March 7, 2024
This morning’s journey was a tear-jerker. I cry at least once during these journeys into the Imaginal. I can’t help it; it’s an automatic response when I’m confronted with the full force of each soul’s story. There is beauty and suffering and all sorts of emotions. Souls that are stuck carry a lot of baggage with them and my heart has to be open or the meeting wouldn’t happen. Somehow, I’m led by my heart to find them. I shudder to use the cliched terms ‘frequency’ and ‘resonance’ because they are bandied about by all sorts of spiritual snake-oil salespeople these days. However, it’s not wrong to say there is an affinity. Perhaps this affinity or attunement is what leads me to them? I only know that I don’t get attracted to souls that I don’t empathize with. So, maybe it’s empathy?
I’ve begun to realize that a blocked feeling in my heart presages the visit of a lost soul. It’s taken me a long time to understand that this feeling doesn’t have anything to do with me or my personal history. In the past, it frequently did but these days it rarely does. The task, if you call it that, is to be curious about the blockage without doing anything. This is part of the nondoing practice.
This morning, I tuned into the blocked feeling and suddenly saw a steel blade being sharpened on a whetstone. The prevailing color was slate blue. As the scene resolved itself in my heart’s eye, I perceived a truly horrific spectacle. The soul sharpening the knife was using it to slice off his own flesh. He’d removed so much flesh that only a bloody skeleton with bare eyeballs remained. Even reduced to bones, the soul continued to whittle away at the few remaining strips of bloody flesh. Yes, it was gruesome but I’ve become accustomed to such scenes.
Of course, there were a number of misconceptions going on with this soul. First, his physical body no longer existed so why did he continue to flay himself. Also, I could tell this soul truly believed he deserved eternal punishment for his supposed sins. None of this, though, took away from the depth of his misery and anguish. I’ve met plenty of souls who were in tremendous pain, many times self-inflicted because they believed they were evil or deserved punishment, but this one was the most extreme case so far. It was heart-wrenching to fully open to his torment.
I gathered the bloody skeleton in my arms and drew him against me, hugging him and crying. “Stop,” I begged. “Please, just stop!”
“I can’t! I’m evil. I only deserve pain.”
He didn’t elaborate but he didn’t need to. I could feel his history unfolding inside my heart and I felt the full force of his suffering. This was a soul who had been severely abused as a child and lived a truly awful existence before finally dying. I’m not positive but I believe he committed suicide, probably using a knife. Whatever the means of his death, though, it was not a peaceful one even if it wasn’t self-inflicted.
I sobbed and sobbed, holding him to me. Finally, the feeling of my warm, enfleshed body against him began to soften him. He began to cry, too. I think that it is important because he wasn’t crying when I first met him.
“It’s time to leave this place,” I murmured. “You’ve suffered enough.”
Our hug became a kind of melding and we merged, his skeletal body dissolving into the blackness of my own. We entered the Absolute, the gentle annihilation.
I expected we would ‘come out’ at the Crossroads when we exited but we were in another realm. This realm was akin to the ‘Land of Soul’s’ that I routinely visit but it was also different. While blue was still the prevailing color, it was a different color of blue. More slate blue than light blue. Also, the place felt firmer and more substantial than the Land of Souls. It was also quite beautiful.
The man and I were still hugging. His body was no longer a skeleton but looked human. He was a robust, middle-aged man with a stout physique and slate gray hair and beard. We were both naked and there was a little tinge of eroticism present but it wasn’t strong. Mostly, the feeling between us was that of love. Deep, abiding love.
My body was a muted gold in color and I was slim with shaggy, brownish blond hair. I realized that my body had taken on a form familiar to him and that was why he was gazing down at me with such affection. It only took me a moment to realize that this body that I was wearing was the body of the one person in the man’s lifetime who showed him compassion. His contact with ‘me’ had been brief but it had left a lasting impression. An impression that lasted beyond life.
Taking on the body of a loved one isn’t unusual for me during these journeys. What was unusual was that, as I became aware of who ‘I’ was, the actual soul of that young man emerged from within the depths of blackness inside me and took over my body. We separated and my body became glowing white.
The young man and the older man continued to embrace and they were still both naked. I thought it was interesting that their penises were touching and they didn’t seem to mind. I could tell both were heterosexual but I could also feel the depth of their bond. Their bond was so powerful that it had drawn them together after death. And I could tell that, if not right now, soon they would consummate this bond. Clearly, I don’t know anything about sexuality or sexual attraction.
As I watched them, crying, I realized the Woman in White was standing beside me. My heart expanded with love for her and we embraced. It was a beautiful, intimate moment that we savored. During the embrace, I realized then that she loves me just as deeply as I love her.
“How could I not?” she whispered in my ear. “I fell in love with you the moment I saw you.” I cried even harder and she laughed. “That’s the way it works when you’re free of your physical body.” She looked past me to the hugging pair and addressed my unspoken question, “They will eventually find their way to the Crossroads but right now they need to be here. They need to pass through this land together. It’s their journey.”
I was wondering if she would reprimand me again for crying so much over the pain and misery of the soul but she wasn’t stern at all. “You did well,” she said. “You didn’t wallow in his misery or take it on as your own. You kept it clean, let him be with his own suffering before offering him a way out. He wouldn’t have left if he wasn’t ready.” She smiled, nuzzling against me. “Your heart needs to be open or you wouldn’t be able to reach these souls. Just stay rooted in your ground. That’s all you need to do.”
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