A Travel Essay from the Inner Journey

In the opening retreat for the Attraction Sphere in the Sage’s Golden Path Retreat, Richard Rudd invited us to look at our Purpose Sphere and our Attraction Sphere together … two Gifts in love, and two Shadows in love.

He spoke of how the Shadows of our Purpose and Attraction Spheres are “two faces of one wound in love: when I relate from the Shadow of Inadequacy … I draw the Shadow of Intellect toward me.”

I had never thought of these two Gene Keys in quite this way before, and it led me on some intriguing and illuminating contemplations.

My Two Gifts in Love

I have Gene Key 48, the Gift of Resourcefulness, in my Purpose Sphere; and I have Gene Key 62, the Gift of Precision, in my Attraction Sphere.

My Gift of Resourcefulness means that I bring trust into all my relationships. I trust in the people in my life; and they trust in me. I have come to see that unless there is absolute and mutual trust, then there can be no relationship. At least, not a relationship that has any depth or meaning.

You see, I have been so badly hurt and used in the past, in intimate relationships, and in friendships, that now, I can only be in relationship with people I can trust to hold my heart.

For me, this is the mark of resonant relationships.

We trust each other.

We sing the same song.

We walk the same pathways.

I simply have to look at the people I have attracted into my life to see the truth that shines through these songs I sing with others … each and every one of the people who are closest to me do radiate Precision, even if that Gift is not in their charts, even if they don’t “believe” in the Gene Keys at all!!

My Two Shadows in Love

My Shadows here in my Purpose and Attraction Spheres are Inadequacy and Intellect. Richard spoke of how, when I am in fear, which was my natural state for so long, then my loving collapses into Inadequacy; and then I cannot help but attract the Shadow of Intellect into my relationships.

Oh, this was so familiar to me! For this used to be the pattern of all of my relationships. I would be so scared, all the time. Scared of my own Inadequacy, which only made me feel even more inadequate. Scared of being in relationships, scared of not being in relationships. Scared, all the time, of not being good enough … not a good enough partner, wife, friend, daughter, sister. You name it! I felt as if I were always off-balance, always on the back foot.

What is interesting to me now, with hindsight, is that it was my own Intellect that was used against me. My Intellect would be mocked by people who were either in this Shadow themselves, or who felt their own Inadequacies in the face of my Intellect. Or a combination of both!

These Shadows set up the most insidious and destructive loops. There was no true communion, there was always a competition. And I always had to come second to them. Over and over, this pattern repeated. Oh my goodness, I really did attract the most arrogant, self-serving people into my life! It was as if they had read the script of these two Shadows, and followed it to the letter!

“The Same Wound, Seen Twice”

Richard Rudd concluded the two Shadows we have here in our Purpose and Attraction are “two faces of one wound in love”. He says that when one relates to people from the Shadow of our Purpose, then we cannot help but draw the Shadow of our Attraction towards us. So, for me, when I am relating from my Shadow of Inadequacy, I am drawing the Shadow of Intellect toward me.
This means that our struggles in relationship aren’t the random occurrences we think they are with our logical mind … they are actually our own two Shadows meeting.

That blew my mind when I read it, because I realised that it is so true for me. Every “bad” or toxic relationship I have ever been in, whether intimate or friendship, was just a mirror of these Shadows. Seeing it written down in the notes that come along with the Sage’s Golden Path Retreat, there was a sudden clarity of thought. It was one of those moments when I had an insight that was so bloody obvious, that I couldn’t believe it had taken me so long to realise the truth.

In every single one of my relationships, I was stuck in my own Shadow loop. I felt inadequate, so I would use words to try to prove I was right. If I couldn’t find the words, then I would feel even more inadequate. A horrible loop. A crushing loop that kept me small.

The Purposeful Attractor Conundrum

There is a pattern here, a bit of a conundrum, that means that these two Spheres are in constant interaction with each other. There was not only that crushing loop of the two Shadows, Inadequacy and Intellect, feeding off of each other and weaving around each other, there is also a delicious web-like pattern where each Gift heals the other Shadow. Richard Rudd calls this “the cross-over” … my Gift of Resourcefulness works to dissolve the Shadow of Intellect I attract. And in perfect symmetry my Gift of Precision helps me to soften my Shadow of Inadequacy. It’s a harmonic and symbiotic relationship.

Looking at my Shadows and Gifts, and their corresponding Siddhis, allows me to stop wrestling in the shadowlands. I feed the Gift on the other side, and the Shadow loosens its hold.

The way that Richard writes about this relationship between my Purpose and Attraction spheres could have been written about what has happened to me in the fifteen years of being in a relationship with my husband. It has slowly unravelled me. I am unwinding the bonds those Shadows used to have around me.

And I can feel that I am in my Gifts in this marriage. Of course, the Shadows rise sometimes, we’re human, after all; but I catch them really quickly and they dissolve like soap bubbles sinking into the water of my life. 

I feel as if I have stopped that wrestling match between those two bullies, Inadequacy and Intellect, where I feel as if I have to somehow defeat the Shadows before they defeat me. 

Instead, now, like water widening cracks in rock, I create fissures out of which the Gifts may seep into my everyday life.

Writing My Love Story … The Bright Story

This next part of the Sage course was so delicious … We were invited to “set the shadows aside” and tell the bright story of our own love through the Gifts of our Purpose and Attraction. And oh, it was so wonderful to do this. I was able to drop into the warmth and softness of the Sage words, Affinity and Myth, and craft a bright love story all of my own.

I have an affinity for this mythic work of telling the stories of love. I have walked far, through pain and suffering, but have found, not the darkness of the void, but the rich black loam in which my roots can go down, grow strong, and out of which jewels may grow.

I am here to hold others steady while they grow their own roots. I am to be trusted, for I am the stable mountain when the ground is shaky, I am the lifebelt when the water is too deep.

I am the keeper of stories who spins and weaves the golden threads that reveal the great tapestries of mythic lives.

I am the word weaver. I know the precise words to speak lives into being.

I am the womb and the creator.

I can sing the beauty of the world in a single word or in a rolling saga that lasts a lifetime.

My Love Story of Affinity and Myth

My purpose in this life is to draw love towards me, and to radiate love out towards my fractal. My affinity for this work of love and connection is bone deep. I hold the Wisdom of the ages in the fecund folds of my heart. From that fertile earth grows the sweet fruit of connectedness, the flowering of oneness.

My resourceful precision has taken my Purpose and created of it a new collective noun … “affinity” …

an affinity of soul friends,

that is what I call this soul family I draw to my heart.

We are connected in ways that are akin to the gravitational pull of planets.

We were meant to come together,

we are sisters by affinity,

if not by consanguinity.

I have an affinity for this work.

I have a gift and a talent for this inner work. The marriage of interiority and affinity means that I am made for this work. This is my calling. This is my métier. I am drawn to this work because it is my destiny to do it. I have an instinct for diving deep into my own interiority, for knowing which paths to follow and which threads to unravel. I know that this is what I’m meant to do with my life.

Affinity holds worlds within it. It is not just a word; it is a whole life. It is the inner world I have discovered through being brave enough to dive into my own darkness. Affinity is the treasure that lies hidden in the very heart of my being. Affinity is the pearls I bring back to the surface of my life. Affinity is the song I sing to soothe myself. It is the battle cry when I need courage.

Affinity is my true north.

Affinity is love and connection.

Affinity is empathy and understanding.

This is my oath to myself …

to always soften

to always be gentle with myself

to listen to the love that is always singing and whispering and humming in my body.

This is my oath to myself …

I will be the love I long for.

I will be the love I need and deserve.

I will be the love I was born to be.

And I can do all this, because I am the mythic warrior, fighting for love.

I am the mythic crone, hiding out in the woods.

I am the mythic gardener, whose precise planting and nurturing can make anything grow, even in parched and barren land.

The weaving of my Wisdom and my Impeccability is a myth in the making; it is the mythic saga of my life. I am the shamanic storyteller, sitting by the campfire, passing on the myth to others, so that they might take heart, and start to create a mythology of their own.

For we all have our own stories to tell.

But more importantly, we have our own stories to live.

And I am here to show the way, with wise words, and impeccable timing.

The photographs I used in this essay are all of my sunrise walks along the bridleway and through the wildflower meadow near my lovely Wiltshire home. You can see lots of Wiltshire photographs on my Flickr page. There’s also an art journal card inspired by my Attraction Sage word, “myth”.