Chapter 2: Sar'h Returns

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With the onset of puberty, my awareness and experiences with energy intensified. When I became a woman, the prophetic dreams and visions strengthened, much to my discomfort. I found myself more sensitive than ever to energies, in addition to the mood swings common among teenagers. I was empathetic to the extreme. If a classmate was sad, I felt it in every cell of my body. I absorbed his or her pain and suffering as if it were my own, and then I reflected it back to the person involuntarily, which made me no fun to be around. I found no reprieve at home. Sad mother. Angry father.

I could not distinguish where my energy field ended and another’s began. I could not discern where my teenage human emotions ended and the consciousness of my soul began. It was confusing and exasperating. As a result, I ate. I ate when I was sad, stressed, angry—anything. I ate when those around me felt discomfort in any form. My house happened to be filled with copious amounts of junk food and soda, which was available to me at all times. In seventh grade, the school nurse weighed me in front of the whole class; it was some Arnold Schwarzenegger fitness program that made it into the public schools.

“One hundred and twenty-seven pounds,” the nurse called out as I turned a deep shade of red.

I had not realized how fat I had become. I weighed a good thirty pounds more than most of my classmates. I searched inside for an answer as to how this had occurred without me realizing it. The truth I discovered was that my soul was not inside my body. Instead, she hovered like a nebulous cloud above it. It felt too painful to stay in the physical body while it absorbed the feelings of the moody teenagers and unconscious parents surrounding me. The weight served as an ineffective barrier to the emotions of others. I retreated into my imagination, into the nonphysical realms, which is what I did when things became intense. I tried various things to connect my soul back with my body but couldn’t quite figure out a lasting solution. My body continued to feel like a shell—a separate being walking around empty and on autopilot.

Throughout junior high and during my freshman year in high school, I created a small group of trusted friends. Music was our common denominator. I grew up listening to Carol King, Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, Paul Simon, Motown Records’ artists, and the Beatles. I loved listening to and interacting with music as it transported me to the place of no time and no space. It was also a place where I felt understood by my friends on the spinning vinyl records. The first time I heard the Beatles song “Tomorrow Never Knows,” I was blown away. When John Lennon sings the opening lyrics, “Turn off your mind, relax and float down stream. It is not dying, it is not dying,” I could feel consciousness in the words. Later in the song Lennon sings, “Listen to the color of your dreams.” It wasn’t just drug talk, as those around me said; it was what I had been doing my whole childhood, sober.

In seventh or eighth grade, I heard Jimi Hendrix for the first time. The way he played guitar, the energy flowing from the amplifier, was all soul voice, and it stirred something inside me I could not quite describe at the time. It was the sensation of stuck energy inside me being freed. This music was the first time I experienced art in a way that moved me at both the human and the soul level. My new friends could relate, and it was amazing. For the first time I had something to talk with my friends about that created an authentic connection. For years I longed to have a deep connection with my peers but had never found the right frequency to ride into the conversation on without it seeming awkward or forced. I didn’t feel like an outsider for once, or at least less of one.

After school, my music friends and I convened in one of our bedrooms, locked the parents out, and listened to the greats like Jimi and Led Zeppelin and the new stuff like Nirvana and White Zombie. I dyed my hair black and wore combat boots with dresses or jeans and flannel, imitating the style of Courtney Love. I spent my spare time in garages with teenage boys with long hair, learning to play instruments. We hid in the neighborhood park bushes, smoking cigarettes and swag weed and eating psychedelic mushrooms we had picked from cow patties.

In an altered state, I read a book aloud called Das Energi by Paul Williams. It was a collection of poetry that fused rock and roll with Eastern philosophy and New Age consciousness. It was the only book Jac Holzman published through Elektra Records, which had introduced Jim Morrison and the Doors to the world. My new group of friends and I enjoyed the magic of immersing ourselves into the world of rock music. It was a lovely escape from the sterile, florescent-lit box that was our school.

When I wasn’t with my friends, I studied. Not schoolwork—I completed that before I left the school building. I studied any book with esoteric knowledge I could get my hands on. This was pre-Internet and Amazon, so I was limited to what I could find in the library. We lived in suburbia, so there wasn’t much selection beyond major world religions. Growing up, my mom read me Bible stories, and I attended weekly Catholic education classes. I felt a strong connection with this Jesus man my mom always talked about, yet I knew something was missing. The people around me used their minds to interpret the stories of his life, when these stories were intended to arouse something in the soul. Additionally, half of the Bible seemed to be missing because it only showed a male perspective. When I quickly hit my limits at the library and church, I convinced my mother to take me to the large Book Stop in the city.

I remember I lit up like a Christmas tree when I walked the aisles of the New Age section for the first time. Despite her strict Catholic upbringing, my mom understood me enough to let me pick out any book I wanted. She believed in Jesus, but she encouraged me to learn about other schools of thought. It was a true childhood luxury. I rabidly digested anything I could get my hands on. Astrology, tarot cards, runes, Wicca, witchcraft, psychics, metaphysics, ghosts, mediums—I read it all, but it wasn’t what I was looking for. Eastern philosophy and yoga, which has currently taken the West by storm, hadn’t made it to the suburbs of Houston, Texas, in the early 1990s. The only Eastern knowledge available to me was basic books on Buddhism and Hinduism—both felt entirely too masculine and too mental. I knew it wasn’t what I was looking for. I gravitated toward books that allowed for moving beyond the mind rather than going into its inner workings.

Many of the books were interesting, but one lit up in my thirteen-year-old hands--The 21 Lessons of Merlyn: A Study in Druid Magic & Lore by Douglas Monroe—the copy I still have on my bookshelf today. It was a dense, scholarly book with more than four hundred pages. The cover depicted a young blond boy sitting on a rock while a wise, silver-haired teacher wearing a long robe taught him something under a grand oak tree. The picture stirred something inside me. It looked an awful lot like me perched on the rock talking to Mortimer in the garden some years ago. “That’s really strange,” I thought.

When I started reading the text, it wasn’t the words but the images that transported me to a time and place where I lived completely connected with nature—where magic, dreams, imagination, and the bending of time and space existed as common knowledge.

With my eyes closed, I smelled the fresh dampness in the air. It was cool, springlike. Everything around me was bright green and new. The snow had recently melted, and it seemed as if the forest was vibrating with celebration. In this time and space, I was a young woman, an adult. I wore a long, flowing white dress and walked barefoot on a carpet made of moss. My long, dark hair was the color of my father’s, and it turned a shade of red in the sunlight like my mother’s. In this place, my gifts for working with energy—my ability to create things seemingly out of thin air and to feel others at such a deep level—was not only normal but highly regarded.

It felt so real. I was there, and yet I felt thousands of years and thousands of miles away, simultaneously. I went so deeply into this transformative experience simply holding the book in my hand that hours passed as I lay on my bedroom floor with my dog, a black cocker spaniel named Kacee, who never veered too far from my side.

Some of the words in the book spoke directly to me. In the introduction, the author suggested that if you could read the book with the open-mindedness of a child, you would receive more from it. Monroe understood that children were open to the nonphysical world, as I had been. He also said Druids were called tree people--Druid literally meant “men of the oak.”

An image of my relationship with the great oak in my own backyard popped into my third eye. Furthermore, the book mentioned the soul, a word surprisingly missing from other texts, and the soul’s ability to take various human forms through the reincarnation process. I made the leap without thought. My soul had lived many lives, many incarnations, and I was here once again. Sar’h was not just me, but also the dark-haired woman in the woods. Whoa. If I tried to wrap my brain around it, it felt too confusing; on a sensory level, it made perfect sense.

Besides the Druid philosophy, spells, and rituals (most of which were too mental for me to digest), the book featured the story of an orphan boy named Arthur, who meets a teacher he calls Merlyn who shows him, like any great teacher, where to look, not what to see. In the book, Arthur undergoes a series of experiences or initiations facilitated by his merlin—merlin is actually a title, not a person—before realizing at the end that he is, in fact, destined to be king. Merlyn never shares this knowledge directly with Arthur; instead, Arthur must figure it out for himself.

“Some things we must realize on our own,” Mortimer had said.

Instead of the literal story, I focused on the energy between the words, reading the book with the consciousness of my soul rather than within the confines of my human mind. I saw how Arthur’s story serves as a parable for self-realization, what some call enlightenment. I understood Arthur’s noble status wasn’t about ruling over a kingdom of people but rather being the ruler of your own kingdom—SELF.

At thirteen years old, I knew that was what I was here on Earth to experience, but I didn’t have the words for it yet. At the time, the concept was only a sensation that felt real and true, more so than the world I happened to be living in. My soul voice reminded me that Sar’h was Hebrew for “princess”—not a ruler over people but over SELF. The information was beginning to click within the density of my human mind, emotions, and physical body.

The book also confirmed some childhood experiences for me. In the book, Monroe said the Druids knew that the nonphysical or other world was every bit as real and tangible as the physical world, and one affected the other constantly. It was the first time I saw in writing something that I knew so clearly. Additionally, Merlyn speaks to Arthur about a universal picture language—communicating in visual imagery, a language in which I was fluent. After all, it is how our souls communicate important information to the human part of ourselves. My soul rarely, if ever, spoke in words, choosing images and sensations instead that I would then translate into words as necessary. The information came in packets I had to unravel with gnost, or inner knowing, rather than with my mind.

The book also distinguished between the truth of mass consciousness and the truth of the soul—confirming my experience in the classroom at age eight. Even though I knew I did not make these things up, it was a comfort to read about how other people saw and experienced the same things as me. I realized there were others like me out there somewhere. I knew I would meet them someday when I left the suburbs of Houston to travel the world. It excited me to no end.

However, the book had its limitations. It was sexist at its core and implied only celibate men could experience authority over SELF or enlightenment. It talked about enlightened beings Jesus, whom I now call Yeshua, and Buddha, yet I knew there were women who had accomplished mastery over SELF as well. I knew that celibacy and a dick were not requirements, although I could see why most would forgo children during the time when it took place.

I would have to reclaim my feminine authority another way. It showed up in a book called The Witch in Every Woman: Reawakening the Magical Nature of the Feminine to Heal, Protect, Create, and Empower by Laurie Cabot, which I discovered at the age of sixteen. The dedication of the book simply stated, “To Sovereignty.” The word sovereignty rolled around my tongue like a marble. I realized it was another way to talk about the self-governing nature of the soul or the authority over SELF as I read in King Arthur’s story. Cabot also talks about femininity and sex in a way that resonated in harmony with my soul voice. Cabot writes,

"A woman’s entire existence is sexual, her every move a sexual expression. If she decides to enjoy sex with a partner, she should understand it is an enhancement to an innate sensibility she already possesses and enjoys. When it comes to sex, a modern woman must say to herself…'I am sovereign.'…Sexual loving is an integral part of her nature." (83)

I wanted to write Monroe a letter and tell him to shove his bullshit back where it belonged. I also found that the spells in many of the books I read, especially ones that affected the lives of others, did not resonate with me at all. I checked in with Sar’h, the ultimate authority on my SELF. I found these answers inside: To be sovereign you must also recognize the sovereign nature of everyone. Sex should be an act of self-love. It seemed so much easier to go to the source within.

However, the stories contained in these two books—not the spells and exercises, but the parables—helped me confirm and reclaim pieces of myself at an impressionable age, pieces I might have lost in the confines of the modern, mind-based world I lived in, and I am grateful to have found them.

My esoteric studies relieved the awkwardness of my early teenage years. Magic and nature were the saving graces in a flat, mind-based world. I never shared too much with my friends. If they happened to see one of my books, I showed them some spell to distract them or buried them in stories so complex they would lose me. I certainly wasn’t going to bring up self-realization; I’m not even sure I could have spoken about it in a way that would have made sense. Music was the perfect way to connect, as talking during it was highly discouraged.

As I relaxed more into my true nature, I eased back into my physical body. I found it uncomfortable to be overweight. My parents were also overweight, especially my dad. He had a round Santa Claus belly to match his silver hair, which he said turned from black to white when he jumped from a plane in Vietnam. When I told them I wanted to lose weight, he insisted it was in our DNA or part of our ancestral heritage.

“We’re big-boned,” my dad told me, but I knew better.

I held an understanding that no one was ever bound to his or her DNA or ancestral lineage, and it could be changed with consciousness. My mom saw how serious I was, and after talking with a friend, she found the name of a personal trainer in the area. He owned a gym in Katy, Texas. I had never taken to group sports or any after-school activities really, so I went to see Michael while my peers ran track, played soccer, or rehearsed plays. Over the next two years he changed my concepts of health entirely. He not only showed me how to work out but also how to eat. I found it so much easier to connect my soul with my body, both through physical exercise, which moved the stuck energy that caused the extra weight, and through creating a less toxic environment within the body for it to reside. Yet as quickly as I discovered this, the realization was thrown to the side as well as my soul’s voice—once again.

It took some years, but by seventeen years old my ugly duckling turned into a swan. I had muscle and a size-two figure. I let my hair grow back out to its natural blond. The guys who had made fun of me and called me Shamu, the whale, now drooled over me, and I was happy to play my new role. With all the attention and new friends, I left my esoteric studies and my music friends. I was popular now and didn’t have time for such things as enlightenment, merlins, rock and roll, and certainly not my soul. My parents bought me a cherry-red convertible. Instead of Jimi and Zeppelin, I blasted Tupac and Timbaland from the tape deck.

The summer before my senior year, I met a high school soccer player who was now a freshman at Texas A&M University. He was a notorious philanderer, and I didn’t want to touch him with a ten-foot pole. It took some heavy convincing before I gave in, but soon we spent every summer day together, smoking weed, drinking beer, swimming, and playing cards with our friends, who also had nothing to do. He introduced me to sex, but it was his cocaine I fell for. The first time I did a line of coke with him, I knew I was hooked. It made me feel like I was all human, all the time. I was confident. I was not empathic to the people around me. I did not see or sense energetic designs anymore. I couldn’t have cared less about anything but my immediate surroundings and myself.

“This must be how humans feel every day,” I thought. The notion was absurd, yet it fit into my experiences perfectly.

By eighteen years old, I had hit full-blown addict status, and it timed perfectly with my freshman year at the University of Texas at Austin. When sniffing coke wasn’t enough, I spiraled out of control into the designer drug buffet readily available across the UT campus. If I was going to allow myself to experience the darkness of addiction, I was going to go all in. Three years, a felony drug charge, and a rehab stint later, I decided to get clean, trading one addiction for another—a socially acceptable disease called success.

In my early twenties, I dove into the deep end of the American dream. I finished my undergraduate degree in journalism and graduated with honors at age twenty-one. I went on to work for a US senator in Washington, DC, and for award-winning newspapers in South Carolina, Georgia, and back home in the Houston area. By the age of twenty-four, I’d made my way back to Austin, serving as the press secretary for a state senator. At twenty-five, I met my future husband. After earning my master’s degree and graduating in one of the top ten slots, I married my husband, and I started my new career as a nonprofit lobbyist for the Lance Armstrong Foundation, where I was quickly being promoted up the chain of command. I was so convinced of my belief in success as a path I even fooled myself.

At thirty years old, I looked at myself in the mirror and realized I was living the singular human life I had found so offensive as a child and teen. There was no magic, imagination, or play in my life. My soul voice was nowhere to be found, and my human brain and body were preprogrammed goal-setting and accomplishing machines.

So where had I lost it, this sense of SELF? Where and when had I exited the road to self-realization? When I felt into it, I realized it—the soul or master voice had never really left. It was shelved, stepping in only in times of major crises and then returning to the shelf, waiting for me, Lauren, the human, to recognize her. The soul is so patient with the human expression of itself. The soul has such unwavering passion and unconditional love for the human—so much so that if the human says, “Hey, I’m going to have the experiences of doing drugs, partying with the cool kids, becoming a wild lobbying success, whatever,” the soul says, “OK, I’ll be here when you get back.”

In some cases, this can take lifetimes. For others, all it takes is a crack in the human self for the soul to return. It can be an actual physical trauma or an emotional one. What the human views as a tragedy is so often an opportunity for the soul to seep back in through the cracks. “Bump and fill” is what I heard it called later. My tragedy or opportunity—however I chose to view it—was quickly approaching.

At thirty years old, my life changed in an instant—with a phone call informing me that my dad had slipped into a coma and would probably never wake up. Those childhood memories resurfaced, and my soul jumped at the opportunity to come back into my human’s field of awareness. I realized I could no longer hide behind the facade of success. The dam I had built to shut out the chaos of consciousness—the awareness of who I truly was—was crumbling, and there was nothing I could do to stop it.

​I was unaware of the details while completely aware that my life was about to change entirely. Between the summers of 2011 and 2013, I lost everything that mattered to me and, as a result, my identity. My father. My career. My husband. And more importantly, I was about to flush an entire set of beliefs down the toilet. I would be left with nothing but the I EXIST and the few fairytale breadcrumbs back to the path of the soul that I had collected from childhood and adolescence. And I was going to need a stiff drink.