Spiritual Cowgirl

I’m cute.

I’m not drop-dead gorgeous or a Victoria Secret super model, but I’ve been called “pretty,” and even “beautiful” (occasionally) throughout my life. These labels and other people’s opinions about my looks have obviously played a role in my life, but I only recently realized just how big a role when I received a beauty mark that went more than skin deep – thanks to my parrot.

My loving yet slightly neurotic African Grey, Anaya, doesn’t like me anywhere other than directly in her line of sight. So when she saw me packing suitcases the night before my flight to Charleston where I was giving my first big Redvolution talk and a day-long Redvolution workshop, she was not a happy feather ball. In fact, she climbed up on the bed and began tossing my belts, shirts, and Cosabella underwear out of my suitcase. She was making a total mess. So I picked her up and brought her to my face for a kiss, as I have done a hundred times before, but instead of letting me kiss her cute beak and ruffle her soft feathers, she bit me. Hard. So hard that she tore off a chunk of skin right below my lip. I screamed, threw the startled parrot on the bed, and ran to the bathroom where I screamed again (and again and again) as I investigated the bloody, oozing, open wound that no amount of cover up or careful lighting could hide.

Then I did what any normal woman would do: I cried, I prayed, I swore like a princess who had just lost her crown. If I could have, I would have risked the delicate balance of the space-time continuum, just so I could time travel a few minutes back and place that ornery bird in her cage instead of on my lip.

Staring at that nasty red wound on my face I actually seriously considered cancelling my trip and hiding out in my San Fran apartment till the wound healed. Yeah, that’s enlightened - cancelling a talk and workshop and seeing my family and friends because of a minor flesh wound. Sure I was totally stressed out about my talk and workshop. Sure I was PMSing. Sure I had only had about two hours of sleep for the past few nights. But, still. The non-reactive part of me was in shock at how much this small little incident affected me. The feelings that poured forth through my open wound spoke volumes. They made me reflect back on the role my looks have played in my life.

When I was a young girl, strangers in the grocery store, at restaurants, on airplanes would often comment on how pretty I was. I didn’t totally understand what they were saying, but I dug it. I felt, even at that young age, the advantage it gave me. The power it afforded me, the respect, the attention, and maybe even the love. My looks kept me out of the “loser” group at various schools despite my “quirky” interests in all things spiritual and metaphysical. They helped me be picked first for teams and groups and certain job positions. They constantly guaranteed a dance, a date, a relationship, and devout secret admirers. My cute innocent face kept me safe and well protected when I traveled alone in India, Nepal, Tibet and Turkey (I was often fawned over by local woman, which kept me protected from the men, and got me many free yummy home-cooked meals). My looks, possibly, even made people give my work, my studies, my voice more attention. And the list goes on. Bottom line: my physical appearance has been an important factor in how my life has played out.

When I arrived in Charleston the next day and explained the wound on my face to my parents, my mom simply said, “Well Sera, this is a great chance for you to realize that who you are is more important than what you look like.” Duh. Could that be any more of a “mom” thing to say? “But why now?” I sulked. Why couldn’t a spiritual beauty lesson happen at a time when I had no place to go or no one to see or no big talks to give or intimate workshops to run? Why? Because the red path is about learning and growing through direct lived experience. Taking the red pill means that you are constantly bending over so the universe can kick yer ass (lovingly) over and over again. It’s one thing to sit alone and journal about my beauty issues (which I did do after my trip, see below), it’s another to be in front of a large crowd of people with bright lights and a camera crew and speak my divine stuff with an open wound waving a gooey red flag right below my lips.

But I did it. Thanks to my mom channeling The Red Lady, I gained perspective, quickly remembered my priorities, and my sense of humor. I reset my focus, slapped my own ass back into gear and later that night in front of all those people, I spoke from my true beauty. I offered the red goods. I did what I was there to do, and I of course, completely forgot about the wound.

Why am I blogging about this minor incident that I made into a lifetime drama? Because there’s a tendency to think that it’s not all that “spiritually correct” to be into your looks - hence all the robed and shorn monks, swamis, priests and nuns in Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity and the conservative clothing, unattractive grandma undies, and prescribed hair styles of some Mormons, orthodox Jews and conservative Muslims. Hell, even certain groups within the New Age arena dress only in loose body-masking materials or certain bland colors so they can ascend the physical body and morph into love and light and cosmic popcorn for angels (spiritual people tend to forget that angels swoon for Cosabella underwear).

Fact is, “spiritual” peeps have always had a complex relationship with beauty – we praise it when we’re looking at nature or classical art or anything we deem as perfect or transcendent. But we often have a difficult time recognizing and honoring beauty when it’s fleshy, sweaty, dirty, and immanently imperfect. We desire beauty, we feel bad about desiring it. We’re attracted to it and we feel less than evolved for being attracted to it. We feel guilty about striving for physical beauty and sometimes we even see beauty as something that stands in the way of spirituality. There are countless stories of saints, especially Christian female saints, who prayed God would take their physical beauty away so they could be better at loving Him. Some of these women cut all their hair off or did something painful to permanently mar their faces so they could be closer to God. Feminine beauty in particular has been feared, abused, worshipped, objectified, misunderstood and carefully controlled (especially through the religious traditions) for millennium.

In my red opinion, part of the divine feminine’s role on the planet at this time is to free beauty from external standards, definitions and limitations. And also, importantly and somewhat paradoxically, the divine feminine reminds us to honor beauty and experience the physical world and our lovely flesh (no mater what shape or size or color) as Spirit incarnate. “Notice me, appreciate me, adore me, ” the DF winks from every redwood tree, fleshy thigh, African Grey parrot, and mirror. Acknowledging beauty is an affirmation of the DF’s universe…but divine beauty is not exactly a beauty that can be controlled or carved or injected. It’s not standardized. It’s not perfect. It’s not often found in beauty magazines, or on runways, or on the T.V. Divine beauty can only be truly discovered when we rip off the lenses our culture has encouraged (and sometimes forced) us to wear. We know this.

For me, true beauty can only be experienced when I keep my gaze on Goddess and Her gaze on me. This isn’t easy. There are things I really don’t like about the way I look, especially my asymmetrical face, which makes every camera an enemy (perfect for someone who is about to be filmed in a feature documentary, eh? Hooray, for the Red path! I’m bending over). But keeping my gaze on Goddess means that I practice accepting what I see in the mirror and I ask (over and over) to see myself the way She sees me. Also, I try not to be overly attached to my physical looks, but I do take the time and make the effort to take good care of my body, celebrate my unique face, and allow the universe to shine through me, as me. If I try to be old-school “spiritually correct” and downplay my looks, or shrug away compliments, or pretend my looks don’t matter, I would be lying and denying Her grandness, Her beauty, Her radiant presence that is embodied in every human woman.

But back to my story.

The emotional tizzy I went through because of this little parrot-biting incident made me realize that I had some unconscious energetic pimples I needed to pop. So when I got back from my crazy busy trip, I chilled out, tuned in, and The Red Lady told me I had 9 false beliefs about my beauty rooted in my unconscious that she wanted me to dig out so I could plant 9 new true beliefs about beauty to replace them.

As usual, with unconscious work, my logical mind was all “I do NOT believe that!”…but my deeper mind was saying that somewhere inside, these beliefs were lurking around . So here we go with another list. My spirit is so freakin’ orderly.

False Beliefs (making mud pies out of my inner beauty supplies)
1. My beauty will save me
2. I won’t be seen if I’m not beautiful
3. I won’t be heard if I’m not beautiful
4. I won’t be loved if I’m not beautiful
5. I won’t be successful if I’m not beautiful
6. I’m not divine if I’m not beautiful
7. I won’t be protected if I’m not beautiful
8. Lack of beauty means lack of spirit
9. If I’m not beautiful I fail

Nice ones, eh? My unconscious never fails to shock the hell out of me. Where did they come from? The media, fourth grade gym class, spiritual traditions, my family, friends, culture, my past lives, some crazy invisible secret agents who like to distract women from their deeper meaning, power, and purpose by encouraging them to obsess and spend insane amounts of money and time and energy on their looks, which holds millions of women back from owning and beaming out their true beauty and truth and love and wisdom and prevents them from being of even greater service on this planet. These secret agents implant our unconscious with beliefs like those up above - beliefs that directly or indirectly tell us that our worth is measured by our looks, so that no matter how many Oprah shows we see, or therapists we visit, or workshops we take, or beauty rituals we do, or feminist classes we take, we still can’t shake their carefully crafted false beauty myth out of our cellular reality. And sistas, we need to shake and bake those suckers if we want to be All we’re here to Be.

OK, so then I quieted down and listened in for the new beliefs about beauty.

True Beliefs (that make my cells shimmer and shine):
1. I am beautiful because of who I am
2. My beauty is not dependent on my physical appearance
3. My beauty is a clear reflection of the Divine Feminine
4. I am “seen” because of my spirit, my presence, my courage, my heart, my love
5. I am heard because of the authentic way I communicate my true self
6. I am loved because of who I am, not what I look like
7. My success and work does not depend on how I look
8. My real beauty is my truth and birthright and a reflection of my spirit in physical form
9. My physical beauty is in service of the Divine Feminine

Now as super obvious, slightly fluffy and somewhat contradictory as some of these “True Beliefs” may sound, they were important intuitive planters that with practice and intention can help blossom into my lived reality. Hopefully. If not, Anaya is here to remind me.

Next on the wacky spiritual agenda for Sera’s morning: Blinking in my mind’s eye, flashing on my intuitive T.V. screen, I saw that although those false beauty beliefs were nixed from my unconscious (they were now made conscious), I was still energetically plugged into a ton of external sources for my beauty mojo - the culture, religions, my family, schooling, friends, the media, fashion magazines, past boyfriends, and the invisible secret agents and so on and so forth. “Holy Crap!” I oh so profoundly responded to this humbling visual. So, I got active. I visualized myself yanking those plugs out of those particular energy- sucking sockets, like I would pull a lamp cord out of a wall. One by one I yanked, pulled, ripped, and cleared.

After I was done with my little energetic exercise I felt better, but I was still holding all these unplugged cords. “So now what?” I asked. I heard a distinct polite “Ahem…”. Oh yeah. I nodded and smiled. I imagined taking all of my cords and plugging them directly into the She She Bang, the luminous Universe, the decadent Divine that loves every inch, pucker, curve, angle, pimple, flesh wound, and asymmetry, the Me of me that guzzles gorgeousness like the ocean guzzles salt. And sure enough, as soon as I plugged back into my divine truth, I felt my cells sigh like they had finally come home. I felt my beauty unfold like it had been waiting for a millennium. And I immediately made an appointment for a pampering facial.

So what beauty outlets are you currently plugged into (even unconsciously)? What are a few things you can do to remember and reveal your true beauty? How bout recreating your own Beauty Myth?