A Travel Essay from the Inner Journey

Dedicated intention and focus
that embraces and works with weakness

These are words that go along with “sincerity” as the Sage wisdom for my Evolution Gene Key of 38.1 (the Shadow of Provocation, the Gift of Perseverance, and the Siddhi of Honour).

“Dedicated intention and focus” are most definitely what my inner work is all about. I could not have continued, for so many years, to return again and again to my interior world, were I not 100% dedicated to this work.

I see the connection between the commitment to follow my inner truth (which is the Sage wisdom for my Life’s Work Gene Key 39.1), and this dedicated intention.

I am fully focused on this inner work.

I am intent on following my inner truth to its source deep inside me.

Dedicated intent goes hand in hand with that passionate intent that Richard Rudd talks about in my Gene Key 39. With dedication and passion, it becomes possible to keep on following the glimmering light of truth.

With focus I can continue to contemplate concepts until I have insights; then I can continue to focus on those insights until they become breakthroughs.

But my focus does not stop there. I remain focused until I have integrated it into my body, this truth that I have dedicated myself to finding. And this might take fucking years!!

Focus IS dedication.

And dedication in turn brings more focus.

And when I am focusing on the light of truth inside me, then I find that light spreading into every aspect of my life.

… embraces and works with weakness

Oh. When I read these words, I knew that this was going to bring me face to face with something I wanted to deny for so long … the truth of my own weakness.

Because I did feel weak for so long. I allowed myself to believe I was weak, that my weakness was why I remained trapped in bad situations for so long. I allowed myself to believe I was weak, and that I would remain weak and subservient forever.

You know me well enough by now, to know that of course I reached for my Roget’s Thesaurus … “weakness” … vulnerability, helplessness, tenderness, defencelessness, in danger

What if I were to embrace weakness as vulnerability?

Nobody wants to think of themselves as weak. But, by allowing, accepting and embracing the weakness, then I am able to see the truth in the understanding that vulnerability is strength.

(If you’d like to read more about Allow, Accept, Embrace, Meghan and I have written a series of Wizardly Words on Wednesdays articles about them.)

What if I were to embrace weakness as defencelessness?

The Gene Keys way of looking at both defensiveness and defencelessness, is to come to see that the greatest defence is to have no defences at all. 🤯 This is a lesson I have learned over and over again, from many of my Gene Keys … letting down my defences and having a consistently open heart that allows the arrows of struggle and of suffering to just to go straight through, is truly the safest I can be.

My Soft, Unprotected Parts

What if I were to embrace weakness as tenderness?

Owning our own vulnerability makes us strong. Knowing where the chinks in our armour are makes us vigilant.

So, there are soft, unprotected parts of me that arrows of suffering might reach … what am I going to do about that? I cannot coat my entire being with armour; even my warrior rhino has soft, tender parts. (This is a reference to the Dream Arc animal for my Gene Key 38 … The Rhino, the Warrior of Light!)

No, what I do is I lean into the safety inside myself. I know, from all of this work that I have been doing with the Gene Keys over the last three years, that I carry my safety inside. And how do I build that sense of safety? By living with a consistently open heart. By allowing those arrows of suffering that find my weak spots to fly on through.

What if weakness wasn’t bad?

What if weakness was simply those soft, tender places in me that remind me that suffering is part of life?

What if I remember that, even though weakness is a part of life, it is not all of life?

There is strength in my vulnerability.

There is safety in my defencelessness.

Again … It Comes Back to Acceptance

Is all of this telling me that I must accept my own weaknesses?

Is it telling me that I must trust life?

Is it telling me that I must surrender to the flow of life?

Must I accept that life is struggle and that we evolve because of our struggle, not in spite of it?

Yes!, I believe is the answer to all of these questions.

Gene Key 38 tells me that I must choose a fight for right, that I must fight honourably. Perhaps this line …

Dedicated intention and focus
that embraces and works with weakness

… is telling me that by accepting my own weaknesses, I am better equipped to fight for love. I am better equipped to fight for the underdog, if I am able to accept my own weakness and see it as the seed of strength.

Dedicated intention and focus IS the Gentle Perseverance of the rhino.

There’s a beautiful passage in the Dream Arc wisdom for the Rhino …

You are going to learn the true meaning of deep contemplation, which brings great breakthroughs when done with consistency and love. Finally, dedicate your change to the service of something higher than yourself. This is the most important thing of all – to do this thing for yourself, yes, but even equally, to offer this effort to a higher service, for the sake of all beings.

I read that and I think of how completely perfect it is that I have this Gene key 38, with its Rhino wisdom, in my Evolution Gene Key. I do dedicate myself to this inner work, I have done for many, many years now.

But I don’t just do this work for me, I do this work for all of us. I share this work with anyone who cares to listen to me or read what I have to say. I am not just fighting for myself with this work, I am fighting for everyone; for those who are not able to do the work themselves, because of the struggles in their own lives. I do this work because it is a privilege and a duty.

The Honourable Warrior of the Heart

I do love this idea of the of the honourable warrior, the chivalrous knight that this Gene Key 38 conjures up, and I love that I get to be the warrior! I get to be the Brienne of Tarth character in my own story. (And if you know me at all, then you’ll know how much I love a mythic, epic tale of knights and magic!!)

But of course, it’s not easy. It does mean that I have to get my ego out of the way. It does mean that I have to stop feeling sorry for myself, because the hero doesn’t fight for himself or herself. They fight for the greater good. They fight for love. They fight for the underdog. They fight for what is right.

And that requires full acceptance of the warrior archetype. That requires me to get on board with all the great things about being a warrior … the strength and the bravery and the courage … as well as the weakness, the tenderness, the vulnerability.

Dedicated intention and focus are what I bring to this work. I do embrace and work with my own weakness, even if that’s hard.

My inner work is the single-minded determination to fight for what is right.

I am the Warrior of the Heart!

All of the photographs I have used in this essay are of wildlife I have encountered in my travels around Wiltshire. I would have loved to fill the essays with photographs of those big, armoured unicorns (aka rhinos) which are the Dream Arc animal for my GK38 Gift, but we don’t see a lot of them in the West Country of England, so you’re getting bunnies and birds and badgers and deer!! Best wildlife I could get!! If you’d like to see more of my photographs, you can find them on my Flickr page.