November 24, 2023
As you know, I’ve been less enthralled by the Imaginal recently, mostly because I feel drawn to focus on the world of the manifest while I still have the luxury of a body. This doesn’t mean that I’ve become more materialistic. Hardly! It’s just that I’m listening to the pulse of Being in my physical life. I feel less compelled by instinctual desires and my superego and more content to simply listen and feel what life has to offer. In this way, it’s really not so different from my Imaginal experiences.
I find we exist in an ecosystem all the time that is both external and internal. We are jostled, visited, preyed upon, coaxed, observed and tempted by all manner of creatures. The compelling urge is to live in harmony with our ecology, both manifest and unmanifest. If we humans would just spend more time listening and watching and feeling before acting, all of us would be better off. The Earth wouldn’t be quite as assaulted by our hunger for objects that never really satisfy us and our souls would be haunted by the continual pangs of our separation from the Source. We would live in harmony and I mean that in the literal sense of the word. Harmony is the underlying beat, the pulse, the rhythm of Being that underlies everything. It is overpowered frequently by the melody but, if we listen and feel, we can tune out the melody and tune into the rich, vibrant, living harmony.
Today, I saw what looked like a mummified corpse standing in front of me. It wasn’t pretty to look upon but I could tell it was benign. This apparition was there to ask me to follow it and I did so, though following meant opening to it and being absorbed into it. As I became absorbed into it, I found myself in a dark wood. There was a white speck, a dove, flitting through the leafless tree branches overhead. The white dove, I knew, was a guide so I followed it through the forest.
After a while we arrived at a temple of sorts but it was unlike any temple that I’ve seen before. It was more like an abstract shrine and had a distinctly Eastern feel to it. There were a series of square wooden columns rising in a geometric pattern. All together, they formed a large, open square in a clearing in the woods. The dove flew over the ‘maze’ toward the center. I followed.
In the middle of the maze was a creature that I immediately recognized as two entities in one. I’m pretty sure one of the entities was a human soul, the soul of a woman, and the other was non-human. We might call her a demon but I’m not fond of that term. If you’ve been reading this blog, you know that I view demons much as I do humans: Works in progress. Most human souls are undeveloped and therefore can be viewed as parasitic. Demons are no different; they just lack physical form.
Because we were in the Imaginal, we were in the intermediate realm, a sort of communion between the physical and spirit realms. Therefore, this being (which was really two beings) could be viewed as a combination between two beings, one of the physical world and the other of the spirit world.
She (or should I say they?) appeared as an amalgam of human and demon. There was a lot of red–blood red–and black. There was also white. In a way, she was like a mixture of light and dark, yin and yang. She appeared to be in distress.
I felt sorry for this creature, mostly because its suffering was so palpable. I addressed the demon, saying, “I can tell you really cared for her. But she’s dead now, isn’t she?” (Yes, demons do love their hosts. The purity of this love can vary quite a bit, though.)
Just stating this had a profound effect on the combined entity and she grew huge before me. As she increased in size, though, she became more diffuse and separated. The human part of her was diffuse white and the demon part was diffuse black. They started out side by side but slowly melded into one. I slowly came to realize that in doing this, she was becoming a portal to yet another realm.
This realm was even more shadowy than the last. The trees were more skeletal and a ghostly mist twined around the trunks. It felt dead, inert, and reminded me of the Crossroads but there was no road.
A creature approached. It was a dimly glowing white and reminded me at first of the Woman in White but it didn’t have a human form. It appeared to walk on four legs and sort of resembled a giant, ghostly buffalo, although it was more haunting than that. Its great head was sort of anthropomorphic. It approached me and, as it did so, the ghostly white and black apparitions completely disappeared. There was nothing left of them, not even a trace.
This surprised me because I’ve never had that happen before. In the past, the souls I’ve ‘helped’ have transformed but they have never completely disappeared. As they disappeared, I was left with the remnants of a deep grief. Staying with the grief, I saw the human woman’s last moments in my mind. There was a large, bleeding wound. I couldn’t tell what it was from, whether childbirth or an accident or self-inflicted. The feeling, however, was painful and poignant and devastating. I cried.
The image of the woman’s bleeding body slowly departed and I was left with the giant, white, ghostly creature. There was only silence and stillness. Then a fresh, green shoot pushed out of the dead ground, unfolding and growing into a beautiful bush. Golden flowers appeared on the bush, shining with a soft light. The light was pure and beautiful. To feel it was to experience peace and healing. I closed my eyes and saw that this plant was another incarnation of the two beings, human and ‘demon’. The human part was the above-ground shrub with the golden flowers and the demon part was the below-ground part, the roots delving deep into the black earth, bringing life forth from the rich emptiness of the void.
I remembered seeing such a shrub once before in my journeys. At the time, I hadn’t thought about its origin but, now that I understand what it is, I am even more grateful. The Imaginal is full of blessings and surprises!
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