Two surfers at the beach Not-Self Human Design

What is the Not-Self?

June 12, 2015 By Wade

Funny little name, the “not-self”.

How can any part of us be not-self?

The term “not-self” is simply a way to refer to the type of energy we are emitting when we are out of balance.

People as Living Frequency

In every moment, we are a living frequency that is part of everything. We are connected with the world around us, interacting with it at all times. We are affecting our environment, and it is affecting us.

As auric beings, we also influence each other. When I stand within your aura, we can feel each other and the influences each of us carries in our frequency. There are harmonious and disharmonious frequencies.

Living in Balance With Life

When we are going against the flow and living out of harmony, our frequency becomes jagged, off-putting, and overall, difficult to be around. This is what is referred to as “not-self”. We have all experienced ourselves and nearly everyone in our life in this uncomfortable frequency, which brings up feelings of anger, frustration, bitterness, and disappointment. The true self, however, brings out feelings of peace, satisfaction, success, and surprise.

An area where the not-self influences us deeply is our decision-making process. Our decisions are driven by feelings of lack, of thinking we are not good enough and we need to make up for it. When you begin to see and understand this part of yourself, you may be surprised by how much of your life is motivated by these unconscious fears.

When we are living in balance with Life, our frequency is sweet. It feels good to be around. We all know this and experience it often. It’s graceful and true in the sense that we are simply being ourselves moving with the flow of Life.

How do we Know when we are out of Alignment?

When we spend a lot of time in our not-self frequency, we run into lots of resistance. There are so many ways that Life will try to tell you that you are out of alignment. The question is are we paying attention?

Understanding Through the Human Design Lens

This is where the Human Design chart comes in handy. Imagine having a map to help you recognize the areas where you struggle the most and how to navigating through life experiences by staying true to yourselves. This is a daily subtle shedding of conditioning and aspects of your not-self.

This is not an over-night transformation. You learn the intricacies of your frequency over time. The acceptance you have when you know that life is giving you exactly what you need for your next level of growth is a real grace. This knowing helps tremendously, especially on those challenging days.


By seeing the not-self, we can begin to take a step back from our usual pattern of decision-making and take a moment to breathe into a new awareness of our body and self. Be the witness. We begin to open our perspectives to different ways of navigating life throughout the day. We gain a deeper understanding and appreciation of our body and the unique language it is speaking to us in.

This way, we can observe when we are behaving in a way that causes chaos, rather than harmony. This doesn’t mean that we don’t ever get upset. Sometimes that is in alignment with the flow of Life. The key is to distinguish when we are or are not in alignment. One cue to take notice of how often we are feeling relaxed as ourselves.

We are part of the feed-forward-feed-back loop. When we are living our true frequency there is support from Life. We are nurtured by Life and we trust that we are exactly where we are to be, experiencing exactly the people, situations, and lessons right for our growth and the evolution of our consciousness.