Hello dear friends, Lizzie here! For the next three Wizardly Words on Wednesdays, Meghan and I are writing the articles together.

We decided it would be really good to go back to basics and give you our definitions of the building blocks of the Gene Keys themselves … the Shadow, the Gift and the Siddhi.

Meghan will be weaving in the magical essence of the Dream Arc, and I will be telling you the story of how I interpret Shadow, Gift and Siddhi through my own Gene Keys.

The Shadow is the Seed

There is a concept which sits at the heart of the Gene Keys teaching …

The Shadow is the seed.

The Gift is the tree.

The Siddhi is the fruit.

And of course, the fruit contains the seed, and so the cycle of life continues.

Using this analogy of seed to tree to fruit to seed is really helpful when you are contemplating your Gene Keys.

The word “Shadow” has a bit of a bad rep! Modern, and not so modern, culture tends to think of the Shadow as something bad, something to be fixed or eradicated altogether.

Some people would read the Shadow words in their Gene Keys chart and think these are “bad” things about them or their lives, character flaws they need to change or fix. Now, the Gene Keys are all about transformation but it is not transformation born out of there being something “wrong” with us, but rather out of there being the seeds of greatness, and love, and compassion, and strength inside us; they simply need to be cracked open, like the husk around a seed that must open to allow germination.

Every Shadow Contains the Gift

Every Shadow contains the Gift, just as every seed contains the tree it will become. The tiniest acorn can grow the mightiest oak.

“Every Shadow contains the Gift” has been a source of comfort and of strength throughout my journey with the Gene Keys.

For example, I look at the Shadow of Struggle, and instead of being overwhelmed by the suffering and the pain it represents, now I see the seed of Perseverance in it.

Yes, I went through some dark days of Struggle, but I did persevere, I did keep walking, some days only one tiny step, some days I felt like I was going backwards, but I kept walking, I persevered.

So, when you look at your chart and you see a Shadow you don’t like, or that makes you uncomfortable, think of that response as a good thing … it’s an invitation to dive in and find that seed of the Gift.

When I saw that I had the Shadow of Inadequacy in my Purpose sphere, it was deeply painful. Inadequacy has been my constant companion in life. But learning that within that Shadow of Inadequacy nestles the seed of Resourcefulness, oh, that changes everything!

The 48th Shadow is like a bottomless black hole. It is the primal fear of the feminine and was enacted in archetypal form during the great witch-hunts that took place across Europe during the Middle Ages.
The Gene Keys, Richard Rudd

But what if I see that black hole as an infinite well of Wisdom and resourcefulness?!

That changes everything.

Approaching your Shadows with an attitude of openness cracks the shell and releases the seed.

Lizzie and Her Shadows

I’m going to say right off the bat that with every Gene Key I have worked with, I have found it much easier to recognise the Shadow in myself and in my life and in my behaviour, than I have the Gift.

Before I start to talk about my experiences with some of my own Shadow frequencies, I want to tell you something fundamental to my understanding not only of the concept of the Shadow, but also to my understanding of all of my own Shadows.

Our Shadow frequencies can be broken down into two constituent parts … Suffering and Separation.

“Life is suffering,” the Buddha said.

“To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.” Friedrich Nietsche.

Richard Rudd defines the Shadow frequency thus …

The frequency band relating to all human suffering. The Shadow frequency band emerges from an ancient wiring in the human brain. Such wiring is based on individual survival and is linked directly to fear.

I’ve been working with my Gene Keys for two and a half years, and since almost the beginning of this journey, when I first started working with my Evolution Gene Key … 38.1 – The Shadow of Struggle … I learned the fundamental truth that not only is my Shadow here all about the fear of death, ALL Shadows are really about the fear of death, when you break them right down.

When I read that, it sounded a deep, sonorous note inside me. I could see so clearly that everything … every fear, every issue, every anxiety and insecurity … all of the “hard stuff” in my life, could be boiled right down to a fear of death. And this Shadow of Struggle in my Evolution key is like the motherlode of that fear.

And before I even got to the Evolution key, when I was working with my Life’s Work Gene Key, especially with the Shadow of Provocation, I was already convinced that these Gene Keys were onto something! It was as if Richard Rudd was writing about my life.

Then I moved into the Shadow of Struggle and BOOM! There it was … the fear of death that has stalked me since I was ten years old and my dad died.

Suffering

Richard says the Shadow frequency band relates to suffering, and with my Evolution Shadow of Struggle being all about suffering, I get a bit of a double whammy.

I’m now almost at the end of my second journey through the Golden Path, and I feel as if I have the perfect Gene Keys in my chart to allow me to understand the truth of that Shadow frequency.

I have gone from feeling uncomfortable about my Shadows (and in some cases, actually fearing them), to being completely in LOVE with my Gene Keys, to seeing every single one of my tricksy Shadows as noting more than portals into transformation. They are my stepping stones on the path home to myself.

Separation

The unconscious presence of fear in our system continues to enhance our belief that we are separate from the world around us.
Richard Rudd, 64 Ways

“Separate from the world”! That could pretty much sum up my 60-year journey to get to the Gene Keys! I was a loner my whole life, even as a child. I was an alien in a world I didn’t understand, especially after that cataclysm of my dad’s death.

Again, my Gene Keys reflect this separation. Again, the Shadow of Struggle is all about maintaining the illusion that I have a separate identity, which is all about my unconscious fear of death … which as I said, Richard tells us lies at the root of all of the 64 Shadows.

The Shadow of Control (Gene Key 21) has me believing I have to stay separate in order to maintain control.

In my IQ, the Shadow of Vanity (Gene Key 12) is all about my “love of my own uniqueness”, and that keeps me separate from other people … oh, I really felt the paradox of separation when I worked with this Shadow … I so desperately wanted to “belong” but could never find the group/clan/tribe/community that quite lived up to my expectations.

The Archenemy of Love

Vanity is the archenemy of love. Vanity keeps you from truly loving another because it keeps you isolated.
Richard Rudd, The Venus Sequence

Separation is also part of the Shadow of Victimisation (Gene Key 55) in my SQ, which is of course the very sphere where you are invited to feel this sense of separation deeply … separation from the mother, from Eden, from life itself … in order to feel the wholeness behind it.

And then of course, in my Core Wound, the core of my being I have 31.6 … the Shadow of Arrogance, with Line 6 Separation!!! Shit! Line 6 … SEPARATION!! You couldn’t make this shit up!!

Do you think my Gene Key Shadows are trying to tell me something?!!

Where Am I Now In This Journey Through My Shadows?

As I write this article, I am working with my Culture sphere. I have Gene Key 25 here, with its Shadow of Constriction.

Richard says that this is “the central Gene Key of love and it is all about our journey of forgetting love and then rediscovering it again.”

Constriction exists wherever love is absent, and it is the underlying source of all human suffering. To constrict life in yourself, or in another, is to welcome more suffering into your life. 
Richard Rudd, The Gene Keys

Writing that sentence, Constriction exists wherever love is absent, was like describing my life from the age of ten.

When love is absent, it’s not just an emptiness you feel, it’s an inexplicable loss. There’s a hole in your heart; you don’t understand it, but it’s like a black mass, sucking the air out of your lungs. Your chest constricts like a sac that’s had all the air sucked out.

Love is the air we need to expand our chests, open our bodies, breathe deeply.

When love is absent, you fold in on yourself, your heart is stripped bare, flayed, so you must tighten everything around it to protect it.

When love is absent, every muscle in your body constricts and contracts; you’re held in constant fight or flight, in readiness for the next blow, the next bad thing. When you are constricted you shrivel up, no air in your lungs, no blood pumping, just an empty shell.

When love is absent there is only more emptiness, more constriction, less movement, no growth. You literally choke the life out of yourself. Your voice abandons you and all you know is fear. You never feel safe. You distrust everyone, especially yourself. You are a shrunken woman with nothing to give.

Love Is The Antidote To My Fears

Now, I did tell you that we are not on this journey to “fix” our Shadows, but there are some fundamental shifts that can occur, when you sit with your Shadows long enough, when you dive deep enough into them.

I’ve come to understand, as I have been journeying through all the fears that come up in my Shadows, that love is the antidote to all that fear. So, doesn’t it therefore follow that love is the counterbalance to anxiety? Because isn’t anxiety born out of fear? Isn’t it my fears that create the anxieties in me?

The fear of loss, the fear of rejection and abandonment, the fear of my own inadequacies. The fear of being alone; the fear of running out of time. And the underlying motherfuckinglode of fear … death.

If I bring love to all of these, then fear lessens; and if the fear lessens, the anxieties ease.

It’s only when I forget that there is all this love, that my anxieties threaten to take me over and shut me down. It’s only when I forget that there is an infinite well of love inside me, that I go into fight or flight mode and allow my anxieties to be in charge. It’s only when I forget that love lies at the heart of my being, that I let the Shadows engulf me.

Love brings the light into those dark, shadowy places.

Love eases.

Love soothes the anxieties.

Like a gentle hand on the neck of a skittish horse, love calms the anxieties and says, sshhhh, it’s all okay.

For where there is love, there is the possibility of everything being okay (just like the seed holds the possibility of the tree!). Where there is love, there is no room for fear and no need for anxiety.

Trusting love will ease my anxieties.

Trusting love takes the power away from fear.

Fear is always there; we are mortal, ergo we fear; but fear does not need to rule. Love rules. Love lets me lead from my wide-open heart, and there is no space there for fear and anxiety.

When you look at it like that, the Shadows cease to be scary, and instead become the dark, fertile soil out of which love can grow.

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Shadows in the Dream Arc

Meghan here! When I was first introduced to the Gene Keys in the late fall of 2020, I was so thrilled to finally have a map to my own inner workings as a human being. As I really started studying however, I was a little dismayed and frankly not wanting to own the level of each Gene Key called “The Shadow”. Who wants to admit to Force or Dominance, Weakness or Turbulence as part of their waking life? Richard Rudd and his team, in the retreats I attended throughout 2021, may have emphasized that the Shadows contain the gifts as Lizzie has so eloquently spoke about here in this article, but still my first response was to try to get rid of them (hello Shadow of Force in my Life’s Work!)