A Travel Essay from the Inner Journey

The Lifebelt
Sometimes pain outshines poetry.
At such times it may help to recall
that deep in the fecund folds of this night
We are germinating jewels.
Richard Rudd, The Sage

For the first few days of being in our Purpose sphere inside the Sage’s Golden Path Retreat, my journaling and my contemplation were focused on the Sage Word and Line (check out this article for more about that … Affinity and Beyond) … and then on the Sutra that goes along with my Purpose Gene Key of 48.3.

And I absolutely adore the Sage Sutra! ❤️‍🔥 It is so typical of Richard Rudd … it’s poetic (that phrase “deep in the fecund folds of this night” … I’m melting!!) and it’s right on the button!!

In the pages of my journal, I broke the Sutra down line by line, because that’s just the way I am!! If I am going to explore something, then I am going to dive head-long into it. I’m going to take that Line 1 “interiority” of my Life’s Work, and I am going to explore every single aspect of every single word that Richard Rudd has gifted us with his Sage wisdom.

“The Lifebelt”

Gene Key 48.3 appears to be about me rescuing myself. I am my own lifebelt. I am the rescuer and the rescued. There isn’t anyone else standing on the shore, with a lifebelt in their hands, ready to throw it out to me. I don’t need anyone else to rescue me.

I am the lifebelt and I am the woman who is kept afloat by this simple, yet glorious buoyancy aid.

I am here to rescue myself from my own Shadows. I am here to keep floating, to keep my head above water, even when the Shadows feel as though they might swallow me.

Oh, and there have been so many times when I’ve felt as if those Shadows would engulf me, when I’ve felt as if the troubled seas of my life were going to drown me. There were so many years when I did feel as if I were drowning, and I didn’t know that I was the lifebelt! I didn’t even know such a thing as a lifebelt even existed.

But here I am … I am the lifebelt. I am bright colours, so I can be seen from afar.

I am here to rescue myself and be a beacon of hope for others.

“Sometimes pain outshines poetry.”

There are times when the pain and suffering is so great that I can forget the poetry of my own life and of my own words. I can get caught in the web of pain and suffering, caught in the Shadows of Provocation and Struggle, and I can forget that I have all I need to write my way to healing.

My heart beats with poetry. Every day, as I sit at my journal, my heart bleeds its poetry onto the page and I am soothed.

But sometimes the pain can be so overwhelming that I forget. And I am sucked back into the victim mind, where all connection to the natural poetry of my heart is cut off.

Sometimes the pain is the brightest thing in the room, blinding me, so that I can’t see my own poetry. Because the truth is, I am poetry. My life is poetry. My love is poetry. My inner work is poetry. All of it is a beautiful lilting poem to life.

What is incredible to me is, that since doing this deep contemplative work with the Gene Keys, those moments of pain are so few and far between now. I will feel myself caught on the barb of a Shadow, but I’ll free myself quickly. I am quicker to remember the poetry of life, and less inclined to slip into the darkness of the shadowlands.

“At such times it may help to recall”

This is about remembering. Isn’t all of this inner work about remembering? Who we are. Why we are here. To love. To live every precious moment of our lives.

As humans we so easily forget even the most important things we’ve learned, even when we think that these things are epiphanies, insights, breakthroughs, that feel as if they are changing our lives. But we do forget, therefore we always have the joys of remembering.

That is part of this human journey … to forget, and then to remember.

I forget much less often these days, because I devote myself to reaching into myself for that shining poetry every day.

And when I do forget, I remember much more quickly, and the remembrance is sweet, like ripened fruit.

“deep in the fecund folds of this night”

When we are in the depths of our pain and suffering, it is as if night has fallen on our inner world. All feels dark, all feels isolating. We feel as if hope has deserted us along with the light. Diving into our pain and our Shadows requires a doughty heart. We must be prepared for the night; we must ready ourselves to be wrapped in darkness. For there is no way out of our pain except through our darkness.

But the thing I have learned about this darkness, about the dark of the void inside myself … it is not ALL darkness!

I just adore that phrase, “in the fecund folds of this night”, because that is exactly what you will encounter, should you be brave enough to take the leap into the darkness within … that wrapped in its folds are fecund, fertile places teaming with life and light.

All of my seeds are germinating there. Seeds of my ideas, seeds of my dreams, yes.

But also seeds of my future self not even dreamt of yet.

Seeds of my stronger self.

Seeds of my more loving, more compassionate, more understanding self.

All are nestled in the loving, gentle folds of this darkness within, and all are bursting with pure potentiality.

“We are germinating jewels.”

Indeed!!! Out of the darkness of our pain and suffering we will find treasure to bring back to the light of our external world. We will find our own wisdom in that void within us. We will find every answer to every question that we sought for years.

We will find that inside us is a glittering, jewel-filled hoard that we can dive into again and again, to find exactly what we need, when we need it … the compassion for our wounded self; the love for our lonely self; the safety for our frightened self; the forgiveness for our shamed self.

All of these jewels and more are nestled in those fecund folds within us. We must never doubt that we hold all we need right here, inside ourselves. We just need to trust the darkness. We just need to trust that if we allow ourselves to fall into that darkness, we will find all that we need.

How Do I Remember?

So, how do I remember? How do I ensure that I never forget that I am my own lifebelt?

Well, it starts with a daily practice. For me, this is journaling. For others it may be a morning meditation, a prayer, a visualisation. But for me, every morning as I sit at the blank pages of my journal, I know that I am reaching down into my own well of wisdom, with its fecund folds, and I am finding the pearls I want and need to bring back to the surface. 

It’s in the pauses each day, where I allow my awareness to drop into my body. I may not be consciously thinking, “I am my own lifebelt”, but I know that I am dropping into the well within where all of my safety lives, and that is enough.

It is in my daily walks in nature, where the rhythm of my own steps allows me to drop into another layer of consciousness.

It’s in my daily conversations with Meghan, where we mirror each other in a perfectly choreographed dance of truth telling and hearing, of baring our souls and witnessing each other.

It’s in the guidance, so soft and gentle, that I receive from Hayley.

And the beauty of this work is that once you have seen the jewels within your own lush and fecund folds, there is no way to UNsee them. And even forgetting is good, because it ushers in the joy of remembering.

Of all the wonders I would love to tell people about the power of doing this inner work, this would be near the top of the list …

“You do not need to fear the inner darkness, for it holds treasure,

and it holds jewels of infinite, undying light.

Be brave.

Leap off the cliff.

Dive into the dark waters of your inner world.

Become your own lifebelt, and you cannot drown,

you can always save yourself!”

All of the photographs in this essay are of the sea … got to keep with the “lifebelt” and “anchor” analogies!! They were all taken on trips to Devon and Dorset.

You can see more of my photographs on my Flickr page, if you’re interested!