Reflectors 101
Reflectors 101 - understanding their energy, the program, their strengths and challenges, their aura and why we can stop referring to them as unicorns.
Get your Reflector cheat sheet here.
Other links:
Free Human Design Ephemeris 2014-2024
Sort of Spiritual HD Facebook Group
Episode 7 on the Lines
Becca from @hdundefined
>>> Want to win a free Human Design reading with me?
Leave a review for the podcast, screenshot it before you submit it and send it to hello@sortofspiritual.com. For every 25 entries, I'll be choosing a winner!
Instagram @sort.of.spiritual
See you next Monday for Reflectors part 2!
Transcript below:
Hello and welcome. We are in the reflector episode. We are a few weeks away from the end of the year, which is blowing my mind. I'm just over a month away from moving to Mexico for the winter, which I am so excited about. I am not built for this cold weather, although my skin is also not really built for sun. So I don't know. Anyways, I'm going to experiment. I'm really excited to spend the winter by the beach. That's for sure. But today I can't wait to talk about reflectors in this episode. They are such a cool energy type. I was initially going to interview one of my reflector friends for this episode, because when it comes to rare energy, I love hearing about it from personal experience, you know, right from the source. But I think we'll have her on another episode in the future and perhaps talk to some different energy types just to get some real life examples and experiences to share with you. Because again, I just love learning through people's actual lived experiences. I think it's so powerful. So in this episode, we are going to be talking about the reflector 1 0 1 strengths and challenges, their signature. They're not self theme and their aura, which is such a cool aura. Why we are not like reflectors, even if we have a lot of openness in our design and why you also might want to stop calling them unicorns. We'll talk about that in the episode. What reflectors are here to do. And we're going to talk about the program and reflectors learning the program and like what that actually means. And yes, of course, I made a cheat sheet for you and I even put together a cheat sheet library. Finally, I think I talked about that. I don't know it was last week or two weeks ago, but I finally put it together. So when you go to sortofspiritual.com/reflector, you'll get access to the reflector cheat sheet and also the entire cheat sheet library where all of the types, the centers, the gates, the planet. So many cheat sheets there for you. You can also go to sortofspiritual.com/cheatsheets. That sounds weird to say cheat sheets anyways, you can go there and you can get access to the library there too. But like I said, if you go to sortofspiritual.com/reflector, that will give you the reflector cheat sheet, as well as access to the whole library. Let's get into this week's episode. All right. Starting with the basics. Reflectors are the 1% of human design. They are very rare. Of course. However, 1% of our current population is still about 70 million people. So there are a lot of them in that sense, but also not a lot at the same time, their strategy is to wait a lunar cycle. Their signature is surprise. Their not self is disappointment. Their aura is really interesting actually, it's a sampling aura. Their authorities are going to say either none or lunar authority or wait a lunar cycle, depending on what software you use. It all means the same thing. The focus is taking your time, reflecting the wellbeing of the right people and the right places for you. The mechanics for a reflector will have no centers defined. So their chart will look completely white. As far as the centers go, they'll just have gates defined, and they are a lunar type. So the other four or three types, however you want to look at it, are solar types reflectors are lunar types. Reflectors are unique, as you can imagine, however, they are powerful. They operate differently than most, this is true, but they are not at the mercy of their openness. So just because you see reflector has all these open centers, their aura operates differently. One of my human design friends, Becca who's Instagram is HD undefined. I will link up below she's a reflector. And I like how she puts it, that reflectors are sensitive, but tough in regards to typical reflectors, there isn't really such a thing because they reflect the people and the environment around them. So they can be very different from each other. And I want to start this off with being mindful when you're talking to a reflector or talking about a reflector, because some of the things I was talking to, some of my reflector friends about. That they find is a little bit annoying or frustrating when people are like, oh, well, I'm kind of like a reflector because I have, you know, seven centers open or I only have two centers defined or I'm kind of like a reflector because I'm a mental projector where I'm kind of like a reflector because my body is a reflector and that's not true unless you are a reflector. You're not like a reflector because the auras operate very differently. Also, I like to remind people to be mindful of comments, like, oh, wow. So rare. Oh my gosh, you're a unicorn. Like, there's just such a lack of depth there when you're talking to a reflector or about a reflector like that. So when you meet a reflector or in awe of a reflector, because they are rare and they are uncommon to come across, sometimes don't treat them like, they're just some sort of exotic species. no they're humans. They're beautiful. They're wonderful. Yes, they're rare. But we don't need to go around calling them unicorns and making them feel like they're weird. we need to recognize them for more than just being special or unique or uncommon. And that's one of the pet peeves of being a reflector as well is when other people don't go deep. So those kinds of comments are very surface level. reflectors are undefined. All of their centers are undefined. They will not have any channels. And this is interesting because most of us can only understand what undefined means as the opposite of defined, because most of us have definition in our chart. And again, by definition, I'm talking about channels connecting centers. So we have these colored centers in our chart. So their body graph only has what I'm going to call environmental gates, meaning that there is a gate activated, but there is nothing else in the channel. Some people might call these hanging gates or dormant gates, because no centers are activated and because there's no channels, the gates themselves are just on their own and I'm calling them environmental gates because it's the environment and reflectors that will create definition in these gates. So we'll talk about that a little bit later. Reflectors are also more than a reflection. So a lot of people say that reflectors are like a mirror, right? And to a degree, yes, that's true. They reflect that just like a mirror, a mirror still exists without someone standing in front of it, looking at themselves, right. If nothing's in front of a mirror seeing its reflection. The mirror still exists. The mirror is still its own thing. It can be beautiful, gorgeous, wonderful, whatever, but it still serves a purpose even without someone standing in front of it. So reflectors are more than a reflection. And although you are here to reflect the, we, the environment, the community, you are still wonderful and valid on your own when you are not reflecting anyone or anything. Some of the talks that I listened to Ra Uru Hu on reflectors, say things like. reflector doesn't exist. They are only a reflection. I don't think that's true at all. And I think that's a very disempowering view. And although you absolutely are here to be a reflection, that's not all you are. I think sometimes we get caught up in the energy types. Like, oh, this energy type is here to do this thing. And this energy type is here to do that thing. We are here to use our energy in a specific way. So when I look at energy types, it's more of the, how am I supposed to go about doing whatever it is I'm here to do and the, whatever it is I'm here to do. Isn't actually about my energy type. It's the mechanism of how I'm going to go about living out my purpose or doing what I'm here to do. So I know we often say reflectors are here to reflect their communities and yes, sure. There's some truth in that, but it's more that reflecting is how they're going to go about doing whatever it is they're here to do in their life. You know, maybe they're here to be a composer. Maybe they're here to be an engineer, or maybe they're here to be a parent. Maybe they're here to who knows so many different things. But reflecting is one of the ways that they're going to go about doing that thing. It's not that it's all they're here to do. Strengths and reflectors. Reflectors are amazing at sensing and feeling others. They know the potential of people and communities. They have a deep knowing and awareness and a deep understanding of others. They are great at tuning into the transit field of the planet and that energy. They're also great at reflecting or judging what is working and what isn't working and being with nature or experiencing it in a way that most of us don't understand. It's like they can commune with nature in a way that other energy types just can't. As much as we do or love it or think it's beautiful. If we go back to the very beginning of civilization, many people were reflectors. And so it's like they have this ancient different relationship with nature. Some challenges for a reflector, there is constant pressure that a reflector is under because of their body graph because of how they're designed. So if you look at the very top center of the body graph and the very bottom center of the body graph, I also do have an episode all on centers. I'll link it below. I forget what episode number it is. One of the earlier ones, but if you look at the head center and the root center, so the very top and the very bottom, those centers are known as pressure centers. And when they're open, they continue the pressure down through the centers and reflectors are all going to have all of centers open. So everything is under pressure to a degree. Again, their sacral center is going to be open. So there's that challenge of not knowing when enough is enough that is present for all of the open sacral types, which are manifestors projectors and reflectors. There's a big challenge for reflectors around being in an incorrect environment or with incorrect people. Because they reflect that. So that's a big challenge. If they're not in the right place, it can also be very difficult for reflectors to make correct decisions. We don't really live in a world that respects someone needing to take a lunar cycle or basically a month to make a decision. And they often feel pressured to make quick decisions. There's a challenge also of not knowing who you are and having so much variability. And it is beautiful, but if you don't understand that about yourself as a reflector, it can make you feel like you're totally lost. Like you don't know who you are when that's not the point of who you are designed to be, You have this capacity for this beautiful experience of being empty and having this variability of being empty when you're completely on your own in a good way. And having this variability, when you're around these different groups of people, There is a challenge of merging with people and environments and really being dependent on them. There's a challenge with not being consistent and reflectors aren't meant to be consistent and that's okay. But if they believe they should be, then again, that's where problems come in. There's this variability. So if they think that they can't be variable, if they think they can't change, they think they can't be different from day to day. That can be really difficult if they believe they should be consistent and solid and like have a strong identity. That's just not going to be the case. There's a challenge of making decisions based off of someone else's or some places potential. So when we say that they can understand the potential or see the potential, sometimes it can be tempting to make decisions based off of someone's potential. So whether that is a relationship decision, a job decision, like maybe you see so much potential in somebody and that's great. To have the ability to hold space for someone's potential, but you also need a degree of being with where the person is right now or where the place is right now. So if someone is being terrible to you and you're like, yeah, but they have great potential. They could be this, or they could be that. okay, but they're not doing what they need to be doing. They're not being nice to you. They're not taking care of you, whatever it is you need to be w ith people where they're at, I think it's Oprah or something that says when people show you who they are believe them. So I think that's a helpful thing for reflectors to think about that. Yes, the potential they can see in others is beautiful and you can see it and hold space for it But when they show you who they are, believe them. Right. Kind of take that at face value to a degree because it can be challenging if you are making decisions off of potential. When not everyone is going to live up to their potential, and I don't mean that in a pessimistic way, but in a way of taking care of yourself and protecting your own energy. Reflectors are highly sensitive that's true. Although they're not like, oh, you're so delicate, highly sensitive. You're highly sensitive like you have a great attunement to the senses. And so that can create a lot of issues sometimes in terms of feeling overwhelmed, because you have so much sensory information coming through all the centers all the time. There's also a challenge with her factors with staying on the surface. They don't like that, but sometimes it can be more comfortable if they're scared to make others uncomfortable by their depth. One of the themes of having an open emotional solar plexus, which again, all reflectors are going to have is not wanting to create a uh, sort of uncomfortable feelings, avoiding conflict. You don't want to do anything that's going to make someone else feel bad because then you're going to feel their feelings. So sometimes that can be a challenge where it's like, they don't want to stay on the surface, but they also don't want to dive deeper. Cause they don't want to make someone uncomfortable and then feel their uncomfortable emotions. There's also a challenge around the fact that it takes time to benefit from human design as a non-energy type. And again, I talked about this in the projector episode. I don't love the non-energy type term, but I'm just using it as a human design term. And I think there's a few different ways of looking at this. When Ra talks about taking time to benefit from human design as a non-energy type or as a variable energy type, as I prefer to call it. I think he's talking about moving more towards alignment and how you may not get the quick wins as quickly as a generator would for example. However, I am such a firm believer that a lot of information of the human design system can be so transformational, especially if you've been living and feeling bad or different about how you are or being wrong or. Especially if you've been living and feeling bad about who you are or wrong for, how you are, or like you should be a different way or comparing yourself to everybody else, perhaps you won't benefit completely from the whole system for a while. I believe there's so much to be gained, especially for reflectors and just understanding that there are different, seeing it in your chart, that you are different, you are unique, you are rare. And that feeling like you're different or unique is not a bad thing because it's just the truth. So I think that perhaps, yes, there's a degree of it taking more time because it's not like you're a generator, that's going to be responding constantly to things. But I also think there's so many quick wins that the information can provide on its own when it comes to reflectors in terms of understanding yourself. So moving on the signature of a reflector is surprise. So they're really here to be full of joy and carefree. And there's always something new to sense and experience when they're taking in all of this around them. So they got this signature of surprise when they're seeing the possibility in others and the world. And they're staying in wonder and awe and When they're in the right place and they're in the right environment, that's when they can really experience this surprise. And I like to think of it more like delight, but it is called surprise. The not self is what is often experienced as a reflector. And this is disappointment and it's hard to know the possibility and potential of people and of humanity and of your environment and not see it fulfilled. That's disappointing. And right now we also live in a world that. So quickly and doesn't respect your need for time to make decisions. So that's something that can also create disappointment when you're pressured into making decisions quickly, reflectors can also become clingy or dependent on a person who introduces them to a new place or a community. And that can also create disappointment in that person, in the relationship and in the community. So just something to be mindful about when you're experiencing disappointment, that's the not-self. The reflector aura. I think the aura is so fascinating. It's called a sampling aura, but the aura is different in that it protects reflectors. So yes, you're very open, but your openness is protected in a way that other types aren't, it's like Teflon, right? Nothing really sticks to it. I heard this analogy from Ra I believe it is. Where it's like, if you are skipping a stone across the water, it's like that where the energy is like the stone, but it never quite breaks the surface. And I mean, I guess technically if you're skipping a stone, it does break the surface eventually. But for this analogy, it's just the skipping, the surface part. So it just like skips along your aura. So it's like that with reflectors where they're sampling aura picks up little bits and Pieces as it skips along, but it doesn't fully absorb it or fully take it in. So despite the fact that your centers are fully open, you're not more vulnerable than other types. You're not delicate. You are not fragile. You are very resilient and you're designed to be this way. It allows you to sample the energy without taking in too much. I like to imagine this aura actually is like a UFO. I don't know why, but if you imagine a mirrored UFO, you can barely even see the UFO sometimes because it's covered in a reflective surface. So it's reflecting everything around it. But it can go in all these directions and zoom up and down and over and sample different areas and then just zoom off. So it doesn't have to stay in one place or take in that energy. And by staying in one place, that's just the analogy of the UFO. I'm thinking about that energetically. I'm not necessarily thinking of reflectors moving all over the place. I don't think that would be great for them. Some level of consistency is really helpful. Reflectors are here to objectively share the wisdom from what they have sampled. So their aura helps them sample and they're here to share it. You help others to see themselves and their potential. You help humanity move towards a cooperative, peaceful collective. You take a stand for justice. And what is right. Justice is a big part of the reflector purpose. Reflectors are here to be accepting of others and to reflect the truth. And they're here to teach the rest of us that what we often judge as good or bad in the world is really just our diversity. And to me, this has a big feeling of the gate 15, which is the love of humanity or extremes. And so we have a lot of judgment often of we think things are good and we think things are bad, but from a different perspective or in a different way, it might not be so reflectors are here to teach us about that judgment. Reflectors are the guardians of humanity. I like this terminology as opposed to the Canary in the coal mine. So there's often this analogy when we talk about reflectors of the Canary in the coal mine, I don't like this analogy. So if you're not familiar with it, what it means is in coal mines workers used to bring a caged Canary down into the coal mine. Sometimes toxic gases could accumulate in mines and they would kill a lot of people because it's this slow creep and you don't realize until people are just dropping dead because they've reached like a critical level of gas, right? So to stop this, they would bring a caged Canary and the gasses would kill the Canary before it killed the workers. So as soon as they saw the Canary drop dead, they knew they had, a couple of minutes to get everybody out, to be safe. So that would save a lot of lives and that's great for the workers, not so great for the Canary. But I don't like it when it comes to talking about reflectors because reflectors are not here to sacrifice themselves, to save the rest of us. That's just not their purpose. They're not here to drop dead or to be miserable because the community is so terrible. And then we can be like, oh yeah. Wow. The community's not doing so well, thanks for warning us. That's not what they're here for. So I like to look at them as guardians of humanity in the sense that they reflect and they can help us, but they're not here to be sacrificed. And currently there's a bit of a reflector Renaissance happening. So I mentioned earlier that they are said to be the oldest energy type, and they really lived in harmony with nature and with the cosmos, the planets, you know, all of that energy. And it's really starting to come back to that. And it's about the reflector coming back to their own center. It's about appreciating your own unique power, your perspective, and your wisdom, and you're here to help society evolve into a new way of being. So you can look more into the age of Aquarius. If you're interested in that. I think that lines up with this, do some Googling if you're interested in terms of astrology and this new age that we're moving into, or have moved into, depending on who you talk to, or depending on who you learned from. But I think also as we go into this 20 27 evolution of hopefully there being more peace in this world that reflectors will help guide us and become the hearts of our community. Ra talks about imagining a future with reflectors for hire, where you could just hire or a reflector to come into an environment and whoever hired them could observe the reflector and would know what's going on in that environment from how the reflector was. And I think that would be so cool to have reflectors that are that tuned into themselves and the environment and have them be so appreciated and so valued for their gift of reflecting. Reflectors also have a gift for reflecting the program. So again, this is a weird kind of human design term. It's really about the cosmos, right? The program, the celestial weather, the planetary transits, You're really here to know them and to understand them and to watch the process, if it feels right to you, You don't have to do this, but it can be really interesting for you to better understand the planetary transits. Again, if it's something that you're called to, and there's this idea that you're not actually here to understand other people, necessarily projectors are here to know other people. You're here to know the program and its effect on people. So it's like you're here to know the planetary transits and how those are affecting others. So it's very valuable for you to understand the transits and how they're affecting the community. And then how the community's affecting you or how the transits are affecting you. We talk a lot about reflectors as needing to be in the right community. And yes, that's true, but it's not just about the people and their individual designs. It's also about the program effecting the people in the community and how that affects you. So it can be really helpful for reflector to understand. That the right community is under the influence of the program. You were designed to understand the conditioning that everyone lives within the community. And one last thing that I enjoy that Ra says about reflectors. I don't always love things that he says, but he says, don't let others tell you who you are, do your own discovery. So discover the planets and the transits and the effect that they have on you yourself. Don't let other people tell you how this planet is affecting you. And yes, of course, as you learn, you're probably going to learn from other teachers. But do your own discovery and with it, something that can help is getting a human design ephemeris. So I'll leave a link down below to a free one that I've found. There's paid ones as well. And I do want to note, because we talk, I'm not going to talk about it in this podcast, but we do talk about the lunar transit and this ephemeris only has one entry per day, so it's not going to be at the detailed level of time. And it's only going to show one lunar transit per day. And the moon moves two to three times per day. So it's not going to be super detailed, but it can help you to see larger patterns and larger transits. And if you're new to human design and you're just like, absolutely not, that's way too much for me to look at. No worries. You do not have to at all, but it can be something interesting to look into. Thank you so much for listening. Next week, we are getting into reflector strategy. And what does it actually mean to wait a lunar cycle? What does that look like? What do you do when you can't wait a lunar cycle? Why environment is important to reflectors and what to sort of do about that. We're going to talk about reflectors and work reflectors and health, and what reflectors actually do reflect because it's not everything. So that's coming at you next week. Make sure to tune in. Thank you so much for listening to this week's episode. If you know a reflector, please share this with them because the more we can understand them, the more they can understand themselves, the better we all are, the better they can do their job. The better we can support them so if you know, someone send this their way and I hope you have a lovely week I will see you in the next episode.