Flipping The Script
As Human Design Projectors , you’ve probably been told: “Don’t initiate.” But what if that advice has been keeping you stuck, disempowered, and waiting for a life that never seems to start?
In this month’s Gathering, we’ve flipped the script on one of the most misunderstood concepts for Human Design Projectors. Initiation isn’t off-limits — it just looks completely different for us than it does for Generators and Manifestors.
Here’s what we explored:
→ Why focusing on the *invitation* might actually be leading you astray
→ The critical difference between being invited and being *correctly recognized* — and why it matters for your health
→ A real-life story of an “ideal” invitation that led to collapse and exhaustion
→ What Lynda Bunnell (director of the International Human Design School and direct student of Ra) says Human Design Projectors can do once they’re truly recognized — and it might surprise you
→ The ugly duckling metaphor that perfectly captures the Projector experience
If you’ve ever checked all the boxes on an invitation and still ended up bitter and burned out, this one’s for you.
You’re Invited!
🦢 Welcome to the Human Design Projectors Society — a space where Projectors are seen, supported, and reminded of how uniquely powerful we really are.
📅 Next Human Design Projectors Society Gathering: February 23rd — Our theme: *Vitality* | 11:00 AM Pacific
🔗 And, get your free Human Design Projectors Society chart and custom report.
Human Design Projectors Society Gathering Transcript
Here we are, Human Design Projectors Society. Welcome, welcome. And if you’ve read a little bit about why this project invited me to bring it into form, it’s on the website and it’s on some of the YouTube videos, but I’ll just share with you briefly that it really did come through kind of a download that, as my own journey to understanding and recognizing my Projector nature expanded and deepened and grew, I just started to feel so deeply how much we need each other, how much we need to be seen by each other, how much we need to spend time with each other.
Because for the most part, right, just odds are good we’re surrounded by Generators and it can feel like we don’t belong.
The Ugly Duckling
I was thinking this morning on my walk about the story of the ugly duckling. I don’t know if you’re all familiar with that. It’s by Hans Christian Andersen.
Here is this baby swan who’s kind of just tall and gangly and totally gray and, you know, for a swan quite beautiful, but when you’re surrounded by all these cute little yellow ducklings who are compact and like, you know, bopping around as a group, you just feel like, what’s wrong with me? Why don’t I—why is my neck so long? Why am I gray? How come I’m not that bright, beautiful yellow? But then as we grow into our awareness of our true nature, then guess what? We get to be the swan.
Our gathering theme this month for January is Initiation, which, you know, the word initiate or initiating, any of that can be a little bit of a hot potato for us Projectors. When you first learn about becoming a Projector, you are told, stop initiating.
And we’ll go into more detail about what kind of nuances we want to really incorporate in our awareness of this concept of initiation.
What are the dictionary definitions?
- Bringing someone into a secret society. So you have all been initiated into the Human Design Projectors Society. Welcome.
- Or it’s the introduction to a particular skill or activity.
- Or the action of beginning something.
And that is, I think, the context that is most common for talking about initiating, initiation in terms of Human Design, because Manifestors initiate to create impact.
Generators are here to respond, but often they spend lots of energy trying to initiate incorrectly. And so this concept of beginning something, giving some—making something happen in the world is, I think, the framework or the lens through which we have been trained to think of initiation. So I’m going to offer a new lens for us today.
So the energy types, of course, for them, it’s an action to begin something. Because when you have consistent sacral definition like a Generator or motor energy that’s always connected to the throat like a Manifestor, then when you think of initiation, you think, I’m going to do something.
And so we have been taught that idea that that’s what initiation means. And therefore, I think too, sometimes in Human Design, you know, you get taught, ‘Don’t do this. That’s bad.’
And so anytime we start to demonize aspects of human experience in order to comply with somebody’s rules, then we really lose out on rich parts of the human experience that we are absolutely entitled to.
Redefining Inititation
For Projectors, as awareness types, initiation is recognizing that you’re being correctly recognized. It’s a very different way to see initiation.
And you might think, well, why even bother using the word initiation? Because the rest of the world embraces the experience of initiation. And as a Projector, you get to have ownership of that experience too.
You can say, yeah, I know what initiation for a Projector actually means. Therefore, I can initiate all day, which is you’re going to recognize, ‘Am I being correctly recognized?’
That’s how we create the initiation. It initiates the energy to engage with the invitation.
So again, we don’t have consistent, reliable access to energy. And for anyone watching who may not know, it’s because, of course, we don’t have a defined sacral center, but also any Projector that has a motor defined will never have it connected to the throat. So there will always be a gap or inconsistent access to energy.
Our capacity for initiation is simply our ability to recognize, is this other person correctly recognizing me? And if they are, if we’ve discerned that through our awareness, the energy rises up.
And that’s the energy that carries us into the invitation and that allows us to share our gifts. So often, and especially when I was first learning about Human Design, I really felt, and maybe it was just the way I heard it, but it was more focused on deciding if the invitation is correct, which we must do. We must.
It Starts With Recognition
Lately, I have definitely felt that we focus too much on invitation and not enough on recognition. And that’s partly because we love invitations. We love being invited. And we’ve, I don’t know about you guys, but I’ve accepted plenty of invitations in my life that were not correct because I wasn’t correctly recognized, but I definitely was invited.
And then the energy that was there actually was harmful to my health and well-being. So when you recognize, I’m going to offer this as a potential, um, experiment for you. When you are in a day-to-day experience and you realize that someone has invited you, instead of asking yourself, ‘is this invitation correct for me?’
Go back to, ‘am I being recognized correctly?’
And it’s going to take some practice to shift the way you engage with and receive these invitations from other people. Because we’ll immediately look at the invitation and say, well, it’s an invitation to do this work at this hour, at this time, and then, uh, yeah, I can do all those things. Check, check, check all the boxes. But if you haven’t been recognized correctly, then even all those boxes being checked aren’t going to fill you with enlivening, vital, healthy energy.
Bitterness
Just as an example, back in 2015, I was married to an orchestral musician and he was also a conductor. And there was a big change in the community orchestra situation and suddenly his group wanted to form their own identity. I am not a classically trained musician. I’m not even orchestral trained. I have zero experience with orchestral music except for being married to him and being in that tribe.
But when they needed somebody to be the administrator, to organize the timelines, the projects, the branding, the marketing, all those things, I had those skills and I was absolutely invited to share them and was very much appreciated for the sharing, at least by the community.
And so in many ways, if you look at that, you’d say, wow, those skills really match what my design says that I’m capable of or the gifts that I have consistently and reliably. There was success for the organization, but ultimately at the very beginning of it, I was not recognized for my true gifts. And my gifts come from my design as do yours.
Correct recognition would have looked much more like what we’re doing today. I am here to explain my sometimes wild and crazy ideas to the world with the aim of creating some awareness, self-empowerment, self-acceptance, and self-love. That’s really what I’m here to do. And so even though I had all the skills to do that work, in the end, it drained me to the point of literal collapse and exhaustion. And I would explain to them that I couldn’t keep up and that I needed to not do it. And no one listened because they didn’t recognize me correctly.
Our Superpower
So no matter how good an invitation looks, sounds, or feels, if that recognition isn’t genuinely for who you really are and particularly what it is to be a Projector, we’re going to end up with bitterness and also really can be harmful to our physical health. So our temptation always as Projectors is to advise and guide.
We are ready to jump in. This is our superpower, right? We can do this with our eyes closed and both hands tied behind our back, right? We can advise and guide all day, all night. And we’re ready to do it even if we haven’t been recognized or invited. Or we can also focus only on the invitation.
And then this can happen too, and I’ve worked with Projectors for whom this has happened. They have been invited and they’ve even been invited for gifts they have, but they haven’t been recognized for what it is to be genuinely a Projector, an awareness type, not an energy type. And so then the Projector spends time trying to hammer the invitation to fit what actually works for them.
And so there’s just a lot of stress, a lot of energy used in the wrong way, a lot of exhaustion, and ultimately bitterness.
As a Projector, we have the ultimate right. It’s our right to do this. And it’s actually our responsibility to do this, to direct our awareness that absolutely wants to focus on the other person, but our right and responsibility is to direct our awareness to discerning the quality of the recognition from the other person. That I feel like that can be very new to us Projectors.
Generators Want Response
It’s also not something particularly Generators are going to like about you or appreciate about you, you know, that you have the right to discern, ‘Is this person recognizing me correctly?’
Because that does frustrate Generators to not have you respond to them the way that they are ready to respond to life. Totally understandable, but it doesn’t take away the fact that we still have that right. And it is a responsibility because Generators aren’t going to do that. They’re not designed to do that.
Therefore, because it is our design, it’s our responsibility to also make sure.
So let’s say a Generator has seen you and said, ‘oh, I want to give you this job.’ They’re going to want you to respond to their invitation and you get to take the time to discern the quality of the recognition.
But it will confound them, right? They aren’t going to particularly like that you don’t just take the invitation. But that’s part of our gift, but also part of our job. So only when recognition is absolutely correct and the invitation supports us in experiencing the alignment with our motivation, that’s when the initiatory energy of the relationship lets us give our gifts of seeing, advising, and guiding. Not energizer bunny producing, generating, superpowering, powering our way through.
Doesn’t mean we don’t do stuff. Like obviously I made this presentation. I do do things. But the energy for it moved through me. I didn’t use my energy at all.
It’s a Projectors’right to have some agency over their lives. Otherwise, I feel like so much of what we are told and, you know, the internet’s full of misinformation as well. The idea that you just sit here and wait. You’re not allowed to do anything. Don’t initiate anything. Don’t respond to anything. That’s incredibly disempowering.
Again, that’s another reason that I was inspired or guided to create this community and these gatherings to really reassure each Projector who shows up that you’re not powerless.
In fact, we are uniquely powerful in a way that energy types have a hard time comprehending. And because we’ve all been trained by energy types, for the most part our entire lives, we’ve learned to not be able to understand ourselves either.
Lynda Bunnell
Right. So here, this is Lynda Bunnell. She is the director of the International Human Design School.
She was a direct student of Ra. He picked her to create the educational organization. So coming from someone who is so fixed in staying rooted in Ra’s original teachings, I feel like that gives it a pretty good basis for reliability and we can trust this.
Lynda Bunnell: “See, Projectors really are not supposed to compromise. For you to really live your fullness, no compromising allowed. Once a Projector’s invited into something, they can do anything they want. So if you, if you got an invitation years ago to be a coach, then market yourself till your little heart’s content because once you’ve been invited into something, you then become a Manifestor. You really can do anything that you want to do. You got the invitation. You got recognized. Now you’re a coach. Now you can go out and just do whatever you want to do in that realm.
That’s the beauty of a Projector. Projectors are given energy. They don’t have a sacral definition. It’s open. And when a Projector gets invited, somebody is saying to them, here’s this energy. Now let’s see what you can do with it. And now you have the energy to go and do whatever you want to do within that invitation.”
Moderator: “I think, Linda, one of the things that you said was very key was once you are invited, then you can almost be a Manifestor and you can take a lot of action. And I think that’s a myth, another myth that people have that if you’re waiting, you take no action.”
Lynda Bunnell: “Yeah. For Projectors, the motto is do what you love and the invitations will come. It doesn’t mean you’re home watching TV all day. What do you love to do? Go do it.”
Essentially, what she’s saying is when you are correctly recognized and invited, you can be a Manifestor.
I don’t know about you, but I have not heard that from anyone else in the four and a half years of Human Design professional analyst training. And I think for good reason we don’t start with that because we’ve all tried to be Manifestors regardless, right? We’ve tried to initiate.
So it is important that we get the basic foundation of understanding of the true nature of being a Projector, which is that we are an awareness type, not an energy type.
And so if we start with the idea that, oh, well, if I’m correctly recognized and invited, I can be a Manifestor, then we’ll just overlook the importance of spending enough time and space with the recognition as well as discerning if the invitation is going to let us live in alignment with, give us the experience of, our motivation. We don’t create our motivation, but we can have the experience of it.
Know your design. Know what is the part of you where the energy will emerge through you as power versus the parts of you where energy is going to zap you with force.
The next gathering is the theme of Vitality, which I think is going to flow really nicely from this new awareness around initiation. And it’s on February 23rd, again at 11:00 AM Pacific.
Thank you all. Look forward to it. Thank you. Okay. Bye. Thank you. Bye-bye.
Human Design Projectors thrive when they’re seen, recognized, appreciated, and invited by other Projectors. So, you’re invited to join the Human Design Projectors Society membership. In our private community, you can access HD resources, courses, and meet Human Design Projectors from around the world.
Give yourself the gift of recognition and check it out today.
PS—Join us on the Human Design Projectors Society channel