Human Design – The Four Quarters and Goal Setting

I’m writing this right at the beginning of 2023 and, as is true for every January, everyone is talking about their New Year’s goals. And I want to invite you, whenever you happen to be reading this, into a different perspective on goal setting.

I invite you to look at goal setting through the lens of the 4 Quarters of Human Design. And to switch from Goal Setting to Goal Aligning.

I invite you to align to your goals before you take action towards them by aligning to the energy of your Quarter, removing resistance so you can sustain your goals when you reach them.

The four quarters of human design are very linked to the exploration of your Incarnation Cross and your incarnation into your body:

This is my cross, made up of the Design and Personality Sun and Earth Gates, which forms a cross in the astrological wheel. Your cross is who you’re here to be in this lifetime – not what you’re here to do.

It is the purpose that will move through you, that will naturally happen through you, as you live your design more and more.

 

 

The way your purpose moves through you is very tied into one of the four quarters:

 

 

Aligning to your Incarnation Cross and Quarter – and therefore allowing your goals to happen with much more ease – requires that you allow more energy move through your nervous system.

Goal setting often ends up being a distraction from being present with the emotions and sensations that are in the way of you truly living the goals and life you desire.

You end up taking action and forcing your way to a goal, pushing down the fears and anxieties that rise up during the journey. And then you hit the goal and breathe a sigh of celebration and relief.

Unfortunately, now that all of that action is complete, there’s nothing to distract you. And all the energy of the fear and anxiety comes into your awareness. And that’s why it’s so easy to fall right back into old habits and revert back into your pre-goal form.

Instead of all that, the invitation is to first build your capacity to be present with the fears, anxieties, emotions, and sensations that arise during the process of expansion that is “goal setting” – moving towards goals outside your current comfort zone.

It requires expansion. Before expansion is contraction. Like the breath. Like everything in nature.

And when you take the time to slow down and breathe into the challenging sensations in your body, you create space for your nervous system to unwind and for new patterns to emerge.

You remove resistance.

You create space for your Incarnation Cross and Quarter to happen through you as its designed to and naturally will.

And when we look through the lens of Human Design, the Incarnation Cross is pointing to this very exact thing:  the purpose that will naturally move through you when your nervous system has the capacity to let it happen.

And, in a world that teaches you to try to control everything with your mind, there’s a lot of nervous system and neurological patterning that blocks that purpose from happening.

Your incarnation Cross “starts” in one of the four quarters. Whatever gate is in your Personality Sun position is the gate that determines which Quarter’s energy moves your purpose through you.

In this post, I’ll invite you to look at where your Incarnation Cross starts and to be empowered with what the energy of that Quarter means for how your purpose is designed to move through you.

As with all the aspects of Human Design, the Quarters are connected to the wisdom of nature.

The four quarters correspond to the four seasons. And the best way to understand this is to look at the philosophy behind Human Design, that of the I’Ching.

This image shows the original I’Ching hexagram wheel in the Fuxi order. The order of the hexagrams in this wheel are ordered by the seasons, distributed in – you guessed it – 4 Quarters. These 4 quarters are the basis for the 4 Quarters of Human Design.

The origins of this wheel date back 5000 plus years to ancient China.

This is when the ancient Chinese philosophers were first observing the wisdom of nature and documenting these 64 archetypal moments of nature.

So when you’re interpreting your human design chart through the 64 gates, that wisdom is based on the 64 hexagrams – and therefore the 64 building block archetypal moments of nature.

It is the wisdom of nature within you. Because you are inseparable from nature. You are nature.

Just like there are 64 archetypal moments of nature, there are 64 codons in your DNA. These codons, made up of 4 base nucleotides mirror the 64 hexagrams that are made up of the 4 base seasonal energies.

The 64 hexagrams are in the Fuxi order around your chart. And the 64 Gates that carry the wisdom of the 64 hexagrams are distributed throughout your chart in the 9 energy centers, based on the life theme of each center.

This is the first ordered Hexagram wheel ever used thousands of years ago and is in the order of the seasons and elements. You can also see it’s mapped to the Astrological wheel so we can see what Gates the planets were in at the time of your birth and the time 88 days before. This then helps to see what gates were defined/imprinted in your chart in these 2 moments.

The Personality Sun Gate (where the Sun was located at the moment of your birth is the most important of the four Quarters for you. More on that later in the post.

Each of the four seasons corresponds to one of the Four Quarters of Human Design. And carries the theme of that season. The theme of which your Purpose moves through you.

There are 16 gates in each quarter that have a foundational energy of that Quarter’s corresponding season. Let’s look at each quarter one at a time, starting with …

 

The Quarter of Initiation (Season of Spring)

This quarter corresponds to the Season of Spring. You can see that each hexagram in this quarter has the Yang and Yin line of Spring as the bottom two lines of the Hexagram.

Spring is the foundational seasonal energy of all the gates in this quarter. It is the energy of initiation. It is about the initiation of your Soul into a human body, the initiation of the human experience.

If your Personality Sun gate is one of these 16 gates, your Purpose is fulfilled through the Mind, as it tries to make sense of the experience of being in a body and following the wisdom of the body.

If we were to break it down farther, you can then see in the picture that there are 8 hexagrams with a foundation of Fire and 8 eight with a foundation of Thunder, the 2 elements of Spring.

They are both Yang energies that rouse dormant energy after the winter season.

This quarter is where things get started.

Is your Personality Sun gate in one of these 16 gates?

If so, notice if your mind is trying to figure out your life or the world. Instead, follow the wisdom of your Strategy and Authority and use the power of your mind to educate and inspire others by describing the experience.

It’s about fine-tuning your mind so that you can help your mind surrender to being present in your body and moving through the world based on the body’s wisdom. It’s about surrendering to the body’s wisdom.

The more you follow your Strategy and Authority and the wisdom of your chart, the more you’ll notice this happening through you. You don’t need to “do” your Quarter. Just watch it happen. Watch you be guided to its expression through you.

On to the second quarter. Technically, according to the channeled message, Quarter 2 is the Quarter of Civilization, corresponding to the season of Winter. But we’re going to look at the quarters in order of the seasons.

The Quarter of Mutation (Season of Summer)

Summer is all about mutation, action, and activity. Of festivals and backyard barbeques.

The 2 elements of Summer are Lake and Heaven.

If you think of a Lake, think of all the activity that happens underneath the still of the surface. And think about all the activity that happens around the Lake as a gathering place. And Heaven is traditionally linked to “Father” or “Masculine” energy. The yang energy, represented by 3 Yang lines. It is the impulse and cosmic motivation that moves our bodies through the world.

And if you think about the summer season, there is a lot of energy, connection, and activity happening.

A lot of energy moving.

So all the hexagrams of this Quarter have the 2 yang lines of Summer as their foundation, meaning Summer is the foundational energy of all 16 of these gates.

If your Personality Sun Gate is one of these 15 gates, your purpose is going to move through you in a very particular way. This quarter is about your full potential for transformation being realized. It is the transformation that comes with the great movement of energy of the Summer.

It is about contemplating life and death, accepting death and surrendering to exactly what life is, an unfolding emerging moment that never ends.

It is one big emerging moment and you are constantly transforming. This is about allowing yourself to mutate, to let old versions of you die, old beliefs fall away, and to not get attached to any one identity or any one belief system that you hold about yourself for the world. It’s about allowing death and rebirth continuously, being in the never-ending mutation of Summer.

Contemplating death is really important for someone whose Personality Sun gate lies in this Quarter, as  you’ll get to be fully alive here as you remove the fear of death and allow the possibility that a whole new experience begins after that.

 

The Quarter of Duality (Season of Autumn)

So we moved from the Quarter of Initiation (Spring), where it’s about the Soul’s journey into the body and all of a sudden having a mind to think about being in a body…

… to the Quarter of Mutation (Summer), where it’s about moving through the world in your body and transforming, allowing yourself to die and be reborn as you move with the energy of life through different phases of life …

… in the natural order of the seasons.

Next is Autumn and the Quarter of Duality.

Now, we’re looking at not only your inner journey and journey through life… but your relationship with others.

In this human existence, you’re no longer in the field of infinite consciousness that you were as a Soul. Your particular aspect of consciousness has been magnetized to your body and you’re interacting with other bodies, other people.

So if your Personality Sun Gate lies in this quarter, your purpose is fulfilled through bonding.

It’s the energy of Autumn with the Yin energy coming back to slow things down after the full Yang of Summer. It is the weaving of feminine and masculine energy together in all of your relationships: intimate, friend, and professional.

The elements that correspond to this quarter are Water and Wind, flowing and blowing with the currents and winds of relationship.

And note that both wind and water can be both gentle or fierce, like the Autumn. Like relationships.

Your purpose unfolds through looking at the human need for each other, the need for community, and the dual nature of what it means to be a human.

That even though there is the mystery of collective consciousness that we are all one through, the mystery of oneness, there is also this very human experience of separation and the longing for coming back together.

This quarter is pointing to where we work together and collaborate and form bonds with each other to move things forward and to move around obstacles in ways we can’t do alone.

And this leads us to the fourth quarter…

 

The Quarter of Civilization (Season of Winter)

This quarter is about the pure Yin energy of winter. And that winter energy is the foundation of all the hexagrams/gates in this quarter.

This is the womb before the birth that happens in spring. It’s the space being created for new birth, new life to emerge.

This quarter is about manifesting into form, creating civilizations that support the human body and help it thrive.

In the Quarter of Initiation, the mind thinks about the wisdom of the body and begins to surrender to it. In the Quarter of Mutation, the body moves through the world and transforms time and again through experience. In the Quarter of Duality, humans bond together to do more than they can do alone. And in the Quarter of Civilization, they build civilizations that will better support the bodies of all people. And then the cycle starts again… the cycle of the seasons.

If you have your Personality Sun Gate in this quarter, a likely question that is operating in your subconscious is, “How do I now take concepts and bring them into form?”

How do we work together to build structures and communities that support the body to thrive and develop in a way that is also in honoring of the earth and the cosmos, of greater purpose while in alignment with self and other?

Creating these civilizations helps humanity get through the winters in easier and easier ways. Think about our ancestors in the winters of thousands of years ago. All the preparation and planning that had to happen to just survive the winter. And think of the civilizations that have been built since.

 

Your Incarnation Cross and the Quarters

 

Your Incarnation Cross has one gate in each quarter.

When you look at your Incarnation Cross, the Sun and the Earth at the moment of your birth and 88 days before form a cross in the Astrological wheel, as seen above.

So there’s a little bit of the energy of all four seasons in how your purpose unfolds.

But your Personality Sun Gate is where your cross “begins”.

It is the moment you were incarnated onto Earth in order to bring this Solar/Cosmic Purpose into the Earthly plane.

And so where that gate lies is what “your” Human Design Quarter is. It is the main energy through which your purpose will unfold.

And it will happen naturally the more you live your design. It isn’t something you do. It’s something you watch happen through you. It’s something you get out of the way so it can happen.

Your Quarter and Incarnation Cross aren’t for you. They’re for everybody else. 

If you happen to be reading this in winter time or around New Years, instead of Goal Setting, try Goal Aligning. Align to your design. Align to the energy of your Cross and Quarter. Let the winter season run it’s course, letting go of some behaviors and habits that have kept you stuck in limiting cycles.

Create space for the new to be born in the Spring. Allow your goals to emerge from this space, from inspiration, and most importantly from alignment. When you don’t force yourself towards goals and first let go of the parts of you that resist those goals, now you can reach them with far more ease.

Hopefully, this post has been really helpful for you in understanding the Quarters of Human Design.

If you haven’t gotten your free Personalized Report yet, download it below. It includes your Human Design Chart so you can tell which Quarter your Personality Sun Gate lies in and what your Incarnation Cross is. As well as details about your Type, Strategy, Authority, and Profile.

Enjoy!