A Travel Essay from the Inner Journey

The Sphere of IQ, where the mind meets the heart.

IQ is not just how clever you are – it is about how intelligently you can respond to challenges and communicate clearly and openly in all your relationships, so that love can continue to deepen and mature.

The Sage’s Golden Path Retreat

The sphere of the IQ part of your journey through your Gene Keys Golden Path concerns the cycle of imprinting between the ages of 14 and 21. This 3rd seven-year cycle is an intense period in the life of anyone, even if they have a completely stable home life, even if nothing traumatic happens in their external lives. On the inside, this transition between childhood into early adulthood, is always turbulent, as one navigates the changes in one’s body and the changes in the way one relates to the world, not to mention the changes in one’s relationships … with parents, with friends, with our first emotional and sexual partners.

These days, I am getting very good at this clear and open communication that the Gene Keys talks about. In my actual IQ years though, there was no clarity, there was no clear communication. To be honest, there was no real or honest communication at all.

My relationships were chaotic. My relationship with my mum was turbulent in the extreme. I was self-destructive, burning bridges everywhere I went … in my education, in my relationships. I was full of self-loathing. I felt utterly worthless, I felt inadequate. I felt broken by the things that had happened in the years leading up to this time. I felt alone, and entirely separate from life, separate from my family, from the people around me, and ultimately, I felt separate from myself.

Poor, Poor Pitiful Me

Oh, my poor, sad, lonely teenage self would not recognise the woman I have become. That girl, who felt so closed off, was locked in a glass box of her own making, where she could see the world, but not touch it; and where the world could not touch her.

My heart is so wide open now that I am able to communicate on a heart level. I speak love. I respond with love. I feel love like a physical presence, inside me and around me. 

I want there to be so much love in my life that when the challenges do come along, (and they always will, for that is the way of life as a human being), I am soft and yielding, not hard and brittle. I want to bend like the reed. Not snap like dead wood.

My love is a living presence in my life, which softens me, which makes me able to yield. 

And my love is my measure of my intelligence. This is a whole new way for me to look upon the notion of my intelligence. It is nothing to do with intellectualism (or how many exams I passed … which used to be my measure of how intelligent I was during these IQ years!).

I like this new way of viewing intelligence as a whole body, mind, being, and emotional experience!

The Shadow of the IQ

“What you resist, persists”

The Sage’s Golden Path Retreat

When I look deeply at my own fear-based patterns in relationships, which this IQ sphere encourages us to do, I can see how all of those fear-based patterns came down to one thing … How do I make myself acceptable enough to this person so that they stay? I would ask myself this question in so many different ways … How do I make sure that I stay small enough, so that they stay powerful and want to keep me around? Or … How do I please them enough to make sure they don’t leave me?

But it all came down to the same thing … fear. Fear of abandonment. Fear of loss.

I would make rules for myself …

☯️ Don’t rock the boat in case they get splashed.

☯️ Walk lightly in case you break their fragile, eggshell ego.

☯️ Never answer back.

☯️ Never fail at anything.

☯️ Never say no.

☯️ Never voice an opinion that differs from theirs.

☯️ Never show that you know more than them.

☯️ Never express feelings unless they are to make the other feel good about themselves.

For many years, I resisted standing up for myself, and so the subjugation persisted.

I resisted my own authenticity, so I had to keep living behind the mask.

And What Did I Do When I was Stressed or Felt Betrayed and Abandoned?

Easy! I look for what I have done wrong. I look for where I have made the mistake. I look for the flaw in myself, even when I am the one being betrayed. I ask myself, what could I have done differently or better?

And I throw up my defences. I say, I’m never letting anyone in ever again. I tell myself the story that “This always happens to me, ergo there must be something wrong with me”.

I take it all on. I feel like I had so many years being blamed for not being a good enough daughter or a good enough wife, that it became second nature for me to blame myself. For everything!

Things have gone wrong … it must be my fault.

He/she betrayed my trust … there must be something wrong with me.

And then, of course, I move into trying to fix the situation.

The “fixing” used to come in the form of people pleasing, fawning all over the person, desperately trying to make them like me again.

Literally debasing myself at their feet, like a whipped dog who still obediently loves her master and licks their hand, no matter how they’ve been treated.

The “fixing” looked like me doing whatever I had to do to get them to stop doing whatever they were doing … lying to me, using me, abusing me.

Then, when I started to feel better about myself, I moved into avoidance … don’t be with anyone; don’t let down the defences; don’t trust anyone; stay safe in my glass box.

My responses, when I was in my Shadows, when I was separate, alone, and afraid, were all to subjugate myself, to make myself small, to treat myself like shit, because that felt like all I deserved, because I did not love myself.

I don’t need to feel shame for how small and how subservient I made myself; I don’t need to feel shame for capitulating in the cycles of abuse. I was doing the best I knew how in order to survive. I look back and I not only see the broken woman I believed myself to be, and the broken child I had been. I see a child, then a woman, surviving in a harsh environment, and who, despite constantly being put down, got back up again and again and again. I see a woman who did the work to excavate the self she could love and nurture.

Unlocking the Cage Around My Mind

I love the image of unlocking a cage around my mind and thereby awakening the highest potential of my heart!

Imagine throwing open the cage that keeps all those negative beliefs about yourself locked in your head, and letting them fly away.

Imagine throwing open the cage so that all of your fears are free to leave and dissipate in the fresh air.

Imagine no longer being held prisoner in your own mental cage, whose bars are made up of the beliefs that you are not good enough, or smart enough, or thin/pretty/interesting enough! Anything enough!!

Imagine how freeing that would be!!

And then imagine that the Gene Keys teachings are correct in their assertion that once your mind is free, your heart can awaken to its highest potential … love. Pure, true, unconditional and universal love.

The thing is that I know it is true. I’ve seen it happen in my own life. As I have stripped away those layers of false beliefs and freed myself from the fears that kept me locked in my mind, I have felt love grow, like a garden in my heart.

I have felt love for myself put down roots and start to grow tendrils that reach out to others. I wouldn’t have believed it was possible to love my husband more, but I do. I wouldn’t have believed it was possible to feel love for friends I haven’t even met, but I do. I wouldn’t have believed it was possible to have a soul family, but I do!!

Now that I no longer have to spend so much time, and mental and emotional energy, on shoring up my defences to make sure no one gets to touch my heart, I find that my heart wants to pour love out onto other people, onto the natural world around me; and it wants to feed me a diet of love and care.

All of this has come from opening the cage of my mind.

This Work is a Powerful Process of Healing

Recognising just how much my unconscious belief patterns around my unworthiness shaped all of my relationships was like having a dusty old curtain pulled down from the window into my mind. Light flooded in and I could see how I had entered into, then stayed with, relationships, both intimate relationships and friendships, with the belief that I was so unworthy of love that I was willing to accept the scraps they fed me, and never had the audacity or confidence to ask for a seat at the table.

I was like an emotional Cinderella … consigned to the basement, to serve them, but never allowed to join them in the fresh air or the glittering ballrooms of life.

I let that happen because I didn’t believe I deserved better. I allowed people to walk all over me. I was responsible for placing myself below their feet. And yes, some were bullies, abusers who kept me under their boot, so I felt unable to break free, but it was me who laid my neck before those boots. I have to take responsibility for that.

I went into relationships and friendships believing I was a victim, so when I was treated as such, it felt normal. I thought the victim role was one I was destined to play.

But that was just a story. 

I am not a victim. I am not weak, and I am worthy of love and care.

The process of untangling those stories and false beliefs of mine has started a process of healing that is ongoing. False beliefs that were planted fifty or forty or thirty years ago have grown deep roots. Like bindweed, they have grown around healthy beliefs and stories and tried to choke the life out of them.

I have already started the process of cutting back the false beliefs and victim stories, but I have to go further.

As I heal parts of me, I grow stronger and become more able to pull out those deep root systems.

The healing happens both quickly and slowly. I can have sudden insights, see truths that cannot be unseen, and things shift dramatically in an instant. Light floods in and shows me the wonders of my healthy roots.

Then the slow work of tending to those roots begins. 

You cannot rush an oak tree out of the acorn. You nurture it, you feed the soil, you continue to pluck out the weeds of self-doubt, blame, and shame, to make sure your young sapling-self has room to grow.

Tending to your inner world of belief systems and heroine stories, tending to your self-love and self-esteem, is like tending the most magnificent garden. And gardens can’t be rushed. You must have patience with yourself as you pull up deep victim roots. You must be gentle as you tend to the young shoots of your healing.

Patience and Compassion

Of course the key here is to be patient and compassionate with myself. I know that this is slow work. I know that each time I have gone through my Golden Path, deeper layers of self have been accessed. But I also know there is more. There are so many things yet to be uncovered within myself. You are never finished with the Golden Path. I will never be finished with my Gene Keys, and I know that there are so many others I want to explore. Like Patience. Like Boundlessness. Like Desire. Shadows, Gifts and Siddhis I yearn to know more about.

But I have patience. I can approach this work slowly, all the time holding compassion for myself, and having compassion for the vulnerability that may arise. I can give myself that gift. And the more work I do, the more compassionate I can be, with myself and with others.

And oh, the sheer joy that tumbles around my heart when I realise that I no longer need to make this journey alone is breath-taking. I was content for this to be a solitary journey. But oh my god, travelling this path with so many companions is wild! I can’t believe that I am able to talk about this work for 20, 30 minutes every single day with my best friend, Meghan. I can’t believe I can sit and talk to her about one aspect for over an hour in our regular Conversations With A Couple Of Crones Podcasts. I can’t believe I sat and talked about the inner work for two yours this week, with a woman who was a stranger a few weeks ago.

I am on this mountainside alone, but I am surrounded by allies.

The Shadow of Vanity

The Shadow of Vanity is “when the love of one’s own uniqueness creates isolation or division with others.”

This is the single hardest thing about Vanity for me to get my head around. It was never my love of my own uniqueness that isolated me. I hated the fact that I was different. I did not want to be different, I did not want to be isolated.

My differences, my isolation, these weren’t badges of honour for me. I hated it. I hated that I never fitted in anywhere. I hated that I was always the odd one out.

This is so hard for me to grasp, that a love of my own uniqueness was at play. I’ve never felt that.

The Shadow of Vanity is the separation from life that occurs when one identifies with the beauty or pain of their own individuality.

The Sage’s Golden Path Retreat

Now, this I get. I may not have identified with the beauty of my own individuality in these teenage years, but I sure as hell identified with the pain of it. The separation was real. I felt separate from my mum, from my brother. I was separated from my dad, separated as we were by his too-young death. I was separated from my first boyfriend. I felt entirely separate from everyone around me, in school and in college. These years were all about separation. These years were all about pain, pain that kept leading to more and more separation, that led to more and more pain.

Even now, when I see the beauty in who I am, when I am in love with my life, I feel the separation between me and people who don’t do the inner work. I feel like I can’t have the conversations I want to have.

I see the separation aspect of this Shadow so clearly.

Vanity is a Longing to Express Myself

Is it Vanity then that makes me want to pour my words out for others to read? 

Is it Vanity that wants to have an impact on others with my words?

Is it Vanity that is driving me to write more and more of these essays of mine, and have more people reading them?

Is it Vanity that drives me to share on the Cauldron and in Gene Keys Unleashed to make sure lots of people are reading what I write?

Maybe it is. Probably it is. Here I am, for the first time being praised for something I love to do (hello, Gold Star Girl!), so maybe it is Vanity that drives me. But it is Vanity tempered by service. I love it when someone tells me my words have had an impact. I love it when I make someone think. But I think maybe, if I am completely honest with myself, there is a part of me that loves the praise for my writing more.

Vanity is the first human vice, so it is clearly in me, whether I want to admit it, or look at it, or not!! But if I am aware of it, if I allow it to be there, if I accept that it is part of my journey, then I may be able to embrace it, as a step towards the Gift and then the Siddhi. Perhaps by seeing it and accepting it, I can transform it into service, perhaps that very human desire to be thought of as unique may be softened, and it may allow something more to arise.

I Am No Longer Afraid of Losing My Power

Vanity is afraid of losing power through honest authenticity.

The Gene Keys, Gene Key 12

I feel as if I am finally overcoming the fear of honest authenticity, the more work I do with my Gene Keys. I feel as if I am allowing more of my real self to be seen. The fear has dissipated, and it’s okay if people don’t like me.

I realised that getting people to like me, to love me, to accept me, was really the only power I ever craved. I have never wanted power to make people fear me or obey me or give me things. I am just not interested in power over people.

This deep journey into my inner being has always been about me recovering my own innate power, a power I never knew I had, until I started to peel back the layers of obfuscation and false beliefs I had been accumulating since I was a child. And these IQ years, they were such a breeding ground for those false beliefs about myself …

The “I’m not good enough” beliefs.

The “I will always be alone/abandoned/hurt” beliefs.

The “Bad things always happen to me” beliefs.

Vanity is afraid that if you come from your heart, you will lose your personal power.

The Gene Keys, Gene Key 12

What an incredible realisation I had as I wrote this quote in my journal … “Vanity is afraid that if you come from your heart, you will lose your personal power.”

I realised that I no longer feel this way!!

I used to feel this way, for so long. And I definitely felt this way in my teenage years. Oh, but these IQ years were fraught with the worry that I had no personal power at all.

I no longer live in fear of losing my personal power.

And this has come from really and truly loving myself. The deeper into this work I go, the more I love myself. It’s really quite mind-blowing.

And There It Is … The Antidote … LOVE!

I have found this a tricky Shadow to wrap my head around, even though I’m now travelling with it for the third time now, but there’s a statement that Richard Rudd makes … “Vanity has an arch enemy – LOVE” … that makes it so much easier!!

Knowing that this Shadow has been one of the things in my make-up that has kept me isolated from others was a huge discovery for me. Seeing all my brick walls and emotional caution through this lens has been an eyeopener.

I realise now that Vanity helped me in the dark and dangerous times when I was a child and a young adult, and had no one to protect me … I think Vanity, by pulling up the drawbridge and keeping me safely locked inside, saved me from a lot more hurt. When I was young, there simply wasn’t the love available to me, there wasn’t the safety. So that isolation I inflicted upon myself was a necessity to keep me safe.

But that’s not true anymore. Vanity doesn’t need to protect me any more. I don’t need to be cut off in order to be safe. I need the opposite. I need to be wide open. I need to let love in, and I need to let it out. To be open is to be safe, to love is to be safe!

Vanity can just be a seed again, instead of a barrier. I can be safe to peel open the fruit. Vanity is still there, the seeds nestled in the pomegranate fruit, but it’s okay to be out in the world. It’s okay to show the world the jewelled fruit that is inside me. It’s okay to open to love …. I don’t need to be scared.

Love is juicy and sweet. Love is nectar. Love triumphs. It doesn’t crush Vanity; it just shows the seed where to plant itself.

Love is in charge now. Love is fruitful. Love is open. And love cannot be trapped in her castle, protected by her drawbridge. Love can fly free.

(What a lot of mixing of metaphors … fruit and castles and flying! This is why humans tell stories, because stories can capture truths in a way that makes them tangible to us.)

Love is everything.

Every small act, every small creation, every small step … if they are all made with love in my heart, with love leading the way, then there is ease. There is no need for Vanity to get on her arrogant high horse.

I don’t need to be RIGHT all the time; I just need to be true.

I don’t need to grasp after power; I just need to be authentically me.

I don’t need to be afraid; I just need to love.

For this essay, since it’s about the Shadow of my IQ, those pretty dark teenage years, I decided to use a variety of black and white shots. It felt like they suited the mood!

You can see more of my photographs on my Flickr page.