Will you recognize your inner critic?
We're transiting Gate 18 from September 27 - October 1
WE DON’T SEE THINGS AS THEY ARE, WE SEE THEM AS WE ARE
This Solar Transit brings a potential awareness of what isn’t right in the world around us. It’s an energy of challenging what doesn’t work, and, what could make the world a better place for us all.
Do you recognize your ‘inner critic’?
Autumn has arrived in the Northern Hemisphere with leaves and seeds falling to the ground. Nature is removing what has spoiled to make room for the systematic renewal of life in a never-ending spiral of deterioration and rejuvenation.
Autumn is nature’s way of showing you how beautiful letting go can be.
What can you release in your relationships to make room for new growth? The energy of Gate 18 is like a blueprint for relationships … an awareness of what can be improved.
When you’re dissatisfied with something, chances are it has lost its vitality.
When you’re dedicated to, or in service to, the healing of a relationship it can lead to an awareness of what needs to change.
This awareness, or judgement, encourages your thinking to focus on ways to correct, adjust, or replace what isn’t working. It’s a way of clearing out what isn’t healthy or restoring vitality to something that’s been corrupted.
Your judgments about things are simply patterns that have developed over a lifetime. And, your partner in a relationship may have a different pattern. Your judgments are based on what you like or don’t like and vice versa. It’s all a matter of ‘taste.’
Is it time to have compassion for differences and commit to heal the relationships in our lives? Can you work on what has been spoiled?
I have a dear friend, Kathy, who has this gate in her natal design. We’ve had many discussions about how this awareness shows up in her life. We’ve nicknamed this awareness her gifted critic or the judgmental bastard.
She’s learned to apply this awareness to improve the relationships in her life and to notice how it feels when she turns it in on herself. This knowing allows her to continually grow by releasing what no longer serves her.
THE REAL VOYAGE OF DISCOVERY CONSISTS NOT IN SEEKING NEW LANDSCAPES, BUT IN HAVING NEW EYES. – Marcel Proust
Love Yourself,
Ruth Brennan
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What are Solar Transits?
In Human Design, Solar Transits reflect the impact the Sun is having on humanity as it moves through the Gates and Lines of the Mandala (64 Gates and 384 Lines). Transits are potentials that you may see in others and the world around you, and, may become a part of your experience as well.
Not everyone experiences these energies … and if we do, we experience them filtered through our own unique Human Design.
Would you like more information on Human Design? You’re invited to visit and like my Facebook page Embrace Human Design. Feel free to post comments and ask questions there.

I am a Human Design teacher, guide, and survivor whose path to purpose was forged through profound transformation. In 2012, a Stage 4 lung cancer diagnosis shattered the life I knew—and became the unexpected beginning of a deeper awakening. What followed was a journey through illness, the unraveling of a long marriage, and the quiet rebuilding of a self I had never fully met. Human Design found me in the midst of that unraveling—during a time of deep searching, blackouts of identity, and a hunger to remember who I really was. What began as a personal tool for survival and self-reclamation soon became a lifelong path. Human Design gave me language for what I had always felt but couldn’t explain. It helped me understand my energy, my wounds, my gifts—and how to live in alignment with my true nature.
Today, I teach Human Design not as a system of labels or rules, but as a living, breathing map back to the Self. My work is rooted in lived experience—because I know what it’s like to lose your way, and what it takes to come home to yourself. I specialize in guiding others through times of transition, awakening, and reinvention—helping them understand the unique blueprint they were born with, so they can navigate life with clarity, self-trust, and deep compassion. My gift lies in transmuting adversity into wisdom—and walking with others as they remember who they truly are.
Ruth Brennan is an IHDS Certified Professional Analyst, Certified BG5 Career & Business Consultant and Certified Teacher of Human Design. She currently lives in the beautiful Pacific Northwestern area of the U.S.