Hi everyone. How has summer (for you friends in the northern hemisphere) or winter (those of you in the south) been treating you? I traveled north and returned south and am now digesting the experience, back home in Southern California. My blog hiatus has  lasted a little longer than anticipated…

Where did I go?

At the end of June I traveled to Cortes Island for a retreat. I had been in Vancouver once in the 70’s but never went back, and have never visited any of the islands off the coast of British Columbia. Friends told me I was in for a treat, yet the actual experience went beyond my dreams, and for at least three reasons:

First, the islands and their surrounding waters are magnificent. They exude a tranquil purity. Humanity’s footprint is still relatively light in this part of our beautiful planet. Caring stewardship of land and water has continued during a time when many glorious places in nature have been overrun and lost their pristine edge.

Second, I stayed at Hollyhock Centre on Cortes Island. Hollyhock www.hollyhock.ca declares in its mission that it: “exists to inspire, nourish and support people who are making the world better. As Canada’s lifelong learning and leadership institute, Hollyhock is a not for profit and an unparalleled centre of learning, connection and cultural transformation.” What a joy and also a profound privilege to meet and stay among people who daily walk their talk surrounded by natural beauty. Views from the center are exquisite and Hollyhock’s garden is both a work of art and a source of health-filled nourishment.

Third, I shared my journey from Vancouver to Cortes in a mini-van with four hitherto strangers, known only to me before our trip through our internet connections via Facebook. Yes Facebook, that much used and sometimes criticised medium that is revolutionising our worldwide social relationships and global interactions!

Between the five of us, some nine nationalities were represented as we traveled together, alternately by land and on several ferries, ,packed cosily together into one accommodating vehicle.

Here we all are below. Taiwan/Canada, Romania, Wales/England/USA, Argentina/Italy and Spain: a veritable traveling United Nations!

And the international mingling story was not yet complete, for we shared our stay at Hollyhock with 125 others who had themselves come from many different countries all over the world. We came together to participate in a Seven Sacred Seals Retreat.

Not only the five but also all 130 of us were personally unknown to me before this event. I count myself in that number of unknown now too. I had felt prior to going that I knew myself pretty well. I was to discover through the course of the retreat that during more than six decades, I had still only just scratched the surface!

All 130 of us now feel to me like members of a huge fractal tribe that was just waiting until the moment was right to have a family reunion. And, through our various personal and internet connections, the family also extends beyond to members of a growing Gene Keys network who could not be physically present on Cortes but were represented through the art and poetry and many messages they had sent..

Here is the original invitation that resonated enough to attract so many of us to Cortes, Hollyhock and the SSS, in body or spirit:

“Make a pilgrimage to the exquisite Cortes Island and experience the rarefied realm of the Seven Sacred Seals, highly refined transmissions or higher states whose purpose is to heal specific aspects of the wounding around your heart.

Before you were even born, the seed of both your suffering and its transformation were imprinted deep within your ancestral DNA. This seed unravels through our childhood as layers of protection that gradually form around the heart. Through your Gene Keys Profile you can see the precise obstacles and shadows that prevent your heart from truly re-opening.

The Seven Sacred Seals is an ancient teaching designed to melt each of the blockages that prevent you from experiencing unconditional love. Each Seal is invoked in a spirit of Grace, with a specific kind of inner light, and once it is felt within your body, it can be called upon as an ongoing essence to bring you solace and peace in your life. You will also find that of the Seven Seals, one is important to you above all others. This is the master key to your awakening, purifying your heart in a most powerful and lucid way.

This special retreat with Gene Keys founder, Richard Rudd, will have a deep internal focus using gentle dialogue, contemplation, silence, sacred music and communion with nature.”

I had never met Richard or any of his small dedicated core team that has recently created an internet community at www.genekeys.net prior to the retreat, except through some online ‘webinars’ and ‘community hangouts’. I had studied Gene Keys independently for several years, for my own purposes and, latterly, to better understand some real-life characters from yesteryear that inhabit my historical fiction. This independent study may have helped set the stage for my experience on Cortes Island, yet it was as nothing relative to that of total immersion in the Gene Key teaching’s higher frequencies, and in a collective setting where all shared a similar intent to invoke the blessings of grace in ourselves and our world.

I’ve participated in and led many small and large group events over the years. This one reached depths that I had never accessed before. Then again, maybe this one has affected me profoundly, in part because of all that independent study and all those events that have preceded it. I do see more clearly than before how I simply tread the path of life and follow the breadcrumbs that it offers, putting one foot in front of the other. Awakening comes when awakening comes, and builds on countless drops of awakening that come before (as well as those in a non-temporal universe that also come after). For me it is that drip-drip of continuing experience that leads to personal awakening, sometimes gentle, sometimes shocking, and in turn I now sense how it feeds into and is fed by an ocean of transpersonal, collective consciousness which exists beyond space and time.

For me and I am sure for many others who were together on Cortes Island this summer, the process has continued after the retreat. I continue to wake up to parts of self that had been cloaked and under wraps before. Change myself and I can change the world.

And then again, is it change and/or is it simply waking more fully into that which already exists..?

As i write, I’m suddenly aware that sharing one’s personal illuminating moments along the path of life can easily come across to others as showing off the family’s holiday photos. Memory-jogging and enthralling to myself maybe. And if I go on too long, yawn-making to my audience?!

And heck, as I look over what I have written and shared here, I can see that I have been showing off the family holiday photos here…

So, enough of my recent inner and outer adventures for now. Suffice it to say that I felt a wish to share with you some reasons for my recent silence and to add that this summer opened me up to a heartfelt visitation of Grace for which I feel a gratitude that permeates my very bones.  I have a hunch that Gene Keys explorations will continue to appear here as indeed they have already occasionally in past blogs. www.nightsoftheroad.com/?p=616 ; www.nightsoftheroad.com/?p=556

Here now for your pleasure, if you feel inclined to listen, is Richard Rudd speaking to the 22nd Gene Key of Grace. Enjoy. Thanks for listening and bonne continuation!