I have to tell you about something that’s been giving me chills all week. This Sunday, July 5th, is Bob Proctor’s birthday. He would have turned 92.
Most years, a mentor’s birthday comes and goes with a quiet moment of gratitude. This year, something lined up that stopped me in my tracks, and I need to share it with you, because it feels like more than a coincidence. It feels like a message.
Let me back up for a second…
Over the last couple of years, a dear friend and mentor of mine, Julie Ciardi, introduced me to Human Design. I’ll be honest with you. I didn’t go looking for it. I didn’t even know I was searching for anything. But after Bob passed, a lot of things stopped making sense to me. And Human Design became one of the tools that finally helped me start making sense of myself again.
In Human Design, we all carry certain frequencies. Julie teaches them by their gate numbers, and each one has a low expression and a high one. Two of those frequencies are lit up in the sky this entire week, right through Bob’s birthday. Gate 39 and Gate 38.
Here’s the part that got me.
Those same two gates were two of the core frequencies Bob Proctor was born with. His conscious Sun sits in Gate 39. His conscious Earth sits in Gate 38. They were part of the fundamental signal of who he was.
And this week, the sun in the sky is moving through Gate 39, and the earth is sitting in Gate 38.
So on Bob’s 92nd birthday, the sky itself is broadcasting his exact frequency.
Now, anyone who knows Human Design will tell you this happens every year, and they'd be right. It's called a solar return. Every birthday, the sun comes back to the exact spot it held the day you were born, and the earth swings around to meet it on the other side. So this isn't a fluke of timing. It's a homecoming. Every July 5th, the sky returns to the signal Bob arrived broadcasting. This is simply the first year I had the eyes to see it. And it's his 92nd.
Now let me tell you what those two gates actually are. When you hear it, you’re going to understand why I got goosebumps…
Julie calls Gate 39 the Dynamic Liberator. She describes its whole purpose as provocation. Not provocation to create conflict. In her words, to “provoke to awaken others, to activate, to help them awaken into their purpose.” The low expression pushes buttons and makes people react. The high expression wakes people up and sets them free.
Friend, that is Bob Proctor. Not close to Bob. That is Bob, exactly.
I had the honor of serving as Bob’s Creative Director for the last four years of his life, which means I got to watch him work up close, almost every single day. On a stage in front of thousands or sitting one on one with a single client in a hot seat, the man was a constant, relentless, loving provocation. One moment to the next. Always poking at your small thinking. Always challenging the story you’d been telling yourself. Always daring you to pick up the reins of your own life, set a real goal, and decide to become the person you were capable of becoming.
He talked about playing the lead in your own movie. Being the star of it. The director of it. He provoked people awake to their own possibility, over and over, for decades. It was the great privilege of my life to experience that first as his student, and then to stand beside him and watch him do it.
That’s Gate 39.
Then there’s Gate 38. Julie calls it the Honorable Warrior. Its low expression is combativeness. Fighting just to fight. Arguing to be right. Its high expression is having a cause. She quotes Richard Rudd on this, and the line has stuck with me: the only difference between the shadow of the 38 and the gift of it is the nature of the fight. It has to be the right fight. It’s about finding your soapbox. The cause worth pouring your heart and body and soul into.
That was Bob too.
Bob’s fight was never for Bob. His cause was always bigger than himself. He wanted to reach the whole world with the truth about paradigms, about the power every one of us has to change our thinking and therefore change our lives. That was the hill he lived on.
And here’s something you might not know about him. Bob wasn’t especially interested in talking about his own legacy. He never sat around trying to architect what he’d leave behind. He figured that would get sorted out after he was gone, and it wasn’t his job to plan it. His job was to wake up as many people as he possibly could while he was still here. He trusted that the more people he reached, the more the work would carry itself forward.
And look at what happened. The thousands of people he mentored are out in the world right now, teaching the same principles in their own voices. The cause outlived the man precisely because he never made it about the man.
That’s Gate 38.
So now put it all together with me, because this is where it gets almost too much….
There’s a program I collaborated to bring into the world after Bob’s passing called Proctor’s Principles, built on Bob’s work and facilitated by his firstborn son Brian Proctor, who spent sixty years at his father’s side, along with Brian’s wife Cory. Proctor’s Principles launched on July 5th, 2024. Bob’s birthday.
This week, on July 5th, 2026, the first era of Proctor’s Principles is completing. Taking a breather. A pause before whatever the next era becomes.
And this week, I had the pleasure of facilitating the finale of our practical application sessions of this cohort. The very last one.
All of it landing on this week of Bob’s birthday. While the sky runs his frequency.
I don’t usually over-read a coincidence. But when a man’s two core gates show up in the heavens on his birthday, at the exact moment an era built on his teaching quietly completes, it stops feeling like coincidence and starts feeling like a hand on your shoulder. It feels like Bob is here. Like his spirit is broadcasting straight through those two frequencies, saying the same thing he said every day of his life. Wake up. Find your cause. Go.
Here’s why I think it landed on me the way it did.
When Bob died, I lost my compass. I don’t think I’ve said that out loud before, not really. So much of my direction, my goals, my sense of where I was headed had been wrapped up in being close to him and being part of that mission. When it ended, I drifted. For a lot longer than I’d like to admit. I had all this potential energy and no big, clear cause of my own to aim it at.
That is actually the low side of these very gates. Julie describes the shadow of the 39 as a trapped spirit. Like an animal backed into a corner. Full of life force with nowhere to send it. That was me for a while. A lot of drive, a lot of gifts, and no soapbox to stand on.
This is where I want to give credit where it’s due. Julie Ciardi-50 Not Finished📕 , the friend and mentor who brought Human Design into my life, was a Dynamic Liberator for me. She was and is my new Gate 39. She provoked me to awaken to a whole new way of seeing myself, right when I needed it most. She didn’t comfort me. She activated me. Which is exactly what the 39 is designed to do.
Because here’s what’s finally true this year, for the first time since Bob took off.
I have a yes worth protecting.
There’s a line I love from Proctor’s Principles:
Learn to say NO to protect your YES. A no isn’t rejection. A no is a boundary that shines a brighter light on the thing you’re actually here to do.
For a long time, my yes was always somebody else’s mission. I’m a giver by nature, and I love that about myself. But I spent decades pouring my creative gifts into everyone else’s message and everyone else’s stage. Supporting. Producing. Making other people look and sound like the fullest version of themselves. Beautiful work. And also, if I’m honest, a very comfortable place to hide.
I’ve been saying a lot of no’s lately to protect a new yes. My own platform. My own voice. My own soapbox. This one, right here, that you’re reading.
Julie confessed something similar in the same teaching that sparked all of this. She said that for six years she’s had to keep pulling herself back from the easy, lucrative thing she could do in her sleep, because it isn’t her real cause. The right fight is almost never the easiest one. The 38 isn’t only about the willingness to fight. It’s about the discipline to keep choosing your true fight over the convenient one.
So this is me. Choosing.
Here’s the part about this week I don’t want you to miss.
That frequency in the sky isn’t only Bob’s. It’s on loan to all of us right now. For these few days, the whole world is running the Dynamic Liberator and the Honorable Warrior. You get to feel, borrowed for a moment, the exact signal Bob got to live inside of permanently.
So let the sky ask you what it’s been asking me.
Who are you here to provoke awake? Not to push their buttons. To free them.
And what is the cause worth fighting for? Your real one. Your soapbox. The fight that’s actually yours, not the easy one you keep defaulting to because it’s familiar.
Julie teaches, borrowing from Dr. David Hawkins, that courage is the tipping point. It’s the switch that flips you from a low frequency to a high one. You don’t have to have it all figured out. You just need enough courage to choose your cause and stand on it.
If you’re one of the coaches, teachers, creatives, guides, and light-bringers reading this, I suspect your real work overlaps with Bob’s, with Julie’s and with mine. It’s some version of helping people wake up. The world is in a state right now that needs a lot more of us awake, and a lot more of us standing firmly on the right soapbox. Yours matters. We need it.
When I look up this week, I feel him.
There he is. The provocation. The cause. The refusal to let any of us stay small.
And then the frequency turns, and it points back at me, and at you.
Here I am. There you are.
Happy 92nd birthday, Bob. Thank you for provoking so many of us awake, and for fighting the right fight that was always so much bigger than yourself. I’m picking up my piece of it now. Finally standing on my own soapbox. I think you’d be glad. 💙
This is a little of what I’m building here. My reflections and the lessons from my years with Bob, what Human Design has helped me finally understand about myself, and the ongoing work of learning for myself and helping others to be seen for the truth of who they already are. If that’s your frequency too, I’d love for you to stick around. There’s a lot more coming.
Omg Tommy this made me cry. Bob is so the 39/38 and lived his design so beautifully. As are you 🔥♥️🙏🏻
Well that helps explain a bit of my brain and energy the last couple days! Deep diving and refining more of my story and why I do what I do in the studio. Wow! Thanks for sharing.