Love of Self

Gate 10 of the Human Design system carries the name "Love Of Self," and this entry describes it as the system itself presents it. Human Design is a modern esoteric system, originated in 1987 by Ra Uru Hu (born Alan Robert Krakower, 1948-2011), who presented its content as received teaching rather than as an inherited tradition. It is roughly four decades old and is best read as a contemporary synthesis, not as ancient wisdom or established fact. Ra Uru Hu combined four older systems that had never before been joined: the I Ching supplies the sixty-four gates, the Hindu chakra model the nine centres, the Kabbalistic Tree of Life the connecting channels, and Western astrology the method of calculation.

The gates take their numbers from the King Wen sequence of the I Ching, so Gate 10 corresponds to hexagram 10, Treading. The link is one of numbering and binary structure only: the hexagram belongs to a genuinely ancient Chinese text, while the gate's psychological keynote, here summarised as "Love Of Self", was formulated in the late twentieth century and is not drawn from the classical commentaries. The two meanings are best kept side by side rather than merged.

Within the bodygraph, the composite body-map at the centre of Human Design, Gate 10 is placed in the G/Identity centre, one of the nine centres the system maps onto (and expands from) the seven-centre chakra model. Gates do not act alone in the model: each pairs with another gate to complete a channel joining two centres. It participates in the Channel of Awakening (10-20), which it forms with Gate 20 ("The Present Moment"); the Channel of Exploration (10-34), which it forms with Gate 34 ("Great Power"); and the Channel of Perfected Form (10-57), which it forms with Gate 57 ("Intuitive Clarity"). These placements and pairings are features of Ra Uru Hu's 1987 design and describe the system's internal mechanics; they are presented here as the system's own claims, not as verified facts about human beings.

Human Design's own teaching reads Gate 10, love of self, through its I Ching correspondent, Hexagram 10, Treading, whose received image is walking carefully, even on the tail of a tiger, without being bitten; the system carries that image into a gate concerned with self-acceptance as the basis for authentic conduct, and gives it three channel partnerships, Gate 20, Gate 34 and Gate 57, more than almost any other gate in the bodygraph.