. This is our Conceptualization Function in BG5 (career application of the Human Design System) Terms. To read the other Centers, search at the top right of this blog using the magnifying glass icon.

As the Awareness Center that handles the conceptualization function of your mind, you can see that there are no motors (energy) connected to mind - mind is for communication, not action. Here is the location of your design "crystal" the dark matter that holds the genetic imprinting that makes your body what it is. Do you see all the calculations in red on the left side of your Human Design Chart? Your design (form) crystal received this unconscious genetic imprinting at eighty-eight degrees (about 88 or 89 days) of the Sun's movement before you were born.

The Ajna is one of the three Awareness Centers in your bodygraph (Spleen and Solar Plexus being the other two). Ajna awareness is all about mind-consciousness that operates over all time - which is a reason we live with the notion of always having to make mental decisions. This mind-consciousness that can conceptualize about things outside of the present moment is also why we can worry about the future, and regret or obsess about the past, when we use our mind as a personal decision-making tool - which is not it's job.

Our minds can be brilliant at measurement and comparison; we can justify and realize, rationalize and find answers, develop and share opinions, insights and ideas, yes. But when it comes to personal choices it cannot be trusted to be able to process all the relevant data, because it's self-perception is not accurate, whether it is colored in (defined) or undefined (white) in your deisgn.

Conceptualization Function

Your Ajna Center handles researching, investigation, analyzation, and categorization - all things that have a basis in seeing and hearing the world around you. The Ajna is a critical processing hub for transforming cognitive comprehension into language that can be expressed by the Throat Center.

The biological correspondence of your Ajna Center is your Neocortex - the part of the cerebral cortex in your brain that handles sight and hearing. Your Pituitary Glands, which are endocrine system glands that send out chemical messengers (hormones) to other endocrine glands, are also under the Ajna’s domain.

Your Ajna is an awareness center that processes information in a dualistic manner and is valuable for providing outer authority to others and weighing out situations, but not for making your decisions. Because Mind attempts to control your life based on what it thinks it knows, you experience resistance when you are not following your unique Strategy and Authority.

How to Develop Witness or "Passenger Consciousness"

Practice observing your mind like a third party by starting off observations of your conceptualizing with "My mind thinks/believes..." rather than “I think....”

This practice can help you tune into the fact that you cannot rely upon what your conditioned mind thinks about your life to make personal decisions.

Cultivating awareness helps you become savvy to the difference of decision-making from Mind versus the correct timing for decision-making via your Strategy and Authority.

Your Ajna is a Mental Awareness Center

If you have a defined Ajna Center, you have a fixed and reliable way of processing and interpreting information; likely you are someone who enjoys researching things. Your mental preferences and inclinations are detailed in the gates and lines imprinted here. For more information on these gates and lines, please see Ra Uru Hu’s Rave I-Ching, available on myBodyGraph as an upgrade to your free online Human Design Software. This text is also available at the back of the Definitive Book of Human Design, available on Amazon.

As you contemplate your Ajna Center gates, illustrated from an awareness perspective, have your bodygraph handy to take special note of the ones imprinted in your Human Design. Ajna Center gates alert us to the conceptual potentials our mind is home to, and can be valuable signposts of awareness. Defined or Undefined, we can all share our unique perspective and experience of life for the benefit of others.

The Mental Anxiety of the Ajna Center

Our Ajna is the home of six different kinds of mental anxieties. These mental fears provide the seed of awareness. When you have a whole channel colored in (defined), your fear has a consistent way of resolving itself. When you do not have the other side of the channel, this gate activation (in a defined center) or dormant potential (in an undefined center) meets up with different ways that the fear can be experienced and resolved (or magnified).

If your Ajna Center is undefined, you are someone who does not have a consistent way of conceptualizing, and you take in information like a sponge. When Transits or other people activate your dormant gates, those are very specific themes you are designed to experience when thinking about things.

Remember, the mind is always an outer authority - it is here to provide a differentiated, unique perspective to others. It cannot be trusted about your own personal decisions - because it only knows a third of the story. See the video at the end of this article for an extensive training on why you cannot trust your inner voice when it comes to making decisions about yourself and your life.

Follow your personal decision-making Strategy and Authority to make correct decisions that lead you to your unique purpose and expression of fulfillment.

Defined Ajna Center: Conceptually Consistent

If your Ajna Center is defined, you are here to be conceptually consistent. The unhealthy behavior is that it's possible you may be over-reliant on your mental functioning. You may be prone to thinking along the same lines, ie. repeated thought patterns, or even experience obsessive thinking. Mental anxiety from spending all this energy and effort trying to figure it all out in your head is often the result. You may be conditioned to take action on the mind’s concepts about your personal situation, which invariably leads to resistance.

The effect of your defined Ajna Center on undefined Ajna Center people is that you can pressure others to be certain like you are, or to give up their certainty in the way things are.

Your behavior as someone with a defined Ajna Center when operating correctly is that your Mind operates in a consistent, specific and trustworthy way. You are someone who is not influenced by another’s presence, but has your mental preferences and predispositions. You have a dependable and, correctly limited, fixed way of thinking. You enjoy researching and thinking about information.

Undefined or Open Ajna Center

If you have an Undefined Ajna Center, you are fluid and adaptable in your mental processes and have the potential to be highly intelligent. You have an openness and flexibility with regards to conceptualizing, with themes particular to the gate and line activations in your design present.

When operating incorrectly, you may notice that you are uneasy with your uncertainty of thought or the unreliable way your mind conceptualizes. You may tend to compensate by being overly fixed with your opinions, insights, and ideas. You might recognize the behavior of making decisions that try to convince others or yourself that you are smart or certain. Getting things wrong and being exposed publicly for your error or inability can be a huge fear. It is probable that you developed the adaptive strategy of attempting to be intellectually consistent to avoid being humiliated.

Having your mental abilities or functions challenged constantly over your lifetime can be traumatic, and this can lead to adaptive strategies like being rigid in your beliefs and holding onto concepts that do not serve you. Trying to pretend to be certain about things may result in you making conceptually defensive decisions. When making decisions about yourself from your deeply conditioned mind, it leads to experiencing the not-self theme of your Type and mental anxiety.

Also, if you have an Open Ajna (with no gates defined), not knowing what to think is a theme you experience and being overwhelmed by concepts is entirely possible.

Undefined or Open, it is so very important for you to not give into pressure to have an answer. Get comfortable with saying things like “I don’t remember/know. Let me get back to you on that, I need to check my notes to be certain.” Trying to solve personal problems by figuring it out with the mind is dangerous for the undefined or open Ajna; doing that cultivates conditioned behavior and actions that reduce your potential to live out your uniqueness.

When you are operating correctly as someone with an undefined or open Ajna Center, you have an ability to develop wisdom about the variety of mental concepts you encounter in life. Your inconsistent way of thinking doesn’t bother you, and you learn to enjoy having no fixed way of processing thoughts. You are open to all kinds of concepts and ideas, being fluid and adaptable in your mental process. You aren’t concerned about presenting yourself as smart, having all the answers or being consistent mentally. Allowing thoughts to float by without being attached allows you to recognize truly valuable concepts worth pondering.

The wisdom that someone can develop here in the Ajna Center it that they truly know what one can be certain about, and recognize which ideas, insights and opinions are useful, practical or worthy to ponder and share with others.

Questions for Self-Inquiry:

Have you noticed yet how the mind continually tries to make decisions on what it thinks it understands? Have you noticed how your mental dialog relates to your undefined/open centers? Making decisions from the domain of mind can cause obsessive thinking, worrying and regret, often leading to frustration, bitterness, anger or disappointment. What examples of the thoughts below, which may come up on behalf of your deeply conditioned mind, do you recognize in you?

I need to memorize this so I can show I’m smart, certain or right.
I should figure this out; we have to figure this out.
What should I do with my life? I've got to figure out what to do with my life.
Where is my next move?
I am certain that (fill in the blank).
I have to put order to my life.
I have to figure out life because it feels futile.
I have to know the answer.

No matter the configuration of your Ajna Center, you are designed perfectly exactly as you are.

Remember that everyone has everything present and functioning in the bodygraph. Your definition is the map to the uniqueness of you, energized consistently to show up in your life in a specific way. Where you are are open to experiencing the abundance of possibilities and potentials that you can learn from and hopefully grow wise about over time is anywhere undefined in your bodygraph.

You were born unique. Although we are delivering this information to an adult population, Human Design's highest purpose is to give our children a chance to fully differentiate into individuals they were born to be. Raising our children in respect of the beings that they are, rather than conditioning them to be something they are not is the biggest gift you can give them and the world, besides operating correctly as yourself.

Following your Strategy and Authority to experiment with this knowledge can release your mind's conditioning and control over your life, which leads you to discover the uniqueness of your authentic being.

Over time, experimentation with Living Your Design and sharing it with your children expands the potentials and the awareness of the totality, but it begins with you. Human Design has the potential to transform your body’s chemistry at a cellular level and bring you to a place of true fulfillment to live out what only you can. Only you can live your life, and the signposts we have given you can Guide your way.

Now that we have journeyed through all the Centers of the Human Design Bodygraph, you can take the journey again with the charts of the people close to you to gain an understanding of how they are designed to function. This is particularly helpful for anyone who cares to discover how their loved ones operate correctly, which brings awareness, compassion and acceptance when they are not.

Living your Human Design helps you to life the fulfillment of what it means to be authentically you. Would you like to share any of your Ajna Center epiphanies or feedback with the Human Design Community? You’re invited to ask questions as well.

A version of this article was written for JovianArchive.com in August of 2015

Want to watch this video below to learn more about the Ajna Center? See why you cannot trust your conditioned mind to decide about yourself in this life.