Meghan and I have been very busy working on a delicious project for the last couple of months, and we’ve been brewing up lots of juicy stuff in our creative cauldron, so we’re moving our Wizardly Words articles to a fortnightly feature … Wizardly Words on Wednesdays … rather than publishing one every week.

In the last Wizardly Words article, Meghan wrote so beautifully about the first aspect of Breakthrough which Richard Rudd describes in his book, The Art of Contemplation … Allow.

Today I’d like to talk about the second aspect … Accept.

We Realise that the Emotional Pain Will Not Kill Us

I feel really lucky. I have the Gift of Acceptance (Gene Key 25) in my chart, in my Culture sphere. That feels incredibly important to me, and to my understanding of the whole concept of this Art of Contemplation, of which “Accept” is key.

Acceptance is soft … when I accept then I am softening not only myself, but my reactions to pain and suffering. So often we run and hide when pain or suffering come into our lives. We distract ourselves so that we don’t have to feel the pain. Me, I used to get busy. Always spinning a thousand plates, always doing, doing, doing, so that I didn’t have to look at the pain.

Even after I started this inner work journey, I would look at my suffering when I was alone with my journal, but the rest of the time I would rush from “important” task to important task, never taking the time to go deeper.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I did go deep when I was journaling for all those years, and I did change my life; but what the Gene Keys and The Art of Contemplation have brought to me is an understanding that I cannot compartmentalise the inner work. And if I want to have any hope of bringing my inner peace out into the world, then I have to accept the suffering all the time.

For me, acceptance can no longer be put into a box labelled “Inner Work”, only to be examined when I am in the deep contemplation of my journaling, or in heart-opening conversations with my guide and with my best friend (Hayley and Meghan!). Acceptance needs to become part of my everyday life, as vital to me as breath. For until we truly accept our own suffering and our dharma, we have no hope of transmuting it, we have no hope of finding the sweet spot of breakthrough, where everything shifts, and clarity and peace wash over us.

I love what Richard says about the Gift of Acceptance …

Acceptance becomes a calm optimism that acknowledges what is occurring while simultaneously breathing more loving awareness into the moment.

We begin to get used to the discomfort, the pain … and then we can start to heal it.

If you don’t accept your pain, then you are in denial of it, and there is no hope of breaking through that barrier into the healing that lies beyond.

Below is a kind of whistle-stop tour of part of my Gene Keys chart, so that I can show you some of the ways in which I have begun this journey of acceptance. I am writing this article as I have moved into my Vocation sphere, and that’s where I’ll end this contemplation on Accept, but first …

It Starts with Our Life’s Work Shadow … Can We Accept That?!

If I accept the Shadow of Provocation (my Life’s Work Gene Key is 39) in my whole being, then I am showing my trust in life, and I am understanding on a deep level that life trusts me too. Life is not bringing Provocations into my path to hurt me, nor to make me angry or frustrated. Life IS a series of provocations for EVERYONE. My Provocation shows me that I am strong, that I have the core stability to weather any storm.

Provocation is proof positive that I am ALIVE!! If I can be provoked, then I am alive, and I am moving forward. I am not allowing myself to shut down out of fear of the provocations. I am, instead, putting on my armour and stepping out to fight for life.

For so long I thought I was a “survivor”, and I am but I am so much more than that. I’m a fucking warrior. I embrace Provocation and I fucking fight for more.

The Pathway of Challenge … Accepting What Is

Your core challenge in life is to see your shadows playing out and instead of falling victim to them, to accept and embrace them and use them as a pathway to your magic.

The pathway of challenge is one of the ultimate places of discomfort in your life.

The Gene Keys Activation Sequence

There is no rawer, harder place in your Gene Keys chart for getting you to accept what is than your Pathway of Challenge!

In the past, my pattern has always been to play the victim. These two Gene keys that sit at either end of my Pathway of Challenge, the Shadows of Provocation and Struggle, are indeed, as Meghan once so eloquently described them to me, the schoolyard bullies, who push me around, who push me between them, and who can keep me caught in this loop of victimhood.

A “bad thing” (my old language for “Provocation”) would happen … this could be anything from my car breaking down, to a huge bill coming in, to being sick, to being hurt by another person … and I was immediately in my victim mode … Why me?? Why does shit (my other old word for Provocation!) keep happening to me? What is wrong with me? … and then I was neatly placed in the path of that other bully, Struggle, who sneered and laughed at me, who called me weak and pathetic and stupid, and who told me that this was all I could expect from life, because this was all that I deserved.

And “this” is my Struggle. I was born poor; I was born to struggle … that is the message I learned at my mother’s knee … “Don’t expect life to be easy; don’t expect anything good; for then you won’t be disappointed.”

When you walk into your life waiting for the next bad thing to happen, and when your shoulders are already stooped waiting for that yoke of struggle to fall onto them, then you are closed to all the good there is in life. You are so bent over by the weight of the struggle of everyday life, that you don’t see either the path before you, or the stars above you. You just see your poor, weary feet, struggling to take each laboured step.

As I was writing that, I could actually feel that old victim mentality rounding my shoulders, pulling me down into the shadow self, oppressed by life’s harsh struggles … there is no acceptance in wearing a yoke. There may be resignation to your fate, but that should not be mistaken for you accepting what is.

But the truth is, that is not who I am any more! I spent years loosening that yoke of struggle and that mask of the victim. Years of showing up for myself in my journal. And then I found my way miraculously into Hayley’s world of The Journey Home (it’s now called Gene Keys Unleashed with Hayley Curtis!), and her Coming Home Journey threw open a door to a whole new way of being, of behaving, of believing.

And then I stepped onto this path, with my Gene Keys, with The Art of Contemplation, with the simple truths of Allow, Accept, Embrace, and everything changed.

I saw the spheres of my Life’s Work and Evolution.

I saw the Provocation – Struggle loop of the Pathway of Challenge.

And it all made total sense. It was like seeing my inner life laid bare for me to examine, like a body on an operating table.

And that is kind of scary! To see that I have been living out this journey that is so archetypal, that a complete stranger (Richard Rudd) can write the story of it, as if he’s been inside my head. And then to meet a guide in Hayley who can see me, really see me.

There is no hiding place for me on this Gene keys journey. If am going to truly embrace this journey, then I need to do it naked, without my protective shields, without my masks, without my victim’s excuses. I need to step into acceptance of what is.

But here’s the glorious thing, and it’s a truth I come back to so often, that it is almost my Gene keys mantra … if the Gene keys are so accurate in their descriptions of my Shadows, then it follows, as day follows night, that the Gifts are right too!!

And it follows that these Pathways I take are not only challenges and hard, rocky roads, they’re golden pathways to my own inner strength, my own inner genius and magic.

And I know that to be true, because as well as those playground bullies, Provocation and Struggle, I’ve got my big sisters, Dynamism and Perseverance, looking after me. They’re not threatened by either of the bullies … they can run faster, climb higher, keep going much longer! They laugh and play and love life so much that the bullies don’t get a look in any more.

Of course they’re still there. I’m a living, breathing human being, so I AM going to come up against Provocations and Struggles, but if accept and embrace them, they become the next golden steps on my pathway home to myself.

I now ask myself every day … What is the great challenge for me? It’s no longer about simply overcoming obstacles or struggles; it’s no longer about battling against the Shadows that kept me in victimhood all those years. I’m not there any more. I’m not a victim any more.

My Challenge now is to be my real, authentic self. It is to step out of all those boxes that compartmentalized my life and myself, and become a real, whole woman!

My Challenge is to accept myself, in all of my Shadows and all of my Gifts.

To be wholly me.

Now, that WOULD be magic in action!!

The Shadow of Inadequacy is Just a Fear of Death

I have the Shadow of Inadequacy in my Purpose sphere, and believe me, that can be a hard Shadow to accept. My whole life I have been assailed by this crushing feeling of Inadequacy, and it has filled me with fear … fear of not being good enough, fear of failure, fear of rejection. How, you may ask, can one ever accept all that fear?!

The thing is that being afraid of these things is natural, but if I avoid those fears, if I avoid really sitting with them, allowing them into my heart, then I have no hope of ever transmuting them into something new.  As Richard Rudd says, “Because we know we will die one day, we can become afraid to truly live.” He also says … “Only one who has fully embraced the certainty of death is truly alive. Without the perspective of death, life loses its true sense of value, which is precisely what desensitises human beings.” Boom!! This is why I have to accept my Shadow of Inadequacy, this is why I have to accept the fears. This is why I have to get used to the discomfort, as Richard puts it.

If I avoid my fear of death, then I am not really living! (Read that sentence again … it’s the truth!!) Instead, if I can look my fear of death in the eye and say, “I see you, I accept you as part of what it means to be a human”, then I open up the possibility that I might transmute that fear into a willingness to live, FULLY, and with my whole heart wide open, in every moment. Acceptance must come before the transformation. Allow the fear of death to have a seat at the table; accept that it is part of being human; only then will I be able to transmute it.

If I look that fear of inadequacy in the eye and say, “I see you, I accept you as part of my human journey”, then I have the chance to crack my inadequacy open to reveal the seed of Resourcefulness, which is the key to me ALWAYS finding a way through, no matter what obstacle is placed in my way.

Fear is a part of being alive. It’s part of our DNA, it’s part of our survival instinct and our evolution as a species; to avoid it, to pretend we don’t truly see into its darkest heart, we are NOT fully living.

We are avoiding life itself; every single time we avoid our fears. Would it not be far better to accept those fears and suck the marrow out of this precious life?!

Accepting My Dharma is Part of the Journey

May you not only come to accept your dharma but fall madly in love with it. Hayley

This can be hard to accept. That all the shit that has happened to you not only has purpose, but that it is also something to be loved. If you’ve walked a hard path, it can be hard to see how you could ever love that path.

I never thought I would be able to do it, and I do sometimes still struggle with it. The “if onlys”, the “what ifs”.

But here’s the thing. I love where I am right now. I absolutely believe in every fibre of my being that I am right where I am meant to be, right now.

I was meant to meet Hayley.

I was meant to discover the Gene Keys and all they hold for me.

I was meant to do this work, to travel my Golden Path, to travel it again as part of DEVOTED.

I am meant to be here now. Writing this. Creating a vessel for our stories and our art with Meghan.

So, how can I NOT love the dharma that brought me here? How can I not love the journey?

I know I’m still a work in progress when it comes to this. I know that there are still pockets of anger and frustration and pain; but oh, the rewards when I go into them and find the beauty. But I have come to accept exactly where I am, and I have come to accept the road I’ve travelled to get here.

All of Me is Important

Acceptance will allow me to see that ALL of me is important, the Shadows as well as the Gifts; the fears as well as the love; the dark of the void as well as the light of understanding. Acceptance will allow me to be fully myself, my natural self, and that will be the thing that resonates out from my words, from my work, from my service. People will trust me because I am speaking my truth straight from my open heart. I know that I have so much to give, and Acceptance of who I truly am will allow me to open the floodgates of all my Gifts.

It’s easy, when I’ve had a lifetime of not feeling good enough, to think that Acceptance is just about accepting my Shadows, and loving myself even in the presence of those Shadows.

But of equal importance, probably more important, is acceptance of my Gifts. Because my Gifts are the service I am here to bring to the world. My Gifts are the overflow of my deep self-love and my deep self-acceptance.

If my vocation is what I am here to bring to the world, then I must accept the path of Leadership (Gene Key 31). And I mustn’t be afraid. That Vocation Gene Key is in my chart for a reason.

It’s interesting to me that even when I’ve struggled with some of the Shadows in other spheres, I’ve found the antidote to those struggles in deep contemplation and understanding of their Gifts. With my Vocation sphere though, while I did/do struggle with that Shadow of Arrogance, I struggle even more with accepting the Gift of Leadership.

A lifetime of seeing myself as the opposite of a leader is a pretty big belief paradigm to de-program. 

But self-acceptance tells me that I need to step up to the plate and truly embrace this Gift of Leadership. I just keep reminding myself of what Hayley said … my Leadership is me being my natural self.

And I can only be my natural self through radical self-acceptance. I don’t need to create a mantle of leadership; I don’t need to become someone other than the woman I was born to be.

I cannot truly find my connection to my Higher Purpose unless and until I am truly connected to myself. And that is the profound lesson of all of this inner work … that only by truly knowing, accepting, understanding and loving MYSELF, can I possibly hope to bring my Higher Purpose gifts to the world.

Accepting myself fully is the only way to that Gift of my Vocation.