A Travel Essay from the Inner Journey

I know that I’ve moved into the Purpose sphere, and I am already sharing my Purpose journey with you, but there were things I wrote in my journal as I reached the end of the Radiance sphere, that I didn’t share before, because I got so excited about my Purpose Sage word, line and sutra, that I just had to start sharing that with you right away! I know, I know!! I am rather excited by this Sage’s journey … can you tell?!

There were some things that Richard Rudd said at the opening retreat for the Radiance sphere, that I came back to right at the end of that month, as I waited for the Purpose sphere to open. He often speaks about the Sage words and lines as being like acupuncture needles, that get straight to the heart of the matter, and it felt important to look at all three of these first prime Gifts and their Sage words and lines together; and now it feels right to share them with you.

Putting these Sage needles in opens us to the Siddhis.
Each line builds upon the last. You’re experiencing their effect.
A rhythmic, mythical pattern to your awakening.
Richard Rudd, The Sage’s Golden Path Retreat

Interiority, sincerity, reconsideration … this is the rhythmic pattern of my awakening.

My Life’s Work … Interiority

I dive deep inside myself, I follow every thread of inner truth, even though it may be frayed, or so fine as to be barely visible. I follow my truth deep into the recesses of my being, never faltering , never doubting that this thread of truth is the way I must go. Never afraid of what that truth may reveal.

Interiority is like following the beat of my own heart, there is a rhythm I can trust; it resonates with the earth herself.

And the deeper I go, the more treasure I reveal. Like following a seam of gold down to the mother lode, then finding there is more. There is always more. This is my life’s work … to keep going deeper and deeper into myself, to keep revealing more and more of my treasure.

My Evolution … Sincerity

Sincerity drives me forward. I cannot allow myself to fall victim to perceived weakness. I must make of weakness an ally, who will walk this inner path with me. My path is strewn with struggles and obstacles, but we will not let that stop us. My weakness is a frightened part of myself, but I am here to care for her. Together we can be dedicated to this cause … of being honest and true, of being authentic, even if it means showing weakness to the outer world.

If I am sincere, honest, authentic, then any weakness I feel can become a gift to the world. The other faces of weakness are equality and tenderness. What if I embrace and enfold my own weakness with tenderness? Would that not be a beautiful thing to do? Would that not be a good quality to model to the world?

I go inside … I meet my own weak parts of myself … I fold them into my heart and love them … then weakness is no longer to be feared or shunned or fixed … just loved.

I am fluid, I am like water, I can change direction, I can flow along the easiest path. I do not need to make life hard for myself. I am allowed to change my mind. I am allowed to reconsider all decisions.

I am like water … soft, yet strong. Weak, yet relentless. Given time, I could wear down any boulder in my way. But what if I decided not to do that? What if I decided instead to course correct, to flow in a different direction, to move with the tides?

My Radiance … Reconsideration

Reconsideration as Radiance … to allow my light to shine, even if it’s not in the way I thought it should be. I am the author of my own life. I can write a new chapter any time I want. I can take the plot off in any direction. I can flow with life and write the story that fits me. I can follow the truth of my own heart all the way to the wide open sea, the sunless sea that is vast, infinite, and which lives inside me.

Go inside, tell myself the truth, even if I don’t like it, choose the next path. Go inside whenever I have a decision to make, whenever I am at a crossroads; listen to the weakest, most frightened part of myself, enfold her, and take her on the next part of the journey with me, show her that life is not to be feared, life is to be lived. In harmony. In trust. In love.

The Sutra of my Radiance

The Sutras are threads.
Radiance anchors the higher heart mind. The Buddhic divine will.
Richard Rudd, The Sage’s Golden Path Retreat

A Mind Like Water

What’s the point in having a mind

If you can’t change it?

Sometimes the rivers of our lives

Make vast, sweeping and unexpected turns.

The Shadow of Control wants everything, including me, fixed in place. It doesn’t want change; it doesn’t want fluidity. It wants rigidity, it wants a structure that doesn’t just hold things steady, it wants a structure that binds us. It wants me rigid. Constricted. Unchanging. But I know that’s not my true nature. I know I am meant to flow like the wild Scottish rivers of my youth.

I have witnessed my life take those vast, sweeping and unexpected turns. Steve. England. The Gene Keys. Great shifts in direction that have changed not just the course of my life, but that have fundamentally changed me.

And every time, it’s been my heart leading the way, with my fluid mind flowing with it.

This sutra tells me many things. It tells me to release control, melt structures, and allow my mind to flow in the direction my heart wants to take me. It tells me that I need to feel free to change my mind, to change direction. It tells me that blockages can’t stop me for long … I can choose to wear them down, or I can flow around them, taking them into the stream of my life, but not making them mean anything about me.

The Mental Body

The mental body is where thought and emotion travel together. The lower mind is processing life through questions, lists, unfinished thoughts and contemplations. Give yourself permission to not finish a single thought. We can let the mind be incomplete. We can allow that to feel safe.
Richard Rudd, The Sage’s Golden Path Retreat

Now that is a fucking radical proposition to me! I have this Shadow of Control here. I do think that I need to complete lists, thoughts, contemplations. As if there is an answer I am going to come to at the end of the contemplation or thought … the right answer, that will make me feel complete and yes, safe. What if there was no end? And really, I know this! For as well as Gene Key 21, I have Gene Key 48 … that fathomless well, the infinite void.

What if the answer, what if all of the answers, were simply to be.

Just be.

Just breathe.

Just smile.

Just love.

Just laugh.

What if the answer was that there is no answer, there are simply more inquiries to lead you deeper into yourself?

Can I let go of the need to find an answer, and simply be in the glorious unknown of the questions? What would that look like?

It would look like freedom.

It would look like trust. 

I don’t need to know all the answers. I don’t need to finish every thought. I can just let them be there, floating around in the infinite well inside me.

Where Love Touches Down

I love this sentence that Richard Rudd said in the opening of the Radiance Retreat … “It’s where love touches down, it’s where compassion emanates from.” If that is the Radiance, then I am connected into it. If that is the Radiance, then I have broken through to it in many parts of my life.

I imagine my heart, slowly cracking apart, but not in pain or suffering. No, it is the carapace of protection which I encased it with for decades that is cracking, fault lines of light are opening up, and shafts of light, and love, and compassion, beam out from the white hot orb of fire that lives here.

The Atmic field is a place of simple presence. The now. Love emanates from here. This is the still point of Radiance. We drop all frameworks. We just breathe. We are just aware. It simply is.
Richard Rudd, The Sage’s Golden Path Retreat

And is this not the whole point? Is this not why I am doing this work? To simply be. To be present in each moment. To be the beating heart that emanates love, and which absorbs the love emanating from all other hearts.

I just love this idea of the “still point of Radiance”. My Life’s Work and Evolution keys are pretty fucking active … I mean, Dynamism as a Life’s Work … it doesn’t get much more active than that! But if this Radiance is the still point, how can I see my Gift of Authority as a point of stillness?

Still Authority. This is a woman who is at one with herself, and who knows herself; she knows what she can and can’t do. She understands herself and her own deep knowing and authority. She can be the author of her own life without ever worrying about what she should or shouldn’t say or do.

If she comes to a place of stillness within herself, then she is in her authority. If she comes to a place of simply being, then her authority radiates from her. It is her natural glow. It is her breath; it is who she is.

Oh, this woman of still and natural authority, she is who I want to be. She is the me I have yearned to be for decades, and this work with the Gene Keys has slowly allowed me to peel back the layers of wounding and false beliefs, to discover that she was here all along.

Radiance is Always a New Beginning

Radiance is always a new beginning. You don’t need to understand anything that’s happened. Let your system begin again from here, this state of depth and simplicity.
We don’t get to Radiance from Effort.
Radiance comes from inner permission.
Listen from the Radiant field.
Richard Rudd, The Sage’s Golden Path Retreat

Countless times on this Gene Keys journey, I have found myself back at the beginning of this spiral path that takes me simultaneously deeper into myself and higher into myself. A paradox, but one I hold with ease. A paradox nested within a paradox, where I am 62 years, 30 years, 3 years, into the journeys of life, of the inner work, of the Gene Keys; and yet I arrive at each Gene Key or Sphere with a feeling of beginning again. 

“Radiance is always a new beginning” … it is honey for my heart to hear Richard Rudd say these words! This time, my fourth in the Radiance sphere, I have finally let go of the need to understand what the Radiance is about, and I am simply revelling in the light it’s shining on me.

And what has happened?

A dawning of understanding that the light is inside me! It is my love. It is my compassion. It is in my stillness and in my movement. It is in my connection to nature and to my fellow travellers. 

It is in me being me.

“Radiance comes from inner permission” … I am allowed to just be me. I am allowed to be my own self. I am radiant. I am enough. I don’t need extravagant outward shows of my authority.

My Authority is the light that has always burned inside me.

My Radiance is my permission to bravely shine that light out into the world.

I’m listening … and I’m following the call of my radiant heart.

All of the photographs I’ve used in this essay have the theme of light … sunrises and sunsets … my favourite kinds of light. If you’d like to see more of my photographs, you can find lots of them on my Flickr page.