350. Gene Keys: Unlocking Your Life's Hidden Genius Codes - Michael Peterson

Kara Goodwin: [00:00:00] Welcome to the meditation conversation, the podcast to support your spiritual revolution. I'm your host, Cara Goodwin, and this is a great episode with Michael Peterson. I love talking to him about gene keys, plant medicine, shamanism, energy medicine, and so many more fascinating topics around transformation and spiritual awakening.

We get into some really important things to think about when you're engaging with plant medicine in particular. Michael is an approach coach, guide and ceremonialist after taking the traditional education path and receiving his MBA and master's of public policy degrees from Carnegie Mellon University, he shifted course towards a more soul fulfilling path.

He's a trained ayahuasca. Iowa Squarrow and a Master Practitioner of Shamanic Energy Medicine through the Four Winds School and a Gene [00:01:00] Keys Guide.

Michael's approach is rooted in a knowledge that all life is sacred, and he uses his skill set to help those on the path of self discovery transform outdated stories so they can blossom. So we'll get into this episode in just a moment, but first I want to quickly mention something I'm really excited about.

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So welcome, Michael. I'm so excited to talk to you today.

Michael Peterson: Thank you for having me on. I'm happy to be here.

Kara Goodwin: So tell us a little bit about your journey into shamanism and energy medicine and gene keys and, and all these, uh, some of my favorite topics.

Michael Peterson: Yeah. So I had a pretty traditional, straightforward upbringing, you know, went to school, high school, college worked grad school, and I was coming out of graduate school and I was looking around and people were getting great jobs and by great jobs, I mean they paid well and they had status associated with them. And They also weren't happy and maybe looking back, that was just a projection, but I can definitely tell you that I knew I wouldn't be happy. And so I said I needed to [00:03:00] change things up for a little bit. And I wanted to take care of my body a little bit more. I still was going down a track where I was going to end up in the corporate world again. And so I came up with a plan and part of that plan involved going to Guatemala to get my yoga teacher certification and have a little bit of plant medicine come into my life. And as soon as I got introduced to plant medicine, I said, hold on, there's something here. Um, it kicked off an entire healing journey for me.

Yeah. I still ended up going to Peru to join the Peace Corps, but it wasn't the right fit. And about five months later, I ended up leaving the Peace Corps, was back in Peru, studying plant medicine full time. And through that journey, I also ended up [00:04:00] studying things like human design and the gene keys to help get an understanding of what was going on or to educate myself about different ideas that were there. And then after five plus years working with ayahuasca, I wanted to make sure that as transformative as plant medicine can be, it's not the right approach for everybody. It's not the right fit. And so that's when I started looking at other forms of energy medicine to bring in and supplement the plant medicine work and sometimes even replace it. If it's the correct approach. And so my journey has taken all of those different trajectories and avenues that I've explored and kind of coalesce them into my own offering at this point. And that's how I got here.

Kara Goodwin: Hmm. I love that. I, um, you know, it's really interesting. So your [00:05:00] plant medicine journey has really been focused around ayahuasca. Is that correct?

Michael Peterson: Yeah. And I would say with ayahuasca, you know, the big thing about ayahuasca in culture is that people talk about the psychedelic medicine that is ayahuasca. But on the training side of ayahuasca shamanism, it's all about doing dietas. And so it's working with other plants and other trees that help clear out the energetic body and give you stability when you're in that space. And so if you only work with ayahuasca, it's like you're a tree that is really, really tall but doesn't have the roots. So anything that comes in in your life that's a strong wind will knock you over. And. What the dietas do is that they help clean out your energetic body, but also give you the roots to be able to navigate life and everything that's involved with it in a [00:06:00] way that is much more grounded and rooted while still being open.

Kara Goodwin: I love that. That's fantastic. I feel that I hear a lot about, I'm not hugely into plant medicine. I've never done ayahuasca. Um, I know that one of the kind of watch outs with plant medicine, you know, particularly ceremonial plant medicine is the vulnerability. You know, people come in and they have these amazing experiences that, um, they just don't have in a sober state.

And. There are leaders facilitating these experiences and, um, you know, you really, well, I don't know if you have anything you want to say about finding a scrupulous leader, how people can do that, why that's so important when you're in these open, vulnerable states, [00:07:00] that's a big kind of foundational thing that I feel doesn't get enough.

Can you talk a little bit about that?

Michael Peterson: Sure, it's one of my favorite topics actually,

because one of my teachers likes to say that if ayahuasca led to enlightenment, the jungle would be full of enlightened people walking around all the time. And the truth of the matter is it's not. Iowasca can be part of a spiritual approach and it can even be a central pillar in it, but it's not the only thing that will lead you to whatever you want to title enlightenment. And within that, the facilitators span the entire spectrum from very well trained, very well educated, deeply rooted in traditional wisdom and Also capable of sharing within a modern context to [00:08:00] delusional guru and ego driven support. And so not all of that is unintentional and not all of it is intentional. So as a consumer, when you're going into a ceremony, when you're trying to find a facilitator to work with, the biggest thing to understand is that you are going into a vulnerable state. You know, your energetic body is completely open. Um, ayahuasca is in my language, a non specific amplifier, but it opens up your energetic body and there's energetic surgery that is happening. And so having a very well trained and well respected physician surgeon, even in our modern context, [00:09:00] Like you would go shop for doctors, right? Um, hopefully, uh, you'd find somebody who you feel comfortable with, you'd find somebody who is approachable. And even if there's certain aspects about them that might bristle you, you know, as long as it serves a point, you're okay with it. Um, ayahuasca has shifted from its traditional context. It used to be. Patients would go and the shaman would drink ayahuasca for them. He would take a look at their energetic body and then he or she and then would prescribe a dieta and then patient would go and do the dieta or follow the prescription and heal within the new context where there's a bunch of westerners coming in for the most part and just it's not bad it's just a change in the dynamic. [00:10:00] Ayahuasca is being consumed directly by everybody. And so you're going into the state that you don't really know. And so it's healthy to have a positive skepticism and a little bit of nerves around it. And the way that I have found to find the right facilitator is to really just sit with it for a while and look for what. You want within yourself. Do you want a facilitator who only speaks Spanish or Portuguese or another language, or do you want to have a facilitator who can speak Spanish and English or whatever language it is that you speak so that you can have a translation ask questions? Or do you at least want the support to be there?

And how comfortable do you feel? Psychedelics, we talk about set and setting a lot, [00:11:00] you know, part of the set is who are the people, who are the facilitators? And so there's no one size fits all. There's no, this is the only correct way to do it, but it's understanding what you're looking for and then finding the facilitator that fits.

Kara Goodwin: you for that. I remember hearing Terrence McKenna, or I think I heard a quote of his not talking about ayahuasca, probably talking about LSD or something. Um, but he was like, whenever you enter into. An agreement like that with somebody, keep one, keep one hand over your wallet and one hand over your private parts is basically how he said it.

But you know, you really just, I just really want people to go in with their [00:12:00] eyes open because it is so easy to deify the the guru who, you know, we get in this situation in any number of ways. Whether there's ayahuasca or not, um, but ayahuasca really helps to imprint that, um, you know, the, the deification of somebody and allowing them to take advantage of Our, Our, uh, money or our sexuality or, you know, just our attention, our energy.

So there are, you know, it's just, again, I really appreciate your perspective. And I didn't even plan to go into this, this, but it just, I just feel like it's such a big watch out and there's just such a popularity with plant medicine right now that it's like, yeah, it can really help facilitate some amazing experiences and keep your eyes open, stay alert, you know, stay empowered.

Michael Peterson: [00:13:00] And how can we do that while also not just being in constant fear of what's going to happen, especially if we're coming from a place where we are already feeling injured, we already have hurt that we're looking to go heal that might make us not trust a situation. And then we build up the confidence to finally take the first step, go be vulnerable. And then all of a sudden you found the wrong facilitator who takes advantage of that trust or. In, in a variety of ways, whether it's financial, whether it is sexual, whether it is just energetically wanting you to keep coming back. You know, in my perspective, the point of all of this work, and by this work I mean meditation, spirituality, I don't know what the, the end result is, but I can. [00:14:00] Definitively to say that whatever experience I'm having is a human experience right now, and I would like to be empowered through that. And I hope that everybody is empowered through that. And so if our spiritual practices, whether it's meditation or ayahuasca or anywhere in between. Right. Don't help us lead better lives, be more authentic in our self expression, um, be more engaged in life, then it's just another way of bypassing and ayahuasca can be a wonderful tool. It can be a beautiful, transformative medicine. And you can totally still use it to bypass what's going on. And if you get caught in a lot of people who are bypassing in that sort of community, You're going to learn [00:15:00] the lesson the hard way.

Kara Goodwin: That is so well said that I don't know that there's anything else we need to say. Maybe we just have this be a 10 minute podcast.

Michael Peterson: And now please find a comfortable meditative posture. We'll be in silence for the next 10 minutes. There will be a gong.

Kara Goodwin: I love it. Yes. Well, you do have a lot more wisdom to share, so I'm going to keep going, even though I want everybody to like, just sit with what you said, because that's beautiful. Um, I would love to talk about the gene keys. So I know that was one of the things with human design that you, you explored, and I have had a gene keys reading and I was Fascinated by it.

It was so accurate and so in depth, and it was such an amazing tool. Um, it still blows my mind. Um, but first of all, can you just start by explaining what gene keys is? Because I imagine there are a lot of [00:16:00] people who don't know what it is.

Michael Peterson: Yeah. So the Gene Keys is a system of contemplation and I like to view it as a playground of contemplation to get to know yourself. And it is a combination of astrology, the chakra system, the I Ching, and it weaves them all together in a way that is very similar to human design, which is another system that Gene Keys has evolved off of. But whereas human design might be telling you, hey, this is the type of vehicle that you're driving, what Gene Keys does is it invites you to play. And explore what type of adventure you want to go on in life, and what type of, not just that you, adventure that you want to [00:17:00] go on, but that you're being invited by spirit as you incarnate to, to, play out. And so, the main component of it is what's called the golden path, and it's three different sequences. It's the activation sequence, which is, you know, what is your genius here in this life? It is the Venus Sequence, which is all about how you incarnated into form and how relationships are your teacher and how you can get back to healing the core wound that comes from incarnating. And then there's the Pearl Sequence, which is about what it means to truly prosper for you in this life. And what I love about the system is that It's non prescriptive. It is [00:18:00] gentle, it is patient, it is contemplative, it involves self inquiry, but it doesn't tell you, this is who you are, and this is what it means to be who you are. It says, these are things that might be extremely prevalent for you in your life. Given that, here's some things to consider. And you can play around with it, and if it lands, it lands, and if it doesn't land, it doesn't land. But for me it landed and it sounded like it did for you too. And it has for a lot of other people and it's a very useful tool to start getting to know yourself better.

Kara Goodwin: Yeah, that's a wonderful way to explain it. And I noticed when I had it done, you know, it was recorded and everything. So the facilitator was. Talking me through what my different, you know, codes were and so forth. And, uh, [00:19:00] There was what I could relate to as he was telling me everything. Um, so kind of reflecting on my life because some of it is like from this age to this age, you know, zero to seven and seven to 14 and 14 to 21.

And, um, or how am I? I might've butchered that,

Michael Peterson: that's perfect.

Kara Goodwin: um, but it's like, these were themes that maybe showed up at that time. This is kind of where you were, what you were focused on or trying to overcome or opportunities that came up during those times. Um, but a lot of it is like there, I also feel that there are layers where it's like, well, here are things that are hidden.

So they're kind of like shadow elements. And. You know, I've been doing a lot of shadow stuff lately in terms of just my own understanding of the shadow. Um, where I kind of used to think of the shadow as like the bad parts of us, the sort of, you know, like the, when we're grumpy, when we're, when we're not our [00:20:00] best, this is kind of how we show up.

But I also understand, um, the shadow just as being the hidden parts. So not necessarily even bad things or things that we don't want to accept about ourselves, but things that we just aren't aware of, you know, things we just haven't connected to. And there were things that showed up and I had my reading like seven months ago.

I re listened to it in the last couple of weeks. Just to kind of get the flavor of it. And, and then even just from listening to it, you know, recently things that I had forgotten that had been shown and how they relate to like right now, you know? So not only like, Oh, the big picture, here are themes that show up in patterns that show up for me, but it's amazing how you might get inspired to just re listen to it or re engage with it.

And it's like, Oh, [00:21:00] this part of myself that I was kind of like, yeah, I guess I kind of can see how that is a thing like really has shown up in the last like three weeks for me personally, where I'm like, Oh, that thing is like, Oh, that's really, really true. I haven't really even been able to express that, or at least been able to connect that I'm expressing it until right now, you know,

Michael Peterson: I love this

Kara Goodwin: It's like this living reading that I had, you know?

Michael Peterson: The system is alive. And I mean it sounds esoteric and weird because it is. Um. But, you know, we're all living beings. These, these teachings that we have and the jinkies is a synthesis. So it's pulling together all of these different living systems and getting to the quintessence of them to [00:22:00] use one of the jinkies his own words and, you know, you talked about hidden knowledge. And so. If you're looking at Tibetan Buddhism and Padmasambhava, who put all these secret pieces of knowledge out there into the ether to be discovered over time, um, termas is what they're called. The G keys is a terma that was discovered and activated and pulled. Um, and so there's so many different pathways in. But what I love about what you shared is really the shadow portion, which is the shadow is just the unseen. And we tend to focus on it a lot in our lives. We can point out actually what we don't like about ourselves or what we struggle with. [00:23:00] And really, if we're able to see those things, they're not necessarily the shadow in that they're unseen.

It's just. heavy for us to work with. The shadow does have these unseen aspects of ourselves, these hidden patterns that can be negative or hold us back. But then to your point, there's also this golden shadow, like the positive attributes about ourselves that we don't recognize. And so each gene key works on a level of frequency.

So it has a shadow state. It has a gift state. And it has a civic state or a, a supreme divine state, if you will. And so it's not that these energies, these core archetypal energies are just the shadow state, or just the gift state, or just the civic state. Although that last one might be up for debate. It's the, [00:24:00] the way that we are engaging with them. is through one of these frequencies. And as we, as both individuals and humans continue to evolve, you're changing our frequency over time. And the Gene Keys is a wonderful way to start chewing on that because it's a, it's a pretty dense piece of meat and it takes some time to digest and to break down.

And Richard Rudd, who is the creator, founder of Gene Keys has a poetic background. And so a lot of the terminology is very flowery and very flowy. And if that is really easily digestible to you, it's going to click. And if it's not so digestible to you, it's just going to take a little bit of time to really let it sink in.

Kara Goodwin: Yeah, I love that. I, it makes me think [00:25:00] about, I have not read Richard's book about the gene keys. Um, and. And the reason was somebody I know read it and they had a hard time with it. They just, they thought it was pretty dense and, and hard to kind of get their head around. Um, what, what do you think about people who are not practitioners?

Do you think it is helpful to read the book? I

Michael Peterson: And don't read the book like you would read your favorite. Like fiction novel, or even like it's a textbook, you know, if you read it from front to back, it's just, which is going to be great to do. It's going to be a little bit overwhelming and it doesn't have any context within your life. So there's just a lot of information that's coming at you.

That doesn't really make any sense. You're wondering how it's applicable. It's talking about. Stages of [00:26:00] evolution that go beyond where we're currently at. And so it's really easy to get lost in that system. What I would say is really helpful is that you can go to gene keys. com, get your free profile. It gives you a nice little writeup of four spheres or gene keys in your chart, how they apply to your life, and then get the book.

If you want more information on them, read them. But it's essentially a modern day I Ching. So it's an oracle. And so you can use the book as an oracle. If you don't like reading, there's audio texts about it. There's only one way to learn anything. You engage with it. And so, you know, this goes back to plant medicine. When I was first asking my teacher, I was like, well, how do I study plant medicine? It was like, you drink it. [00:27:00] And you do the work. And the same is true for gene keys in a way. It's if you want to continue to dive deeper into that system, you're going to eventually have to read it. Um, a guide can help you discover things about yourself, um, or help point out different obstacles along the way, but nobody can live anybody's life for them. It doesn't work. We've all had people who have tried to live our lives for us. We don't like that. Um, and if we've tried to live other people's lives for them, it's just exhausting. And so the G keys is an invitation to live your life fully. And as a practitioner or a guide. All I'm trying to do is live my life and because there's things that I've learned through that study, I can help others [00:28:00] navigate them maybe with a little bit more ease and grace than I originally had.

Kara Goodwin: love that. Thank you. So can you talk a little bit about, um, recurring patterns and how shamanic energy medicine can help to transmute some of those patterns?

Michael Peterson: Sure. Let me ask you a question, though. Has there ever been something in your life that. You've worked on it's gotten a little bit better and then it keeps coming back and then you work on it a little bit harder and it keeps coming back and it's just really frustrating and exhausting and kind of

loud

Kara Goodwin: Oh, of course. Yeah.

Michael Peterson: that's that is what we would call an imprint and so what I have noticed in the ayahuasca world is that we'd get these big clean outs and then there would be these things that started [00:29:00] coming back in and it was really frustrating and these patterns And that exist. They're just, I don't want to downplay the immense amount of pain that they can cause in one's life, but to me, they're really just annoying. Like I, there are things that I've worked on or they're an oversized reaction to something that no matter how hard I try, I still have that oversized reaction. Or it's a behavior that I can witness really well, but I can't change and those patterns live within our luminous energy fields or. Our auric body or the electromagnetic sphere that surrounds us.

Choose your language and your lens. And what [00:30:00] the shamanic energy medicine work does is that it helps us identify what those patterns are. And then through accessing those patterns through the chakra system cleans out both The imprint itself, the energy associated with it, and most importantly, it clears out the affinity for it. And so, if we don't get rid of the affinity for these patterns that we've cultivated over time, they're gonna come back. And so, if you've ever, for your listeners, I don't know if they've ever gone skiing or snowboarding, but if you think about fresh snow on top of a mountain, and then you think about somebody who's skiing down it, It creates a trail and then they go up again, they take the next run and it creates another trail, but eventually you fall into these grooves and in the [00:31:00] Hindu tradition, we might call them sense scars, right?

These deep grooves within our consciousness that we just fall into the shamanic energy work helps us identify them and then transmute them so that it's like fresh snow falling on the mountain. And then from that place, we can choose how we go forwards.

Kara Goodwin: I love that analogy. Do you have, um, any examples that you can share of where you've seen this in action?

Michael Peterson: For sure. And I can share for my own, which is my favorite place.

So one of the patterns that I had, and this was kind of leading up to getting married, I was working with the Venus Sequence and the Jinkies as a preparatory tool. And I was also doing shamanic energy work around each different sphere of that journey. And when [00:32:00] I got to my core wound, The thing that I was noticing most about my wife, it's like, I knew how to feed myself. And what I mean was like, I know what I need to do that is supportive. I know that I need to work out. I know that I need to not eat like three tubs of ice cream every single night. Uh, I know how to tend to my body's needs. And despite that I had that knowledge, I would still choose. To do all these things that weren't too good for me. I would choose to stay up late and binge Netflix and not nourish myself in certain ways. I would choose to not work out and instead like go have a burger somewhere. And it's not that doing that is good or bad, but the way that it was resonating in my body was just like, why am I not doing what I know is good for [00:33:00] myself? And When I received Shamanic Energy work around it, what we'd start with is just that feeling, you know, it's hard to always describe what it is, so we get to the essence of the emotion, and that's how we access the imprint. And so I could feel the frustration, I could feel that moment where it was like, no, I don't want to do what's good for me, um, and through working on releasing that, the story that was underneath it, Was I was so hungry that I would eat anything and that's a dangerous place to be Because I wasn't in a situation where I needed to eat anything just to survive what I actually needed to do was eat what was right for me so that I could thrive [00:34:00] and that pattern of living out of harmony with how my life actually was Needed to shift. And so the reason that ceremony around these things is important is because in our current culture, we are very mentally driven. We can talk about even in our meditations. They're very much. So mental, although the somatic meditations are definitely growing in popularity. You go to your therapist to talk about these things over and over and over and over and over again, but in order for us to change the myths that we are living these underlying unseen stories, we need to have ceremony and ritual. And so the shamanic energy medicine is a technique and a protocol where we. [00:35:00] Create a ceremony to release those old patterns, clear out the energy, the imprint, the affinity, and then fill it with pure, pure, pure divine light so that then I can sit there and say, wow, I don't have to eat. I'm not so hungry that I actually need to eat everything.

I can make a choice and rewrite that contract within myself and say, I will eat the things that nourish me and not just physically eat, but metaphorically, I will take in that which nourishes me. And I'm going to stop taking in the things that are toxic and poisonous to my body. And that created a drastic shift in terms of my physical health, mental health, and emotional health all the way through, as soon as I got rid of that pattern.

So is that an okay example for

you?

Kara Goodwin: great. And so that it sounds like the real like shift was around the ceremony. Is that right? And was that an individual [00:36:00] ceremony? Was that like facilitated by somebody? I'm wondering how, you know, listeners can take that and apply it to themselves. That's

Michael Peterson: So I would say just with ceremony broadly, I encourage everybody to live a ceremonial life. Um, you know, life is a ceremony and this is one of the big things from any spiritual practice, right? Take your yoga practice off of the mat and into your life. Take your ceremonial ayahuasca plant medicine journeys off of that pedestal of only being when you're sitting around the medicine and take it into your life. And so, People can definitely craft their own ceremonies and it just needs to create sacred space. So smudge and or find another way to [00:37:00] create a clear distinct space. If you work with the directions, call them the directions and orient yourself. If you don't work with the directions, orient yourself towards being in a ceremonial sacred space. and then play. Ceremony's fun, so just play. Um, and then when you're done releasing whatever that is, have a closing, and then you've created a ceremony. Within the shamanic energy medicine realm, I was working with another practitioner, and who's trained in the same modality, and so I would bring my issue to him, he would perform the work, I would say thank you very much and then see the results.

Kara Goodwin: fantastic. I've, this has been such a rich discussion, and I imagine people are very curious about how to find out [00:38:00] more about you and work with you. Can you please let, let people know how they can find out more?

Michael Peterson: Sure. People can go to my website, which is www. alchemyshift. com. And when they're there, there's a variety of different avenues that they can go down, whether they want Genki support, shamanic energy work. Um, I have a ayahuasca retreat coming up in Costa Rica in November, if anybody wants to go explore that realm of things and At the core of all of my work is really just the idea of what we want to be is real. It's the secret sauce to all of it. And it's some sort of state where we are relaxed, engaged, authentic, and loving. And so all of my work focuses around helping people become their authentic selves and blossom into who they are meant to be, want to be, designed to be, so [00:39:00] that they can be an empowered individual sharing their gifts with the world. So, if that sounds up your listeners alley, again, my website is www. alchemyshift. com.

Kara Goodwin: Beautiful. Well, thank you so much, Michael. This has just been such a powerful discussion. I really have enjoyed connecting with you today.

Michael Peterson: Thanks for having me on. I appreciate it.

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