This story starts where most start, how much I don’t know.
I had no idea what the term “aura” is used in our social-media, Gen Z world. It was only after a friend’s young son was talking about it did I clue into what it really means in our current vernacular.
For my benefit, let’s give a quick recap.
“Aura” is a person’s cool factor, star power or unspoken confident swagger. Having aura means you have a natural, undeniable presence and is effortless.
There’s some nuances whereby you can gain aura and also lose it. You lose it by doing something clumsy, embarrassing or uncool. Or the opposite being that you are doing something effortless stylish, smooth and impressive to others. And then of course you can go overboard by trying too hard to look cool or doing something that doesn’t appear natural, and that’s called aura farming.
This actually is something that we talk about in Human Design/HD a lot. In fact it’s the basis for the most important concept which is: Decision-Making Strategy.
In Human Design and BG5 (which is HD’s business cousin), one’s aura is described by one’s Career Type. But before we get to the way HD labels it, I feel it’s better to talk about the aura itself before we provide it a label.
You see, HD can tell you how to maximize your aura without making it look it’s farming. By knowing what your particular, unique aura is, yours being likely difference than mine or the person sitting next to you right now, you can leverage that to always be in the Goldilocks zone of aura.
At the highest level of HD, you are either your complete self, making decision as yourself. Not from the mind, not from the mind chatter that we know comes from everywhere. In the inverse, we also have a state where you are making decisions that aren’t to your own benefit, maybe because of this or that consideration. That’s what HD calls the Not Self.
But making decisions that come “effortlessly” is just the outcome of you being yourself already, effortlessly you. That’s what in HD means living your design, making decisions that aligns with the specific type of aura that is yours, from birth.
And I could imagine that when you’re aura farming or are losing aura points that it’s a direct consequence of not living one’s design and more of your Not Self is coming through.
So with that, we can go back to what are the 4 major types of aura — which is literally your energetic makeup that is unique to you and helps you move around the world more effortlessly or at least maximize the changes you are gaining aura.
Open & Enveloping
I’ll use the paired keynotes to describe each major type, minus the labels which we’ll get to in the end. The first major type of Aura is Open & Enveloping. Keep in mind that these words are chosen to help describe the energetic field, not so much your personality or behaviour is OPEN per se. It’s the energy that is Open & Enveloping.
What does this mean? It means that your energy field is open and it envelops to tends to take everything in it’s field. You are open to other people, influences, events, situations to come and interact with your energetic field. And knowing your aura type is the key to gaining aura because you now how to behave in situations that come effortlessly to you.
In Human Design we talk about this a your overall Strategy. If you know that you’re Open & Enveloping then you know that job is wait to respond to some external stimuli. Whatever the circumstances, the situations are initiated outside of you for to take advantage of it or not.
I won’t cover the entire list but I will cover the next most common aura type and that is the people that have a Focused & Absorbing aura/energetic makeup.
Focused & Absorbing
This other common energetic aura is one where the person is naturally, effortlessly focused outward. Their attention is typically outward facing and also typically on one particular person at a time which is what is mean by absorbing. These people focus on other people, typically one person around them and attentive toward them.
That means they tend to know more about the people around them (that they do themselves sometimes) but their attentive nature can support how they are process. So their Strategy is to Wait to be Invited and Recognized (for something). Because there is a tendency for this type to be so focused, so absorbed that they might even notice the other more than they know themselves that it might be very violating for other people have their aura be so penetrating.
Comparing and Contrasting the Two Major Types of Aura
While one is Open & Enveloping (and this is for a Type called Builders) the other is Focused & Absorbing (type = Advisors). It means the the Strategy for optimizing the Aura that they create in both the slang and in your personal/professional life is to follow the strategy to wait. In the former, it is to wait for external stimuli, brownian motion that one can respond to (or not). In the latter, it is about waiting for an invitation and recognition from the other.
Say your have been skateboarding since you were very young. As a Open & Enveloping energetic makeup, your aura comes out when you have all those rails and half-pipes for you to choose to do. Choose in the moment which ones you do and see them as they come up, presented to you.
But say your aura type is Focused & Absorbing instead — what do you do? I would say, you’ll in your best aura when one of your friends call you out to the skate park. They know you can handle yourself and your natural aura will come out.
This is not a perfect example, but one that when you think about larger decisions in your personal and professional life, BG5 and Human Design can give you the specific energy make-up that can you make decisions that optimizes your aura!
If you’re interested in learning about your unique aura type and how to use that to maximize your own “aura” at work or in your personal life and minimizing aura farming or losing, I’m now offering a free consult to know your own aura. Book one below: