Our Human Design is comprised of nine centers, thirty-six channels, and sixty-four gates, all of which present as either open or closed, connected or absent, on or off, respectively. There are a lot of parts and pieces and potential combinations, so suffice it to say that how these centers, channels and gates interact all combine together to form our overall Human Design.

In these first nine posts, we're going to zoom in on each of the nine energy centers in the Human Design chart, and explore how we're impacted when they present as open/undefined in our charts and how we're impacted when they present as closed/defined in our charts, so get your chart ready! On Monday, we talked about centers in general and took a closer look at the Head/Crown Center, and today, we're diving deep into the Mind/Ajna Center. If you're new to this series and are looking for a quick primer on the principles of Human Design, follow this link for a brief explainer.

The Mind/Ajna Center, a downward facing triangle, is directly below the Head/Crown Center. It connects to the Head/Crown Center as well as the Throat Center.

The Mind/Ajna Center is where we store all of our thoughts, concepts and belief systems and is focused primarily with research and conceptualization. This center is all about taking the information that flows down from the Head/Crown Center and distilling, filtering and rationalizing it, with the ultimate goal being understanding. Remember: the Head/Crown Center is one of the pressure centers, so it's pushing down all of the inspiration it absorbs in the form of thoughts into the Mind/Ajna Center for processing and analysis, resulting in a pressure to understand or find an answer. The Mind/Ajna Center is the ultimate connection-seeking device: as one of our three awareness centers, it's taking in all of these thoughts and ideas and beliefs and connecting them to our past and present so we can project and extrapolate this information into the future.

In the chakra system, the Mind/Ajna Center correlates to the 6th chakra (Ajna), also known as our third eye, which empowers us to see the world with intuition and deeper insight, assisting us to see more clearly what we need to learn. When we have a blocked 6th chakra, we feel fuzzy, hazy and confused, which leads to feelings of agitation and worry, two feelings that also live in the Mind/Ajna Center. Think about it: how do we usually feel when information we're taking in just isn't clicking, despite our best efforts? Anxious and agitated 😰. It makes sense these feelings would live alongside our rationale.

Biologically speaking, the Mind/Ajna Center is associated with the pituitary gland. Just like the Mind/Ajna Center is like the master computer for our Human Design, constantly taking in and processing information, the pituitary gland is the master gland for the body, directing our hormones. Working in conjunction with the hypothalamus, the pituitary takes in information and directs messages to multiple other major glands in the body, just like the Mind/Ajna Center takes in information and ideas for analysis and eventually, action.

Grab your Human Design reading and take a look at the very top: in the middle head area, right under the Head/Crown Center, you should see an isosceles triangle pointed downward. Is it colored in or left blank? If it's white or blank, your Mind/Ajna Center is undefined/open. If it's colored in, your Mind/Ajna Center is defined/closed.

Hot tip: your center presentation makes far more sense when you read both, so don't just skip down to the info on the closed center if your center presents as open.

OPEN/UNDEFINED Mind/Ajna Center

If you have an open/undefined Mind/Ajna Center, you're someone who is empathetic, judicious and open-minded (duh). You have the GIFT of being able to approach information or a situation from multiple sides/perspectives, look at all the different layers and process what you find in a myriad different ways. You're thoughtful and intellectual, and really have no fixed way of thinking or interacting with new thoughts or information. This also has a tendency to frustrate those with a closed Mind/Ajna Center. Ever been told to just "DECIDE ALREADY!!!" or to "JUST MAKE A DECISION AND STICK WITH IT" before? ✋🏻I have ✋🏻ALL THE TIME. Just remember: those of us with an open Mind/Ajna Center were engineered specifically to take in information this way, so it might prove super challenging for us to lock onto any one fixed idea or belief, precisely because we see all the layers and nuances in a way that not everyone does. Our world is not black and white: it's far more shades of grey than fifty. Those of us with open Mind/Ajna Centers are here to really be wise and considerate of thoughts and ideas and beliefs, not to necessarily adopt them as our own, which is a mantra we need to keep in mind especially since open centers are open to the conditioning of others. When our Mind/Ajna Center is open, we live in the land of uncertainty, so rather than fight it, we should embrace it, because with uncertainty comes potential and possibility and expansion.

On a practical note: have you ever wandered around your bedroom or torn your car apart frantically looking for your sunglasses, only to find that they're on the top of your head? #openmindcenterproblems As a community, we can be super absent-minded (our Mind Center is OPEN after all). A practical tool is keeping a to do list to keep track of tasks that must be completed or keeping a journal of conversations we want to remember, lest they flitter away from us whilst we're focused on something else. Another perk: because this center is open, we are able to, in a sense, trap the thoughts of others. This presents as being able to tune in and perceive what others are thinking, which makes us highly engaging in conversations and able to sense what those around us are thinking and feeling.

MANIFESTATION AND THE MIND/AJNA CENTER

This struggle to really latch onto a fixed idea with any sort of permanence kind of butts up against the popular notion in modern spirituality of using our positive thoughts as a means of manifestation. Especially for those of us with an open Mind/Ajna Center: our thoughts change CONSTANTLY. As an exercise, later today, just observe all the twists and turns your internal monologue can take within a five minute span. We are constantly taking in new information, processing it, adjusting to it, etc, so much so that it's virtually impossible to sustain this consistent fixed vision and never have a negative or contradictory thought. Those with a closed Mind/Ajna Center tend to worry a lot (👇🏻more on that in the next section👇🏻), simply because in their search to process information, they tend to go deep into the details, often surfacing problems, sometimes out of thin air. If your Mind/Ajna Center is closed, it might be easier to hold onto a specific idea, but that doesn't stop worry and anxiety from creeping in. I'm sure you've heard the notion associated with the Law of Attraction of "thoughts become things." Maybe a better phrasing would be "thoughts that lead to aligned beliefs and consistent action become things." Our thoughts and ideas and beliefs are constantly changing, whether by subject, by approach or by feeling, and if we were able to magically manifest based on those thoughts, our lives would be CHAOTIC, to say the least.

To tie things together w/r/t manifesting, the text Abundance by Design makes some strong suggestions, regardless of whether or not your Mind/Ajna is open or closed: First, the Mind/Ajna center is not the energy center we should rely on when making a decision. And those of us with the one-two punch of open Head/Crown AND open Mind/Ajna Centers should reframe and think of these centers as places to cultivate the conditions for inspiration and possibility and dreams so that the rest of our energy centers can co-conspire with the Universe to call in the things that we want. Our goal in these centers should be attunement, and we should try our best to RESIST the urgency and anxiety coming down from our pressure-filled Head/Crown Center into our Mind/Ajna Center, pressure to figure things out immediately and act, or pressure as anxiety because we aren't able to maintain relentless positivity.

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CLOSED/DEFINED Mind/Ajna Center

Whereas an open Mind/Ajna center is like a computer, the closed Mind/Ajna center is like the external hard drive, still processing, but also constantly comparing, reviewing, categorizing and storing information (or maybe computers do that, too...not great with technology analogies!!). If you put your mind to solving a problem or researching a specific topic, you are focused, you work it out, and you move on to the next thing. When you're deep in it, though, sometimes all the focus can read as 🚨INFORMATION OVERLOAD🚨 You have a methodical way of working, and you approach each new task in a fairly fixed way. I mean, if it isn't broke, why fix it? Overall, you're trustworthy and reliable, engineered to hold information, and uniquely capable of certainty in a way that those of us with open Mind/Ajna Centers just aren't. If fact, you bring a grounding energy to a conversation: those with an open Mind/Ajna Center, left to our own devices, will attack a problem from ALL OF THE SIDES, but when we're around those with a closed Mind/Ajna Center, we're able to channel some of your decisiveness. So, THANK YOU.

People with closed Mind/Ajna Centers are fantastic at jobs like consulting because they're able to really nitpick, in the best sense of the word, and surface problems or issues others might not have noticed. And to paraphrase an old AA adage, the first step toward a solution is actually admitting that there's a problem.

Where a closed Mind/Ajna Center can become a problem is when it gets fixated on anxiety and worry. Just like those of us with an open Mind/Ajna Center get yelled at because we can be indecisive, we yell at those with a closed Mind/Ajna Center with "You're worried about NOTHING!!" or "STOP worrying about something that LITERALLY hasn't happened yet!!" Maybe we should just stop yelling at each other in general? 🤷🏻

Now you may not be able to completely turn off your thoughts and worries, but those with a closed Mind/Ajna Center might find meditation to be helpful for practice with observing thoughts without engaging with them.