Gate Overview
Active withdrawal and the transformation of a weak position into a strength.
Drive
I remember or not. Sharing lessons of the past.
Gate 33 marks the end of a cycle, and built into all endings is a moment of silence for considering every aspect of the experience. This is where your need to be alone comes from. Retreat for you arises in that moment of uncertainty between the completed experience and a new one, a pause that allows you to reflect on what to take forward while you renew your strength. It is in the quiet moments of contemplation that the most valuable lessons, stored in the depths of Collective memory (Gate 13), will come to the surface. In Gate 33 your need for privacy is joined by the Collective's voice of "I remember." It is also your nature to share the lessons of experience and reveal its truths. The experience can be one of your own, or another's, or even that of a group of people; the process is the same. When the time is ripe, you will be asked to share your wisdom which then becomes part of the greater community and humanity's evolving consciousness. Like the Prodigal, you mature over your lifetime, and your realm of influence expands as you move through each cycle of experience. Without Gate 13 you may not have a sense of the right timing for sharing your lessons.
We started last night with the collective process, with these collective gates of communication. This morning we went to the process of seeing the individual process from the individual gate of Communication to the individual gate of Identity, to express the identity. This afternoon we will take a look at the two collective gates of Identity. We are going to begin with the abstract process, with the 33, and follow with the logic process in the 31. The channel 33/13 is the channel of the Prodigal, it is the channel of the Witness. The identity of the abstract process is rooted in what we call reflection and remembrance. Reflection and remembrance is all part of this 13/33. The voice of the 33rd gate is not a voice that says, "I know I can contribute." This is a voice that says, “I remember" or "I don’t remember". This is the remembrance that takes place at the end of an abstract process, and the 33rd gate is one of the three gates of Aloneness. The 12th gate, the 40th gate and the 33rd gate. These are the three gates of Aloneness. The 33rd gate is the gate of Privacy.
Whenever I am dealing with abstract people, whether they have this gate or not, or the 13, I always remind them that in order for them to truly make sense out of their live, they have to have time in which they reflect. At the end of each day, at the end of each ongoing process, that they make an auric space for themselves where they are not being influenced so that they can have an opportunity to reflect on the experience that they have been through. This 33rd gate Retreat is the gate of Privacy. It is the privacy that says, "I will not be able to remember everything unless I am left alone so that I can reflect on this process, and then I will be able to remember that and in remembering that, I share my reflection with you. The 33rd gate, at its mystical level, is the gate of revelation. The unconscious 33 can speak of an unconscious remembrance that emerges out of the unconscious, and as such can have a deep mystical impact.
Above the lines in retreat it says, Active withdrawal - this is not passive withdrawal, this is not running away. This is not a gate that says, "I want to be alone because I have to hide." This is a gate that says, "I need to be alone in order to survive. I need to be alone in order to be clear." – and the transformation of a weak position into a strength. Every abstract person is at their weakest point at the moment that an experience ends. This is the weakest point for an abstract person because their temptation is to jump into the next experience without reflecting on what they have been through. What happens to so many abstract people is that they keep on repeating the same experience and that is not what the abstract process is about. It is about having an experience, reflecting on it, recognizing its fundamental worth and then going on to the next experience. Thus turning a weak position into a strength. The weakest position of the abstract being is the moment that the experience is over and it is at that point that privacy, separateness, aloneness and the opportunity for reflection is essential. This is a minor point.
The abstract process being what it is, you can never know anything while you are in it. An abstract person can never know anything about the experience while they are in it. That is why the key to the abstract process is the 46/29, which begins with the concept that you have made a commitment, and in that commitment you are in the right place at the right time. The 29 makes a commitment and the 46 says, “I am in the right place at the right time." As long as you accept that, it does not matter what is going on in the experience, because you can know nothing about it while you are in it. You can only learn from the experience when it is over. So, very important for abstract people to reflect on their experience and not simply to collect experiences.
Line Descriptions
Line 1 ⌇ Avoidance
The first line, the foundation of any hexagram, says ‘Avoidance.’ After all, this is the framework of the identity of the abstract person: avoid everyone until you have reflected, and then you can share your remembrance. Then you can offer your witnessing. That is what it is about, offering the witnessing. The wisdom in a weak position - weak position meaning that you finish an experience, that is your weakest point – to recognize that survival demands complete withdrawal. Pulling away is the key to the nature of Retreat. Retreat is there to build strength and abstract strength is built through reflection. Without reflection one can be a fool over and over again. It is okay to be a fool once. If you reflect on it and understand the nature of what you have experienced, you don’t have to be the fool the second time.
Mars in detriment, Where courage is just plain foolishness. This is a person that will not reflect but jump to the next thing. Or, in the sense that it is the identity out of the Throat "I will not reflect on my experience and remember it in depth. I will simply babble it all out the moment that it is over." The moment that the experience is over, the abstract person does not know anything about it. Whatever they babble out will only be an aspect of the wave that they have been through, and not the proper reflection. In the white book, Retreating when one realizes that one is in a weak position. Again, at the end of the experience is the weakest point. And on the other side, Unable to retreat when overwhelmed by stimulation. This is the key to that. The abstract person that is pulled from one experience immediately to the next. This is always going to be a problem for them. When you are an abstract person and you are in the middle of a process, and all of a sudden there is an emergency - if you are drawn away in that moment from what you are doing, you lose the value of everything that you have been doing, because you won’t be able to reflect on it. If you can’t reflect on it when the experience is over, you will not remember it. You will not be able to bring out of that the necessary qualities for the remembrance.
In the relationship between the hexagram and the genetic codon structure we have three genetic codons that are called stop codons. Stop codons literally are the punctuation points at the end of a genetic expression. Two of the genetic stop codons are in the abstract process in the Throat. We will see in the 56th gate the abstract voice that says, "I believe" or "I don’t believe". This is a stop codon. In other words, that the conceptual idea is nothing that goes any further than its capacity to be able to express and share it. When you come to the 33rd hexagram, it is a stop codon and so is the 12. Here the process comes to an end when the reflection is complete. We saw that the introspection of the first line is the recognition of the value of privacy and its power, because one can grow in that
Line 2 ⌇ Surrender
When you get to the second line, you get to a projected field and you get to somebody who projects outwards that they are private. They are projecting outwards that they are the reflecting ones. They are projecting outwards that they are the ones that remember. Remember, the nature of the paper tiger. They may or may not remember, they may or may not enjoy their privacy. All of these things are possibilities in their process. Jupiter exalted, The recognition that surrender to superior forces - superior forces are anything that is going to pull you into a new experience. After all, the abstract being is trapped by the experiential wheel. These are people that are really on the wheel. There is this constant pressure on them to enter into another experience, - can be an opportunity to expand one’s own strength and eventually triumph. In other words, it is better to wait and avoid a temptation and build up one’s reflective capacity, and that may lead to success in the future.
In the white book, Embracing powerful forces in order to lay the foundation for future success. But look, because this is a projected field you have people who are saying "Leave me alone," but they do not necessarily know why. I mean, they know that they need to be left alone at the end of an experience, but it is not like they are actually using that to get into a deep reflective process. They may, or they may not. What they recognize genetically is that it is better for them to be apart, to have this aloneness and the opportunity to be separate than it is to get hooked up into another experience. This is the genetic structure in that. Remember, this is a stop codon saying, "o.k., no more." These are people that can be very withdrawn, without that necessarily being an advantage. These are the people that can complain about having to be alone for example.
Neptune in detriment, Unlike the reasoned and calculated surrender above, the deeper and personal surrender. The feeling that one’s original position was a delusion, and the impressionability that makes might right. In the white book, A public embrace of powerful forces and a private resentment of their power. There is a deep resentment when one cannot complete one’s process and the moment that powerful forces are there and pulling on you to remember, if you are not clear - in this line we are dealing with projection - you can really feel like, "Oh, that whole experience was a waste." Imagine what this is like for somebody who is going through an experience and when they finish that experience, before they really have a chance to reflect on it in order to see what its value really was, they get pulled by other forces, they get pulled to remember and share their witnessing. What they say does not carry the clarity of their experience.
In that moment, by not having impact on those that are pulling that out, they can feel like, "Well, that whole experience was a waste because I did not really get to see what it was. My reflection on that is not of value,” and they put that out into the world and get smashed for that by the outside because they are not paying any attention to it. This is all about the process of development, of being able to project these things outwards, but every time that you have a second line you always have to see that you are going to be challenged in that process. Anybody who is projecting out is going to meet a very strong challenge coming back at them. The 33rd gate, because it is the gate of Privacy, is the gate of being closed in, in that sense. That is, being closed in a room, or somebody that is forced to go into retreat by being sent to jail or by ending up in a monastery, or retreat through illness and states of paralysis. In the second line you see people that are locking themselves up in a room and when you get to the fifth line, you can see that the outside world will lock you up in the room.
Line 3 ⌇ Spirit
With the third line we reach the end of the lower trigram process. Here the bond that is being made and broken is the bond of privacy. These are people that will naturally seek out their privacy, that is part of their process, but it will not be like the second line which is just focused on that. In the third line, there is the beginning of the recognition that there is the other - it is the beginning of that process. It is not really there until the fourth line. In the capacity to adapt is the recognition that one has to come out of the privacy when it cannot just be held back inside. The attitude that turns retreat into victory. The victory comes after the reflection. This is the whole beauty. The weakest point is at the end of the experience, the power comes after the reflection, and then the real value of the remembrance can bring about victory, the completion of this process.
Jupiter exalted. The responsible and principled retreat based on preservation, but with the determination to persevere. In other words, "Yes, leave me alone now. I have to think about all of this, but I’ll see you tomorrow." This is not "Leave me alone, I never want to see you again." This is the other side of this line with Mars in detriment, A lack of responsibility in retreat. The bridge burner. "I have reflected on all of this. I never want to have anything to do with you again. Over." These people go into retreat, reflect and break whatever the bond was. This is the kind of person that says "Leave me alone now. I want to go home and think. I will see you tomorrow." And the next day, they will call you up and say, "I don’t want to see you anymore, I have thought about it." In other words, they can just simply break the bond at that point. But this line is called ‘Spirit.’ The Spirit that lies within the whole nature of Retreat is that these people are essential for us. If these people do not tell us about the experience, we don’t learn. So there is also a part of us that is trying to get them out of that retreat so that they share their secrets, their reflections with us. After all, this is a collective gate. There is a lot of pressure on these people to share what it is that they have inside of them.
In the white book, Privacy as a path to success or A drive for privacy that will cut off its relationships, often abruptly. All of this is due to the nature of reflection. These people know that they have to go into retreat and they know that they have to reflect, but the moment that the reflection is not positive for them, it is very easy for them to break off the contact. These people can be disliked for that. There is the moment where they’ll cut you off and you don’t get access to their remembrance, to their experience anymore.
Line 4 ⌇ Dignity
When you come to the upper trigram and again, dealing with a collective channel, a collective process and identity. The collective is rooted in sharing and when you get to the upper trigram, you get to the transpersonal lines in which they are very much aware that there is a harmonic gate at the other side. The harmonic gate to the 33 is the 13, the Fellowship of Man, is the gate of Secrets. There are secrets in the 13 that the 33 can be aware of, and recognize that it has to get access to these secrets. When it gets access to those secrets through reflection, it can then reveal them. The 4th line of the 33 is as close as you come to finding a line that is religious. I did not say spiritual and I did not say mystical, I said religious. The whole abstract process is rooted in belief and this 4th line, which is about externalization and about being one-tracked, is called ‘Dignity.’ A lack of turmoil in retreat.
Pluto exalted, The underlying faith in resurrection that turns retreat into an opportunity for renewal and regeneration. This is the kind of retreat where people say, "I have to go and meditate. I have to go and be silent in order to be empowered." In that silence or in that retreat, they seek out that power in order for them to feel better about what it is that they have gone through as an experience in life. But the terminology itself: renewal, regeneration, resurrection, all of these processes, when you get to the Neptunian detriment, Without the guiding light of resurrection, the inevitable dissolution that leads to degeneration. These people are very fixed on being able to see that what they can reflect on can truly be of value. They understand that they have a responsibility, genetically speaking, to be a witness. There is an aspect of them - see the resonance to the first line, first principle: avoid the outside - that needs this deep reflective process in their life. They will be the kind of people that get involved in all kinds of different levels of meditation.
In terms of the white book, The healthy retreat for regeneration. “I need to get away from everything. I need to go through my process and I think things out, and I need to make sense out of my life.” This is a common attribute for these people. If they can’t make sense out of their life, out of that process when they are in retreat, unless they have faith they are going to get depressed. Unless they have faith, they will feel like the whole thing is just a waste, and they can become very sad people. These people really need some cosmic level of hope, even if it is not true that the time in their aloneness is of value for them. They will seek out formulas for that like sitting in a church on Sundays, getting down on their knees on Fridays, going up on the Himalayas on any given day. All of these rituals are there to go through this process of being separate and at the same time, in stillness, with the hope that in this quietness somehow life can be resolved.
Line 5 ⌇ Timing
You know that the fifth line operates in a wave that we call ‘the seducer and the seduced.’ So it is all about seduction. It is one of the things to recognize about the nature of all fifth lines, they all are deeply related to the question of timing. This line personifies that in its name. This is the line of ‘Timing.’ The fifth line is always getting projected on. So in that sense they are getting projected on that they are the seducer. But because of the projection coming from the outside, it does not mean that they are ready to fulfill that projection at the time when the projection is there. There is always this pressure of the 5, where there is this projected field on the outside which is trying to pull them into some kind of response that they may or may not be ready for. If you have a line of being private, and you have a child with the 33.5, you have a parent that says, "Why don’t you stay in your room and play by yourself and close the door?" It is being projected on you that you need that privacy and you need that withdrawal. This is a projected field, and a lot of 33.5 children get locked up in their rooms very often. It is projected on them that they need to be alone and private. Due to this projection it is even projected on them that they are not really social, or capable of it.
‘Timing.’ Pluto exalted, As important as the timing itself is the ability to keep secret one’s intentions until the appropriate moment. This is the magic that remembrance can bring in the right timing. Everything about this process is about reflection: going through it and completing it, and only then the capacity to be able to act on that and verbalize that, as in this particular case. What that means is that until the reflection is done, you cannot give in to the pressure from the outside. You can’t. Only in the right moment, only when the reflection is done, then you have the power to universalize that reflection. In the white book, The ability to keep one’s intentions secret. You keep the secret until you know. In other words, the reflective abstract person is always at risk when they try to involve others in that process, because they do not have their own opportunity to go through it and see it clearly. They can only express themselves when they are ready.
Jupiter in detriment, A tendency to want others to participate in the selection of the timing, which can lead to confusion. In the white book, Without a sense for timing, letting others in on the secret prematurely with resulting confusion. Let us say that you are reflecting on how you experience your work day by day and you recognize, as you reflect each day at the end of your work, that you really do not like your job. Day by day, each reflection brings you closer to that point where you are really clear about that. This is not a work for me. I have reflected on that. I am clear about that. At the moment that you are really clear, you can quit your job. But only at that moment. That is the exalted.
The detriment works in another way: You have this ongoing process on reflecting about the quality of your workplace and you do not like it. Then you start talking to somebody that you work with and you say to them, “You know. I don’t really like this job and I am really thinking that maybe this is not for me, and maybe I should do something else." In that moment of seeking out somebody else’s reflection, experience or guidance, in that moment anything is possible. That person can have a friend who needs your job, can go to the boss and say, "Louise is not happy. She is thinking of quitting." Louise goes home that night, goes through her reflective process and realizes, "I really do like my job. I just have bad days." She comes into the office the next morning and the boss comes over and says, "You are fired. We do not like to work with people who hate their job." Whether this event is good or bad for Louise is open. This is not about a moral question. This is simply about mechanics. There are going to be these people who will always let others in. They just do. Sometimes that will be very confusing and sometimes that confusion will work its way through. It is not about whether this is good or bad. It is just about recognizing that that is the mechanic. To recognize that something is a mechanic is in order so you can come to grips with accepting yourself. If you are somebody that cannot get to the point where you have the right timing, and you know that that timing is going to be disturbed by others. At least, you can see that that is correct for you. It is not about changing it. It is about recognizing what is correct for you. The moment that you recognize that that mechanism is you and correct for you, the moment you surrender to that, you will find out what its value is. It is not without value. It is just one of many ways in which this reflective process works.
Line 6 ⌇ Disassociation
We get to the 6th line, to the transition line. The formula for the 6th line is that they are not necessarily going to be fulfilling the potential of the gate. There is something that is of greater importance to them, because the 6th line is not simply transpersonal in the sense that it understands the harmonic gate — in this case it knows the secrets of the other end. It is more than that. It wants to see the whole complete circuit, it wants to see that the reflection covers everything, so that out of that reflection can be established the proper remembrance, so that humanity can be guided. After all, this is at the root of what we call history and philosophy, all of this information, all of this capacity to be guided by past experience, so much of it is rooted here at the end of this abstract process in the 33rd gate. We have a line here of ‘Disassociation.’ The ability to let go. This is a kind of withdrawal in which the retreat can be so complete that, in that sense, these people can walk through the world and be totally disconnected from it. The nature of reflection can be nothing more than an ongoing personal process, because no reflection is really of value to the totality unless it can be a reflection that can add to the experience of humanity, and humanity will accept that as a way to see themselves.
In the white book, The ability to let go in retreat, to enjoy privacy. These people can enjoy privacy for its own sake and feel no pressure to be brought out of their privacy. They can be private all the time. These are the kind of people that are private when they are public or when they intimate. They can always be private. These are people that will always hold things inside of them because there is no sense in revealing what they remember unless it can make a contribution to society. We have this funny twist that goes in the abstract. It is very beautiful. When we are looking at the 56.6, at the abstract belief process — "I can stimulate you with my belief" — we see that it goes to the 31.1 which is the gate of Influence, the gate of saying "I lead" or "I do not lead". So it goes from the abstract 56.6 to the logical leadership. Here in the 33.6, the very next line is the 7.1. The 7 and the 31 form the channel of logical leadership together. In other words, both aspects of the abstract process, both the mental process and its identity, what they really want most of all is that it is just not another idea. That it is just not another experience. That it can be of value to guide humanity into the future. You see, human beings always want to be what they want. Logical people want to be able to reflect on the past, and abstract people want to be able to project into the future. Here in this ‘Disassociation,’ there is the capacity to simply just let go of all that because unless that you have a reflection that is going to guide humanity and lead them, it is not worthwhile. I am born into a generation that has Pluto in this gate. I have my design Pluto in 33.6, in disassociation. This letting go completely. I lived for three and a half years totally alone and wild without any sense or need to go back in, not only that, but with all the information that was going on inside of me there was no need to share it with anybody. Because at that point it just did not seem to be something to give to humanity. Not that I was thinking in those terms. The reality is that when you get to the 6th line, there is this "Why should I bother? Why should I trust in this?" And as we see, the logic is trying to go to the abstract to see that its projection into the future can be experienced and recognized for its value, and the abstract wants to project into the future and wants everybody to know that its experience can really be of value to the collective. This is this twist that goes on in the collective process.
Every 6th line carries within it what some people call a potential for satori, or transcendence. We have many words for that. All 6th lines are about that. What that really means is that the 6th line has a much tougher criteria for living out its nature than the other lines. In other words, it is much more concerned with larger principles. As such, it can end up being transcendent, wise and of value to society as a whole. But, being what it is, the vast majority of human beings never really get to live out their 6. They tend to be the opposite of what the hexagram says. An enormous amount of arrogance is projected onto people with 6th lines from the outside. You can see that in the 44.6, in the nature of aloofness. There is this sense of that they are not really participating.
If you hook into somebody’s 6th line in an electro-magnetic connection, it is not like hooking into any of the other lines. You do not even know if they are really responding to you. They may. They may not. It depends on whether the hook-up that they get from you can go beyond into many other things. I never have seen a design that did not impress me. I am not saying that to be quaint. This is the nature of what it is. The fact that we all do not live out what we are, that is another story. Very few people live out the potential that is there in their design. They live out the potential of their conditioning. Not only do they not get an opportunity to live out the true nature of the 6, they do not even get to live out themselves first. You can’t get there anyway. It is quite a process. A 33.6, at the end of their reflection process can say, "Never again!" as a kind of value for humanity.
The resources in the HDKB were pulled from several places, including The Definitive Book of Human Design by Lynda Bunnel, The Book of Destinies by Chetan Parkyn/Carola Eastwood, and various other source material recordings and PDF transcripts of Ra's lectures. If you find value in this content we suggest supporting the original creators.