Chapter Five
The Orange-Ray Energy Center

Our Relationship with Ourselves

The orange ray is that influence or vibratory pattern wherein the mind/body/spirit complex expresses its power on an individual basis.⁵¹

The orange-ray energies which we experience in our daily lives are all about loving ourselves and loving others. This is where the Game begins to get more complex and interesting!

We usually have not played on the flat gameboard with much thought of expressing love in our daily choices. Before conceiving of ourselves as spiritual seekers or Players, we generally have confined our moves to those available on the flat gameboard. We have analyzed the advantages and disadvantages of each option and have used our logic in finding solutions. We have thought, planned and schemed. We have grabbed that parking place! We have persuaded that customer! On the flat gameboard, the main point is to win.

The problem with playing the game of life entirely on the flat gameboard is that we shall never graduate from this environment using the flat gameboard alone. To graduate, we must also use the enhanced Gameboard, which calls upon love/light energy to help us “get our hearts right.” We want to get our hearts in the right place. And we want to keep them there. We want to graduate. The big Gameboard has assets that help us play the Game of Life to win through to graduation. One of those assets is our ability to work with and keep cleared the energy body’s pipeline up to the heart chakra.

We are able to clear the red-ray chakra quickly and simply as we acknowledge our sexuality and affirm the appropriateness of our instinct for survival. While the red-ray center needs to be checked daily to be sure that the energy body is open; still, the check list is short. Am I OK with being a sexual being? Am I OK with living on planet Earth? If yes and yes, then we can move on.

Unlike the root chakra or red ray, the orange ray chakra is able to “bloom” into more brilliance, articulation and clarity as we become better able to keep this energy center clear. We can and do create more and more facets of this orange, flower-shaped center, located along the spine at our belly, as we work with the power that is ours within relationships.

In orange-ray work, issues continually mount up. We are never done with the clearing! It is like housework. Just as we can vacuum the carpet every day and remove dirt each time, we can continually vacuum the house of our relationships with ourselves and others and find dirt to clean every time.

The Ra group says that the orange ray is that influence or vibratory pattern wherein the mind/body/spirit complex, which is their term for a person, expresses its power on an individual basis. And what is that power? It is our power to give or withhold love, acceptance, forgiveness and compassion. It is our power to keep our promises and to treat people ethically, fairly and generously. And before we use this power on anyone else, we need to use it on ourselves. We need to learn to accept ourselves and to treat ourselves with respect.

Our feelings about ourselves run deep. Their power can lift us up or drag us down without our consciously realizing it. We often find that accepting ourselves is harder than accepting others. We can see, in most cases, that another person, who is seemingly imperfect, is actually dealing with difficulties and is doing a good job of coping under the circumstances. Our compassion springs forth readily. When it comes to being able to forgive ourselves for our self-perceived errors, however, we are often stern judges indeed.

How do we judge ourselves? One way is to internalize the scolding voices of our childhood. We keep those toxic voices from the long-gone past audible by listening to them. What are the words with which our voices scold us? Mine tend to be, “This is not good enough.”

Today, when I set out to do something and fail, by my own reckoning, I can, if I listen, still hear the same voice that scolded me when I broke a heavy glass fifty-five years ago. I was about seven years old, trying to wash the family dishes. I had to stand on a chair in order to reach the kitchen sink. The glass slipped from my hands in the soapy water and splintered. I was soundly scolded for my clumsiness. How well I recall the frustration of doing my absolute best and it not being good enough!

As an adult, I can look back and see the child who was doing her level best. I can see that I was far too young to have been expected to do this chore. I can tell myself that my best effort, even if it failed, was good enough! I can be moved to true compassion for that little girl. But until I start listening to my own voice; until I find mercy for myself; until I begin accepting and forgiving myself for breaking that glass over a half-century ago, I am still a prisoner of my own persistent memory.

I do not know what your toxic voices say. I only know that the way to become a skilful Player is to lay them to rest. Maybe they were fair voices, maybe unfair ones. Either way, that time is past! We need to move on. As Players, we need to be in the present moment, free of the voices of days gone by. When we wander into self-judgment, we need to bring ourselves back to that balanced state wherein we can see our own goodness and worth as a soul and a part of the Creator as well as being aware of our perceived faults.

I am not saying that we never make mistakes. Of course we do. I am not saying that we should ignore our mistakes. Not at all: we need to learn from them. I am not even saying that we are loveable all of the time. Most certainly we are not! We are all bozos on this bus.

I am saying that we can learn to love ourselves, knowing our faults. And that is what we need to do to open our orange ray. At the core of keeping energy flowing through the orange-ray center is developing the attitude of genuinely liking ourselves.

We spend a lot of time with ourselves. We know our thoughts and biases, spoken and secret. We have created an inner world of our own in which our stream of consciousness flows. It is important to come into an abiding friendship with ourselves. If we do not like our own company, then how can we really enjoy anyone else’s? If we do not have compassion for ourselves, how can we have compassion for others? We really need to enjoy being who we are. That is essential for keeping the energy flowing through the energy body.

A positive attitude is at least in part a habit. As Players, we need to cultivate that habit. When we pay attention to something, it grows and develops in our lives, just as plants grow when they are given water and plant food. If we are paying attention to the blessings in our lives, those blessings gradually respond by multiplying, until we have changed our inner world completely. We find ourselves becoming more expansive, serene and peaceful. It feels good! And feeling good allows the love/light of the Creator to sail merrily through our energy body’s orange ray and onward towards the heart.

Another aspect of our orange-ray relationship with ourselves that is seldom in good shape is our feelings about our bodies. We are seldom happy with our appearance. We feel self-conscious. We may feel physically inadequate simply because we do not have ideal looks. We seldom measure up to our images of the ideal. These feelings constrict the orange-ray center.

The pressure of trying to look “right” has developed its own pathology in our society. Too strict a diet can lead to anorexia or bulimia. This is very hard on the physical body, since the body is denied the nutrients it needs. Nevertheless the practice of some sort of dieting is very widespread among image-conscious people. Men are not as likely to go completely without food and become anorexic, but they, too, tend to obsess about their weight and feel unattractive because of weight issues, thus constricting their orange-ray centers.

Dieting is not the end of our judgmental attitude towards our looks. We can move on to the harsh techniques of plastic surgery, smoothing our wrinkles with poisonous Botox injections, stripping our accumulated fat surgically with liposuction and in the case of women, replacing the bosoms, noses, lips or hips which nature gave us with the surgically altered shapes which we prefer. This culture has created a brutal environment for those who wish to make a realistic peace with how they naturally look

This means that when it comes to acknowledging and enjoying ourselves as human beings, we are likely to be less than confident. We are likely to be concerned with how others see us. This worry also can constrict the energy body at orange ray.

We know that it is silly to worry about how we come across. The people whom we enjoy are always those people who are just themselves, not trying to impress a soul, but relishing the living of their lives. That is what the Confederation suggests we do: relish our days. The orange ray is the ray of movement and growth in our sense of selfhood, just as the orange-ray density, the density of plants and animals, is the density of movement and growth and the reaching towards the light. Just as wild animals enjoy their environment, we need to enjoy ourselves and our lives in order to balance the orange-ray energy center.

It sounds odd to ask people to work at relishing their lives, and yet it is needed advice. We are all possessed of a mixed bag in our daily lives. Some of our experiences are blessings, some are neutral and some are seemingly toxic. The trick to meeting the oncoming present moment with our energy body clear and flowing is to focus on our blessings.

The Orange Ray and Others

A key indeed is to see each entity within a relationship as a flower of an unique beauty which is better beheld than trimmed or plucked.⁵²

We have discussed the good things that happen to us as Players when we see ourselves as being worthy just as we are. Now let us take a look at how to reap the benefits of seeing others as equally worthy, just as they are.

The orange-ray energy center is not about abstractions. It is not about loving humankind. The orange-ray chakra works strictly with the way we use our personal power and expend our vital energy in our relationships with ourselves and with other people one at a time. The belly chakra is all about personal relationships.

Relationship! There’s a buzz-word of our times! It even has its own acronym. It is “the R-word.” The word entered the English language in the 14^th century from Latin, by way of French. The Latin word, “relationem,” means literally “a bringing back; a restoring.” Its first usage was romantic. People who had a relationship were restored to each other, not by blood but by romantic interest or marriage.

By the 16^th century the legal world had taken possession of the word to indicate specific connections between clients and their lawyers. As science blossomed in the Renaissance, physics and chemistry took up the word to mean a natural attraction. Some elements just have a natural affinity for each other. (Thank heavens!) Oxygen and hydrogen are very good in themselves, but what would we do without two parts of hydrogen relating to one part of oxygen—H₂O—water? Patterns of natural attraction are a deep portion of the way creation works.

We find that we have instant “chemistry” or natural attraction to some people and not to others. This brings us back to the R-word and to our natural attractions to each other as human beings. We cannot help liking some people more than others. Each of us has an aura of energies from our energy bodies that constitute our “vibration.” Some people are naturally going to “vibe in” with us in a harmonic and enjoyable way, so that sharing energy with these people is a treat.

And with other people our vibrations are enough different from theirs that we will probably never be able to appreciate them properly at the conscious, human level. Yet at the soul level, we are all equally “good.” We are all one. Invoking that remembrance of oneness when we are faced with relating to such people unblocks the orange-ray center so that the vital energy of the Creator can come freely through that chakra.

I love the q’uote above about treating people as flowers, not moving them from their natural habitat nor cutting their stems to make them fit in our vases but enjoying them just as they are. This is a powerful key to keeping the orange-ray chakra clear. This key sounds simple but it is not.

Our culture suggests that manipulation of others, for their own good or for our own benefit, is acceptable. As children we learn how to ask for things nicely, with “please” and “thank you.” We learn how to grease the wheels of social intercourse. We learn to smile when we do not mean it, in order to be polite. We learn to tell “white lies” in order to avoid offending those we love or wish to please. We learn to “behave.”

In and of themselves, these learnings are solid assets on the flat gameboard and acceptable starting points on the enhanced Gameboard. It is a pleasant thing on either gameboard when our personal relationships move along smoothly. However, such learned and artificial behaviors give us no idea in any inner sense of what personal power is, what it feels like to be powerful or how we may make our best use of that power in playing on the enhanced Gameboard.

A spiritual democracy reigns on the enhanced Gameboard. The people on death row, whose murders and other crimes were committed with the most negative and black of motives, are souls precisely as worthy and honorable as we are, according to Confederation philosophy. From the Confederation’s viewpoint, which sees the creation as a unitive whole, people’s actions, no matter how heinous, pale before their unique value at the soul level. The compassion that reigns on the enhanced Gameboard sees right through our errors and follies and finds that “piece of the One” as Joshiah⁵³ calls it, that all entities are.

So while on the flat gameboard judgment is logical and necessary, it has no value on the enhanced Gameboard. Indeed, it tends to stand in our way. When we are judging one another, we tend to narrow or even to block the orange-ray energy center.

When we need to deal with a person whose vibrations we do not enjoy, there are a couple of simple techniques that use our own energy bodies to create a safe space for us.

Firstly, if we are dealing with a rude clerk or a pushy acquaintance and we feel pressed and uncomfortable, we can take just a moment for psychic self-defense. We can pretend to straighten our hair. We can stroke over our entire head with a free hand. Then we can brush the lint off our shoulders and brush our hands down our bodies as if straightening the way our clothes hang. We have just cleansed and refreshed our auras. Be mindful, while doing this, of asking that energy which we do not appreciate to leave the personal space of our auras.

Now, continuing to use the power of our energy body, we can put our feet or ankles together and clasp our hands, closing the circuits of our two hands and our two feet. This is much easier to do when seated, but even when standing we can unobtrusively and effectively close our energy body’s circuits by this means.

When we have closed this circuitry, we have created for ourselves a safe place. We have defined our psychic space and we have protected ourselves from the toxic vibrations which we feel are coming from the other person.

And we have done this without for an instant separating ourselves from him in our hearts. We continue to see his worth at the soul level. We honor ourselves by setting limits with the psychic self-defense. We honor love itself by seeing the oneness of ourselves and all others at the deeper, spiritual level.

If we have a personal relationship that is really close, like that of a good friend or lover, we will eventually find that there are things about that other person that annoy us. Maybe it is the way he chews his food. Perhaps it is a particular tone of voice she has that rasps on our nerves. Whatever the reason, we find ourselves irrationally irked by these little things.

In such instances it is helpful to pretend to enjoy what we do not enjoy. A large amount of the emotions we feel are created by ourselves. If we act as though we love something or someone, we can create the habit of doing so.

I remember my first job as a librarian, at the Speed Scientific School, the engineering school of the University of Louisville. I was 22 years old. My boss was the woman who had created the engineering and technical library there in 1941, two years before I was born. She had been reigning there ever since. I was hired in 1965 and was her first assistant. She had no idea how to deal with me. At first, each day I worked for her was torture. And I knew that to honor a professional appointment I needed to stay a year. That year ahead loomed long and difficult before me.

Then I devised the plan of acting as though I loved her dearly.

I took on the project of finding ways to make her smile and feel more at ease. I started calling her “Chief,” a term used on a then-popular television sitcom, “Get Smart.” No matter what idiotic chores she invented for me, and she was a master at finding doozies, I would give her a chipper grin and say, “Right, Chief.” She loved that.

Within a month, I found myself completely able to love her, just as she was. What had started as pure fiction became the truth. The reason is that when a Player invokes love, love flows and love teaches. We do not have to do the loving. We only have to start the flow of love by determining to act as though we love.

It is just like when we smile on purpose rather than because we mean it. The upturning of those facial muscles actually changes our body’s chemistry and the smile ceases to be mechanical and becomes a true smile if we let it.

Love showed me why she was acting like such an idiot. Love opened up to me her fears and her deep feelings of inadequacy and unworthiness. My heart went out to her and she could feel that. By accepting her as she was I became her defender and helper.

We ended our year together with an ideal relationship. And during that year she taught me the craft of running a library, from stem to stern. I was able to move on to a job where I had my own school library at a private, 13-grade school. My old boss gave me the skills I needed to do that job. It was a plum of a job for such a young woman and I loved having my own shop.

The habit of love is like any other habit. Psychologists tell us it takes about three weeks to make a habit. And it takes us about that length of time to break a habit or to change to a different habit. As Players, we are wise indeed to invoke love and ease those irksome issues we have with our friends or lovers. We will soon find ourselves smiling when he chews his food, for this is his little quirk and only he does it this way. When we hear that grating tone of voice we will grin, acknowledging that we would know that dear “barbaric yawp” ⁵⁴ anywhere.

These small matters are insignificant on the flat gameboard, because on the flat gameboard, relationships are about getting sex, having a friend, making a useful partnership or fulfilling some worldly need.

These same matters are very significant on the cosmic Gameboard. For when we are irked, irritated or otherwise aggravated in our emotional selves, our energy bodies are narrowed in orange ray. They may even be blocked completely if we are really, really upset. Such emotional tangles rob us of our personal power as well as our peace of mind. Under the influence of such negative feelings, we are not likely to be able to make consistently service-to-others choices dealing with people who aggravate us. We knock ourselves off the enhanced Gameboard when we cannot make good, positive choices.

Muhammad Ali and Howard Cosell are two good people to contemplate when dealing with people who irritate us. Boxing is a bloody sport and Ali was a loud-mouthed character in his youth, full of attitude. It aggravated sportscasters like Howard Cosell. And Cosell could be loud-mouthed and insensitive as well. Yet Ali and Cosell became friends over the years, as each of them found ways to honor and respect the other while continuing verbally to spar in perfect mutual harmony and respect.

When we approach our relationships with others from the standpoint of service to others, such emotional tangles tend to smooth themselves out. We can enjoy all sorts of people so much better when our first thought is one of service. “Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country,” said John F. Kennedy. The Confederation advice is similar. “Ask not what the other self can do for you. Ask what you can do for the other self.” In polarizing towards the positive, to help another is to help ourselves. And we will find bread returning to us on the waters a hundred-fold, love being reflected in love.

Distractions from Orange-Ray Relationships

In a negative sense many of the gadgets among your peoples; that is, what you call your communication devices and other distractions such as the less competitive games, may be seen to have the distortion of keeping the mind/body/spirit complex inactivated so that yellow- and orange-ray activity is much weakened, thus carefully decreasing the possibility of eventual green-ray activation.⁵⁵

Orange-ray relationships are a substantial part of the grist for our metaphysical mills. It stands to reason that our mill grinds finely, and what gets chewed up in their work disturbs our feelings. For that reason it is often uncomfortable to work within a relationship, either with ourselves or with another person.

We do well with our Sunday manners on a first date or talking with a stranger. We can even keep the fiction of the role-playing going for several dates. Eventually, however, both parties in the relationship must get real and express themselves honestly. And catalyst ensues.

Often, when we get real, what we need to say to each other will be painful for the other self to hear. And yet relationships need an honesty profound enough to allow for both partners’ spiritual growth. So we must share our shining truth in the course of our relationships in order to keep our orange ray open.

Once a certain amount of trust has been engendered in a relationship, these times of necessary communication become easier. But the discomfort of having to talk about painful feelings never really goes away.

Is it any wonder, then, that we seek refuge in recreations that do not involve quality time together?

Years ago, Sammy Davis, Jr., had a television interview show. One night I saw him interview Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme. This couple had met, both of them being popular singers, on a television show where they were both guests. They had fallen in love, married and raised a family together. They also continued touring together as performers.

Sammy asked Eydie what the secret of their long and happy marriage was. Eydie replied, in perfect honesty, “We try never to have a meaningful conversation on the road.” Of course I knew they could not manage that successfully. I could immediately see them in a dressing room somewhere hashing out an issue that could not wait.

We often find ways to escape relationships and the work they engender. We distract ourselves endlessly with television when we are together. There we are, together but not together. We are both watching the same thing but we are not really “with” each other. The television shows keep us from having to relate personally.

Or we need to tend our children. We choose the tube as the real babysitter. Where we could be taking long walks and answering the youngsters’ endless questions, going to the library, feeding the ducks or whatever involves directly relating to our children, we turn on the television and find a cartoon show for them to watch. By opting out of directly relating to our children, we are allowing them to be raised by the television. The people who program the network channels have a specific agenda for children. It includes their ability to be consumers and accept that buying an endless stream of new toys is a worthwhile pursuit and a good value system which will make us happy. And that is what children learn, even though toys do not make any of us happy for long.

We may have chores such as mowing, raking and gardening. This can be a good opportunity for contemplation and meditation. However if we are listening to an iPod or a boom box rather than to the birds, the wind and the silence, we have missed that opportunity.

Then there are computer games. For many people, free time is computer game time. It seems to be a good form of recreation, in that it is relaxing. And yet excessive playing of such games results in tuning out of what is going on within ourselves, much less with the significant others in our lives.

In order for negatively polarized people to continue to use the power of our governments and cultures, the first thing that needs to happen is for positively oriented people to be distracted and cease paying attention to real events. The mass media are such means of distraction. And we choose them all too often.

Unless people turn on the television only when they wish to watch a specific program, the tube will likely be left on no matter what happens to be playing on the screen. We then choose the best among our alternatives to watch rather than having the wit to turn the TV off entirely and engage with each other in conversation or joint projects.

I cannot recommend to anyone else that which I myself do not do without being hypocritical, so I do not ask you to get rid of your TV or iPod. I just ask us all to become conscious of our use of such distractions. Enjoy the shows and the music, but remember to find the time to relate to yourself and to the relationships of your life as well.

The error of being a TV watcher or net surfer or gamer is not necessarily in doing those activities. Some of the games have little or no negative polarization in and of themselves. Solitaire, for instance, is innocent, although combat-oriented games that cause gamers to lose all hesitation about pulling triggers are certainly suggestive of our polarizing negatively by seeing other people only as targets.

The error for Players is in allowing our chances to polarize and grow towards graduation on the Gameboard to slip away unnoticed. Seize the day! We do well as Players to spend real time with and to cherish our relationships.

Orange-Ray Sexuality

The orange-ray attempt to have sexual intercourse creates a blockage if only one entity vibrates in this area, thus causing the entity vibrating sexually in this area to have a never-ending appetite for this activity. What these vibratory levels are seeking is green-ray activity.

There is the possibility of orange- or yellow-ray energy transfer; this being polarizing towards the negative: one being seen as object rather than other-self; the other seeing itself as plunderer or master of the situation.⁵⁶

In most people’s lives, sexual relationships loom large. From the first stirrings of our sexual desire to the grave, we deal with the right use of our sexuality. Keeping our orange-ray energy centers clear throughout the drama of our sexual relationships is essential to being a Player on the enhanced Gameboard.

This work does not come naturally or easily to any Player. We tend to have little idea of how to change our soap operas into sit-coms and lighten them up. However when the dramas close our orange ray, we are stuck on the flat gameboard. We do not want that! We want to keep our orange chakras clear and open so that the love/light of the Creator can flow freely through to the heart.

Staying open in orange-ray sexuality is a challenge. Seldom in this day and age have either men or women been able to come to the discovery of their sexual nature in a way which is positive. Very often our sexual experiences are laden with others’ manipulation of us, pressure to perform and instances of emotional and physical abuse. If you have had a perfectly normal sex life, I congratulate you. Most of us have not.

Most young men are under intense peer pressure to perform. Perhaps they would not wish to do so if they gave the matter deep thought. Deep thought is not encouraged by our society. Conforming is. In wishing to belong, some young men will become sexual predators.

For instance, I was raped by a gang of four boys when I was barely four years old. I was fortunate that these particular seven- and eight-year-old boys did not yet have the ability to achieve an erection, so my physical body was not penetrated. I was not severely injured. I had only bruises and the discomfort and humiliation of being tied down by all four limbs to bramble bushes in order to make my body available. After they were finished using me, one of the boys loosened one of my hands as the group rode off on their bikes. I was then left alone in the little clearing the boys had made. I got scratched by the bushes to which I had been tied while untying my other limbs with my free hand.

But although I was not hurt badly in a physical way, I sustained substantial emotional damage. I weighed less than forty pounds at the time and was overpowered by four boys, all of whom were larger than I. Yet this did not stop me from feeling that somehow I should have been able to avert this disaster.

I knew I had been abused. I felt soiled. My clothes had been taken away, as had my identity. I had to walk home almost naked, having been able to locate only my underpants. I was lost and had to ask for help while in this embarrassing state of undress. Because of being used as a sexual object, I was made aware of men’s sexual feelings in a disturbing and crude way long before I as a woman should have experienced them.

Because of this experience my self-image was skewed for years, well into grade school. I gradually outgrew the toxic feelings which stemmed from my having been sexually abused. But many of us retain chronic problems with orange-ray relationships because of such abuse far into our adulthood. It often takes deliberate and persistent work to release this kind of buried sexual pain and trauma.

I mention this detail of my history because I believe that the level of sexual abuse is far higher than it is usually perceived to be by the general public. I want those of us who have been abused by family members, boyfriends or strangers to take heart from my experience. We can come to deal honestly with the feelings of guilt and shame which stem from these invasions of our bodies and our beings. We can forgive. We can heal.

Lesser kinds of sexual abuse than outright rape are also common in our society today. Date-rape is commonplace in our culture. Many orange-ray-blocked young men feel it is all right to drug a woman in order to mate with her. Their excuse is that the women really want this mating but are too afraid of what people will say to agree without being overmastered.

And varieties of consensual manipulation and control abound in sexual relationships. Even in early years, some young men habitually tell young women that they love them in order to convince the women to mate with them. Or they threaten abandonment if the woman does not engage with them in sexual congress, saying that they can find another, more willing partner if the young woman refuses to meet their sexual needs.

So young women often cave in, wishing to satisfy and keep their boyfriends. These young women are often too young to handle, or perhaps even feel, physical desire. They may agree to have sex in the hope of holding on to their romantic relationships. That hope is usually in vain. Once the man’s conquest has been made, the woman is usually abandoned by him. He has conquered. The game is over. He moves on to the next object of his sexual predation. This is not true of all young men. It is true of far too many. And sexual predation is implicitly accepted in our culture.

How can women fail to resent such treatment? Either they resent it and avoid sexual relationships, separating them from many of their peers, or they come to accept being seen and used as sexual objects.

They may even decide to become sexual predators themselves, emulating the dominant and aggressive behavior of men. There is a spurious freedom in this choice. The woman now feels in charge and in control. She has changed her role from “prey” to “predator.”

However she has as little hope of true sexual energy exchange from this behavior as have her male counterparts. The heart chakra will not open while such manipulative expenditures of energy are being run. All such manipulative behavior polarizes us in service to self, undoing our good work at polarizing towards service to others.

Such is the condition of our culture today. The culture as a whole is over-activated and blocked in orange ray. This means that Players will be facing a steady headwind from the everyday “Matrix” in order to clear their orange-ray energy centers.

Why do some of the males of our society rape women? What is the impulse? Obviously, it is not red-ray sexual desire. These seven-year-olds who raped me were too young for lust. Yet they were not too young to imitate their elders in wishing to achieve power over others. Rape is about imposing one’s will on others, not about sexual desire.

Look again at the quote from Ra, above. They say that “the orange-ray attempt to have sexual intercourse creates a blockage if only one entity vibrates in this area, thus causing the entity vibrating sexually in this area to have a never-ending appetite for this activity.”

In looking at the red-ray sexual dynamic between males and females, we have seen that by instinct some species of male great apes will mate freely within the females of its clan. The female great apes of these species, on the other hand, have the instinct to bond faithfully with one strong male who will take care of her when she has children.

We are more than great apes because of our human nature, and many mature human men will choose to bond with one woman in a faithful, lifelong mated relationship. There is room in the great ape’s instinct for that behavior. But the human male’s immature, youthful sexual instinct, uninformed by ethics, is to mate with as many women as possible. This situation is ripe for sexual aggression and abuse.

There is rage and fear buried in sexual predation. Many men are intimidated by the divine feminine. Women are carriers of this sacred energy. The comedienne Judy Tenuta’s apt phrase of invitation is, “Come closer to the Goddess.” Her accordion playing and other comedic havoc onstage notwithstanding, she has professed a profound truth. Orange-ray-blocked men do not want to come closer to the Goddess! That is the fundamental problem they have with dealing with their own sexuality. Every instinct in their immature emotional natures warns them of the power of womanhood. Such men want to keep their distance from that amazingly powerful energy of feminine sexuality and nurturing mother-love.

Yet this desire works directly against their spiritual progress. The Ra group is clear on this point. On February 27, 1981 they say,

The green ray activation is always vulnerable to the yellow or orange ray of possession, this being largely yellow ray but often coming into orange ray. Fear of possession, desire for possession, fear of being possessed, and desire to be possessed: these are the distortions which will cause the deactivation of green ray energy transfer.⁵⁷

Note the main word: fear. Fear is what closes the relationship chakra.

Until a man is able to move through the energies of relationship, both before exclusive mating or marriage and after the commitment to one woman has been made, while fearlessly retaining his clarity of mind and heart, he will tend to want to keep that Goddess quiet. He will want her to be docile and not challenge his leadership. This is something men can seldom expect, at least in the United States of America in the 21^st Century.

Nevertheless, the emotionally immature male will try. And when, as is inevitable, he fails successfully to control the female other-self, he finds himself forming a hard knot of anger against women in general. Sons inherit this attitude from their fathers. Do not think those seven-year-olds got the idea of raping me by themselves. They were playing out their fathers’ fantasies by abusing a little girl who trusted everyone.

Looking at the far less extreme but much more common situation, men in general fear the power of women. Especially within the “one-God” cultures of Arab, Jew and Christian societies, men distrust and doubt women’s goodness.

Men tend to see their mothers as “good.” And when men marry, they often switch from relating to their wives as women to relating to their wives as mothers. Many men routinely call their wives, “Mom” or “Mommy.”

Motherhood confers a kind of permanent virginity, a Madonna-hood, upon women. This role does not usually appeal to men sexually. However men will often stick with their wives, even without sexual interest on their parts, if they are satisfied that their wives are good mommies to them and their children.

All other women tend to be seen by such men, at least subconsciously, as sexual objects. And sexual objects have no virtue. Therefore men do not have to respect the women they are hunting. There is no desire to seek the heart of womanhood with one woman; to move beyond our cultural conditioning and great-ape sexual instincts.

When men are caught by the law in sexual predation and brought to trial here in America, often they are able to escape society’s punishment because they are able to convince a jury that “she was asking for it.” This is true in spite of what should be the obvious fact that young women do not wish to be raped and are not asking for anything but the approval of their male and female peers in terms of what they wear and how they use cosmetics, piercings, tattoos and jewelry.

And in some societies, where men have been more successful at reducing women to second-class people than in the United States, men in a raped woman’s family have the right to kill her to save the family’s honor. The rapist is not punished. Such cultures wrap their women in heavy robes and hide them in harems to protect them from themselves. The myth in these cultures is that women are weak and cannot help being sinful.

These beliefs and behaviors are bizarre in any rational sense. They are expressions of the fact that men in these cultures do not want to move into green-ray sexuality. They would prefer that their hearts not be involved. They fear being possessed. They would like lust to be simple and convenient and not result in entanglements. They have no desire to mature beyond red-ray and undeveloped orange-ray sexuality.

And without allowing their emotions to mature into a view of sexuality which aims to make one special woman their partner and companion for a lifetime, they are stuck with endless desire. They are over-activated and therefore blocked in orange ray. So their desire continues to increase throughout their sexually active lives. This desire is never quenched or focused into any expression of their sexual power which succeeds in outgrowing the desire to control or manipulate women.

Women, too, often work at manipulating and controlling men, usually through their beauty or through emotional blackmail. Women want men to fall into the “tender trap” of marriage. Their desire for a home and family is just as it was at the great-ape stage. Women are looking, instinctually speaking, for the alpha male who can obtain for them a nice cave in which to bear and rear their young.

Looking at sexual power, we include “Mom-ism” and “Daddy-ism.” A mother and her son share a special bond which has latent sexuality within it by the nature of humankind. A father and his daughter share the same special bond with sexual overtones.

We have covered those parents who abuse their children in outwardly sexual ways just now. Let us also include the mention of the fact that a sometimes very toxic codependency can exist between a Mama’s Boy or a Daddy’s Girl and the Mama or Daddy. This can have its roots in the power of forbidden sexual feelings and be difficult to shake without help. Such overly close relationships within the birth family are often the cause of the destruction of a marriage.

If any feel they may be in such a relationship, it is a good idea to seek some counsel. The simplest way to begin is to do a key word search on “codependency.” A toxic codependency of this kind can close the orange ray very quickly. And there is help, on-line and in 12-step-type groups in your area.

With all of this in mind, we can see that it is a wonder and a blessing indeed when a man and a woman are able to create a safe sexual haven for each other. It is very difficult to achieve this on the flat gameboard. Without the miracle of love, which inspires men and women alike to reach for a higher way, we would all be stuck.

How do we reach for a higher way? In part it is by delaying sexual activity. Perhaps because of my early sexual abuse, I chose to ban dating for myself until I fell in love at the age of 17. By not dating until I fell in love, I gave my body a chance to catch up to my mind and emotions. When I gave myself for the first time, at the age of 19, it was in utter trust, to my fiancé. My passion opened very naturally. I felt like a beautiful, blooming flower.

My fiancé was fickle. He left me soon after taking my maidenhead. I have to give him points for persistence: we had been engaged for over two years when I gave myself to him. He persevered until he had conquered my girlish reservations and morals. Having succeeded in doing so, he fled.

His love for me was in my role as a virgin. When he had taken my virginity, he lost all sexual interest and even complained that all I wanted to do was make love. He left me later that summer, just nine days before our wedding date. He left me pregnant. I lost the child before the end of the second month of my pregnancy. I still mourn the loss of my baby. Nevertheless, I do not mourn the loss of my first love.

However I feel thankful to him. By wooing me well, he gave me the gift of my own passion. Although my heart was shattered for several years after he left me, my sexual nature was alive and well. To this day—I am now in my 60s—when I feel the natural upwelling of my physical body’s sexual nature I rejoice.

Nowadays, young women as early as grade school are being pressed to become sexually active. Young men can achieve erections and orgasms years before young women are likely to have the naturally arising passion to respond in kind. The culture is such that young men can put intense pressure on young women to become sexually active long before they have any naturally arising sexual feelings. There is abuse of women built in to our current cultural norms. And I would like to encourage young men and women to retain the power over themselves which it takes to defy the culture and to say no to early sex.

I am not a man, so as I write about men’s situations, I can only hope to be accurate. In my observation, males do not have the natural red-ray block against casual sex which women routinely have in place. As soon as their hormones kick in, they seem ready to have sexual relationships. Philip Roth writes strikingly of this adolescent male period of raging hormones in Portnoy’s Complaint. In some men, this stage of random and universal attempts to bed anyone in sight lasts the whole life long. Needless to say, staying within this stage of the emotional maturation process keeps many men safely locked into the flat gameboard.

In many women, this habitual sexual abuse by men, whether in their attitude or in their actions, creates in women a dynamic of anger and disgust. I can remember a counselee saying to me, about a man who had attempted to abuse her, “That is just what men do.” There is a poignant hopelessness and despair in those words. A woman who feels this way is also likely to be blocked or at least constricted in orange ray.

There is a natural, spontaneous, organic sexuality that has been given us by the Creator. It may seem like an odd point to make. However, many women have never felt that spontaneous feeling of arousal from the catalyst of being with their partner. For them it remains forever a matter of politics and accommodation on the flat gameboard.

My advice to all young people is to slow down and remain celibate until they have found the mates with whom they wish to form permanent relationships. It will not make them popular or hip. It will, however, safeguard their energy bodies. For when we make love, we mingle our auras in an intimate way. To remain safe in such an intimate situation, we really need to be able to trust our partners and to have respect and affection for them.

We can progress and mature sexually, if we wish to put in the time and make ethically wise choices. We have a good deal to forgive, in doing this work in orange ray. We must forgive our culture for being so shallow. We must forgive our mass media for constantly parading sexual images in front of our eyes and imaginations. We must forgive ourselves for wanting so much to belong that we would consider accepting less than a green-ray energy exchange. And we must forgive those who would, if they can, abuse us.

Forgiveness is the key to clearing orange ray. The Ra group suggests that forgiveness stops the inertia of action, which is sometimes called karma.⁵⁸

In order to keep our orange-ray chakras clear, it helps tremendously to recall this home truth. We may not wish to forgive. We may wish to hone our edge of rage until it is sharp and savage. That wish, however, traps us on the flat gameboard, unless we are negatively polarized. Like a Chinese puzzle, lack of forgiveness traps us who wish to polarize positively. It binds our hands and our ability to act.

The Confederation philosophy suggests that forgiveness is a powerful tool for Players. They suggest that

You can forgive the people or the situations that are crushing you. The power to forgive is tremendous.⁵⁹

The thing to hold on to in forgiving is that most often the people who are hurting us do not know what they are doing. In fact it is fair to say that none of us knows the impact of our actions in relationships, at least for a lot of the time. We are all unaware of our power to hurt and to heal. Practicing forgiveness of ourselves and of others with whom we have a relationship helps us to keep our energy bodies clear and lets the energy flow through us up into the heart.

In keeping our orange-ray energy centers clear, sexually speaking, it helps to remember that we are looking for one mate who vibrates with us in affection, respect and love. We are skilful Players when we wait, in a state of complete independence of mind and heart, for a true partner.

Orange Ray and Nature

The orange-ray body is the physical body complex. This body complex is still not the body you inhabit but rather the body formed without self-awareness, the body in the womb before the spirit/mind complex enters.⁶⁰

In working to keep our orange-ray chakras clear, it helps to understand our orange-ray physical bodies. I have talked about this great-ape body and its instincts and how that heritage influences our thinking.

But there is a larger issue here. Our bodies are part of the global, orange-ray world. That is the world of plants and animals; the world of nature. If we can escape our logic-driven intellects and let our bodies be a part of the natural world, a good many chances for enhanced balance open up for us. When our bodies feel rhythmic, often we are much quicker to spot times when our energy bodies are not in rhythm with what is occurring.

Many of us find enjoyment in exercising in nature. Perhaps we golf, jog or run. Perhaps we bicycle or swim. As a child I spent many summers dancing in nature, following the dancing techniques of Florence Fleming Noyes.⁶¹ As my bare feet danced across the sprung board floor of the open-air Pavalon or the grass of its surrounding greensward, I found myself expressing from within the rhythms of animals, trees and stars and everything natural. I felt entirely at one with my world. Later in life, gardening became my way to connect with the earth very directly and consciously.

Whatever way we connect with the natural world, we can be sure that doing so is very healing for our energy bodies. For the orange-ray body itself retains a complete, though unconscious, knowledge of the oneness of all things and the harmony of all parts of the Creator.

Indigenous cultures such as Native Americans have a strong awareness of the unity and interrelatedness of all things. They have animal totems for their tribes and each person also has his individual totems. These totems act as guides and helpers as the tribesmen and women go through their lives. In some systems, one person can have as many as nine different totems or guides. Usually there is one main totem. Identifying our totems can help us ground ourselves in the instinctual world of orange-ray.

It makes sense to connect with this system, especially if we live in North America, where the Native Americans have lived in harmony and symbiosis with the land for thousands of years, long before encroaching Europeans robbed them of the freedom to roam the land and took it for their own. The land is alive and its spirits are quite used to communicating with people.

I would highly recommend that Players familiarize themselves with the beautiful spiritual traditions of the Native Americans, as their harmony with nature is our heritage for the asking. They have much to tell us about our connection to Mother Earth, something most of us have largely forgotten in our modern urban life

To identify your totems, ask yourself what animals you most frequently notice. What animals do you seek out when you go to the zoo? About what animals do you dream repeatedly? What animals do you repeatedly see as you are surfing television channels? Of what animal are you irrationally afraid? Such questions will lead you to your totems.

It is an interesting exercise to do a key word search under “totem” or read a book such as Animal Totems: The Power and Prophecy of Your Animal Guides by Millie Gemondo and Trish MacGregor. Locate your totem animals and see how Native Americans connect your special totem to your nature and the themes of your life experience.

Grounding our energy bodies into the orange-ray environment comforts us at the very deep level where we belong to the land rather than the land belonging to us. Doing so helps our energy bodies stay clear.

Orange-Ray Accountability

When you get the opportunity to incarnate within your density upon your sphere, you first go through the process of creating the scenario or the screenplay, shall we say, for your personal movie of life. You choose the cast. You choose who shall play mother, father, spouse, lover, friend, enemy, and so forth. You make agreements with these entities, not within the Earth plane, but within the finer world which this instrument calls the inner planes.

No matter how difficult the relationships seem or how much pain has been experienced, this was part of your own choice. It may be difficult to believe or to understand how you would wish to choose to ask yourself to suffer, yet we can only say that when one is outside of the illusion that you now enjoy it seems like child’s play—and a good kind of playing at that—to plunge into the sea of confusion and to swim about in its waters.⁶²

The Confederation suggests that before we come into incarnation by the birth process, we set up for ourselves the agenda for our lifetimes. We are responsible for the situations with which we work from day to day. We cannot blame some agency outside of ourselves for the difficulties of our life. The credit or blame rests securely upon our own shoulders. As Harry Truman said, “The buck stops here.”

We have all heard the phrase, “It is God’s will,” speaking of a loss or hardship someone is experiencing. By saying that the situation is God’s will, we are able to avoid feeling accountable for our situation. We can tell ourselves that we are victims and God is the victimizer.

However this is not how creation works, according to the Confederation. We ourselves chose these losses and hardships. We wanted to experience the full range of emotions and feelings within this incarnation, here in the bright and vivid emotional landscape of third density.

Before birth, as we were planning this lifetime, we planned to undergo our times of testing in this incarnation in order to progress spiritually. From outside of the incarnated state, when we as souls were aware of the oneness of all things and the worthiness of our goals of becoming better than we were, we were eager to place in our lives challenging relationships and issues which would repeat throughout our incarnations. These incarnational lessons were carefully set up to play out in our lives again and again.

When we have challenges in our relationships with ourselves and others, then we as Players need to examine the challenges. We need to get clear on what is happening and how we feel. We can ask ourselves to good effect, “Why did I choose this catalyst?

We all have repeating themes of catalyst. By identifying them within our life experience, we become far less fearful when they come around again, as they certainly will. By identifying what this catalyst makes us feel, we can infer what our fundamental lesson of life is, this time around.

Starting from the assumption that all is well on the Gameboard, no matter what the flat gameboard seems to tell us, we are already halfway towards being able to meet challenges with a positive attitude. We can say, “Oh, yes, I must be having a quiz on this incarnational issue.” We are still suffering, but we know what is happening and we can cooperate with it positively. Knowledge gives us power and we are no longer victims but Players.

This is especially important to remember when those close to us seem to use us badly. Perhaps they have, in fact, done so. It happens! However, chances are that, instead, we have colored a situation with our skewed perceptions to the point that we have misunderstood what they said and almost certainly, what their intentions were.

When we hear something which hurts our feelings, then, as Players we need to step back and decline to offer any immediate response. Instead, we need to ask the other self to repeat what he or she has said. In the majority of cases, we have just avoided a useless brangle over nothing by doing this, because we find that we have, indeed, misunderstood another’s words, tone of voice or expression.

Here is a good example, from my husband’s and my experience as to how this can happen. I am often in a considerable amount of discomfort and have been since birth. I have always tried to work around that and I always hope to appear quite normal. However, sometimes the pain can overwhelm my emotions momentarily. I may not look or act any differently. But the read-out of my vibration suffers as the red-ray chakra is narrowed by the pain.

My husband Jim used to be concerned at these moments that he had hurt my feelings. He would ask and repeatedly discover that my bad vibes were not about him at all, but about my body drama. These days, instead of asking me if he has hurt my feelings when he perceives that my vibration is not as it usually “feels,” he asks if I am in pain. This allows me to acknowledge the situation and we can then go happily onward with our days.

Everyone has good days and bad days, so to speak; times when we are effortlessly in the flow and times when that flow eludes us. When the good times are with us, we may rejoice! When we hit hard times, emotionally speaking, we need to comfort and love ourselves quite consciously, having compassion for our woes.

And when those around us hit hard times, we need to comfort and love them just as consciously. We are all one. Sometimes they are the Good Son. They are at home with their Creator and all that He has is theirs. But sometimes they are the Prodigal Son. They feel abandoned and rejected and seek to return to a home which has eluded them. Those roles are two sides of one coin: the coin of authentically felt life on Planet Earth. When we find that a loved one is a Prodigal Son today, by all means send for the fatted calf.

At the end of each day, we will find it helpful to examine our thoughts and feelings with regard to our relationships. Evaluate these thoughts and emotions with compassion. Move within, in responsive, loving thought, to heal our distortions and to clear our orange-ray chakras.