MY HIGHER EDUCATION
The universe is full of magical things, patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.
EDEN PHILLPOTTS
Moving to Northern California after graduate school offered me a whole other kind of education. Naked sunset yoga therapy on the beach? A Zen meditation community–sponsored Rumi recital? An all-night tantric dance party with tarot/astrology/aura readings, chased by a shamanic ritual of ayahuasca? You got it. Almost every conceivable expression of spirituality is thriving in the Bay Area.
Amid the swirl, I found an off-the-radar energy school and, from the very first class, became spiritually smitten. This was partly because the teachers talked about the Universe the way I used to encounter it as a child and during my New Age explorations before college — a Universe full of angels, spirit guides, reincarnation, and multiple dimensions; partly because my “freaky shit” was no big whoop (everyone there was just as sensitive to energy and experienced “the freaky shit”); partly because, during an introductory exercise, they had me energetically “anchor” my skinny ass so strongly to the center of the earth that two grown men couldn’t pick me up off the ground (fascinating); and partly because the two men who couldn’t lift me off the ground were hot. What can I say? I’ve got a weakness for hot spiritual men who try to pick me up.
Unlike most New Age-y classes that I peeked into over the years, this school taught serious spiritual street smarts. Fluffy it wasn’t. I learned that venturing into the other realms is like visiting a foreign country — you respect the culture and customs, but you stay alert and cautious (keeping your ID and a can of mace with you at all times), and you don’t just invite any Joe Schmo home with you. Just like you can get attacked by an angry dog or get raped or experience identity theft in this realm, you can experience all of the above energetically in other realms.
This class taught another one of my favorite subjects — spirits. (Oddly enough, one of the most academically rigorous classes I had ever taken at Harvard was “Angelogy.”) Throughout history, spirits have inspired artists, saints, politicians, and even psychotherapists — from Handel to George Washington, Joan of Arc to J.R.R. Tolkien, William Blake to Carl Jung. Truth is, every single one of us has a spiritual team hanging out “on the other side,” busy helping us with all sorts of stuff in our lives, from our career to our relationships to parking spaces and, of course, our spiritual growth (which involves all of the above, including the parking spaces).
Jennifer Posada, another soul sister and author of The Oracle Within, likes to say, “We’ve got friends with bodies and friends without bodies.” In my experience, the same holds true about “enemies,” or frenemies. In fact, many ancient Gnostic groups differentiated between the true light, coming from authentic Divine sources, and the false light, which comes from “fakers” — a bevy of false beings, commonly called archons, and their false god, called the demiurge. The tricky thing is the false light often appears like the true light.
In my experience, true light beings don’t push agendas, belief systems, or spiritual techniques. They don’t treat you like a lost little child. They rarely ask you to use their energy (or special symbols or purple/white light), nor do they keep you “high” or constantly “blissed out” (cosmic crack is a real thing, sista). They do not want you dependent on them. Instead, they repeatedly redirect you to your own inner Divine power source. They do not ask to be worshiped; in fact, they Ping-Pong projections right back at-cha. True light beings grace you, and, yes, sometimes goose you, but they do not grab your spiritual authority away. While there are always exceptions, if a spirit being shows signs of any of the above, you may need to become a better bouncer to your personal energetic space. Bottom line: it’s best to go in rather than just going “out.” The more familiar you become with your own Divine light, the less easily you’ll be duped by the false light, and then you can move through multidimensional realities with eyes wide open.
Whether you choose to believe in any of this is, of course, your prerogative. I’m simply sharing this information because energetic discernment has become mandatory on my Red path. In fact, I now firmly believe that becoming wise to the ways of energy and acknowledging our multidimensionality are the missing links in most spiritual traditions, teachings, and practices. Truth is, mystics from every tradition and “nontradition” know that there is much, much more to this world (and the other worlds) than the five senses relay, and to deny these alternative realities is to cap our consciousness, doubt God’s grandeur (inside and outside of us), and inhibit our abilities to receive Divine guidance, not to mention curb our natural evolution.
Alongside a galaxy-load of helpful tools and mind-blowing information I learned from the energy school, I was reminded of what my spirit had always known, deep down: the Universe is way bigger and way weirder than most of us are led to believe, and like it or not, we’re paranormal, de facto and by default. Needless to say, I recited a slightly different mantra during my energetic education:
Screw normal. Be super normal.
THE LOW DOWN
Right about now, you might be wondering whether you’ve accidentally picked up a different book. That’s because during my higher education, Kali got trunked. Why? Because I have a nasty habit of repressing Red, being embarrassed about Her, and even doubting Her divinity when I’m around traditional and nontraditional spiritual environments that resonate with me but that don’t exactly roll out the Red carpet for Her. If I’m not careful, I end up trusting their spiritual reality over my own. This “habit” is one of my biggest, most painful spiritual lessons.
The tricky thing is, Red is the color with the lowest frequency and vibration. According to many beliefs, Red is associated with humanity’s most primal developmental level, our lower consciousness, and the lowest chakra in our subtle energy system, which relates to physicality, sexuality, and self-preservation. (Sensing a theme here? I’ve got Friends in low places.) Many traditional and New Age-y spiritual systems teach the necessity of moving up and away from lowly Red, toward higher chakras and states of consciousness and colors, like blue and purple or angelic white, which are more commonly related to inspiration, equanimity, and enlightenment. Needless to say, a bloody, Red-hot, and horny Goddess with a ’tude and in a mood is not exactly on the top of enlightenment’s Evite list. I’m embarrassed to admit, but during my higher education, I put away my icon of Kali and my Red journal, and I even painted my Red altar a higher-vibing shade of purple (well, at least purple’s got some Red in it).
The energy school, though definitely not a place that favored Red, was the first place — after a lot of exploration on my part — that felt like a second home (with some hot “distant cousins”), and its cutting-edge energetic education resonated with my spirit (versus my soul — you’ll read about the difference in A.M.). That said, every time I walked into that school’s classroom, I contracted. I became ultra-serious, emotionless, and “clean” energetically. I tried extra hard to keep my awareness “up high” in order not to “lower” the vibe of the group. The teachers once commented that energetically, I felt like a cross between Marilyn Monroe and Gloria Steinem … like that was a bad thing. So, I shut down my sexuality, my “feminism” (’cause gender doesn’t matter in the realms of spirit, right?), my bawdy sense of humor, my colorful fashion sense, my love for heavy-bass electronic music, my spontaneity, and what I now know to be my very life force, all because I wanted to be a good spiritual student and hang with the cool kids.
KALI’S HOUSE
Although I dumped Kali, She didn’t stop pursuing me. The year I was at the energy school, my boyfriend and I vacationed on the Big Island of Hawaii, staying in a rambly house near the ocean. The night we arrived, I doubled over for hours with the most peculiar pains in my vagina. (I later found out that locals relate each Hawaiian island to a chakra, and the Big Island relates to the first chakra, the Red chakra, which influences the sexual organs.) The next day, standing in the driveway, washing sand off my toes, I looked down and saw a word drawn clearly in the gray cement:
K A L I
I yelled for my boyfriend. We found out from the rental agent that the owners of the house had two daughters, and one of them happened to be named Kali. Shut the front door! No matter how far I was from Cambridge and Calcutta, I was still residing in “Kali’s house.”
Later that trip, we visited Pele, the Red-hot Hawaiian Goddess who hangs out in the fire-pit crater, Halema’uma’u, at the summit of Kilauea, one of the earth’s most active volcanoes. We snuck away from the tourists, and I quietly sat with Her for some time; then I tossed a bouquet of flowers into the massive smoldering crater. My boyfriend took a picture of me right after the offering. In the photo, my body is open and relaxed, my smile is soft and inviting, but my eyes look fathomless and fierce … not unlike the way fire feels.
A few hours later, we walked along Pele’s cooling black lava on the coast and watched in awe as Her Red molten lava gushed, sizzled, and then exploded when it met the sea, almost instantly creating new land right in front of our eyes. I witnessed such raw power. I recognized the Force of Nature. I understood that everyone and everything (including “high-vibin’” spiritual peeps) have to bow to Her Movements.
While on the Big Island, I bought an un-retouched photograph of Pele’s Red lava burstin’ through her black lava, forming a Red heart. When I got home, I placed the photo on my purple altar, but I kept these humbling hints on the backburner and eagerly returned to my energy school.
HIGH AND DRY
As I continued to move up class levels, my body began to react. I became chronically nauseous. I dropped down to ninety pounds. I spent time in the hospital due to unbearably painful periods. I cried … a lot. And weirdly, every time a classmate would call to give me intuitive guidance, it felt like a suit of armor was constricting me. They told me my physical and emotional symptoms and bizarre armorlike sensations were due to past karma and my fears of moving forward on my spiritual path. That sounded right — and I so desperately wanted to be the A+ student, gain more psychic powers, and become more spiritually advanced and stuff.
One day when I was buzzing high off angel fumes, however, a very subtle thought arose from deep inside me. Although becoming more wise to the ways of energy was undoubtedly very good for me and even necessary for my personal evolution, the actual path that my school was so high on taking was perhaps not so good for me.
A Red flash went off! The heavy armor fell away. I ate a cheeseburger (and kept it down).
That insight was snuggled by some powerful synchronicities, not to mention the plain and simple fact that my body clearly didn’t want to be in that class anymore, all of which helped me make the difficult decision to leave the school, walk down that particular mountain, and come back to my own spiritual path.
That lesson bit me on the ass. The good ones usually do.
REDMINDERS
In today’s jam-packed spiritual arena, it’s all too easy to absorb someone else’s protocol, some traditional or trendy spiritual road map to enlightenment or a “happier/better/more powerful” you. Yet by doing so, we often override our own map. Truth is, even if we find ourselves nodding yes yes yes to the most super-duper teachings or amazingly potent practices ever, our soul might be nudging us in another direction. No matter how great it is, it might not be what our soul wants or needs to experience right now.
I believe there are multiple realities and multiple truths floating around (“reality” and “truth” change at different levels of consciousness), and the trick is to find the frequencies that align with our unique soul’s vibration, to only engage those that encourage and support our organic growth. In other words, truth is only true for us when it honors and matches our current level of consciousness and supports our soul’s plan and mission for this particular lifetime.
Here’s another Redminder I would often forget during my energetic schooling — and sometimes still do when I’m around someone who exhibits truly awesome “powers” or intuitive abilities: being psychic or talking to spirits or channeling disincarnate beings or healing people or having paranormal experiences or manifesting things does not necessarily equate with being spiritually advanced … and vice versa.
Interesting fact: Many mystics did demonstrate spiritual “superpowers” (called “gifts of the spirit” in Christianity), but they used these powers to fight for the liberation of all beings. They used their heightened abilities to incarnate more Divine Love on earth. Eastern religious traditions call psychic powers siddhis and warn us not to focus too much of our precious time and energy on developing them; otherwise, we might become distracted from developing a deeper connection with Ultimate Reality or the Divine. (Interestingly enough, when we focus primarily on cultivating our connection with the Divine and act from this connection, our spiritual superpowers often start activating quite naturally and effortlessly.) In other words, psychic powers are merely cosmic party favors, and psychic or spiritual techniques are merely tools to help build our spiritual awareness; they are not the awareness itself. It’s a bit like focusing so much on the notes that you can’t hear the music. And, Baby, She wants us to dance.
When I left the school, I began to dance again.
DANCING ON
Although I left the school, I couldn’t leave the wisdom. I knew just how crucial this realm of study was to my path. So, through a friend from the energy school, I found an extraordinary woman to work with who was not unlike a Zen master in multidimensionality. This woman’s work focused on extreme self-inquiry on all dimensions in order to connect directly with our Divine Source. Her energetic awareness put my previous school’s awareness to shame, although she didn’t give psychic readings; she only asked me open-ended questions so I could learn to read myself. Only then would she share “Spirit’s” perspective. I’ll admit, freaky shit got a whole lot freakier working with her, and I found myself hanging out in the far corners of the Universe more often than in San Francisco. But unlike the school, she emphasized the importance of listening to my Lady above all else.
Yeehaw!
It was during this expansive time in my life that the Presence I had always sensed peeking through Kali stepped forward — not negating Kali, but opening me to Her deeper Reality. I started to call this familiar, yet still mysterious, Red Feminine Presence, the Red Lady. Having my energy teacher recognize and honor my Lady was healing and validating. I started trusting my unique experiences of Her again. I started listening to Her again. And most importantly, I started openly loving Her again.
We’re back in the saddle again …