A Travel Essay from the Inner Journey

The Shadow of your Radiance is one of the most powerful internal forces that can undermine your life.
Richard Rudd, The Sage’s Golden Path Retreat

You know, having Provocation and Struggle as the Shadows of my Life’s Work and Evolution Gene Keys was not an easy way to start my Golden Path journey. But hard as they were to accept, I could also see that they were also perfect. When I first encountered those two Shadows, reading the Gene Keys book and listening to Richard’s audios, it was like hearing the story of my life. They were so accurate. It was as if this stranger, whom I’d never met, had somehow looked inside me and seen the whole journey of my life, all my pain, all my emotions, and wrapped them up in his lyrical text.

But let me tell you, when I first came to this Radiance Shadow of Control, I didn’t like it! I didn’t even like that the word was in my chart. I’m on my fourth journey through the Activation Sequence, and “Control” is still a thorny subject, or a thorn in my side!

No one wants to be controlled … and yet, for so many years, I was.

No one wants to be thought of as a control freak … and yet, that is exactly what I was for large swathes of my life.

What is Control?

It always helps me to start with words. They are my métier. And so, to the Thesaurus I go …

Control … order, cleanliness, neatness, quietude, harmony, methodical, uniformity, ritual, power, potency, authority, sway, stability, ability, capacity, moderation, golden mean, quiet, calm, influence, power, mightiness, dominance, reign, prevail, performer, expert, doer, director, perfection, wise, skillful, expert

There is so much meaning wrapped up in that word “control”. I look at all of these definitions, and I can see the seeds of greatness, authority, mightiness, within this Shadow of Control.

But I can also see that insidious ability that this Shadow has to undermine me. Order and harmony are good, but when I use them as the yardstick for my life, I end up failing, and the yardstick becomes the instrument I beat myself with.

Ritual, power, expert … these all sound like they are good things too, but when they are used to control myself or others, they become bonds that constrict me. If I am not the expert in the room, I am diminished, I am less then. I am at the bottom of the hierarchy.

Control is all about hierarchy in its Shadow state. I feel as if I am less than other people if I am not perfect, if I am not completely in control of every aspect of the situation. If I do not hold sway over others, then I must be beneath them, right?!

And all those glorious facets of control … the capacity to do things well, the wisdom, the action and direction wrapped up in an ability to hold potent authority …. can become reasons to hate myself, to judge myself.

Control sets the bar so high … I must reign supreme in my little island of self and life … that I can never hope to meet my expectations of mightiness. And so, I am a failure. I am not in control, I am not perfect, or skilful, or wise.

I am not in harmony with life.

And then I’m sucked under, into the mire of disorderliness, filth, weakness; a cacophony of discordant notes rings in my ears and I am powerless to move. I’m frozen in place by my own weakness.

Control Keeps Me Out of Kilter with the Basic Rhythms of Life

Looking back on times in my life when Control governed me, as either the controlled or the controller, I was definitely out of kilter.

When I was controlled, my rhythms were set by another’s febrile tempo. I never knew what I was supposed to be doing … rushing around, serving their whims, or staying quiet, silent, unseen, so as not to annoy or anger them? There was no rhythm to my days, except the chaotic pace that they set.

Flip the script to a few years later, and I’m out of kilter again. I’ve liberated myself from another’s control, but here I am, rushing from thing to thing in an attempt to control everything.

The only time there had been a natural rhythm to my days and to my life, was when I was nursing a baby. Perhaps that’s why I clung to breastfeeding for so long.

And there was a natural rhythm again when I installed the habit of morning pages into my life, a journaling practice that saw me write three pages (or more!) every single morning.

Aaahhh. That is when things started to calm down. When I set my rhythm to this morning contemplation, despite the helter-skelter chaos of the days, the mornings at least had a stillness and gentle rhythm. I truly believe that my morning practice of journaling brings me into harmony with the Schumann Resonance in a way that nothing else can.

Moving from Mistrust to Trust of My Natural Rhythm

The earth and all life forms move according to a deep heartbeat known as the Schumann Resonance. This is a measurable pulse that underpins all organic life. Most modern human beings live lives that are out of synchronisation with this organic pulse, which puts our bodies under stress and weakens our immune system. It also exerts a subtle influence over the way we behave in our daily lives, resulting in a worried, hurried lifestyle and a time-centric outlook rooted in an unconscious mistrust in the natural flow of life.
Richard Rudd, The Sage’s Golden Path Retreat

I was in that place of mistrust for decades. Always rushing. Always running from one spinning plate to the next. Always pushing myself to the point of exhaustion as a means of showing the world how worthy I am. Look at me! I do everything … I raise my child, I go out to work, I clean, I shop, I cook, I clean some more, I garden. Even my creative endeavours would become about how much I could do and was doing.

The beauty of the pause, the gentleness of slowing down, the kindness to myself, which have all been part of falling into this Gene Keys work, have all changed my rhythm. I am slower. I am more measured. Life becomes more about flow, and less about rigid control.

I have built practices into my day that bring me into a gentler way of moving through my days.

I begin each day with journaling. I begin each working day with a guided meditation. I walk each day. I contemplate. I’ll do a tapping script before I go to sleep. (If you’d like to know more about tapping, check out this Podcast we recorded a few weeks ago with the lovely Samantha Lee Vigliotti!)

There is a world of difference between the rhythm of a person who is coming into tune and flow with herself, and the rhythm of a person who is frantically trying to hit all the notes all the time, with no regard for how they flow together! Harmony versus discord. I know which song I want to dance to!

Slowing Down … Then Slowing Down Some More!

All of these things slow me down and bring me into a rhythm that feels gentle and natural. Oh, how I love the fact that Richard Rudd and Team64 have created the Sage’s Golden Path Retreat as such a slow, somatic experience.

The whole Retreat is like a huge permission slip to slow the fuck down, and savour the simple, everyday moments in life, rather than chasing the achievements we are all brought up to believe we need in order to be “successful”.

I harvest pauses during the day, allowing myself sometimes to simply be, with no agenda and no To Do list.

This slowing down, this gentleness with myself, opens up gaps and space inside me for the inner work to be done. So, my inner work is no longer confined to my time at my journal, it is woven through the fabric of my days.

It is part of the walking I do in nature every day.

It is there as I do mundane, repetitive tasks; it’s there when I drive, when I cook, when I clean.

The contemplative life has become my real life.

That surely must be bringing me back into a more natural rhythm?! 

That surely must be a big part of bringing myself back into a trust of life!

I Am Here to Learn from the Challenges of Control

Richard Rudd says that with Gene Key 21 here in my Radiance, “I am here to learn from the challenges of Control”.

I can feel the truth in that statement. Long before the Gene Keys came into my life, I was familiar with this Shadow of Control. It controlled my life (pun entirely intended!). It wasn’t just that I was controlled by the moods and vagaries of others (like my mother, who didn’t even need to say anything; her control oozed from the look of contempt she’d cast upon me). Of course, I’ve done a lot of work on forgiving my mum; I can see all too clearly why her way of clinging to life was to control every aspect of it. Her life had been a catalogue of catastrophes, over which she had no control … the loss of two children, then death of my father … so she held what control she did have in an iron fist. I no longer blame her for the control she exerted over me. Rather, I think, “My poor mum”! She wanted a malleable daughter she could control and instead she got me. Wild, untameable. She had to cow me into submission so that I would bend to her will. I didn’t make this easy for her.

I spent from the age of ten until my late forties, not feeling as if I had any control at all. I bounced from bad choice to catastrophic outcome; from dramas to repercussions; never feeling as if I had any control over my life whatsoever.

Did I learn from this?

Damn straight I did. Of course, the first lesson, which I’ve subsequently had to unlearn, was that I need to get, to aggressively take back, as much control as I possibly could. I needed to be the controller, not the controller!

Peeling Back the Deeper Levels of Control

Control is power used to serve personal agendas over collective interests, wielded from a place of tightness or fear.
Richard Rudd, The Sage’s Golden Path Retreat

When I was the one being controlled, it was definitely all about serving the other person’s agenda. They were not truly in control of themselves, they were weak bullies, and the only way to make themselves feel strong was to exert tight control over someone they perceived as weaker than they.

When I was in my Control Freak Era, I was serving the single purpose of trying to keep myself safe. There were major areas of my life where I felt I had no control at all … money, single-parenthood, etc, etc, so many bloody et ceteras … so I tightened my control over the things that were within my reach … housework, gardening, bringing up my son, working several jobs.

Submissive personalities give away their power to others, fearing the responsibility to stand in their authority.
Richard Rudd, The Sage’s Golden Path Retreat

All the years of giving away my power, I never once thought of it in terms of “fearing the responsibility of standing in my own authority“. I can see why Richard Rudd says this, but I don’t think I ever formed those thoughts themselves.

For me, the biggest blocker to standing in my own power was purely that I simply didn’t know I had any power in the first place! I was deep in the programming partner Shadow of Inadequacy, never even venturing to dream that standing in my own authority was possible. I never stood up for myself for years. I was too scared to step out from the cloak of submission. But once I did, wow!! Everything changed.

I’ll say it again … This Is Slow Work!

Now, I’m not saying this happened quickly, because it didn’t. I have been doing this inner work for nearly three decades now, and I feel as though I am finally getting to those deeper layers!

Only after my son was born did I dare to think that I could stand up for myself, because of course then I was standing up for him too.

This new experience of motherhood was the first thing that made me believe that I might just stand a chance of standing in my own authority.

I then spent twenty-five years working in solitude, just me and my journal (and The Artist’s Way!), digging deeper and ever deeper into my own psyche. And I did have some major breakthroughs. I changed my life (more than once!). I found self-love and self-compassion. I found self-respect.

And then I found the Gene Keys!! And that is when this “slow work” speeded up. Of course, the delicious Gene Keys paradox is that I simultaneously slowed down even more!

As I write this, I am on my fourth journey through the Activation Sequence, my third journey through the whole Golden Path, and I am just starting to get an inkling of what Richard Rudd means when he says that the Gene Key you have in your Radiance sphere is the most magical of all!

The Radiance is about the dissolution of our ego.
Richard Rudd, The Most Magical Gene Key video

This Shadow of Control had me wrapped in invisible chains of ego for years. This work with my Gene Keys is dissolving those chains. I neither need to be controlled nor do I need to be the controller. I need only be. Me. Standing in my own power. Not submissive nor oppressive. Simply me, emanating my light, walking to my natural rhythm, being my natural self. Dissolving the ego allows me to be me! And it turns out that the “me” I am becoming, she is perfect just the way she is.

Oh, I know that looking at your Shadows can be scary, we don’t always want to see those parts of ourselves. I did not want to look at this Shadow of Control when I first saw it. But believe me, because I am speaking the truth of my heart, contemplating the Shadows in your Activation Sequence will change your life! And when you get to your Radiance, buckle up!! Because magic IS about to happen!!

Contemplation of the Gene Key of your Radiance can send ripples of manifestation into the quantum field of your life.
Richard Rudd, The Most Magical Gene Key video

The photographs I’ve used in this article all feature shadows, in one form or another!

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