June 10, 2023

 Clearly, what I think I know about Reality and the soul is limited. This week, I received a teaching about the Absolute and the bank of negative karma, as I call it, built up by humanity’s transgressions. Every unresolved conflict, slight, assault, etc. seems to add to this ever-growing bank of negative karma. It’s pretty vast at this point and appears as an incredibly dense, impenetrable black miasma, kind of like sooty fog but even darker. It’s not impenetrable but it’s oppressive and poisonous. To me, it seems like humanity’s shadow. Because our world is dominated by unrestrained masculine energy gone rogue (i.e., ‘toxic masculinity’), the bank of negative karma feels like out of control yin energy. It’s the perfect counterpart to the imbalance in the world. Entering this bank of negative karma is difficult but it must be done. Balance must be restored for healing to take place and for humans to develop.


Differentiating between the blackness of the Absolute and the blackness of negative karma is difficult but it’s also pretty obvious when you tune into them. The Absolute is absolute mystery, creation, destruction. It is the source, infinite and immaculate and incredibly beautiful. It’s completely empty, beyond emptiness, non-being and yet it’s also everything. It is also completely benevolent even though it is everything, including malice, hatred, destruction and suffering. 


The negative bank of karma is toxic, choking, oppressive, blind. I don’t want to lay morality on it because that makes it too easy to reject and split off. It simply is and needs to be experienced as such. It has a right to exist, just like anything else. Rejecting it or attacking it will not change anything. If anything, it makes it worse. One must enter it and let it own you, seep into you, overwhelm you and become you. Once that happens, you are open to it and your heart opens and then you see with clarity and feel with depth. Then you can experience the Absolute together with this out-of-control yin energy and then it’s possible to understand how to heal it.


Today, I was meditating and became aware of a familiar bardo. This is a gray and wintry bardo with scudding clouds overhead and a silvery moon. It’s eerily beautiful and filled with souls. They show up as wispy shadows in its expanse, nameless and faceless. It is like they have forgotten their human lives and are now empty, traversing this eerie landscape. I know, however, from experience that a soul never truly forgets its past; the past just gets locked inside it. When the soul develops to a certain extent, the past will come back and it will remember.


At first, I was just observing the passing souls but soon became aware that golden light was radiating from me. And then I realized that my soul had become a portal into a golden realm, the realm of Truth. This realm was the obverse of the eerie bardo, golden instead of silver, rich instead of desolate, filled with nourishment (the Land of Milk and Honey) instead of privation. Still, both ‘lands’ were beautiful and both were equal.


The souls began moving through me into the golden land. I realized then that what nourishes a soul is Truth and truth alone. I also realized that the reason both ‘lands’ were of equal value was because both were the Land of Truth, both were made of Truth. Once I understood that, everything changed and there were no longer two lands but one that was both. Silver and gold had become one, the Land of Truth was united and its radiance was even more intense.


I thought that was it but it wasn’t over. I found myself back in the silvery bardo and became aware of a black slug with two big, protruding eyes. If you’ve read my other entries, you’ll know that this ‘slug’ is a relatively common visitor. Its body was pitch black, my cue. As I stared at it, the blackness grew until I was immersed in a realm of pure black. But it wasn’t all black. An arrow of silver from the bardo was still present. It sliced through the blackness, dividing it like the Red Sea and revealing the body of a child.


I cried as soon as I saw the child, knowing how precious they were. I couldn’t tell gender or race or even age but I knew they were deeply loved by the adults in their life and their death had completely devastated those adults. It’s the sort of thing a parent never overcomes. I leaned down and scooped the child into my arms. Something about their face with its puffy cheeks made me think of cancer and chemotherapy. I know that some patients’ cheeks swell over the course of treatment. Was that how this child died? Or did they simply have ‘chipmunk cheeks’?


I carried the child in my arms through the aisle of silver with the towering banks of deathly night on either side until I saw the moon directly before us. In the light of the moon, I spotted a familiar figure astride a stag. It wasn’t the Woman in White and this wasn’t the Crossroads, though. I have, however, met this woman before–if you can call her that because she is definitely not human, I lifted the child up and the woman took the child in her arms. The stag turned and they headed toward the moon which had now become a golden sun. They disappeared into its radiance.


***

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