We all have places inside ourselves that we'd rather not look at. Those psychological positions we hold onto—beliefs about ourselves, others, and how life should be—that give us a sense of stability but also keep us stuck. When we bump into these defended places during self-inquiry, our first instinct is often to turn away. "Let's not go there. It's too difficult."
This is where the Red Latifa comes in. This essential quality provides something crucial for genuine self-inquiry: the courage to challenge our own positions rather than just defending them.
When the Red Latifa Kicks In
Picture this: you're exploring some aspect of yourself and you suddenly feel that familiar urge to avoid, to move on to something easier. The Red Latifa comes in and says, "Wait a second. Why am I avoiding to look here? What am I afraid of?" It gives us the courage to look, to challenge ourselves in the same way we might challenge someone else's position in a conversation.
But here's the thing—this isn't about challenging other people's philosophies. The Red Latifa is asking us to challenge our own. "Why do I have this position? Why am I scared of letting go, of looking into it? What is here?"
Most of us would naturally turn away from difficult psychological territory and say, "Okay, let's not go there." But the Red Latifa says, "No, I want to see everything. I want to see everywhere. I want to see also the places in which I'm afraid."
The Adventure of Truth-Seeking
It's like going for a hike in the mountain—there's something a little bit dangerous, but we're curious and we want to go a bit further, to take that risk. The Red Latifa brings that quality of psychological risk-taking, the willingness to see what we're actually doing rather than what we think we're doing.
The red is like lion-hearted. We naturally as human beings, we love the truth. We love love. We love to show up in the truth.
This love of truth is paradoxical. Sometimes in a relationship, we desperately want to know: "Is it finished? Is this over?" Maybe the other person is tiptoeing around it, and when they finally say yes, we feel heartbroken and relieved and happy that we know the truth all at once. We're actually freed by the truth, even when it's painful.
The Red Latifa works like a sword in our experience, separating all the elements so we can see clearly: "This is my super-ego talking. This is my ego defending. This is what the other person actually said versus what I made it mean." This discriminating clarity helps us become objective about our own psychological processes.
Beyond Mental Analysis
What makes the Red Latifa different from ordinary mental analysis is that it engages heart, mind, and body together. The red heart loves the adventure of finding out who we are, what's true in any situation. Meanwhile, the red mind gives us the capacity to discriminate between all the different elements of our experience.
This isn't the mind that already knows telling us the same old stories about ourselves. It's the Diamond Body mind—like a scientist taking notes on an unfolding experiment, one step behind the experience as it arises. The heart leads with its love of truth, and the mind articulates and discriminates, promoting genuine insight rather than mental concepts.
The rat here comes in and say, 'Wait a second. Why am I avoiding to look here? What am I afraid of?' So it gives us the courage to look, to challenge.
When we avoid looking at something—maybe a limitation we don't want to accept, or a deficiency we don't want to feel—that avoidance itself becomes a powerful force in our lives. We end up behaving differently, avoiding certain people or situations, creating elaborate psychological maneuvers around the thing we won't face. The Red Latifa gives us the capacity to look these fears in the eyes and say, "Okay, I have this limitation. This isn't happening as I thought it should."
What places in your own experience do you find yourself wanting to avoid? What would it be like to meet those places with the lion-hearted courage of the Red Latifa—not to fix or change them, but simply to see what's actually there?