Hello, my friends, and welcome to Episode 5 of Conversations With A Couple of Crones.

---

---

In this episode of CWACOC, you’ll hear a juicy conversation about the Gene Keys (who’d have guessed!!) and about loving ourselves. (As always you may choose to listen to the podcast above, or watch us on video by clicking the film icon on the player.)

---

We begin this episode with our usual opening question, “Where am I now?”.

You’ll hear that we are in our IQ Sphere at the moment. Meghan talked about her glorious Gene Key 50, with its Gift of Equilibrium (the Dream Arc Raccoon with its wily equilibrium bringing harmony!!), and it’s Shadow of Corruption, which in the Dream Arc is the Spider, with its Fear of Overwhelm. Meghan, in her inimitable, creative way talked about how she has created an Oracle deck of 64 cards with Raccoons and Spiders and delicious quotes about harmony and overwhelm.

You’ll hear me talk about how I am loving how this IQ sphere is allowing me to see that so many of the opinions that I formed about myself during that time are just stories. Stories that I not only made up with my teenage mind, but stories that weren’t actually true. I am loving the analogy that Hayley gave us about how we need to pull up those weeds of those old beliefs gently … if you pull too hard, you leave the roots behind and the weeds just grow again.

---

---

You will hear both Meghan and I talk again and again about how much deeper we are going with our Gene Keys this time around … I would love this to be a message of hope and optimism for all of you, especially those of you who are maybe at the beginning of your Gene Keys Journey, or are maybe completely new to this whole concept of Inner Work … do not give up on the work, nor on yourself! The more work you do, the more work you find there is to do, but the easier it becomes, the more enriching it becomes. It just gets better and better.

The Question from Our Community

This week we have a delicious prompt from Hayley …

“I’d LOVE to hear you chat about the way you think your future will be different now that you have the Gene Keys vs how it may have been if you didn’t.” 

You’ll hear Meghan talk about how she was a seeker for so much of her life, how she worked with various teachers and modalities but how they were all a little “hit and miss”. You will hear her talk about how, although she was doing the inner work, she was stuck in that loop between her Life’s Work and Evolution keys. She talked so beautifully about how the Gene Keys brought such loving kindness into her life FOR herself, and from that loving kindness how she was able to build her self-esteem.

Meghan also talked about how differently she approaches challenges now that she has the tools and the map of the Gene Keys … it gave me goosebumps when she said that with the Gene Keys she wakes up every morning with a sense of deep fulfilment because she is learning about herself! Wow! Is there anything better than that?!

“I am seeing the world in such a different way than I ever had before and that is due to the Gene Keys because it gave me my own personal entrance into the spiritual life I had been craving and seeking for so long”

You’ll hear me talk about how the first huge impact for me is the language. I am a lover of language, shaping words around my thoughts and feelings, and learning the language of the Gene Keys has been like opening a treasure box of words. I describe them as floating around me like golden balls of light.

The words of the Gene Keys have changed the way I use language myself. I feel like there is a poetic cadence to the way I think now, which is delicious.

Next, I talk about the map! Like Meghan, the Gene Keys have not only given me a map of my life, they have also given me a map of my inner world. This map of my Golden Path has given me clues to solve, and it has pointed the way down paths I might never have followed.

The Gene Keys have opened me up and I have discovered this vast universe inside myself. The field of pure potentiality exists INSIDE ME! How fucking awesome is that?!

I talk about how the Gene Keys tell the story of my life, but what is incredible to me is that not only do the Shadows describe the suffering I have been through, and the journey I’ve had to walk to get here, the Gifts describe how I have taken those Shadows and transformed them into something glorious.

I look at my life through the lens of the Gene Keys and see my Gifts at play. It’s so easy to get caught in the struggle and caught in the victim mentality of “poor me”, “why me?” (two of my Shadows right there!). But with the lens of the Gene Keys, there is so much more. There’s strength and resilience in my Gifts … Perseverance, Resourcefulness, Authority, Leadership, Acceptance!

You’ll also hear me talk about how this is SLOW work. Even though the Gene Keys are like the inner work on steroids, they’re more about the breadth and width and depth of the work, rather than the speed of it. So even though some days I feel like I’m working at a hundred miles an hour as insights and breakthroughs drop into me, I’m going SLOWLY!!!

Our conversation about the Gene Keys was just so beautiful, it covered so much; it was a delicious contemplation on timelessness and the holographic nature of this work!

This discussion led perfectly onto the next question we wanted to pose to ourselves!

---

---

Our question to ourselves …

The question we are asking ourselves this week was inspired by a conversation that we had been having all week in our Voxer space, and which itself was inspired by a conversation in one of our Devoted Voxer spaces …

How do you love yourself? How do you build self-love?

I love the way that Meghan framed it … is it “building” or is it actually “uncovering”?!

And that’s EXACTLY what it is!!

You will hear me (Bossy Lizzie!) telling you that the best, the easiest way for me to build self-love this is TO DO THE INNER WORK!

All those things people tell you to do to love yourself … acts of kindness to yourself, meditation, mindfulness … these are all just flavours of inner work of course. But we can tend to stop at that surface level and think that we are loving on ourselves by having massages and solo dates.

The real love comes with work, with peeling back the layers of protection and obfuscation that we’ve built around ourselves because of the suffering life has brought our way. And that’s why I loved Meghan’s word “uncovering”.

You will hear me talk about how, doing the inner work, showing up for yourself day after day, whether that’s in the pages of your journal, or by gifting yourself pauses, by walking in nature and dropping into the contemplation space of your heart, these are the ways that we continue to build and uncover the self-love.

However you choose to show up for yourself, THAT is the beginning of self-love.

Loving yourself enough to commit to doing the inner work is the first step on a path that will lead you to your own heart. Throwing open your heart will allow you to see that you are, and always have been, worthy of love.

And once you see that, that you ARE worthy of love, because we all are, then you can peel back those layers of fear and allow yourself to love.

And then you do more fucking work!

You can hear Meghan talk about her path towards self-love, and how important it is to recognize how the way you were raised has such an impact on how you love yourself. Meghan herself was raised in a very harsh climate, her schooling, her parents … the duality of good-bad, yes-no … and she talks about how, if that’s the only paradigm you know, then that’s what you believe about the world and yourself … harshness, with no room for love.

Meghan talked about how the principles of the Gene Keys came into her life … inquiry, patience, gentleness … and how these principles allowed her to soften that harshness she had held towards herself, to loosen her tight hold.

Meghan also talked about the power of giving your inner critic a name (hers is Gertrude, what a fucking bitch she is!!), and how she is even able to bring love to Gertrude, who after all, was only trying to protect her!

We talked a lot about patience and gentleness. We built up those barriers to loving ourselves over many, many years, they’re not going to be dismantled by a spa day! They are going to be dismantled by patient, gentle work … day after day after day … until you start to uncover the love that beats at the heart of you. And the incredible thing is, when you start to love yourself, you find that you have an even greater capacity to love others. When you have compassion for yourself, then your compassion for others cannot help but grow.

There was a lot of talk of magic in this CWACOC, because the truth is, the more of this work you do, the more magical you realise your life actually is … the magic in the mundane, Richard calls it. And do you know what? Once you start to see the magic in your own life and in your own self, there is not one fucking mundane thing about it!!

---

---

And We End with a Touch of Whimsy

Listen in to each episode to hear us pose a whimsical question that the other is not expecting!!

---