Fabrice Mars talks with Sjef Romijn.
Fabrice: Hello Sjef. Nice to see you, always nice to see you and meeting some Opportunistic Role Model, working on himself. So, it’s a rare feat and it’s a treat to have access to that. That’s why I want to give you access to this equipment because I feel that you have many stuff to share with people about: “what is the experience of Human Design?”

Sjef: And it took me a while myself before actually making decisions according to my Strategy and Authority. I was caught up with knowing this and knowing that and then talking about knowing this and knowing that. But to actually, in my case of course I’m a Reflector, to wait, to actually wait with a decision, 28-ish days, to actually wait. And you know in the beginning not even looking at ‘ok today this is my decision’, tomorrow this is my decision and journaling all that. But just to, to allow myself to wait. That took a while before I actually started applying it. And once you do and once you know, once you -know-, then you make different decisions.

And it’s so different that when you are not mentally convinced about it, but you know, you -know-. I jump on my motorbike and I buy a guitar. I -know- this is correct and it happens. My mind was like: ‘what are you doing? You don’t have money for this guitar.’ So…? I did and it was ok, it was correct. And to find yourself not strategizing, not making it up, not … becoming mentally certain that it’s correct. I’m not certain that it’s correct. I do and then ‘ohh, ok, this is my experience and now I have this guitar, ok cool.’ And I just use the guitar and when it’s correct, I’ll sell it. Without trying to ‘oh I need money or I don’t need money, or I don’t have the money. This will be a good guitar, I like the color’, no. it’s not about this mental process, of trying to persuade myself it’s correct.

Fabrice: That’s the key element, because I see many people they take a decision and after, they make everything uuhh, they take all the parameters to make it possible. They go see people ‘oh please how shall I do it? Tell me, tell me. I need to go there, tell me the way.’ And ooh ok sure lets invoke the spirit. I don’t say you don’t have techniques and accesses and I am not denying this aspect of things but what it’s going to be of use for your daily life. Is it going to make it better? Or is it still the same like: ‘Universe listen to me?’

Sjef: yeah I want -this- experience

Fabrice: yeah..Universe are you listening?

Sjef: haha it’s listening but it’s not responding.

Fabrice: Not the way you expect.

Sjef: …’Sort it out yourself buddy.’ Yeah, well half and half, but yeah.
I’ve been in that trip many, many, many times and the first thing I think I learned-ish, is to accept that I made many mistakes. Ok, this is where I am right now. This is all a result of the way I made decisions. And now with this tool let’s make ‘m differently let’s see where I end up, instead of: ‘this is where I need to go what are the steps,’ like you just said, ‘to get there.’ it’s not about that. Because you may indeed take 1 step or 2 steps and end up somewhere else, you meet someone, and it’s open and it becomes…it’s always been open. We have narrowed it down, or I narrowed it down. This is my focus and this is what I want and therefore I need and therefore this is what I need to do.

Fabrice: it’s not working like that

Sjef: sigh… yeah…Sometimes it is, but that’s not good.
yeah and still, today even, I’m 7.5 years in my process and still to this day I find that sometimes ‘ah Sjef, you need some clean up, or not, but this has been a decision that you did not made according to your strategy and authority.’

Fabrice: It happens to me as well. Sure

Sjef: And sometimes you catch yourself, sometimes you don’t or later

Fabrice: Or you see yourself and you are too lazy hahaha

Sjef: never mind….it’ll pass.. yes… yeah

Fabrice: Cause Human Design does not bring your bliss. You can experience bliss, but you’re not in a blissful state and it’s not like, beautiful.

Sjef: Giddy and happy. No. It’s actually, it’s more and more serene, the peaks and the valleys of your emotional, landscape, haha let’s call it like that, they become less pronounced. And yes there is happy and yes there is sad or sorrow or this or that. I don’t want to use the word balance. Cause balance I think is also a construct but yeah, it becomes manageable. It’s ok. ‘Now I feel sad.’

Fabrice: Less attached to the emotion or having to feel.

Sjef: Yeah, it still can be very intense though. Your lover leaves you and you feel rotten and shit and all that. But you have your tool. You know what to do, which usually is nothing, right. Instead of where the mind says: ‘ok, now take alcohol, find another lover’. Do something to relieve you from this pressure, from this notion, from this feeling that you have, or: ‘ok, I have this feeling and I am just going to sit with it and be with and honor it and then see what happens.’ Usually nothing happens and that is the key thing. That’s ok, at least for me.

Fabrice: When you say nothing happens that might sound scary. You have many Generators out there with filled up the energy and they are just like: ‘nothing happens, what do you mean?’

Sjef: Well nothing happens bad, nothing bad happens in the sense that you get worse. No, what is correct for you is correct for you. For instance when you lover leaves you, (crying in background) you feel bad. Ok: feel bad. Nothing happens from feeling bad. That is basically, maybe it’s different for a Reflector I don’t know…
But, to just be with that and not have to resolve it: ‘Now I need to go and do this to resolve this feeling that I have.’

Fabrice: The mind needs to know, to accept

Sjef: To trust.

Fabrice: The mind is not accepting, the mind does not accept.

Sjef: We don’t allow for sorrow, we don’t allow for grievance, right, because we want, we…

Fabrice: Pursuit of happiness. It’s in ‘The Constitution’

Sjef: yeah So we don’t allow for, feeling shitty, feeling even fucked up, messed up.

Fabrice: I heard, in California it was banned. To feel bad hahaha arrest you or something.

Sjef: Maybe it works, let’s see ! Yeah
It’s the same with when you feel happy. When I used to feel happy I would try to take it a step further. I would go out and drink more alcohol, and do drugs. Do something even more to retain that feeling. And then when I was feeling bad I try to do the same to trigger feelings, to trigger states of experiences. And now… You know, it’s reactionary, that’s what it’s. We always react to something externally and you don’t always have to do that, right? When you just: ‘Ok, yeah I see the light is green’ but that does not mean I have to cross the street. Or I see the light is red and now I have to run for it. You don’t always have to react to what is happening.

Fabrice: Is that contemplation ?

Sjef: Not sure.
It’s non-doing and see where it takes you and not because you react to something that your mind says ‘ok now walk. it’s green, now walk.’ I want to go left. No it’s correct for me to walk backwards. It’s correct for me to… I don’t want to over exaggerate but…. So this reacting, this responding constantly, constantly. With my mind, to stuff what is happening and then get very good at doing so. Bullshit, nonsense. So to step back and see for a while, what happens if I don’t respond to it. What happens if I just, not let it, ‘ok I notice this, I observe this, I watch it, ok, is it correct for me?’ ‘I don’t know’, well, then don’t do anything then if you don’t know. Don’t let your mind just go with something your mind tells you.

I tell many people: ‘wait, comma, pause.’ Wait, comma, pause and then see, seeing, what is correct for you. ‘I don’t know.’ Well, then nothing is. Then it isn’t, right? Wait, comma, pause. Take your time. Allow yourself, while the mind of course it runs off and says this stuff, that stuff, buy a cookie, don’t buy a cookie. I like cookies haha

Fabrice: If someone is like ok this sounds appealing. You talk to me about my Design and yes I recognize features. It speaks to me, but what is the use, what use can I make of that information?

Sjef: You want me to answer that ?

Fabrice: ahuh

Sjef: The use is, to not have to make bad decisions. And I mean bad in the sense of incorrect, that take you on quite a different path. What is natural for you? What is correct for you to be in this live to be -you-, right? Who is Fabrice, who is Sjef. Without identification. That you see, what is your identification. ‘Ooh I’m this great’, so and so, and maybe you are; good for you, right and maybe you are not but to find that out.

Fabrice: According to my mum I am

Sjef: Hahahaha, yes, she is right ah oh phew but that’s ? What are you, what is correct for you? Who are you and what are you identified with; what are you attached too? Are you, I don’t know, whatever your job is. Are you that or are you simply good at doing that and you rolled in to that world, but it’s not correct for you. There’s all these things that we can do. We have the ability to push ourselves to learn and becoming this and that and we get these jobs and this pressure and this and that. Is it correct for you to do that? ‘Ooh I rather be a dancer’ or a musician or a baker or a truck driver. Why are you -not- doing that? What happened? I think once you start with Human Design, with a little bit of reading, a little bit of…

Fabrice: You tell them ‘change the job’?

Sjef: No I don’t tell them ‘change it.’ But look at you. Why -are- you doing what you are doing? And I don’t mean to give a mind fuck of..

Fabrice: The answer is the same. ‘I need to pay the bills’

Sjef: yeah but is that good enough?

Fabrice: I don’t know.

Sjef: Me neither. ‘Is this the way you pay your bills correctly?’ That would be my question to… I’ve had people come to me that were stuck and I maybe had not seen them for twenty years and you come to this age around Uranus Opposition and maybe you have a few children and you feel stuck. Why do you feel stuck? What makes you feel stuck, right? They don’t even look at that. They don’t know that you can look at that.

Fabrice: No, they’re in the pipe, they’re stuck in the pipe

Sjef: ‘If I work 3 months harder then I get this other assignment and -then- it will be good.’ Why not now? Why can’t it be good now? What is blocking you from experiencing “good” now? So it’s funny with Human Design. Sometimes people come to it and learn a little bit about it. What is their Design? What is the Design of their children, their partner or whatever and nothing changes. Ok great.

Fabrice: and they know Human Design and they’re a specialist with Human Design, don’t forget

Sjef: yeah but nothing changed, and sometimes this is good because they have this process of going through: ‘ok what is correct for me?’ Oh, you know what, actually this is correct for me. It was just a mind fuck, that it wasn’t. And with other people it’s like: ‘ok this is not working and “need” to resolve this. I need to change some things. This is hurting in a bad way. In a way that I feel its unnatural for me’ ok and then something always changes, right? People make little shifts.

Well, somebody once told me, with the not-self, when your decision making is ruled by your mind and or conditioning, external, people telling you, right, social rules and regulations: ‘you push this button; you get this result.’ It’s very easy with the not-self: you push this button; you get that result. With Living Your Design you can push this button but the result is uncertain, right? And this is what I slowly found to be true, that indeed before: you can push this button with me and you get that result. And for a long time I lived out what ever…and it was cut and dry, it was clear cut.

These days you ask me a question and you don’t know beforehand, and I don’t know beforehand what the answer will be. And particularly, right, between you and me, I am having a lot of fun with that we don’t know what the experience is gonna be like.

Fabrice: I am gonna be around Sjef. Will I see him? I don’t know.

Sjef: Exactly, do I like that you’re here? Yes. Are we going to hang out every day? Mmm, maybe. I don’t know. We’ll see what happens right?

Fabrice: Yeah exactly.

Sjef: We can be honest with each other like: I don’t feel like it and it’s not personal, it -is- mechanical. We can say ‘oh it’s stupid of your mechanics’. No, but we can have a joke, right? And say: ‘stupid mechanics.’ But it’s ok, that is what it is.

Fabrice: it’s about respecting the state of the other.

Sjef: Each other’s process

Fabrice: yeah, what is the reality at the time

Sjef: yeah without going like ‘ooh, this is this, this is that’

Fabrice: and maybe it is and maybe it isn’t, that’s not the point. If you ask a question, be ready for the answer

Sjef: whatever it is

Fabrice: People, they ask you questions they expect the answer, and when you answer differently they like are like deceived

Sjef: yeah the argument started

Fabrice: ‘no, no you were not supposed to answer that way.’ If you ask a question, accept the answer

Sjef: And sometimes the answer is silence. There is no answer. The mind goes nuts. It goes like: Why didn’t this person answer me? I don’t know what to think: Great, then don’t! But, I’m not gonna say it’s a trap, but it’s a trip.

Fabrice: You’re lucky you don’t have a 2nd or 5th Line in the Profile, after the projection you receive after that, wow…

Sjef: Still, I get projections, maybe not as much

Fabrice: Its projections, all the profiles, every one, it’s just projections
Respect, simple, it’s about respect. ‘Oh you don’t want to be in my agenda? Ok, it’s my agenda, it’s not yours’ …let’s go.

Sjef: In part, as you said, when you ask the question, expect the answer and look at how the question is formulated: ‘Do you feel like?’ Well..

Fabrice: Listen to the question

Sjef: If you pose the question like this: ‘do you like blah blah blah?’ And the other goes: ‘No’ Ok, no. It’s all set up in a way.

Fabrice: uuh communication within relationships, you mean?

Sjef: People think they say this but actually they say that. They don’t know what they are saying, what words they use. So if you ask me: ‘do you feel like this or that?’ You get the answer of my feeling. And this is new. This, people don’t understand. People don’t get ..I mean you are emotionally defined so it’s another layer, another level.

Fabrice: yeah do you sense for Splenic. I mean you can ask sense, do you want if you want to ask the Ego, depending on the way you ask, you’re gonna get different answers of course

Sjef: With a Reflector, ask, because beforehand they don’t know. Ask, and then see and sometimes: ‘well, not really’ and sometimes: ‘d be great, wonderful, thanks for asking. I didn’t know that I would like to do that.’

Fabrice: it’s a surprise. With you it’s a surprise, I am always surprised, if you say yes or… it’s a surprise, because I never know what to expect. it’s like…uuuh..ja

Sjef: I don’t do it on purpose. I used to. I had a strategic agenda with people. ‘If I answer like this and answer like that’ blah blah And now I answer what you ask me. ‘Ok what do you ask me? Hmm, how do I?’ hmm ok, or, not ok, yeah…

But it’s a journey. I mean most people.. I’m not sure if they are told correctly or not, but it seems that it’s been more and more silent these days: it’s a 7 year journey. Seven year journey. You’re actually doing something and it does not mean like going walking 12 miles every day, it’s not like that. But in those 7 years stuff is going on and you get to see yourself. It’s work.

Fabrice: Yeah ja

Sjef: it is work.

Fabrice: Not taking decision is work

Sjef: To stop. To re-visit what you actually feel about something. Or how

Fabrice: Ponder, take the time, reflect.

Sjef: Contemplate. yeah and not many people are, seemingly, willing to actually do that, to go there. They want a solution to their issue and they want that solution now. And it needs to be, you know, not too expensive, not too long to take and the results must be almost instantaneous or in the foreseeable future.

Fabrice: Instant gratification

Sjef: Yeah and if you want that …
it’s a journey, a 7 year journey, and personally I like to study. That’s my trip. I love to read more stuff. I really, really do. I enjoy, wauw, and I read stuff and I look at, ‘ok how does that pertain to my life’ or to yours, I’m a Reflector. I look at other people and my interaction with them, or their interaction with other people. For others is it more visceral, it’s less studying, they grok it easier. For me first my mind gets involved and then slowly the rest of me, the rest of my process. And it’s slow running, slow running.

I can see people struggle with it. People struggle first with the radical difference what Human Design is, first of all. Then the depth of Human Design, they get tripped into all the mind candy of knowing your Variables and this and that.

Fabrice: right…don’t get me started…

Sjef: haha, ok.
And then that they have to actually do the work. That they actually have to look at themselves and their own decision making and take responsibility for their own decisions, right? ‘ok, I fucked up. I did that incorrect for me’, regardless of whether it was incorrect for you, right? Cause that’s the other part of it. But just for me, just for me, that was, I didn’t think, I responded, I reacted, and just from how I am conditioned, how I’d like to behave. How I’d like to present myself. What is correct for you? I am a Reflector and basically I don’t know. I thought I was going to be this Human Design Professional blah blah blah… and in a way I am, but it’s something I do and not who I am, it’s something I do. I am Sjef. What is Sjef? I don’t know. Ask me again tomorrow you get a different answer. Ask me in month you get a different perspective of… what I don’t know. Because I don’t know. There is nothing fixed, there is no ..There is stuff I do: I play to play music, I like to record music, I like to nerd. I like to read and read and read and read. But none of that is me, basically, it’s what I do. It’s not my identification, it’s not my identity.

Fabrice: Personification with Human Design I’m very skeptical, of people trying to personify. Embody is not the correct term. It’s linked to identity, it’s about finding who you really are, not what…

Sjef: even if that is not anything

Fabrice: You don’t know, maybe you’ll be noticed, maybe not, I don’t know. It’s how you live it. If you are running like for… I don’t want to ostracize anyone, but…for recognition
Are you really not bitter, about anything? That is the question I would like to ask to those Projectors. You’re not bitter? Seriously? I don’t know, I’m not you. So yeah, cultivate your… do Permaculture with Generators, that is my advice. Projectors are needed, they’re way needed, because they go fast with the Generator, they go very fast. But yeah, if they respect what is out there because it is not theirs. it’s always respecting what the other beholds. Maybe you can benefit from it at some point but maybe it’s not where you think you would benefit from…

Sjef: Follow that, that you don’t know. Be open.

Some people said 9 centered community, 9 centered inter-communication. No man is an island. You are not doing this on your own.

Fabrice: no one can be by him or her selves, no one

Sjef: To see yourself interact with the other and the other with you, you take your decision correctly, even if it’s to say to someone ‘I don’t want to see you anymore’. Take your decision correctly. That it is: ‘ok, great’. And sometimes you go like, ‘ha, -that- person’ maybe it’s not correct for the other person.

Fabrice: Pressure, you get the pressure all the time from others.

Sjef: Expectations.

Fabrice: Saying this way or that way, I am not saying sometimes it’s not good advice. At the end of the day, take your decision correctly. No one can judge that because there is no standard, in a way..

Sjef: Yes there is no format to adhere too, there is no lay out

Fabrice: No one is going to tell you: ‘you should have done this’, that or whatever

Sjef: Well people say but hehe…it’s unimportant, becomes unimportant.

Fabrice: If you want to really escape from that, that might be a way for you. It’s not for everyone. When it works, it’s good flow. After, yes you have good days and you have bad days. It’s not about not having bad days, but not being lured by those bad days to have an insignificant, a conversation without meaning. Trying to figure out what’s going on.

Sjef: Even the bad days can be in the flow, it’s just: ‘ok’. My mind sometimes goes like ‘huuu I want to do this, I need to this, I need to strategize so and so’ blah blah blah and then: ‘ok Sjef where are you?’ ‘I’m nowhere now’ ‘ok wait’ and I sit back, I wait. ‘What do I feel like doing?’ ‘I feel like a cookie’ ok I eat a cookie. I do nothing instead of, you know, putting on my jacket and running outside, or even in my mind, to go somewhere. Instead of just: ‘ok, here I am. This is now, this is now.’

Fabrice: So, the..for people who have an Open Spleen, the spontaneity, something that is tricky right? Not to react on urges: I need this and it’s …When you tell Open Spleen that: ‘I am sure you think you’re a spontaneous person’..’yeah, yeah, this is who I am’ all the time. ‘O yeah, yeah, yeah this is me, miss spontaneity it’s me’ Oh my god

Sjef: Stop… Or look at it at least. Don’t let me tell you to stop, but: ‘stop’ haha but look at it. Why are you spontaneous?

Fabrice: It’s on the menu, it’s ok. You can look at the menu. But don’t eat it!

Sjef: I used to be-have, people come, ask: ‘yes!’ And the answer was always ‘yes!’ yes, yes, day and night, yes. And you feel it in your body, that something is off but you don’t know, just right where to put it.

Fabrice: And you see yourself saying yes

Sjef: There is this nervous vibration, tension in you wanting … and it’s not correct for you, but you do it anyway. Stuff I did…

Fabrice: I know Splenic persons like that as well haha

Sjef: it’s like the example I gave earlier with me buying this guitar. There was such calm. But when I woke up that morning, I did not know that I was going to buy a guitar. But I got up made my breakfast this and that… ‘Yeah…’ I put on my motorbike clothes, I got on my bike, but all in a very calm relaxed state. There was no edginess, there was excitement! Because I’m gonna get a guitar, but there was not the edginess, the nervousness… ‘ok we’re going to do this.’ It felt like, a fluidity. Like there was no rubbing, there was no obstruction. Just fluid going along and the Mind goes like ‘do we have enough gas, oh I’m gonna use the visa card’ blah, blah, all this stuff, right? ‘Don’t drive too fast’ and all this mind stuff and the body ‘lalala, I am gonna get -that- guitar.’ It was fluid, where as before, or usually, my spleen ‘ajwaja’ must, must, must, there is all this pressure to perform and to have a certain result. And you feel there is the pressure and it’s not correct and that you burn your body for it. You use your body, so, and you get depleted. And with this trip, I did not feel depleted, at al. There was just calm. I don’t know how else to describe it. It was just calm: no peaks, no valleys. Just calm and it happened.

Fabrice: So ..you told me that you’re, not looking for, but like being watchful of tensions in your body

Sjef: Yeah you start noticing. Sometimes you don’t, but yeah I get to see more and more, that is true. Before, I had no concept of even being able to look at it like that. That is my process. For other people it’s easier. They tell me, ok great. I learn from it, but, yeah ok, what is my experience right now? Where am I feeling tension or not? Can I relate to it, can I not? Ok, this, that, blah, blah, blah. Do I need to act on it, do I not need to act on it?

Fabrice: I don’t know, but you have a toilet over your head

Both: hahahaha

Fabrice: It’s weird, weird country man, toilets flying over.
So we are speaking about the decision, that for you actually, what is the use of Human Design, is about making decision.

Sjef: And the observation of yourself. I think that is such a treat, to… Like I said before I had no concept, of looking at myself. I had no reference and nobody ever told me and I did not figure it out by myself. So, I needed some guidance, information. And people to: “Look Sjef, look this, look that. And then see for yourself what it’s about for you.’ And till this day I am observing, I am looking. And what decision did I make and what is my part in it. What is my responsibility and I don’t want to make it that heavy but ‘what -is- going on?’ and to be able to look at that.

More about the new guitar here: MoonBlog 4.6

Transcript thanks to Winda Kuut