Podcast Episode 37 - My Experience as a Manifesting Generator

I have been asked many times what have I learned about being a manifesting generator? What are my reflections? What are my thoughts? Now, after about five and a half years of experimenting with human design, what's shifted? What's changed? What have been the biggest breakthroughs? That is what we are discussing.

A little about me, I am a fighter. I am argumentative. I have gate 17 three times in my chart, which is an Aries gate and an opinions gate. When I found out I was a manifesting generator, I saw this gate a lot in my earlier days with human design specifically, because I was really upset when human design was only talking about four aura types. Or, if anybody just lumped manifesting generators with generators, it felt really frustrating to me, and I felt like I wasn't seen, and undefined G Center, that's a huge thing for me is not being seen and not being heard.

I did my very best to advocate for my opinion, which was that if we're going to say that manifesting generators are different than generators, then we should include it in the aura types. I was reading about generators versus manifesting generators and thinking about my personal experience, and I just didn't resonate with so much of the generator things. I think it's because I was looking at my life as a whole. I was looking at the big scale patterns. I was looking at the big picture, and if you look at the big picture of my life, I've had lots of phases. I've gone through many different interests. I'm always multitasking, but if you look at it a little bit closer, there is definitely this generator theme.

I'll share a little bit of the history on that actually. In the first publication of human design content, I think it was titled The Human Design System, it's also referred to in the human design community as the black book because it has a black cover and it was the first human design system interpretation created by Ra. In this book, it does not discuss types. In the first draft of human design, there was no such thing as type. It was the body graph, with the centers and channels. It was still the foundational principle. It discussed authority and decision making and all of those things, but it didn't talk about types. It did not label different energy types or aura types.

The four aura types came about a couple years later. If you look at the timing and you look at the story of when they were published and when type came around, you’ll see that the human design types were actually brought about as a marketing tool. It's so much easier to discuss and to market, especially as a five line, which Ra was as a 5/1 manifestor. As a 5/1, being able to say, "Look, I've done the research. I have the education, and I have the answers. You are this type, therefore, this is the solution. This is your strategy. This is your authority," that works really, really well for the five lines. For him to bring the system into the world, that was a brilliant idea, especially since in the education he teaches going deeper and differentiating the whole thing. It starts with type, but it does go deeper into differentiating individuals. So, that's why we have types in the first place.

When I heard that, all of my gate 17 energy was very opinionated, and I thought that if it's just a marketing tactic, it's not necessary. But there's also this part of me that sees how type is so generalized and most of the advice for your type, but I do think that a lot of the generalized information around type is empowering, and it's exciting, and it's a great way to get people introduced to the system, but it's not the end all be all because every single chart is unique. My expression and my experience being a manifesting generator is going to be different than absolutely every single one of you, because of the details in my chart, because of my experience, because of the differentiation between you and me. We are different. Our designs are different. We're going to have different experiences.

I went from doing a lot of work with type, and then I went into a phase where I was really trying to break it down even further, and I really wanted to show people that you're not just your type. So, I tried playing with subtypes. I wanted to break down generators, and I wanted to break down projectors because I wanted people to start seeing a step further, a step beyond your type, and I thought maybe a subtype was what was missing. That led to people just attaching onto labels even more.

I played with subtypes, and I did this by trying to break each type down into what's defining and what's informing your energy. Are you an emotional generator? An emotional generator is going to react and respond differently than, let's say a root generator, where your generator energy, your sacral center, is connected to your root center. That channel and that activation, that's going to be a different conversation than your emotional center being connected to your sacral center or your G center.

I started to try and break it down, and I wanted people to understand not just their authority center, but their authority channel. When you understand the channels, that's where you start to see the conversation that is happening underneath. I can very specifically pinpoint and navigate the conversation of turning emotionality into commitment and willpower and a promise through my authority channel, and that's been so much more helpful for me than just riding my emotional wave. I think that the generalized advice is a great place to get started, but the whole point of the system is to learn about yourself and to learn about all of the details and to figure out how you operate in a way that's completely unique to everybody else and to see how your conditioning shows up for you.

I think it's important for me to say all that because I went from really trying to say like mani gens or the fifth type or something else to a conversation where I'm really just allowing everybody to be unique, and I'm not discussing type as much. I think that being a manifesting generator, that's still a label that I do refer to a lot, and that's still a really important part of my design. I come back to it over and over again, because it is such a foundational piece and is a great generalization. It's a great starting point.

So, I think types are great when you know more about them and you can make your own assumptions around what advice and what things you resonate with. But ultimately it's always going to come back to I trust individual pieces of advice. If I read an Instagram post about a mani gen and it really resonates with me, I'm going to take that and I'm going to feel empowered. If it doesn't resonate, I'm going to leave it and I'm not going to try and judge myself for being that or not being that. Take everything in, trust your intuition above everything else. That's the whole point.

My experience with being a manifesting generator, I was so relieved when I heard that I am here to be multi-passionate and bounce between things. I have always labeled myself as a chaotic, hot mess. I see myself as a tornado that comes into places, has no idea what she's doing. She's chaotic; she's all over the place. She makes a mess of her life, she makes a mess of other people's lives, all while trying really hard to do the right thing and be perfect and not hurt anyone in my process. If that's the story I'm telling myself, then of course that's the story that I'm going to see, because that's what I'm focusing on. It's going to expand. When you're looking at something or you're looking for something, it shows up all around you. I really resonated with the multi-passionate thing, and it really allowed me to be multi-passionate in that moment.

At that moment, I was in the beginning stages of nursing school. I was in the general education classes. I'm taking English, nutrition, and some sciences. I was learning about myself, learning about psychology, and having this secret world where all I'm doing in my free time is listening to podcasts about building a business and reading about how to change your relationship to money. I'm diving into personality types and understanding people in different frameworks and all these things in the side. It felt really good to have that permission slip of being a manifesting generator, of being multi-passionate. It allowed me to feel like I could handle a lot of different things.

I think my initial understanding of the manifesting generator was that you will always have multiple big projects in your life. I saw it as I was going to be training for a marathon, while simultaneously working, doing acroyoga, writing a book, and being the social media superstar and podcaster, and then I would have all of these different really big successful areas of my life at the same time. What that led me to do was, in my life and in my business, I assumed my energy was limitless. 

I'm told I have big sacral energy. I have four motors defined. I'm not just a manifesting generator, I have the 34-20, which is the direct manifesting generator channel, and not just that, but that's my conscious sun and conscious Earth, so it's literally the biggest part of my personality. It's also in a six line, which means I'm here to teach about it. I'm here to play with it. I'm here to be a role model for other people in what it looks like to really live this powerful and creative individual life, to like to really pave your own path and do things your own way as a manifesting generator. 

When I knew that I had this big sacral energy, I really opened up energy in my body. Suddenly, I felt like the embodiment of an energizer bunny. I remember being at the gym lifting, and I just want to play. I just want to bounce around on my toes between sets because I'm just so energized and so excited about everything that I'm doing and about this new understanding, this new perspective, everything that I'm contemplating. It was really powerful for me to give myself permission to handle a lot of things, to not be ashamed of my large capacity, to not be ashamed of being able to do it all.

What I have found is that when you have a large output capacity, when you do a lot of things, people get jealous. People get insecure. If everything is defined in the body graph, which is our collective conditioning, we all want everything in the body graph, our undefined energy searches for and is seeking definition. The ultimate societal conditioning says that you have to be an emotional manifesting generator with all nine centers defined. I'm an emotional manifesting generator with seven of the nine centers defined, so I'm very triggering to a lot of people, especially when I'm going at a very high pace and I'm doing everything at once. 

That has led me to lower my self-confidence, because as soon as people see you doing a lot at once, the doubts come in. They say, "There's no possible way you're doing it all your own. You're cheating. You're not doing it right. You're not doing it with integrity." They start to look for reasons why I can't be doing it all, because if I can be doing it all, if I am easily able to run a business and stay healthy and take care of my house and do all the things that I like to do, then why can't you?

That's going to be the conditioning that shows up, and that's the triggering that happens when I'm really in alignment. Other people start to look at that, and we always crave what we can't have. So if you see me in my big sacral energy, and you're maybe a generator who's not satisfied with the work that you're doing, you're frustrated with the work that you're doing, that's triggering to see that somebody else has something that you want. Suddenly, it makes your situation feel even more painful and even more frustrating in comparison, because there's the comparison available to you.

When I show up as a role model and I show up and allow other people to just witness me in my process, they see what they want to see. They see what they're available to see. When they see more than what they're available for, it triggers them. The potential in being triggered is that you can recognize it and do the deconditioning to change the story. They can tell themselves a different story, and they can use me as proof. You can use me as proof to break your own limitations. Me being successful and me being able to handle a lot of things at once has nothing to do with me and me being better or worse, it has everything to do with this is available to you. This is energy. This is me living in alignment, and when you live in alignment, it may not look exactly how it looks for me, but you don't have to be me. The same level of satisfaction is available to you. The same level of pleasure, the same level of enjoyment in your life, the same level of fulfillment is available to you. It's just going to look different if you want to do it your way, and I think everyone should do it their way.

Where I am now, I feel like I have a really good understanding of what the manifesting generator aura experiences now. I've gone through a lot of phases, but my phases will go and they will come back. One of them specifically is art. I taught myself how to draw when I was younger. I took one art drawing class in college. I've taught myself graphic design, that is a form of art that I do now. I'm illustrating a lot of things for my upcoming website.

Even as a child, I would go through phases where all I wanted to do was draw. I started drawing with graphites, and it was just my happy place. I would get lost in it. Then there were a couple years where I really wasn't into it for a while. It was boring. I was over it. Then I would fall back in love with it in a different style. The second time it was colored pencils, and I started working with color instead of just the black and white. Then I moved into more charcoal and a more advanced style of graphite. I've worked with different things, but they're phases that come and go.

One thing that you’re going to realize is that all manifesting generators are different. You can have direct manifesting generator channels. You can have manifested channels. You can have the 34-20 which directly connects the sacral to the throat center, like me. You can have an emotional connection to the throat center. You can have one of the direct manifested channels like the 21-45, 12-22, or 35-36. You could have indirect manifested channels. You could have your sacral center connect to your splenic center, then your splenic center connect to your throat center. That's an indirect connection. All those different experiences with the manifesting generator aura are going to have a very different experience with waiting, with patience, with timing, with intuition, with taking action. It's all going to look different.

I can really only share my experience, and my experience is that I have pretty big seasonal cycles like a manifestor. Gate 34 is the only gate defined in my sacral center, so the only expression that I have with sacral energy is not necessarily in response, but it's always responding with action. It's always in the moment taking action. It's actually also manifestation. For me, when I'm responding, it's also an urge. It's been weird and difficult for me to tease this apart and differentiate what is a sacral response, because my sacral responses build up over time.

What I've found is that if I get an initial response to something like, "Ooh, that's exciting," if I jump into it immediately, it doesn't work. It fizzles out, and then I get to a space where I'm like, "Oh no! This was a great idea. I should still be passionate about this. Why am I feeling lazy? Why can I not get this done? I have to continue working on it. I have to force it," and I'll fall into the shadow. What works well for me is a slow burn. Some anticipation. I need to let it build up like a creative urge.

What I talk about with manifestors and the manifestor aura is that you go through cycles. You're going to have an inner winter where you're resting, reflecting, probably pretty solitary, and of course, that's going to depend on your design, your lifestyle, and your profile (two lines, four lines, things like that can impact your socialization desires). We then have this spring energy, and the spring energy is where you're starting to get new ideas. There's this anticipation. Things are growing. Things are blooming. It's not in full bloom yet. Things don't quite look bloomed and pretty and put together yet; it's still forming, it's still growing. There's still some snow on the ground. There's still some things that need to be warmed up a little bit.

That's where I feel like my creative urges start. I feel like I have to wait through that spring, and then all of a sudden it's time to go. Right now, I have a couple of ongoing projects that I am continuing to work on, the things that I do in my daily life, but there's something building, and I can feel it physically. I can feel it mentally. I can feel it emotionally, and when I tune into just my ideas of my inner world, I can feel it's like fire. There's anticipation, and there's this breathiness that I want to inhale a little bit more. It's a beautiful sensation, and I know this feeling. I know this feeling because I've been here before. I have studied these patterns. I have studied myself deeply in contemplation.

With this anticipation, what I do instead of jumping in immediately is I look at what is everything that I need to do right now, before it's time to go all in on that, how can I get ready? How can I get ready so that when it is time I can fully surrender, I can completely forget about absolutely everything else, and I'm divinely supported in getting lost in that creative flow? I know once I wait, once I let that energy build up, that actual moment of clarity, that actual response, that urge when it actually happens, I am lost in creative flow. For me, creative flow is where I have my muse. I have my genius. I have the spirit, or the feeling, the sensation of the idea, usually over my left shoulder. I can't tell you why, but that's where I hear this. That's the source for me of my ideas. It's over my left shoulder, and it's almost like someone is whispering into my ear. It's a warm presence. It's delicious.

My eyes are visually looking at whatever it is that I am putting together. I have a lot of passive energy, but I'm a focused view perspective, which means I like chaos to be going on around me so that I can zone in on one thing. I can block out absolutely anything in order to get something done: loud music in a coffee shop, kids can be screaming, there could be a burning building next to me, someone in a monkey suit could walk by. I would not notice because I am so focused on what it is that I'm doing.

I have this muse over my shoulder, I'm fully locked into the one thing that I'm focusing on, and then in the upper right side of my visual field, this is my inner vision cognition kicking in, I see the future. I see me talking about this. I see myself sharing this. I see people responding to this. I'm holding the vision, and it's like I can see the potential and I'm watching all of the possibilities of what could be. Sometimes those visions come true, sometimes they don't, but other things very similar will happen, or it's still that feeling, that energy.

That's what I'm doing in creative flow. I'm literally holding multiple perspectives. I am listening. I am channeling this idea through me. I'm connected to it. I'm actually physically doing the things. I'm writing the words. I'm creating the graphics. I'm recording the thing. I'm physically doing it, and I'm looking at that and paying attention. I'm present for that, and I'm also holding the vision for what I'm creating. When I'm in flow, I get lost in this state. Absolutely lost, and I need to make sure that I can support myself to really, really get lost in that flow, because it only lasts a season. It only lasts until that project is done, and then I go back through my creative cycle. Then I'll go into a fall, then I will go through the completion cycle, and then I will find myself back in an inner winter.

What I've found is that I have these bigger, overarching creative cycles and creative urges, but when I'm in an urge, I show up like a generator. I have this overarching manifestor scheme where my sacral energy builds up, builds up, builds up, builds up. There's this anticipation, this slow burn. That's always my process. I want to build anticipation until I am literally about to explode. I cannot not do this. I have to let this idea come through me at a physical level. That's how I want to be creating. That's what I desire in my creative process, and if it's not that, I'm not doing it.

I'll go through the creative cycle, and when I'm in the creative cycle, it is very much generator energy. I'm excited about the same things. I can come back to the project. I have energy for the day. I drain myself, I recharge, I come back the next day. It's consistent. It's not like day one, I'm really into this project, and day two, I want nothing to do with it, and I'll come back in a week. When I'm really in flow with a creative urge, I'm locked in. I have one big focus, and I am working detail by detail to get it done.

The anticipation, I literally will do everything I possibly can to get ready for it. I will clean my house. If my house is not clean, the creative urge is not going to come through. If I walk out of my office and the house is messy, I'm going to feel anxious, and I don't like that. Or, it's going to build up over a couple of days inevitably, because I'm not going to want to do any of the house cleaning, and then, it can possibly pull me out of flow. I want to make sure that my house is tidy. 

I want to make sure that I am continuing to maintain my health, which means before I can get started in the morning, I will force myself to go through my slow, boring morning routine. It's going to build that anticipation, and then by the time I do take action on that urge, I know that it's a full body yes, and I'm primed and ready for that state. If I jump into it immediately, I'm not keeping the promises and the boundaries that I made to myself, and the promises that I made to myself are that I am going to take care of myself over being successful and over getting things done.

Right now, I know the creative urge. I know the timing of when it's about to come through. I know what's going to happen. I can feel the anticipation. I can see the vision of people responding to it and connecting with it. I'm really just loving the experience that we're going to be able to create together. I'm seeing that, and I'm spending time connecting with the vision now. I'm still in anticipation, but there's things that I can do to make that flow really, really comfortable. I'm creating some outlines. I am finishing up some other projects that I know that I have to finish up. I'm wrapping things up. I am creating simplicity so that if people are wanting to buy products of mine, it's easy to find them. It's easy to navigate, and that's going to reduce some of the time that I spend in DMs answering questions or having my team answer questions.

I can see that the vision is going to come through. I get this premonition that an idea is going to come through, something big is going to happen, and I want to be ready. I want to make sure that I am going to be able to handle that, and make it successful. I want to marry my energy to it. I want to be obsessed with it. I want to be in partnership with this idea. I want to give it my all, and in order to give it my all, I have to take care of myself first. I will prepare the setting, and I will fantasize about it. As soon as it happens, then I will be able to get lost in that creative flow.

When I get lost in creative flow, I will get to a point where I start to get frustrated. I'm like, "Ugh. I've been here for a while. I'm starting to get tired. When is this going to be over? Did I take on more than I can handle?" At that point, the goal is to go back to the details and look at exactly what's in front of me and not think about how much further I have to go. If I keep working on the details, they will all fall into place. It's like a puzzle, piece by piece, everything will make sense in the end. Even though it looks like a jumble of pieces right now, it will all fit together in the end.

There's usually a little bit of resolve, a little bit of willpower that is necessary towards the end to finish the project, and it's coming from an aligned state. I'm really intentional about that, especially towards the end of projects, because that's where I have the tendency to burn out. If I don't do it in the beginning, when I'm just so excited and want to go fast, fast, fast, fast, fast, I burn out at the end, because I'm pushing when I need to start allowing myself to rest a little bit more. So, my days will become a little bit shorter. The amount I'm producing each day will start to dwindle a little bit, and that's not a bad thing. That's just my energy cycle. It's starting to get tiring. 

This is the difference between mani gens and generators: the more you do something as a manifesting generator, the less exciting it becomes. I used to think that this was me not being able to appreciate things. Me just wanting that new, shiny object. I was like, "Oh, I just have shiny object syndrome. I only like things when they're new and exciting, and then I get bored of them." I do only like things when they're new and exciting, and when my body is done with it, when my energy is done with it, I get bored of it, and that boredom is my sign to tune in, check in, make sure that it's time to move on, wrap up anything that I need to do, follow through with any commitments that I've made. 

I’ll then move on to usually a resting period, where I'm really focused on recharging and going inwards and seeing what went well, reflecting on what didn't go well, learning from my mistakes, contemplating what I did because in the moment I don't see my design. In the moment, I am not making mental decisions, and I think that that's one of the hardest things to do, especially as you're first getting started in human design. You want to make mental decisions, but you're in your head and you're thinking how you approach it as a manifesting generator, and you're no longer in your body. If you're trying to think it through and logic your way through how to make a decision based off your emotional authority in this moment, it's not quite the same. You're still in your head, you're still in your mind, you're not in your body.

I really allow myself to get lost in what I'm doing and just be. I will look back and be able to reflect on and be able to see what parts of my design come out, what patterns I see in retrospect, and that's really where my contemplation comes from. That's a major part of the creative process, is after I'm lost in it, allowing myself to look back and see what I messed up, what I didn't like, what I really liked, what I want more of, what I want less of, and that helps me to create change in the future and set myself up even better for the next time that I go into an urge.

That's been my experience as a mani gen lately. I have recently started discussing the hormonal birth control journey that I have had, and how that's affected my sacral energy specifically. But since being off of it, I've definitely noticed my big sacral energy coming back. I love living a sacrally led life. I do things for pleasure. I am very, very firm in that I will not do things I don't want to do. I don't do things that are of no in my body, and I've always lived by these, but I'm finally feeling that big energy again. Those sensations where I feel like an energizer bunny and where physically bouncing up and down, and I can't stop moving. I'm not antsy, but just excited. I'm physically feeling that energy, vitality, and vibrancy come back, and that's been really, really delicious. 

That has been my experience lately, just reminding myself again of my big energy. I've gotten a little bit cautious when it comes to overexerting myself since that was a pattern in the past. I kind of overcorrected in a couple of areas, and so sometimes there's hesitation. I'm working on really just seeing that big sacral energy again and really seeing that I do have four motor centers defined. In the correct state when I am healthy, when I'm taking care of myself and making big decisions, like getting off of a hormonal birth control to protect my sacral energy and to create a more natural rhythm and environment for my body, that's me making big decisions for my design. That is me following my authority, but that's me making big decisions to prioritize the sacral energy, because I want to feel excited. I want to feel happy. I want to feel joyful. I want to feel delighted by the things that I do, and I do, but I know that there's more available to me. I know there's more because I've experienced more. Now I am intense on creating more, and I'm taking the steps to creating more of that big sacral energy in my life.

So, follow along my journey as I continue to create things, and as I continue to embody the multi-passionate and creative powerhouse energy that I hold as a sacral being. 

If you are interested in listening to the podcast episode, listen here!

Also, if you are interested in learning more about how to design with your sacral and with your soul involved, you can find more information about this 2+ hour masterclass replay: Soul Signed – Stop settling for mediocrity and start creating things you are proud to Sign with Your Soul