Red Dress

by Bridget Finklaire

  “My God! What are you wearing?” said Shanti, opening the front door, her mouth gaping, her eyes darting up and down.

  “It’s the bloody Aura-Soma!”

  “Huh?”

  “The Aura-Soma. Looks like my wardrobe’s telling me when to switch bottles!”

  “You’d better come inside.”

  “My clothes are telling me what to do.”

  Shanti let out a peel of laughter. “What’s the bottle after this?”

  “Baby-pink and pale-blue,” said Katy, turning down the corners of her mouth.

  “I’m guessing you’re on spring-green and pinkish-red now?”

  “Lime-green and magenta. What does it mean, Shanti? This Aura Soma stuff and all these colors. Lavinia said something about chakras, vibrations, and frequencies, but I was too embarrassed to ask her about it. Can I use your loo?”

  “Sure. Want a chai latte and some chocolate covered rice cakes?”

  Shanti disappeared into the little kitchen at the back of her cottage, and after some clattering, and the sound of a blender, emerged with a tray just as Katy returned.

  “Chakra, it’s pronounced with a ‘ch’ like chocolate, not a ‘sh’ like Shanti, it’s Sanskrit,” she said, setting down the tray. “Now, Sanskrit is an interesting and complex language because one word can mean different things, depending on context. Did you know that it’s one of the five sacred languages? It’s Indo-European, and the Hindu Holy Vedas and Scriptures are written in it. That’s why we chant in Sanskrit – Lokah Samastah Sukhino Bhavantu.”

  The last bit was sung in her sweet voice. “It means ‘may all beings be happy and free, and may my thoughts, words and actions contribute to that happiness and that freedom.’”

  “Very nice, but what does chakra mean?”

  “I’m getting to it,” she said, sipping carefully at the hot milky drink which she’d seasoned with cardamom pods and a sprinkling of cinnamon and black pepper. “It means wheel, circle, turning or vortex. They’re basically energy centers.”

  “But why magenta? I thought they were the colors of the rainbow – you know, red, orange, yellow, blue, indigo and violet?”

  “And green.”

  “What?”

  “Green. You missed out green. You’re thinking of the seven major chakras, but there are more – above your head, in the palms of your hands, on the soles of your feet. The ones you’re talking about are the ones you see in diagrams of people meditating.”

  “Yes. Red at the bottom, then one above the other, with violet at the top of the head.”

  “Correct. They’re usually just in front of the spine.”

  “But what about magenta?”

  “It’s a higher chakra, above your head!” she said, holding her palm a few inches above her to indicate.

  “And lime?”

  “Chartreuse or pale olive? True yellow-green would be even higher.”

  “What do they do?”

  “Magenta is for the soul and a higher level of universal love, and I’m not sure about the lime. It could be an aspect of the heart chakra, about letting go of bitterness and sourness.”

  “What’s the significance then?”

  “You’re being guided by a higher love, being prepared to connect with it.”

  “Why?”

  “Probably to open your heart and mind to universal love so you can link to something much bigger,” said Shanti, pausing for thought. “And the green is helping you let go of the past, probably so you can learn to love yourself.”

  “I’m not sure I like the sound of that,” said Katy, nibbling on a chocolate rice cake. “How does it work?”

  “The chakras are like energy portals. They turn and open like the iris of a camera, but more like a vortex. Think of them as turning, unfolding like a flower, and spiraling like water eddies, but upwards and outwards. Actually, they’re a bit like antennae, sort of transmitters and receivers.” Shanti was scribbling a diagram on a piece of paper to illustrate her point.

  “The goal is to purify and activate them, so they’re functioning properly and in balance with each other. They get blocked, you see, like a drain or a kitchen sink, and you need to unblock them.”

  “So, the Aura-Soma’s a kind of spiritual dyno-rod?”

  Shanti let out a girlish laugh. “Yes! It’s a big cosmic sink plunger that’s freeing you up energetically!” The visual humor had Katy giggling too.

  “But seriously,” continued Shanti, “You’ve got to work through them to expand your consciousness and become more aware, more connected.”

  “But why?”

  “The more aware you are, the more connected you become and the more expanded your consciousness!”

  “But why do I need to expand my consciousness?”

  “Enlightenment, that’s the goal, self-realization. It’s the very first baby-step on the long path to ascension.”

  “That’s rubbish, Shanti. Nobody ‘ascends’.”

  “You start with self-awareness,” said Shanti, ignoring the last comment. She was used to dealing with sceptics. “The chakras are called the seven seals in the Bible.”

  Katy shot her a glance. Was she serious?

  “The book of Revelation,” said her friend, “John the Divine’s Apocalypse. You should read it! The seven seals have to be broken before we can graduate to the next level.”

  “I thought it was all hell and damnation? And anyway, isn’t the Bible just a load of nonsense?”

  “No! It’s a great metaphysical Love letter from The Divine! You just have to know how to interpret it,” said Shanti, sitting back in her chair. “Because I’m half Indian, I came at it from a different angle. It wasn’t rammed down my throat when I was growing up, it was just another story, like the Mahabharata. Anyhow, the book of Revelation is speaking of the end times, which start off with destruction. But when you get further into it, it talks about the thousand years of peace and the new heavens and the new earth. It’s an amazing read! You’ve got to take a look!”

  Katy finished her chai latte and reached for a second rice cake. Shanti could talk gibberish at times. “You were telling me about the chakras,” she reminded her.

  “Each of the chakras is associated with different things – a musical note, a seed syllable like Om, a symbol, a color, a mandala, a system of the body, an emotion.” Shanti was counting them off on her fingers. “Each has a vibration and a frequency. That’s why the Aura-Soma lady talked about the vibration of your name.”

  “So, each of these bottles I’m working with is affecting a whole load of stuff that’s connected with the chakras?”

  Shanti nodded. “And the green was all about love, the heart, the circulatory system and a whole lot more.”

  Katy picked up the tray, taking the empty mugs and plate to the kitchen while Shanti followed. “Tell me about frequency and vibration and how that’s connected to chakras.”

  “Okay, but let’s get settled. We’re in for a long afternoon.”

  “Do you mind?”

  “No! I love talking about this stuff. A lot of people don’t want to know. They’re asleep to it all – like Muggles!” said Shanti, lighting a fire in the small sitting room grate before sinking into a large floral armchair. “I’ve got blankets and hot cocoa for later if the temperature drops,” she said, gathering her thoughts. “Where shall I begin?”

  Katy watched the fire roaring. A wisp of incense curled up beneath a brass dancing Shiva on the mantel. Either side of the statue were two white candles which flickered in the draft.

  “You already know about the basic chakras,” said Shanti. “Red at the base, violet at the top, each one vibrating at a different frequency.” She stood up to illustrate. “The red is for survival and being rooted to Mother Earth, orange is the sacral for sexuality, reproduction and creativity, yellow is the solar plexus for confidence, fear and other lower emotions.” She placed her hand over each area as she spoke. “Then it’s green for the heart, which is love and compassion, tu
rquoise-blue for the throat and communication, indigo for the third eye, which is mental capacity, intuition and psychic ability, and violet at the top of the head for the crown chakra, the gateway to a higher consciousness.”

  Katy nodded as she leaned forward, eager to hear more.

  “Each of those colors has a spectrum or a wavelength. Red has the longest wavelength and the lowest frequency, and violet has the shortest wavelength and the highest frequency.”

  “Hang on. That’s where I get lost. What’s the difference between wavelength and frequency and between frequency and vibration?”

  Shanti sighed, puffed up the cushion behind her, put her clasped hands behind her head and looked up. “Have you heard of Nicola Tesla?”

  “Rings a bell, who is she? Another healer?”

  “He. He was an inventor and futurist, dead now, unfortunately. He was a genius really but unrecognized, and I’m sure something dodgy happened because a lot of his work was either suppressed or stolen, but that’s another story,” she said, unclasping her hands and leaning forward. “He’s known for his work on electricity, but I love his theory about the numbers three, six and nine.”

  “They’re my favorite numbers!” Katy chimed in, “Three’s my favorite, and I love six because that’s my birthday and it’s double three, and I love nine because it’s three threes!”

  “Well, Tesla said those numbers were the key to the universe!”

  “Wow!”

  “Anyhow,” said Shanti getting back on track, “he famously said if you want to find the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency and vibration.”

  “But what are they?”

  “All right. Frequency,” said Shanti, pulling a blanket over her lap, “is the rate per second of the vibration of a wave. Think of two people holding a long skipping rope, with one person moving their end up and down so the whole thing snakes.”

  “Got it. That’s a wave.”

  “Correct. It could be a skipping rope wave, a water wave, a sound wave, a light wave, or an electromagnetic wave. It still applies. The frequency is how fast the wave is vibrating.”

  “Vibrating?”

  “Moving up and down. Vibration has a sound, like a guitar string vibrating and a movement, like the spin drier shaking. It’s the movement of any wave, the oscillation, or the motion back and forth, or up and down. It’s the ‘snaky-ness’ of the rope.”

  “I think I’ve got it. The frequency is the rate at which the wave is moving back and forth. It’s how fast the snaky-ness is.”

  “You’ve got it! And each wave has its own signature, its own frequency and vibration. The bottom string of a guitar is different from the top one because they vibrate at different rates, because of the relative lengths and thicknesses of the strings and how tight they are. In the same way, the base chakra is different from the crown, and red is different from violet.”

  “And the Aura-Soma is tuning the wavelengths, frequencies, and vibrations of my chakras, so they’re in harmony, like someone tuning a guitar?”

  “Exactly!” said Shanti, pushing herself out of the chair to tend to the fire. “Cocoa?”

  Katy nodded, and Shanti disappeared into the kitchen before returning with two steaming mugs of hot chocolate.

  Katy’s mouth widened into a smile of recognition. “So, when they say, ‘raise your vibration’ they also mean ‘raise your frequency?’”

  “Yes! The vibration of your name means the sound wave frequency of the sound of your name along with its numerical value, its geometry, its wave shape and size, and its color. Your name has a vibration, and that vibration has a frequency and a corresponding sound and a corresponding color and a corresponding form. It’s a kind of code, like a computer code.”

  “I can’t imagine the color, I mean, we can’t see it, can we?”

  “You know dog whistles? We can’t hear them, but dogs can. Well, there are loads of sounds the human ear can’t hear, and there are loads of wavelengths of light that the human eye can’t see!”

  “You mean ones that are shorter than violet or longer than red?”

  “Colors we’ve never seen, yes.”

  All that could be heard was the slurping of hot chocolate as they tried to imagine a new color.

  It was Katy who broke the lull. “So, the Aura-Soma bottles are energetically clearing the blocks and limitations, not just in my chakras, but in my life?”

  “Yes. They’re realigning you by raising the vibration and frequency of your chakras to their original state.”

  “How do they get out of whack in the first place?”

  “They get blocked, sluggish, stuck, that sort of thing.”

  “How?”

  “You should know that, Katy! Trauma, childhood stuff, past-life karma. All the things a therapist deals with like worry, fear, anger, ingrained habits.” She took another sip of cocoa. “Then there’s environmental pollution, Wi-Fi, mobiles, eating processed food, lack of exercise – all sorts of things can block those babies!”

  “Can the bottles clear all that?”

  “No. They can only provide the conditions for the gunk to come into your awareness so you can process and release it yourself.”

  “Then make the necessary changes.”

  “Exactly.”

  * * *

  “What the hell are you wearing now?” said Richard, as Katy walked through to the kitchen.

  “New bottle of that stuff. Lime and magenta for a while, I’m afraid.”

  Richard rolled his eyes and returned to the newspaper. “I thought we’d have a bit of a splash,” he said, turning the page, “and go to your favorite Michelin-starred restaurant, if I can bribe the maître d’ for a table.” He looked up at his wife. “But on second thoughts, perhaps you’d better spend the money on some new togs.”

  “Can we afford it? The restaurant, I mean?”

  Richard tapped the side of his nose with his index finger, sniffed, returned to the paper and muttered, “Yes. I got a rather large bonus from work.”

  “I thought they came quarterly?”

  “This one came early, just in time for Christmas,” he said, snapping the paper shut as if to close the matter.

  Chapter 13

  Upstairs, in the quiet of her office, Katy flipped the laptop open. Her heart missed a beat as she noticed the email address. Tony Verde had replied. With racing pulse, she tip-toed out to the landing, her ear straining for signs of the family, before quietly shutting the door and scurrying back to her desk. What would he have written, what would he be like now, she wondered? Holding her breath, she opened the mail, but there was something odd about the long, newsy message. Instead of excitement, she experienced a detachment, as if she were reading a letter from a client or an uncle. He was married, with a daughter, had travelled widely and had an interest in the esoteric. Smiling to herself, she noted he was fascinated by the fact that she was a healer as well as a therapist. It surprised her that he’d settled down but there was a maturity to his writing. It must have been the intervening years, she supposed, she herself had grown up, why not him? He had moved away from the area, just as she had, and like her, he no longer saw anyone from school. It was all rather pedestrian in the end, she thought, smiling with relief as she pictured a happily married, older, Tony with a golden-haired daughter. He held no attraction whatsoever. She wasn’t a dizzy teenager, and neither was he. Hitting reply, she penned her own version, expanding on her thriving therapy practice, her spiritual interests, and her house in Turnham Green. It was an odd exchange, and once done, she felt a sense of closure and shut the laptop.

  Leaving the office, she thought she saw something move in the mirror and turning towards it, she heard the Voice.

  “Good evening, Katy!”

  “Oh. Hello!”

  “You’ve been learning about vibration and frequency.”

  “How did you know?”

  “Omnipresence. I’m not just here in the mirror, you know!”

  “Are
you following me?”

  “Not at all! Would you like me to expand on the subject?”

  “I think I’ve got it, thanks – vibration and frequency are important!”

  “You know that everything in the cosmos is moving? Everything has a vibration and a frequency.”

  “Even rocks?”

  “Even rocks. The cosmos is open-ended – that means there’s no beginning and no end!”

  Katy screwed up her face, trying to imagine what that was like.

  “It keeps expanding, moving, changing, shifting, birthing and re-birthing, creating and re-creating.”

  “What about dying? Isn’t it a cycle of birth, death and rebirth?”

  “It’s not so much death as moving into a different cycle, but that’s another subject. The soul doesn’t die when the body does, it goes on in another format, so to speak. Energy doesn’t disappear, it just changes form.”

  “I see.”

  “As above, so below, as without, so within.”

  “Now you’re talking in riddles.”

  “What happens in the higher heavens or the greater cosmos also happens here, because everything is related and connected. What happens on the outside affects the inside. Have you ever been affected emotionally by the environment?”

  “Yes! That’s basically what Feng Shui is, isn’t it?”

  “Quite so. Well, as you’re changing the frequency and vibration on the inside, in the hidden energetic world, you’re affecting the outside world and how it shows up for you. And similarly, as shifts are taking place in the higher dimensions beyond this world, your world is responding.” The Voice paused to let it percolate in Katy’s mind.

  “The electrons within an atom are constantly in orbit around the nucleus, and the world is constantly revolving around your sun. Similar pattern, you see? The sun above shines its brightest at midday, and below, in the recesses of your mind, the pituitary responds. The sun sets out there, and in here,” she could sense the Voice was pointing at her forehead, “the pituitary tells the body to make melatonin.” There was a pause. “Nightfall above, sleepiness below.”