A Travel Essay from the Inner Journey

I am coming to the end of my month in my Evolution sphere, within the Sage’s Golden Path Retreat with Richard Rudd and Gene Keys Team64. My Evolution key is 38.1, with the Shadow of Struggle, the Gift of Perseverance, and the Siddhi of Honour. Richard talks about this Gene Key as an “energy of stubborn persistence against the flow of life”.

There is so much wisdom and “juice” for me in Richard Rudd’s Sage words for Gene Key 38.1, that I have used a fair few quotes from the Sage’s Retreat course notes. I truly hope that he won’t mind me sharing them here! If you’re curiosity is piqued by the things that Meghan and I write here in A Cauldron of Crones, I would highly recommend that you check out the courses that the Gene Keys share. Some of them are free, if you want to just dip your toe in. You can find them all here.

There is a deep sadness in my Shadow of Struggle, because all of the patterns of that struggle can be traced back to my childhood and the death of my father; they can be traced back to the instant withdrawal of my mother into her own dark cavern of grief. That was my first true experience of Struggle, an experience where I was engulfed in a deluge of pain, with no one holding out a hand to keep me afloat.

At ten years old, navigating the great unknown of a world without my dad, the only words said to me were, “You have to be brave for your mum.” No one was being brave for me. I wasn’t even being told to be brave for myself. I was being told that my mum’s grief is so big and so important, that I had to keep quiet and not show my sadness. I was being told that my grief and my pain didn’t count.

What else could I do but throw up my walls and shut myself away? What else could I do but conclude that life was a scary, dark place, where only bad things happened? I had no protector any more. I felt so alone.

There was nothing for me in the outer world. There was no love, there was no comfort. It was as if no one knew what to say to me, so they said nothing at all. It’s hard, when you’re only ten years old and you’re left to wade through the mire of grief alone, to not take it on as a personal thing.

It wasn’t that I thought the adults in my life were being deliberately cruel, I thought it was that they just didn’t care, that I didn’t count. Fifty-two years ago, and I can still feel that pain of separation.

Is it any wonder that I stubbornly persisted against the flow of life, when all it seemed to do was wash shit downstream?!

The Constriction of My Body

Struggle is epitomized by the body’s constriction in response to external situations, where in the face of challenge one locks up the breath and steps out of their centre.
Richard Rudd, The Sage’s Golden Path Retreat

I have spent a lifetime, until very recently, in a constant state of constriction, a constant state of holding my breath, as I wait for the next blow to fall. It is so hard for me to relax. My muscles have been constricted for decades. That lithe, tree-climbing imp that I was as a child has trouble getting out of bed some days, because my joints and muscles spent so many years being constricted.

When Richard says that we “lock up our breath and step out of our centre” it is a perfect description of what all the years of constriction and struggle have done to me. My body is literally locked. And I am so far from my own centre that I forget what that feels like sometimes.

I feel as if these last three years of diving ever deeper into my Gene Keys has allowed me to gradually begin to loosen my body and my breath. I have a long way to go, but I am loving the road I am on, especially this somatic nature of the Sage’s journey. I walk every day; I am conscious of my breath. I do guided meditations and tapping every day, bringing my focus into my body.

I am slowly coming back to centre, and that centre is in my body.

Struggle is born from the genetic need for survival, but this program gets improperly translated into emotionally stressful situations that don’t actually pose a fight or flight threat. At its core, fighting creates the illusion of control over one’s environment and validates the concept of individuality.
Richard Rudd, The Sage’s Golden Path Retreat

I think that I am more on the side of flight rather than fight, when it comes to relationships with others. I flee from the fight, from the confrontation, because I am so terrified that they will reject me. So, I take the verbal or emotional beating.

Where I do fight is against the circumstances life brings to me, and against myself. Where I do fight for control is over my external environment, all the stuff that surrounds relationships, the bad shit that happens.

I had never thought of it in terms of validation of the concept of individuality until I started to do this Gene Keys work. If that is part of 38, it is only something that has come to the surface in the last few years. I celebrate my individuality now, and I don’t really feel any need to validate it. I don’t think I was ever trying to validate it when I was in survival mode. Part of my fight to survive was a desire to be pulled into relationships, social groups. I didn’t want to be a separate individual. So, there is a real paradox for me here.

Used outwardly, struggle vents its aggressive energy at others as a way to protect against the feeling of being threatened. When this energy collapses in fear, it becomes a defeatist attitude – blaming oneself and conceding into victimhood.
Richard Rudd, The Sage’s Golden Path Retreat

Now, there is a pattern I recognise! That fucking defeatist attitude of believing there was no point in fighting the external circumstances of my life, because it was all going to go to shit anyway … because it always goes to shit, because I am a weak victim; I am intrinsically wrong in some way. I am nothing. I don’t count … oh, the negative loops I can get into! Fear then collapses into a belief that life always has been struggle, and always will be a struggle, and I might as well give up. Why have hopes and dreams when it’s all going to go to shit anyway, right?!!

Then victimhood becomes an insidious, noxious gas that fills every crevice no matter how small, it creeps through every chink in my armour and starts to poison me. Victimhood is a poison, and once it’s in my system, it can poison every part of me.

The first stage is about allowing the painful feeling. Whether the feeling is anger, fear, numbness, resentment, grief or any other emotion, the first step is to simply allow yourself to feel it. You don’t have to like it or accept it. You can even hate the feeling. To allow the feeling is to provide some space around it.
Richard Rudd, The Sage’s Golden Path Retreat

Allowing is like the foundation stone of the self I am building with this work. Allowing there to be so much space in my chest that the challenge/pain/grief can be there, without engulfing me is something that becomes easier, the more I practice it. I am finding the tapping (EFT) so helpful with this. It allows me to open up space in my body and feel the grief and the pain, the sadness. I feel it in the back of my throat and in my jaw. If I just allow it to be there, not trying to fix it, merely witnessing it, then it has the opportunity to transform.

The beauty of allowing is that it is so generous. It just opens the door a little, as much as we are comfortable. There is no pressure from allowing.
Richard Rudd, The Sage’s Golden Path Retreat

I really love that idea. I love to see allowing as generosity. I am being generous to all of my feelings, all are welcome here. I don’t need to throw open the floodgates and be engulfed in a deluge of pain. I can open the door a little at a time, I can let more and more of the pain in. That’s what I’ve been doing for the last three years as I’ve worked with the Gene Keys, and for the twenty-five years before that.

Now, when I look at the Sage’s words about Struggle, I recognise old patterns that have already shifted and that gives me the courage to open that door a little wider. I have looked at and allowed some really deep trauma, and it is okay.

I am okay.

I am safe to do this work.

The Gene Keys hold me like a gentle mother’s arms.

I am cradled in this work.

I am safe to allow the pain in.

All of the photographs I have used in this essay are of shadows or of light and dark. If you’d like to see more of my photographs, you can find them on my Flickr page.