Loving Your Gate 63

Many of us who are involved in Human Design and/or the Gene Keys vividly remember the first time we laid eyes on our charts. There were so many aha moments. Moments of feeling seen and understood. Moments of “that makes so much sense now” and “that’s why I feel this way”. And for me, it was no exception. I remember looking at my charts for every aspect of my life from the time I was little until now, reverse engineering every decision and relationship that I had along the way. It was a giant puzzle piece that I enjoyed fitting together…. Every piece except the 63. 

Gate 63 in Human Design is called the Gate of Doubt. For humanity, there is so much pressure to be certain. And if you have an open Head and/or Ajna in your Human Design chart, the pressure to be right is constantly there. Doubt is something that the collective conscious will experience, and something that never goes away. So that I’m not the Debbie Downer here, while doubt seems like a bad thing, doubt has a higher purpose in our collective. Doubt is what made us realize the world isn’t flat, doubt is what made us explore the Universe and discover that Earth is in fact not in the center of everything, doubt is what made us come up with cool little things we take for granted every day like electricity and running water. 

But in total honesty, I hated the 63 the first time I saw it in my chart. In Human Design, the 63 is present in my conscious Moon and conscious Jupiter. In my Gene Key profile, my 63 is present in my Pearl.  It became my validation for all of my self-doubt, but it was also something that (I felt like) held me back. I blamed the 63 for everything. Had a bad day? It was the 63’s fault. Kids acting up? Checking account overdrawn? Stressed out the max? 63, 63, 63… the freakin 63 was responsible for everything! That is until something happened in my life that made me love the 63. I’m going to share that story with you now, as storytelling is intricately woven into who I am. 

Shortly after discovering Human Design, I was put in quite a unique situation. You see, my husband’s childhood friend Chris had a rare autoimmune disease- autoimmune hepatitis. Due to the nature of this disease, he needed a new liver to prevent sepsis. Sepsis would be his killer long before his liver failed him, and because of this, he would never be high enough on the UNOS list to receive a liver. So he was forced to ask friends and family to step in to help save his life and donate half of their liver. Many people stepped up, but there are so many factors that go into being an acceptable donor. Having an O negative blood type, I knew one of the biggest hurdles would put me in a good position to donate as O negative is a universal donor, meaning everyone is compatible with this blood type. 

So I made the trek to Mayo Clinic for 3 days worth of testing. Everything matched up and I was the perfect candidate for Chris to receive half of my liver. Until the last exam- the psychiatric evaluation. This is where they told me that only 1 in 200 survives this surgery. To be honest, this statistic shook me to my core. Mayo had just had a death last year from a young woman trying to donate her liver. I actually spoke with the doctor who had been her surgeon and looked into the same surgeon’s eyes as he pleaded with me to not go through with the surgery. He was in tears. I had never seen a surgeon cry. When I spoke to the psychiatrist, she told me that emotionally she didn’t think I would make a great candidate if I was going into the surgery scared that I would die, and that this clearly wasn’t for me. She picked up on my fear and my doubt right away and used it as a way of not recommending me for this surgery. 

Yes, I had many doubts. All of them were rearing their ugly heads at me as I was seated in this cold and sterile room listening to this woman talk about all of them. As she talked, I zoned out and started listening to those doubts one by one. 

“Who do you think you are being here? You are trying to play the role of a hero when you’re nothing but a chicken and you have been your whole life. You’ve always played things safe, what makes you think you’re brave enough to do this now?”

“Hundreds of people have done this surgery and you think you’ll be one of the lucky ones to survive? Yeah right! You’re going to die for sure!”

“Think of your girls. If you go through with this and you don’t make it off that table, you are the most selfish mom alive not putting them first and going through with this surgery. A mom who willingly orphans her kids. Mom of the year everyone!”

“Brittany… Brittany…. Are you ok? Did you hear me? I think you need to not do this surgery. I don’t know that in good conscience I can recommend you proceed with this. Did you have something you want to say, she asked me as I snapped back into reality.

And then, my lovely Gate of Doubt kicked in. The gate I’m lovingly renaming the Gate of the Detective. It felt like just in those few short minutes as she was telling me all of the reasons I didn’t have what it took to be a good candidate, in my mind it’s like all of the moments of grit and perseverance I was faced with over the course of my life flashed before my eyes and I spoke up loud and proud in that room. I don’t have the time to go over everything I shared with her in that room, but when I finally took a breath and spoke my peace- she smiled at me. She said, “You have tenacity, and tenacity makes a great candidate for surgery.”

In that moment, my perspective of my 63 changed forever. Richard Rudd defines the Gift of the 63 as “All inquiry is of great service to humanity. At a certain stage, the Gift of Inquiry must always lead you back into yourself. It is your Divine doubt that drives you to follow a spiritual path in the first place. When you begin earnestly and honestly to question your own nature and purpose, you enter one of the great spiritual paths of all time, known in the East as the path of yoga. Yoga is the progressive sequential process whereby you raise the frequency of your vibration from a low state to a higher state.” That is exactly what I experienced in that room that day. 

For those unfamiliar with Gene Keys, in Human Design every gate can be experienced as a high vibration or a low vibration. Having the 63 doesn’t mean that you have to experience doubt in the low vibration, but doubt can lead to inquiry and inquiry can lead to truth. You get to play the part of the detective in order to get to the truth. That is what I got to experience in those fleeting moments in that room that day. And let me tell you… it was beautiful. I wish I could go on to say that I remained in the Gift expression of the 63. But better than that, the Universe has given me many opportunities to love and appreciate the 63. 

Now, whenever anything awful goes wrong, I lean on my 63. After all, it is my Pearl. I just say to myself, I doubt that in the end, XY&Z is going to end up this way. I bet you I have my own miracle waiting for me to get everything worked out even better than I can imagine. I don’t have to come up with the answer, the answer will find me. I am so thankful for my 63, to play with it, to love on it. Some of the coolest things in my life that I have been able to experience came from growth opportunities arising from the 63. It challenges me, it plays with me, and above all, it blesses me.

For those of you wondering about my friend Chris- he is alive and well. Not because of my liver, and not because I decided not to donate… because I had my mind made up that I had to trust, and that I was ready for the surgery. But another miracle came out of that situation. The story of that miracle I’ll have to share with you for another day, for another Human Design gate. But my wish for you is that you learn to love your 63 as much as I love and appreciate mine. 

XOXO,