Full Moon in Sagittarius Newsletter
Shot Through The Heart
Sagittarius is the Archer, and this Full Moon his arrow pierced my heart and reminded me of one of my most painful wounds. The explorer and philosopher set his sights on the remaining uncharted terrain of my heart and hit the bullseye.
This post is less of an analysis of tomorrow’s Full Moon and more of a confession, with an intimate look inside my process of working with The Gene Keys.
Chiron, the wounded healer, holds this full moon in his arms and gently reminds us that our wounding is beautiful and powerful. If we are willing to go where we’ve never gone and pretend that the impossible is possible, profound healing is waiting for us. If you’re moving through emotional turmoil, look for the support of people who will deeply understand you now.
The following is a story of how my work with The Gene Keys has cracked me wide open, in ways that I asked for, but didn’t fully understand when I started. Enjoy :)
-Andy
Today, I am humbled and shredded from the inside. The culprit? Me. I have come to a really tough realization and I have stayed with it. I have allowed it to be there and continued to look for it in my life. It is painful to realize this about myself.
I use my intellect to alienate people.
Let’s back up and reverse-engineer the path that got me here.
I have been working with The Gene Keys since the summer of 2020, since I signed up for my first Activation Sequence online retreat hosted by none other than the impeccable Mark Bentley. Since then I have done the Venus and Pearl retreats. I have been on my 2nd pass through the Venus Sequence since around October of 2022 and it has been…fucking hard.
The Gene Keys sequences are structured in a way to open us in layers. Each sphere precedes the next like the rungs of a ladder, lowering us deeper into our unconscious wounds. The Venus is the 2nd leg of the journey, after the Activation, which is about awakening your prime gifts.
The Venus examines our emotional and relationship patterns, unwinding our childhood conditioning in reverse. I’ve managed to penetrate the spheres more deeply this time and although it has been rewarding, it hurts me to see these patterns in myself.
The Venus teaches us how to “return non-love with love”. When someone is acting in a way that is not loving, The Venus beckons us to be loving. It’s the most important work I can imagine.
I had some useful insights emerge from my Purpose, Attraction, and IQ spheres. When I got to the sphere of EQ - Emotional Intelligence - I pushed pause and decided to pitch a tent, build a fire, cast out my line, and go fishing for answers that had thus far eluded me.
This sphere, unlike others, had never quite opened to me the first time around. Here I have the 62nd Gene Key, 6th Line. The Shadow is Intellect, the Gift is Precision, and the Siddhi is Impeccability. It is activated by the Mars placement and imprints us from the ages of 8-14.
The first time, I remember thinking, “Okay, yeah, I definitely can over-intellectualize matters of the heart”. I never saw it play out and never consciously witnessed its impact on the people around me until recently though.
The 6th Line Keynotes of the EQ are Alienation in the Shadow and Reverence in the GIft/Siddhi. This part never really clicked for me last time. Did I feel alienated? How does Reverence relate to Precision or Impeccability?
A mini opening arrived when I looked into the other Gene Key in the same Codon Ring - the 31st. Here the shadow is Arrogance. Richard in this one talks about how we can never see the ways we are arrogant on our own, we need feedback. It is so easy to see other people’s arrogance and nearly impossible to see our own. The Gift is Leadership. The Siddhi, Humility.
He talks about spiritual arrogance as the belief that your way is the best way. This one struck a chord. Even though I know in my heart that there is no “one way”, my behavior and, more importantly, the tone of my voice often say otherwise.
I’d managed to catch a baby shadow. I took the insight and filed it away. I knew there was more here for me, and I felt encouraged by the opening.
It’s the ways we fool ourselves. This led me to a definition of Intellect that was workable for me. Intellect is the complex web we weave to maintain our illusion. Intellect is self-deception. it is the house of cards, the bubble that can be popped at any minute. Eastern philosophy calls this “the Maya”.
A couple of weekends back, I went on a solo camping trip along the St. Croix River. I needed some space to be alone with my thoughts. I consumed some plant medicine, went on a hike, and spent a lot of time staring into the fire I had built at camp and thinking deeply.
You see, The Gene Keys is a gentle path of contemplation. The spaciousness afforded by the quiet of nature was just what I needed in order to really contemplate what had been happening in my life, away from comforts and stimuli. I’ve often been able to connect to my soul when staring into the flames, alone.
As I called the Sphere of EQ into my Awareness, I began to meditate on the words as I stared into the flames.
“Intellect”
“Precision”
“Impeccability”
“Alienation”
“Reverence”
I trusted that some combination of these words added up to something greater than their parts, and, like a knife in my chest, it hit me:
I use my Intellect to Alienate people if they don’t see things the way I see them.
I use my intellect to alienate people I love. People feel alienated by me at times. Even if what I am communicating is true, and the content of my words is fairly benign, there is a tone in my voice that carries a vastly different message.
I sat there dumbfounded, mouth agape, and allowed this realization to sit with me. It was deeply uncomfortable. I had drunk the proverbial Halahala and was determined not to swallow it or spit it out, but it hold it inside of me, in the cauldron of my awareness, and let it transform me.
And so I continued to look at it. I re-read the 62nd Gene Key, the 31st, and revisited the lessons from the Venus Sequence Online Course (highly recommended). I asked ChatGPT what “Reverence” meant, and asked a few of my friends what it meant to them.
Often with The Gene Keys, the content is pointing to something that cannot be described with language. So by approaching it from multiple angles, the picture emerges.
The EQ holds a very tender pattern for us. Because it rules the period of time from 8-14, when our emotional body fully incarnates, it often stems from a stressful or confusing experience we had during this time. As I deepen my contemplation here, I know that my intellect cannot crack this code, this is a place of embodied emotionality, and the more I can be in my feelings, the more I can be guided into the gift.
In this realization lies the potential for a pivot, a way to create emotional space within me, and to hold myself in that space like I wish I had been during that time in my life.
One thing you may not know about me is that I have a stutter. It’s fairly rare these days because I am able to slow myself down. From 8-14 though, it was something that was on my mind in every single social interaction. When it was my turn to speak, I would pray to god that the words would JUST FUCKING COME OUT.
It’s an endearing story to those who hear it now, but the reality of my experience during the ages of 8-14 was torturous. What was wrong with me? Why can everyone else speak normally? Why won’t this fucking word come out of my fucking mouth? And why am I crying about it now? I had no control.
The anxiety that would build during school especially made it hard to pay attention to anything else. When we would snake around the classroom reading aloud from a story in one of our textbooks, I would count the people in front of me, glance at the clock, see how many pages were left in the story, and pray that I didn’t have to read aloud, pray that the teacher would have mercy on me and skip over me. Anything.
Kids would make fun of me. Occasionally, one girl would stand up for me. I wonder if she knows how meaningful that was for me.
Speech classes helped. The teacher managed to figure out that it wasn’t any kind of speech impediment. My mind was moving so fast that I would basically try to spit an entire paragraph out of my mouth at once, and unsurprisingly, it didn’t fit. Interestingly, learning a different language helped too - I pretty much never stuttered in Spanish.
It still shows up today sometimes. If someone asks my name, I can’t just spit out, “Andy“ for some reason. “My name is Andy” rolls right off the tongue though. The number “8” is sometimes a struggle - something of a problem because my phone number has it not once, but twice :)
Taking a deep breath helps. Making a nonsensical sound before speaking breaks the stream of consciousness long enough for me to get the right words out.
Bottom line, I felt like an Alien, and one who had no control over his speech. I felt alienated. Now I use my capacity, words, language, and facts to alienate other people - hallmarks of the 62nd Shadow.
Somewhere here, as I keep looking at this, feeling what happens in my body as I tune into my emotions, I trust that the true meaning of Precision and Reverence will manifest in my words and actions. I want to speak with others from a place of deep reverence for their wisdom and their unique emotional process. I want to see them with my heart, not through the lens of my own illusion.
I don't want to make people feel alienated. It’s painful to know that I am responsible for this experience in other people and, no matter how uncomfortable it is, I have to keep looking at it, and, more importantly, keep feeling it.
I’ve seen and felt it come up another couple of times since staring into the fire, and it’s a challenge to hold myself with the gentleness needed to be patient with my process. Seeing that I not only treat people this way has left me humbled, stripped open, and vulnerable.
I’ve had some bright spots. I see where deeper reverence would have helped, so that's something.
My wife, very kindly, pointed out to me the other day that she doesn't know anyone as committed to inner work as I am. While I take the compliment, I feel confused:
Doesn’t everyone want to be a better person? Doesn’t everyone want to know if they’re doing something that hurts other people?
For now, I’ll keep on allowing this pattern to be there, and try to accept it. What will it mean to work with this shadow, to breathe space into the emotional reaction and allow the gift inside to emerge?
Every shadow contains a gift. By uncovering a new shadow pattern, I have located a new gift.
This is a good thing. The tears that come up are good. The pain that I feel is good. I need to trust that feeling more fully. If I can love it, a new world of possibilities opens.
Now that I am here, I intend to stay here as long as I have to for a breakthrough to emerge. I have to be as aware of the pattern as possible, and in order for that to happen, I have to keep looking at it. We’re working with a part of myself between the ages of 8-14, so imagining what I needed at that age is useful. Being playful, doing things just for the sake of them, with no goal in mind, has been nourishing for me.
The nature of this work is that the more we look at and for a pattern, we are presented with ways to see it and eventually shift it in the moment. Life has a way of aligning itself with the contemplative process, which is supportive, and, exhausting at times.
I say all this in the hopes that, if you see me, you’ll understand where I’m at, and give you the opportunity to show up for me in a way that I need right now.
This isn’t the first battle with myself I’ve had in the Venus Sequence. The Sphere of Attraction and SQ have both pummeled me in the past.
Learning not to fight, but to love, has been a challenge.
I pray for patience and gentleness on this journey.
There’s nothing like The Gene Keys. Nothing. If you’d like help starting your journey and aren’t sure how to approach it, consider booking a 1:1 Inquiry where we look at your life, and your profile, and find where they currently intersect so that you can embrace what is calling you, now. Let me save you some time and searching by starting you off where there is the highest potential for growth and transformation now.