Each Gene Key has three constituent parts … The Shadow, The Gift, and the Siddhi. For this article, the second of this latest series of collaborative Wizardly Words posts, Meghan and I are going talk about the Gift, as defined within the Gene Keys modality.
When I first saw my chart, all I really saw were my Shadows … words that seemed to define the darkness that had haunted me for years … Inadequacy, Struggle, Provocation, Constriction … and that’s just for starters.
Now though, almost three years into this work, and nearing the end of my Golden Path for the second time, it is my Gifts I see first … Dynamism, Perseverance, Authority, Resourcefulness … not to mention Imagination, Acceptance, Freedom!!
They glow like golden orbs.
They are connected by a gossamer net of golden threads that are what Richard Rudd calls “the holographic nature” of one’s chart.
But I’m getting ahead of myself!
Let’s back up a bit! The first of this trio of articles was about the Shadow, and I confess that I was so eager to write about my own Shadows, that I dived straight in, and maybe didn’t explain some of the fundamental things about this Gene Keys work. So, I’m going to start there, with the basics.
Your Hologenetic Chart
When you first come to the Gene Keys, the very first thing you do is get your “chart”, your Gene Keys profile, what Richard Rudd describes as “a universal geometric matrix whose central purpose is to show the relationship between an individual and the whole“.
This is created using the exact date, time and place of your birth. Now, I don’t want you to get hung up on this, and think, “oh, astrology … I don’t believe in that!” It’s just a mechanism, and you don’t have to “believe” in anything, you can be as sceptical as you like (I know, because I was!). Suspend your disbelief for a minute and just wrap your mind around this concept … somehow, through a combination of astrology, astronomy and the I Ching, you are presented with a chart, your hologenetic profile, and what you’ll see are the eleven archetypes that “define” you.
I’ve put define in quotes there, because I’m not quite sure that’s the right word. Perhaps it’s better simply to say that your chart is like a map of your inner self, a depiction of your psyche, the story of your life.
That’s how it is for me, anyway. I look at the Gene Keys in my chart and I’m like, Holy fuck, how did Richard Rudd know the story of me?!! Is this man a psychic?!! I don’t have an answer for you. I have no earthly clue why it should be so, but what I can tell you is that my Gene Keys chart is scarily spot on!
Your Hologenetic Profile is a personalised map of the unique inner contours of your consciousness. The Golden Path describes a transformational route through this map. This is your own path through the mystery of the Gene Keys, and as you follow it, it may bring about many changes in your life.
Richard Rudd, The Activation Sequence
Your Golden Path
The other thing I should have explained in our Shadow article is exactly what we mean when we talk about our “Golden Path” … this is the route you take through your chart, from your Life’s Work Gene Key all the way through all the spheres (a couple of them, your Purpose and your Core Wound/Vocation, you actually look at twice, through different lenses), back to that same Life’s Work Gene Key, which at the end is called your Brand. You end where you begin, or perhaps you begin where you end. Don’t worry! I know that sounds a bit complicated, but all you really need to do is start the journey with your Life’s Work, and the rest of the journey through your chart will unfold quite naturally.
This is a gradual process of coming into equilibrium, in which many hidden gifts inside you may come to the surface. Ultimately the Golden Path is a rich inner voyage into the deep mystery of the Self. Because it is a mystery, there is no way of predicting what may occur in your life as a result of following this path. The only way to find out is to step forward bravely, trusting in the inner light that already lies inside you.
Richard Rudd, The Activation Sequence
It’s a journey, and I’ve been on that journey for nearly three years now, and as I said at the beginning, I’m approaching the end of my second full circuit through my Golden Path.
The Golden Path is a path into the deep mystery. It is a path of soul, in which your daily living becomes your greatest muse. It is a path of enrichment, which at the same time trains a fierce eye upon the way you are living. It asks you to contemplate some profound and sometimes painful questions.
Richard Rudd, The Activation Sequence
The Gift … “A Creative Attribute”
I thought it would help me to illustrate what the Gift actually is, by walking through the Activation Sequence of my own Golden Path, painting a picture of my life, using these four Prime Gifts, which are the cornerstones of my particular genius in life.
This journey through your Activation Sequence helps you to uncover the deepest purpose that you have for being here on this planet. Even if you never looked at any of your other Gene Keys, looking at the four keys in your Activation Sequence alone will change your life. Of course, in my experience, you’re not going to want to stop there, but don’t worry about that now! For now, I just want to walk you through my first four Gifts, so that you can get a flavour for what this work is about.
Our primary purpose is to live well, to live with passion, to learn from our mistakes and to continually expand beyond the parameters set by our minds or the minds of others.
Richard Rudd, The Activation Sequence
Meghan here, I thought I’d weave in a little Dream Arc magic here and there in this article for a different perspective on the Gift. In our previous article, Wizardly Words on Wednesdays: Shadow I spoke about how the Dream Arc underworld creatures hold a hopeful spark within each of their messages to help us move out of the flavor of fear they each carry. In this article I want to speak about the mammals. In the Dream Arc, each Gene Key gift frequency is represented by a mammal. I love this group of animals and the artist, Rosy Aronson, has done such a wonderful job helping us relate to these warm-blooded creatures by focusing on the eyes and having them all look out at the viewers with compassion. These are the mammals in my own chart, with Rosy’s illustrations – it’s been on my bulletin board for years (a photo of an art journal page).
Just as with the underworld creatures, these middle world mammals each have a message for us (written by Richard Rudd). Often these messages are spot on and contain just what I need to hear to help me to manage my own middle world dilemma. Sometimes I gather the overarching message and then bring in their warm-blooded coziness to just sit with me. When I was grieving the death of my mother a few years ago, Polar Bear (Courageous Idealism, GK 11) simply held me in her furry warm arms in a cave deep within my interior body day after day after day. Sometimes I like to give magical qualities to an animal in my art when it feels like that is what the message seems to help spark in me, like when I walked for months with the Weasel… he really belongs with a magic wand in his paws!
Right now, as I am working with the Bat, I recognize that I also use the mammals symbolically. For instance, I did read Bat’s message in the Dream Arc course but was being intuitively called to go deeper. And so, I am now reading the Gene Keys text for 57 and listening to the audio in order to find the messages I need. Then I will do some visual exploring, through AI as well as art journaling, to take the lessons I’m gathering from the key of 57 and embedding them into the warm-blooded symbol of this Bat to help me remember. When I am done, I will see or hear of the Bat and all of the lessons from 57 will wash over me intuitively (I say that with a wink as the Bat represents Crystalline Intuition).
Life’s Work
It’s in the Gift of our Life’s Work that we are first introduced to the concept that every Shadow contains the Gift. It is also where we learn that this work is slow work. We have to take our time with each Gift, to allow it to open the next, and the next, and all of the Gifts.
Your inner work affects your outer work. This is a universal law.
Richard Rudd, The Activation Sequence
My Gift here in my Life’s Work sphere is Dynamism. This Gift makes me great unblocker of people’s internal obstacles. I am an unblocker of their joypipes … I not only unblock myself by doing this work, by overcoming the obstacles in my life, but my Dynamism and passion and enthusiasm for this work can also help other people to unblock their obstacles. My enthusiasm is contagious! I want everyone to feel the passion of this inner work that I feel. I had been doing the inner work for twenty-five years before I found the Gene Keys, and I had done a lot. But the Gene Keys?! Man, this is inner work on steroids.
My Life’s Work is Gene Key 34 and is represented by Bear, Inner Strength. Inner strength holds the middle space between the fear of ease and the Siddhi of majesty. “May I have easy strength this day” is the prayer I say each morning as I remember how powerful a bear can be as well as how gentle and present it is as a mother. May all who know me draw strength from my own innate strength as I move through the world with ease and without force (shadow).
Evolution
Our Evolution Gene Key is a programming partner to our Life’s Work Gene Key, and these two Keys represent our greatest challenge in life. The secret of this Evolution Gift is not that we are here to eradicate challenge, but that we are here to see that it is out of this challenge that we grow. This is where we find the compost out of which our Gifts grow. The Gift of our Evolution grows out of our attitude to our challenge. Will we be a victim to our challenges, or will they be the very reason we grow?
Here I have the Gift of Perseverance, which doesn’t sound particularly fancy, but as I have dug into it, I have found that it is an amazing Gift to have. This is the Gift that keeps me going, when life gets hard. This is my warrior energy, that keeps me fighting for what is right. It gives me fierce devotion, and it means that no matter what struggles life brings my way, that I persevere, that I keep on fighting for love.
Gene Key 20, my Evolution, is the gift of Self Assurance and in the Dream Arc is represented by Skunk, Boundaries of Self Assurance. I love the connection between boundaries and the simple and even gentle way the skunk protects itself. She is a warrior and yet her only weapon is her protective stink. This little self assured animal reminds me to safely hold my own space, knowing I am protected. Being Bear’s programming partner she is also relaxed and at ease in her own black and white balanced state.
Radiance
Our Radiance Gift is all about slowing down and coming into a natural rhythm. It invites us into a feeling of harmony, with life, the universe and everything in it!!
My Radiance Gift is Authority. I caution you here about this language of the Gene Keys! Do not take the names of these Gifts at face value! Dig deeper!
“Authority” sounds, well, a bit bloody bossy! We think of people in authority as being in control of us. For me, this word definitely used to have a very strict, a very masculine energy about it. The Bosses! The ones in charge.
But as a Gift, it’s about taking full responsibility for my life. It’s about being the author of my own life.
I can’t control the external environment, but I can control my responses and attitudes to it. I can slow down, as this Radiance sphere invites me to do. I can choose to have a more contemplative rhythm to my days.
I am the author of my interior life.
And I have seen this Gift in action over the last three years, as I have slowed my inner life to a beat that means I have created the time and space to do this work. For nearly three years, I have devoted myself to this inner work, and it has changed me, it has brought me into harmony … with my own inner rhythms, with the rhythm of this work, with the rhythms of nature.
My Radiance is Gene Key 40, Resolve, and in the Dream Arc is known as Relaxed Resolve… Cat. I love that the Cat is my example of slowing down and coming into natural rhythm. What a great animal to emulate in this regard. A cat has such a great natural rhythm. On the one hand they are so ‘resolved’ when they hunt but then are able to absolutely relax when they are resting. I also love that in the Dream Arc, Richard talks about the Cat ‘hunting’ for the essence of love. I am so on board with that!
Purpose
Our Purpose Gene Key and our Radiance Gene Key are Programming Partners who sit on either side of the Pathway of Core Stability … and that is what this work is all about … growing our Core Stability.
If you really want to get in tune with your deepest Purpose in life, there is one failsafe way to do it … spend more time listening to nature. Our Core Stability is about feeling the pulse of the earth within us.
Richard Rudd, The Activation Sequence
We need to feel this Gift of our Purpose in our very cells.
I love my Purpose Gene Key!! I mean, I really bloody love it! It’s Gene Key 48, the Void, the Well of Wisdom inside us, and the Gift is Resourcefulness.
As I worked with this Gift this year in Devoted, the year-long Golden Path container being run by Hayley Curtis, which was my third time in the Activation Sequence, I dived deeper into this Gift than I ever had before. And believe me, this was no mean feat. When I first worked one to one with Hayley, this Gift of Resourcefulness blew my mind. It was as if someone had ripped down a black-out blind that had been obscuring my true purpose.
This Gene Key is the unknown, and the unknown scares the bejesus out of us humans! But let me tell you something extraordinary … the unknown, the void, it’s not the scary black hole we think it is. It’s actually full of light, it’s full of love, and it holds oh so many treasures.
I love all of the Gene Keys in my chart, but this one, which Richard Rudd calls “the deepest Gene Key”, is my absolute favourite.
Resourcefulness has taught me deep trust.
Resourcefulness has shown me that I have an infinite ocean of love inside me.
It has shown me that I have everything I need, right here inside me. I conjured a glorious image, as I was working with this Gene Key this time round … in this vision, I have a magical backpack (think of Hermione Grainger’s magical bag in Harry Potter, The Deathly Hallows!). My magical backpack holds all the tools, all the resources, all the maps and compasses that I need to navigate this world.
What an awesome fucking Gift to have as my Purpose.
It’s who I am. Resourceful as fuck!
I was tapping into this Gift long before I knew about the Gene Keys. I’ve gone through some hard times in my life … bereavement, divorce, single parenthood, financial poverty, abuse. But I survived all of it. And more than that, I thrived.
All those years of doing the inner work alone, just me and my journal, it was this Gift of Resourcefulness that kept me going. So, you can see why I fucking love this Gift.
My Purpose is what deeply fulfils me. I am here to be a deep resource of living wisdom for others. And that is exactly what I try to be, when I share my writing. That’s what I’m trying to do right here, right now.
What could be more perfect than the Programming Partners of the Cat and the Dog? The Cat is steeped in aloneness so it can hold its integrity when Dog asks for and gives help where needed. These two might seem like opposites, even within our own psyches, but can be an awesome team when reconciled. I hear Lizzie speak about her Purpose key truly fulfilling her. I have yet to feel that, I’m more on the side of the Cat and her aloneness, but I’m holding space for Dog, as my Purpose, to charm me! (I also have Cat in my Culture key which might be why – two cats!)
Why Not Get Your Chart, and Explore YOUR Prime Gifts?!
If you haven’t done it already, why not get your own hologenetic profile here and have a read of the four Prime Gifts that are your Genius in the world? You can even find out what animals go with your keys in the Living Library (no descriptions, those are in the course The Dream Arc).
I promise you … you will love it, and you will see yourself reflected in those Gene Keys. You will recognise yourself in the four Prime Gifts … you will recognise the Genius you are here to bring to the world.
It’s wild and it’s magical. And it’s true! Go on! Give yourself the gift of exploring your own Gifts.
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