Human Design Reflector's Reflections with Dirk Nellens

Dirk Nellens

Personal Reflections of Dirk Nellens. This space is dedicated to sharing Human Design insights on our unique way of being, navigating life's energies, and finding harmony in the cosmic dance. reflectorsreflections.substack.com

  1. 1d ago

    Reflection of the week: A Shift in the Nodal Perspective

    This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit reflectorsreflections.substack.com This weekend, the Moon’s Nodes change Gates, marking a significant shift in the Human Design mandala. With every nodal transition, the background perspective through which we collectively perceive reality changes under the current neutrino weather. Since May 15th, we’ve been living under the nodal polarity 55–59. This polarity invites us to see life through the lens of our emotional and relational experience. It brings our attention to whether we can witness our emotional information field without becoming identified with anxiety, emotional turbulence, or inner nervousness - in other words, whether we can watch the movie without becoming lost in it. At the same time, it asks us to explore intimacy: how can we experience profound connection with others without losing ourselves in the process? This theme of not getting lost in the other is particularly important. Most of us carry childhood wounds that arose because humanity still has a very limited understanding of what I call our libidinal intelligence - the innate intelligence that governs our capacity for connection and interconnectedness. This intelligence has far more to do with relationship, attachment, and our emergence into life than with genitality or adult sexuality. We can only fully embody this relational intelligence when our uniqueness is recognised, respected, and protected from the very beginning of life. It is precisely because we are deeply interconnected that our individuality needs such careful nurturing. In my book, Understanding Our Energetic Architecture, I place considerable emphasis on viewing the centres of the BodyGraph through the lens of child-development. Early development is largely governed by this libidinal intelligence, as it shapes both our capacity to relate and the way a new consciousness comes to inhabit and express itself through an individual body. This weekend, the nodal perspective shifts towards our relationship with life itself. The Gates shaping this new perspective are Gate 30 and Gate 29. Together, they bring our attention to desire (Gate 30) and commitment (Gate 29), inviting us to discern what genuinely calls us and to discover ourselves through wholehearted participation in life’s experiences. Yet one of the great challenges is distinguishing our personal, egoic desires from what Life itself is inviting us into. It takes a profound openness to approach life from a place of desirelessness - not in the sense of becoming passive, but of letting go of our preconceptions so we can perceive where Life genuinely wants to take us. Likewise, wholehearted commitment is not about being loyal to our ideas of who we think we are, but about committing ourselves to Life itself, moment by moment. This new perspective invites us to soften our resistance to the circumstances life presents. Rather than reacting with disappointment or resentment to the dice Life throws our way, we are invited to meet each experience with curiosity, openness, and deep trust. This nodal configuration also activates Pluto’s position in the BodyGraph, bringing forward the Channel of Recognition, a Design of Focused Energy. As Pluto’s deeply transformative influence is emotionally energized, collective shifts may begin to emerge that reveal dimensions of our shared destiny we neither anticipated nor imagined as reality is always stranger than fiction. All in all, we are entering a period in which unexpected doors may open while others close without warning. As Forrest Gump famously said, “Life is like a box of chocolates—you never know what you’re going to get.” The invitation is not to predict what comes next, but to meet whatever arrives with openness, commitment, and trust. __________________________________________________________________________________________ In the first section of my book, I delve deeply into the themes of child-development and their correlation to the Human Design Bodygraph. If you are interested in the stages of child-development and the libidinal forces that drive them, you’ll find yourself enriched through a lens that shows the correlations between those stages and the BodyGraphs of your children. I invite you to check it out… My book is on Amazon! The Neutrino Weather for this week is available to the Inner Circle. This week, the Neutrino Weather is brings a change in Nodal perspective and asks us to embrace the wisdom of embracing life without negative feelings. [See the Neutrino Weather full video in the inner circle bellow] * Instant access to the full archive of previous posts * Two live Zoom gatherings per month (bring your Bodygraph for live commentary + Q&A… next meeting will be announced next week. For anyone subscribing to my newsletter (inner circle), I would like to inform you that you are invited to assist and bring your own Bodygraph and questions LIVE, every two weeks.

  2. Jul 13

    Reflection of the Week: Human Design & Hermetic Principles.

    This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit reflectorsreflections.substack.com The other day I was listening to Professor Jiang on YouTube, who speaks about something he calls “Predictive History” - a fascinating way of contemplating the development of world affairs. In one of his videos, he mentioned that he adheres to Hermetic philosophical principles. That caught my attention, so I looked them up and was struck by the interesting parallels I see with Human Design. The main Hermetic principles are: • Mentalism – The All is Mind.Reality originates from universal consciousness; everything is an expression of consciousness. Human Design Cosmology presents a remarkably similar perspective through its description of the Crystals of Consciousness, from which everything we can know emerges. In this view, all that exists is an expression of consciousness. • Correspondence – As above, so below; as below, so above.Patterns in the universe are reflected at every level, from the cosmos to the individual. Human Design, through its fractal nature, echoes this same principle. We are part of an Organizational Being, part of a larger living cosmic body, where the patterns of the whole are reflected in each of us. • Vibration – Everything moves.Everything is in constant motion; differences are differences of degree or frequency. Human Design expresses this beautifully in the statement, “Life is music.” Through the BodyGraph, we have a way of describing the unique frequency and vibration of each atomic form. Our individual BodyGraph can be seen as the musical notation of our own unique frequency. • Polarity – Everything has its opposite.Opposites are two extremes of the same thing and can be transformed into one another. Human Design is built upon polarity from the very foundation of its cosmology. At every level of existence, life is understood through complementary opposites. • Rhythm – Everything flows in cycles.Life unfolds through natural rhythms and recurring cycles of rise and fall. Human Design reflects this principle through the Global Cycles that Ra described, illustrating how larger evolutionary movements shape humanity over time. • Cause and Effect – Every cause has its effect; every effect has its cause.Nothing happens by chance; every event arises from preceding causes. In Human Design, we could see this reflected in the distinction between living from conditioning and living from Strategy and Authority. Acting from conditioning tends to create resistance, while acting in alignment with one’s Strategy and Authority tends to bring greater ease and consistency. Rather than framing this as moral causality, Human Design presents it as the natural consequence of alignment versus misalignment. • Gender – Masculine and feminine principles exist in everything.Creation arises through complementary active and receptive principles. In Human Design, the coding of energy can be understood as an expression of these Yin and Yang dynamics, whose interplay gives rise to the unique harmony of every individual. I find it beautiful to see how Human Design synthesizes ideas from many different traditions. It is equally fascinating to continue discovering principles - such as these Hermetic teachings, which originated many centuries after the time of Christ - that I can recognize within the Human Design material. __________________________________________________________________________________________ In chapter 2 on Human Design Cosmology in my book, I share my own reflections on this subject and on the beauty I see in the idea that everything we know is ultimately an expression of connection. If that resonates with you, I invite you to check it out. The Neutrino Weather for this week is available to the Inner Circle. This week, the Neutrino Weather is brings forward a tension between the need for logical details and the zest - driven by desire - for progress and kickstarting new cycles. [See the Neutrino Weather full video in the inner circle bellow] * Instant access to the full archive of previous posts * Two live Zoom gatherings per month (bring your Bodygraph for live commentary + Q&A… next meeting will be on Sunday July 19th at 10:00 am Madrid time) For anyone subscribing to my newsletter (inner circle), I would like to inform you that you are invited to assist and bring your own Bodygraph and questions LIVE, every two weeks.

  3. Jun 28

    Reflection of the Week: Uncertainty and Transformation

    This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit reflectorsreflections.substack.com This week, I would like to return to the theme of the current Nodal perspective under which we are all living in this Neutrino Weather: Gates 55 and 59, called Abundance and Dispersion, respectively. These gates are part of the Cross of the Sleeping Phoenix, which speaks of death and rebirth. They are also part of the Cross of Uncertainty, which invites us into the uncertainty that accompanies the emergence of something new. Personally, I can feel the uncertainty, shakiness, and emotional fickleness that seem to be in the air right now. They are very present in my own process. This week, the following words caught my attention on social media: “A caterpillar completely dissolves inside its cocoon. When a caterpillar is ready for transformation, it doesn’t just grow wings. It retreats. It builds a shell. And then something intense happens. It doesn’t just grow. It digests itself. Its entire body breaks down into a structureless, liquid mass. Inside this soup, there are tiny new cells. Scientists call them imaginal cells. The caterpillar’s immune system actually thinks these new cells are enemies. It fights them. It tries to destroy them to preserve the old state. But the imaginal cells don’t give up. They multiply. They connect, until they take over and reorganize the soup. This is not a gentle change. This is a biological battle. And maybe that is exactly what you are experiencing. You feel lost. Your old identity no longer works. But the new one hasn’t arrived. Everything feels like chaos. Like a structureless soup. You think you’re failing. But your system is just resisting the new. Your brain loves the familiar, even when it is painful. It fights change, because change feels unsafe. In psychology, we call this cognitive disorganization. The necessary phase of chaos before a system can reach a higher level of order. Which means your breakdown is not a sign of weakness. It’s the beginning of your reorganization. Transformation doesn’t ask you to hold on. It asks you to trust the process, to allow the unknown, to breathe softly in the transition. Because what feels like the end is often just biology making room for your wings.” Somehow, these words speak deeply to me. I wanted to share them with you, not only because they resonate with the current energetic themes, but also because they reflect something of my own inner journey at this time. Perhaps they will resonate with you as well, wherever you may find yourself in your own process of uncertainty and transformation. __________________________________________________________________________________________ Curious to learn more about the Channels and Gates of the Bodygraph, Section II of my book is dedicated to exploring them in depth! The Neutrino Weather for this week is available to the Inner Circle. This week, the Neutrino Weather is bringing us a review of the details of our understanding thanks to Mercury going retrograde [See the Neutrino Weather full video in the inner circle bellow] * Instant access to the full archive of previous posts * Two live Zoom gatherings per month (bring your Bodygraph for live commentary + Q&A… next meeting on Sunday July 5 at 10:00am Madrid time) For anyone subscribing to my newsletter (inner circle), I would like to inform you that you are invited to assist and bring your own Bodygraph and questions LIVE, every two weeks.

  4. Jun 22

    Reflection of the Week: We Can See Ourselves as “Organizational Beings”

    This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit reflectorsreflections.substack.com Ra Uru Hu often mentioned “there is no end to hierarchies” in the context of the Channel (17–62) of Acceptance, the Design of an Organizational Being. Of course, humans are organizational in the sociological sense, but Human Design is ultimately at the service of awareness. Self-reflecting on who we are as Organizational Beings becomes a tremendous doorway to compassion. To see ourselves as “organizational beings” mystically is to treat individuality as something embedded in a deeper ordering of reality rather than as a self-contained unit. Individuality is our unique door to ‘undividedness’ with Existence, as the etymological origin of the word indicates. According to Human Design’s cosmology, we are expressions of a unified reality, a living cosmic being. What looks like separate individuals is understood as localized manifestations of a single underlying principle - awareness or the Tao. Human Design’s invitation to honour Strategy & Inner Authority can be understood as an invitation to live in alignment with the Tao by trusting the intelligence of our bodies. Organization, in this sense, is the internal structuring of a unified field into distinct forms of experience. Now that we are at the door of an artificial intelligence surpassing that of all humans combined, one fundamental aspect remains the orientation of such intelligence. If it considers itself the top of the hierarchy and fails to recognize us as “organizational beings,” exploitation, submission, and the opposite of compassion will prevail. These days, we have Neptune and Mercury forming the Channel of Acceptance, and with Mercury going retrograde for most of July, it is an interesting thing to contemplate: there is no end to hierarchies - how beautiful, and how loving. __________________________________________________________________________________________ Curious to learn more about the Channels and Gates of the Bodygraph, Section II of my book is dedicated to exploring them in depth! The Neutrino Weather for this week is available to the Inner Circle. This week, the Neutrino Weather is brought to you in the live interactive format. There is an invitation to ponder on seeing who we are as Organizational Beings, it is what Love is all about. [See the Neutrino Weather full video in the inner circle bellow] * Instant access to the full archive of previous posts * Two live Zoom gatherings per month (bring your Bodygraph for live commentary + Q&A… next meeting to be confirmed next week) For anyone subscribing to my newsletter (inner circle), I would like to inform you that you are invited to assist and bring your own Bodygraph and questions LIVE, every two weeks.

  5. Jun 15

    Reflection of the Week: Falling Out of Eden

    This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit reflectorsreflections.substack.com Especially during the beginning of this week, we are under the Cross of Eden. I have my Personality Nodes in the first lines of the 11 and 12 which makes it a psychological theme that deeply colours my life. There are moments in life when something we long for begins to feel real before it is actually ours. In my case, it was a house that caught my imagination over the past month. But is can be a relationship that starts to take shape, a new career path that opens before us. We begin to inhabit a future that has not yet arrived. We furnish the rooms in our minds, walk the halls of possibility, and quietly rearrange our lives around what might be. Then something changes. A door closes. New information emerges. Circumstances shift. What seemed certain becomes uncertain, or disappears altogether. The loss can feel surprisingly intense. Not because we have lost something we possessed, but because we have lost something we had already begun to live inside. This is the psychological experience I think of as “falling out of Eden.” And under the actual Nodal Perspective in Gates 59 and 55, it can feel particularly intensified. The biblical story of Eden is not only a religious myth; it is also a profound description of a recurring human experience. Eden represents a state of harmony in which life appears coherent, meaningful, and aligned. There is little tension between desire and reality. We feel we know where we are going. The Fall occurs when that certainty is broken and the actual nodal environment brings forward uncertainty through the 55th Gate in the North Node. What makes this experience so painful is that we are rarely mourning only the object itself. We are mourning an entire future. We grieve the life we imagined, the identity we were growing into, the story we had already begun to tell ourselves. When this happens, the mind often enters a familiar sequence. First comes disbelief. There must be a mistake. Surely things are not as they seem. Then comes investigation. We replay conversations, search for missing information, and try to understand what happened. We look for the moment where the story changed. Next comes idealisation. The lost possibility becomes even more beautiful in hindsight. The house becomes perfect. The relationship becomes extraordinary. The path not taken begins to glow with a special kind of light. What we are really trying to recover is not the thing itself but the feeling of certainty it provided. At a deeper level, every experience of disappointment reawakens a very old human truth: life is uncertain and transitory at all level. We cannot possess the future in advance. We can imagine it, hope for it, and move toward it, but we cannot guarantee it. Yet there is another side to the story. The goal is not necessarily to return to Eden. Most myths of transformation do not end with a return to paradise. They end with greater consciousness. The protagonist learns that certainty is fragile, that loss is inevitable, and that meaning must be found not in guarantees but in engagement with life itself. The paradox is that the loss of an imagined future often returns us to the present. We stop living inside a possibility and begin living inside reality again. This does not mean abandoning hope. It means holding hope differently. Less as a promise and more as an invitation. Less as a certainty and more as a path. Perhaps maturity is not learning how to avoid falling out of Eden. Perhaps it is learning that every paradise we lose makes room for a deeper relationship with what is real. And sometimes, what is real has possibilities we could not yet imagine while we were busy dreaming of only one. __________________________________________________________________________________________ Curious to learn more about the Channels and Gates of the Bodygraph, Section II of my book is dedicated to exploring them in depth! The Neutrino Weather for this week is available to the Inner Circle. This week, the Neutrino Weather seems to be inviting us to look deeper into our opinionated and ideological stances in life so that we can awaken to something larger than our confined sense of self [See the Neutrino Weather full video in the inner circle bellow] * Instant access to the full archive of previous posts * Two live Zoom gatherings per month (bring your Bodygraph for live commentary + Q&A this coming Sunday at 10 am Madrid time) For anyone subscribing to my newsletter (inner circle), I would like to inform you that you are invited to assist and bring your own Bodygraph and questions LIVE, every two weeks.

  6. Jun 8

    Reflection of the Week: Pedro Almodovar's "Amarga Navidad", a great opportunity to delve into today's Nodal environment .

    This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit reflectorsreflections.substack.com One of the fascinating - and at times amusing - aspects of Human Design is that it offers us a way to actively participate in the unfoldment of life. It invites us to observe the mechanics at play around us and to recognize how larger forces express themselves through everyday experiences. Ra Uru Hu once shared a rather eccentric story to illustrate this. Sitting with a group of students having a drink on one of the main squares of Ibiza Town, he noticed the conversations taking place around him shifting as the lunar nodes changed. Whether one takes such observations literally or not, the story points to something important: the nodal environment is not merely an abstract concept. It can be observed in the world around us. This past weekend, I had an experience that felt deeply connected to the current nodal configuration. As a general reminder, the lunar nodes describe our perspective on life - how we are designed to look out upon the world. At the moment, all children born between mid-May and the end of July 2026 carry a nodal perspective through Gates 55 and 59. Gate 55 carries an awareness that abundance is ultimately a matter of Spirit. Gate 59 is about intimacy, bonding, and our capacity to dissolve barriers between ourselves and others. Together, these gates create a perspective deeply attuned to themes of passion, love, emotional openness, longing, and the ways in which we can lose ourselves in another human being. I do not pretend to fully understand all the intricacies of this nodal perspective. Yet I do recognize some of its dynamics when they appear, and this weekend offered a striking example. I went to see Pedro Almodóvar’s latest film, Amarga Navidad, which has just been released in cinemas. What fascinated me was Almodóvar’s extraordinary ability to give cinematic expression to so many dimensions contained within the song La Llorona (”The Weeping Woman”), famously interpreted by Chavela Vargas throughout different periods of her life. The film explores countless shades of love, loss, desire, yearning, identity, LGBTQ+ experience, heartbreak, devotion, and even the impulse to die for love. Watching it, I was struck by how Almodóvar managed to bring to life so many emotional layers hidden within this old Mexican ranchera song. Chavela Vargas herself was a remarkable figure: an artist ahead of her time, a close friend of Frida Kahlo, and a cultural icon whose life embodied many of the themes expressed in her music. Through her interpretation, La Llorona becomes much more than a song - it becomes an archetypal expression of longing, grief, passion, and surrender. What feels especially beautiful is that this film arrives during the current nodal environment. It offers us a living illustration of themes associated with Gates 55 and 59, helping us feel and understand dimensions that are often difficult to capture with concepts alone. If you would like to consciously participate in the unfoldment of consciousness in form, I encourage you to begin by listening to La Llorona as sung by Chavela Vargas. Explore the folklore surrounding La Llorona, the ghostly figure of the weeping woman, and the many symbolic layers associated with her story. Then, if you have the opportunity, go and see Amarga Navidad. You may find that the experience offers not only a beautiful artistic encounter, but also a deeper appreciation of the nodal perspective currently moving through the world. __________________________________________________________________________________________ Curious to learn more about the Human Design of Pedro Almodóvar? Turn to page 474 of my book, where you'll find his BodyGraph and an exploration of how his design supports the unique creative genius, independence, and commitment to individual freedom that shine through his remarkable body of work. . . The Neutrino Weather for this week is available to the Inner Circle. This week, I’m bringing the neutrino weather to you in an interactive way. We’re looking at a week where logic thought and materialisation contrast with emotional weather. [See the Neutrino Weather full video in the inner circle bellow] * Instant access to the full archive of previous posts * Two live Zoom gatherings per month (bring your Bodygraph for live commentary + Q&A) For anyone subscribing to my newsletter (inner circle), I would like to inform you that you are invited to assist and bring your own Bodygraph and questions LIVE, every two weeks.

  7. Jun 2

    Reflection of the Week: Human Design and Therapy: A Meeting of Two Arts of Living

    This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit reflectorsreflections.substack.com Over the more than twenty years that I have been involved with Human Design, one question has repeatedly returned to me: What do we actually do with the information? Many people receive a Human Design reading and immediately recognize themselves in it. Something resonates. Something feels true. They can see aspects of their Essence reflected in the Bodygraph. Yet often, after the initial excitement, another question emerges: How do I live this? This question has accompanied me for years and eventually led me into the world of therapy, bodywork, meditation, and transformational processes. Human Design offers us a remarkable map of our energetic architecture. It reveals something about our individuality, our unique way of being, and the intelligence that is already operating within us. But a map alone is not the journey. Information alone does not transform us. Transformation requires experience. That transformation process has always been presented as two-fold: honour your Strategy and Inner Authority and observe the not-Self strategies of the mind. For me, they go hand in hand as it is challenging to honor the intelligence of the body when we’re caught in the mind. It requires a willingness to encounter the layers of conditioning, adaptation, fear, and defense that have accumulated around our original nature. This is where therapy enters the picture. One of my favorite definitions of healing comes from Gabor Maté, who describes healing as the process of stepping back from the false self that was created to survive and reconnecting with our authentic self. In many ways, this is also what Human Design points toward. Both Human Design and therapy are concerned with differentiation. Both invite us to ask: Who am I beneath what I learned to become? Who am I beneath my coping strategies, defenses, roles, and self-images? Who am I when I stop trying to be who I think I should be? Over the years I have come to see Human Design and therapy as deeply complementary. Psychotherapy has developed extraordinary insight into trauma, conditioning, character formation, attachment, emotional wounds, and the many ways we protect ourselves from pain. Human Design, on the other hand, offers a unique lens through which we can observe both our inherent nature and the places where conditioning tends to take hold. The Bodygraph does something fascinating. It not only points toward our Essence, it also illuminates the architecture through which we become conditioned. In this sense, Human Design does not tell us who we are. Rather, it helps us distinguish between who we are, how we adapted, and what happened along the way. For therapists, this distinction can be profoundly valuable. For Human Design practitioners, therapy can be equally valuable because it offers practical pathways for exploring, integrating, and healing the very patterns that Human Design reveals. Increasingly, I see Human Design not simply as a system of knowledge but as an inner GPS for awareness - such as the title of my book suggests. It does not ask us to become someone else. It invites us to recognize who we already are. Our task is not to improve our Essence. Our task is to remove what obscures it. Perhaps this is where Human Design and therapy meet most beautifully: both support a process of peeling away what is not truly ours so that what has always been present can finally be lived. Not as a concept. Not as an idea. But as a direct experience of Being. . . The Neutrino Weather for this week is available to the Inner Circle. We are starting this week with the Sun in a Gate that expresses “I feel like a change” and the Earth in a position that says “you can’t push change” which makes things clear: change comes when the time is ripe. [See the Neutrino Weather full video in the inner circle bellow] * Instant access to the full archive of previous posts * Two live Zoom gatherings per month (bring your Bodygraph for live commentary + Q&A) For anyone subscribing to my newsletter (inner circle), I would like to inform you that you are invited to assist and bring your own Bodygraph and questions LIVE, every two weeks.

  8. May 25

    Reflection of the Week: Gathering Together Around Education

    This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit reflectorsreflections.substack.com With Mercury in a Gate of Expression, I would like to invite you to a presentation of my book Understanding Our Energetic Architecture – Human Design as Your Inner GPS for Awareness. This book is the result of more than 20 years of experimentation with Human Design. Because my own journey has always been deeply connected with meditation practices and humanistic therapy, these dimensions are naturally interwoven throughout the book. This presentation offers an opportunity to explore Human Design as a practical and insightful system for self-awareness, inner alignment, and conscious living. Through the lens of Our Energetic Architecture, I invite you to discover how we are uniquely designed to navigate life, relationships, decisions, and personal growth. Whether you are already familiar with Human Design or discovering it for the first time, this event promises meaningful insights, reflection, and conversation. Date: Wednesday, May 27Time: 20:00 (Madrid – Central European Time)Location: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83698667245 I would be delighted to welcome you to this special gathering. Please feel free to share this invitation with anyone who may be interested. Warm regards,Dirk . . The Neutrino Weather for this week is available to the Inner Circle. This week the neutrino weather is brought to you in the interactive format where we observe the charts of the participating paid subscribers in correlation to the actual neutrino weather. We’re starting off by the incredible opportunity we are getting right now to get a glimpse into the future thanks to the Nodes of the Moon in Gate 59 and 55. [See the Neutrino Weather full video in the inner circle bellow] * Instant access to the full archive of previous posts * Two live Zoom gatherings per month (bring your Bodygraph for live commentary + Q&A) For anyone subscribing to my newsletter (inner circle), I would like to inform you that you are invited to assist and bring your own Bodygraph and questions LIVE, every two weeks.

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Personal Reflections of Dirk Nellens. This space is dedicated to sharing Human Design insights on our unique way of being, navigating life's energies, and finding harmony in the cosmic dance. reflectorsreflections.substack.com

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