A RUBY IN THE HEART OF GRANITE
You are a ruby in the heart of granite.
How long will you try to deceive us?
We can see the truth in your eyes.
So come, return to the root of the root of your own self.
RUMI
Intrepid soul sista, we have finally made it to the center of the Red rose or what Rumi calls “the ruby in the heart of granite.” This is the darkest, yet most luminous, Place To Be.
And, the realm where our energetic shadow hangs out.
Say what?
Yep, it’s time to introduce you more directly to the energetic shadow, which is related to the psychological shadow. (I’ve included quotes in this chapter about the psychological shadow to help communicate facets of the energetic shadow.) While both are hidden from our conscious minds, the energetic shadow is, well, more energetic in nature and operates multidimensionally. It’s a vast collection of past-life and cosmic experiences, thoughts, feelings, and actions, many of which we’ve judged as “wrong” or “evil” and so shoved into the shady corners of our cosmic being, where they reside as concealed, yet still highly active, aspects of us. In fact, besides certain behaviors we exhibit and relationships we enter that stem from our energetic shadow, the energetic shadow often forms into a seemingly separate multidimensional “being” of its own that rides on the coattails of our “lighted” being and affects all those around us just as strongly as our light spirit does.
A Redminder: Energetic truth is often stranger than fiction — hell, even than science fiction — and much harder for our intelligent and even “spiritual” minds to reconcile. It’s taken me years (and I’ll venture to say lifetimes) of going through some extraordinarily painful and even dangerous experiences, before I finally began to take the energetic shadow as seriously as I should and not just brush it off as an ego defense or divine delusion. But here’s the great thing about truth: It leaks through even the tiniest cracks, no matter what dimension it comes from. While defiantly mysterious and annoyingly intangible, the energetic shadow is always trying to get our attention via subtle but direct ways, like dragons, dreams, intuitions, somatic sensations, external signs (like websites), and other humans.
Why am I sharing all this with you? Because every human has an energetic shadow (in fact, I’ve noticed that those with the largest energetic shadows are often the most “spiritual” in appearance), and because I could only go so far on my spiritual journey without coming face to face with my cosmic journey and the energetic shadow that has developed as a result. In order to know and embrace my Self means I have to know and embrace all of my Self.
Alrighty then, let’s do this.
THE RED RETURN
The night before I was to inform my publisher of my decision, Emily tried to help by telling me I was avoiding facing something, and it was Something Big. Fried to a crisp due to all that dragon fire, I told her if she couldn’t offer me any real guidance, then I was getting off the phone. She retorted, “You see! This is your defended thing, Sera. You’re doing everything you can not to face this, but you need to face it. It’s right in your chest; just breathe into it and feel.” I sighed, my voice dripping with sarcasm, “Fine, I’ll breathe into my chest, but I have no idea how the hell this is going to help me make this life-changing professional, personal, and financial decision!” I got off the phone and tried to feel the thing in my chest. I even thought about dying whales and starving puppies to jump-start some emotions, but nothing was happening. I was as dry as a politician’s speech and as empty as my bank account, so I watched a movie. Then I walked my dog. Then I took a shower. Then I browsed Facebook. Then I washed the dishes.
And then, I started to feel something … slowly pressing against my insides, creeping more and more into my awareness. As I finished drying the last dish, I decided to let this something have me. I sat my ass down on the couch and took some deep breaths into the center of my chest.
(Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale.)
Suddenly my inner sight cracked open, and I became privy to a super-fast slideshow of scenes from my past lives.
In one, I was wearing a filthy red dress, which was hiked up around my waist as my captors raped me and smashed my skull against the stone wall I was chained to. As my Red blood splattered against the gray walls and I started to die, I swore vehemently to myself and to God that I would never, ever practice Red again. There was another one of me and my sister priestesses barricaded in our temple, burning alive. As the flames grew, so did the desolation. I felt totally abandoned by the Red Goddess we served. There was a scene from another lifetime in which I was a male in a pulpit preaching esoteric Christian ideas from a Red book. I knew that after I left the pulpit I would be killed. I knew, but I still spoke. In another, I was purposefully kept alive, forced to watch my children, my lover, and my community be slaughtered because of my Redness. Another lifetime, I was determined to fit in and be prim and proper and not Red. I was extremely vocal about my hatred of Red. I was a living dead woman, fiercely jealous of those men and women who hadn’t doused their inner flame. In another, I’m male and actively persecuting and killing those I deem “Red Ones”; their bright blood covers my hands as darkness covers my heart.
(Deep inhale.)
I have felt and caused so … much … pain related to Red.
What awes me during this slideshow is that no matter how hurt I’ve been or how badly I’ve hurt others, I’ve doggedly followed this mysterious Red thread as it’s woven in and out of my lives … for eons.
There’s a thread you follow. It goes
among things that change. But it doesn’t change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for some to see.
While you hold it you can’t get lost.
Tragedies happen; people get hurt
or die; and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.
You don’t ever let go of the thread.1
— William Stafford, “The Way It Is”
But there was more to see:
I’m shown how in most lifetimes, starting in the womb, I energetically chuck Red at someone/something else — like a flaming potato too hot to handle — because when my consciousness first touches my fetus body, it immediately remembers/encounters all the pain Red has caused me in past lives, pain that it can feel only in physical form, not in spirit form. I feel overwhelmed, horrified, doomed, guilty, not to mention ill-equipped, unworthy, and sure that someone else could do the Red job better than me. So the safer, smarter, more “spiritual” decision is to give Red away. To refuse It. To project It. As Robert A. Johnson stated in Owning Your Own Shadow, “Projection is always easier than assimilation.”2
Every hair on my body stood on end as I witnessed how I’d projected Red onto Maya … for lifetimes, and I saw the habituated energetic shadows that were hiding behind our current friendship, confusing and influencing both of our lives. I realized that my dramatic upset over Maya’s particular public usage of Red wasn’t just petty insecurities or professional competition. There was Something much deeper at play. As Johnson wisely warned:
Two things go wrong if we project our shadow: First, we do damage to another by burdening him with our darkness — or light, for it is as heavy a burden to make someone play hero for us. Second, we sterilize ourselves by casting off our shadow. We then lose a chance to change and miss the fulcrum point, the ecstatic dimension of our own lives.3
Next, I was given the Holy Understanding that my Red Tent is a metaphysical attempt to rectify what repeatedly happens starting in the womb. By consciously re-wombing myself, I had been giving myself the chance to retract my projections in order to rebirth my Self/the Divine Child. And, as recent external events demonstrated, it was time to withdraw the psychological, spiritual, and energetic projections in all my relationships — especially my relationship with Maya. It was time to retrieve what I had repeatedly given away, and finally embody Red.
I slowly came back to my human awareness, profoundly moved, forever changed, and yet still confused.
Why am I to embody Red in the first place?
WHAT … IS … RED?
Unsurprisingly, I received no answer to the question I’d asked a million times before. So, with a heavy sigh, I lifted myself off the couch and started to sweep the floor. As I made a pass with the broom near my parrot’s cage,
the truth bombed me in the stomach.
Oh. My. Goddess …
I AM RED.
The Red thread I’ve been following lifetime after lifetime after lifetime
IS MY OWN SOUL.
I collapsed onto the floor,
awareness spreading everywhere,
and I began to comprehend just what I have done.
How I have thrown my soul away over and over (and over) again, or sold it, allowed it to be violated, abused or “used.” How I’ve controlled my soul, puffed it up, pushed it down, squished it into a box, tricked it into a tradition, or streamlined it into a system, ignored it, hidden it, condemned it, silenced it, and even tried to kill it. And how I have always put something (social norms, my career, my relationships, my pride, my finances, my ego’s desires, my fears, my success, my academic knowledge, spiritual beliefs, practices, authorities) before it.
From the smallest decision to the grandest choice.
It was suddenly all there.
Inside me.
I could barely stay in my body to acknowledge It, but I knew I had to, so I did.
I faced and felt every single time (in this lifetime and before) that I had abandoned my own soul.
I howled. I hunched. I hit. I heaved.
I clutched. I clawed. I cringed. I cried.
I choked repeatedly on my own tears and snot and blood and remorse.
I felt in a way I didn’t think was possible without dying …
And then,
I Saw Her:
My Soul.
Dazzling directly across from me …
Burning so Bright.
Her Beauty
My Beauty
Our Beauty
Floored me. Enfolded me. Reminded Me.
She Was. For Real.
And, right here. Blazing in my living room.
Every cell in my body fell to its knees.
How could I? How could I? How could I have ever abandoned Her?
How could I have ever not chosen Her?
Clumsy words caterwauled out of my mouth:
“I’m so sorry so sorry so sorry so sorry …”
Slowly, almost shyly, She Embraced me.
Soon, I had no idea if I was Her or I was the crumpled human on the floor. We kept switching places. Sight merged with sight. Body with body. And then something stabilized. I was Her regarding my shaking, sobbing human form and feeling such pure unconditional love for it. While I knew that blessed body/being on the floor had to acknowledge her shadowy ways, “take responsibility for her past actions,” feel the pain this repeated soul abandonment incurred, and make the honest apology, through my Soul’s eyes she had done nothing wrong. Ever.
Then I was back on the ground, human and hushed, feeling a softening, a forgiveness, an already resurrection.
Wait, I had done nothing wrong???
(Ever.)
As my Soul’s Embrace intensified, I was filled with a rose-petal soft Understanding that all my past “mistakes” were unerringly purposeful, part of a cosmic learning curve. I was made aware that my soul chose every single detail of those particularly rigorous lifetimes, even the torturous parts, to grow into a Being who knew and embraced all aspects of life, all aspects of Herself, and all aspects of Divinity. As Bill Plotkin wrote in Soulcraft, “Perhaps the soul sees to it, to catalyze a special type of personal development that requires a trauma for its genesis.”4
My soul then showed me the trauma for our genesis: incarnation, when my soul first “separated” from her Divine Source in order to start her cycle of lifetimes on Earth. Immediately, I was wracked with that familiar homesickness that used to accompany me as a child on those Kiawah Island beaches.
did you and I meet ever?
But in love our hearts are as red
earth and pouring rain:
mingled
beyond parting.5
Gasping, I asked my soul Who or What we separated from when we first came into human form? Who or What was the Divine Source? She was quite clear in her answer:
The Red Lady.
So I asked my soul the obvious follow-up question:
“And, Who is the Red Lady exactly?”
Levels leaped, Layers lifted,
And
My soul sighed in sweet relief
as Recognition flooded us both
HOLY. SHIT.
I
AM
THE RED LADY!
The Red Lady isn’t a Goddess outside of myself
SHE IS MY SELF!!!!!
It was like suddenly discovering I had a left arm.
In those Moments,
The Red Lady felt that real, that natural,
that
much
a
part
of
me
and
vice versa.
There’s nothing more beloved than realizing for the first time in your body that the Divine Presence that’s been flirting and firing through your life, challenging and supporting your every twist and turn, is actually You. A Greater Part of you; a part of you that resides in such a deeper space and on such a higher dimension (and thus, higher consciousness) that She often feels like a separate entity, like a Goddess outside of you.
In other words:
seeking/serving/fearing/following/leaving and loving
for all my lifetimes.
As I have been retrieving fragments of my soul,
My Lady has been retrieving me.
MY TRUTH AND MY FALSEHOOD
You still with me? I know this is a lot to take in, but I wouldn’t be including it if it weren’t also serving your soulSelf. There were a few last things my soulSelf needed me (and you) to understand that Redvelatory night:
From my soulSelf’s much bigger perspective, I Understood how my publisher, my best friend, my finances, my femaleness, “the matrix,” patriarchy, religion, the Church, “the false light,” the Inquisition, witch burnings, and threats of death have never really been “obstacles.” They had actually been projections of my own forgetting, and necessary, time-released, cosmic challenges pushing me to face and burn through everything I had perceived to be in my way to simply being my Self on Earth.
The Reality Was: Nothing and no one (including my own ego) can ever truly harm or separate me from my Divine Essence.
My soul next told me that I was now able to start the process of letting go of everything and everyone that I had perceived to be in my way to being my Self here. My soul whispered: “You can do it, Sera. You can stop focusing on ‘them’ and start focusing on Her. That’s what will really change things. Thank them for the important roles they have played in your lives. Forgive them. And Let. Them. Go.”
Like an exhausting game of tug-of-war I’d been playing for eons …
I finally Let Go.
And, I turned completely toward Her …
and almost shat my pants.
Because I had to see Her.
Not just my glorious true Red Lady, but also my energetic shadow Being, aka my false Red Lady, who has developed from unconscious reactions to my past lives. She was a masterfully manipulative Goddess, who seduced and enslaved beings, feeding off their adoration and keeping them addicted to Her Red energy, dependent on Her, and thereby distracting them from their unique paths. She was immensely powerful and immensely beautiful and immensely confusing, because She expertly exhibited all the shiny signs and incited all the flashy feelings of a Being of the false light “posing” as a Being of the true light.
What happened next is hard to describe accurately, but I saw false Red as true Red. Through true Red’s unconditionally loving gaze, false Red appeared like a prodigal daughter, and, undoubtedly, a dearly missed piece of true Red’s Being. Then, true Red simply Opened Her Arms in Choice:
Do You want to Come Home Now?
I saw false Red shimmer and shake and look around Herself — at the realities She had created, the beings She had lured, the power, the control, and the divine status that She thought She had — and then back at true Red …
and then straight at me.
Human Sera me.
Before I could pass out, my soul stepped forward, informing me that the only way to embody Red was to accept not just my true Red Lady but also my false Red Lady. I needed to be willing to embrace my All — my horror and my holiness, my murderer and my mystic, my Goddess and my SheDevil — in order to Come Home.
I was completely and totally awed by what “embodying Red” truly meant.
I was also completely and totally shit-storm terrified, but I couldn’t help but trust what I was being offered, because I couldn’t help but feel my Lady’s love and longing for us both … Her deep desire for Our Re-turn.
So, I awkwardly opened my shaky human arms, and
We
Came
Home.
The morning after that Redvelatory night, I broke my contract with my publisher, dismissed my agent, eternally altered my relationship with Maya, and chose to write this spiritual memoir. A few hours later, I came across an old photo that a childhood friend had posted on Facebook of himself, my sister, and me as young children, riding a small merry-go-round in someone’s yard. What caught my attention in the image, besides our giddy grins and my snazzy Red OshKosh B’gosh corduroy pants, was a large, mysterious, translucent Redness that’s almost touching me on the left of the photograph. Gasping, I looked closer and realized that the picture was taken from inside a house, through a window that must have been framed by Red curtains.
Tears poured as I saw how Red has really been here all along (even when I was a young Catholic purple lover), winking through whatever medium I had in front of me — be it a photograph, Buddhist dakinis, Sufi poets, Christian mystics, Zen masters, a fierce Hindu Goddess, the Gnostics, Eve’s Red apple, Lilith’s Red Sea, the Whore of Babylon, Magdalene and her daughter, dreams, books, movies, myths, music, airports, high-school track teams.
I’ve been following the Red brick road that the Universe has so lovingly laid down in front of me, and I’ve been wearing ruby slippers the entire time. Truly,
There’s no Place like Home