I took these photos in Livingston, Montana in November of 2015.

January 5th-10th, 2022, the sun will be transiting Gate 54, the Gate of Drive. Keep reading to learn 1) what a Solar Transit is and 2) what a solar transit through this gate might feel like.

WHAT IS A SOLAR TRANSIT?

Over the course of the year, the Sun shines a giant spotlight on each one of our gates over the course of a 5-6 day period. During that time, our relationship to that gate is brought out into the light of the sun so we can take a good, hard look at it because we can’t heal what we can’t see! The path the sun takes around the wheel of the Rave Mandala version of our chart, and the subsequent blocks of time the sun spends illuminating each gate, are referred to as Solar Transits.

HOW DOES EACH SOLAR TRANSIT IMPACT YOU?

Well, that depends on which gates you have activated (and which gates the folks you’re most energetically enmeshed with have activated). The transits you will personally feel the most are the ones associated with the gates you have activated in your chart.

Now, I know we’re only just starting to talk about gates here on the blog, so let me quickly summarize: in our Human Design charts, there are 64 gates (the teachings of which stand on the shoulders of the 64 hexagrams of the I’Ching). I collectively call the gates our TEACHERS because of the different ways each gate’s energy can manifest in our lives, totally depending on our conditioning. In our charts, gates can be:

a GIFT we’ve been given, and we learn a ton through being really successful and gifted at the thing OR
a LESSON we’re here to learn, and we learn a ton through sucking at the thing, adjusting our relationship to it, and hopefully ultimately getting much better at the thing

For some people, a gate can present as a gift and a lesson simultaneously in different areas of our life (that’s me and my gate 21 all 👏the 👏damn 👏 way👏!!!).

In his book The Gene Keys, Richard Rudd does a FANTASTIC job of explaining the extremes of the shadow/lesson sides of each of our gates (he terms them our “repressive” and “reactive” natures), and how each relates to the gift of each gate that we (hopefully) grow into via self-reflection and a willingness to engage in honest self-scrutiny. And the Solar Transits each year provide an AWESOME opportunity to give a bit of structure to that reflection☀️🌍☀️

WHAT DOES IT LOOK LIKE TO WORK WITH THE ENERGY OF THE SUN’S TRANSITS?

Each transit, what I like to do is start by reading a little bit about the gate that is being transited from a variety of sources (the I’Ching, the Gene Keys, various Human Design books) to refresh my memory around the variety of meanings for the gate. Then I combine that with what I already know about my specific placements (which planet(s) opened that gate for me on which lines). Then I try to observe, without expectation, what happens to me/around me as the transit is occurring over the 5-6 day period. After the transit, I like to take time to reflect and journal, feeling into anything that took place or came up for me that related to the energies of the gates being transited.

Some transits there are SUPER CLEAR connections and lessons.

Other transits are less eventful or feel more like gentle reminders.

So what might a Gate 54 transit look and feel like? Let’s take a look at a case study via an experience a close friend of mine had with her husband this week last year. She’s not into Human Design but was experiencing/working with the energy of this transit literally without even realizing it.

STORYTIME!

Even before they had gotten engaged, my close friend’s husband was CHOMPING AT THE BIT to have kids. He had a bad case of baby fever and enthusiastically proclaimed to anyone within earshot that he viewed parenthood as a 50/50 PARTNERSHIP, that he wanted babies NOW, and that he COULD NOT WAIT for things like midnight feedings and diaper changes. My close friend was also excited to be a mom and shortly after they were married came baby number 1, followed by baby number 2 a few years later.

But her husband…well…let’s just say that he wasn’t usually the one up with colicky babies at 3 am or cleaning up after an explosive diaper situation. He was great for a tickle and a bedtime story, loved taking them to a weekend baseball practice, but tried to evade the harder aspects of parenting when he could.

Flash forward to last year: we’re smack in the middle of a global pandemic, their two kids are elementary school-aged (one young enough to just be learning how to read), and their school has gone virtual.

By this time, my close friend and her husband were working full time in careers they were each passionate about, and both were lucky to be able to work remotely.

Maybe you can already see where this is headed…

It quickly became very clear who was expected to make sacrifices to support the kids.

This week last year, my close friend calls me crying. It was 8:30ish at night, and she was sitting in her freezing cold car in the parking lot of a Target after a really upsetting conversation with her husband. She had asked him, for the umpteenth time, to look at his calendar for pockets of time in his day when he could support the kids, either with their virtual learning or by helping keep them occupied/helping to meet their needs while she took time to get some work done. He had said NO.

Here’s what their typical day looked like:

She was waking up at 3:30 am, frantically trying to get as much of her work done as she could before the kids started waking up, hungry for breakfast around 6:30/7. She tried to shower before the kids woke up and was working on improving her 30% success rate. Her husband typically woke up around 8 am, worked out, showered, and headed to an office he had set up in their basement.
She then spent all morning getting them logged into their devices for school, supervising the older one as he attended class (he’s super smart and gets bored easily, which translates to him getting distracted), and supporting the little one who couldn’t read yet with his schoolwork, all while her husband worked from the basement office.
Then she made lunch, got them ready for their afternoon, lather rinse repeat, all while her husband worked from the basement office.
In the evening, she would make dinner, and her husband would emerge from the basement to eat, play with the kids for a bit, before he plopped in front of the TV or a video game while she bathed them, read to them, and tucked them in by 8:30/9ish…
THEN she would work until 11 pm and try to finish whatever work was left she hadn’t been able to finish early that morning.

She was running on caffeine and maybe 4 1/2 hrs of sleep and it just wasn’t sustainable. She felt like she was failing her kids by trying to work while supporting them. She felt like she was failing her coworkers by keeping unconventional hours and by trying to cram an 8 hour workday into 4-5 hours.

She knew her husband usually responded well to data, so she had tracked their schedules over the past two weeks and had just finished presenting him with an objective overview of what each had done to support the kids, with a plea that he find time during the day to emerge from the basement to take on some of the parenting responsibilities.

His response? In a nutshell, he communicated that 1) his job was more important than hers, 2) she was making it seem like he was an absent father, and 3) maybe she needed to quit her job if she felt stretched too thin because he felt he was already compromising too much.

My response: 1) NO it wasn’t, 2) well, he kind of was, and 3) OH MY DEAR GOD WTF???

It was crazymaking, and as my friend cried and vented, I found myself getting angrier and angrier on her behalf (open solar plexus LOL). When I met her husband, he very much seemed invested in being her PARTNER, but over the years it had become clear through his actions that he saw himself more as an investor/board member who could pop in periodically and yell about how the company was performing than a full-fledged sweat-equity partner. Now that the blinders were off, my poor dear friend was mourning the loss of the partner she thought she had and desperately wanted/needed/deserved.

This all literally unfolded during the last time the Sun transited Gate 54, which she has activated in her chart.

Gate 54 is about our goals and ambitions, and the energy we give and receive as we work toward them. The sun in Gate 54 shines a giant light on the energy around our goals and asks us (among other things):

are our goals realistic and actionable?
are our actions aligned with our goals?
what are we pouring our energy into? and
are we receiving reciprocal energy back in return?

Those were now things she needed to reflect on, especially that last bullet, and only she would know what next step felt the most aligned to her.

Being a mom had always been a BIG GOAL of hers. Motherhood is a part of her identity.

BUT NOT THE ONLY PART.

Another big goal of hers was career-oriented, and she had recently reached her dream job and pre-pandemic, she was CRUSHING IT.

In her professional life, she was paid very well, frequently promoted, given flexibility and respect. Basically, it was a pretty even energy exchange. She was getting back energetically what she was investing.
In her marriage, she was dismissed, gaslit, and instead of her HUGE contributions being recognized, she was shamed for not doing more and for asking for help. It didn’t feel like there was an even exchange of energy between her and her partner.

When she asked me what she should do, I reminded her of this transit in her chart and suggested therapy, which she already had been feeling pulled toward.

So where are they now? In a better place. Not perfect, but better.

My friend convinced her husband to go to therapy with her. The breakthrough came when the therapist had them do an exercise where he put five minutes on a timer, and they had to write down all the interactions they had with their kids, working backward in time from that moment.

After the 5 minutes were up, her husband’s list stretched back a couple of weeks and was full of things like “played Mario Cart” and “read a bedtime story.”

In contrast, my friend hadn’t even finished listing out all the things she had done with the kids over the past 24 hours, and her list included things like “cleaning up vomit after the little one was sick with the stomach flu” and “attending a conference with the older one’s teacher about the possibility of skipping a grade and enrichment activities she could do to help him feel more engaged with classwork he found easy.”

With help from the therapist, her husband FINALLY had a much-needed epiphany. From there, their therapist helped them to envision a way forward that felt closer to fair, was grounded in reality, and contained a lot more compromise (on his part).

Is it 50/50? No. But are things better than they were? Absolutely.

Now my friend feels like the energy exchanges between her and her husband (as they live their common goal of parenting two awesome kiddos) feel far more balanced than they have been. And the energy of Gate 54, that pressure that broke the damn, helped to push them forward out of a pattern that ultimately wasn’t serving either of them.

If you have this gate present in your chart, during this transit, I want to invite you to start to notice where you feel pressure around your goals and ambitions, whether they be personal or shared. Are there tough conversations that need to be had? Are you getting back the energy you’re putting in? The next week or so might shine a light on something you haven’t noticed or only vaguely felt the stirrings of before…