May 2, 2024
Another morning, another teaching. I’ve been feeling guilty (read that as my superego has been beating me up) about being short-tempered, irritated and impatient with my coworkers. I have been under stress and sometimes I can’t help but to take it out on them. I know it’s wrong and damaging but sometimes I can't stop myself.
I’ve always struggled with the bad versus good split. In spiritual work, this shows up as feeling like I have to be pure and perfect in order to merit transformation. Only once pure and perfect will I have earned it. Now, the teachings during my meditations over the past three years have been counter to this belief with the overarching message being that perfection is not required. In fact, it’s an impediment. The Divine needs us to be imperfect. It’s required. We need to make mistakes. We need to hurt each other. We need to do bad things. Only by experiencing the pain and heartache as a result of these things can we truly know the wisdom of love and Being.
Think about it: If we were perfect, how would we ever grow? Change? Learn? Develop? It wouldn’t be possible. We must be flawed or we will not grow.
I don’t know why this is so hard for me to understand. I learn it over and over and forget it over and over. I suppose part of the reason is my superego is worried that, if I embrace my flaws, I’ll just hurt people without any remorse. But this is not at all how it works.
The heart grows by being open to and allowing itself to feel pain and suffering. Sometimes this suffering is outside of ourselves but frequently it’s suffering that I myself have created and inflicted. I feel like it’s necessary to hurt and be hurt in order to learn compassion and how to heal and learn and grow. When your heart is open, you feel pain–a lot of it–and it’s hard but it’s also necessary. I don’t know why I always forget that.
This morning, my heart started out closed but it opened when I saw my superego attacks and defended against them. I allowed myself to both hold my flaws and forgive myself for them without making excuses. As I did so, the Black opened up in my heart and I dissolved into a shining black sea of radiance that was filled with mystery and love and forgiveness. It was so dark that it glowed. This is the realm of the Absolute, the boundless dimension of pure blackness. It is my true home, the ‘place’ that is nearest to my heart. Who would have guessed that pure Absence is what my heart loves most? It’s so paradoxical.
I stayed with the Blackness, allowing it to bathe my heart with its soothing erasure. The more it erased, the more my heart opened and the more soft and sensitive it became. Finally, a window opened and I was in black mausoleum. Shades surrounded me. When I felt into these specters, they were pure Absence. They led me through the ornate room to a sepulcher made of black onyx in the center. I gazed down upon it, knowing I’d been called here for the one who lay interred in the coffin.
The lid dissolved and I was looking down into a pit of darkness. A ray of light streamed down from above; its source was my heart. In the depths of the pit was an adolescent boy. His body was wreathed in fire and horns grew out of his head. He was filled with remorse and regret but also believed that he deserved this ‘divine’ punishment. I have no idea what supposed sins he committed but he’d done something he regretted deeply.
My body transformed into a winged angel of pure white. White light streamed through me and shining wings unfurled on my back as I drifted downward to him. I cradled him in my arms, holding him and loving him. I know some readers are probably thinking that this boy represents a rejected part of myself and they could be correct; however, he didn’t feel like me at all. I could be in denial about that but I don’t think so. I think I was called to him after–for the moment, at least–coming to terms with my own ‘badness’ and letting my heart open and receiving mercy and forgiveness. There was no need for me to retrieve a lost and suppressed self image because the self image had dissolved as I dissolved into the Absolute.
Rather than a rejected part of me, I perceived this: The Absolute takes the form of humans, every human is the embodiment of the Absolute. However, only some humans know themselves to be the Absolute as I am (very slowly) learning to be. For those who don’t know themselves yet as the Absolute, an intervention is required and one of the ways this intervention can show up is from another soul who embodies the Black. This ‘Black-knowing’ soul embodies the qualities most needed by the ‘lost’ soul and, through empathy, reaches out to them and guides them.
My heart opened into blackness as I held the boy and he dissolved into my chest. For a long time, I was alone in the Absolute again, unaware of him. After a while, though, the blackness dissolved into white and I was looking up at the muzzle of a reindeer that was peering down at me. Upon the reindeer’s back was the Woman in White. She appeared as a young mother wearing a white robe. Her skin and body were pure white. In fact, everything around us was pure white. This was the Crossroads but it was unusually beautiful, a snowy forest of white trees.
The boy had become an infant. He was tiny and naked and also shining with whiteness. I picked him and offered him to the Woman in White. She smiled, accepting him, and immediately placed him at her bosom, allowing him to suckle.
“You’ve learned another important lesson,” she said, urging the reindeer to turn around. “Do not forget it.” As she left, the forest and reindeer, woman and infant, became colorful and the golden light of the sun streamed down through the trees. It was the light of the Living Daylight, the honey-gold radiance of the Divine. It streamed into my heart, filling me with love and wonder.
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