There are so many different things that I can show you in relationship to Lines. Again, it begins with something that is very important to grasp. That is, the assumption is that you read a Line for its own value, but you can’t. A Line is something that comes alive within the context of whatever the Design happens to be. It requires an understanding of the basic mechanism that’s there in front of you.

The Need to Understand the Design to Understand Lines

Earlier today for me, I was taking a glance at the charts that I was going to look at today. I was assembling them in my program. I began to smile because the fact was that it really didn’t matter what I was looking at, it didn’t matter what I selected, that in understanding the nature of the design, you can weave in the value of any Line. Again, this is really something to grasp. You need to understand the design in order to make sense out of Lines.

When I first started my career, the only way that I could get people to see that there was a potential in this knowledge was that the first several years of my work was mostly about just doing readings. That process of doing readings was very rudimentary; a long way from where I am today after two decades of this.

I just rigidly followed what was there in the Design. When I first began to do readings, I would do these very extended readings where I would go through every Line, all of those things. In essence, I left people pretty much confused. The whole thing about Design is about the surface—seeing the surface, seeing where the dilemma is, seeing where the shadow is, seeing where the not-self lurks. Seeing what is essentially defined so you know what is there that can be trusted, that in being trusted can realize the real potential of the being.

Ponder the Lines One at a Time

It’s here that then you can begin to integrate the Lines; and not all of them. My best advice to you about your own Lines as you ponder them over time is really to do it in that way, one at a time to see how they integrate into your nature, and what that really means for you.

Excerpt from the new release: The Lines of Consequence

Ra Uru Hu was the Human Design System’s founder and messenger. Ra dedicated 25 years of his life to the development and teaching of the System around the world until he passed away in 2011.