Part of the Mt. Liebe stories, we catch up with Ruby on her spiritual quest in the small town of Padreson Chemin. To find more of her stories, check out this link:

Spiritual Allegories and Stories

Ruby arose from a tangle of sheets, her mind adrift in a fog.

She assumed she’d slept bad.

Several weeks had passed as she spent time at Maggie’s house. She had been looking forward to this day when her dress would be finished by Gwen. She’d finally have something that fit well.

She stretched her body and yawned in the hazy light filtering through a grimy window. Outside a blur of orange, red, and yellow tree refuse covered the street and some of the other makeshift homes. A lot of people had moved to the area recently, and a lot of structures had been quickly thrown together.

She and Maggie had gone out to greet meet many of the newcomers. Ruby felt intoxicated by Maggie’s gregariousness, and she quickly took to the task of showing people around Padreson Chemin. Ruby became known and liked by many. Some called her Desert-walker, impressed by what she had done. Most called her Renee.

She didn’t mind.

Ruby arrived at Gwen’s place and again was overwhelmed by the mess of thread and fabric that spread everywhere in the building.

“Gwen? Are you in?”

“Yes! Come on in! I’ll be right with you.”

Ruby ran into a large cobweb of thread and fought to extricate herself from a bunch of brown and gold thread. She made it clear when Gwen appeared, shepherding an older woman out of one of her fitting rooms. Ruby recognized Shalise–someone she and Maggie had shown around the town a few days earlier.

“Hi Shalise.”

“Renee.” Shalise took Ruby’s hands in hers. “Good to see you again.”

“You as well. Are you settling?”

“Like snow in January. Softly. Slowly.”

“How long do you think you’ll be here?”

Shalise’s brown eyes shimmered. She squeezed Ruby’s hands.

“As long as I can.”

“Yes, yes, yes,” Gwen interrupted. “Be back in a few weeks. I’ll have something for you. Come, come, Renee. Let’s not wait. I’ve got a busy day ahead of me.”

Ruby followed Gwen into another room with yet another vociferous explosion of threat and fabrics. She went through the strange ritual of stripping down in front of the elderly woman, and then she put on her new dress.

The deep red fabric glowed with a strange vibrancy. The silver threading offered its own shimmer. Ruby looked at herself in the mirror. Awe washed over here.

“I’ve never looked so beautiful in all my life,” she almost whispered.

“You’ve never worn one of my dresses!” Gwen cackled. “Try this on too.”

Gwen handed Ruby a leather traveling cloak that had been dyed a deep red to accent her dress.

“Oh my goodness. This is too much.”

“Nonsense. Yours looked like it was going to fall off you along with all your other clothes. This will fit and serve you better.”

Ruby put on the cloak and felt overwhelmed by kindness. Tears came to her eyes.

Gwen laughed. “No need for tears. It is what I do.”

After paying Gwen, Ruby was about to leave when Gwen asked, “Has she appeared to you yet?” Gwen indicated the owl feather Ruby still wore in her hair.

Ruby shook her head. “I didn’t see her the first time either. I just thought this was a regular feather.” And Ruby still did.

Gwen shook her head. “If you do see her, please let me know. It’ll be all the extra compensation I need.”

Ruby promised she would and walked out to the street. She somehow felt taller–a rare feeling as she was very much average or below average for most women.

It felt good.

It also felt good to be in a town with such generous and kind people. It had never occurred to her that such places existed. Her hometown of Dormir was such a sleepy place. Most people offered little in the way of support. They attended to themselves, made demands of others when it served them, and gossiped about the many goings-on of other places. Everyone knew everyone, but no one seemed to care to come together for much of anything.

Ruby paused to look at Mt. Liebe. Snow had already fallen upon it even though autumn had only just begun. She still wanted to go to the top of it, but why leave now?

Maybe she should stay in Padreson Chemin?

She felt a familiar presence pass overhead. She looked up, but only saw blue sky. Drifting to the ground, she saw another owl feather. She picked up the white feather with black speckles and looked around.

“I know you’re there,” Ruby proclaimed.

A soft “who” came from the tree canopy.

“I am Renee,” Ruby replied with the name the townsfolk had given her.

No further response came.

Ruby returned to the center of the town, and she began to hear remarks about her.

“Look at Renee.”

“Oh my, she’s lovely.”

“Is that one of Gwen’s dresses? It must be.”

“Wow! She’s hot!”

Ruby blushed. She’d never gotten this kind of attention before. She found Maggie greeting more newcomers.

“Renee! Look at you!” Maggie gushed. “You’re gorgeous!”

“Thanks, Maggie. Gwen is amazing.”

Standing next to Maggie, a man who had been giving talks in town remarked, “You are beautiful.” He smiled broadly. “I’m Tru. And you are?”

“This is Renee, and you are Trouble.” Maggie laughed and playfully pushed him.

He frowned. “That’s not my name.”

Maggie rolled her eyes. “Oh, you’re so serious. His real name is Troubler, but he goes by Tru,” she explained, giving him a quick hug. “And Renee came from the desert.”

“So you’re the one they call Desert-walker.” His eyes stared deeply into her, holding onto her gaze.

“Yes.” Ruby blushed even more. She didn’t really know how to handle this kind of attention.

“I’d very much like to know you and hear about your experiences. I hear it is dangerous in the desert. Sinkholes, scorpions, and worse!” Tru took her arm and began walking her away. Maggie winked at Ruby and mouthed, “Let’s talk later.”

“Yes, that’s true,” Ruby agreed.

“I heard another came from the desert recently. He’ll be at my talk. You should come to it today.”

“Ok. What is it about?”

“The truth!”

Ruby promised to come and excused herself to put away her old clothes that she’d been carrying.

Later that afternoon, she found Tru in a gathering of twenty or more people in a small cove surrounded by Ponderosa Pines. Tru sat in a chair on a small raised platform. As she came within earshot, she heard him talking about giving up the quest for Mt. Liebe.

“Many come here for the mountain. But what do you really want? You don’t want a pile of rocks! You want what’s here. Friends. Food. Warmth. Love!” He saw Ruby after saying this last part. “Ah our friend from the desert is here.”

Ruby blushed yet again, but she felt compelled to join.

Before she could, a man stood up and walked up onto the platform.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean you,” Tru replied.

“Doesn’t matter. I’ve got something to say. The name is Gerald. Friends call me Gerry.”

“Gerry. I didn’t mean you.”

Gerry ignored him. “Listen. The desert is a death trap. The spiritual path is a fraud!”

Ruby stared at the man who looked familiar to her. His face had scars and jagged lines across his nose. Then she remembered. This was the man who thought he could fly. He chased her across the desert.

Ruby’s eyes narrowed. She walked up to the platform.

Gerry was expounding about the many lies of spirituality while True was increasingly exasperated.

Ruby got to the steps of the platform when Gerry caught her look. Crimson rose in his cheeks. He stammered, losing his train of thought. She kept her eyes on him, and he fell silent. He dropped his eyes, muttered “sorry,” and left the gathering.

Tru gave out a sigh of relief. “Now that that is over…Everyone, this is Renee–the real Desert-walker.”

Tru asked Ruby questions, and she responded during the next hour. They fell into a natural give and take. The audience fell into a trance of rapt attention. Some visibly wept at Ruby’s difficult moments. Tru was also deeply moved, and everyone asked her to come back and tell more.

She did.

Tru and Ruby did the same dance again. And then again.

They’d fall into a rhythm of give and take–a flow that felt easy. A question, then a response. Question, then response as Tru moved into Ruby’s story and Ruby opened more to him.

One day, she felt his arm around her. Then hers around him.

Then his hands on her waist.

Her hands on his back and his neck.

Then surrounding him.

Then lying in a sweat-laden stupor with his breath on her neck.

Then drifting off into sweetness unconsciousness in a tangle of their naked limbs.

Interpretation

Everything in this story is about getting entangled in ego. It’s about going unconscious.

This makes everything blurry, confused, hazy, and tangled, but it doesn’t mean unpleasurable. In fact, going unconscious can have lots of pleasurable qualities.

Throughout the story, we see Ruby through an increasingly blurry lens with the ending of the story vague and ambiguous in its statements, but we know what is going on.

She’s found a lover.

As usual, words that you don’t know usually have other meanings. As explained in a previous story, Padreson Chemin is a mixed up word itself from the French phrase “perdre son chemin”–to lose one’s way. “Troubler” is another French word that means cloudy, confused, and some other things. In English, it looks like he’s trouble–which Maggie suggests. But she too is confused, so she doesn’t really understand who he is. Her name is based on the Estonian word “magav,” which means sleeping.

Ruby’s quest to go to Mt. Liebe appears to be in jeopardy, but what does it matter?

What does the spiritual path matter when you get want you want?

Releasing Attachments You Like

And what is it like when you get things that feel amazing that you didn’t even know existed?

These are some experiences that are being explored in this series of stories.

7 Common Spiritual Awakening Experiences

Will Ruby stay where she is or not?

What lessons will she learn in Padreson Chemin?

More is coming.