Post by lunaria on Aug 16, 2006 12:29:22 GMT -5
August 13, 2006
Interview
Sera Beak, Author of
The Red Book: A Deliciously Unorthodox Approach to Igniting Your Divine Spark
Q: Sera Beak is author of the new book, The Red Book: A Deliciously Unorthodox Approach to Igniting Your Divine Spark, published by Jossey-Bass, an imprint of Wiley Books. She's a Harvard-trained religious scholar, adventurer, and overall sassy chick. I'm so excited to have the opportunity to ask her some questions about her new book. Thanks for sitting down with us, Sera!
A: Thank you so much for having me, this is very exciting for me as well because I’m such a fan of your work.
Q: Sera, you've had the chance to study many world religions over the years. In The Red Book you offer tidbits and food for thought taken from many faiths, providing inspiring, user-friendly bits of wisdom that sit outside any conventional religion. I'm going to ask you something that may be impossible to answer. After all of your studies and adventures, is there any one religion that you follow? Or are you more like me, synthesizing the best of many of the world's faiths into a special gumbo of your own?
A: I’m more like you, a sort of spiritual freestyler. While I deeply respect the wisdom within the world’s religions and alternative practices, I’m far too much of a freedom-loving Aquarius to force-fit myself into just one - when I try, it feels like I’m squeezing myself into someone else’s clothes. So, I do what I think many of us are doing these days - I graze freely at the spiritual buffet, choosing what suits me for that period in my life and evolution, and leaving the rest. But at the same time, I try to be very conscious of the pitfalls of this kind of approach, of how easy it can be to only chow down on the sweet, feel-good stuff while avoiding the more difficult spiritual broccoli. I’ve become pretty discerning over the years. For me, it’s all about intuitive resonation, finding those beliefs that spark my intelligence as well as my heart, that challenge me to grow and that allow me to unfold organically. The spiritual practices, tools, and beliefs that I do work with, I don’t treat with kid gloves. I like to rough ‘em up a little, open them up for some fresh air, and get creative. I’ve become a shameless (but still respectful) spiritual appropriator -- something that would make a few of my grad school religion professors scowl -- and this is why I have happily deemed myself a “spiritual cowgirl”.
Q: I love that term, "spiritual cowgirl." I want to join the spiritual cowgirl club right now! I like how you are informed by the past but focused very much on the future. You write in your book about how world religions have gotten off track when they moved into the patriarchal mode and stomped out the wisdom of wise women throughout the world. Which aspects of women's voices and women's wisdom do you feel we need to recapture the most as we move ahead with new forms of spirituality? What are the most urgent things that you believe we need to revive to balance out the legacy of the overly patriarchal systems we've been living under?
A: Here are a basic few: a more holistic and healing approach towards political, medical, environmental and religious issues, the creation of some smart and bold (non-sappy) tools to treat the collective sexual wounds of this planet, taking more responsibility for our beliefs and our vibrations, daring to know truth for ourselves instead of relying so much on media or blind faith or “received wisdom”, learning how to love our flesh as is, unity versus separation, the celebration of horizontal transcendence, sports teams named after goddesses. The list goes on.
But for me, there’s a big catch in all the talk about resurrecting the divine feminine. See, I studied religion and mysticism in grad school with the intent of uncovering the lost, missing pieces of the feminine that I felt sure were buried deep inside our patriarchal religious traditions. And guess what? I was sorely disappointed. Sure, there are wonderful feminine threads interwoven into our big traditions (especially the mystical sects of these traditions, such as Kabbalah and Sakta Tantrism, which use such great feminine metaphors, images, and even goddesses), but if you get up real close, what you still see -- through the academic lens, anyway -- is a big ol’ penis. I found that there was, and still is, a dominant masculine energy overlaying everything within religion, and the more I studied the traditions, the more I realized that there might not have ever been a “true” feminine heart beating within them.
But it is beating within each of us. And as such, I’ve come to realize that for me, it’s just too much work trying to revive something from the religious or spiritual past that doesn’t actually exist in the way my heart and mind really need it to exist. In other words, maybe we need to quit looking so hard for powerful divine feminine representations outside ourselves, and start creating anew, from within ourselves.
Q: I agree. If we listen to the heart beating within us, we KNOW how to connect with Spirit. We each have our own way. And I think you're right, it would be great if we were encouraged to tap into that essential truth within us instead of looking to outside agents, gurus, or methods. You offer some ideas about how to do this in your book.
One of the really great things about your book is how it is designed to inspire women to open up their psychic toolbox and start writing down dreams, creating a scrapbook of ideas, inspirations, and experiences. Tell us a little about how you started doing this. Wasn't it a family member who gave you your own first "Red Book?"
A: Four of us -- my older sister, my grandmother, my aunt and myself -- were at my grandfather’s bedside when he passed away. Witnessing physical death up close and personal for the first time broke something wide open in me. I was pretty raw for a while. We happened to bury my grandfather on the same day as my 26th birthday, and my sister gave me a big red journal as a gift. I stared at it for a few weeks and then one night, I got quiet, sat down, and started to write. Like most young women, I’d kept journals before, but due to the experience with my grandfather and my newfound awareness of death and love and spirit, the words that began to fall out of me, into this red book, were quite different from what I had written before.
I wrote phrases. I wrote weird little poems, raw thoughts to god and goddess and the divine. I began to call my brief phrases “prayers,” because they became a deeply personal dialogue between me and my divine self, a conversation that fed off my daily life and my nightly dreams. Sure, some of my prayers were dramatic, obtuse fluff, some were based on too many years of devouring Rumi, but many were just me and the divine sitting down for a little authentic chat. And the power of this interaction began affecting all areas of my life.
Later, after I finished grad school and was stuck in a bland cube job where I found myself with lots of free time in front of a computer, I started to write about my red book and its role in my life, about what this type of creative and deeply personal approach to spirituality (with and without a journal) might mean for other young women. One thing led to another, and after about the 25th page of my musings I realized I had something that looked like the beginnings of a very unique kind of book.
Q: I usually keep two journals - one about "real life" stuff and the other about my dreams. The funny thing is how much crossover there is. The spiritual aspects of life spill over into "daily life." So at some point, I've sort of merged my journals into one big messy one. But messy is good, right? Isn't the whole purpose of keeping a journal or a Red Book to have a place where we can allow all the wild stuff in our heads and hearts to spill forth somewhere, without editing?
A: Absolutely! As far as I’m concerned, journals should be – must be -- uncensored cross dressers. If you go at it with abandon, journals can provide the ideal space to express all of our self – not just the angelic, picture-perfect, carefully figured-out hunks. No way should the so-called spiritual aspects of our lives be separated from the “normal” aspects. My original red book was packed with images and words cut straight from street flyers, makeup ads, funky calendars, old photos and weird fortune cookies, all mixed with glitter and paint and sundry dreams, random musings, lousy spelling, sexual desires, odd phone conversations, my most embarrassing moments and my deepest fears and of course, my most intimate personal revelations. It got pretty messy at times, but in a way it was also exceptionally beautiful. A human truly being, accepted and unedited, with mustard staining her chin and lots of unexpected ideas in her head, can be a profound spiritual practice.
Q: Your book has lots of humor and spark to it. And you also cover the spirituality of certain subjects like sex, which is rarely mentioned in the context of spirituality writing. I think this is fabulous! I was just thinking about this the other day when I heard George Michael's 80's hit "I Want Your Sex" playing on the radio. That took me down Memory Lane! I remember coming of age sexually in the late 80's and really loving that song. At the time it was considered really shocking (conservative Ronald Reagan was still in office promoting the idea that young people weren't supposed to have any fun.) But I was listening to the lyrics the other day, and they were so innocent, really.
(excerpt)
I want your sex
I want your love
I want your.....sex
It's natural
It's chemical (let's do it)
It's logical
Habitual (can we do it?)
It's sensual
But most of all.....
Sex is something that we should do
Sex is something for me and you
Sex is natural - sex is good
Not everybody does it
But everybody should
Sex is natural - sex is fun
Sex is best when it's....one on one
One on one
(end excerpt)
Now what's wrong with that? He's not promoting abusing his "bitches" as is portrayed in so much rap music and hip-hop today. I guess I'm getting to be a bit of an old fogie, because I love art that celebrates sex in a positive and playful way, not a gruesome or exploitative way. And unfortunately it seems that we're regressing in pop culture right now, moving away from this and expressing more of a dark view of sex in our music and movies. Do you feel the spiritual aspects of sex are getting lost, if we ever celebrated them at all?
A: I so agree that the spiritual aspects of sex are buried deep within the frigid genitals of both our religious beliefs and our raunchy pop culture. There’s so much darkness around sex, so much misinformation and fear and denial. It’s an incredibly loaded and complex subject and brings up many sticky issues for most of us. Thankfully, my editor for The Red Book was wonderfully open-minded, and she fought hard to keep the playfully sexual tone in the book, especially when the (male) higher-ups in the company nearly balked at the entire sexuality chapter (orgasm and vibrator references in a spirituality book? What gives?)
In The Red Book, I remind women that being sexual is a natural and healthy part of being a divine human. But I take it further than that. As far as I’m concerned, you really can’t be all that spiritually attuned if you’re ignoring your sexuality, hiding it away, repressed and unconscious and unhealthy. It’s like calling yourself a chef when you refuse to learn about butter. I also wanted to paint a more realistic picture of the sex/spirituality union in the book, because if you ever do hear spirituality and sexuality mentioned in the same sentence these days, it’s often by way of some sort of neo-Tantric, G-spot, lingham-yoni, clothing-optional orgasm workshop somewhere in Maui. And that sort of approach, while helpful to some, is often seen as a little woo woo to many women I speak to in The Red Book.
In other words, you don’t have to call your genitalia flowery names or light incense and chant when you have sex to connect with a divine energy. You simply need to be as conscious about sex as you would any other part of your spiritual life. Look, touch, taste your sexuality. Bring it into the open. Question it. See what you might be avoiding, or abusing, or just totally unconscious of when it comes to the act. Take the time to create authentic ways to become more intimate with your unique sexual/spiritual self. Have fun. Let a little divine light in under your covers. To me, being sexually attuned isn’t so much about headboard-banging sex (though that can be divine in itself), it’s more of an attitude, a way of engaging this deeply sensual universe on a fully reciprocal level. As I say in the book, a conscious sex life is just another way – one of the best ones we have, actually -- of opening more fully to divinity and saying ahhhh.
Q: Gee, does that mean I have to stop calling my genitalia flowery names? Just kidding! I hear what you're saying. A lot of workshops that are designed to help women get in touch with their sexuality are kind of, well, weird, and can end up making you more SELF-conscious (i.e, am I having enough orgasms? Was that even the right kind of orgasm?) instead of just being more CONSCIOUS.
One thing I really resonated with in your writing is how you very clearly put love, spirituality, and humor together in one place, urging women to synthesize these things as they pursue their own spiritual quest. I myself can not STAND religious teachers or spirituality or self-help type authors who haven't cracked a smile in ten years. I just feel that they're almost contradicting the very teaching that they're trying to share. If the whole purpose of a spiritual quest is to access the miraculous feelings of love and, as you write, "To ignite the divine spark," then shouldn't that also involve the fun things like humor and joy? Have you encountered any resistance from more "traditional" spirituality authors, editors, or teachers who feel threatened by the sassy yet sincere tone you use in your book? I guess I'm asking you if anybody has bummed you out yet because you're offering a light-hearted look at Spirit instead of a heavy one, and they can't deal!
A: No one has bummed me out - yet. But the book is still new. Like you, I’m very wary of “spiritual” people who refuse to show some honest bouts of gigglyness or unfettered joy or healthy irreverence. In my experience, the divine has a wicked sense of humor, one that, if you allow it in, can actually be incredibly healing, can transform the darkest stuff into light much faster than acting all “holy” and serious.
Here’s my favorite example: I had the privilege of meeting the Dalai Lama on my 21 st birthday, and I left that meeting believing he was the most truly spiritual person I have ever met, simply because he was the most “human” human I had ever encountered. He was himself. Completely, effortlessly, lightly. He told a hilarious human-blooper story to my class, and as he delivered the punch line he laughed so deeply and so purely that we all fell to pieces and the whole experience just rocked, and it reinforced what it is we all feel when we’re peeing in our pants over something we find hilarious: that humor is sacred, that genuine laughter breaks up energetic clogs, that the divine can be a loving, powerful ball of cosmic goof that’s not afraid to get down and dirty with us.
Q: I LOVE that story! How cool is it that the most holy guy in the world loves to laugh at simple things and "keep it real!" That's the way it should be.
Well, Sera, I firmly believe that you and I are part of a sisterhood that is growing on this planet, and we are the comedienne/spiritual warrior/sassy chicks. And I'm so happy that your book is out there now reaching women of all ages - and boys, too! After all, the men need to understand that the new form of "feminism" isn't anti-male, it's actually very pro-male. I think you convey this very well in your book. When women get together and celebrate their power, it's not about overpowering or threatening men. It's about being the very best we can be, and encouraging our men to do the same, don't you think?
A: Thank you! I’m excited to be part of the sisterhood. You’re absolutely right; sassy/funny/spiritual warrior chicks are swarming the planet like mad right now, and we’re only just beginning to show our stuff. Priests may faint, spiritual teachers may roll their eyes, but I believe the divine feminine is definitely getting a much-needed makeover. She’s not bitter or anti-male or some sort of screeching harridan, she’s just ready to roar, while wearing some seriously cute shoes.
To me, "turning red" is simply about being ourselves to the best of our ability. The power in this practice transcends male or female, but also celebrates their differences. We’re not necessarily here to match each other, we’re here to enhance each other. When I empower myself, it encourages you to empower yourself and vice versa – no matter if you have a penis or a vagina or a Texas license plate.
I gotta add this one side note: when I first read the Publisher’s Weekly review of The Red Book (you can read the PW review on amazon.com), I was a little shocked by the “feminist” label they placed on the book. Not just because “feminist” has become somewhat of a dirty word for my generation, but also because I don’t feel the intent of The Red Book can be so heavily gendered. I feel it’s simply humanistic. TRB encourages us to release any false confines, any beliefs, practices, tools we hold that keep us feeling different, or isolated, or less than divine. It encourages us to question beliefs that don’t support our empowerment. It asks us to get a bit more creative and intuitive with our spiritual approach. And yes, throughout, it pays deep homage to the divine feminine. But to me, that’s a universal idea. It’s sort of “duh” these days. We all know the planet’s pendulum has been stuck in the masculine realm for way too long, and now, it’s swinging to the feminine side for a bit in order to balance things out. And we’re all (men and women) responsible for creating unique pathways for the feminine to boogie down -- one of mine is The Red Book.
Q: Sera, it's been so fun chatting with you. I wish we could do it a lot longer, but I know you have a thousand things to do promoting your new book. It's been a pleasure. Feel free to stop by LipstickMystic.com any time, and even share articles or essays in the future. It would be a joy to present them to my readers, because all of my readers should be reading YOU!
A: Thank you so much for this interview – you and your site are an inspiration to me and so many others, and your questions and insight have been amazing. And I hope to interview you when I get my spiritualcowgirl.com blog up and running!
Q: Thanks again, and best wishes to you as you continue on your journey.
A: Red blessings and divine winks to you, my lovely lipstick mystic sista!
Sera Beak is a world traveled Harvard-trained scholar of world religions who's spent the last dozen years traveling the world exploring spirituality -- from whirling with Sufi dervishes to meeting the Dalai Lama on my 21st birthday; from taking the host from a Croatian Catholic mystic who had the stigmata (truly) to having life-altering visions with a shaman, and just about everything in between. Check out her new website serabeak.com and blog: spiritualcowgirl.com. More material will be added to these sites soon. You can contact her at sera@serabeak.com
The Red Book: A Deliciously Unorthodox Approach to Igniting Your Divine Spark
Excerpt From Publishers Weekly Review
"A modern, femme fatale spirituality. The book lives up to its unorthodox subtitle . . . poignant insights throughout." (Publishers Weekly)
Synopsis
"The Red Book" is a nothing less than a spiritual fire starter—a combustible cocktail of Hindu Tantra and Zen Buddhism, Rumi and Carl Jung, Mary Magdalene and modern psychics, goddesses and Gnosticism, shaken with cosmic nudges, meaningful subway rides, haircuts, relationships, sex, dreams, humor, and intuition. It's a book that encourages women to live more consciously so they can start making clearer choices across the board, from careers to relationships, politics to pop culture and everything in between. For smart, gutsy, spiritually curious women whose colorful and complicated lives aren’t reflected in most spirituality books. The Red Book is an open invitation to find your true self, and start sharing that truth with the world.
Interview
Sera Beak, Author of
The Red Book: A Deliciously Unorthodox Approach to Igniting Your Divine Spark
Q: Sera Beak is author of the new book, The Red Book: A Deliciously Unorthodox Approach to Igniting Your Divine Spark, published by Jossey-Bass, an imprint of Wiley Books. She's a Harvard-trained religious scholar, adventurer, and overall sassy chick. I'm so excited to have the opportunity to ask her some questions about her new book. Thanks for sitting down with us, Sera!
A: Thank you so much for having me, this is very exciting for me as well because I’m such a fan of your work.
Q: Sera, you've had the chance to study many world religions over the years. In The Red Book you offer tidbits and food for thought taken from many faiths, providing inspiring, user-friendly bits of wisdom that sit outside any conventional religion. I'm going to ask you something that may be impossible to answer. After all of your studies and adventures, is there any one religion that you follow? Or are you more like me, synthesizing the best of many of the world's faiths into a special gumbo of your own?
A: I’m more like you, a sort of spiritual freestyler. While I deeply respect the wisdom within the world’s religions and alternative practices, I’m far too much of a freedom-loving Aquarius to force-fit myself into just one - when I try, it feels like I’m squeezing myself into someone else’s clothes. So, I do what I think many of us are doing these days - I graze freely at the spiritual buffet, choosing what suits me for that period in my life and evolution, and leaving the rest. But at the same time, I try to be very conscious of the pitfalls of this kind of approach, of how easy it can be to only chow down on the sweet, feel-good stuff while avoiding the more difficult spiritual broccoli. I’ve become pretty discerning over the years. For me, it’s all about intuitive resonation, finding those beliefs that spark my intelligence as well as my heart, that challenge me to grow and that allow me to unfold organically. The spiritual practices, tools, and beliefs that I do work with, I don’t treat with kid gloves. I like to rough ‘em up a little, open them up for some fresh air, and get creative. I’ve become a shameless (but still respectful) spiritual appropriator -- something that would make a few of my grad school religion professors scowl -- and this is why I have happily deemed myself a “spiritual cowgirl”.
Q: I love that term, "spiritual cowgirl." I want to join the spiritual cowgirl club right now! I like how you are informed by the past but focused very much on the future. You write in your book about how world religions have gotten off track when they moved into the patriarchal mode and stomped out the wisdom of wise women throughout the world. Which aspects of women's voices and women's wisdom do you feel we need to recapture the most as we move ahead with new forms of spirituality? What are the most urgent things that you believe we need to revive to balance out the legacy of the overly patriarchal systems we've been living under?
A: Here are a basic few: a more holistic and healing approach towards political, medical, environmental and religious issues, the creation of some smart and bold (non-sappy) tools to treat the collective sexual wounds of this planet, taking more responsibility for our beliefs and our vibrations, daring to know truth for ourselves instead of relying so much on media or blind faith or “received wisdom”, learning how to love our flesh as is, unity versus separation, the celebration of horizontal transcendence, sports teams named after goddesses. The list goes on.
But for me, there’s a big catch in all the talk about resurrecting the divine feminine. See, I studied religion and mysticism in grad school with the intent of uncovering the lost, missing pieces of the feminine that I felt sure were buried deep inside our patriarchal religious traditions. And guess what? I was sorely disappointed. Sure, there are wonderful feminine threads interwoven into our big traditions (especially the mystical sects of these traditions, such as Kabbalah and Sakta Tantrism, which use such great feminine metaphors, images, and even goddesses), but if you get up real close, what you still see -- through the academic lens, anyway -- is a big ol’ penis. I found that there was, and still is, a dominant masculine energy overlaying everything within religion, and the more I studied the traditions, the more I realized that there might not have ever been a “true” feminine heart beating within them.
But it is beating within each of us. And as such, I’ve come to realize that for me, it’s just too much work trying to revive something from the religious or spiritual past that doesn’t actually exist in the way my heart and mind really need it to exist. In other words, maybe we need to quit looking so hard for powerful divine feminine representations outside ourselves, and start creating anew, from within ourselves.
Q: I agree. If we listen to the heart beating within us, we KNOW how to connect with Spirit. We each have our own way. And I think you're right, it would be great if we were encouraged to tap into that essential truth within us instead of looking to outside agents, gurus, or methods. You offer some ideas about how to do this in your book.
One of the really great things about your book is how it is designed to inspire women to open up their psychic toolbox and start writing down dreams, creating a scrapbook of ideas, inspirations, and experiences. Tell us a little about how you started doing this. Wasn't it a family member who gave you your own first "Red Book?"
A: Four of us -- my older sister, my grandmother, my aunt and myself -- were at my grandfather’s bedside when he passed away. Witnessing physical death up close and personal for the first time broke something wide open in me. I was pretty raw for a while. We happened to bury my grandfather on the same day as my 26th birthday, and my sister gave me a big red journal as a gift. I stared at it for a few weeks and then one night, I got quiet, sat down, and started to write. Like most young women, I’d kept journals before, but due to the experience with my grandfather and my newfound awareness of death and love and spirit, the words that began to fall out of me, into this red book, were quite different from what I had written before.
I wrote phrases. I wrote weird little poems, raw thoughts to god and goddess and the divine. I began to call my brief phrases “prayers,” because they became a deeply personal dialogue between me and my divine self, a conversation that fed off my daily life and my nightly dreams. Sure, some of my prayers were dramatic, obtuse fluff, some were based on too many years of devouring Rumi, but many were just me and the divine sitting down for a little authentic chat. And the power of this interaction began affecting all areas of my life.
Later, after I finished grad school and was stuck in a bland cube job where I found myself with lots of free time in front of a computer, I started to write about my red book and its role in my life, about what this type of creative and deeply personal approach to spirituality (with and without a journal) might mean for other young women. One thing led to another, and after about the 25th page of my musings I realized I had something that looked like the beginnings of a very unique kind of book.
Q: I usually keep two journals - one about "real life" stuff and the other about my dreams. The funny thing is how much crossover there is. The spiritual aspects of life spill over into "daily life." So at some point, I've sort of merged my journals into one big messy one. But messy is good, right? Isn't the whole purpose of keeping a journal or a Red Book to have a place where we can allow all the wild stuff in our heads and hearts to spill forth somewhere, without editing?
A: Absolutely! As far as I’m concerned, journals should be – must be -- uncensored cross dressers. If you go at it with abandon, journals can provide the ideal space to express all of our self – not just the angelic, picture-perfect, carefully figured-out hunks. No way should the so-called spiritual aspects of our lives be separated from the “normal” aspects. My original red book was packed with images and words cut straight from street flyers, makeup ads, funky calendars, old photos and weird fortune cookies, all mixed with glitter and paint and sundry dreams, random musings, lousy spelling, sexual desires, odd phone conversations, my most embarrassing moments and my deepest fears and of course, my most intimate personal revelations. It got pretty messy at times, but in a way it was also exceptionally beautiful. A human truly being, accepted and unedited, with mustard staining her chin and lots of unexpected ideas in her head, can be a profound spiritual practice.
Q: Your book has lots of humor and spark to it. And you also cover the spirituality of certain subjects like sex, which is rarely mentioned in the context of spirituality writing. I think this is fabulous! I was just thinking about this the other day when I heard George Michael's 80's hit "I Want Your Sex" playing on the radio. That took me down Memory Lane! I remember coming of age sexually in the late 80's and really loving that song. At the time it was considered really shocking (conservative Ronald Reagan was still in office promoting the idea that young people weren't supposed to have any fun.) But I was listening to the lyrics the other day, and they were so innocent, really.
(excerpt)
I want your sex
I want your love
I want your.....sex
It's natural
It's chemical (let's do it)
It's logical
Habitual (can we do it?)
It's sensual
But most of all.....
Sex is something that we should do
Sex is something for me and you
Sex is natural - sex is good
Not everybody does it
But everybody should
Sex is natural - sex is fun
Sex is best when it's....one on one
One on one
(end excerpt)
Now what's wrong with that? He's not promoting abusing his "bitches" as is portrayed in so much rap music and hip-hop today. I guess I'm getting to be a bit of an old fogie, because I love art that celebrates sex in a positive and playful way, not a gruesome or exploitative way. And unfortunately it seems that we're regressing in pop culture right now, moving away from this and expressing more of a dark view of sex in our music and movies. Do you feel the spiritual aspects of sex are getting lost, if we ever celebrated them at all?
A: I so agree that the spiritual aspects of sex are buried deep within the frigid genitals of both our religious beliefs and our raunchy pop culture. There’s so much darkness around sex, so much misinformation and fear and denial. It’s an incredibly loaded and complex subject and brings up many sticky issues for most of us. Thankfully, my editor for The Red Book was wonderfully open-minded, and she fought hard to keep the playfully sexual tone in the book, especially when the (male) higher-ups in the company nearly balked at the entire sexuality chapter (orgasm and vibrator references in a spirituality book? What gives?)
In The Red Book, I remind women that being sexual is a natural and healthy part of being a divine human. But I take it further than that. As far as I’m concerned, you really can’t be all that spiritually attuned if you’re ignoring your sexuality, hiding it away, repressed and unconscious and unhealthy. It’s like calling yourself a chef when you refuse to learn about butter. I also wanted to paint a more realistic picture of the sex/spirituality union in the book, because if you ever do hear spirituality and sexuality mentioned in the same sentence these days, it’s often by way of some sort of neo-Tantric, G-spot, lingham-yoni, clothing-optional orgasm workshop somewhere in Maui. And that sort of approach, while helpful to some, is often seen as a little woo woo to many women I speak to in The Red Book.
In other words, you don’t have to call your genitalia flowery names or light incense and chant when you have sex to connect with a divine energy. You simply need to be as conscious about sex as you would any other part of your spiritual life. Look, touch, taste your sexuality. Bring it into the open. Question it. See what you might be avoiding, or abusing, or just totally unconscious of when it comes to the act. Take the time to create authentic ways to become more intimate with your unique sexual/spiritual self. Have fun. Let a little divine light in under your covers. To me, being sexually attuned isn’t so much about headboard-banging sex (though that can be divine in itself), it’s more of an attitude, a way of engaging this deeply sensual universe on a fully reciprocal level. As I say in the book, a conscious sex life is just another way – one of the best ones we have, actually -- of opening more fully to divinity and saying ahhhh.
Q: Gee, does that mean I have to stop calling my genitalia flowery names? Just kidding! I hear what you're saying. A lot of workshops that are designed to help women get in touch with their sexuality are kind of, well, weird, and can end up making you more SELF-conscious (i.e, am I having enough orgasms? Was that even the right kind of orgasm?) instead of just being more CONSCIOUS.
One thing I really resonated with in your writing is how you very clearly put love, spirituality, and humor together in one place, urging women to synthesize these things as they pursue their own spiritual quest. I myself can not STAND religious teachers or spirituality or self-help type authors who haven't cracked a smile in ten years. I just feel that they're almost contradicting the very teaching that they're trying to share. If the whole purpose of a spiritual quest is to access the miraculous feelings of love and, as you write, "To ignite the divine spark," then shouldn't that also involve the fun things like humor and joy? Have you encountered any resistance from more "traditional" spirituality authors, editors, or teachers who feel threatened by the sassy yet sincere tone you use in your book? I guess I'm asking you if anybody has bummed you out yet because you're offering a light-hearted look at Spirit instead of a heavy one, and they can't deal!
A: No one has bummed me out - yet. But the book is still new. Like you, I’m very wary of “spiritual” people who refuse to show some honest bouts of gigglyness or unfettered joy or healthy irreverence. In my experience, the divine has a wicked sense of humor, one that, if you allow it in, can actually be incredibly healing, can transform the darkest stuff into light much faster than acting all “holy” and serious.
Here’s my favorite example: I had the privilege of meeting the Dalai Lama on my 21 st birthday, and I left that meeting believing he was the most truly spiritual person I have ever met, simply because he was the most “human” human I had ever encountered. He was himself. Completely, effortlessly, lightly. He told a hilarious human-blooper story to my class, and as he delivered the punch line he laughed so deeply and so purely that we all fell to pieces and the whole experience just rocked, and it reinforced what it is we all feel when we’re peeing in our pants over something we find hilarious: that humor is sacred, that genuine laughter breaks up energetic clogs, that the divine can be a loving, powerful ball of cosmic goof that’s not afraid to get down and dirty with us.
Q: I LOVE that story! How cool is it that the most holy guy in the world loves to laugh at simple things and "keep it real!" That's the way it should be.
Well, Sera, I firmly believe that you and I are part of a sisterhood that is growing on this planet, and we are the comedienne/spiritual warrior/sassy chicks. And I'm so happy that your book is out there now reaching women of all ages - and boys, too! After all, the men need to understand that the new form of "feminism" isn't anti-male, it's actually very pro-male. I think you convey this very well in your book. When women get together and celebrate their power, it's not about overpowering or threatening men. It's about being the very best we can be, and encouraging our men to do the same, don't you think?
A: Thank you! I’m excited to be part of the sisterhood. You’re absolutely right; sassy/funny/spiritual warrior chicks are swarming the planet like mad right now, and we’re only just beginning to show our stuff. Priests may faint, spiritual teachers may roll their eyes, but I believe the divine feminine is definitely getting a much-needed makeover. She’s not bitter or anti-male or some sort of screeching harridan, she’s just ready to roar, while wearing some seriously cute shoes.
To me, "turning red" is simply about being ourselves to the best of our ability. The power in this practice transcends male or female, but also celebrates their differences. We’re not necessarily here to match each other, we’re here to enhance each other. When I empower myself, it encourages you to empower yourself and vice versa – no matter if you have a penis or a vagina or a Texas license plate.
I gotta add this one side note: when I first read the Publisher’s Weekly review of The Red Book (you can read the PW review on amazon.com), I was a little shocked by the “feminist” label they placed on the book. Not just because “feminist” has become somewhat of a dirty word for my generation, but also because I don’t feel the intent of The Red Book can be so heavily gendered. I feel it’s simply humanistic. TRB encourages us to release any false confines, any beliefs, practices, tools we hold that keep us feeling different, or isolated, or less than divine. It encourages us to question beliefs that don’t support our empowerment. It asks us to get a bit more creative and intuitive with our spiritual approach. And yes, throughout, it pays deep homage to the divine feminine. But to me, that’s a universal idea. It’s sort of “duh” these days. We all know the planet’s pendulum has been stuck in the masculine realm for way too long, and now, it’s swinging to the feminine side for a bit in order to balance things out. And we’re all (men and women) responsible for creating unique pathways for the feminine to boogie down -- one of mine is The Red Book.
Q: Sera, it's been so fun chatting with you. I wish we could do it a lot longer, but I know you have a thousand things to do promoting your new book. It's been a pleasure. Feel free to stop by LipstickMystic.com any time, and even share articles or essays in the future. It would be a joy to present them to my readers, because all of my readers should be reading YOU!
A: Thank you so much for this interview – you and your site are an inspiration to me and so many others, and your questions and insight have been amazing. And I hope to interview you when I get my spiritualcowgirl.com blog up and running!
Q: Thanks again, and best wishes to you as you continue on your journey.
A: Red blessings and divine winks to you, my lovely lipstick mystic sista!
Sera Beak is a world traveled Harvard-trained scholar of world religions who's spent the last dozen years traveling the world exploring spirituality -- from whirling with Sufi dervishes to meeting the Dalai Lama on my 21st birthday; from taking the host from a Croatian Catholic mystic who had the stigmata (truly) to having life-altering visions with a shaman, and just about everything in between. Check out her new website serabeak.com and blog: spiritualcowgirl.com. More material will be added to these sites soon. You can contact her at sera@serabeak.com
The Red Book: A Deliciously Unorthodox Approach to Igniting Your Divine Spark
Excerpt From Publishers Weekly Review
"A modern, femme fatale spirituality. The book lives up to its unorthodox subtitle . . . poignant insights throughout." (Publishers Weekly)
Synopsis
"The Red Book" is a nothing less than a spiritual fire starter—a combustible cocktail of Hindu Tantra and Zen Buddhism, Rumi and Carl Jung, Mary Magdalene and modern psychics, goddesses and Gnosticism, shaken with cosmic nudges, meaningful subway rides, haircuts, relationships, sex, dreams, humor, and intuition. It's a book that encourages women to live more consciously so they can start making clearer choices across the board, from careers to relationships, politics to pop culture and everything in between. For smart, gutsy, spiritually curious women whose colorful and complicated lives aren’t reflected in most spirituality books. The Red Book is an open invitation to find your true self, and start sharing that truth with the world.