A Travel Essay from the Inner Journey

I’m deep in my Sphere of Attraction in the Sage’s Golden Path Retreat. I have Gene Key 62.6 here, the Shadow of Intellect, the Gift of Precision and the Siddhi of Impeccability.

This is my third time in this sphere, my third time of working with the Shadow of Intellect I have here, and it is still elusive and intriguing to me. For me, the Shadow of Intellect is the desire to know everything, to gather as many facts, accumulate as much knowledge, as possible, because I think that if I know enough, then I am going to be able to control my external world.

I see this Shadow of Intellect wrapped around so many other Shadows and the fears that have stalked me for years … Control, the unknown, Struggle, Constriction. And me thinking that if I can just gather enough facts to alleviate suffering is me succumbing to desire, specifically that desire to end the suffering that this Attraction sphere is all about.

Third time round, and I am still struggling a bit to connect the dots of my Gene Key in this particular place of Attraction.

I think that part of this confusion may be to do with how the Shadow of Intellect keeps me locked in the subservient role. The Shadow of Intellect keeps me in a competitive hierarchical way of thinking … the other person (or the situation, or the circumstance) is above me, but if I can learn enough, then maybe I can flip that control on its head, and I will be in control. And if I am in control, if I have the power, then I will be safe.

Because for so long I had this false belief that the gathering of facts and knowledge would keep me safe; but it never did, it never does, it never will. No matter how much knowledge I accumulate, it never seems to be enough to protect me, to make me feel safe. And so I keep looking for more. And while I’m doing that, while I’m living in that fear of being exposed as a fraud who doesn’t know enough, while I’m searching for more and more information to cushion me from pain and suffering, all I am actually doing is keeping myself small. I am keeping myself low in the pecking order, I am keeping myself in that victim role, offering myself to the bullies.

Expanding my Capacity to Love

Everything you attract towards yourself – all relationships, experiences and their timings – serve a single purpose – to offer you the possibility of expanding your capacity to love.

Sage’s Golden Path Retreat

Richard Rudd also says, in the Attraction course notes, that I use my Intellect in an effort to avoid feeling “utterly powerless in a chaotic world”. Boom!! That was a pretty mind-blowing insight right there. Because, oh my goodness, there were so many times when my life felt chaotic. You see, I did not have a “normal” childhood. Growing up living in a caravan, not a “normal” house like everyone else I knew. And there was my cold, distant mother, who kept me at arm’s length; there was a dead father, who left me rudderless; there was my brother, who left home soon after my dad died, and oh, I felt so alone with him gone.

Chaos. Confusion. Fear. Lack of safety.

My younger life was all chaos. And the only defence I had against all these external adversaries who wanted to defeat (or at best, ignore) me was the accumulation of facts, and the gathering of evidence that I was worthwhile.

Pass all the exams and mum might love me.

Build a wall of facts around me and no one can get through to hurt me.

Pass the exams, be top of the class in order to divert attention from the fact that I was a useless waste of a good skin (now, there’s a Scottish expression to pen in a girl with a massive inferiority complex!).

Facts, information, exam grades, these were all lifebelts in turbulent seas.

But still I drowned, weighed down by these facts. Because all they did was set a bar I couldn’t keep reaching.

(Enter yet more disappointment from my mum, by the way!).

I really couldn’t bloody win!

So, how does all of this expand my capacity to love? I knew I needed to dive deeper into this Shadow of Intellect, to see if I could find a way in.

What Happens When You’re Addicted to Living Through the Mind

When I am in this Shadow of Intellect, I am grasping after a life lived through my mind, and this disconnects me from “the intuitive, wild nature of existence”.

I recognised that description, for that was me for such a long time … always operating from that masculine, logical mind of facts and information. I was so out of touch with my feminine, wild nature that even having a child was alien to me. Yes, there was the “homely language” aspect of motherhood, but so much of that language came from books. I devoured books about pregnancy, childbirth, early years. I wanted to understand everything with my mind.

I’ve had that same approach to so much of my life … learn the facts, gather the information, arm myself with data.

I can see that this Attractor field of mine is drawing circumstances and relationships into my life that make me face the naked vulnerability of letting go of my Intellect, of letting go of all that data, all those facts. It invites me into trusting that when I dive into the void of the unknown, that I am going to find everything I need there … all the love, all the answers, all the treasure, all the Gifts. There is no need for facts in the void. If I can let go of that need to know everything, then from the void of the unknown will bubble up the precise thing that I need in every moment, whether that be an answer to an inquiry, an insight, a breakthrough, a piece of art, a poem, a book, or simply the gentle space of a pause to catch my breath. And to know that I am safe not to know!

Now, finally, in my crone years, I am leaning into the wild, intuitive nature of being me.

My writing is one place I see this very clearly. I no longer feel the need to dissect activity. I let my hand flow across the page, sometimes it fairly flies across the page!

I let intuition lead my words. I let my wild nature direct the flow. It feels so much more natural now, this act of writing; it is looser, it is freer, and it is more me.

More Facts, Less Creativity

When my Intellect turns inward, I become obsessed with facts and logic, and there’s space for creativity when that happens. The irony of this is that I could see that I’ve been coming at this Attraction sphere, and indeed at this Shadow of Intellect, from the Shadow of Intellect. I’m trying to figure my mind out with my mind!!

What if I approached it intuitively? What if the mystery here is that in one’s crone years, one’s sexual energy, which this Attraction sphere is really all about, takes a different form and becomes a creative fire that burns in one’s belly instead?

What might it feel like to go easy on myself and simply allow the creative juice to flow where it wants to flow? What might it feel like to let myself off the hook? Creativity/sexuality doesn’t have to follow intellectual restrictions. I can be wild and free in my creativity. I can stop beating myself up for not being able to figure everything out with my head. I can go easy on myself for not having it all figured out by now! I can let myself off the hook for still being a bit confused by this Attraction Shadow. I can just stop.

I can just let myself be … myself.

Once again, for this essay I have used photographs taken on my morning walks through the wildflower meadow and along the bridleways near my Wiltshire home. The world is full of wildflowers and golden crops at this time of year.

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