Your Hidden Symmetry

by Jean Haner

  What the Chinese call your destiny, we might understand as your true calling, the ultimate power you’re evolving toward. Your true purpose is simple: to live a sacred life. Your calling is to bring an elevating energy to the world, inspiring us all to a higher awareness and our best lives.

  Honor your need for authenticity and meaning in your career, relationships, and lifestyle. Work on establishing healthy energetic boundaries so you’re not buffeted or knocked off balance by the invisible currents swirling around you. If you can do this, you’ll move to a place where you can hold great power within your own life and for others.

  With the breath in and the breath out, you always come back to this moment of perfection, where you can let go of grief and find the treasure—which is how deeply you’ve been enriched by all your experiences, each moving you more fully into the sacred.

  Third Number: Seven

  Creation of Beauty

  You’re an absolute charmer on first meeting, gracious, witty, and able to make anyone feel welcome. People may get the impression that you’re affluent whether or not you actually are, and you may be surprised that they behave a little deferentially at first.

  In terms of how you do things, you’ll be concerned with others’ needs in any situation and very willing to alter your plans so that everyone can be happy. True to your perfectionist nature, you’ll focus on getting all the details right and worry that what you do won’t be good enough.

  Your Challenge

  This is the issue that’s woven through your life, appearing repeatedly in both subtle and obvious ways. With a Seven here, there’s always a self-critical streak that can make you feel uncertain about the rightness of your choices and cause struggles with issues of self-worth.

  Highly aware and self-conscious, you can sense what’s going on with the people around you, and you often feel too responsible for their experience. At times you may even tell little white lies, saying what you think the other person wants to hear even if it’s not true. You do it to try to be nice, but if they later find out that it wasn’t true, they can misunderstand and think you were insincere—or worse, that you were lying to them. You’d never view it that way. You were just trying to make them happy, and the truth may have been too uncomfortable a conversation for you to have.

  It can help to understand this behavior by visualizing the image for the Seven: the glassy surface of a lake, which is perfect and without a ripple. The Seven influence here makes you continually work to have things as perfect and beautiful as possible. This also means being uncomfortable with conflict or confrontation and always trying to put a good face on things. If a problem continues unresolved, the Seven may avoid directly addressing it and instead fall into passive-aggressive behavior, or denial, hoping that if we all just pretend things are pretty, they really will be.

  The energy of a Seven in this position inclines you to take your responsibilities too seriously, to let them weigh too heavily on your shoulders; and there’s the chance that you’ll deprive yourself of your own needs in the process. You can be overly conscientious or perfectionistic or too much of a good soldier, toughing out difficult times rather than asking for help.

  Some people with a Seven as their third number live too minimally because of concern about money or alternatively become hoarders, accumulating piles of things just in case, unable to throw something out because they might need it. But there can also be too much attention on appearances, being status conscious or worrying about what people will think of them. Even if they’re hoarders, it’s likely that no one would ever know. From the outside, the house looks perfect.

  One image for the Seven is the Princess. When it’s in this third position, the image can be expressed as a longing to live the good life, to be taken care of and not have to work so hard. You may dream of your ideal days in a big, beautiful home, with few responsibilities and a charmed life. There’s also the possibility that you actually do end up living a life of affluence and prestige, but it challenges you in some way. It’s fascinating that Seven is the third number for both Diana Spencer and Sarah Ferguson, two women who greatly struggled with being princesses.

  Your Calling

  You excel in any field that requires attention to detail and awareness of how to make things beautiful. Work as a fine artist, jewelry maker, fashion designer, interior designer, florist, or graphic designer is all well suited to anyone who has a Seven in this position.

  You could find success in the hospitality industry as a cruise director, concierge, maître d’, or wedding or party planner. But this same quality can also be used in communications, writing, public speaking, research, languages, media, or the entertainment industry.

  You work with precision and can deal especially well with money, so a job in the financial world can be a good fit. However, this same quality will incline you to be highly sensitive, and it can be a bit overwhelming to work in large institutions or surrounded by a lot of people. Add the Seven’s “free spirit” influence here, and you may prefer to freelance no matter what career you choose, rather than being locked into one job or stuck in a busy office all day.

  What the Chinese call your destiny, we might understand as your true calling, the ultimate power you’re evolving toward. When your third number is Seven, your true purpose in life is to create beauty. At its heart, what this really signifies is your ability to appreciate the preciousness of every moment, the incredible beauty in every subtle detail of life around you.

  You remind us to live with grace. You reflect what’s pure and true and real inside us and help us remember what we value. Your calling is to bring a refined and gentle presence to the world, inspiring us all to become present, drawing our attention to this moment right now, and allowing us to feel how perfect and holy and beautiful it is … and we are.

  Third Number: Eight

  Deep Transformation

  On first impression, you have a quiet warmth and a solid presence, and people will get an immediate feeling that they can rely on you. You may come across as overly serious; at the same time, others may sense that you don’t feel entirely sure of yourself. But you’ll also be the first one to volunteer to help in any situation.

  In terms of how you do things, your attention is directed toward the needs of others. This doesn’t mean you’re a social butterfly—it’s just the opposite, because you like your alone time. But a lot of your life will naturally revolve around your commitments or helping people in some way.

  Unless the influence of your other two numbers modifies this Eight, you’re not usually comfortable with being spontaneous; instead, you like to take your time to think things through. You feel it’s silly to proceed with anything without a good plan in place, and you can sometimes be slow with that process.

  Your Challenge

  This is the issue that’s woven through your life, appearing repeatedly in both subtle and obvious ways. If Eight is your third number, this can involve your natural generosity and drive to take care of others. You may take on too much responsibility, or life may just arrange to give it to you. Either way, you can work too hard, too long, or too seriously and may lose all sense of yourself in the service.

  You feel drawn to supporting others. It might be that as a child, you were more the parent for your own mother; or that you take care of her or even both parents as they age, or even other family members on and off throughout your life. But if this isn’t part of your experience, others (both friends and family) will still naturally choose you to ask for help, and there can be no end to your work. While you sincerely do want to show up for people, you also have a strong personal need for your own space. Remember, Eight is associated with the image of the cave inside the mountain, and you’ll need to balance helping your tribe with time when you retreat to pay attention to your own self-care.

  It can be hard to say no when you need to and not feel selfish about time for yourself. If the balance of giving and receiving falls too far out of whack, you can begin to feel resen
tful and eventually angry. That mountain can turn into a volcano, blasting the people in your life with your upset at being used, taken for granted, or unsupported. It’s really a lifelong process, this work to develop healthy boundaries and not feel so responsible for everyone’s welfare. You’ll always feel pulled to be the one to step up, but you’re not at the mercy of this impulse. You can learn to manage the feeling and recognize the yin and yang of it—when it’s okay to give and when it’s time to stop and ask someone else to pitch in.

  The issue isn’t just about attending to whether you over-give, but about how receptive you are as well. These are two halves of the same cycle, and you tend to be brilliant at being the giver but not so great at opening your arms to receive. You’ll have to work on allowing others to lend a hand and even (gasp!) asking for help so that the people you’ve given so much to know how to return the favor.

  You can respond with enormous anger to issues of unfairness and can be single-minded in your determination to get justice for yourself or for others. It’s possible to get stuck and just keep digging yourself deeper into the problem rather than finding a way to resolve it and move on.

  The qualities of Eight are hard work, reliability, and diligence; and you may repeatedly choose situations that require all those characteristics and then some. You can wonder why you always seem to end up doing things the hard way or why life can’t be as easy for you as it is for some. But what this is really about is the essence of the Eight, which is transformation. You choose experiences that create struggle because it’s only through hard work that true inner change can be achieved. You aren’t here to coast; you came to gain deep knowledge and achieve powerful inner growth.

  Your Calling

  As a for career, the Eight influence makes you take your work very seriously, and you can succeed at whatever you put your mind to through pure diligence and determination. Someone with an Eight in this position often does very well as an entrepreneur because of this. There’s also a theme of accumulation here, which can mean accumulating wealth (often through deliberate effort, not overnight success) or working with finances, such as in the banking industry or estate planning.

  Because of your drive to help others, other jobs that would be a natural fit include social worker, nurse, business manager, or caregiver of any sort. With that pillar-of-strength mountain characteristic, you give powerful help, often for large groups rather than just one person at a time. If you own a business, you’ll treat all of your employees like family and go out of your way to make sure that everyone is well taken care of.

  In the mountain, there is a cave; and the cave is where the knowledge is, so you might be a teacher or consultant. But the cave is also where transformation happens, so work as a member of the clergy or psychologist can be fulfilling as well.

  Since a hot button for you concerns issues of unfairness, other careers are mediator, attorney, union organizer, or community activist, working to ensure that everyone’s rights are protected.

  The themes of home and the land apply here, so jobs such as real estate agent or appraiser, property developer, or property manager can be good. Many people with an Eight as their third number dream of establishing a retreat center where groups of people can go to focus on spiritual growth. There’s also a pattern centering around food, so a career as a nutritionist, chef, or restaurateur is a possibility.

  What the Chinese call your destiny, we might understand as your true calling, the ultimate power you’re evolving toward. When your third number is Eight, your purpose in life is to be that mountain of strength and knowledge, offering your deep understanding of how harmonious the world can be if only we can each stand in our truth.

  You help call us home to our deep desire for our tribe, our loving community of family and friends that gives us a safe place to land. But most of all, you offer yourself as a wise and nurturing support, taking our hands, guiding us deep within, and helping us through a powerful alchemical process to discover our own buried treasure.

  Third Number: Nine

  Fearless Heart

  The first impression you make is as a warm, friendly, and outgoing person. There will be a sparkle about you, and others will assume that you’re an extrovert, but they may be totally wrong. People with a Nine in this position will shoot their energy out to someone on first meeting, but their true nature may actually be shy and introverted, depending on what their other two numbers are.

  In terms of how you do things, you like freedom and spontaneity instead of being locked into some rigid schedule. You’ll make any project fun and always bring a lighthearted attitude to whatever you do. It can feel too heavy to be around people who don’t respond when you crack a joke or try to make things fun.

  Your Challenge

  This is the issue that’s woven through your life, appearing repeatedly in both subtle and obvious ways. Nine is about the heart, which you will definitely wear on your sleeve. Rejection can be an issue for you—whether it’s the hurt you feel if someone doesn’t return your affection or because you’re so frightened of rejection, you hold yourself back and miss opportunities. You may have lessons around understanding that it’s not possible to be special to everyone and to not take it personally if someone doesn’t respond in the way you’d hoped.

  Others may judge you as being flamboyant or wanting attention because you’re so expressive. This is a misperception, but it can cause problems in relationships. You may not realize you’re putting some people off when you’re merely being your lit-up self!

  You think fast and learn quickly. In fact, depending on the influence of your other numbers, you may do everything fast, with words tumbling out of your mouth more rapidly than people can follow. But along with this comes a tendency to speed overall, and that can mean you have trouble completing projects. You’ll get excited about something and you’ll stick with it while it’s still fun; as soon something else grabs your attention, though, you may drop the old project for the new one.

  The influence of the Nine can also mean that your heart is so open that you can be overly trusting of others in general or that you can let someone get too close too soon and end up getting hurt. There may even be a pattern of experience that’s usually recognized as betrayal. Sometimes this can be in romance with an unfaithful lover; but it can also show up in other ways, such as with a business partner or family member. You may not have specifically defined it as a betrayal at the time, but looking back, you can see that’s really what it was. One woman’s husband failed to file their tax returns for ten years and lied to her about it, for example. It was a huge shock when she discovered warning letters from the IRS hidden in the bottom of his desk drawer.

  In Chinese medicine, your consciousness is believed not to reside in your brain, but in your heart. If you have a Nine here, this means that you have an open consciousness as well as an open heart, and you’re affected by what others are thinking and feeling. You may know who’s calling when the phone rings, but what also happens below your awareness throughout the day is that the thoughts and feelings of other people affect your own. This tendency to be a “psychic sponge” can cause you to develop a constant background anxiety, as little energetic messages float in from the person working on the other side of the partition in the office or sitting next to you on the plane and blend with your own thoughts and emotions. I always recommend training in intuition and energy work so that you can begin to develop better psychic boundaries and transform this empathic ability from a challenge to a strength.

  Your Calling

  As for a career, it’s possible that you’ll end up in the spotlight, your work involving being seen in some way. Especially since you’re creative and a natural performer, you could be happy as an actor, singer, artist, or public speaker. But you also have a talent for getting people inspired and excited, so other careers could include sales, marketing, public relations, or communications. Since you have a special talent for making people laugh, your work will be done with humor—y
ou could even become a comedian.

  You’ll do best in a career where you interact with others rather than work in isolation; it’s also essential that your job be fun because the moment you’re bored, you’ll want to move on. The travel industry is an option because it gives you the opportunity to see new places and meet new people, your favorite things.

  What the Chinese call your destiny, we might understand as your true calling, the ultimate power you’re evolving toward. We might simply say that you’re here to develop a fearlessly open heart. Maybe it’s easiest for me to explain by sharing my own story, since my third number is Nine. Decades ago, when I first began to work with feng shui, I started to notice that at the end of every consultation, my clients were making the same comment. I remember the day it dawned on me what this meant.

  I was feng shui-ing the home of a woman who shared her story with great embarrassment, hardly looking me in the eyes, as if she were ashamed of what she was saying. She described how she’d conquered alcoholism through sheer force of will and then had struggled with and overcome a serious eating disorder. At this point, she was unemployed and depressed; on top of that, her husband had come to her and said that he’d always felt like a woman trapped in a man’s body, so he’d decided to have sex-reassignment surgery but hoped she’d stand by him. She sat there with her eyes downcast and quietly said that she’d given it a lot of thought and had realized that since she truly loved her husband, it shouldn’t matter whether he was a man or a woman, so she’d decided to stay in the marriage.

  I sat across from this woman, breathless, in total awe of her heroic journey. She’d fought so hard to heal herself, and despite her current emotional downturn, she was able to stay in her heart and continue to love her husband. After I was finally able to speak, I quietly reflected back to her the genuine strength, beauty, and courage that I saw in front of me. She was finally able to hold my gaze, and I hoped she really was hearing my words.