A Travel Essay from the Inner Journey

The Pathway of Breakthrough runs across the centre of your Gene Keys chart, from your Evolution Gene Key to your Radiance Gene Key, and it is of supreme importance in the whole journey of your Golden Path, because it is the Pathway that links your outer work in the world to your inner work.

There’s another wonderful quote in the Sage’s Golden Path …

One of the key conditions necessary for a breakthrough is an ability to dwell on our life as it is now, rather than what it has been or what it might be.

And hasn’t that been exactly the place I have been coming to with all of this Gene Keys work? Acceptance. The total and complete acceptance of life as it is right now.

No more going over the past as a means of keeping the wounds open and allowing myself to dwell in the martyrdom … poor me, my life has been so hard.

No more thinking that I have wasted time. The irony is not lost on me when I think about how much time I’ve “wasted” worrying about how much time I’ve “wasted”!!

No more projecting into a future where I’ll feel good “when this happens” or I’ll be fixed “when that stops”.

I am alive in this moment. And everything is exactly as it should be in this moment. Because in truth, how can any moment be “wrong”? If all we have is right now, then right now has to be right. Right?!

Acceptance Threads Through This Work

Acceptance has been a thread that runs through all of this work. Acceptance of what is, has been where all of my breakthroughs have been birthed from. Acceptance that I had the childhood I had; that I had the birth family and heritage I had; acceptance of the experiences and relationships I had.

Acceptance that it simply was what it was, and no amount of going over it in my mind can change what actually happened … all of this allowed me to have the breakthroughs around acceptance and attitude.

And these in turn led to the breakthroughs in forgiveness.

And all of this led to compassion, for others, and definitely for myself.

And Accepting Leads to Embracing

Acceptance of what is allows me to embrace life exactly as it is in each moment. And that means embracing my ageing body; it means accepting that I have truly moved out of my mother years and into my cronehood.

And doing that, embracing exactly where I am right now on this journey through life, allows me to let go of all those insidious thoughts that I somehow “wasted” my precious time in all those bad relationships and shitty situations.

No time is ever wasted when you allow yourself to see the lessons inside the shitty situations. I cannot change the facts of the past, but by releasing the trauma, and the guilt, and the suffering, then there is at least an opportunity to learn something and show up more clearly, more stable, in the present moment. And I can only release them by being with them, by sitting with them in deep contemplation.

What Breakthrough Feels Like

Breakthrough has sometimes felt like a rush, a great whoosh of feeling, of energy, coming up through my belly and my chest, into my throat, like something big wants break out. Often my head will feel simultaneously tight and light, almost like a dizziness.

“Holy shit, holy fuck, how did I not know that already?!” is usually the first coherent thought. And it’s almost always happened when I’m journaling; when I’m writing and writing and suddenly a missing piece falls into place, and words fall onto the page that I wasn’t expecting.

I will suddenly see things with such clarity, like the lens has clicked round and the truth comes into focus. I love those moments; my hand can’t keep up with the words pouring out of me. And I love it! I am breathless with the love of the journey, when this happens for me. I’m dizzy and happy. There are often tears. There are always smiles!

But more often than not, breakthrough creeps up on me, like a long, slow wave of realisation. I just had this mental image of those waves you see forming on frozen lakes, where the water freezes as it moves up the shore, so the wave is solidifying and moving in slow motion right before your very eyes.

I will work and work, I will dig deeper and deeper … I will have an insight, but I will not stop there. I will keep going. This is the power of this inner work, that I can come back to it again and again, going deeper and deeper into my understanding of myself, putting the pieces together, until I can zoom out and see the whole beautiful picture. The breakthrough lands … the forgiveness washes through me, the compassion swells inside me. I want to laugh, I want to sing, I want to shout, YES!! I GET IT!!!

My Evolution is the Gateway into My Radiance

… crossing the Pathway of Breakthrough

My Evolution Gene Key (38.1) feels as if it was all about surrender, letting the Shadow of Struggle into my life, and, as Richard Rudd advises in the Sage’s journey, accepting the death of my ego.

Surrender allows me to drop deeply into my inner power.

Accepting what is on the outer planes of my life is allowing me to step boldly into the inner realms ahead.

Acceptance shows itself to be the keystone that holds up the bridge between my outer world and my inner world. I need to face and accept the Provocations and the Struggles (my Life’s Work and Evolution Shadows) in my outer world, so that I am able to cross the bridge into my inner world and start working with the deeper layers of Control and Inadequacy (the Shadows of my Radiance and Purpose Gene Keys) that lie there.

It’s so interesting to see this work as excavating layers of life and of truth. I’m ready for the next layer. I’m ready to step across the bridge of breakthrough and enter the inner realms where the real, deep work begins. Oh, what a juicy couple of months I have ahead on the Sage’s Golden Path.

Will Challenge be a Portal or a Crushing Weight?

Richard Rudd says that the way I show up in the challenge of my Evolution Shadow of Struggle is “either a portal into accessing higher states of vitality and well-being, or it becomes a place where I squash my vitality and wellbeing, never giving it a chance to ever reach higher states.”

Oh my! I existed in that crushed state for a long time, where the weight of the Struggles in my life was too heavy for me to move. I was stuck, I was trapped, I was immobilised by my fears. 

Coming to see that my Struggles could be portals was a life changing experience, one of those things that, once seen, can never be unseen … a breakthrough!! Eureka!! I may forget sometimes, but coming to see that I was always vital, even when I felt crushed by life, was illuminating. It shone a light on my Gift of Perseverance, which, as I say, I could never unsee.

More than a Pathway … Breakthrough is a River

Sometimes, breakthrough feels like a great river, moving inexorably towards the sea. The river is not going to wash me away or drown me. I don’t need to be scared.

Rivers can wear down rock; they can break free stones. But I don’t need to be afraid. The stones are the blockages, internal and external, and they will be dislodged at the right time. It’s all okay.

I can let this happen … the more I walk this inner path, and the more grounded within myself I become, the more able I am to take these breakthroughs and make them part of me.

All of this work I have done for the last three decades has brought me here, to this place, to this Pathway of Breakthrough. I have been here before. This is the fourth time I’ve worked with the Activation Sequence of my Gene Keys chart, and each time I arrive at this crossing from the outer challenges to the inner challenges, I may feel as if I am back at the beginning, but each time, I am deeper, I am more open, I am more grounded.

The last two months of being in my Life’s Work and Evolution spheres again as part of the Sage’s Journey have been intense but so illuminating. (There’s that word again … “illuminating”! It is no wonder that Richard Rudd and the Gene Keys talk about “light” so much! This work really does shine a light on our inner world, on our psyche, on ourselves!).

I feel ready for this next part of the journey. I am ready to move with this flowing river. I am safe to move forward. I can trust that everything is happening in exactly the way it is meant to happen. I love myself and trust myself enough to do this work.

I can sum this Pathway of Breakthrough up in one simple sentence … This whole journey through life is about trust and safety and love … and isn’t that exactly what we’re all looking for? Trust, safety and love.

To step into this power of breakthrough is exactly what I am meant to do now.

I am meant to move forward; I am meant to step across the bridge into my Radiance.

I am ready.

All of the photographs I have used in this essay are of bridges in Wiltshire and Devon, in the West Country of England. This Pathway sometimes feels more like a bridge, sometimes more like a river, so it felt right to share images of bridges. If you’d like to see more of my photographs, you can find them on my Flickr page.