The Indirect Diaries ep.1
I want to preface this series with emphasising the fact: this is my own individual experiment. Everyone’s body is different and unique. What works for me may not work for you. What I have found to be true in my experience might not be true you. Talking about food and dietary habits is always a touchy subject. If you have a history of eating disorders or other body dysmorphia issues, I advise to not read this series. I am not a doctor; nothing I share has scientific evidence or backing. It is purely anecdotal.
I also want to say — my experience with indirect light determination is constantly changing. It seems that as soon as I *think* I’ve figured it out, something else comes right around the corner that changes everything! Treat each piece in this series as a diary entry in real time of what I have discovered during a specific phase of my experiment. These phases and cycles will naturally flux over time.
Articles in series:
ep.1 - 2nd October, 2021.
ep.2 - 29th September, 2022.
ep.3 - 16th May, 2023.
I woke up at 4am this morning to the moonlight streaming into my bedroom. I don’t have curtains, which I should probably fix as I’m not sure whether my neighbours can spy on me. But anyway, this is a regular occurrence (not the neighbours spying, the waking up at 4am) over the last few months. It has only intensified since coming into lockdown here in Sydney. I suppose less influence from the outside world, along with not really working, has allowed my body to adjust to its own schedule.
I was very resistant to PHS (Primary Health System) when finding out about it. Every woman — and perhaps just every person in general — has likely gone through their own body image issues, which for me was an eating disorder during high school. Some things never leave you: I could estimate the calories in pretty much every meal I eat, but it’s not something I think about anymore. Being receptive, I don’t really think that much at all (if you get what I mean).
But anything that comes close to being a “diet” or has any connotation of “restriction” I immediately contract. I controlled my food intake for so long that I just got over it, once overcoming my ED deciding I never want to have to think about food again. It’s fucking exhausting. Since moving past that, I haven’t really had body image issues ever since. Plus, when you realise how incredible these bodies are through the lens of human design, it’s like wow, am I ever grateful for this vehicle looking after me.
Determination and your PHS is dependent on the colour and tonal fixing of your design Sun/Earth. Lower tones (1, 2, 3) will fix the arrow to the left; upper tones (4, 5, 6) will fix the arrow to the right. And then there are six colours. Hot tip: a fast way (relatively) to learn human design is to understand the hexagram structure and six lines in detail. There is a continuity between all 1s, 2s, 3s, etcetera so you begin to grasp resonances quite quickly.
The thing about PHS is that it’s not a diet. It will not tell you what foods to eat, how much to eat. It is about the conditions and circumstances in which you take your food in. You will notice how collectively, we have been conditioned to all eat food in the same way, at the same time, with the same conditions and circumstances. Eating according to your PHS will supposedly nourish your “differentiation” or “uniqueness”. It will also enhance your cognition — strongest sense — which is the tone underlying the colour.
It won’t do shit for you if you are not in the experiment. It’s why Strategy and Authority is hammered into you over and over and over again. I know, it’s like “ENOUGH ALREADY WE GET IT”. But understand that nothing works, none of this information matters unless you are experimenting with S&A. Yes, it’s all intellectually stimulating and exciting to research, and maybe that’s what you would rather do. Although, it is practically impossible to understand certain layers of the knowledge unless you have deconditioned enough through S&A.
The magical thing about having your own authority is that if it says it’s not right for you to experiment with PHS, then you have to honour that. If your sacral goes “u-uh”, then listen to that. If you have emotional authority, you will have to feel this out over time. Whatever authority you have, always refer back to it as your ultimate truth. PHS might be right for you at some point down the road or perhaps it never will be. Both are perfectly okay and correct.
So let’s get into this first episode discussing indirect light. Indirect is 6th colour and upper tone. Whenever we see a six — 6th lines, 6th colour, 6th tone — it is the most mutative and evolved in terms of our history as a species. One always sets the foundation; six is on the edge of something new, something we don’t quite understand.
In this context, if we see it as the most “evolved” digestive system, it can technically digest anything. The upper colours which are based on circumstances means that the food itself is not important, and that when we are transferred (living out our not-self) we will obsess over the food itself, or the conditions in which we take it in.
Indirect light people are described as being “nocturnal eaters”. It immediately didn’t resonate with me — I have always been someone who loves sunlight, who was conditioned to eat bigger meals for breakfast and for lunch than dinner, who has always fallen asleep relatively early. I have never seen myself as someone “nocturnal”, although I have loved the idea of staying up late until 2am creating and writing and eating cereal (the ultimate midnight snack).
What I am constantly reminding myself of is that this system is experimental. Never take anything as truth until you find out for yourself. I am also realising that everyone’s experience with PHS is going to be so incredibly unique, and that we can have very different experiences with the same determination i.e. someone else with indirect light may experience it very differently to myself. Reading over the theory, I realised that this is all just theoretical and that practically applied, it will come out uniquely depending on the individual.
The ironic thing I have found in experimenting with indirect light is that the less I mentally think about it and try to control it, the more my body just aligns to it. I feel like I am watching rather than consciously deciding to live indirect. I was reading Esther Patrizia’s blog post a while back on her experience with colour 1 (called “appetite”, consecutive – eating one thing at a time) which struck a chord with me. To paraphrase, whenever you are forcing your PHS, that is a mental decision and not correct.
So for me, whenever I tried to force myself to eat less during the day, or tell myself “I’m going to start my day when it gets to 4pm”, it backfired, because I was ignoring my body. If you have to ignore your bodily cues, then you are mentally trying to force something which can be incredibly harmful. When I am hungry during the day, I eat. If I am tired at 9pm, I go to sleep. It’s whatever, it’s no big deal.
However, I have found myself eating fewer heavy meals during the day. And going to sleep on a full stomach is paramount. No, it doesn’t mean being stuffed to the brim. But I digest my food best when I have a late dinner — eating even an hour before I go to bed can feel really good to me. I CANNOT go to sleep hungry, on an empty stomach.
In my ED days, I would force myself not to eat anything after 7pm (I had so many strange rules) and I was constantly going to bed incredibly hungry. It was absolutely awful. Lots of diets and traditions encourage having your largest meal for lunch and the smallest for dinner — that might work for someone who is direct light, but as someone who is indirect, eating a large meal in the middle of the day just makes me drowsy and gives me indigestionion.
I also have been waking up at strange hours of the night, or very early in the morning. This is where it gets interesting in terms of differentiation because my initial understanding of indirect light was that I should naturally be staying up late at all hours of the night. Well, instead I find my body still going to sleep rather early — sometimes as early as 9pm — and then waking up between 4 to 5am. So for me, indirect light seems to be the early morning.
I love writing before the sun comes up. All my creativity wants to come out before 7am. I love having a cup of coffee in the early hours and voice messaging my friends who live overseas. I am absolutely obsessed with the morning hours. For others who are indirect light, they might find they are night owls and naturally align to staying up until 3am and sleeping until midday. But that was never really me. And as much as sometimes I like the idea of trying out that identity, my body was not having it. This is my own version and experiment with indirect.
I had so many observations I was going to share but I suppose they will be saved for the next instalment. It’s very early days — it’s only been the last few months that I’ve noticed myself aligning with it. It could potentially be a receptive thing (being quad-right), not “consciously” deciding but ultimately falling into it.
It’s been fun nonetheless. Yes, sometimes I can get quite serious and heretical with some of the knowledge. But also, I think there is just an element of excitement, of fun, of surprise, to live out my differentiation, to go against the collective conditioning. Being yourself is quite the movie to watch.