April 11, 2024
I needed a break from all of the drama of the journeying. It happens. Sometimes I just want to meditate and just meditate. When these moods come over me, I receive the space I need. I don’t want these journeys to become an identity that I wear. I don’t want to be special. I simply wish to be human. In fact, I don’t want to want anything. Wanting disconnects me from my humanity and propels me into the realm of ego. When there is no wanting, no identity, things are simple. And I feel at home.
I realize how I can’t separate my inner life from the outer one. Both are important and both have their place. And they are interconnected in complicated ways that I don’t understand. But one thing is clear: Inner life is life, too. It’s not just the stuff happening in the physical world that matters; it’s all important.
That said, I still don’t have any deep conviction that the journeys that happen during meditation are anything but dreaming while awake. If they were just dreams, though, they wouldn’t be so coherent and follow such a similar pattern. Different every time but still following a thread. Who knows? I feel like the human soul is connected to the physical world by way of the body. Without the body and all of its amazing abilities, the soul would not have the possibility of being here and enjoying a physical life.
But the soul is much more than the body and can’t be disconnected from its spiritual nature. The inner life of the soul is important, vital even. And it’s primary, meaning it came first. The body came later and is only temporary. This means that it’s important to give the inner life its due, don’t ignore it, don’t get lost in the physical world and all of its yummy seductions (or its painful ones, either.)
This morning, I first saw a small goblin-like creature with blue-white skin and blue-white eyes. It was bad all over and possessed really long teeth and ears. It was an ice goblin, I could tell, because iciness radiated from within it. It was surrounded by many others of its kind. They formed a half circle around me and before me was a wall of ice. It was immense and so clear it shone with blackness.
As I stared into this wall of ice, I could see my reflection. I radiated a soft, golden light and wore a rich robe of midnight and gold around my shoulders. This robe has been with me before in other journeys and represents the balance between light and darkness, the yin and yang of existence/nonexistence. It is precious and a part of me.
The golden light emanating from within my body melted the ice and soon a yawning doorway had melted through. I stepped inside and was immediately awestruck. I knew that I had entered a sacred place.
It was like a cathedral made out of ice. The ice was so fine and thin, though, that it was completely transparent and ethereal. It sparkled with the light of the stars in the night sky overhead. A soft bluish purple glow permeated the entire cathedral. It was deathly quiet at first but soon I heard a woman begin to sing. I looked up and, there on a pedestal of ice, stood a robust, middle aged woman decked out like the Queen of the Night in Mozart’s famous opera, The Magic Flute. She sang the Queen of Night’s aria flawlessly, so beautifully that it caused the ice to tremble.
I was taken aback by the unexpected beauty and nature of the place and the woman that it took me a while to realize that this woman was the one I’d been summoned to help. Her body had died and her soul resided inside this Cathedral of Night where she reigned like a queen. The place was sacred and beautiful but it was still a prison. How many of us live in beautiful prisons of our own construction? Both while we’re alive and after we die?
She gazed down at me imperiously, angry at my interruption. I asked her what she wanted from me. She gestured to the cloak on my shoulders, saying, “I want that.” I shook my head. While I would literally give her anything, the cloak was not mine to give her. “I can’t do that,” I explained, “but we can use it together. Do you want to do that?” I held up my hand before she answered, adding, “You have to realize, though, that if you do, you will be forever changed and you may not even return here. Is that what you want?”
“Yes.”
She said it was such conviction that it shook me. I was shaken by her sadness and loneliness as well as her yearning. She had been imprisoned long enough; she was ready for the next stage of her journey.
I held out my hand to her. She took it and we turned toward the far wall of ice. When we did so, the wall disappeared and there was an immense, black sun surrounded by a bright white ring of light. The black sun of the Absolute, the gateway through which nothing ever returns. It is annihilation, erasure. It requires a deep trust to step through and is easier when you’re with another. You may go into it together but, once inside that blackness, you are completely alone. I think that’s the hardest part for most people.
As soon as we stepped inside, the blackness erased us and I became nothing. I welcome this holy erasure, this return to the Source. It is sacred and divine and so empty. The woman disappeared and I wondered if I would see her again. I needn’t have worried, though, because as soon as I came back to my thoughts, she was there beside me.
We were at the Crossroads, lying down in the snow. Our bodies were completely white like the snow. We were radiant. She was elated, joyful. She laughed and rolled around in the snow, eventually coming to rest on top of me. She laughed as she gazed down upon me. Even though she’d lost everything, she was free. And she delighted in her freedom. She hadn’t realized how delicious life was when you lose everything. I think that’s something we all need to learn over and over again. It is such a simple and yet incredibly precious thing.
The Woman in White was waiting for us. We stood and the woman who had just freed herself walked toward her, taking her hand. The Woman and White regarded me with a half smile on her face. “You’ve been away,” was all she said.
“I needed a break,” I replied.
“I understand. We all do at times.” Her smile brightened and I could tell she was genuinely happy to see me again. It made me happy. Before she turned to leave with the woman, she said, “I’m glad you’re back.”
As they walked away, the little army of ice goblins who had led me to the woman emerged into the Crossroads. They scampered around like happy children and I saw they no longer resembled goblins but were more akin to gnomes or dwarves. They ran laughing after the White in Woman and her latest charge.
***
