I was born in Atlanta, Georgia,
to loving Catholic parents
who named me Sarah.
I was a strong-willed, inquisitive,
and sensitive child
who talked to animals, trees,
and our family’s station wagon.
And God.
In fact, I was in love with God
and wanted to be a priest when I grew up
but learned that wasn’t an option
because I was a girl.
I was terrified of being locked in the basement
(something my mischievous sisters took full advantage of),
went through a phase where I graffitied
my name on every wall around me
(it felt necessary to leave my mark),
and an even longer phase
where I was convinced
that I was adopted.
Even while surrounded
by a wonderful family,
I felt like an orphan.
But all in all, I had a fortunate, healthy,
stable, and relatively happy childhood.
When I was in sixth grade, I read
a book about reincarnation.
The Reality of us Returning
again and again
in order to learn and grow as souls,
seemed as natural as the continuous,
yet always-changing seasons,
exceptionally compassionate
(to have more than one chance at life),
and honestly, sort of duh.
The local priest didn’t think so.
Even after I prattled about how many
early Christians believed in reincarnation.
(Did I mention that I was a wee bit of a spiritual smart ass?)
He shooed me out of the confessional booth
hauling a heavy bucket of penance,
which I dumped
as I walked out of the Church
for good.
My open-minded parents respected my departure
from our family’s religion
but emphasized how important it was that I find
Something
I believed in.
That was all the permission I needed
to spend the next few decades of my life
on a magical mystery tour of the Universe.
I read every spiritual book I could get my eager hands on,
visited every holy person who floated through town,
had my chakras aligned, my aura cleansed, my stars read,
and for numerological reasons
changed the spelling of my name from “Sarah” to “Sera.”
To ground my obsession with all things spiritual,
I rigorously studied world religions in college and graduate school
and traveled around the world investigating their lived reality.
I moved to San Francisco after graduate school
and submerged myself in the Northern California whirlpool
of spiritual and self-help movements.
After a few years in San Francisco, I wrote and published The Red Book:
A Deliciously Unorthodox Approach to Igniting Your Divine Spark,
which was aimed at young women who I felt had been left out of spirituality.
However, the magnitude of fear and panic
that coursed through my body
when I presented my work publicly
made “stage fright” feel more like “stage death.”
Something else started to happen at this time in my life:
spine-curling bouts of pain during some of my periods.
Every episode happened late at night,
foreshadowed by a dream where I was
viciously attacked by a demon I could not see.
Not exactly something my gynecologist
could write a prescription for.
To try and help ease and better understand
my agonizing physical reactions
to my budding spiritual career,
I found an esoteric school in California
where recalling past lives was as common
as recalling childhood memories,
and dealing with interfering forces was as ordinary
as dealing with invasive neighbors.
Although remembering previous lives
when I was tortured or killed for speaking my truth publicly
explained some of my reactions to my career,
and although learning to protect myself from interfering forces
provided temporary relief,
my body did not heal,
my terror of going public did not lessen,
and the interference only increased.
I left the esoteric school after a year.
The embarrassing truth was
despite my vast and varied spiritual studies,
travels, and experiences,
I could not find a tradition, lineage, community,
school, practice, trend, or even a teacher
that really resonated with my heart.
Now it’s not that nothing
in my spiritual explorations
resonated with me.
Something
had repeatedly poked me
in the chest over the years,
and that Something
showed
up
as
Red.
Kali, the fierce Hindu Goddess of destruction and creation,
awakened dark, tight, hidden parts of me
with Her long, red tongue.
Eve whispered in my left ear
the Real Reason why
she tasted that red apple:
to Know Herself.
Lilith welcomed me to dance ecstatically
with her on the shores of the Red Sea.
The Whore of Babylon raised her cup of red wine
and toasted my bloody female body,
and my divine right to experience pleasure.
Female mystics from every spiritual tradition
reminded me that we have only been taught
half of the divine’s story
—the masculine half—
and therefore only half of our story.
And then there were my dreams.
Where I was running, running, running
with a tiny fetus in the palm of my hand,
desperate to save its life.
At some point in the dream
the fetus would fly toward a couple making love
under a luminous Red Light.
The couple was Jesus and Magdalene.
The Red winks amped up in my late twenties,
flirting through songs on the radio,
movies, billboards, roses, wine.
Everywhere I looked,
Red
Looked
Back.
It felt like I was being wooed
by Something Specific and Sacred,
and it made me giddy and grateful.
I started to call this strangely familiar Presence
that winked through these Red mediums
the Red Lady.
We began to commune
like Close Friends.
Our Love grew like a wild fire.
A wild fire I let
BLAZE
in my personal life.
However.
Nobody knew Who I was referring to
when I talked about
the Red Lady this and the Red Lady that.
Neither did I.
It didn’t help that She was a She
and that She was Red.
As we know, the Feminine has been exiled
from almost every religion,
and Red isn’t often viewed as a very “spiritual” color,
and through some lenses,
Red symbolizes rage, our base nature, sexuality, and evil.
So, over the years, I developed a painful habit.
When my Red Lady clashed
with the spiritual realities I was exploring,
I abandoned Her.
My spiritual pride, self-doubt,
and fears of being seen as woo-woo
or undeveloped, delusional, or wrong
often overruled my authentic experiences of Her.
If spiritual traditions didn’t know the Red Lady,
maybe She didn’t actually exist.
The Shake Down
In 2009, I signed a large contract for my second book,
was interviewed and featured in the New York Times,
and received several promising and lucrative offers.
I felt like I was on mission.
But then my life fell apart
when I met the Jungian psychoanalyst
Marion Woodman.
The difference between us
was a titanic transmission.
She was full of Herself.
She knew her soul, intimately.
It filled her entire body.
She radiated,
not with spiritual light,
but with soulful realness.
She was Here.
She was All In.
I abruptly woke up to the fact
that despite my spiritual knowledge and mystical experiences,
my booming social life and successful career,
I was not ensouled.
In fact, I could not find
my soul
at all.
Like a sheet ripped off an empty bed,
I suddenly realized that most of me
was missing.
Although I looked and acted the part,
I wasn’t Human.
Although I had a pulse,
I wasn’t Alive.
Although I had a body,
I wasn’t Incarnate.
Although I passionately (and publicly) preached the opposite,
the truth was that I was gravely disconnected
from my humanity, my feelings, my flesh, my primal needs,
intimate relationships, other humans, and the earth Herself.
And I had been living
in this soulless, disembodied way
for all of my life.
The shock and pain of this recognition
humbled me and completely mystified me.
When I inquired about why and how I had lost my soul,
trauma shook my body, core wounds opened,
and darker-than-dark feelings surfaced:
I hated being human (and other humans).
I was terrified of being in a body and living on this earth.
In fact, I would rather be dead than alive.
The extreme nature of my newly disclosed
feelings and trauma
stunned me, surprised my therapists,
and befuddled highly regarded trauma specialists.
For we could not locate the roots
in this life.
The Red Tent
To help find my missing soul,
I pulled away from my professional and social life
and created a physical and spiritual cocoon
that I called the Red tent.
A lot happened during my three years in the Red tent,
(much of which I share in my second book,
Red Hot and Holy, which I wrote while in the tent)
and included
intensive psychological work (I was dissociative and avoidant),
extensive career changes (from mainstream success to my soul’s kind of success),
and spiritual redirection (from transcendence to immanence).
I was a spiritual bypasser
who (unconsciously) used spirituality
like one uses a drug
—as a defense against the harsh realities of life,
the human condition
and the soul.
In the Red tent, I began to detox.
I gave away all my spiritual books
and stopped going to workshops,
listening to teachers, and using practices.
I discarded my spiritual studies and beliefs
and began to nurture my natural impulses
and rebuild trust in my inner knowing.
Slowly but surely
I started to find my way through
the cosmic dimension.
Throughout this process,
I inquired who the Red Lady was
but never found an answer.
The mystifying mind-fuck was that my Red Lady
felt as infinite and essential to me as the Creatrix
and had Divinely Feminine qualities,
but my Red Lady also felt different than the Creatrix.
At one point, frustrated and worried that Red
was a cosmic distraction
or a sly symptom of spiritual bypassing,
I pushed Red far away from me.
About six months later, my then-publisher
refused to publish my “strange” book manuscript
(the one I had written while in the Red tent),
and my then-best friend received a publishing deal
and came out in the world with her own work about red.
It was the perfect set
of external circumstances and internal collisions
to puncture my core wounds,
deep enough
that
Red
gushed out,
making me Remember and Realize
in every cell of my female body,
that Red was my eternal Divine Soul,
whom I had distrusted and given away
not just in this life, but in all of my lives.
Remembering myself as a sovereign Divine Soul
who was a visiting fractal from another Universe
felt like the pinnacle of my journey.
Although I knew it would be a lifelong endeavor,
I believed I had reached my final step:
embodying my Divine Soul.
But I was wrong,
sort of.
Turns out, the Real Way
to embody my divinity
is through my humanity.
Put differently: I can’t embody my Divine Soul
without embodying my human soul.
I became aware of Sarah while I was in the Red tent.
However, the importance isn’t how Sarah revealed herself,
it’s how I felt when she first did:
I felt Found.
The focal piece of my puzzle
was put in its place
by a Hand bigger than my own,
and my Whole Picture
snapped into view.
In those initial suspended moments,
I didn’t just Remember
an essential piece
of my soul,
I also Understood
why I am the way I am
as a human.
A Truth trailing behind all my truths
tackled me to the ground that day
and would not let me stand back up without It . . .
without Sarah.
Needless to say, Sarah is a big red pill to swallow
and way too easy to spit out.
For it is one thing to know and embrace your Divine Soul.
It’s another thing to know and embrace your human soul.
And it’s something else altogether
when a fragmented piece of your human soul
that is seeking integration
identifies herself as Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene’s
abandoned love child.
Especially if you are a critically minded, psychologically reflexive,
energetically astute, spiritually rigorous modern woman
who went to Harvard.
I’ve explored many possibilities,
starting with the obvious:
A previously unconscious part of me is using
the symbol, metaphor, story, and possible reality
of Jesus and Magdalene’s lost daughter
in order to process trauma and heal my wounds.
I am a middle child and a “4” in the Enneagram,
which means that when I’m out of balance or living unconsciously
I crave attention, desire to feel special, and have a flair for drama.
All of which are also fitting characteristics for someone with “Sarah’s wounds.”
I’ve considered that many, if not all, women
suffer from “Sarah’s wounds”
and feel (or have felt) dismissed,
like their soul has been “buried alive.”
If we widen the lens even more,
we could theorize that Sarah
is not just a missing piece of my soul,
but of all of our souls
(women, men, and those in between),
which would make each of us
part of a larger archetypal process
of “Remembering and Reclaiming Sarah.”
Other possibilities I’ve explored are that Sarah is a:
delusion, sub-personality, complex (messianic, most likely), PTSD,
shadow, projection, inner child, imaginary friend, active imagination therapy,
part of the collective unconscious, ancestor, genetic memory,
lineage link, karmic agreement, New Age fantasy, childish fairy tale,
walk in, lost soul (but not mine), descended master, spirit guide, nefarious being,
energetic overlay, cosmic counterfeit, metaphysical manipulation, etc.
I’m relatively confident that anything
you might wonder or suppose about
who and what Sarah is,
I have wondered and investigated, too.
But here’s something I’ve learned the hard way:
While it’s crucial to question and doubt
all “beings” that stake a claim in us,
it’s cruel to torture them.
In other words, if we’re not careful,
our intellectual, spiritual, and psychological
credentials and acumen
can kill that which is genuinely trying
to come back to Life in us.
At the beginning of our conscious relationship,
Sarah was like a skittish, starving, feral animal
who had been kept in isolation for way too long
and did not know how to trust the only hand that could feed her.
Sarah had good reason to distrust me
and doubt my ability to care for her
because I had never cared for my soul before.
Soul Fragments
Despite my doubts and intellectual bullying of Sarah,
which arose soon after she revealed herself,
she was not easy to shake.
Everywhere I looked,
an All-Knowing finger pointed
not at me, but through me,
at Sarah.
After my encounter with Marion Woodman,
I had become fairly proficient
at recognizing and retrieving soul fragments.
Here’s how this normally goes down:
Something will (or will not) happen in my life,
and I will start to feel a “tug” from a displaced part of me
that is significantly different in feeling than
a purely psychological force, such as a complex or “part.”
After identifying that I am indeed dealing with a soul fragment,
I will quiet my mind, sink into my body,
and start to inquire about how this soul loss happened.
Soon enough, I will start to remember
something that happened recently
or in early childhood
or in another life
or on a different dimension.
Sometimes my soul will fragment due to shock, trauma, or pain
from the loss of a loved one, an accident, a crisis of faith,
abuse, a natural disaster, or any threatening event.
Sometimes the soul loss is because of something I have done
such as staying too long in an unhealthy relationship;
not speaking up when I needed to;
or putting my career, money, social standards, opinions of others
—or a spiritual teacher, paradigm, or practice—in front of my soul.
Sometimes part of my soul sneaks away
due to something as seemingly small as
a parent or friend getting upset with me,
a grade-school teacher calling out my mistakes,
a stranger looking at me the wrong way,
or watching the nightly news.
Often my soul will fragment because
I can’t handle feeling
what I am feeling at that time.
After I remember when and why my soul fragmented,
I locate and connect with the piece,
kind of like a TV picks up a satellite signal.
Most soul fragments are stuck in a reality
they believe is real.
They keep replaying the scene
where they fragmented
over and over again.
Locating these soul pieces,
letting them express their reality,
and then helping them realize
that while their feelings are real
their reality isn’t,
is part of, but not all of,
what is needed
for them to come home.
For the more traumatized pieces,
outside help from a trained professional
is often necessary.
However, inside help is always available.
Our Divine Soul not only knows
the ins and outs of our human psyche,
It knows the ins and outs of our
entire incarnational and Universal journey.
This is because our human soul
is the part of our Divine Soul
that is here on Earth.
Therefore, our Divine Soul knows
how far and wide It has cast Itself,
what it takes to reel Itself back in,
and importantly, when to do so.
and our body’s and Soul’s subtle guidance
is how we stay healthy, safe, and on our path.
However, I was stumbling down
an unpaved path.
Sarah was unlike any soul fragment
I had ever encountered before.
Sarah’s Fragments
Sarah came at me with a knife
between her teeth,
dirt beneath her ripped nails,
and a savage look in her eyes.
Her words carried the force
of two thousand years
of suppression and silence
—as did her feelings.
She was enraged and embittered,
soaked in shame and self-loathing,
bristling with pride, and brimming with blame.
In other words, she showed up as she had been left behind.
And as if every second since her first human life
had twisted her into a tighter knot.
Sarah was as complicated as any human,
and what was even more fascinating
was that Sarah had soul fragments
stuck in traumatic and painful events of her life,
specifically her father’s crucifixion,
her birth, and her death.
Therefore, I was not only retrieving a supposed soul fragment,
I was also busy retrieving a supposed soul fragment’s soul fragments.
Almost every day, through something that was happening in my own life,
I was encouraged to remember a related part of Sarah’s story,
locate another (or the same) piece of her soul,
let her express herself,
and then try to share a broader and healthier perspective with her.
It was time-consuming, demanding, and grueling.
But it also felt like the most important
and necessary inner work
I had ever done.
Fetus Sarah
The most influential and multifaceted fragment of Sarah
was her fetus fragment,
the part of Sarah that split during the crucifixion.
There was so much trauma, terror, and pain
enveloping the fetus
that initially I didn’t know what to do for her.
I felt Sarah’s trauma in my own womb.
I often placed my hands on my locked pelvis
while working with her, attempting to reground us
and relieve both of our pain.
But fetus Sarah refused to inhabit
her body and this earth.
She was locked shut against Life.
And I couldn’t help but feel
how much I was, as well.
When I worked with the aspect of fetus Sarah
who sold her Soul to the demon,
I recognized my own lack of proper boundaries
and inability to discern healthy relationships.
I also identified a previously unconscious belief
that I will only be safe and loved
if I give away my troublesome Soul and mission.
The bitter truth was that I sold out my Soul on a regular basis.
Newborn Sarah
The next fragment I was repeatedly pulled toward was newborn Sarah,
the part of Sarah that fragmented right after she was born
due to feeling rejected by her first community.
This fragment of newborn Sarah felt unwanted
and unable to participate in her parents’ mission
because something was wrong with her.
She believed that she would never be nourished
by human relationships or get her essential needs met.
Working with newborn Sarah, I recognized
how much I distrust
and struggle to bond with others.
And how I’ve been afraid to identify and voice my needs
from fear of rejection
or from having to admit how they are not being met
by those close to me and, most importantly, by myself.
I also acknowledged that lurking underneath my own work in the world
was a fierce need to be accepted and finally prove myself,
underscored by a relentless fear that I would disappointment everyone.
Perhaps behind my spiritual vocation and passion to be of service
was a broken soul’s agenda to be wanted and loved.
Child and Teenage Sarah
Child Sarah darted away from me
every chance she could.
She felt neglected by her mother,
ignored by her spiritual community,
and different than other children around her.
But she was just fine on her own
and could take care of herself
thank you very much!
That lone-wolf,
refusal-to-ask-for-help attitude
is one I could relate to.
Connecting with child Sarah helped me admit
how different from others and lonely I feel,
and how much I yearn for, yet avoid, community.
Interacting with teenage Sarah
was like interacting with a middle finger.
One phrase best describes her attitude
toward me, you, her parents, her community,
and all spiritual authorities:
Fuck
you.
I have always had to hold down my “middle finger,”
which wants to raise at just about every spiritual authority
or religious institution in existence, especially the Church.
I thought it was just because I was a freedom-loving rebel
who was told as a child I couldn’t be a priest,
and who now takes a heretic’s delight in “sticking it to the man.”
Maybe it’s also because I’ve had
a supremely pissed-off spiritually ostracized teenager
trapped inside me for two thousand years.
Adult Sarah
Working with adult Sarah was like
working in the pitch-black dark.
She had been buried underground for so long
that she was an empty shell
—pale, skeletal, and starved of Life.
When I first found her, she could barely register me.
She had given up on ever being found.
She also didn’t want to be found.
She believed she was an epic failure,
and felt unworthy of Life or Love.
When I approached her, no matter how softly,
she vehemently turned away from me
toward the desolate darkness behind her.
[deep breath]
Though I visited Sarah frequently
and our relationship grew stronger and healthier,
Sarah’s three main fragments
—the fetus, newborn, and dying adult—
refused to come home with me
for reasons I could not figure out.
I quickly learned that I could not force
Sarah to do anything,
nor could I control this process.
I also experienced that it’s downright abusive
to feed a fragmented soul spiritual platitudes like:
“There is no past or future; there is only now.”
“Just let it go.”
“Don’t get stuck in your story.”
“Focus on the light and stay positive.”
Soul work necessitates that we stick to our story
or stay in the dark or sink under water
for as fucking long as we need to.
Working with Sarah was confronting,
to say the least.
Though foreign in shape and story,
Sarah was more than familiar
in feelings and energy.
She had been kicking and screaming,
or silent and steaming,
underneath every aspect of my life,
including every relationship I had entered (and exited),
each book I had written,
not to mention all my health conditions
and spiritual ambitions.
Sarah had been hiding in plain sight.
On one occasion, when I was struggling
with immense feelings of guilt and loss
around leaving town for a few months
without my intimate partner
in order to write this book,
our couple’s therapist asked me:
“Who did that in your life?
Who left you to pursue their path?”
I could make plenty of sensible mental associations
for why I was feeling the way I was,
like because I was weaned from my mother,
or because my dad traveled a lot for work when I was a child.
Or because some of my friends were so focused
on their personal transformation
that they didn’t focus as much on our human connection.
(I did live in Northern California for eleven years.)
Or maybe I feared abandoning an aspect of myself,
like my femininity,
by pursuing my spiritual path
—a traditionally masculine endeavor.
And so on and so forth.
But later that night, while taking a shower,
I doubled over
as another truth washed over my body,
as tangible as the hot water itself.
Sarah’s parents left her to pursue their spiritual mission!
And I’m desperately trying not to do the same thing to someone I love.
While Sarah’s feelings are undeniably universal,
they also felt like the intensely personal feelings
of a tormented girl from two thousand years ago,
which resulted from her particular life experiences.
They also felt like the feelings that had erupted
out of me
after my meeting with Marion Woodman.
Although I tried not to take detours from my life,
crossovers happened so often
that I wished I could take Sarah to therapy.
But I didn’t.
Because how the hell was I supposed to share this
and not be diagnosed as delusional
or suffering from a host of other pathologies.
Yet, what became difficult to deny
was that whenever I went back to “Sarah’s life,”
something almost always shifted in my life.
For example, when Sarah first revealed herself
I was suffering through a year-long writer’s block
around my second book.
I tried many different things to help break my block
—therapy, writing exercises, self-help practices, coaches, shamans,
psychics, silent retreats, expressive arts, flower essences—
but nothing had worked.
The day after working with Sarah’s resistance to her life’s work,
my writer’s block broke,
and I was then able to complete Red Hot and Holy.
It wasn’t always this dramatic,
but it was frequently noticeable.
My work with Sarah was (and still is) therapeutic,
but as months turned into years
it became harder for me to believe that Sarah was a delusion
or just a psychological exercise like active imagination
or only an archetype, symbol, metaphor
or fantastical person from the past
who I was projecting upon in order to heal.
I had to admit to myself what I was terrified to admit
from the moment I first became aware of her:
Sarah felt as real as I did.
Before we move on, I want to clear away
a few cosmic cobwebs.
I do not receive “visitations” from Sarah
or experience visions of her.
This is not a psychic seeing.
This is a human remembering.
Until our reunion, which you will read about later,
I experienced Sarah as a being separate from me,
and I simultaneously felt myself as that separated being.
My memories are not of Sarah,
but rather, from Sarah.
Put differently: information about Sarah
does not come from an external source,
nor is it “presented” to me,
nor are my memories “inserted” into me.
I mention this because synthetic memories
and the resulting, often intense, simulated emotions
are a common cosmic phenomenon and trickery,
and one of the reasons why people believe they are
reincarnations of someone “important” in the past.
This spiritual subterfuge works because we humans
long to feel special and like our existence matters.
Plus we have shadows; covert ambitions; repressed desires for power;
and myriad unconscious parts, wounds, and needy aspects of ourselves
—including sincere yearnings to be of service.
Rigorous psychological and shadow work,
vigilant energetic boundaries and discernment,
and ongoing multidimensional self-inquiry
are a must for those of us who get tapped
on the shoulder by a possible “past incarnation,”
especially if it claims to be someone
“significant” from the past.
Remember: Feel for the Real.
Feel for that which can’t be faked or forged.
If your experiences are shiny and showy
like you’re visiting a multidimensional multiplex,
or if they feel overpowering, disembodied, or cosmic,
you’ve probably bypassed the soul realm.
The soul realm is subtle, grounding, sobering.
It brings you down and in, not up and out.
Soul memories are somewhat muted,
like recalling a tune you haven’t heard for decades.
Soul memories are familiar,
manifest from and in your body,
and should be directly related to,
and reflected in, your ordinary life.
A soul fragment should feel like a part of you.
Often a painful, shameful, traumatized, or unacceptable part of you
for those are common reasons why it isn’t integrated.
To be blunt:
I am not using Sarah for a career boost
or to set myself up as the next Big Thing.
However, I fully realize and admit
that sharing my experiences of Sarah
as part of my own soul
can appear as though I am claiming
to be someone “special.”
But the more I sit in this precarious position
the more I realize that that’s partly because
most people don’t know Sarah’s story.
And because of the cosmic falsifications, religious distortions,
and spiritual projections that smother Jesus and Magdalene
and, really, most prominent spiritual figures from the past.
It’s tough to acknowledge the mundane and messy humanity
of spiritual teachers, leaders, and sages like Jesus and Magdalene
and the equally powerful and uniquely special divinity
that exists within ourselves.
Nor is my work with Sarah about searching for secret teachings,
uncovering conspiracies, corralling (and correcting) historical facts,
scavenging archeological sites, scrutinizing ancient texts, debating theology,
starting a new religion, or harboring elitist mystical knowledge.
What I share in “The Past”
about Jesus and Magdalene
and Life and Love,
Every Body Knows.
My work with Sarah
is about embodying my soul
so I can be a better human
and bring a bit more
Love and Life to this planet.
When I was with Sarah and my Parents
in the soul realm,
nothing felt more Real.
But, when I re-entered
the loud dominance
of everyday reality,
my intimate connection
with Sarah and my Parents
often felt unreal.
My rational mind
and the collective consciousness
beat my Redvelations to a pulp.
However, this Universe is extremely persistent
and our souls, quite determined.
Often a sign or synchronicity
would brush across my life in such a way that
my doubts and disbelief would diffuse . . .
temporarily.
A few small, but sweet, examples:
Soon after Sarah revealed herself,
the supposed tibia bone of Mary Magdalene
left its sacred nook in Europe for the first time ever
and went on a world tour,
in my hometown,
exactly on my birthday.
When I approached the glass-encased
ancient bone
and laid a red rose at its base,
every part of me was embraced
by nothing other
than my Mother’s Love.
One agonizing morning a few years after Sarah’s reveal,
I felt like I was making zero progress
and that Sarah would be stuck forever in her painful past.
On our afternoon walk, my dogs pulled me toward
a booming (and hot-dog grilling) graduation party
with a bright-red sign flapping in the wind that read:
“The Future Is Yours, Sarah!”
[pause]
Although I might wow you (or not)
by sharing hundreds of signs and synchronicities
related to Sarah,
I don’t want to have to prove to you
Something that is Real for me.
More important than the signs and synchronicities
are the feelings that accompany them.
Feelings that relay far more Truth and Love
and gut-punching honesty
than all my doubts, thoughts, and theories
about this baffling soul work.
And so that’s what I began to trust:
my feelings.
Ironically, I often avoided Sarah
because of her feelings.
The Runaway
Though I consciously accepted this surreal soul work
I was doing with Sarah,
unconsciously I tried to run away from it.
But I couldn’t run away for too long
without Sarah tripping me up.
A few years after I became aware of Sarah,
I was preparing a talk for a women’s conference
when I was struck by severe and debilitating migraines,
which were uncommon occurrences for me.
A gifted and highly trained woman
did a shamanic journey
to try to locate the cause of my pain.
She called me after the journey, her voice hesitant:
“Sera, in the journey I just did for you regarding the root of your migraines,
I saw a pregnant woman running for her life and the life of her baby.”
[pause]
“The woman was Mary Magdalene.”
I shook my aching noggin.
I had avoided checking in with Sarah while writing the talk
and so now she was checking into my head.
I immediately got off the phone,
zoomed in on Sarah,
and found her to be freaking out.
She did not want me including
an incendiary part about Jesus in my talk.
She was terrified of me being publicly linked to him
and felt certain I was putting my life in danger.
It took a lot of personal coaching to get Sarah
to stop banging on my poor head
and to get us on board a flight to Denver,
where I was able to deliver the talk without being killed,
which helped Sarah trust me and my public work
a little more.
Unfortunately, I have many stories like this one.
When I didn’t take Sarah into account,
I was reminded in some gentle or rough way
that whether I liked it or not,
understood it or not,
or even agreed with it or not,
Sarah and I were intrinsically tied together.
But my, oh my, am I a resistant one.
For years, Sarah was my secret.
While a few close friends knew about her,
I kept Sarah behind the red-velvet curtains
of my public life.
However, it became clear
while writing Red Hot and Holy
that I needed to include Sarah
because she was intimately related to the Red Lady
whom the entire book was devoted to.
The fear of sharing Sarah publicly
was beyond anything I had experienced
thus far.
So, I was meticulous.
I only shared small, digestible bites
of our relationship in Red Hot and Holy,
carefully guarding against what could cause others to reject us,
focusing on the more archetypal elements of Sarah
that we all share.
One year after Red Hot and Holy was published,
I was invited to facilitate a private retreat.
As the date of the retreat approached,
the man who invited me sent me a thoughtful email
informing me that I did not have to hold anything back
and I was welcome to do my Soul’s Work
with his open-hearted community.
Usually I overplanned, micromanaged, and white-knuckled it
through every minute of my public events
due to my staggering stage fright.
I desperately wanted to do my “Soul’s Work”
at these events, but I didn’t entirely know what it was.
So after I read this man’s email, I panicked.
My fears of failing at what was being asked of me
were so convincing that it took all I had
not to write the man back and cancel the event.
My overblown reaction to his unassuming invitation
was a clue that something deeper was going on,
so I ventured into the soul realm.
I found myself in what had unfortunately come to be a familiar scene:
when Sarah gave her Divine Soul to the demon during the crucifixion.
I suddenly understood that doing what this man was inviting
me to do didn’t just feel intimidating for the usual reasons,
it also felt impossible.
For how could Sarah or Sera
do her Soul’s Work in the world
without her Soul?
But then I felt my Red Lady’s Loving Presence,
and I gained Her Bigger Perspective.
I Realized that no matter
what it appeared like or felt like,
what was actually impossible
from her Divine Soul
in the first place.
It was a sinister sleight of hand, a devious illusion
that the demon did everything he could to perpetuate.
The image in the soul realm was of Sarah
staring at a blank wall, bawling her eyes out,
not seeing that what was behind the thin wall
and surrounding her, thickly, on all sides
was her Red Lady,
her Infinite Divine Soul
that never goes away
no matter what she does
or doesn’t do.
Now, with the help from her “outside eyes”
—myself and our Lady—
Sarah’s walled reality ceased being her only reality.
Sarah stopped weeping.
She slowly walked toward the fake wall
and, using barely any force,
pushed it,
causing it to fall back in a cloud of dust.
The always-present Red Light it had previously blocked
shone brightly on her awestruck face.
And, just like that, the spell broke.
My mind was clear
and my body calm.
Unfortunately, demons aren’t as quick to dispel as their illusions.
Later that same night,
I woke up in claws.
It felt like my left ovary was being ripped out of my body.
The pain quite literally knocked me off my feet
—and kept me off them for a day.
Afterward, I was weak but determined.
For the demon usually attacked
when I took a step away from his control
and toward my own freedom.
Two days later, I met the man who had invited me to facilitate the retreat.
When we shook hands, Sarah flipped out, as did my stomach,
but I didn’t understand why
she was having such an upsetting reaction to this kind man.
When I made it to dinner,
the man told me he had recruited men
in his community to guard me during the event.
My eyes widened in surprise, and my face flushed.
I had never had “guards” for an event before
and could not imagine why I might need them.
Despite my recent Redvelation
and my ample human protection,
the retreat had a rough start.
My self-doubt and stage fright shook me to pieces as usual.
And because I had made a point not to bring
my customary pile of copious notes, I had no idea what to do.
The participants became restless
and I sensed their disappointment.
My shoulders slumped
and my head dropped
in defeat.
But then I felt my Lady straighten my spine
and gently brush the hair away
from Sarah’s downturned face,
letting us Know that
She Was Here
with us
no matter what happened
or did not happen.
And then I Realized if She was Here,
other Divine Souls were Here as well.
With a soft but firm voice, I asked the room
to make way for our Souls.
Then I began to support the reconnection
of each human with their distinct Divine Soul.
It was simple, natural, and oh-so-fucking beautiful.
It was the most Real thing I had ever had the honor to participate in.
And I Knew, without a doubt, that it was Sarah’s Work.
Like the swell of a wave from the center of the ocean,
I felt the grace and the gift of Sarah’s previous predicament and pain.
Only someone who has felt disconnected from her own Soul
can empathize and help others who might feel the same way.
For a brief moment, I was okay with Sarah’s blemished past.
For a few hours, I felt okay exposing both
my humanity and my divinity publicly.
In other words, for a short while I was okay with just being myself.
Later that evening after the retreat,
when a few of us were kicking back
and jamming on musical instruments,
the man who had invited me and created the event
turned to me with tears in his eyes and said:
“I know how completely crazy this is going to sound,
but I feel like I need to say it anyway.”
He took a big gulp of air.
“I invited you here because . . .
because I feel like I owe you something . . .
like, I owe Sarah something.”
He exhaled and looked away from me
as he played a haunting, heart-ripping rhythm
on his handheld steel drum.
“I keep sensing that I was, like, some kind of guard for her and her mother.
And, I remember that I took her somewhere . . .
on a boat . . . through a cavern . . . to someone who was not to be trusted.
I did it out of greed . . . or something similar.”
His hands never stopped beating softly on that drum.
He turned back toward me,
his eyes swirls of sorrow, shame, and regret,
and sputtered, “I’m sorry . . . I’m so sorry, Sarah.”
My eyes matched his in wetness
as time collapsed between us.
We Saw each other as only souls can see.
We Felt each other as only souls can feel.
And then Sarah nodded.
His apology was accepted,
then and now.
We turned back toward the group,
ate some delicious Indian food,
and laughed the night away.
[pause]
Let me reiterate in case what happened wasn’t clear:
a soul who once
took Sarah to her death place
because of her Soul’s Work
created a safe-enough space for her
to bring her Soul’s Work back to life,
now.
I don’t know what else to call
this kind of thing
except Holy.
And I know in every fiber of my being
that this kind of Holiness is happening,
to each and every one of us,
whether we are conscious of it or not.
[deep breath]
There are forces inside and outside of us
that want us to think we’re “crazy”
for having these kinds of experiences,
thereby succeeding in separating us from
the only Reality that can make us Whole.
We believe these forces
not only at the cost of our soul,
but also at the cost of our body
and this very planet.
We need to believe in
Something Bigger:
Ourselves.
Soul Pregnancy
Although the retreat provided
an enormous healing for my soul,
in the months following,
I grew sicker and sicker.
I saw holistic and allopathic doctors,
but no one could determine the cause
or could help me feel better.
I was chronically nauseated, fatigued, and dizzy.
I woke up around 3:00 a.m. almost every night
feeling so ill that I was unable to go back to sleep.
I couldn’t sleep or eat,
exercise or work,
much less socialize.
I got to such a weak point that I knew,
in that deep-down belly kind of way,
that if this continued,
I wouldn’t.
One night, as I lay awake begging for some relief,
I received an image that I was pregnant
not with a child,
but with this book.
Then I heard a whisper:
“I need to tell my story.”
I recognized the voice.
It was Sarah’s.
This was an unwanted
and unplanned pregnancy,
for sure.
And I reacted as such.
I had just spent three years cooped up in the Red tent
birthin’ my second book, and I was biting at the bit
to stop focusing on myself
and start doing more spiritual activism and service work.
I had also included Sarah in Red Hot and Holy
and was letting her do her Work (secretly) during my public events.
So why did I have to write an entire fucking book about her?
Before she came into my life, I was a happy woman who had her shit together.
Working with Sarah was like living with a dark cloud hanging over me.
She was so goddamn depressing, dramatic, and needy,
and she was messing with my career and making me sick!
Why couldn’t she behave like a normal soul fragment,
or whatever she was,
get over herself and her crappy life already,
and let me get on with my life?
As I stomped my feet in this puddle of petulancy,
my Lady decided to drop a gargantuan truth bomb
that exploded my sense of self and Sarah.
Bombs Away
Sarah is much more than a soul fragment.
Sarah constitutes the majority of your human soul,
and you cannot effectively contribute to this planet,
nor can your body continue living,
without her.
You are the part of Sarah’s soul
that moved forward and experienced other lifetimes,
while she stayed left behind.
You are Sarah’s only piece in present time,
and you are the only one who can bring her home.
One way is through remembering
and writing her story,
which is also your story.
You will write your soul back into your body,
and you will save both of your lives
in the process.
My Lady finished
by making the hand gesture
of a bomb going off:
BOOM!
Reverberations
What was even more shocking than what my Lady boomed
was that the truth She spoke resounded through my body
like it had always been there.
Like my body had been patiently holding
my soul’s truth for me
until my conscious mind could catch up
and my ego could handle it.
Holy shit monkeys, I thought.
I am not who I think I am.
I am not some flexible, independent creature
who is creating her own reality (woot woot!).
My current existence is the rigid result
of a past reality.
I’m the runoff of a runaway soul.
My meeting with Marion Woodman
replayed itself from a new angle.
Losing my soul was not just a psychological condition,
a slogan for a misdirected career, or even a mystical crisis.
It was also a metaphysical matter.
Most of me was not here.
Most of me was tied up in the past.
And, although I had been going back
and untying Sarah knot by knot,
I still didn’t feel intimately connected with life,
with other humans, or with my body.
Sarah and I were both still separate and suffering.
But remembering and writing down
my soul’s entire story
would stimulate a whole other kind of suffering.
Because it required that I face and feel
everything I have avoided facing and feeling.
As the saying goes: we can run, but we can’t hide.
Eventually the past will catch up with us . . .
and, uh, impregnate us.
Every mother knows birth is painful.
But it’s the only way to bring forth new life.
It was time to birth Sarah back to Life.
And, in so doing,
I would come back to Life.
To catalyze this process,
my partner of three years went to India
and fell for another woman.
And then he fell for another woman
after he returned to the States.
It was as if the ground fell
from under my feet
and took my heart with it.
Now my partner did not physically act on his feelings,
but nonetheless I was besieged by my wounded feelings of
rejection, abandonment, betrayal, and feeling unlovable
just to name a few.
While these are common feelings to have when your
partner strays physically, emotionally, or energetically,
the force of them was a clue that what I was reacting to
was not primarily based in present time.
Years before, right after my encounter with Marion Woodman,
my boyfriend at the time also fell for another woman.
Back then, I did everything I could
to quash my extreme feelings
because they did not seem very “spiritual.”
They made me feel flawed and vulnerable,
unattractive and wrong.
Feeling my feelings felt way too risky.
In so doing, I would surely lose the man and the life
I was desperately trying to hold onto.
Also, I did not understand the difference
between emoting and feeling.
Emoting skims our surface.
Feeling comes from our core.
Emoting might temporarily release something in us,
but feeling permanently transmutes us.
It’s a bit like a champagne bottle popping
versus a volcano erupting.
One sprays all over the place and needs to be wiped up.
The other explodes due to natural pressure and creates new land.
Although emoting can make a mess,
feeling threatens our life.
Point is: my unwillingness to feel is a pattern.
For most of my adult life, I kept myself busy:
focusing on my partner and the needs of the people I was aiming to serve;
writing books, giving retreats, and following my vocation;
fixing—er, “improving”—myself via health regimens,
relationship books, and antiaging lotions;
analyzing myself psychologically and awakening myself spiritually.
In other words: I do everything I can, including
spiritual, psychological, and service work,
in order not to face and feel
my soul’s wounds.
But there’s been a black hole at the bottom
of all my clever coping mechanisms.
A black hole that my boyfriend
unknowingly pushed me toward,
even though in reality
I’d been getting sucked into it
for a while.
Through the lens of my soul,
the situation with my boyfriend
offered me another chance
to face and feel my soul’s wounds.
Through the lens of my ego
nothing appeared more threatening.
Our egos have built
multilayered defenses
around our wounds.
Our defenses are incredibly helpful
and absolutely necessary.
They allow us to grow strong enough
to eventually handle our big feelings.
They help us float without drowning.
But
they also prevent us from fully Living and fully Loving.
To Live and to Love means we have to be willing to
sink to the bottom and feel.
When we are ready.
I had reached a point where I was
safe and strong enough
to face and feel my soul’s wounds.
I had also reached a point
where the pain of avoiding my wounds
had grown close in proportion
to the pain of actually feeling them.
Though I could leave my boyfriend,
which my ego felt justified to do,
I knew now that he wasn’t
the source of my pain.
My wounds had been with me long before
my boyfriend had entered my life
and would still be there if he exited my life.
Needless to say, there was nowhere else to go
but into the black hole of my soul.
Feelings
One evening, after another distressing conversation
with my boyfriend, I felt the familiar pain start to rise.
But instead of defending myself against it,
I decided to allow myself to feel it.
With concentrated effort,
I let down my defenses
and waited for impact.
The pain started to come in waves,
pushing me down,
filling my lungs,
and breaking across my body.
Right when I thought things were calming,
another wave would crash over me,
making it hard to breathe or reach the surface.
Although I had felt pain before,
a lot of it actually,
this pain felt different,
and more than what I previously knew as pain.
My hands began to make
sweeping gestures
down my heaving chest.
I moaned and moved,
swore and struggled
to stay with the pain as best I could
while my boyfriend watched me,
holding his hands over his heart.
Although part of me felt embarrassed,
a wiser part of me knew that
there was something significant
and even sacred going on here,
and I needed a witness.
Through feeling my feelings,
I was beginning to Incarnate.
I was starting to become human.
While I continued to stay in and work on my relationship,
this process eventually required a bigger container.
Call it Lady Luck, a gobsmacking blessing,
or “I must have done something in a past life”
(sorry, it had to be said at some point),
but my loving and generous aunt and uncle gifted me
with a four-month stay at their beautiful, vacated condo
outside Charleston, South Carolina.
I needed this place like a fetus needs an umbilical cord.
It was here that I started to write Sarah’s story
over a tidal marsh
bursting with dolphins, frogs, wood storks,
and the pungent smell of pluff mud.
Every night after I finished writing,
I would drive to the nearby beach on Sullivan’s Island
where I would float in the endless motion of Her Oceanic Body,
then crawl onto Her soft sands and feel my body.
I discovered for myself
what many wise ones know:
My body is my soul’s story.
My facial asymmetry and curved shoulders;
twisted left side and extra-tight hamstrings;
difficulty keeping on weight; narrow, resistant feet;
weak muscles; and a mitral-valve prolapsed heart
are some of the physical reflections of my
soul’s experiences and my disembodiment.
For the body and soul belong together.
When they are separate they become susceptible
to all kinds of structural abnormalities, ailments, and attacks.
And no supplement, bodywork, yoga, healthy diet and lifestyle,
allopathic medicine, or alternative healing modality
can help my body unless I’m also working with my soul.
Likewise, no amount of spiritual, psychological, energetic, or soul work
can help me unless I’m also working with my body,
receiving its unrivaled wisdom and following its trustworthy guidance.
Our body, like our soul, has Organic Intelligence.
Our body stores our memories and feelings,
but it also knows unerringly how to release them.
There are noises it can make:
whispers and roars, whistles and chants,
sobs and laughter, sighs and moans,
snorts and gasps, slaps and claps.
There are movements it can make:
fast and slow, chaotic and rhythmic,
animalistic and ethereal.
To help us release our feelings
and express our soul
through our body,
there is Nature.
Oh, Mama.
as a park or a backyard,
mountains, desert, woods, beaches.
Her vibrant shoots of green even rebelliously
break through concrete,
flashing us along highways and strip malls.
A soul suggestion:
put some bare skin on Her,
at least once a day.
Feel Her unremitting support,
Her Wide-Open Welcome of Your All.
Let Her teach you how to be Wild again
and mirror back your primal perfection.
After I felt and released what was needed each night,
I began to move in ways I never had before.
The movements I made on that beach
were native and natural,
uniquely my own,
and they changed like the weather.
Some nights, I grabbed at and gobbled up
the salty fresh air around me
like it was a vitamin I was severely deficient in.
Other times, I forcefully pushed away
anything unnatural that had been “fed” to me,
lifetime after lifetime.
Occasionally I stomped and growled,
shoving my feet deep into the sand,
marking my physical territory,
wordlessly declaring my right to be here.
Often, I would bring my iPod,
hit “shuffle” (allowing the Divine to be my DJ),
and dance my ass off with the elements.
Sometimes when I made it to that beach,
I was too tired to move much at all
and I poured myself onto the ground.
Lying there,
my human body
surrendered to
and supported by
Her earthly Body,
I Remembered
how it first felt
to Be Here,
with Her
and
in Her.
In the safety of my Mother’s Womb,
I was nourished, revitalized,
and lovingly reintroduced to physicality.
This was how I wrote Sarah’s story.
And this was how I became ready to Return.
One day, as I shut down my computer I heard:
It’s Time to Return.
I had no idea what my Lady was talking about,
but my body sure did because I almost threw up.
Attempting to calm my queasy belly,
I asked my Lady to be a bit less cryptic.
And that’s when it felt like a stretched-out,
two-thousand-year-old rubber band
was snapping me
back
into a place I never,
ever,
wanted to return to.
There’s a theory that intentionally returning
to the past will change our present.
The belief is that we can re-experience, re-enact, or reimagine
difficult or traumatic past events in a more conscious and empowering way,
thereby creating a happier and healthier present life.
Although I had been practicing feeling my wounds
and releasing my feelings in helpful ways,
I had not returned to their Source.
And although I had been writing as Sarah,
I had also been keeping my distance, as Sera.
My Lady’s message meant no more distance.
So, I reacted like any normal person would
when told it was time
to merge with a suffering soul fragment
and return to the Source of their greatest pain.
The Explosion
“This is fucking bullshit!” I shout
at my Lady and the Universe at large.
“Why do I have to return to her life?!
Why do you keep pushing me into Sarah’s pain?!”
I’m only pushing you into yourself, my Lady answers.
I throw my hands up in the air,
“This whole thing is crazy-making!”
It is soul-making.
“Oh really?” I shoot back, “Cause this feels like needless suffering.”
I know it can feel that way sometimes.
“No you don’t! You really, really don’t!” I spit.
My rage rips through time,
leveling the self-imposed walls
between Sarah and Sera,
closing the distance between us
and opening two millennia worth
of pent-up sentiments.
“And you certainly don’t know
what it was like
to be there
when It All went down!!!” I yell.
You are angry, Sarah.
“Uh, ‘angry’ doesn’t quite cover it, Lady!
Not only did I experience
the bitter and brutal ending
of my family,
but I have since witnessed the erasure of my Lineage
and the extermination of those devoted to It!
So now historians and archaeologists can find little
to no physical evidence of my parents’ marriage or my Lineage,
and scholars can only posit tentative theories based on partial,
eroded, unorthodox, and thereby unacceptable texts.
When a popular novel, oral legend, or piece of papyrus shakes things up,
most regard it as fictional, unreliable, fake, or sensationalist.
This book I’m writing will most likely be as unwelcome and harshly judged,
as I was when I slid out between my mother’s legs!
Those who take my parents’ marriage seriously are seen as
misguided at best, delusional at least, and demonic at worst
—not to mention kooky conspiracy theorists or flakes.
Then, there’s the cosmic influence and imposters
and New Age portrayals of my parents,
which have become almost worse than the Church!
There are thousands of supposed ‘jesuses’ and ‘magdalenes’
beaming down or strutting around.
And, don’t even get me started on the bloodline bullshit!
My family has been inflated into archetypes, ascended masters, and saviors
with heady books, cheesy channelings, and unreachable proportions.
And they’ve been deflated into psychotherapeutic complexes,
myths, symbols, and creative exercises
—imprisoned in the psyche or relegated to the imaginal.
The Truth of Us
now registers as the false in us
or the not quite real.
So much so
that even
I doubt
if we were Real.
So much so
that I doubt
if I am Real.”
I choke on an ocean of fire
as I feel just how furious
I am at humanity
for treating me like I don’t exist!
For buying the lies
and perpetuating my prison!
underground
by myself!
My Lady cuts in: What do you want to say to the world, Sarah?
“I EXIST!!!”
I roar and slap my chest.
“I!
[slap]
FUCKING!
[slap]
EXIST!!!”
[slap]
My head drops,
my stinging hands leave my chest
and find my thighs, my nails dig deep.
“Even though I fucked it up, I still deserve my own life!
Even though I’m ashamed of what I did, I was still there!
I was with them! I was their daughter!
Goddamnit! I haven’t even been allowed my own suffering!”
A spark ignites within my first fetus body
and I allow it to grow and grow
into a raging fire
that blazes through every body I’ve ever had,
collecting momentum and gaining power
until it hits my present-day body.
bodysoulmouth
and I
EXPLODE!!!
The sound shocks me.
It’s unlike anything I have ever heard.
It blasts through my body and this reality.
It shakes my muscles and the walls.
It burns so hot that I smell smoke and taste ash.
When the explosion finishes,
I feel like I must be, too.
But my Lady gently coaxes,
What else angers you?
Another surge fills my body.
“Every time I walk into a church,
it reminds me that we lost and they won!
All I want to do is smash the crucifix!”
Why don’t you imagine doing so, my Lady suggests.
I grab a large wooden spoon from the kitchen and run to the bedroom
where I fervently beat the pillows and mattress with everything I’ve got left,
all the while imagining that I’m smashing a crucifix to smithereens.
When I’m thoroughly wiped out,
I sink to the floor in a swirl of feathers.
Staring at my reddened, sore hands,
I start to sob.
fully expressed rage
opens a doorway to grief.
I grieve for Sarah and as Sarah.
I weep for everything and everyone that was lost.
I cry like I have needed to for two thousand years.
After a good, long, wet while,
I mumble through a mound of soggy tissues:
“Because Christianity is a positive source for many,
it’s felt more compassionate, evolved, and just plain easier
to ignore my feelings and memories and keep my mouth shut.”
[blowing my nose]
“But I have done so at the cost of my own soul.”
My Lady softly offers: Your soul’s truth
might be different than others’ truth,
but it still has the right to be shared.
So tell us more of your truth . . .
Embers from my heart fly out of my mouth.
“The Church has us focusing up, at Him,
instead of also down, at Her
and inward, at Ourselves.
Most people can acknowledge
that the Feminine has been excluded,
but if I’m also missing at that cross,
then every Soul is missing!
The Church’s crucifix is one piece of Our Whole Truth!
It’s a misrepresentation of the Nature of this Universe!
How can we Liberate and Love
ourselves, each other, and this planet
if we have no Real examples of
The Divine Masculine
in Love
with
the Divine Feminine
holding
their Divine Child?
Metaphors, myths, symbols, deities, and archetypes
are potent, helpful, and indispensable,
but nothing beats genuine human experience!
And that’s what my parents exemplified
more than anything else: human beings in Love!”
My Lady murmurs:
So Sarah,
go be a human
in Love
with them.
Sacred Wound
Immediately an inner guard forms a blockade
around what feels like the basement of my being
and the place I need to go in order to
“be a human in Love.”
I suddenly feel like a trespasser in my own home.
My consciousness is unwanted and setting off alarms.
“What’s down there?” I breathlessly ask my Lady.
Your Sacred Wound, Sarah.
This is different than the Wound of Incarnation,
which is the wound every soul receives
when they first feel the intensity
of being incarnate on earth.
The Sacred Wound is more intimate and personal
and usually inflicted by those closest to you.
It is the Wound of your wounds.
“Oh, is that all?” I half-jokingly respond
and then mutter, “No wonder I detest basements.”
To be human is to be wounded, Sera.
It is a difficult, but important, part of Life.
While there are many ways around your wounds,
the Way of Love is through them.
After years of working with Sarah,
I had become more familiar with my wounds,
but becoming conscious of my Sacred Wound
—the Wound that initiated all my wounds—
feels almost unendurable, and it appears impenetrable.
Not only is my inner guard surrounding the wound
but I sense a prowler too:
the demon.
Surprised, I ask my Divine Soul:
“Why is the demon hanging around my Sacred Wound?
Is it because he relishes my pain?”
There are different kinds of pain
one experiences in life.
Interfering forces like the demon
create synthetic darkness,
inflict unnatural and undue pain,
and cause unnecessary destruction.
This kind of interference, as well as
abuse, cruelty, and physical pain
are not the kinds of pain
one needs to re-experience.
The pain one is encouraged to feel,
when they are ready,
is a natural pain
that comes from
the organic experience of being human.
If resisted, this natural pain becomes stuck.
It blocks the flow of Life and Love,
preventing the soul from healing, evolving,
and expressing what it originally came here to express.
The demon pokes and prods your wounds,
but he does not want you to face
and fully feel your soul’s wounds.
Because he knows that will be the beginning of his end.
He knows that re-entering
your Sacred Wound
is how you re-enter yourself.
Now that revs my engines.
My demon is my greatest adversary.
He has been tailing me and targeting me for two millennia,
doing every clever thing he can,
including coming through the shadows of those closest to me
in order to keep me separate from my Red Soul.
Maybe this is how I finally release his grip.
I reapproach my inner guards.
“Let me enter,” I demand.
My guards cross their arms.
I try a new approach, “OK, I won’t enter
my Sacred Wound yet,
but at least let me go down the stairs.”
The guards shift and I move past them,
into the depths of my depths
until I encounter my Sacred Wound,
pulsing with unfiltered pain.
Like my Wound of Incarnation,
my Sacred Wound happened
during the crucifixion,
specifically
when I felt abandoned by my parents.
Although I do not enter my Sacred Wound,
the feeling of it is so dire,
so disheartening, so devoid of any light
that I have to pull myself back
in order not to sink into hopeless oblivion.
It’s not easy to find words for this feeling,
but here is my best attempt:
My Sacred Wound is feeling unloved by Love Itself.
At some point, every child
experiences feeling unloved
by those closest to them.
I was no different.
But my soul took this common experience particularly hard
because those who wounded me by “not loving me”
were Jesus and Magdalene
whom my soul recognized and experienced
as the Divine Masculine and Divine Feminine
embodiments of True Love on Earth.
So if I wasn’t loved by Them,
then how could I be loved
by anyone or anything?
I felt so far beyond unlovable,
I was off the map.
The feeling was insufferable,
so I protected myself.
and have avoided True Love
ever since.
And I chose false love,
the kind my demon offered me.
Yes, false love has hurt me,
but True Love has destroyed me.
There is something else I become aware of:
an unconscious belief about myself
that was formed in reaction
to my Sacred Wound.
As a fetus, I felt there had to be a reason why
I was unloved by Love Itself.
And the reason I came up with was
that it must be because
I am an evil soul.
This previously unconscious belief about myself helps explain
why I first rejected and sold my Soul in the womb
and why it was so easy for that man to convince me
that Red was evil and poisoning True Love
when I was in that underground cell.
It also hasn’t helped that evil
is often depicted as Red.
In fact, a former close friend of mine told me
just before Red Hot and Holy was to be published
that she psychically sensed that my Red Lady
was malevolent.
It felt like my universe imploded.
I could barely function
and almost pulled the book.
Now I know why.
My friend shot a bullet directly into my Sacred Wound
right when I was about to reveal my Red Soul to the world.
This is another example of a trans-incarnational unconscious
that stays with us lifetime after lifetime,
often attracting or recreating similar situations in each life
thereby providing opportunities to discover and heal the original wounds.
With that in mind, it’s important to share
a bit more about the nature of core wounds.
Psychologists know that core wounds can happen at any time,
but tend to occur when we are between zero to two years old,
which means we can be wounded while in the womb.
We become wounded from many different things, such as
not being picked up one time when we are crying in our crib, ongoing neglect,
abuse, the absence of a parent, preferential treatment of a sibling during a fight,
or overhearing a family member say something unkind about us, and so on.
Because most of us are wounded at such a young age,
it’s not biologically safe for us to blame our caregivers (yet)
because they are our only means of survival and appear like gods to us
(Whom am I to blame? Jesus and Magdalene?).
So we blame ourselves instead.
We come up with a reason for why this has happened to us,
which usually results in the belief that
it happened because something is (very) wrong with us.
We create these false beliefs about ourselves
often when we are preverbal.
However, as adults it’s important to become conscious of,
and try to verbalize, the beliefs that formed in reaction to the wound
because they influence our decisions, generate our behaviors,
and stimulate our strategies.
Most commonly, we try to prove that we are the opposite
of our wound-based beliefs,
which often propels us to do what we do in life (or our lives).
So for example, if we unconsciously believe we are worthless,
we will try to prove that we are valuable and strive to be
the best financier, mother, spiritual teacher, surgeon, or coach.
In reaction to my Sacred Wound,
I have done my best to prove that I am not “evil”
by trying to be as “spiritual” as possible,
and my humanity has suffered enormously as a result.
I’ve also worked myself to the bone
in order to be loved again by Love Itself.
[deep breath]
When we are ready to become aware of
our core wounds and resulting false beliefs
and we recognize how we’ve been living our life
(or lives) in reaction to them,
we need to be extra-gentle with ourselves,
because it’s a lot to take in.
At this point in my process, I call “mercy,”
and temporarily shut the door on the soul realm.
I take long walks on the beach and play with dogs,
eat some good ol’ Southern comfort food,
and watch comedy shows . . . for a few weeks.
Soul work demands soul play,
soul food, and goofy humor.
If all my soul work is getting too much for you,
I suggest you close this book,
do something fun and nourishing,
and join me again, later.
Shadows
I hope you took a healthy break
because things are only intensifying
from here on out.
When I felt ready to enter the soul realm again,
I tiptoed down into the basement of my being.
Lurking around my wounds
were my trans-incarnational shadows
—disowned parts of me that developed
in reaction to my first life and that want to:
judge, critique, and condemn others so they feel
as evil, unlovable, and unwanted as I have felt;
abuse my power after feeling so powerless: “Kneel bastards!”;
and tear down other people’s missions that threaten my own unlived one.
And then there is my cosmic shadow.
[low whistle]
that exists in the cosmic dimension,
but influences this earthly dimension.
My cosmic shadow-queen wants to receive
everything that she feels Sarah deserves:
prestige, praise, fame, worship.
She believes that she is better than you and humanity and All of This.
She even thinks she is better than the Creator and Creatrix of this Universe.
[gulp]
I have hurt myself and many beings via my shadows,
which stem from my soul’s core wounds,
and this has been a huge motivation for me to face my past
and start the process of healing it.
My shadow work is ongoing.
However, I am a Being
of both light and dark.
Glorifying or hiding
either
ain’t my Soul’s style.
Being Real is.
Too Much
Admittedly at this point in my process,
it all just feels like too much.
I mean if this is what we humans are up against
—fetal trauma, core wounds, false beliefs, past lives,
and multidimensional shadows (that are all unconscious!)—
plus
injustice, wars, environmental devastation, disease,
poverty, synthetic spirituality, oppositional forces,
and not to mention freakin’ demons—
how does any of us stand a chance?
I’ve been afforded the time, energy, and means
and I’m still struggling,
so how do others who are dealing with much harder
and even horrific life situations embody their soul?
Becoming human feels like an impossible feat,
and being human, with all its struggles, pain, and suffering,
doesn’t seem like a very fair or worthwhile gig.
You Chose This, my Lady interrupts.
“You did NOT just say that!” I bellow back with outrage.
“You’re gonna tell that crack baby or rape victim
or Native American forced on a reservation or African slave or Holocaust survivor
or girl growing up in the slums or grieving mother who just lost her child
or bullied transgender teenager or bipolar homeless person or cancer patient
or the millions of humans who can barely find food
and are just trying to—oh I don’t know—survive
that they chose this?!
That’s the kind of unhelpful and damaging parlance
used by sanctimonious, privileged spiritual people!”
I’m not talking about other souls or their paths.
I’m talking about you and your path.
I sweep through my life as Sarah
and every life since,
then vigorously shake my head.
“Well, if this is what I ‘chose,’
then fucking take my ability
to choose away!”
The You Who Chose This was Me,
your Divine Soul.
“So, a Divine Soul, who had
never been incarnate before
chose my lives.
That makes me feel better,” I snort.
“Piece of advice from your human:
don’t choose a life
until you’ve actually experienced one!”
My Lady gracefully moves on.
You cannot be told why you chose This.
You can only be encouraged to Remember.
And you cannot Remember
with your mind.
You can only Remember
through your Heart.
So let’s Remember Together.
My Lady places Her hand on my heart.
My spinning mind slows down
as my heart heats up.
Its ever-present warmth
and always-available wisdom
start to grow
and fill me,
Reminding me of the different dimensions of choice.
There are the choices I make as a human soul,
like how I chose to reject my Soul and my mission
in my first lifetime—and in every lifetime since.
But beyond that dimension,
and beyond a few more after that,
I begin to Remember and feel a much Bigger Choice
than all my other choices combined:
The Choice I have made as a Divine Soul to Become Human.
Everything inside me recognizes this Choice.
My cells carry It,
my blood circulates It,
my spine aligns to It.
Becoming human is one of the main reasons
I chose to enter this Universe in the first place.
Living as an infinite, eternal Divine Being
with finite, temporary flesh
and feeling and experiencing everything this entails
is an unparalleled, rare, and precious opportunity.
[pause]
None of this was coming from my mind
or some “higher state of consciousness”
or spiritual sentimentality.
These are words I’m now giving to
a fresh and fearless Memory
I have always held in my heart
and felt in my body.
While my Choice to become human feels true,
my human mind can’t help but wonder
if my Being is just an experience junkie?
There has to be more to it.
Because the desire to experience things like:
birth and death, friendship and betrayal, separation and fear,
trauma and wounds, roses and thorns, earlobes and armpits,
fighting and dancing, artichokes and whale songs, dogs and dogs,
sunsets and thunderstorms, sex and hugs, burping and farting, bad haircuts,
swimming in the ocean and hiking in the mountains, singing in the shower,
mud between the toes and snowflakes on the tongue, holding hands, bee stings,
laughing so hard you pee your pants and crying so hard you see stars,
cherry pie and chipmunks, forgetting and then remembering,
shattering into pieces and then becoming whole again,
when one hasn’t before is one thing.
to experience pain and suffering
lifetime after lifetime?
My heart goes off like a multiverse of fireworks.
Oh . . .
I Chose to feel pain
and experience suffering,
lifetime after lifetime
to expand and evolve my capacity to Love.
Loving in the Divine realms is easy.
Loving as a Divine Being is effortless.
Loving in the earthly realm is not easy.
Loving as a human being takes effort.
And practice. Lots and lots of practice.
Becoming human
is the
Ultimate Teaching,
Training,
and Test of Love.
Can I Love even when
what I’m experiencing feels like
the opposite of It?
Can I Love even when I am suffering
or witnessing others suffering?
Can I Love when I can’t feel or find Love, anywhere?
Choosing to be at the crucifixion
suddenly makes “Soul Sense.”
I’ve held a false belief that love
will protect me from pain and suffering,
but True Love includes pain and suffering.
Through this Whole-Hearted Perspective and Feeling,
I needed the Wound of Incarnation I received by life
and the Sacred Wound I received by my parents
in order to learn how to Truly Love as a human on earth.
In other words, during the crucifixion
I experienced what I wanted to experience as a Divine Soul
and I received what I needed to receive as a human soul.
Not to mention I witnessed Love in Action.
The Creator and Creatrix Incarnated
to show us how
to Love
in Their Body
and in our body.
They taught through example
how to be True Love in the flesh.
They demonstrated
that it’s not easy,
but it is possible.
Through my Heart, I now Understand
that my parents had to focus
solely on each other at the crucifixion.
For not only could I not learn to Love
without my wounds,
but neither could they.
This Truth, Their Truth, Love’s Truth,
reframed my abandonment at the cross
and forgiveness found me and freed them.
Remembering and feeling my Choice
to become human and experience all facets of life,
including the crucifixion,
sanctified my soul’s foundation.
I stopped playing the violins for myself and asking, “Why me?”
I didn’t blindly grab the shortest straw in the bunch.
I Chose my straw with eyes wide open.
[pause]
I am not declaring that this is true for you
or that it explains why you or others have suffered.
There is far more complexity and mystery
behind human suffering
than I am capable of knowing or sharing in this book.
Please do not let what I organically Remembered for myself
become another spiritual belief to use against yourself or others:
“Oh, I/they chose to be raped or to get cancer.”
If there is more for you to know about your suffering
it will be revealed in its own time,
from inside you.
Although Remembering my Soul’s Choice
doesn’t make much sense to my mind,
take away my trauma, or make Life easier,
it does remind me that I can handle
and trust whatever happens.
Love is behind It All,
even if It appears
so very far away.
I take a deep breath from
every set of lungs I’ve ever had
and then exhale.
I feel ready to rejoin Life
and my human and holy Family.
I am ready to Return
for Love.
The Return
A few nights later, I go to the beach
and plop down in the sand with my iPod.
I don’t exactly know how to “Return,”
but I press “play” on my iPod
and David Tolk’s exquisite piece
“In Reverence” begins.
As I listen to the music
a motion starts in my pelvis:
a gentle rocking
forth and back.
There and here,
here and there.
My body falls backward onto the sand
and I feel the earth’s solid support.
I turn over on all fours
and start crawling
back
through my lives,
starting with this one.
I move through the Red tent and my meeting with Marion Woodman,
through my relationships, my career, my travels, my studies,
my childhood in Atlanta.
I continue to move backward,
through a hellish concentration camp and heavenly convents,
a cramped slave ship and sweltering cotton fields,
isolated caves and teeming temples.
I crawl over battlefields and piles of my banned books.
Through courtrooms, castles, and the Inquisition,
acknowledging when my own hands are stained red.
I make my way toward bonfires where I have burned
and through jails where I have been tortured,
over cliffs where I have leapt,
and around trees where I have hung.
where I’ve felt content and at ease.
Like the North American plains where I have run freely, feathers flying;
the Himalayas where I have found peace, mind calming;
and the jungles of India where I have loved brazenly, body smiling.
As I crawl through the timeline of my lives,
I catch the eyes of my previous incarnations.
Each of them,
no matter what painful or pleasurable state they are in,
nod knowingly at me, encouraging me
to keep going.
Finally, I feel where it all began.
My body trembles
and my breath becomes shallow.
I pause, gather all the positive resources
I have received from my past incarnations
and then re-enter my first life.
At first, it’s just an inky haze.
Then the smell of torn flesh meets my nose
mixed with the sounds of a riotous crowd
and the chaotic forces of violence.
I am back at the Crucifixion.
I resolutely raise up
from my hands and knees
onto shaking legs.
as the haze clears around
the Center of It All:
My parents.
Who are staring straight at me.
Like they have been waiting for me.
Sarah, you’ve Returned!
In this timeless moment, it’s blatantly evident
that my parents didn’t abandon me at this cross;
I abandoned them.
I burst into tears, and my legs start moving.
I’m coming, Papa! I’m coming, Mama!
I shove my way through the crowd
and break free from the guards,
just like my mama has done,
until there is nothing
and no one else
between us.
First I go to my father,
for he doesn’t have much time left.
I tenderly bring my forehead to his mangled feet.
“I’m so sorry, Papa; I’m so sorry for leaving you.”
We have a private exchange
that communicates the indescribable Love
between a father and daughter.
I crouch down
next to my mama.
I brush her matted hair away from her streaked face,
wrap my arms around her wailing body,
and offer my wordless apology.
One of her strong arms pries loose
from the base of the cross,
and hugs me to her,
tight.
It’s the Three of Us.
Three humans hangin’ in there together
and Loving the hell out of each other.
I feel a flutter in my mama’s womb
from my frightened fetus soul.
I beckon this fragment
back into my body,
but she refuses to budge.
She communicates that I need
to come inside her body.
So, I do.
Immediately, everything goes black.
My suffering, grief, and terror are still here.
But I know I can handle them now.
For I am both that innocent fetus, Sarah,
and the wise adult, Sera,
who trusts her body and her Soul
and the Life She has Chosen for Herself.
I was made for This.
I enter my Wounds I received at the cross:
the Wound of Incarnation and my Sacred Wound.
Instantly, Pain batters my present-day body,
which curls into the fetal position on the beach.
It comes in forceful blows,
roughly knocking me about.
I clutch and claw at the sand,
raggedly breathe in and out,
and start to moan.
There is nowhere to hide from this Pain,
and there is no way to prevent it.
It is always here.
It affects everything and everyone.
It is Life on Earth.
I start shaking in shock
as my nervous system levels
any remaining spiritual loftiness
until there is nothing left to hold onto.
Nothing.
My heart stops and my breath halts.
My Sacred Wound.
This is the feeling that I have avoided feeling for two thousand years.
It is harder to feel than I ever could have imagined
and totally different than what I ever could have thought.
It is existing without Love.
[pause]
[pause]
[pause]
Out of the darkness,
an alluring being approaches me,
exuding care and comfort,
love and light.
He clucks sympathetically
and tells me
that Sarah isn’t real.
History proves
that Jesus and Magdalene
were not in love
and never had a child.
So, he gently asks,
why experience
unnecessary suffering?
All I have to do is say the word,
and he will take this painful
and dangerous delusion
away.
Then, he assures me, I will feel better,
my life will get back on track,
and I can really help this planet.
Abruptly,
my Natural Instincts
take over.
My left arm shoots out,
hand flexed back,
fingers spread wide:
“STOP!!!” I ferociously growl,
spit shooting out of my mouth.
“This is MY PAIN!
This is MY SOUL!
This is MY LIFE!
You will not take ANY of this from me!
I have made MY CHOICE!”
My right arm raises above my head,
hand curling into a fist,
“I
AM
STAYING
HERE!!!”
My right arm
drops,
and my fist
slams
the ground.
and I gasp with relief.
I Feel It All and It is Magnificent.
I’m being bitten by dozens of hungry mosquitos on the beach.
Snot, sweat, and sand have formed a gooey paste in my hair.
I’m crying and laughing, swatting and swearing at the same time.
My heart feels expansive and full,
here and there.
It beats loud and proud
within my mother’s womb at the cross,
matching her own heartbeat,
and learning from it.
Then my father exhales his last breath,
and that’s when the first Miracle happens,
not three days later.
In the darkest,
most painful
moment of their lives,
his heart and her heart
don’t shut
but
BLAST
OPEN!
All of Existence
FEELS
the Undeniable Reality
and
Unbeatable Power
of
TRUE LOVE.