A Travel Essay from the Inner Journey

And so, my Travel Essays continue, with a deeper dive into my Radiance sphere. I have Gene Key 21.3 here … the Shadow of Control, the Gift of Authority, the Siddhi of Valour.

I am absolutely loving The Contemplation within the Sage’s Journey …

Sometimes we have to change our direction and even go back the way we came.
Richard Rudd, The Sage’s Golden Path Retreat, GK21.3

I read those words and, not for the first time, I had the uncanny feeling that Richard Rudd had somehow slipped through a crack in my life and read my whole story!

I have changed direction several times in my life. Some have been small deviations, some have been 90 degree turns, hard lefts and rights.

I have also turned around the full 180 and gone back the way I’d come.

Two Changes of Direction

Two of the biggest decisions/choices I have made in my life, were changes in direction and going back to where I’d been before.

First, there was contacting my husband, whom I hadn’t seen in 25 years, not since I was 23 and he was the first (only!) real love of my life. It was a step back onto a path I hadn’t walked for so many years, yet it was instantly familiar, and right. This was the greatest example of “going back the way I’d come”, and it is a choice that I will never regret.

Fast forward a couple of years and I changed direction again. I moved back to England to marry him (well, he is the love of my life, after all!). I left Ireland, where I’d lived and made my home for 20 years, where my son had been born. I honestly never believed that I would leave Ireland. I believed there was no way for me to possibly lift myself out of the poverty-stricken life I led there and start again somewhere new.

But I did. I packed my life into my car and came back to England, back to love, back to a whole new beginning.

And that too was one of the best course corrections I’ve ever made.

Not for one moment have I regretted either of those decisions to change direction and go back the way I’d come.

Catalysts for Change

Both of these things completely changed the life I was living, and they were such catalysts for change within me, that the me I am now is unrecognisable from the me I was before.

These complete changes in direction opened my life like a flower opening to the sun. Light streamed into a life that had felt so dark, and one where I had felt so isolated and alone in that darkness.

Love blossomed where there had only been barren ground, and so much pain and suffering.

And it wasn’t just about love for another … Self-love bloomed in my chest. I started to live the life I had dreamed of living. No! That’s not quite right, for truth to tell, I could never have dreamed a life like this one I am living now was possible for me. I could never have believed I could be this happy and fulfilled. Not only did those huge sweeping turns of the river of my life bring me love and happiness, but they also opened the space within me for my inner journey to deepen; for the Gene Keys to come into my life; for my guide and friend, Hayley, to come into my life. These changes in directions opened me up to such a degree, that the best friend I’ve ever had, Meghan (the other crone in this cauldron!), came into my life.

They opened the door to all the wonderful women friends I now have in my life.

A Whole New Life

And now look at my life! I shudder, literally shudder, when I think about how it might have been, had I never reached out to Steve, or had I not had the absolute trust in love that made me change the course of my life completely. I could still be living a miserable, lonely life, full of compromise; but instead, I am happy, I am loved, I love, I am deeply fulfilled by my life, I am creative, I laugh every single day. I write every day; I have a website and a Podcast with my best friend. Does it get any better than this?

Yes, it does, actually! Because not only do I have all that, but I have also consistently gone deeper into the inner work than I could ever have imagined possible. I have discovered that there is a profound power in the Gene Keys, when you truly allow them into your life, when you sit with them, day after day, when you consistently open your heart.

I have accepted my Shadows; I have embraced them. I have healed wounds that had festered for decades. I have learned to forgive and to hold compassion, for others and for myself.

I have learned to love and accept myself. Truly love myself. I have learned to fully accept myself.

These are all rather incredible outcomes from two decisions that took me back the way I’d come!

Mistakes As Stepping Stones

Mistakes are the stepping stones of a life of genius.
Richard Rudd, The Sage’s Golden Path Retreat, GK21.3

It’s true! Richard Rudd is right again! I could so easily have played the martyr and draped the myriad mistakes I’ve made as millstones around my neck. And believe me, I did that very thing for a long time … playing into victimhood, carrying the weight of every mistake as if that were my penance and my punishment for getting it wrong.

It’s an unbearable dichotomy to be a person who believes she has to get everything right (Straight As, Gold Star Girl, that was me!) or she will not be loved; and who simultaneously believes her mistakes are legion and so manifold that they mark her out as a failure for all to see.

Switch up the narrative and make those mistakes into wide, flat stepping stones in the river of life, and everything changes.

These mistakes of mine are no longer here to drag me down; they are here to help me find my way. They’re part of my path … golden stones that show me how to move out of the victim mentality and into the dancer who steps lightly.

And by learning the lessons of these stepping stones as I come to them, I find that the leap onto the next, and the next, gets easier and easier. I see the stepping stones as these smooth, glacial rocks you find in Scottish rivers, but mine are buttery gold in the sunshine of my life. I see stepping stones with intricate carvings that tell the story of my life.

Honouring My Past, Loving My Present

I don’t want to obliterate my past. I want to honour it. I want to tell the story, without shame. I’m proud of this road of stepping stones I’ve created. Each stepping stone is an example of my genius for Dynamism and Perseverance, for Authority and Resourcefulness, the four prime Gifts in my Gene Keys chart.

I could have allowed the weight of my mistakes to drag me under and drown me. The shame, the guilt, the horror of a life so bleak and barren of love, could have been the river stones that weighted my pockets and held me under in a watery tomb.

But my Perseverance and my Dynamism didn’t let that happen. And here I am, author of my own life, infinitely resourceful, hopping over those stepping stones. Loving Present Me. Stepping into the Future Me.

Dancing across the stones, light of foot and heart.

The Surrender of My Sage’s Line

There is much surrender to be learned through this line … The power of re-examining our decisions and adjusting accordingly
Richard Rudd, The Sage’s Golden Path Retreat, GK21.3

It takes surrender to even be brave enough to make that first step of re-examining our decisions.

We surrender the belief that we are always right.

We surrender the control that making a decision can have over us.

We often believe that it is a sign of strength to make a decision and stick with it. We think that it shows fortitude, a strength of will. But if we are not willing to even look at our decisions with an open mind, then really, we are being stubborn and pig-headed. We are so often terrified to admit we made a bad choice or decision, because we are ashamed or embarrassed. We think that it will make us look weak.

I stuck with relationships (both intimate relationships and friendships) much longer than I ever should have, because I actually didn’t believe it was in my power to change my mind.

I stuck with decisions I’d made because I thought I had to make things work or it would make me look like a failure. The crazy thing is, no one was judging me but myself. All that fear that I would “look like a failure” … Just who did I think was judging me in that way?!

I Get to Re-examine My Decisions … And It’s OKAY!

Well, I sat with that question, and, oh! The truth dawned … My mum, of course!! My inner critic who judges me speaks with my mother’s voice! Because she did tell me over and over that I was a failure. She might not have used that word, but she implied it. She was very good at making sure I knew she didn’t approve of my choices in life. Of course, often it was an “I could have told you so” scenario, when things did inevitably go wrong.

I have to admit now that maybe she was right about a lot of the stuff she disapproved of. But that doesn’t mean that I have to take on the role of judge and berate and punish myself for those bad choices and ill-advised decisions I made when I was younger.

I get to re-examine them, gently, and then I get to adjust accordingly, also gently. This work is not about finding reasons to punish myself for my mistakes. This work is about owning the mistakes and learning from them. This work is about acceptance … I would not be here, in this life I love, had I not made some of those mistakes.

So, while I won’t gaslight myself into thinking “It was all fine!”, I can acknowledge that it happened, that I re-examined the decisions I made, and then I made new choices, better choices.

And sometimes those choices were to go back the way I’d come, to hop, skip and jump from stepping stone to stepping stone, back to the beginning … no judgement, just surrendering to what is right for me, even if it is going back to that new beginning and starting all over again.

The photographs I’ve used in this essay all feature stones, in honour of the stepping stones of my decisions in life. There are several of the River Orchy and the River Etive in Scotland, two of my favourite places when I was a child. There are a couple of the River Elan in Wales. And some of beaches in Devon. Water and stones have always been some of my favourite things to photograph.

If you’d like to see more of photographs, you can visit my Flickr page.