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I've spent 25 years helping people get out of their own way. Somewhere in there, I got out of mine.
Fascinated by Design is what happens when a psychologist follows her own advice — stops performing, starts living, and has a lot of opinions about what she finds. I'm Suzanne Meunier, a 4/6 Splenic Projector coming down from the roof at 50, and this podcast is me living my design out loud.
We're going to talk about Human Design. We're going to talk about what it actually takes to love yourself, love another person, and show up for a world in the middle of a massive shift. Psychology, energy medicine, hard-won wisdom — whatever's fascinating me that week.
Glad you're here.
Fascinated by Design — Episode 2
The Created and the Creator
[00:00:00]
Welcome to Fascinated by Design. I'm Suzanne Meunier, and today I want to share with you some ideas that I've been fascinated by for about the last four years.
I want to start with something I've noticed in my own life and in the lives of many of the people I've worked with. When I've experienced a polarity as a binary — as two opposing things where I have to choose a side — I get stuck.
I go to one extreme, and I stay there. All light, no shadow. All surrender, no action. All acceptance, no change. And that extreme, however spiritual it looks, creates its own kind of suffering.
But when I've been able to hold both sides of that same coin — to value them, embody them, let them exist simultaneously — something shifts. It becomes balanced, integrated, alive.
That's what I want to explore with you today. One of the most fundamental polarities I know: we are both the created and the creator.
[00:01:45]
I'm going to start by telling you a little bit about how my interest in this topic began. I've shared how I've studied energy medicine and shamanic arts. The specific lineage I studied has been passed down from the Q'ero high mountain shamans in Peru. Through those teachings, I became well aware of some of the master plant teachers, including wachuma and ayahuasca.
These medicines were talked about with great reverence in those spaces, and the impression I took away was that these teachers will invite you if they have something they want to share.
[00:02:30]
So one day I was scrolling through Instagram, and I saw a post about ayahuasca — which wasn't unusual. I had seen many similar things before. But in that moment, my splenic authority was saying yes.
Since that was the first time that had ever happened, I thought I would check in with my spirit guides. Shamanic journey was a common practice I engaged in regularly, so I set the intention to check in. And the second that I did that, all I saw were vines everywhere.
My reaction to that was: heard. Okay, I guess I'm doing this.
And without much other thought, I made my arrangements to experience my first connection with ayahuasca.
[00:03:20]
There were many things that Grandmother Ayahuasca showed me in that experience. But for this conversation, I want to focus on one of them — the dance between the creator and the created.
Of course, these experiences are ineffable and so difficult to translate through the limitations of language. But I'll do my best to share the essence with you.
I chose the word dance specifically because it felt like this flowing tension between them. As that part of my journey unfolded, I saw many images that illustrated this rhythmic dance between the energy that creates and the energy that experiences creation.
[00:04:15]
Personally, one of the things that I saw was how many of the frustrations I was experiencing in my own life were about my efforts to create things in places or spaces that weren't meant for me — which, as a Projector, I later understood as spaces where I'm not invited.
At that time, I was working at a center focused on evidence-based treatment for anxiety. I wanted to integrate spiritual practices, and I created a loving kindness group for teens struggling with perfectionism. It never built momentum.
In that journey, I saw why. The clinic's founder had set the parameters for that space, and what I wanted to create didn't fit within them. There was nothing wrong with what I was building. It just couldn't take root in a container designed for something else.
[00:05:10]
I also saw the dynamics of not being fully recognized or invited in relationships with other people. I had this somatic sensation of pushback in response to this feeling of wanting to create something in relationship with someone. When it wasn't aligned, this tension was pushing back on that creative energy.
I suspect most people can relate to the feeling of force in a relationship — either with somebody you used to fit with well, where you've grown in different directions, or somebody you've just never really aligned with. There's a disconnect. A feeling of tension in the way you relate to each other.
[00:06:00]
I had a felt sense of how I am subject to the limits of how the universe has been created, and the limits of being human.
I saw the unavoidability of emotions. Having a body means having a full range of emotional experience. And as much as I may want to escape or avoid those sensations — especially when they're uncomfortable — that's baked into this experience. You can't control or dissociate completely from emotions while you're alive in a body.
And I saw that I can't wish or will there to be world peace, or for all human beings to get their basic needs met, as much as I may want to.
[00:06:50]
Each of those limitations felt like a force field coming toward me. And I could either push back on that force field, creating a lot of difficulty and struggle for myself — or I could move to a space where there was more freedom and movement for my expression.
As I explored moving around with more freedom, I saw that even my creative expression had limitations.
I saw a bunch of points organized in a network, like guideposts. They felt like experiences that were non-negotiables for me in this lifetime. Key moments and lessons.
[00:07:40]
While there was this network of guideposts that were inevitabilities, there were also these wide-open paths between them where it felt like it was up to me what I wanted to create there.
I don't know about your experience, but in my own life, there have been times where certain events — looking back on them — felt like they could not be avoided.
In retrospect, I can see how there were initial hints. What I often call a whisper in the ear, trying to get my attention about this lesson. If I didn't notice it or take action, it was followed by a stronger tap on the shoulder. In some cases, it eventually grew to a spiritual two-by-four over the head — trying to get me to pay attention, to get back into alignment with the curriculum for my life.
[00:08:40]
Through that experience, I learned to accept that there are some experiences or lessons I'm just going to go through in life. I don't have control over that. The control I do have is how I choose to respond to them — the meaning I choose to make of them.
My creative power always lies in my response. I can suffer over the fact that this is one of my life lessons, or I can accept it and use it for my growth.
[00:09:10]
So let me explore each side of this polarity a little more fully.
Much of what I just shared from my experience was about what it's like to feel like the created. There are limitations to what I have the ability to affect. My body requires physical maintenance. I need to eat and sleep and move and do all of these things to keep it going.
There are laws of physics in the universe. As much as I may really will myself to be able to teleport places — it hasn't happened yet.
[00:09:50]
I see that many of my clients are struggling with the fact that they are the created. That there are limitations to what they can control in their lives.
For example, I speak with clients who are worried — or maybe even angry — because a family member doesn't take care of their health. And sometimes they get so focused on trying to get that person to change their behavior that they end up creating enormous tension in that relationship.
What's underneath that focus is often the vulnerability of loving someone you know you're going to lose. And of course, that's everything and everyone.
[00:10:40]
So they invest energy in a reality where they think they can control the outcome — where they can control whether their loved one ever gets sick.
We often deny the reality of life. That everything's temporary. That we grow old and die. But if we embrace that reality, we could savor what we have while it lasts, and use our creative power to make the absolute best of that experience.
The question isn't how to escape being the created. It's how to move through it consciously.
[00:11:20]
I see a pattern that many people have about their identity as the created that represents the shadow side. The challenging thing is that these people have done a lot of spiritual work. They recognize concepts like attachment and surrender. They understand the idea of releasing what they can't control and trusting the divine.
Yet I see some of them who have quietly used all of those teachings to wait.
[00:12:00]
There's a classic parable that you probably already know. A devout man is trapped on his roof during a massive flood. He's praying desperately for God to save him. A man in a rowboat comes by and says, "Jump in. I can save you." And he replies, "No, I'm praying to God. God will save me."
As the water continues to rise, a motorboat comes by and the driver shouts, "Get in. We're evacuating." The man once again refuses. "God will save me."
Finally, a helicopter lowers a ladder offering an airlift, and the man waves it away. "I have faith that God will save me."
The man, of course, drowns. Goes to heaven, and asks God, "Why didn't you save me? I had faith." And God replies, "I sent you two boats and a helicopter. What more were you waiting for?"
[00:13:10]
Sometimes the universe sends the boats. But we're waiting for magic that doesn't require any effort from us.
That's the shadow side of surrender. And it's sneaky — because it's wearing all the right clothes. It knows the language. It talks about trust and alignment and divine timing. But underneath it, there's just waiting.
Waiting dressed up as spirituality.
[00:13:40]
And here's what makes this so insidious. There's a principle that goes back thousands of years from the Hermetic tradition — the Emerald Tablet, the foundation of alchemy and metaphysics. The full line is: "As above, so below. As within, so without."
Let's consider the part: as within, so without.
What's happening inside you is being projected outward as your lived experience. Not as a metaphor. As mechanics.
[00:14:20]
So when your inner state is "I don't know, show me a sign" — the reality you're creating is one where the answers live outside of you, and nothing is showing you yet.
The waiting itself is creating more waiting. The universe, faithful mirror that it is, keeps confirming that the answer lives out there.
That's not surrender. That's the created identity on a loop. And it will keep looping until something on the inside shifts.
[00:15:00]
So what does it actually mean to step into the creator?
We're doing it every day, often without noticing. Every perspective we choose. Every story we tell ourselves about what something means. Every decision about what we're going to make room for in our lives. That's the creator at work.
I can either keep doing what I've always done and get what I've always gotten — or I can dare to build something different and tolerate not knowing how it turns out.
[00:15:40]
Just like my former boss set the parameters of what could exist in his clinic, we set the parameters for what can exist in our lives. Our homes, our relationships, our work. We're doing it whether we're conscious of it or not. The question is whether we're doing it on purpose.
I'll tell you what that looked like for me.
[00:16:05]
A friend once said something to me that I was not ready to hear. They told me that no one could convince me that I was worthy if I wasn't willing to believe it myself.
I couldn't take that in at the time. I just couldn't. But I remembered that conversation much later during a really challenging period in my life, and I decided to try believing it.
Just try it.
[00:16:40]
And what I discovered was that I had a choice. I could be kind and loving to myself — love myself without limits — or I could judge myself, abandon myself. I had the power to choose.
It was as simple as that. And as complex as making that choice again every single time something didn't work out. Every time I made a mistake. Every time the old voice came back.
That's how I changed my life. Not by waiting for evidence that I was worthy. By deciding I was.
That is the creator move. That is as within, so without, lived from the inside.
[00:17:30]
One of the patterns I see with people who don't step into their creator energy is fear about taking full responsibility for their creative power. Because if I acknowledge that I have creative power, then I have to take full responsibility for it. And as Stan Lee said through the Spider-Man series: "With great power comes great responsibility."
I've stayed in situations where I was treated poorly because I didn't feel worthy enough to leave. I've let fear keep me from building things I wanted to build. I have an incredible amount of compassion for that former version of myself. She wasn't capable of anything else at the time.
And that's exactly the point.
[00:18:25]
Self-compassion isn't the opposite of accountability. It's the foundation of it.
If we can't be kind to the former version of ourselves and look honestly at the power we had available that we didn't know how to use yet — then we keep the limits on how powerful we perceive ourselves to be.
When we have the courage to look at ourselves honestly and see the truth of what we've been creating, we can break free from our perceived limitations. And things start to shift.
[00:19:05]
Now, here's where it gets interesting. Because the invitation isn't to graduate from being the created into being the creator.
It's not one, then the other. It's both at the same time.
There's a psychological concept that describes exactly this. It's called a dialectic. Two things that appear to be opposites, both true at the same time. The tension between them is what creates movement. I also sometimes call it living in the place of and.
[00:19:50]
The created and the creator — a dialectic. Acceptance and change.
You can fully accept the container you're in — the limitations of reality — and be an active force of transformation within it. Not one then the other. Simultaneously.
That acceptance is the created move. The building, the becoming, the choosing — that's the creator move.
You need both.
[00:20:20]
And the oldest philosophical traditions in the world have been saying exactly this for thousands of years.
I want to offer you an idea to play with. Hold it lightly — not as something you need to believe, just as something to try on.
The idea is non-dualism. The word literally means not two. The teaching is that at the deepest level of reality, there is only one thing. Not you and God, not matter and spirit, not created and creator. One infinite creative consciousness expressing itself through everything that exists.
[00:21:10]
So what if we applied that to your own life? The body you're in, the family you were born into, the constraints and the gifts.
What if at some level you chose them?
I know that's a difficult idea for a lot of people — especially if you've been through real pain. But sit with it as an experiment. What if your soul chose difficulty to learn something that can only be learned through hardship? To develop a compassion that only comes from having suffered.
Playing with this idea allows a shift — from being a victim of your life, to a participant in it. And that's where your creative power lives.
[00:22:10]
Now, the challenge with this thought experiment is that there are real limits to it. You can't look at someone in active suffering and say, "Your soul chose this, so what's the big deal?" That would be cruel.
The spiritual teacher Ram Dass spoke about this tension beautifully. He talked about balancing what he called Buddha consciousness with the bleeding heart of Christ.
The recognition that everything is unfolding in divine perfection — held alongside full, open-hearted presence with suffering. Not getting so lost in the divine view that you can't be present with people and their pain. And not getting so lost in the pain that you lose the larger view entirely.
[00:23:05]
I lived that tension.
My father was ill for a period of time before he died. And as painful as that was — as much as I didn't want to lose him — I found that I could hold both things at once.
I could feel the grief. The missing him before he was even gone. And underneath that, this quieter knowing that his death was not a mistake. That it was a natural part of life. That there was something larger and more whole happening than what my broken heart could see.
Keeping my heart open to the full weight of what was happening, while also holding the divinity of it — that's what Ram Dass was pointing at. That's not bypassing. That's not pretending it doesn't hurt. It's holding both, fully.
[00:24:10]
So what does stepping into it actually look like?
Courage is the way through. Not the absence of anxiety or vulnerability — the persistence in spite of it.
You can surrender more deeply into trust by taking action. Because here's what I've learned: there's no way to trust except to trust. You don't build trust by waiting until you feel ready to trust. You build it by acting from it before the evidence arrives.
That is acting into being. That is what the creator identity actually looks like in motion.
[00:24:55]
Almost ten years ago, I created about 40 episodes of a different podcast — different topic, different version of me. It didn't go anywhere that I could measure. And for a while, I wondered what the point of all that had been.
I know now. It was preparation. It was the universe through me, as me, building exactly the capacity I needed for this. For right now. For this podcast.
It took ten years for that clarity to arrive. And now I can laugh at all the ways that the universe was winking at me the whole time. The breadcrumbs I didn't recognize as breadcrumbs. The things that felt like detours were actually the road itself.
[00:25:55]
I chose to live in trust that the things that don't make sense to my logical mind are serving me in some divine way I may not understand for a while — maybe even ever in this lifetime.
And I choose trust anyway. Not because I have proof. Not because someone gave me a sign. Because I've decided from the inside that that is the reality I want to create.
As within, so without.
[00:26:25]
The created and the creator, both at once. That's the game. And you're already playing it — whether you know it or not.
The invitation is just to play it consciously.
[00:26:40]
A question I'd invite you to sit with this week: How do you want to use your creative power?
If something landed for you today and you want to share it — or if there's a question you want me to explore — send it to suzanne@soulbloomcoaching.com with the word "invited" in the subject line.
And if you haven't yet picked up the Sacred Discomfort Guide, it's free on my website. Everything we talked about today — the honoring of feelings, the foundation of creator work — that guide walks you through it as a lived practice. Link in the show notes.
It takes a particular kind of courage to play this game consciously. I see yours.
Until next time — be mindful of what you create.