The Verbal Gunslinger

“The most difficult aspect to deal with in Human Design is to be a verbal

gunslinger. It is the most difficult aspect. That is somebody who has the
Ajna Center, or the Self, or the Spleen, connected to the Throat, and only
in that sense. In other words, the Throat is activated, the Throat can be
spoken out of, but there is no motor connected to it. And the other one, by
the way, is the 20-10.

The thing to recognize about the verbal gunslinger is that the verbal
gunslinger has a very powerful Throat Center. There’s no question about
that. And yet the Throat Center has a dual function. And the fact that the
Throat Center is constantly activated means that the Throat Center, at its
own level, has an assumption of being able to act because it can initiate
speech. It’s much easier for an undefined Throat to learn that lesson than
it is for a verbal gunslinger, because the natural tendency of the verbal
gunslinger, because they can manifest verbally, is to do just that. And of
course because they manifest verbally, they meet resistance and get
punished, just like any Manifestor would, and nobody is there to really
pay attention to them.

What happens is that not only do they struggle, and out of that struggle
have the anxiety that goes along with that, but the real sad part about that
is that their beauty that is their intelligence and their inherent gift is
lost—it’s lost on deaf ears. You see the verbal gunslinger always has to
wait for the opportunity to be initiated into conversation. It is their gift,
that once initiated into conversation they have greater power than the
ones who do the initiating. They are, after all, very powerful Throat
beings.

One of the most common aspects is the verbal gunslinger as a Generator.

And here you can really see the difficulty that arises. Instantaneously, it’s
so simple for them to verbally set themselves up, to verbally try to
manifest. “I can do that, I will do that, I’ll go there, blah, blah, blah.” And
of course the frustration that they suffer from all of that. And how long it
takes them to be able to wait to use their verbal power and their
articulating skills to back up their response, to be the weapon, if you will,
of their response, to be the carrier and armor for them from their
response. So it is a difficult aspect and whenever you see that in dealing
with your clients, be clear with them that that’s an experiment that’s
going to be the most difficult for them to live out, and yet the experiment
that’s the most important for them.

When you’re dealing with a 43-23 that is a verbal gunslinger, nobody is

ever going to know what the hell they’re talking about if they’re starting
the conversations—nobody, nobody. It’s the most bizarre babble-speak
you can imagine. Nobody. They’re freaks, after all. The fact of the matter
is that the moment you ask a 43-23, the moment you open up for them the
opportunity to express their knowing as a response, as being recognized
as a projected element, when they’re invited to make their contribution,
everybody pays attention, and everybody gets mutated.

I know so many people who can be so clear at the mental level and
nobody’s listening to them, nobody. This is really the saddest part, and
the most bitter part of the verbal gunslinger’s life. The perversity of what
it is to be a human is that the moment the verbal gunslinger doesn’t have
anybody listening to them because they’re not entering into things
correctly, they shout louder. It’s like being an American in Paris.
“Where’s the bathroom?” You know?

Yeah, you figure that if you do it loud they’ll get it, because you don’t
know how to talk to them. See, you just get louder; the verbal gunslingers
just get louder. They become screamers, and yellers. They’re the kind of
people that everybody says, “They shoot from the hip.” They don’t shoot
from the hip. They just bubble and vomit. And everybody says, “I don’t
know what that is. I don’t know what they’re talking about. I don’t
understand a word they’re saying, doesn’t make any sense to me.”
And you see, you can be brilliant, I mean brilliant. I know a lot of
people— particularly many people that I’ve met in my work in
Europe—whose whole lives crashed, who went down into deep, dark
holes in life, to drugs and to all kinds of things, and really disappeared.
Most of these people were verbal gunslingers. They gave up on
themselves. They gave up on themselves and they gave up on others.
“They’re too stupid to listen. They don’t understand. They’re all ignorant.
They’re dead. They’re not going anywhere.”

A German friend of mine, one day he was telling somebody a story and
trying to turn them on to something, and they walked away, obviously not
deeply impressed. There’s a great expression in German, it’s called ‘toten
hosen’. It’s ‘dead pants.’ Can’t get a hard-on out of that if your life
depended on it; they’re just dead. It’s a great expression in German.
That’s what happens. Everybody’s got toten hosen. Everybody’s dead.
Nobody pays attention. Nobody’s being stimulated. Nobody understands.
Nobody knows, and “I’m not going to tell them. I’m just going to slowly
die here inside with my paranoia.” So it is a difficult aspect in design.
Like all of these things that we look at, if we poke our fingers in any
place in somebody’s design, we’re always going to find dilemmas and
things that have to be dealt with. And if we concentrate on this thing at
the expense of that thing, or this or that, and that’s what happens to
people who come to design. They realize, “Oh, I’ve got this kind of
channel or this kind of gate,” and they get into that and they forget about
that there’s all these other things that are operating.

If you’re living out your Type, it homogenizes that whole process for you.
It allows you to live each aspect that is within you correctly, and then you
can move from one to the other, examining it in your process. But at the
same time, you’re not going to leave your Type and the protection that it
provides you in terms of your aura.

One of the great tasks for the verbal gunslinger is to take the experiment
of recognizing that when their intelligence is called upon, their
intelligence is always greater than what is expected of it, and that’s
deeply impressive. The freak that somebody actually asks, what comes
out of that freak is so profound and deep in that moment that it can come
out. Now, if they were trying to figure out what they were going to do
themselves, it would all be a mess. And the same thing is true whether
you’re going to try to organize people or stimulate them. You’re only
going to be able to do that by being able to live out your Type.

Now, obviously that’s going to be different if the Throat is connected to a

motor. If we’re going to have Manifestors and we’re going to have
Generators, how all of that is going to actualize. But the fact of the matter
is that the nature of the mind works at its best when you allow it to follow
its Type as a guide. Then those things come out. And for the verbal
gunslinger, it’s such an important gift to be able to manifest in language. I
mean it’s a very important gift, this consistent manifestation in language.
We need those gifts to be paid attention to.

It’s essential for us to be able to grasp each of these streams that are
operating at the mental level, so that the moment somebody who carries
any of these definitions lives out their Type. The moment that the verbal
gunslinger waits for their invitation, that’s the moment that their real
intelligence is going to be appreciated, and that’s the moment the anxiety
goes away. After all, it’s about being healthy. It’s about getting rid of the
anxiety. Imagine what it’s like to understand or know or to have made
sense out of something, and nobody listens. It’s horrible. It’s horrible.
And you put it out and you waste your breath—it’s horrible. And human
beings are living with that all the time.

There’s no more pain than the pain that’s racing around at the mental
level, the anxiety level that humanity is operating at. And so much of that
can be alleviated so easily by them simply recognizing how to honor their
Type and get the respect for their intelligence that they deserve. It’s one
of those essential ingredients.

I was just thinking about schools and the way children are educated and
trained and how all children are expected to be Manifestors in the
classroom, as well. And how different we all are, and how different our
digestive processes are, and how much mental anxiety is created in that
situation.

It’s an essential ingredient for us to see that mind is a beautiful thing and
not meant to be a torment for us. It’s meant to be a vehicle of our larger
union. It’s not meant to be occupied with all this mundane stuff. After all,
it’s not tribal, it’s not about that. It’s not about how you make a living and
who you make love to and all of those things that make up the life of the
body—it isn’t about that. It’s mostly just collective with the possibility of
mutation coming in so that everything keeps evolving, but it’s about
larger principles and larger issues.

We personalize our minds so much. We get very, very, very, very, very,
very, serious about what we think; it’s such a joke. We have no idea of the
value of our intelligence unless we bond with others. It’s out of our
bonding that our real intelligence is released. Out of understanding the
mechanics of how we meet and how we bond together, you can see that
there are rules in the game. If we play the mechanical rules, the verbal
gunslingers will have their proper role. They will be the ones that are
called upon to express those things. They’re the rightful expresser of
those things. They’re intended for us to rely on them.

Where would we be without the 11.4 gate, the great teachers? We rely on
them for everything from the mundane to the obscure. We cannot trust
them when they are full of anxiety, and we don’t listen to them when
they’re trying to tell us. Only when we begin to appreciate them, and you
can only appreciate people through their design. It’s like seeing how nice
your formulas can be. In the moment you recognize their capacity, that’s
the moment you can invite them to show you how significant their
contribution can be to understand how things should be organized, to
recognize what truly is stimulating, to recognize truly what we need to
learn, and to be able to have what’s new explained to us. This is a
marvelous capacity of mind, and so much of it is lost.

How many times verbal gunslingers come up to me and they start talking.
They just come up to me and start talking. I truly do not listen to them.
Sometimes I try to make an effort. It doesn’t work. It’s not that I’m not
interested in what they have to say; it’s not that I don’t care about them.
It’s clear to me the moment they start with me that I’m not really listening
to them. I haven’t asked for anything from them.

Now, of course, I get caught in my role as a teacher, so I end up in

situations where by the very formula of being a teacher, I have people
who come up to me, my students, Generators who come up to me and
Projectors who come up to me. And of course, yeah, this is the whole
thing about all of us recognizing the game.

There’s a part of me, and it’s unfortunate that I’m not a humanitarian; one
of you tribal huggie-wuggies will have to do this in the future. But if it
were my nature I would have everybody’s chart in front of me somewhere
on a sheet of paper, and I would recognize the need that certain students
would have to be dealt with just during the course of a program like this,
because everybody goes through different things.
For me to take the time and go up to the Generators and say, “Is
everything okay?” and “How you doing?” and blah, blah, blah. And go
up to the Projectors and invite them to make their comments, and see if
the Reflectors aren’t too disappointed in things, and of course that would
be the best way of dealing with that mechanically.

The more we understand the rules, then the more we can set out the rules
between each other. We are the ones that carry the torch of this
knowledge. For us to be able to deal with each other here in these
gatherings that we’ve had, this is one of those real opportunities to play
out the mechanics and to have the experiment with those that support it
around you, and see how all that works.
But it’s essential to recognize that if you’re a verbal gunslinger, you’re
not going to get the respect that you deserve. It’s not about whether
you’re right or wrong, okay? It’s not about that. You see the gift isn’t
about coming up with right or wrong things to say, the gift is being able
to say them at all. Please understand that.

It’s essential for us to hear all of the opinions, and it’s essential for us to
get as many of the ideas as possible. In other words, we’re open to all of
that, and we need them. We need them for our very business of being a
duality, of playing around with comparison, of being able to compare one
to the other. This is how we codify our history, and this is how we
substantiate our facts. But of course, it’s not about doing.

Whether something is a valid experience is something that you’re only

going to know when you live it out, no matter how many people have had
it before you and have written about it. And no matter what the theory
says, and no matter what the opinion is, and no matter what the facts are,
if you don’t experiment with it yourself, you can never truly accept it
absolutely. It takes the body, it takes the motors, it takes the real authority,
it takes the nature of your Type to have things happen.
Disconnect from giving your mind authority. Watch the anxiety go away.
Watch the medicine cabinet lose its Excedrins and Tylenols, because
that’s really what it’s all about: getting rid of that anxiety. And the other
thing is that the benefit that it brings to your eyes, to your ability to see
more clearly. You know, the cliché we have about the nature of emotions
blinding.”

-Ra Uru Hu