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Human Design Gate 50: The Gate of Values

This is the energy of establishing the right values and responsibilities for your tribe or community. (When anyone in Human Design refers to “tribe”, it means the chosen family, your blood and chosen relations that you live among. Each person’s “tribe” looks different.)



The Gate of Values is the energy of creating or stirring values, laws and rules.


This gate’s energy creates and dictates the rules for a group for its survival and best interest.

They ensure the group is well fed, and cares about their survival.


These rules are all about making sure the tribe is cohesive and safe.


This gate has an instinctive knowing that groups are only as healthy as each member and can easily spot fears that “destabilise” a group. This gate can be a bit conservative and traditional and may want to keep things as they are to maintain stability. Or they may challenge the “laws” that no longer serve the group.


They are very influential and persuasive and can make people obey the rules and to care about the group even with people who don’t normally care for others.


This gate has an intuition about what is fair and just for the group (it is located in the Spleen centre which is associated with intuition). This gate is a natural law maker. It could be about spiritual or universal laws as well.



Low expression of this gate:

The fear of responsibility is a big theme here. You may fear taking on the responsibility for a whole group, or you may fear failing the family or the community and not being able to take care of them. You may feel guilty, this gate is sometimes referred to as the guilt gate or you might guilt trip others.


The low expression may cause you to stay in groups even when they are not healthy for you. You might experience burnout by caring for others beyond your energetic capacity. You may be persuaded into beliefs that are not authentic to you. This may cause inner confusion and burn out.


You may live out fear, poor boundaries or anger in groups.


Sometimes you may fall into doing whatever it is to survive, perhaps going against your morals. If you don’t take care of yourself, then you may inherently be teaching others that that is ok for them to do so too.


You may become too strict or too traditional with the rules of the group where you are demanding they obey. Or you will not evolve the rules with modern needs. From a Gene Keys perspective, the Shadow frequency is corruption. This is about a corruption in our brain’s ability for data processing due to fear entering the process. This is how our social systems also become corrupt, with corrupt human motivation. Corrupt cops, corrupt politicians, etc, are essentially motivated by a certain fear.


In the repressive nature of the Shadow, it is: overloaded. This is the energy of feeling overwhelmed by the weight of the world, its corruption and the effort to protect their loved ones. “Only when the deep fear is faced can their creativity force an outlet for them to transcend the system.” - Richard Rudd, Gene Keys


In the reactive nature of the Shadow, it is: irresponsible. This is the energy of taking advantage of the system and utilizing hierarchy for selfish gain. This energy does not feel accountable for the results of their actions. These are the industrialists, profit-driven business people and the like.


This time of year has a lot of gates where the low expression has fear override our decision making and actions, because the Sun goes through all of the Spleen Gates.



Photo by Yoav Aziz on Unsplash

High expression of this gate:

This gate opens within you a feeling of being here to change the world in a big way. You are here to fairly and justly create and enforce rules that serve the group. You know how to lovingly communicate the rules to a group. You take care of yourself and you lead by example.


Can be exceptionally gifted in cooking, especially if you have Gate 48 defined as well.

There is great potential with this energy to teach about spiritual or universal laws.


From a Gene Keys perspective, the Gift frequency for this gate is equilibrium. Each of us has the coding in our genes to be able to practice peace and harmony. We can experience peace as in, inner peace but also peace with others on a global scale. When you are vibrating in this frequency of the Gift of the 50th key, you can bring peace to whatever social groups you are part of, business or family, etc.


The Siddhi frequency is harmony. “Equilibrium can be lost, but harmony is constant and infinite. Harmony is the true nature of the universe and of everything in it.” - Richard Rudd, Gene Keys


In the Siddhi, we are no longer speaking about human to human harmony, but harmony in our universe as a whole. Experiencing harmony with all that is alive, and all that has passed, dissolving any sense of separateness. In the i’Ching, hexagram 50 is referred to as The Cauldron. It represents a vessel for which mixing and Alchemy of spiritual energies occurs.


Systems change lens:

Today's systems change lens is actually going to be a biography of someone who devoted his life towards peace. Johan Galtung is a name that I saw pop up a lot in my LinkedIn feed earlier this year. My mentors and respected friends in the foresight / futures field shared stories of his impact on them, as their professor and inspiration.


He was deemed the father of Futures studies and Peace & Conflict studies. Ironically, he had the same birthday (October 30th) as the United Nations which was established when he was 15 years old.


He established the Peace Research Institute Oslo, founded the Journal of Peace Research in 1964. In 1969, he became the first Professor of Peace Research at the University of Oslo.

Some of his commentary throughout his career was focused on the critique of how nation states weren’t upholding the right values for peace and for the survival of people or governance systems such as communism, capitalism, fascism, and imperialism.


It seems like he wrote a lot about the societal rules of engagement, and the values that various societies should and shouldn’t uphold.


Richard Rudd feels that social hierarchy amongst human beings is the source of the shadow of corruption:


“…social hierarchies create a climate of deep division among human beings, since they give birth to comparison, which in turn leads to greed, desire, jealousy and inevitably social corruption. The human tendency to operate in hierarchies derives from our need to compete with each other, which comes from an older part of our brain that favours individual survival, or at best tribal survival. The Shadow frequency is created out of these archaic aspects of human awareness that are based on fear. However, other possibilities exist as the human brain thankfully continues to evolve. At the level of the gift frequency, this 50th Gene key sees an entirely new reality for human social interaction, one which is currently in the very earliest stage of manifesting in the world around us.” - Gene Keys


As I consider a colonization, genocide, and apartheid, I can see how this plays out. We can see how when one group of people tries to establish its hierarchical power over another group, violence erupts, harmony is distorted and breaks down. Who gets the right to the land? Whose ancestral lands is it? Whose religion is more powerful than the other? Who gets to profit off of the natural resources of a particular area?

These are questions that we might all be considering as we watch the news these days.


Reflection prompts for you:

  • Is there a tribe, team or group (e.g. family) I am a part of where I disagree with the values we live by?

  • What values would you rather instill and live by?

  • Are there things that you have taken on responsibility for that really shouldn't be your responsibility?

  • Are you taking care of the ‘wrong’ people?

  • Are there people that I love that I could do more for, but I'm afraid of taking responsibility for them?

  • Am I worried that if I don't take care of others, then I won't have a tribe to survive with?



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