Your Life in Color

by Dougall Fraser

  THE SHADOW SIDE OF RUBY RED

  The shadow side of ruby red is usually represented by being oversensitive. But it can also show up as seeming insensitive or disconnected. Ruby red is about developing communication with our moods and emotional levels. If you find you have moments of leaning too far in either direction, you’re not alone. In fact, it is very common to have times in our lives when we experience the shadow side of red. Feelings are a very intangible thing for many people, and we are constantly presented with situations that may trigger emotional reactions.

  The shadow side of red is a reminder for you to gauge your emotions and make the adjustments that will help your heart feel balanced. You might need to pull back emotionally on occasion. Sometimes what is considered “needy” is your desire for emotional validation. In this case, red will help you acknowledge if you are ignoring your innate emotional intelligence. Balancing red energy will also help you carve out space in your life to ensure you have the opportunity to connect with your emotions and get things off your chest, so to speak. Allow ruby red to guide you in finding those opportunities.

  If you are feeling disconnected, I find that watching an emotionally charged movie is a good way to help activate emotional energy as well.

  CHAPTER 9

  ORANGE

  QUALITIES: Balance and perception

  SHADOW SIDE: Uneven, scattered energy

  Orange is an excellent color to activate during busy or hectic times. When we are in the thick of any big undertaking, we may neglect certain elements of ourselves as we put all our focus on the goal. This is completely natural when striving to achieve anything. But in the process, it can become difficult to find perspective. Whether we are motivated toward something specific or just feeling frazzled by life, orange helps us to bring the imbalanced aspects of our consciousness into equilibrium. In doing so, orange also helps us bring our intuitive sense to its highest possible level. For me, orange feels like a quiet meditation room with essential oils wafting through the air and soft music playing; it just feels good. If you feel scattered or overextended in your life, look no further than orange.

  Buddhism has some of the strongest associations with the color orange, as seen by the orange robes that Buddhist monks wear. Buddhists consider orange to be the color of spiritual radiance, which is the point when our souls reach the highest state of evolution. I love this symbolic imagery because I often feel like my energy radiates warmth when I activate orange. The balancing orange color of the monks’ robes is said to have been chosen by Buddha himself, in the 5th century B.C.E. Other religions that value the color orange include Hinduism and Protestantism.

  Confucianism (the main religion of ancient China) considered orange to be the color of metamorphosis and renewal. According to this philosophy, our life’s journey is determined by whether or not we can find balance between the yin (female) and yang (male) energy that exists inside all of us. Orange is the color that helps us reconcile our inner imbalance so we can find a state of harmony.

  In the art world, orange is incredibly popular when paired with opposing colors. In fact, artist Claude Monet inspired the entire impressionist movement with his painting Impression, Sunrise, which showcased a (then) unusual placement of the radiant orange sun reflecting against blue clouds and water. Students of color theory know that orange and blue are opposite colors, meaning that both colors become more vivid when you place them next to each other on a canvas. This is a perfect representation of orange, because working with it will brighten every other area of your life. Just like in a painting, using orange not only highlights every other color it is near, but it also balances their energies as well. The beauty of orange in your life will stabilize everything that it is near.

  Visually, orange is the easiest color to perceive on land or water, particularly in darker lighting. For this reason, it is the color of choice for life rafts, life jackets, and construction signs. Astronaut uniforms are usually orange due to the fact they are the easiest to be perceived in space. Highway workers tend to wear orange because it helps them to be easily seen. I like to use orange because it serves as my beacon for heightened perception.

  Orange represents balance of all things, and, most importantly, it highlights the balance between psychology and spirituality. Some of my spiritual teachers have said it is the color of psychic abilities or intuition, which may explain my attraction to it. Intuition, at its finest, is most accurate when the various elements of our lives are balanced. This was something I didn’t come to understand for quite some time.

  I used to think being psychic was the highest form of spiritual connection, but I now know this isn’t necessarily true. Obsessing over any aspect of our life, whether it’s our job or anything else, will by definition cause us to neglect other areas. I believe intuition is the by-product of meditation and finding emotional as well as spiritual balance. We can be highly psychic and perceive accurate information about someone else’s life, but true intuitive wisdom comes from finding balance in the various areas of our own lives.

  When I first started connecting with energy, being psychic was my main focus. I was laser-focused on being a good clairvoyant for others, but I had emotional blinders on as to what it meant to actually live in a state of peace, joy, and connection. I was training my psychic muscle, and it was certainly growing, but I could feel when I started to plateau. Not only did I plateau, but my soul and emotional body also began to feel tired. I used to get headaches after working with clients. I had no idea how to manage my energy and not a clue that my issues were stemming from neglecting my own physical body as well as my emotional being.

  That’s the ironic part about self-care. Sensitive people often put the needs of other people before their own needs. But the more we look inward and do the necessary work to improve ourselves, the better able we are to use our intuition for others. My career started in Dallas, Texas, when I was in my late teens. At the time, I would get hired for private parties around the area. It felt like such a gift from the universe at that age. I would be paid somewhere around $100 an hour, and I could spend the whole evening at a party with my little card table set up. I would give back-to-back readings with no break.

  On one particular night, I was at a birthday party for a woman in a charming suburb outside of Dallas.

  “Dougall, this was so wonderful. Thank you for making such an exciting party,” Sheila said.

  I liked Sheila. She really honored what I did, whereas at other parties, I sometimes ended up feeling like a juggling monkey. People would laugh about the “fortune teller” in the corner, and I would sit by myself for hours as they socialized with each other. I would polish my crystals or shuffle my tarot cards, waiting for someone to walk over and ask for a reading. But Sheila was quite kind and always made me feel comfortable.

  “Why don’t you stay and have something to eat?” she asked.

  “Oh, no, I’m fine. I need to leave to disconnect from the energy.”

  This was partially true. During events, or when I had done small parties in the past, when the readings were done, I usually wanted to leave. It was a lot of energy to give out, and to suddenly jump into just chatting socially was a little challenging for me. The other reality at that time was I didn’t like public eating. I had not come out yet and was really struggling with shame about my weight at that point. If I were in a restaurant, at someone’s home, or really anywhere in public, I would eat like a bird (albeit a very small bird with body image issues). This must have been startling, because at the time I was six feet six and about 300 pounds. So clearly I was eating somewhere. Instead of facing this issue head-on, I convinced myself food got in the way of reading energy properly. That sounds pretty balanced, right?

  I politely excused myself from Sheila’s party. I gave as spiritual a good-bye as I thought a psychic should. I would say a quick blessing and some namastes, all the while fantasizing about the pizza I would have at home. I hopped into my turquoise Jetta convertible and pulled out
of her driveway. I was not taking care of myself emotionally or physically, and this imbalance was affecting me. As I rounded the corner, I recall feeling a little scattered, and the next thing I knew I was jolted by a collision with another car.

  “What the—?” I said as I opened the door of my turquoise chariot.

  My energy was all askew, and I got out of the car, walking toward the man who so rudely hit me.

  “This is a one-way street,” he calmly said.

  “It is?” I said.

  “You were going the wrong direction on a one-way street.”

  My eyes started welling up with tears. I can only describe this stranger as a father figure. I immediately knew he had children. His kids weren’t in the car, but he could tell I was out of it, the way that a parent can.

  Being a gay psychic in the suburbs of Texas, at that time in particular, did not feel completely safe. There were definitely people in that area who, because of religion or for whatever reason, had some major judgment of me. Not only that, but I had just hit someone while driving a turquoise car with a pop-up sign in my backseat that said “Psychic, channel, and card reader” in huge letters. This may not have been the best moment for me to start crying, but that’s exactly what happened.

  “I don’t have car insurance,” was all I could utter.

  “Okay, okay, calm down; take a deep breath,” he said. “How old are you?”

  “I’m 19.”

  At 19, having car insurance was a huge financial commitment for me. It was my first year of flying solo, meaning I had moved out on my own and no longer got any help from my family. At this point in my life, I hadn’t a clue about how to organize my finances, and making a $600 monthly payment for something I “might” use seemed like a perfectly reasonable expense to avoid.

  This is one of those life moments where I feel so lucky things turned out the way that they did. I was so scattered it didn’t even occur to me to ask this man if he was okay or hurt at all. Instead, he kindly said we could come up with a plan. We exchanged information, and in the following week, we arranged a payment plan. We did not call the police, and no insurance companies were involved. He placed so much trust in me that I was absolutely determined to pay him for the damage, which I did.

  That accident was a wake-up call on so many levels. I realized I was hiding behind these spiritual illusions. I was spending so much time accessing psychic energy that the other areas of my life were totally out of balance. My finances were in disarray, I was completely neglecting my physical health, and now my actions were potentially harming others. Something had to change.

  When I began activating orange, it highlighted my need for balance in areas where I was neglecting myself. I had been seeing this color around people who were very balanced, which was a quality I wanted more of. With this in mind, I experimented with activating it myself. Like a magnet, it would draw a desire out of me to know and search out other aspects of my consciousness.

  I decided to regularly use orange as my divine compass to help me find a state of spiritual equilibrium. Oddly, the payments I made for the fender bender ended up becoming a regular reminder that I needed take better care of myself. In the beginning, I made small changes. I started walking outside for 15 minutes a day and began paying closer attention to my food choices. Instead of starving myself before a reading and then overeating junk food later, I tried to eat a reasonable portion of fresh food. Consuming healthy food did make me feel better, but I didn’t become vegan or only eat raw foods. Rather than making drastic changes, I allowed balance to be elevated to the forefront of my consciousness.

  It’s important to know that one area of your life may be dominant in certain moments, and that is okay. For example, imagine you have just fallen in love. The friends you have been spending so much time with will suddenly take a backseat in your priorities. You will probably invest extra time in this budding relationship. You may play hooky from work or take the day off from school as your two souls bond together. Part of this process involves retreating somewhat from the outside world. As time passes, the foundation of the relationship begins to strengthen and grow. Once you have integrated, you will realize it’s time to reconnect with your friends, your work, or your family. You cannot stay in hibernation mode forever, or the other areas of your life will fall out of balance.

  Just as in new love, this principle applies to your career. Let’s say you are very motivated at work, and you have just been promoted. That surge of positive energy will cause you to place even more focus on your job, setting it above everything else. Your friends and family hopefully support your hard work and will take joy in watching you give it your all. But if you ignore all other aspects of your life, this will begin to take a toll on your relationships.

  The orange light teaches us that yes, we can have one area of our life lead us and temporarily take precedence. But to achieve the kind of balance that brings about true perception, we must recenter ourselves and maintain a level of engagement with the rest of our lives.

  ACTIVATING ORANGE NOTES

  WHAT ELEMENTS OF MY LIFE ARE OUT OF BALANCE?

  Activating orange is usually an easy and natural progression, since it is the combination of psychology and spirituality. With ruby red, our focus was on accessing the emotional body. But with orange, we are accessing a level that is deeper than our emotions, and that is our intuition. Intuition is a by-product of meditation and healthy spiritual practice, and it is also the result of living in balance. The more our lives are in harmony, the easier it is for us to intuit the best choices in our life.

  Please note, some students have reported slight dizziness as they activate orange. Personally, I think this is a result of feeling every part of our being on a more intimate level. Orange will help us connect with the physical, emotional, and spiritual parts of our consciousness. Not only that, but it also allows us to see and feel how these areas are all co-existing.

  SPIRITUAL ACTIVATION NOTES

  Balance is a pretty broad term, and I don’t think any of us live in a constant state of balance. As we each take our respective journeys through life, we face different issues that bring various aspects of our energy to the surface. We have moments when one portion of our life requires more attention than the others, but the balancing act is all about not dropping the ball with respect to the other areas of our lives. In order to be fully integrated beings, we must be engaged with all aspects of our life.

  The orange light helps us check in with every aspect of our consciousness, providing a deep reflection of it as we activate this color energy. With each color we use, we magnify a part of our being. From enabling practical thoughts with gold, to connecting our heart and emotions with ruby, we turn the volume up on whichever energy we want to harness. Orange gives us the opportunity to take a bird’s-eye view of our lives, to give us perspective on how all these parts are interacting together.

  SPIRITUAL ACTIVATION EXERCISE: DESIGN THE IDEAL DAY

  My favorite part of using orange in a spiritual activation is that it requires us to slow down and do a form of meditation. Since orange helps us find balance, spiritual activation is a particularly useful activity. When we close our eyes to ground orange energy through our body, it is naturally balancing and soothing.

  This exercise with orange will help us balance and manage our energy. We have all had that ideal day where everything just seems to go the way we want, and our goal here is to design that day from the ground up. Orange energy is not about experiencing the height of ecstasy in our lives. It is about attaining a happy, Zen medium.

  The ideal day isn’t when you win the lottery, your wedding day, or the day your kids were born. These are incredible, magical experiences, but they also result in huge spikes of adrenaline and energy. They are once-in-a-lifetime events. The ideal orange day is a balanced, enjoyable, routine day that reflects your life where it is now. For example, your ideal day should not include sunset yoga by the beach if you live nowhere near the ocean and have to
pick the kids up from school at 4 P.M.

  My ideal day always starts with a hot cup of coffee and some morning alone time. Even if I have to leave the house at five in the morning, I will get up an hour before that to be quiet and connect with myself. Quiet time in the morning is sacred and important to my sense of balance. If you are the type of person who jumps out of bed in the morning, your perfect day might start with something productive, like an early walk.

  Envision your perfect day. After spiritually activating orange, your goal for this exercise is to calm and refocus your energy so you can visualize this day from a balanced spiritual place. Take your time in grounding orange energy through your body before you map out your day. In times of stress, it may be difficult to remind yourself what is really important and where you need to make more effort. Spiritually activating orange simplifies the task of seeing what makes up a satisfying day for you.

  List the details of your perfect day on a piece of paper. To help you in this exercise, look at the average kind of day you currently experience. What is working and what is not? If there are elements you feel are missing, incorporate them into your perfect day. This should be the kind of day that feels balanced and happy for you. Would it start with cuddling with your dog in bed? Or perhaps you would do some gardening in the backyard. This should be the kind of day you would be happy to live over and over. For example, you might wake up early to reflect and watch the sunrise. You would have enough time to connect with yourself (perhaps through meditation) and prepare for your day. Your hair would do everything you want it to, and your favorite shirt would fit perfectly. At your job, you would feel honored by your coworkers and creatively inspired. By the time you crawl into bed, you would have a sense of accomplishment, peace, and contentment. Again, the specifics of this day are up to you and what you need to attain balance.