Tami Simon: You’re listening to Insights at the Edge. Today, my guest is Sera Beak. Sera is a Harvard-trained scholar of comparative world religions, who spent years traveling the world, studying spirituality with Sufi dervishes, Tibetan monks, Croatian mystics, shamans, and more. She’s the author of The Red Book, and the book Red Hot and Holy: A Heretic’s Love Story. With Sounds True, Sera Beak has written a powerful new book, called Redvelations: A Soul’s Journey to Becoming Human, where she reveals [that] our souls choose the adventure of embodiment so we may learn about the strength that can only come from vulnerability, the love that can only grow in the presence of heartbreak, and the achingly beautiful gift of being fully human.
In this episode of Insights at the Edge, Sera and I spoke about core wounds from other lifetimes, and the process that she has personally gone through to reclaim lost soul fragments from other lifetimes in order to embrace the fullness of her soul. We talked about the personal journey that she shares in Redvelations about knowing herself from a previous lifetime as the daughter of Jesus and Mary Magdalene, and how she didn’t want to be public about this part of her own personal journey, but how she felt she had to be public with it, as an act of love and not abandoning her soul and her soul’s work in this lifetime. Finally we talked about true love, and how the trinity of Jesus, Magdalene, and their daughter Sarah communicate this true love through what Sera Beak calls “the organic lineage of life,” and the distinct, divine person we each are. Here’s my interesting and very provocative conversation with Sera Beak:
Sera, we’re gonna talk about your new book, Redvelations, and I notice in me as we begin to do so that I both want to tread very carefully because the book is so intense and opens up so much material, I think, for the reader, and at the same time, I want to get right to it. So that’s where I’m coming from: tread carefully and let’s get right to it. How does that sound to you?
Sera Beak: That sounds right.
TS: The story of Redvelations is your revealing of a personal journey—your soul’s journey that you’ve been through over the past few years, going all the way back thousands of years. You talk in the book about how when you were 34 years old, you felt cornered, and that you felt that it was really—you know, you could say a sort of life-or-death situation for you, that you had to face a certain level of soul-level healing in your life in order to move forward. Can you take our listeners—what’s happening at that point in your life?
SB: [Yes]. Well, that is when I first met Marion Woodman, the Jungian psychoanalyst. I was interviewing her for a documentary I was creating, and it was the first time I had ever met her in person, and I had read her books and listened to her interviews, but it was in the process of being that close to her that I had the realization that I had lost my soul, or more that I just couldn’t find it. And this was more like a body-to-body transmission if you will, or to put it more simply, she was the first woman at that time in my life that I had met who had fully embodied her soul. And when I was sitting across from her, I couldn’t help but recognize the difference between us. It was earth shaking, it was heartbreaking, it was mind-fucking, because at that point, I had been thoroughly immersed in my spiritual studies and practices, and education, and really felt like I was plugged in. And meeting this woman demonstrated that the most essential part of me was actually missing.
That led to a real necessary crash for me. I pulled back from my professional career. I pulled back from my social life. I pulled back from all my spiritual practices and retreats, and things that I was doing. I really just tried to focus on this soul loss. It took many, many years, and it led to many, many different things, but in that particular time period, it was so real, it was so bone-shaking, that I knew on this level that doesn’t make sense with the mind, but it made sense in my body that if I did not find this missing piece of me, that I really would not continue living. And I didn’t know how that would go about; I just knew at that point it was life or death.
And many years following that, it’s been the same thing; whenever I’ve tried to escape or avoid doing this level of soul work, my physical health itself has gotten to such a state, and just things around me in my life, that I’m reminded of that decision—that if I do not do this, and I do not take it as seriously as I should, that I just, I’m not gonna continue.
TS: So Sera, I think for some people when they have the experience, “there’s some part of me that’s not here,” they begin looking in their biography: what happened to them early in their life. But your journey took you into core wounds that happened in other lifetimes. Tell us a little bit about that. How did you find yourself located in other lifetimes?
SB: Sure. My first area was of course, present life. That was where I was focused, and that’s where most of my energy and time went to. But there was this subtle pull that kept happening whenever I would inquire about what was going on in my present life—and this could be something that was related to my soul loss of course, but it was something like my health, my intimate relationships, my career, just my friendships, just my way of being in the world. When I would sit and inquire about that, what would happen nine times out of ten was that I would start remembering some things that didn’t happen in this lifetime, and actually were happening, in particular, [in] this other time or space. It was confusing on one hand, and also on the other hand it felt so much like me; that what I was remembering was such a rooted, core part of me that it didn’t feel like a distraction, or it didn’t feel like something that was unnecessary.
And in fact, what I began to discover is that when I would do this level of soul work with these memories and these experiences from this other time and space, that things in the present time would start to shift and change. And so even though I didn’t completely understand what was going on at the time, and even though I think, you know, that this almost over-educated part of my mind had several issues with this, what I couldn’t deny is that things were shifting and what I was discovering inside myself, about myself, they were the realest—it was the realest things, it was the realest experiences, it was the realest truths about me that I had ever known or I had ever felt or that I had ever experienced.
TS: Now I want at this moment to talk to that person who says, “You know, I’ve gone into wounds, and there have been past life images and visions, and stories that have come forward. But you know, I’ve never really taken them all that seriously. I’ve thought, ‘Oh, that’s probably a metaphor for something.'” How is it that you didn’t stay at that level, but you took it deeper and said, “No, this doesn’t feel just like some symbolic sort of inner film, it feels real”?
SB: Well, I’ll say this. I did feel it was symbolic, and metaphorical, and archetypal, but if I just stayed there, I ended up getting really, really sick, and really everything would start to fall apart. And what I began to realize was that if I kept it at that level, I was actually continuing my own self-abandonment. I was perpetuating this really ancient habit of denying my own soul, rejecting my own self and my own experiences, and separating myself from my own experiences. And which therefore, kind of led to me separating myself from life and from other people, and from love. So it was a struggle. It was not something that I readily accepted, and was like, “Oh this is real. Like, I was Sarah. [Laughs] Done deal.” That was not—that did not happen. I wrestled with that for a very, very long time. And to be honest, I think there’s a part of me that will always be wrestling with this, and I think it’s an important part of me. It’s a part I actually do respect.
But I also do have parts of me that are so worried what other people will think, and so worried that I am being wrong or delusional, or you know, inflated, or all those things that we can call this experience. That when I give into those parts, I feel that inner separation with myself. I feel that self-abandonment, and my body really reacts to that. So in some ways, I would say it as simply as this, that I actually wasn’t afforded that luxury to only keep it as a metaphor, or an archetype, or a symbol. My body and my entire life let me know that that wasn’t going to heal me, and also that wasn’t going to keep me alive, and that wasn’t love.
TS: Now, I said in the beginning of our conversation Sera, that we were both gonna tread lightly and get right to it, so this is the “get right to it” part. You discovered through this inner inquiry of yours and your own truth-telling, that you were Sarah, the abandoned child of Jesus and Mary Magdalene. And of course, this is where I have this fear that some of our listeners are gonna turn off listening at this very moment, and I know that that’s the fear you also had to some degree that you’re starting to share with us in terms of coming public with your own soul work story that you felt you had to do, and you had to be public about it as well. So tell me a little bit at this moment, why you felt it was so important for this to become public as part of your own being true to yourself.
SB: Sure. Well, first I just want to say that what I’ve learned is there’s really a different communication here between—and how this is worded, it’s something that I discovered is really important. What I am sharing in Redvelations are my experiences of retrieving and reclaiming Sarah, who was the forgotten daughter of Jesus and Magdalene, as the lost part of my own soul. And that said, there is absolutely no interest in convincing or converting anyone, and I really welcome people to interpret my experiences any way they like. They can view my experiences as purely symbolic, or archetypal, or you can view this entire book and this entire story as just a metaphor, because I feel that Sarah’s story is everyone’s story. It’s the human story, and it’s love story. So I just want to say this clearly up front, what’s really much more important to me than anyone believing in me or believing in my soul’s reality is that they believe in their own soul’s reality, and that they have the courage to really do whatever it takes to bring all of their soul home.
This is how I had to bring my soul home. This was the route that I had to take; going public with it was not something that I wanted to do. It was not something that I felt was necessary. I didn’t understand why it would be necessary, but what I learned was that for me, going public was an act of self-love. It was a demonstration to my soul, who I had repeatedly abandoned, that I trust her, and that I believe in her, and that I’m willing to claim her. Even if the world disclaims her, or other people think I’m crazy, or this is career suicide, or et cetera, et cetera. I also know that in—from a soul’s lens, it’s like the perfect setup, because going public with this piece, it brings up all of my greatest fears, and it opens my wounds, and it provides opportunity after opportunity for me to actually do what I haven’t been able to do in the past, which is claim my soul and embrace her no matter what. No matter what others think, just no matter what.
And so in many ways, it’s a grand finale of my soul’s retrieval. I did all of this inner work for years and years. I did all these actual full retrievals, but to begin to speak about that when I’m asked to, and to actually live Redvelations, is the next and the necessary part of my embodiment, and of really bringing Sarah all the way home.
TS: Now Sera, when you say Sarah’s story is, in a sense, everyone’s story, can you tell me more what you mean by that? How is Sarah’s story all of our story?
SB: Sure. Well, Sarah’s story on one hand has the feelings that every human, I feel like, goes through; Love and loss, suffering and healing, betrayal and forgiveness, death and resurrection. Her story really speaks to the wound and the trauma I feel like all of us have just by being human, and just experiencing what it’s like to be alive here on this planet, which is both profoundly beautiful and profoundly painful. And the process of embodying our soul, and facing and feeling our wounds and really wrestling with our divinity, and then allowing it to be found through our own humanity—our imperfect, messy, fucked up humanity—to me is this act of love.
And so when you read Sarah’s story, even though there’s different—it might be different in your own story, the things and the feelings to me are just, they’re the core of us. They describe our own struggles with why we’re here, and what it’s like to be in a body on this planet. What’s it’s like to both love and to lose that love. What it’s like to form deep relationships and then be betrayed by them. What it’s like to feel like we’ve failed. What it’s like to feel just completely lost, and fragmented, and alone here, and actually separate from our origins, whatever we may call them—the divine, the universe. The confusion of it.
But Sarah’s story isn’t a happy one. It’s really the story of a human who comes here and pretty much smashes into a million pieces. Sera Beak’s story is about recovering those pieces, and in so doing, like, I’m hoping to do my own small part, you know, to help ease this hurting planet, and to remind other people through my own story that you know, we’re not alone. We’re in this human struggle together, and that for me—I know this just sounds like words, but it is a lived experience—that love really is behind it all. But man, does it take a lot, at least for me, to remember that, and to get back in touch with that on a bodily level, not just as some abstract spiritual idea.
TS: I wanna talk some, Sera, about this whole process of retrieving soul fragments, retrieving lost parts of our soul. I’m imagining someone listening who says, “OK, I know that there are parts of me that aren’t here. I can just feel it, I can. You know, maybe I feel 60 percent here,” or whatever percentage someone might come up with. It might not be a number but it’s a, “I’m not all here, I know it. OK, I may not have the kind of physical health challenges that Sera Beak reported. I’m not quite on that edge, but there are ways that I know my body’s telling me, ‘You’re not all here.’ How do I go about the process or retrieving these soul fragments? How do I enter that process?”
SB: OK. First, what I would recommend is really inviting your soul forward. What I can say for myself is that I had developed—after my experience with Marion Woodman, I did start to find and develop a very strong relationship with what I refer to in the book as my “Divine Soul.” And this is the infinite part of me, the all-knowing part of me, and it’s really what Red Hot and Holy, my second book, points to and ends with, is this recognition of this Divine Soul that I know every single human has. But by being that intimately connected with my divine soul, it allowed me to enter this process of starting to recollect my human soul, so the Sarah piece of me. So I was really guided through this process by my divine soul, but I really wanna be clear, this isn’t some esoteric, like far out, difficult, out-of-reach thing.
Soul—all levels of soul, to me, works through our body’s sensations and our everyday life, and our feelings, and our dreams. So I was guided by life around me [as to] what was my next step. What was something I needed to look at? Was there a synchronicity? Did someone mention something that resonated with my body that I needed to explore? Was there a book that opened? Everything around me, once I started to pay attention to it and allow it to guide me, provided a really precise path inwards, and in a very precise order that was unique to me. I couldn’t have done something—I couldn’t have just said like, “I’m gonna go retrieve this piece,” and I don’t know, for me I don’t know if it would have worked, just kind of reaching out and trying to use a bunch of different techniques and things like that. I had to really get in touch with, how does my body know to retrieve its own soul? And let it begin to show me.
So one of my recommendations to people is just to invite their soul forward. To start paying attention to their body even more than they might have before. Look around their life and see what’s showing up in a more—in a way that’s making us realize that we need to look closer at something, and start to gently explore in a way that feels right for us. I don’t have techniques, I don’t have steps. If you’re drawn to someone or something, like working with a shaman or working with a particular therapist who specializes in soul work, then please do so. But what I always want to remind myself and others is that we have a very particular, organic timing that needs to be respected. And a lot of this for me regarding soul work is about patience and waiting for the next step to really naturally and organically arrive, just within my own life, and then take that next step. So, yes.
TS: In reading Redvelations, Sera, it seemed from the outside at least that part of what you were doing—yes, waiting, looking at signs and synchronicities, listening to your body, but then there was this going right into the center of the wound, whatever that was that you were feeling, and being willing to do that. Even if it was intensely painful, which is sounded like many times it has been intensely painful. So talk about that—how is it that you were directed, go right into the wound, and what has that been like for you? And maybe even share with our listeners an example of how going into the wound gave birth, if you will, to a retrieval of a part of you.
SB: Sure. So I did a lot of soul work, and what I would say were soul retrieval attempts with Sarah for years. And during that time, I think I was really building up my stamina, my trust in myself; I think I was just building up to many different things. But it got to a point—and part of it was this book; when I realized that, again, kind of through getting quite ill and hearing that I needed to actually share Sarah’s story, just in the act—even though I had been remembering different pieces and dealing with that, just in the act of actually sitting down and allowing my soul to share her story, it was very confronting because I didn’t, I hadn’t sat down and really encountered the whole story. But in so doing, I would write about these very particular traumatic events that happened back then; the first being the crucifixion, the second being my birth, and the third being how I died.
And those were really the main parts of my life where I lost my soul the most, where I really—the wound, the core wounds happened. And even though I wrote about them, even though I was very familiar with them, even though I had—well, one thing I should say is that that part of me, Sarah, had split into fragments that were stuck in each of those time periods. Just stuck with the crucifixion, stuck within my birth process, and stuck in my death process. And so even though I was a very familiar with all these levels and layers, and the story, and I had written about it, and I had been working with those fragments, they had not come home. They had not come back into my body, for reasons that I could not understand. And after I wrote Sarah’s story, my Lady, my Divine Soul, indicated to me that now was time to actually reenter these experiences, and that I pretty much—you can read it in the book, I pretty much threw a tantrum with that. Because at that point, I felt like I had done enough, and I don’t know anyone who really is excited about sort of merging with a fragmented soul part of themselves, in order to encounter the—your core wounds again.
So I really resisted that. And I think again, that’s kind of the healthy human part; nobody really wants to face that much pain again. At the same time, I had grown, and I had developed, and I had been working so hard in such a way that I was able to; it was time. Everything around me told me it was time to do this. This wasn’t something I was just jumping into because I believed it was important. And so what I did was, I reentered those wounds. I reentered my time at the crucifixion, I reentered my time of being born in that lifetime, and I reentered the process of how I died. And what that entailed was being willing to feel everything that I wasn’t willing or able to feel back then.
In some of the first case, I was a fetus. There’s no way I could have taken all of that in, what was going on at the crucifixion. And so, because I am in a healthier place and stable, and I have the appropriate distance, I could then reenter and experience all that. And so I’m not sure if I’m answering your question; I know I’m kind of—this is going a little bit round about, but reentering the wounds was actually the way I brought those fragments home, finally. It wasn’t enough just to remember them, or to work with them, or to write about them, or to do body trauma work with them. I also had to actually go back and relive them, and relive them in a way where I was both Sarah, S-A-R-A-H, and I was Sera, S-E-R-A. And being able to do that is what allowed me to actually begin to integrate these pieces.
TS: Can you take us into one example, and then how it changed you afterwards?
SB: Let’s see. Sometimes I hesitate with going into the details of the Sarah piece, just because it’s such a piece that needs to be read, and I worry sometimes about going into the details, if the context is just—what I’ll do is I’ll do, maybe the lightest one.
TS: Sure.
SB: [Laughs] The one that wasn’t the real kick down. The one that was actually kind of more fun for me in a weird way, but I’ll talk about the birth piece. When Sarah was born, her parents’ community really expected and hoped that she was going to be male, so she could continue what her father left behind. So when I was born, the first real feeling that greeted me and my body was just profound disappointment. Like, epic disappointment that I was female. And a bunch of other crap. [Laughs] Just a bunch of other—a bunch of other stuff got placed on top of that.
And so when I did—so there’s a part of me that fragmented, that really felt just completely unwelcome, unwanted, unacceptable, not good enough to be my parents’ daughter. Not good enough to be here, to be alive, to be human. And so, when I did the soul retrieval in terms of reentering that particular wound, I first had to just feel what I felt back then, and just felt the crushing disappointment and pain, and rejection, and allow myself to feel that. But then what I noticed that the Sera, S-E-R-A part of me wanted to do was then, like, quickly forgive the community. Because you know, I could understand that this is their projection, they had their own fears about carrying on, like, this mission. They were really hoping—you know I went into all that, like, psychological reflexivity, and tried to do the right and appropriate thing and forgive them.
And that’s when my Divine Soul kind of stepped in, and was like, “As you’re trying to do the spiritually correct thing, how is this soul fragment, this baby Sarah-you doing?” And when I looked at the baby Sarah me, I saw that I was just, like wailing, just screaming in pain. And so, what I did in this soul retrieval, is I both was baby Sarah, and I was grown Sera, S-E-R-A, and with a sort of kick from my Divine Soul, to just like get real, I scooped up baby Sarah and brought her into my own body and was holding her so she could feel how much I wanted her. How much I loved her. How much I was not going to reject her in this moment. And although she settled a little bit, it wasn’t quite enough. So then I did what just felt like the most right thing to do in the moment, and I turned around to what we would now refer to as the disciples, and I bitched them out.
I just [said,] “You are acting like a bunch of fucking assholes. This is a baby. This is a baby. And this is what you’re throwing on her. Unless you can get your shit together, you are not allowed near my soul baby ever again.” And I picked her up, and I left. And it was the first time that I felt like I could truly care for myself, and that no matter what situation I was in, even if I was with the so-called most spiritual people walking on this planet, if they were not treating me, my soul, my body right, I could do what felt right. I could leave, I could bitch them out, I could do whatever I needed. And that is what that piece of my soul desperately needed at that time, for me to come home.
It didn’t need me just to like, “I forgive you, and oh, I love you.” It needed me to actually get real, and active, and ground into my female body and say, “Uh-uh, that is not OK.” And so that reestablished this trust in myself, that I could do that, anywhere and everywhere. And that even if I couldn’t, at that particular time period—like there’s no way I could have done that back then as a baby, right? But I still had the chance, I had the chance to do it later, and that’s the beauty of soul work. And that’s the beauty of this kind of work is that is never too late to save our self, and rescue our self, and to give our self these things that we needed back then, but we were not in a position to receive. And so that was more of a lighter version.
TS: Yes.
SB: Of my soul retrieval.
TS: Yes. Well, one thing I’m curious about, do you think in the process of retrieving fragmented soul parts, that we always have to go in and feel the nature of the wound as it was experienced during the loss, or was that just your process? Or do you think, “Oh no, that’s what’s required here”?
SB: No; I would hesitate to say anything, anything that I have done is required. I think this is a very individual process. I have retrieved fragments from what we could call possibly, you know, other time periods or another language—other lifetimes, if that a phrase people are comfortable with; and I have not had to feel, go deep into the feeling. I’ve just needed to recognize it, kind of understand why it’s popping up in relation to what’s happening in my present life, and embrace it. Like really bring it home.
Sarah was a very distinct experience because the majority of my soul was stuck in that time period. And that is the time period where my core wounds happened, and so they were like the root of the root. And so, it was important for me to—for reasons—you know, for these reasons, both because the majority of me wasn’t here, I had to go to the place where the majority of me was located in order to bring myself home, and because these core wounds, this is where they first began.
Also, in this—because I often wonder about this. Yes, does everyone have to go back to a perceived lifetime? And I do not believe that to be the case. I do know for me, like I said, the reasons I just gave were some strong reasons why I needed to, and this wasn’t a mental thing. It was just everything in my life was pulling me to do this. Also, my story involved other people, and other people that we’re familiar with. And so, in order to retrieve my own soul, I also had to recover my parents and their love story. And so, in may ways, although this was a very personal process, I wasn’t blind to the fact that it’s intimately tied to a greater love story.
And that that is my allegiance as a soul, and that’s actually why I did this, and why I chose to do this, is to remind all of us of that love story. Not just the love story of Jesus and Magdalene, but the story that is carried through them and through Sarah, which is the story of all of us together in this universe. It’s this intimate relationship we all have to each other and to this universe. And that’s really the thrust of this work, and what’s behind it, and what’s coming through it, and really what I feel like this book is about.
And while I know there are so many reasons to get focused or even stuck in the Sarah piece, and Sera Beak, how did you [inaudible], and I think those are rightful to be—you know we should address those, because it is curious, and it is strange, and it is unusual, but I know for me, the real core of this and why I did this, was for love. For love of my parents, for love of myself, for love of humanity, for love of life. And that’s really what this book is about. And you can’t do this work without love. You know, I don’t think—we couldn’t have come here and shattered to pieces and gotten so lost and forgotten who we were, and then do the work to start coming back together, without love. You just can’t. So yes, this whole thing for me is about love.
TS: You know Sera, I want to talk more about this greater love story in just a moment, but I want to ask you a question, as these soul retrieval experiences, as you were going through them, and you were having your own internal experiences of what was happening at the crucifixion, being in the womb of Mary Magdalene. I mean, here you are, you’re a Harvard-trained scholar of comparative world religions. Were you thinking to yourself, “Look, I’m gonna go look in a lot of books and see if I can find any documentation that will back up the experiences I’m having in this deep internal space. Are there any records that match?” I mean, did you bother going through that kind of process, or were you like, “I’m not even gonna go there”?
SB: Do you mean to try to yes, like validate or legitimate? [Laughs]
TS: Yes, yes those kinds of things.
SB: You know I read The Da Vinci Code when it came out years ago, and like the rest of, I would say many people. I think there was a piece there that resonated—not so much with the Sarah piece, which he does mention in that book, and that the books that he used for resources do mention, but more the love story, and the inclusion of the feminine just felt so right on, and I think that’s part of the reason that book had such an effect. It wasn’t just the sensational; I think underneath the sensational was a real human recognition, of the imbalance that is inherent in Christianity.
But for my own experiences, no, there’s nothing out there. You know I would—when I first started having my memories, I would Google around and there are other people out there who feel that they are channeling Sarah, or that Sarah is an ascended master [laughs] and I laugh. I’m not disrespect[ing], it’s just that, like if you know the story of Sarah, you wouldn’t think that. You wouldn’t be treating her as an ascended master, you would just be treating her as very, very human, and a very broken human.
And so, I would do that, but no, there was nothing; and I haven’t done a tremendous amount of research, but to my—let’s say this: nothing is common to my awareness of something like this. I do know there are plenty of books of people speaking about being someone in a past life, or having, you know, cosmic experiences, or visions, or they’re channeling, or things like that. None of that was my experience. None of this was some big, booming thing, and I did not have visions of Sarah. Nothing came from outside of me. It was all very much internal, and it was subtle. It was very grounding, it was very sobering. It was just like remembering myself. And so it felt quite different than some of the things that I have come across, which tend to be a little bit more like, maybe flashy, or just like louder, more pronounced. Mine are very subtle, and that’s one of the things that I actually trust about soul work, is that it usually doesn’t overrun us or override us. It joins with us. It’s our own natural pace of remembering who we are. And so it’s not a big, clanging experience. It’s a very slow revealing that happens, again, at our own pace, and in a way that keeps us here, and not distracted but actually really involved in our life, and health, and body, and things.
So I know I’m rambling a little bit, but I’m just trying to set out some of the differences that I do know and I have experienced between what I would consider to be soul work, and maybe some more of these like, past-life experiences.
TS: OK, now I want to talk about the lessons from this greater love story that you discovered from the inside out, so to speak. So here, you’re talking about how part of what’s motivating you is this great love for your parents, Jesus and Mary Magdalene, and the cosmic work, the cosmic love that they’re here to communicate—they were here, they are here to communicate. Tell me if you could, Sera Beak, you get a chance to sort of set the record straight on this cosmic love story. Go ahead.
SB: Oh, OK.
TS: Set the record straight.
SB: [Laughs] Thanks, Tami. Well, first I would say that just because of the labels that I use in this book to differentiate certain things, this is not a cosmic love story. This is what I would call just an organic love story. And that distinction’s very important to me.
TS: Can you help me understand that, the distinction?
SB: Sure. I will try. My experience of this universe, because like all of us I am a multi-dimensional soul, so my memories aren’t just of my experiences on Earth, but also on other dimensions, and other just parts of this universe. And when one thing that I have learned is that there is a thing called a realm or a dimension that for me, I’m just using this label, I would refer to as more cosmic. It is around that most, I would say our spiritual traditions, and religious traditions, and paradigms reside in. I would say it’s where many deities, and we could call them ascended masters, and even what could be perceived as multiple dimensions reside in. It’s where a lot of things reside.
And it’s also a place, obviously it influences this Earth. It’s not always so separate, but it’s also a realm that most of us are in for a while because, we get to experience innumerable things. The things that I’m the most interested in that we get to experience in this realm is actually forgetting who we are, and separating from our soul, and losing our sovereignty, and losing our distinct divine identity. And so we do that in this realm through a variety of ways. Again, my focus is more on the sort of spiritual ways we do this, and that can be just through experiencing oneness, or losing our identity. Merging into everything and various forms of enlightenment. All of that.
So it’s a really important realm because it provides us with all of these incredible experiences, that as beings, I believe we came to this universe to experience. But, one of the things that I feel, is that what my family wanted to remind us of, is that while all those things are wonderful to explore and experience, that we don’t want to lose ourselves in the process. Because who we are as distinct divine beings, our distinct essence is actually necessary for this particular universe to evolve, and know itself. Just like this universe is very important for us as beings to experience, in order to know and evolve ourselves.
So there is this intimate relationship we have with this universe, and one way to view it is the divine masculine, the divine feminine, and the divine soul. Or the creator, and the creatrix, and the creatives. Or the father, and the mother, and the child, who is growing into an adult. And no matter how you view it, for me inherently there is the sort of trinity of true love that is what brought us into this universe as beings, and what holds us all together. And we—and that’s part of what my first family kind of in the flesh represented.
We’re aware now, most of us, that the feminine has been excluded, and it’s been very unbalanced, and it’s created incredible destruction and damage on this planet because of this imbalance. And this is not just in what we call Christianity, because my family was not Christian. This is pervasive throughout every tradition and non-tradition on this planet. But this particular flesh and blood family, was both real and a symbol that we cannot have a complete, whole universe without these two pieces together, but there was a third. There’s a third that’s been missing, and that is what Sarah represented, but the third represents the soul. And that is what all of us are. So from this perspective, we are the missing pieces of love story. And we are the third in the original trinity, which is not just some trinity that later a religion called Christianity co-opted. This is actually, from my soul’s perspective, the very nature of this universe.
And so what that family, my family represented in the flesh was that, was what we all are. And also with trying to stimulate a memory of what this universe is. And that if we are not coming back into awareness of both this creator and creatrix, this masculine and the feminine, all these different labels that we have out there for these two beautifully and mutually contrasting aspects in the universe, and the distinct divine soul, that we ourselves are going to continue to be fragmented and in pieces. And if we are fragmented and in pieces, we are not going to be able to incarnate love, which is pretty much the reason why we came here.
The family represented love, like this—here it is. It’s in the flesh, it’s messy, it’s imperfect, it’s wounded, but it’s alive, and it’s still loving, and we can do it. Like we can do this. And so bringing my story back, with bringing back the story of the importance and the absolute necessity of the soul, and in so doing, I can’t help but also bring back together my parents, which are the founding components of this very universe.
So, it’s a multilayered story. It had to be told to the personal. I think that’s the way love works best sometimes, is through our own personal story. But like all love stories it is—it resides inside all of us and reflects a much greater vision, and experience, and expression of love.
TS: Sera, just finally, at the end of Redvelations, you write, “If you get anything from this bloody book, I hope it’s the importance of embracing and living your own soul’s truth. No matter what others think.” That’s a very powerful statement, and I think it’s something you really are demonstrating and embodying in your own life and in your own writing, this willingness to live your own soul’s truth, no matter what others think.
What I’d also love to hear, “If you get anything from this bloody book,” what would you say to people about true love? What could they get from this book, if they get anything from this book, about true love?
SB: That it’s inside them. It’s their heart connected to the heart of this universe. That it’s why we came here. It’s what holds us all together, and that it really is what it’s all about.
TS: I’ve been speaking with Sera Beak. She’s the author of a powerful and daring new book, Redvelations: A Soul’s Journey to Becoming Human. With Sounds True, she’s also published the book Red Hot and Holy: A Heretic’s Love Story. Sera, thank you so much, not just for being a guest on Insights at the Edge, but for all of your courage to stand strong in your own soul’s truth. Thank you, thank you so much.
SB: Thank you. Thank you for having me, Tami.
TS: SoundsTrue.com: Many voices, one journey. Thanks everyone for listening.
