Exploring Conscious Leadership with Sarah Shepherd and Chris Dierkes
Sarah Shepherd and Chris Dierkes
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[00:00:00] Welcome, everyone. I'm really excited to have Chris Dirks. Did I say it right?
Dirkies. Well, actually, depend, depending if you asked other sides of my family, [00:01:00] you pronounced it correctly for one side of my family and the other side of the family. So there's not even agreement within my own family. So you're fine.
I got a 50%, right? Exactly. And Sarah Shepard, much easier to say. I met Sarah through just social media and reached out to her to be on my podcast a while back talking a little bit about conscious leadership. And from there, I ended up enrolling in one of their courses that talked about the gene keys, and I'll let them introduce that concept, and they can introduce themselves, and we're just going to talk a little bit about conscious leadership, and what that means in the world today, and how we can take our leadership skills up to the next level.
So, I'll turn it over to Chris first, and then Sarah, and then we'll go from there, okay?
Hi everybody, thanks for having me. I'm Chris and I have been in variations of conscious exploration and [00:02:00] transformational work and quests for meaning and so on for almost 30 years now, I think. So Jinkies is something that I've come across maybe in the past.
Five years or so and have been exploring as a further, just, I think, a really beautiful way of trying to look at life and trying to get in touch with life, just to put it simply. So I work with folks, Sarah and I have done things together. We also have a, I see folks one on one. I do reading work that's sometimes Jinki's based and some of the variations that are built off of that.
So. That's enough of me, Sarah.
Thanks, Chris. Thanks, Cheryl. Hi, everyone. I'm Sarah Shepard. Yeah, I would echo kind of a similar story to Chris in the always been a seeker and yeah, really drawn to leadership with sort of this bent towards, how could we do this better? [00:03:00] How could we create inclusivity?
And look at leadership and business as an opportunity to really integrate sort of these higher essences of a human experience into it. How do I, how do I create an environment where as a team leader or a person that is ultimately responsible for my team, how do I create an environment where that could be a home for people to transform in?
And to really learn a new level of leadership. Working together and that inspired me in my youth and then I found myself Doing more along the path of working with people physically as a massage therapist for 20 years I went to school to myself and other people understand human anatomy from a different kind of way of looking at physical health It Became apparent quite quickly that I wanted to open my own practices and then started teaching other teachers [00:04:00] and then went into the retreat industry and then went into the business franchise industry.
Now I'm kicking around software and connecting people through software and soul health and soul integration. And the leadership is really important and it's very near and dear to my heart. And Chris is somebody. That I was introduced to just around the time that I was discovering the gene keys and Chris was my coach and facilitator for me to understand more deeply my soul and my soul's awakening journey and he's brought about some really just incredible soul alignments in my life that have felt really great so we get to collaborate now on projects where we help people integrate Some of these teachings, some of the Jean Keith teachings, as well as some of these mystical teachings into ordinary life, into family life, into work life, into the experience of embodied simple living, as opposed to really kind of this idea that I think many of us have been taught for a long time.
That there's going to be [00:05:00] this big moment. There's just going to be this kind of profound shift. And sometimes that happens. But for the most part, one of the things that I found that Richard Rudd, who is the author of the Gene Keys, and we'll get into that shortly, so much of our awakening experience happens in just simple, ordinary living and by slowing down and that applied way to leadership, transforms teams, success.
Health, and a multitude of other markers. So yeah, really excited to share more on all of that and really excited to be here again, Cheryl. Thanks for having us.
Thank you guys for being willing to share your knowledge and expertise. I'll step back just a little bit. Probably, it's been about a year ago, I joined a mastermind, and it was someone there brought up the idea of conscious leadership and I'm like, Oh, that sounds good.
It's kind of like servant leadership, right? And he's like, No, I said, well, have you ever heard of quiet leadership? And he's like, no, what's quiet leadership? And I was like, there's four tenets, very simple [00:06:00] of quiet leadership. The one that jumps out to me first is humility, which you don't usually, you know, associate with leaders, but all of them were things that just really, you know, in so many ways slowed the process down.
And people are like, Oh, why would leaders of these major fortune 500 companies want to slow anything down? This is the, by slowing things down, you can observe things. You can become much more aware of the people around you and what their needs are. And, and that was a lot of the quiet leadership and servant leadership.
Many people are familiar with servant leadership, but it's all about, you know, making sure that you're meeting the needs of those around you, and not just, you know, looking at a, I'm going to climb the ladder of success and step on whoever to get their kind of attitude and so. I asked him, I said, so it's not quiet leadership.
It's not servant leadership. What's conscious leadership? He says, well, and, and this, this is not even coming from a spiritual [00:07:00] perspective. He said, I said, give me an example of a conscious leader. And he said, Oh, Jesus. And I was like, okay, that's interesting. He definitely was a leader. And he definitely has been well known throughout history, and he's made a mark on the world in which we live today, and as I've studied, I have a class I'm taking now called Holy Envy, where we study the different religions of the world, and the one thing that they all share in common is this ability to just slow down and really observe the world around you and become more aware.
And you think about the people who've had a profound effect upon our societies for thousands of years. They're these people who slow down. And who deeply about things and don't just crunch the numbers and make sure that we're meeting all of [00:08:00] our benchmarks, you know, and going over quarterly reports and that type of thing.
So that's kind of how I got, you know, went down this road and I was really impressed and I thought this is interesting. I think I'd like to take this, you know, to a new level in my own life. And just going down that journey, I was like, I see this all starts with me. This isn't about learning new you know, things to help people around me right now.
Although ultimately that's, you know, where we all want to go. We want to make our communities and the world around us better. But it all starts with me. So, I'll let you guys jump in from there.
Well, first of all, I just want to champion the name of that course, Holy Envy. Right. It's like, oh well, Brandon.
Really, yeah, really curious about learning more about that. We'll talk about that some other time, Cheryl. Yeah, where would I like to go from here? One of the things that maybe I would [00:09:00] say conscious leadership is, Really getting clear on what is the leadership and the guidance that's showing up within me and then what is the Reflection that I'm seeing that's outside of me that I'm paying attention to and just landing Fully and where the information is coming from Because it is a big part of coming back home to the conscious part is making first the body and the heart conscious and In my experience, that does require some slowing down to drop down out of the, the busyness of the mind and the stories and the titles and the identities and sort of those elements that, like you were saying, we often associate, for example, the, what you said about, you know, humility and leadership.
They are very closely linked, and yet, socially, that might not be the first thing that people put together. And so right there is like a perfect opportunity to kind of look at, [00:10:00] like, where is my humility in leadership? Where is my essence of motivation within myself in leading? And getting into that creates consciousness of the body as a guidance system and, and the element of, of really, Getting clearer before leading.
Getting clearer before stepping forward and saying to people, Hey, you should follow me. Or, could we do this together? Or, what are you seeing? What are you noticing? Where's the curiosity and the leadership that incorporates the very people they want to lead or the situation that's showing up that is inviting leadership.
So yeah, that's what I would say is my kind of perspective or curiosity around the conversation of conscious leadership. Chris?
Thank you. That was really helpful, everybody. I really appreciate the slowing down, and to me, that links. So, the Gene Keys [00:11:00] is, it's more kind of a idea of codes to life.
The idea that there's, and by learning these kind of life codes or patterns of nature, we can learn to align more beautifully and seamlessly and joyfully and generatively to something we consider to be more real. But there's a practice as well, there's a practice side that goes with it, and that's known as the art of contemplation.
And so I think that might be a good place to start the conversation because not everybody necessarily gets into the gene keys or human design. Some people get like super into it, maybe they're a little too into it. We're a bit of nerds, but for some people it's not necessarily that system.
It's always the one that links. They might get into Enneagram or whatever, some other system as well. But the art of contemplation for me, which is the practice side, is where it gets [00:12:00] real and where it can be really valuable for anyone, whether or not they also want to continue on with human design system, gene keys, or anything else for that matter.
So the art of contemplation really has kind of three steps or three phases associated with it. And the first is the one you were speaking to there, Cheryl, which is creating pauses. So in the midst, just a moment to moment, day to day, kids, work, whatever, relationship stuff, home stuff, work stuff, whatever.
So just take a moment and have a pattern interrupt, have just a moment and a pause and look around. Look at the sky, look at the trees, listen for the birds. Just take a moment. and begin to start just very slowly weaving those in. It doesn't have to be that you have to start off with, [00:13:00] you know, now you have to start meditating two hours every day in the morning before you get up, and you better get up at 3 a.
m. in order to do that. You don't have to be a monk. Like, you know, you just start to gently weave in little moments of just pause. That's the first. And then the next part with that is to start asking a question that lifts us. This is inquiry. So if it's, what is really conscious leadership?
What is the relationship between humility and leadership? And it's not a question that, it's not a 1 plus 1, what is 1 plus 1 equal question. It's not a question that we already have the answer to, and that we can just go into our scripts or already know that. But a question that evokes mystery and wonder in our being.
It makes us reflect, makes us ponder. Ruminate what it, what would it be to orient for a week in somebody's life to ask what is their form of leadership and is it [00:14:00] conscious or to what degree it is? Or is it to create observation, as you said, with an intent, with a focus. It's a light focus, but it's got enough of a focus to be something as opposed to nothing.
And as we let that question kind of churn and live us. and question us, it'll bring up some stuff. And this is where it becomes a transformative, deeply personal process. And that's kind of the second phase. Somebody's orienting to the topic of what conscious leadership means, and they sit with it enough, they'll locate the parts of them that nurture and express that in their being, as well as potentially the stuff that's getting in the way of that.
And then there can be emotion associated with that, or there can be history of where that comes from. We may need to feel some feelings, or do some journaling, or release some story we've been holding, or sensation, or [00:15:00] felt feeling in the body, as Sarah was saying. But at some point, we may move to the third phase where we actually embody and align to the thing that we were originally asking about.
And then we start noticing, for example in this case, that we're more spontaneously oriented. So to a form of leadership that might be humble, but also potent and powerful. And in this way, we start to, the path of contemplation is to learn to embody and transform and become a fuller version of who we've already been all along.
And that's one that I think everybody can really take up. And then they might get interested also in gene keys or human design, like I said, or other things. There's really a basis in practice so that it doesn't kind of zoom off into over conceptualization and let's learn some maps and learn a bunch of systems just for the point of learning systems is not that interesting.
Maps are supposed to help [00:16:00] us orient to a terrain and actually have us, Go to that terrain rather than just let's study a map all day long just to study maps and not use them for what they're attempted for. (ad here)
And I'm sure both Chris and Sarah can attest to this. As I was in our class together, I, and one of my elements on my map was.
And being in it coming from an instructional design background. I'm always like, okay, what is step one? What is step two? What is step three? How do I do this? And it was like, no, just stop and think about this. And maybe this is connected this and over here. And I was like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Let's just make it all make sense.
You know, that's what my job for 20, 30 years has been writing instructions so people can understand how to do something. But I think back in my life and, I've always naturally been that kind of person that just wants to story in fourth grade. We had, we were learning [00:17:00] multiplication and we had to multiply three numbers by three numbers and there was 10 problems.
And before every morning recess, you had to get 100 percent on that before you could go out for recess. Well, guess what? I never got to go out for recess for a whole quarter. I was too busy racing through it to pay attention and do it right. I mean, I knew how to do it. That wasn't the problem. I got, believe me, I got plenty of practice during all my recesses.
I've also been the kind of person who just, especially when I was younger, and I really miss this as I've gotten older, I just loved to walk and I loved to just, my mind would wander and I would just daydream. I was a daydreamer and it's interesting also because Another confession, I've moved like 42 times in my life.
So you can imagine I've moved a lot. And I moved a lot when I was young. And I learned in a hurry. And this is something that because people have told me time and again, I'm a [00:18:00] leader. And I'm like, I'm not a leader. I don't lead anything. I'm not a CEO of anything. I wasn't the student body president. I'm just a person, you know.
And but one thing I noticed is every time I moved to a different school, and I did that plenty, I observed, I was very observant, I learned that people who moved in and they were always like, oh I want to go make friends, and they were just really outgoing and everything, that people were kind of like, whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on a minute, that's, you're a little overwhelming, and so I, if I want to make friends, I'm just going to sit here, and I'm not going to do anything, nothing.
And invariably, people would come to me and they wanted to be my friend. And I was like, why? And I think about bosses, because I'm working as an independent consultant, literally, once again, having [00:19:00] hundreds of different jobs over my career. I think about the bosses, the people that, you know, were my leaders that I really liked.
They were the ones that weren't, like, overwhelming. They weren't just like, go, go, go, go, go, let's get this done, let's blah, blah, blah. It was always the ones that just kind of sat back and said, hey, how's this going to work? And I just learned, and then as I especially got in high school, my dad worked, I was a very fortunate child, we weren't independently wealthy.
We weren't rich. Maybe that's what I'm looking for. But he bought me a car and he had restored a 67 Mustang and, you know, it was really cool. Everybody's like, why don't you drive your car? And I was like, cause I like walking. I like that time and I look back and that was time to contemplate and since I've gotten older I haven't had that luxury and I find that my life has become so much more stressful.
I find that I don't [00:20:00] naturally attract people like I used to. As a matter of fact, oftentimes I'm that person that comes barging in the door and scares everybody away sometimes because I just don't. And settle down.
I'll let you run with that.
There you go.
One of the things that Chris pointed out, so when we were in this, it was a three month journey with the Liberated Leadership Group, and the course that we've been referencing was kind of from the beginning of April. And it was a lot of practicing contemplation, but built off the scaffolding of this program, which is the Pearl Sequence in Gene Keys.
And so there's a bunch of details we can go into of what Gene Keys is, and we keep teasing that we're going to do that. I promise we will, but this is important to speak to is the application of all of this information isn't in the charts or the maps or all of these things. It's in the practice of contemplation.
And so during the course of that 12 weeks, what somebody bullied the question of what's the [00:21:00] breakdown of the word contemplate? And it was really neat because I didn't know what it was and Chris looked it up and both of us were like, Oh, of course it actually means with temple. So con with template within the temple of my being and walking does that so beautifully.
Walking creates this space where our body is a little bit distracted enough and there's a relationship with the outer world. in such a way that the inner world, it's easier to go in. And it is such a beautiful way of creating a relationship with that temple of self. It works really well in coaching and counseling also because there isn't this directly looking at each other.
So when you go for a walk with somebody, it's like you can both process and not kind of see each other eye to eye. And more and more material can come out that you didn't even know was there. So often before we go into contemplation, it seems like from a head perspective, something [00:22:00] is a problem. And then as you go on your walk, you start to process the information in the body.
Whether you recognize that's what's happening or not, it allows there to be this movement of energy and this opportunity to process what's, so pausing when you can pause with a walk, instead of pausing to sit. This is a, another kind of sweet thing is that you can pause. Pausing to meditate doesn't work for everyone.
Pausing can be going for a walk. Pausing can be contemplating while doing the dishes. Pausing can be just a moment of reprieve. That doesn't necessarily mean that you're sitting on a pillow. So application of this process of embodied consciousness. through contemplation is really happening all the time.
We just maybe haven't noticed that it's happening all the time. And as we start to notice that it's happening all the time, it does start to take on a life of its own. And it becomes something that instead of forcing ourself to [00:23:00] pause, we really long for it. And we create a life that's in a relationship with the pauses.
And then consciously of how often there is an invitation for a pause at a stoplight in a conversation. They're everywhere. And anatomically supports the health of the body and the nervous system, and we can start to calibrate to that. And if you get to go for a walk in nature all the more. So, yeah,
what would you add to that, Chris?
Should we now do the thing that we've been teasing? Should we drag
it out for another 50 minutes? Should we stop being teases? Yeah,
exactly.
Let's, start on the Gene Keys.
Let's talk about the amazing transmission of the Gene Keys.
Cool, let's do that. So, the Gene Keys is a modern, contemporary, Retranslation, Reinterpretation, Revisioning, Return, Upgrade, I don't know, it's kind of all of [00:24:00] the above and probably more so. Of a classic text from the Taoist tradition, and Taoism is the ancient wisdom tradition of China.
A classic text from Taoism called the Yi Ching, which can be translated into English. Which usually is translated as something like the Book of Changes. But it could also be really a book of conscious energy, maybe a more literal translation, or maybe a little more metaphorically it's the book of life, or it's a attempt to write a book of life, I think.
So the story that's told is that there was a medicine being, a shaman, Taoist master, who sat on the river and saw a turtle. And became fascinated by the fact that the turtle's markings on it [00:25:00] were starting to kind of come alive. He started seeing patterns within the patterns and, I don't know, it's kind of like for the young kids like in Moana with like Maui's tattoos, like, move around and change and new and blah blah.
So it's kind of like that. He's in kind of a dream state. He's in sort of a creative visualization state. And the markings on the turtle shell begin to change and move. And out of this long contemplation or observation of these movements, The book grew as basically kind of these universal patterns or codes to life.
That's the idea. There are 64 of them. So this original idea goes way, way back, a couple thousand years at least. And the Gene Keys is a sort of modern attempt to understand, interpret, sort of get to the [00:26:00] heart of it and sort of retransmit it for a new time and era. And one of the things that the Gene Keys does That's really powerful.
One of the first things that came out of it is and this is Richard Rudd is the author, but in many ways he's kind of the transmitter or it's like the translator. He's, I admire him because he goes, he puts himself in the lab, as it were, first. So it's not just abstracted speaking about, like he actually goes through the contemplations himself.
And so they really are, as Sarah said, a transmission. There's really a sense of something alive and vibrant, because I think for me it's rooted in someone actually trying to live a life of contemplation. So one of the key things that came out initially is really levels within each number.
So there are [00:27:00] 64 codes, if you like, or 64 keys, or 64 songs in the Cosmic Symphony, or 64 letters in the Cosmic Alphabet, or however you want to, whatever metaphor you like. But what's really beautiful, I think, about the Gene Keys is it created a pathway of transformation within each one. They're not just static sort of numbers by themselves and their associated terminology.
There's the ability to contemplate and undergo. transformation for each one. So for example, the second key, the second code is patterns of disorientation, dislocation, and how we turn those into orientation and how we can ultimately come to a sense of deep unity with all of life. So that's one of the 64 [00:28:00] contemplations.
And the third one is how we take energy that can otherwise seem chaotic. and turn it into creativity. Or the sixth is about how we take conflict and transform it into generative peace and flourishing. So these themes that, whether we're talking families, relationships, and certainly in business environments, these are the universal dynamics that we're all playing out, whether we realize we're doing it, whether we're doing it consciously and artfully and creatively or not.
It's another question, but the learning of the map is actually an invitation to let each of these 64 start to live in our being, to notice them all around us, within us, between us, and also to be able to align. So again, it has its roots in Taoism, which has this long history of there's [00:29:00] an intelligence to life.
You can either go with that current or you can try to swim against it. It's not recommended to try to swim against it. You certainly can. do that should you choose to do so or one choose to do so. And unfortunately, I think a lot of our experiences are institutionally, collectively, individually, interpersonally, are often swimming against the current of life.
But if we can start to understand how life actually lives and its inherent wisdom, then we can actually find the current more naturally. and go with the current. It's meant to be more graceful and easeful that way. So they're kind of like, to me, 64 blessings, 64 potential blessings that we get to go on journeys to experience them, not just in a conceptual manner, but in a real lived embodied sense.
Is that a good start, Sarah?
Yeah, I love that start. And [00:30:00] I also just want to name that during the time of us recording this, that second, archetypical teacher is alive right now. And so every six days they change. And as we go through the calendar year, there's like another teacher that steps in, in kind of this play of life and has this invitation to come home to the intelligence of what's going on around you, within yourself and within the people around you.
And when we're in that space where we're slow enough to step into the contemplative way of living, we can see that the These elements are alive and they are transforming us all the time. There's transformation happening. The conscious elements that, that Richard Rudd did such a good job of taking those 64 teachers.
I'm going to back up just like a tiny, tiny little bit and talk about my own personal story with the I Ching or Yi Ching. My grandmother cast coins and was really obsessed with Chinese culture. And we all just thought it was this kind of strange thing because she's this white lady in Ontario and we're like, okay, [00:31:00] it's like in the Mahjong and that was her thing.
She was obsessed with it. And then she passed this on to my mom and my mom and her, I'm super into oracular kind of study stuff and I was like, that's really curious and I'm really interested, but it was also just seemed weird when I was younger. And as it turned out, when I was introduced to the gene keys and started to learn about the I Ching and the teaching of this, I was like, this is so funny.
This has been going on throughout my life and such a it's been threaded through as a theme already. It's already been exposed to a lot of what they are from the Chinese element of it, of it being a teacher. And I'd also already been involved in understanding the nervous system and the health of the nervous system.
And so when Richard Rudd introduced this material of these 64 Gates teachers, however you want to call them, one of the things that he did that was really helpful was that he showed that there's a gift, a gift that is essentially the, the representation of each of those 64. There's 64 [00:32:00] gifts. And then there's a higher expression of that, an ordering principle behind that, which is called a It's like a, an ancient word that, it's like a superhuman capacity.
And then there's a lower principle of it, which is an unconscious expression of it. And the unconscious expression of it is a lot of the time what's happening in our society already. We're, we're in an unconscious expression of what's called a shadow. And in that shadow, there's a nature that we're playing out, whether we realize it or not.
But it's always this opportunity to slow down and bring consciousness to it. And that was something that I saw in the nervous system. I saw in very busy nervous systems, in a frenetic world, in a frenetic culture, that were, that were oriented often to fear and survival, it was easy to stay in a shadow frequency.
It was easy to act out a pattern without really changing a behavior within ourselves. We couldn't bring a conscious shift to the human ability to adapt and evolve in something because this [00:33:00] conscious, unconscious pattern was playing out so much because of the fear. So you see these things, these dynamics play out in teams, you see these dynamics play out in office scenarios, or friendship groups, or families, the unconscious pattern of the shadows of different human relating to each other.
And so, by taking that map and really slowing down, it gives us the opportunity to choose differently. And that's what the gift is, it's like a response to life in a new way. And that's incredibly fun and powerful, but it means that. there can be this time of, like, deconditioning from these patterns, deconditioning ourself from the addiction to a nervous system that loves to stay unconscious and hyper facilitated in whatever way that that is showing up.
So that would be the other kind of element that I wanted to add in to that.
Yes, thank you, because I was gonna, that's what was gonna go with the shadow and the gift and the city, and One thing I learned while I was in your class [00:34:00] is, and this, you know, goes back to this conditioning, you know, the way we're raised, we live in this chaotic, I live, it's one of my shadows.
It's chaos. And but it's like, don't beat yourself up. Don't say this is terrible. Now, you know, let's get the instruction manual out. How do I fix this? Or, you know, make myself feel terrible because I have it. And, you know, I'm not ripping on religion because I am a very religious person and I have a tremendous.
deeply held convictions there. But I know as, as a young person in particular, I would go to church and it's like, okay, you're not supposed to be angry, you know? So you go home and you exercise all this willpower, right? I'm not going to be angry. Then you end up being more angry than if you wouldn't have even tried not to be angry.
Right? And I was just like, idea of contemplation. I was like, okay, [00:35:00] I recognize this in myself. And I'm just going to sit with it, and I'm not going to beat myself up, and I'm not going to get the instruction manual out, no matter how much I want to, I'm just going to sit with it. And I found that it kind of transformed me in a small way.
It wasn't like this great big huge transformation that just all of a sudden, my husband's like, Oh, you're a new person. But, you know, I just. And I, I think this is the world that we live in. We, especially in the business world, I found this to be so prevalent in the business world, is that when there's conflict or when there's, you know, things that go wrong, the blame game comes out.
All of these things come out and, you know, nobody wants to take responsibility for it and all of these different things. And I just, you know, I wonder what the work world would be like if we all just stepped back, whether we're a [00:36:00] leader or not, and just said, Hey, that's interesting, you know, and we just kind of observed what was going on.
And as we came out with ourselves being something different instead of expecting either the, you know, the circumstances to change or the person to change or the environment to change, you know, I just think that the world would be a better place.
And we talked about this a little bit before we got on the call, but I came across a statement, you know, especially, We live in a world where it's a win lose everything. It's a zero sum game. But rather than trying to win or lose the game, and we don't try to lose, but instead of trying to win the game, why don't we learn to transcend the game?
Yeah, I really appreciate that. And in Gene Key's lingo, that game is a game of survival. That's a shadow game. [00:37:00] And that's why it's win lose, because it's really locked into, as Sarah was saying, a form of the nervous system that is Fight and flight and freeze oriented. That's kind of reptilian, you know, it's lost it's not yet developed its mammal that has the orientation to nurturance and nourishment and empathy as a way of being.
The neocortex has been hijacked temporarily by the amygdala, biospeak, but in jinky lingo, the shadow form is also the survival form. And it is to be both, in a way, honored, because here we are, we've all survived. as a species through some, and talk to any of our elders and ancestors and hear the stories of ancestral lines, there's some rough stuff everybody had to get through.[00:38:00]
So, the survival energies have allowed us to survive, but the thing about survival energies is they're supposed to be temporary. They're only supposed to get us through on either an individual level or even on a collective level. They're only supposed to get us through the emergency. And then they're supposed to turn off.
But what tends to happen is they turn on and then they don't ever turn off. And then they're still in vigilance mode. They're scoping for threat all the time. And it narrows our ability to experience life because it becomes, through this lens, of fear and aggression and unconsciousness. And so it's interesting in that the shadow form is not the enemy.
It's not the bad thing we're trying to get rid of. Like you said, make the [00:39:00] anger the enemy, push it down. It's only going to come out in a sideways way. But also we don't want to just unconsciously, you know, rage on people either. Like that's not a helpful response either. So we have these kind of two failed options of either suppressing or just unconsciously being taken over by something.
And Contemplation offers an opportunity to befriend the shadow but let it turn. So to go out of a win lose survivalistic game to a game that actually is. win win or mutually flourishing oriented. And that, in Gene Key's lingo, is the difference between a shadow and a gift. One is based in survival, and if we're in survival energy, then some people will, you know, step on other people to get higher up.
That's, it is win lose. But a gifting form is oriented to mutual [00:40:00] thriving. In order to be able to enter that space, we need to feel safe in ourselves and in our connections, in order to trust that if we step into a more thriving space, others are going to step into that too, and then we can all work together rather than like, I'm going to take a jump and then everybody else is going to be in survival mode.
And then I'm going to be the one with the arrows in the back kind of thing. Like that's the prisoner's dilemma, you know, game theory type thing. It's like, well, if I can't step, well, I trust the other people will. And so there's this deep process first in Gene Keys to ourselves, which is where we can most obviously have the greatest degree of agency is to start by actually soothing and being safe with our survival energies.
not making them bad, honoring them, but also recognizing that when they go from being temporarily helpful and then they become the default setting, that's when [00:41:00] things turn sour individually, relationally, ancestrally, collectively. They go past their best by date and then they're like spoiled milk and then they can't actually make us sick at that point.
Okay, Sarah. So how do we get to the city?
You don't.
Good answer.
I want a step by step practice. This is how I operate.
I don't have one for you.
But I would put on my shaman hat a little bit and say it's all around you all the time. Just slow down and you'll see. It's everywhere. Nature is the visible face of spirit and cities are the Ordering Principle of Spirit that's already there, just calibrated at a different frequency. So maybe I'll speak frequency to give like a little bit of kind of context to what this could be.
There's a, there's a author that I really [00:42:00] appreciated kind of prior to Gene Keyes, Dr. David Hawkins. He did a lot of studies on the map of consciousness and frequency, sort of this, you know, elemental wisdom of frequencies. So in the higher frequencies, you see enlightenment, peace, joy, reason, acceptance, willingness, like all of those kinds of frequencies.
It's like a calibration of a field. The nervous system is an electric field. Our nervous system that we embody is electric and the gene keys brings in this other beautiful side of it, which is like, we're also light and sound. But if we just speak on the sense of the. magnificence of frequencies, that fear frequency, that shadow frequency has a denser frequency to it.
It moves slower. There's a weightiness to it. If you invoke for a second the experience of shame, guilt, apathy, there's a [00:43:00] density to that experience that we're all familiar with to some degree. The gift frequency is an awareness of that, and when we speak about transcendence, it's like, it's not jumping into something else, it's including all of the essence of what's occurring, and then aligning it with a higher ordering principle, so we don't go to the cities so much, but as we're with this shadow frequency, as we turn towards and pause and meet, What's showing up physically in our body, then there's an opportunity to respond to what the imitation of life is.
There's an opportunity to respond to the intelligence of what's showing up in that moment. And as we do that, our frequency shifts, we can see more synchronicities. We can see more opportunities. We have an experience of the heart opening and longing to move towards co creation and connection. And that expands our frequency even more.
And then as we show up in that [00:44:00] way, in sort of this relationship of selfless service because it feels so good. You know, I say selfless kind of as this kind of nod of like, you know, it actually is because it feels so good. It is a selfish motivation to feel that good. But as we do that, our body really, you know, loves that frequency.
That's experience of the heart being open more. That's the experience of the nervous system being more relaxed. In Arrest and Digest, we're making better choices with the information that we're bringing into us because we're sensitive to like, oh, that information makes me collapse and not feel good and get scared again.
And so how do I create a relationship where I feel like I can feel myself? I can feel my connection. I can feel my interconnectedness. As that happens, higher and higher essences are aligned with you and you become a tuning fork of this. You become a divining rod of these higher essences. So it's not by going to them, it's by coming into self and to [00:45:00] creating a relationship with that heart and the heart expansion.
The heart is a compass for us. And in my experience with cities, they happen at the most inopportune times, in moments where it's just sort of ridiculous for me to be crying and just feeling the beauty of how incredible this blissful moment is. It's, you know, usually really unexpected, but they happen.
I would say more often than I think we realize, you know, I grew up going to big rock concerts and that feeling of collective assembly when everybody's singing together is communion. You know, that's one of the cities. There's spaces where it happens to us, but it's not, in my experience, because I planned for it to happen when it happened.
Yeah, spontaneous, very spontaneous.
Thank you. That was the word I was looking for. Like, I would love, because Chris, I appreciate Chris has got such a broad spectrum of experience around [00:46:00] this, so I'd love for you to answer that question also. How would you get to the cities, Chris?
Your
I think there's something important about naming that the move from the transformation of a shadow into its gift form. It's not, it's the same energy through all three levels. It's the same quality, it's just taking on a slightly different form. So sometimes I say, the shadow form of any of these codes is very static filled.
It's like you got the radio on and you kinda got the station and you sort of hear the song, but there's all that in there. And that's often how people kind of experience. You hear somebody, but you're not hearing them. Or if we're disconnected and then you notice, it just feels like, like with my kids, if I'm not energetically connected to them, I just recognize, like, I look in their eyes and I'm like, they didn't hear a word.
Like,
I just did not. They just went, [00:47:00] and I'm sure their experience. As I can remember the kid doing to my parents. It's just like the teachers in Peanuts, like in Charlie Brown,
it's just
like, I'm just, I'm not paying attention. So I have to stop, recollect,
let's connect. Then let's, you know, meet kids, animals. They're great. tuners because they don't listen for the content. They're only listening energetically. So shadow form is always going to have static associated with it and dissonance and noise of various varieties. So maybe you've seen the news or maybe you've been on any social media site.
Could be like your example. It's very, very staticky. A lot of division. The gif form is gonna always have a feeling of signal. So all of a sudden the radio station goes from being to like, oh it's crisp, it's [00:48:00] clear, there it is, signal. And the city is gonna be more to me like a gong or like a crystal bowl or like a Perfect peel of a church bell, that sound that makes somebody just stop and go
quiet and kind of odd. So that's maybe one way of kind of feeling these levels and their associated kind of qualities. Anger, you mentioned anger earlier. We make friends with anger and it goes from a static form to a signal form. The signal it will give us, the intelligence it will give us, is if someone's messing with our boundaries.
and what our moral values are. So if we just try to push the anger away, we're losing the possibility of learning what is our boundary that somebody may intentionally or unintentionally be crossing and maybe we [00:49:00] didn't even know it was there and we didn't even tell them it was there and now we need to learn that.
Go, geez, sorry, I didn't tell you that's where my boundary is. Good job. Just gently take a step back. Oh, yeah, no problem. That can be fine. But if the shadow form is the gift, only in its kind of disfigured or marginalized status. It's not that you get rid of the shadow and find the gift somewhere else, it's the gift is hidden inside of the shadow.
So like, you know, in the fairy tales, you kiss the frog and it turns into a prince. Or the, you know, the haggard person, someone's kind to them, they turn into the fairy godmother or the princess, you know, whatever. Like, it's, that's kind of a fairy tale version of shadow work. The thing that seems like it's the haggard frog is actually the light being hiding in there, but it needs to be loved as it is and not try to be changed.
So there's an active side where we can have active [00:50:00] processing and intent and energy and effort in a good way that we put in to be safe with, to befriend, to welcome a shadow, to contain it. kiss it, if you like, such that it flips into its gift form. The movement from gift to city, as I think Sarah was sort of pointing out there, is more that you live the gift, and you live the gift, and you live the gift, until sometimes it surrenders and releases of itself into its city.
So there's a kind of a grace, or it's not exactly passive, But it's a fundamental surrendering act, rather than like, okay, now I'm climbing the mountain, now I'm going to get to the top of this mountain, It just somehow, you live a gift, and you live the gift as best as we can, and then sometimes it'll just spontaneously release into us.
So, as an example, I picked a [00:51:00] card. I like my gene key cards. So this is 23. This is the 23rd gene key. Its shadow form is complexity or over complexity. So you were speaking about that earlier in a business setting. There's all these, oh, we've got to get the numbers in, and the market, and the environment, oh, the world,
oh,
And rather than just saying that complexity, is the enemy. Let's just impose some top down clarity. That's not going to work. But also, we don't want to just have that complexity live us, and then we're like lost in the swamp and the swirl of it. But hidden inside that complexity, or just on the far step of it, is simplicity beyond the complexity.
It's a different form of elegant simplicity. The ability to take the complex parts. [00:52:00] and weave them into a simple integration, which is not simplistic. It's not some fundamentalist, there's one right way and wrong. Everybody else is wrong. And it's taking the complexity as it is, but it's actually finding the simplicity and the elegance on the far side of it.
And then if we learn to live that simplicity, that's the gift and keep living it. It distills and it distills. down to the quintessential, the most, which is the city form of that number. It's like, like the centrifuge has, everything has gone through the funnel and all that comes out is like the total pure quintessential essence of what's needed in the moment.
And so that's one way of thinking of gift is just to be lived and lived and lived until it spontaneously enters into its quintessential [00:53:00] essence. (ad here)
Yeah, you were a mind reader. I that's kind of where I wanted to go with it, too, was, you know, if, because one of the, I have a group that I do on Sunday nights, and I won't go into all of the different topics we cover, but one of the things we've been talking a lot about is redefining words, and Gene Keys has kind of tried to, help me redefine words and I think redefining the word leadership more from a perspective of, Oh, this isn't about, you know, like I said, becoming the CEO or the manager or, you know, whatever even a teacher in a classroom, you know, when we talk about this energy, when we show up to the, you know, we're going to wax and wane.
That's the, we're never going to live in these forms perfectly. Cause we're, that's just, we're human. That's what we do. But when that type of [00:54:00] energy is around us. Then I think people are naturally attracted to us and want to, you know, resolve issues and work with us. And in all my years of doing instructional design, it was probably 10 or 15 years ago.
Like, oh my gosh, how long ago was that? I did a lot of research as to the attributes that kids graduating from college were not bringing into the workplace and the top five and they, not only do they still hold true today, but also they are even more prevalent is they're lacking creativity, teamwork, communication, problem solving, and resilience.
And it's because we live in this, what I always call an assembly line school. You know, schools are just assembly lines, check the box, you know, did you do, did you get 100 percent on your 10 problems you were supposed to do so [00:55:00] you could go out to recess kind of thing. That doesn't generate that type of energy and then all of a sudden to throw us into the workplace and say okay we're no longer on this assembly line, and we don't know how to interact in this environment.
But when somebody. Projects that kind of energy. People naturally, I mean, these things tend to come more naturally, I think, you know, if, say, for example, I'm all agitated and angry and my husband and I are having, you know, a disagreement about something, nobody wants to solve the problem. But if we come to it from a place of, well, let's step back for a minute and think about this and then come to it from a place of better, where we have better energy, our communication is just going to naturally be more productive.
And we're going to get to the real issue that we're, you know, whatever's causing us a problem. And the same [00:56:00] thing with our managers at work, the same thing with our kids. So I, I just think this whole idea of conscious leadership is really all about us. Even if we don't aspire to be some great leader, I like how you always use the term showing up.
If we just show up and learn how to be our best self, then We don't need to win or lose because then we've all kind of, we all have transcended the game and we did it together, which is a beautiful way to end this lovely discussion. I'll give you guys last words.
Thanks, Cheryl. Yeah, that was lovely.
The word that came through as you were sharing that part is like one of my kind of guiding stars is to ask myself, am I participating? And it really takes that win [00:57:00] lose side of it out and it creates an opportunity for me to ask myself, am I fully showing up in a way that is participatory? And Being of service is a big part of the program that we did.
The Pearl sequence is like, how am I serving? How am I showing up to be of service to the collective in a meaningful way that is aligned with me? And sometimes I don't have the energy to show up and participate. In which case the best thing I can do is take care of that first. So, yeah, that was one of the themes that was showing up.
And also just to speak to the, The beauty of this is to kind of look at life as life can be leading us. We don't necessarily need to be taking charge in the way that we've been taught to take charge. Listening is one of the highest attributes of leadership that I know of and listening to life creates a relationship where life can [00:58:00] lead and I can participate in that.
Yeah, thanks.
That's really beautiful, Sarah. Thank you. Yeah. And thank you Cheryl, for having us and letting us explore these super fun topics. I think in terms of tone or frequency, which we came to a lot here, you know, simple one that I often will try to sit with, but simple again, doesn't mean simplistic means simplicity, elegant, insightful wisdom is just not just what I said, but who's speaking.
So a simple example would be, why are you doing that? Versus, why are you doing that? And it's literally the exact same words, but the transmission is, and you could see it in both your faces and everybody listening, you know, like immediately that was, that was a bit caricatured, but that's kind of the point is like, [00:59:00] it had the exact reactions that I knew it would have for everybody, myself included, depending on the nature of the frequency or the tone.
And that, this isn't just like, okay, well, I have to change my tone to sound different. It's like, it comes from an inner place. If I'm asking a question with that edge, then I'm in survival shadow energy. Something's not feeling safe, something's not feeling well or whole in me. And so now I'm getting a little Barbie with my, you know, like attacking with my like, why would you do it that way?
Right? Kind of energy. It's obviously not a question that's predicated on actually trying to get an answer. It's a dig under the guise of a question. Versus if I'm genuinely feeling whole in myself, or as regulated as I can be, And I am actually curious, if somebody does something that I wouldn't have done, I might actually just, without being a jerk, like actually genuinely go like, Huh, [01:00:00] I wouldn't have thought of that that way.
That's really interesting. Can you tell me what you're thinking there? Why you did that? Without it being a leading question, without it being subtly implicating that they did something wrong, but so that I can learn, so I can explore at least take on life from a different lens, even if it wouldn't be the way that I might still choose to do it.
So, again, one of the ways that Gene Keys can really help us is to notice not just what we're saying, but the tone from which we are speaking, and be able to start to notice the difference of when we speak and listen from a place that's either more static, or a place that has more signal.
And that does have some interesting effects, ripples, on things. For sure.
It does, and thank you. And I have to admit, my favorite part of spending time with Chris and Sarah is I spend the whole time just smiling. [01:01:00] And the word smile isn't even in the gene key, so I don't know, but that's okay. Thank you so much for your time today.
I really appreciate you helping educate our audience a little bit more, and even, I always learn so much from you. So thank you so much. Thanks for having us.
Thanks again. Thanks, Cheryl. Thanks, Chris.
