15. Intro to Awareness Centers

Kelsey: 00:00

The spleen, instinctual awareness, is about holding on to life in the present moment. So it really only operates in the now. The spleen does not perceive of past or future. It's very spontaneous awareness in the now in regards to what will keep me safe. The ajna deals with more than one moment. The ajna is able to deal in the present and the future. The way the ajna operates is it focuses on strategizing and finding patterns. but it very much lives in the realm of duality and linearity with ration and reason, black and white thinking, the dualistic, binaried realm. In the solar plexus, we're able to dissolve the binary that exists in Ajna awareness and orient towards more complex, deep, spirallic, layered knowing and awareness and perception. Everything in the solar plexus is a gradient. The Ajna is very black and white.

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.

We will be doing our deep dives into the remaining centers. So we have three left that we've yet to go over. Those will be the awareness centers and the G centers, specifically the two awareness centers we've not yet covered, which are the spleen and the ajna. We have already gone over the solar plexus in our last unit on motor centers, and then we'll also cover the G, which is not an awareness center, but a center with its own unique functionality. So starting with this awareness center overview, and again, I'm gonna remind you probably too many times that the G center is not an awareness center. We are covering that in this unit, but it is not part of the awareness center.

For the awareness centers, we're talking about the spleen, the ajna, and the solar plexus. The awareness centers provide us with our perception of reality. They deal with what we consciously know, realize, acknowledge, and perceive. And one thing that's really cool, I think, about the awareness centers and that has really helped me to integrate my own understanding of the awareness centers is this idea that these three awareness centers have come to be through an evolutionary trajectory. The spleen is the most ancient awareness center, and this is the center for instinctive awareness. It's based on survival. So it's the awareness that humans first had, that we first had as a species on What do we need to do in this moment in order to hold on to life, in order to survive? And splenic awareness has been online in the human consciousness and in the human form for 4 million years. And then relatively recently, according to those 4 million years, we developed Ajna awareness. The Ajna Center came online. The Ajna is the mental and conceptual awareness center. And it's the one that has been the awareness center that we've operated from primarily essentially since we got it. So for the last 90,000 years. So right now we actually have sort of an Ajna, a mental awareness hangover as a species because we're in transition to the newest awareness center, which is the solar plexus center. And this is emotional experiential awareness. As we talked about when we overviewed the solar plexus in the motor center section, this is the awareness center that gives us the potential and the capacity for spirit consciousness. It's a multidimensional awareness that transcends the present as well as the past and the future, which we can be aware of and oriented to through the spleen and the asana respectively. The solar plexus is relatively new. It's only been around for about 2,500 years, and we're evolving towards utilizing the solar plexus as our primary awareness center. It is the most sophisticated awareness center. It's more sophisticated than the Ajna, which is more sophisticated than the spleen. And over a long trajectory of time, it will become the awareness center that we primarily operate from. But in this particular moment in the linear rolling out of time and evolution of the human form, we have access to solar plexus awareness, but we tend to get stuck in sort of Ajna function because it is the awareness that we utilized. for most of the last 90,000 years as a species. So in addition to this sort of evolutionary trajectory, the three awarenesses also operate with different focuses and I perceive them, this isn't something that I was like taught, but this is a way that I guess as a five to have just sort of naturally come to understand and learn to synthesize and articulate the functionality of the three awareness centers is.

Not only do they operate with different focuses, they also operate in different frames of time dimensionality. The spleen instinctual awareness is about holding on to life in the present moment. So it really only operates in the now. The spleen does not perceive of past or future. It's very spontaneous awareness in the now in regards to what will keep me safe, what will keep me alive or The spleen has collective and tribal circuitry as well. So it's not only about what will keep me safe, but about what will keep us safe and alive as a species on a collective level and as a tribe on a tribal level. The Ajna deals with more than one moment. The Ajna is able to deal in the present and the future as well. So the way the Ajna operates is it focuses on strategizing and finding patterns, but it very much lives in the realm of duality and linearity. with ration and reason, black and white thinking, the dualistic binaried realm, and linearly past, present, future. So we can see there's more sophistication to the awareness in the Ajna than there is in the spleen. It's a evolved awareness from splenic awareness. And then the solar plexus, we now have access to but are still becoming accustomed to as a species, is an even more complex and sophisticated awareness system. In the solar plexus, we're able to dissolve the binary that exists in ajna awareness and orient towards more complex, deep, spirallic, layered knowing and awareness and perception. Everything in the solar plexus is a gradient. The ajna is very black and white. The solar plexus awareness, whether we have it defined or not, we have access to that kind of awareness, right? That depth of awareness, whether it comes through as a part of our conditioning or is a part of our nature. It shows us things in more of a gradient, right? We've talked about the solar plexus as a motor center already and a little bit as an authority center, it operates on a gray scale. There's never a concrete knowing in any now moment. Things aren't black and white in the solar plexus. They're more rich, they're more complex, there's more depth and layers to it. And again, the solar plexus is our potential for spirit awareness, awareness on a dimension that transcends the now of the spleen as well as the linearity strategic, dualistic, past-present future of the Ajna.

With awareness centers, I want to point out a distinction that actually applies to centers beyond the awareness centers too, but it just feels more important to present this as we're going over the fundamentals of the awareness centers versus the other functions of centers in the body graph. That there's a distinction between what our awareness is for, whether it's above or below the throat. So anything below the throat is your internal somatic experience and knowing and can be the inner authority that you're able to rely on. Everything below your throat, remember thinking of the throat as the portal, the door from your inner world to your outer world, from your subjective experience to the shared plane of existence that we occupy together in the Maia, in the external reality, the shared reality, the throat is the portal, but What's coming to the throat is different and has a sort of different purpose and functionality based on whether it's coming from below, from the body, or coming from above, from the mind. The awarenesses below the throat, so the spleen and the solar plexus, are able to operate as an authority and they are somatic sensations in your body, in your inner experience that contribute to your inner knowing. The awareness center above the throat, the ajna, is never an inner authority. It's never meant to be an authority for you to help you navigate your world or make sense of your internal experience. That's not what the Ajna mental awareness is for. The mental awareness, the mind, can only ever be an outer authority for others. It's a translation and communication mechanism. I sort of see our heads in our Ajna, so both centers above the throat, as being like these antennas that we have so that we can Tune into each other's perspective and each other's stations just for the purposes of relating and connecting and having an outer authority, having something to intertwine with, to intersect with in this shared experience, this shared reality. But that antenna is a very different functionality than the actual complexity of the world that lives below your throat in the awareness centers and the other four centers that are below the throat, the G, the ego, the sacral, and the root. which make up your rich subjective inner world. What's above the throat, and I am talking about specifically here in terms of awareness, the Ajna, but also the head, is never meant to guide you or to try to negotiate with your inner world. It's there as an antenna to help you connect with outer authorities and to help you articulate and translate and communicate your inner world with the outer world. In other words, your mind is not for you. So even when your mind is defined, we talked about this a little bit already with the defined head center. So whether you have your Ajna defined or both your head and Ajna defined, there's a consistency there. You learn that there's an extent to which you can rely on mental pressure and mental awareness, but you're not designed to rely on it to be turned inwards to guide your inner world or to negotiate with your inner world. It's a consistent, reliable, mechanism and tool that you have for translation and communication outside of you. I do want to mention though that whether we're talking about awareness above or below the throat, whether we're talking about outer authority awareness, the ajna, or inner authority awareness, the splenor, the solar plexus, in both cases we're still talking about a subjectivity. Obviously your somatic awarenesses, your awarenesses below the throat that contribute to your inner authority are if you have them define, they are for subjectively navigating your inner world, right? But then the Ajna, even though it's a tool for outer world communication and connection, it's still about sharing and translating, communicating your subjective reality. It's still not gonna be a one size fits all approach or way of thinking or orientation for others as well. It's still subjective, but one is for you. below the throat and one is to help you connect externally and to be an outer authority for others above the throat.

In the motor centers, we had a slide sort of similar to this where we looked at motor centers in relationship to type. This is not the same setup here. With the motor centers in relation to type, we talked about how which motor centers you do or don't have defined and in some cases, whether they connect to your throat. will determine whether you are a generator or a manifestor. I'm pointing this out because sometimes I refer to the non-energy types of projectors and reflectors as awareness types, but I want to make the distinction that the awareness types or the non-energy types, projectors and reflectors, has nothing to do with whether they have definition in any of the awareness centers. So that's unlike the fact that generators and manifestors Their motor, their energy center, motor center definition is what determines that they have the aura type of generator or manifestor, and that's not the case for awareness centers. Projectors and reflectors are considered to be non-energy types or what I sometimes refer to as awareness types, but this doesn't have anything to do with awareness center definition. Rather, regardless of their definition, their auric function is about sharing their awareness. Whether they have definition or not in the three awareness centers, projectors and reflectors will have a differentiated experience of how and what they perceive and how and what they share and how and what they guide or reflect. But they can be a projector whether or not they have splenic solar plexus or ajna definition and reflectors remain what I call awareness types, even though they will not have definition in any of the three awareness centers or any centers at all. Generators and manifestors are considered energy types because their auric function is based primarily on energy rather than on awareness. But this does not mean that generators and manifestors are unable to access awareness or that they do or don't have definition in their awareness centers. Generators and manifestors can absolutely access the same level of awareness the projectors and reflectors are able to access, but Their awareness doesn't affect the energetic strategy or function for generators or manifestors of generating or manifesting energy. Beyond the fact that having a greater and clearer awareness for generators and manifestors can simply enhance or clarify or expand the perspective they have as they helplessly watch their auric function produce or sustain energy. Because I will sometimes refer to projectors and reflectors as awareness types, I wanted to be clear that their awareness definition does not determine that they are this type. It's still the energy motor definition or lack of that will determine the type for all four types. And lastly, that was an awareness center overview that we went over for most of this. But again, the G center right here in the center of the Bodygraph is not an awareness center. Its function is completely different from the awareness centers. But remember, the G and the throat are the only two centers that don't fit into a category with other centers. They have a function that's totally their own. They are not a pressure motor or awareness center or any combination of the above. So we covered the throat in unit three, where we first started exploring centers. And now we're going to cover the G, the only other center besides the throat that has its own unique functionality. And we'll look at that after we go through our remaining awareness centers.

And as we have in each of these units on the centers, a quick review of how the individual centers and the categories of centers fit into the body graph as a whole and the process of consciousness moving through the body graph as a whole. So just reading the same phrase that we've looked at at the start of each of these three units on the centers, all movement in the body graph begins in the pressure centers at either end. in the head or the root and moves towards the throat to be released. Thus far, we've discussed the head, the root, and the throat. And on the way, all of that pressure moving towards the throat to be released is powered by different motors as well as processed through different awarenesses and filtered for resonance. So I only highlighted processed through different awarenesses, but that's a mistake I should have also highlighted filtered for resonance. because the awareness centers, the spleen, the ajna, and the solar plexus are where pressure are filtered, processed through different forms of awareness. And the G center is where that energy or pressure underneath the throat is filtered for resonance with the self, with the individual self. So those are the elements we're gonna add to our understanding of this entire process of the body graph in this unit. And... Once more, I just want to point out that the solar plexus has two functionalities, and we've already discussed its functionality as a motor center. And we've dipped into its functionality as an awareness center, even just both as we were going over it as a motor center in the motor center unit, and also as we overviewed the progression and evolution and varied focuses and orientations to time of the three awareness centers. So we're not going to have another section on the solar plexus in this unit. If you're focusing on awareness centers right now and you want to revisit the solar plexus as our most evolved awareness center, our most sophisticated awareness center, then you can check that out by going back to the Motor Center Unit and watching the solar plexus video.

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 @Kelseyrosetout.