A Travel Essay from the Inner Journey

I’m half-way through our month-long exploration of the Evolution Gene Key in the Sage’s Golden Path Retreat, with Richard Rudd.

For those of you not familiar with the Gene Keys, they are 64 archetypes of being a human. And each of the 64 Gene Keys has 6 lines, akin to the 6 lines of the I-Ching, which give a particular flavour and nuance to the archetype in question. For the Sage’s Golden Path Retreat, Richard has expanded the teachings, and has created a word and sutra, a contemplation and a mythos for every line of every key. (There is so much more I could say, but that’s the basics! If you’d like to know more about the Gene Keys, their website is full of information. You might want to get your own Gene Keys chart, and start contemplating your Life’s Work and Evolution. There’s a great free course to get you started!)

In my Evolution sphere, I have Gene Key 38.1, the Shadow of Struggle, the Gift of Perseverance, and the Siddhi of Honour. This GK38 is all about Warrior energy. I have a lot of warrior energy in my chart! In this essay, I’d like to tell you about the sutra and the contemplation, and what feelings and ideas they inspired in me.

Here is the sutra that goes along with 38.1 …

I read this and I thought, how perfect! I’m only in the second month of this journey and already I am in love with Richard Rudd’s way of bringing in the mythic archetypes that I adore. I am such a lover of story, of myths and epic sagas, (I cut my reading teeth on Lord of the Rings when I was only about eight years old) that this comparison to a warrior really engages my imagination.

And his sutra is perfect on a more prosaic level too, for I do waken early each day. I am awake and up before the dawn, because my practice of inner work awaits.

And it must be done in the stillness of the morning, when all others sleep.

It must be done in the darkness of winter morning before even the sun is up.

Or, in summer, it is done at dawn, in my garden, just me and my journal and birdsong greeting the day.

This is my warrior training for the day ahead.

I start each day wielding my pen, honing my words, allowing deep contemplation to flow onto the page.

This is the prayer of the true knight, pledging her heart to truth and honour.

Preparing Daily for One’s Death

And this death that I prepare for each day is the death of my own ego. It is the death of self-judgement. It is the death of that oh-so-painful wound of lack … lack of self-worth, lack of self-love, lack of self-belief … lack of trust in life itself and in my part in it.

That is what I must pare away each day with my sword of light and truth.

It is also the death of my false beliefs … the false beliefs that tell me I am separate and somehow unique in my suffering. I am not separate; I am merely a small piece of a much larger puzzle.

I am but a thread in existence.

I am like a tiny seed in the great womb of Gaia.

I am not separate.

I am part of everything, and everything is part of me.

The death I must prepare for daily is the death of separation, for I am not isolated.

I move through the world alone, but I am not actually alone. I am surrounded by allies in this fight for right.

There is my lovely husband, of course, my most stalwart ally who is a knight of a man (in my opinion!), chivalrous to his core, honourable in word and deed, just and fair.

There are my travelling companions on this road. Meghan, my sister and mirror for the work I do. Hayley, my sister and mirror for my soul. Trina, Lizzie, Esther, all companions on the mountainside, as we all do this work alone, together.

Their strength and support make it easier for me to walk this lonely path of the Warrior of Light.

The death I am preparing for each day is the death of all those false beliefs I wrapped around myself as if I thought I was donning armour. I thought I was safe, hidden behind my false beliefs of lack, my beliefs of how it was ever thus … born poor, live poor, die poor.

But that is so false. I was born with all these riches and all this goodness inside me. I was born with Gifts and Siddhis that light up my world.

And now I work daily to peel back the layers of obfuscation to reveal that innate goodness in me.

This IS a serious business! That is why I am here at the page every day. That is why I show up for myself daily to do this work. It is important. I have important warrior work to do in the world.

I will do it.

I will prepare for it in the pages of my journals every single morning.

The Contemplation

“This Line is the Foundation of the Path of the Inner Warrior”

This is the first thing that Richard says in the Contemplation for Gene Key 38.1. And, of course, it is!! There would be no need for a warrior, if there were nothing to struggle and fight against. Life is struggle. It is how we all grow and evolve, from the smallest single-cell amoeba to the mightiest oak or giant whale.

Life is struggle and it is out of the crucible of struggle that the inner warrior is born.

If I had not had the struggles I have had in life, then I would not have become the warrior woman that I am.

Struggle is the Fear of Having No Purpose, according to the Dream Arc. Every warrior needs purpose! Every warrior needs a cause, a good fight, a grail to seek. It’s what all the training has been for.

I was born to fight for good, to seek my grail.

Resisting Resistance

"In the beginning of our path, we resist resistance when we meet it. We wish for things to be easy."

We resist resistance!! I did that for such a long time. I would come up against struggle, and I would rail against it. Why me? Why does my life have to be so hard? How come everyone else has it so easy?!

And every day I pushed against it. I was stretched tight, pushing myself, pushing against the bonds that held me stuck in place, always pushing. Wanting to break free.

I spent a long time wishing for things to just be fucking easy for five fucking minutes!! Pleeeeeeease!!!

The thing about resisting resistance is that you set up so much tension in yourself that you miss the whole point. Instead of seeing the resistance as a way of training you to be strong, you use it as a stick to beat yourself with for being weak!

We wish for things to be easy, when the easiest thing in the world would be to accept and embrace the struggle for what it is … warrior school, teaching you how to make the greatest quest of your life … the one into your own interior world.

Resistance training strengthens your contemplation muscles!

Opening Our Hearts to Resistance

Richard says …

“As we evolve, we learn to open our heart to resistance, since fighting it only makes things worse”. 

Struggle as resistance. Of course!

Struggle occurs when I resist what is.

Struggle occurs when I resist the path my life is taking.

Struggle occurs when I am fighting my own dharma.

Opening my heart and allowing the resistance in calms my heart and my whole being. There is nothing to resist or fight against it, if my open heart is allowing all life to flow through it.

Opening my heart to resistance isn’t about gaslighting myself into thinking it’s a good thing that is happening to me …

We do not have to like all of our suffering or our struggles in order to open our hearts to them.

We do not have to love the fight or the resistance in order to let it into our hearts.

We just have to open our hearts to our own struggle, with love and compassion. We have to support ourselves and comfort ourselves. We have to let it all in … the resistance and the love, the struggle and the compassion, in order to take care of ourselves and give ourselves the space to grow and evolve.

It all begins with allow, accept and embrace, those fundamental building blocks of the contemplative life.

It all begins with love.

It all begins with me.

Trusting, Embracing and Ultimately Transforming our Suffering

"Trusting, embracing and transforming our suffering, and the suffering of others, requires us to continuously face our own ego death."

Trust, once again, reveals itself to be the single most important ingredient that changes everything. I have to trust that I am exactly who I’m meant to be, where and when I’m meant to be. I have to trust the path I am walking.

Trust is the vanguard that throws open the castle doors, drops the drawbridge and lets all the struggle in, so that it might be transformed into growth.

I cannot hope to transform my suffering and move from the Shadow of Struggle into the Gift of Perseverance, without letting go of my ego. I must surrender to the higher power of life, and trust absolutely in myself and my life.

And of course, this brings us full circle, right back to the death of the ego. The death of my ego means the death of my ideas of myself as separate. I am part of a collective, a cosmic whole, where I am connected to all things. I can’t have an ego when I see myself as but one thread in the tapestry of life.

The death of my ego means letting go of the shitty parts of that ego too. It means the death of my self-judgement. Who am I to judge myself? When I have done so much, transformed so much. I must let go of self-doubt and let trust be born in its place. I must let my self-loathing die in order for my self-love to flourish and blossom.

It is my ego that judges me and finds me wanting. It is my ego that doubts me and mistrusts life. It’s my ego that loathes me and mistrusts life. It’s my ego that binds me and doesn’t think I’m worthy of love. It’s my ego that tells me I’m not good enough.

It’s my ego that silences my voice.

"I am a Softer and More Open Being"

I am softer. This work with the Gene Keys has not only worn smooth so many of my jagged edges, but it has also softened my entire being. I can feel that. As if I were a ball of cold clay that is being worked by strong and gentle hands, kneaded and folded and rolled, until I am soft and malleable, capable of change. This work has gently and persistently flowed into my heart, opening the crack a little wider every day, opening my heart to so much more possibility than I knew existed.

This open heart of mine wants to stay open all the time now.

I get it!

I get the power of a consistently open heart.

I don’t want to live any other way now.

But I Have Also Grown a Hardened Resilience

When I read Richard’s words that said that trusting, embracing and transforming our suffering, and the suffering of others, also gives us a hardened resilience that enables us to tackle any situation with grace, it immediately made me think of the rhino, with its armoured body. (The Rhino is the Dream Arc animal for the Gift of Perseverance). It carries its protection with it.

My resilience and my perseverance have been a kind of protection for me. The suffering and struggle I have experienced have made me strong and resilient. I always find a way through, even if it takes me a long time, even if I have to be hit with many arrows, I am never felled. I keep going. I have grit and stamina.

Oh, as I contemplated this idea, I saw the glorious connection between the two Gifts of Dynamism and Perseverance, the Programming Partners of my Life’s Work and Evolution … conjoined, they give me the elasticity and vigour of resilience; they fortify me. They toughen me up without hardening my heart.

Just like my rhino, my big, armoured unicorn! I am lusty with life; I am potent; and I am resolute in my divine stubbornness. I am stalwart. I am the warrior who keeps fighting for right … right until the end.

Embracing Contradiction

"The more deeply we therefore embrace contradiction, the more we become a contradiction ourselves."

Am I a contradiction?! I guess I probably am. I can be all these “normal” thing out in the world, but I can also be this deeply spiritual woman inside. I am the monk without the monastery. I walk my everyday life, dealing with the pedestrian requirements of my job, the everyday needs of my life, yet on the inside I am a warrior, I inhabit an inner world full of wonder and treasure.

I am the hermit in the woods and the partner.

I am the lone walker and the leader who shares her journey.

I am the 62-year-old woman and I am the fiery, wild and free child.

"This is the path of every Sage - to live in a unified state where every perceived difficulty is welcomed as a source of inspiration and growth."

And is this not the very reason I do this work? So that I might come to this unified state of being an extraordinary woman in an ordinary life, who is able to take whatever life brings her and turn it into a lesson, a way to grow, a leap into the unknown, in the absolute certainty that I will fly?

This is my path, this path of the Sage. To do this inner work, to keep fighting for love, to unblock joy pipes, and to never give up.

Resilience, strength and perseverance.

All of my suffering has honed me; all of my struggle has made me strong.

And always I remain honourable. I do not crush others under my feet, I stand beside them, I fight beside them.

This is the way of the warrior … to keep doing the inner work until my last breath.

To keep looking for portals into the me I want to become.

To keep stretching towards the Gifts and the Siddhis.

To make my path by walking.

I am the Sage.

I am the journeyer.

I am the monk without a monastery.

I am the leader.

I am the woman who speaks up.

I am the woman who is not afraid to tell the truth, to tell her story.

This is the way of the Sage and the way of the honourable warrior … to do what needs to be done, to speak the truth that needs to be spoken, to hold out her hand to others.

“… every perceived difficulty is welcomed as a source of inspiration and growth”

I like that.

I love the idea that I can open my heart to the struggle, to every struggle, to invite it in for a cup of tea, and to say, “I see you, Struggle; what do you have to teach me today?”

All of the photographs I have used in this essay are of roads and tracks I have travelled in real life … there are shots from Wiltshire, Devon and Wales. If you’d like to see more of my photographs, you can find them on my Flickr page.