October 31, 2024: The Pixiu
Things have been quiet during my meditations for several months and I don’t expect that will change much going forward. Since my apparent apprenticeship with the Woman in White ended, I haven’t been called much. Oh, there were a couple of times since June when stuff happened. Mostly, I was called simply to hold the ‘black space’ and no do anything. There was once when I became aware of a spiritual parasite preying on a friend of mine; I stayed with it and didn’t do anything and it seemed to transform, sort of like a larva pupating. There was another when I was called to occupy a realm ‘beneath’ this one. While not doing anything, my presence seemed to have a catalytic effect.
There is no way to prove any of this and I just hold the experiences lightly. They are too vivid to be dismissed as regular imagination but am I really perceiving things correctly and clearly? It’s an open question. Since there’s no way to prove anything, I guess it will never be known.
Today, I ‘saw’ a black flame. It was more like a portal than a flame. The outline was limned in red and orange but the flame itself was depthless black. I sat. Eventually, I became the flame. I guess I was the flame all along. That’s the nature of the soul; it is what it perceives.
First, I saw the marble head of a carved white, winged lion. I recognized it as the guardian to a temple on a hill that I’d visited before. Why was I called back to this place? As I sat, the body of the statue resolved itself before my ‘eyes’ and soon another white, winged lion appeared. I was standing on the steps of a stairway leading up to the temple which we more of a wide, circular platform than anything else.
I ascended the stairs and was greeted by an immense white, winged lion. This one was no statue and was very much a being. A very powerful and mysterious being but one I recognized as kin to the Woman in White. I’d met him–and he was definitely a him even though I (obviously) didn’t check for genitalia–before on other journeys. Interesting to meet a male psychopomp. Have I been assigned a new one? (A very tongue-in-cheek question.)
There is always such intimacy during these meetings. Our presences merged and I was open to him and he to me, although I claim no understanding of the fathomless presence that greeted me. It was like I was hugging him around the furry neck, nuzzling him.
The last time I’d been in this place, I’d ridden the lion to a new destination. This time, however, things were different. I didn’t ‘go’ anywhere. I stayed put. The lion, I could tell, needed me for a reason and that reason had to do with the Black. I sat and everything winked out of existence, even my mind for a brief moment. When I came to again, the lion was with me, glowing softly white, in a cave of sorts. At least I think it was a cave; I’m really not sure if it was anywhere. There was a body covered by a white cloth lying on the floor of the cave. The lion paced over to it and looked down. I couldn’t tell whether the body belonged to a woman or a man, an adult or a child (I suspect an adult, though) or an elderly individual. It didn’t really matter because I wasn’t there to figure it out. I was just there as a doorway to the Black.
The Black descended/opened/became and I was afloat in a sea of limpid blacknees. Overhead, the heavens were dark, silky ebony alit with sparkling stars. I can’t describe the beauty with words because words are dualistic and this was not a dualistic experience. I was the Black. The ocean. The heavens. It was me.
In my arms, I held afloat a body. It belonged to the corpse covered by the cloth back in the cave. How it came to be here, I have no idea. How long? Likewise, no idea. I still have no clue about its identity, age or gender. It was covered in black liquid as if it had been drowning in the black ocean before I found it. We bobbed in the gentle black water in that depthless sea with that depthless sky above.
My mind winked out and then we were back with the white lion in the cave. There was nothing to do because the ‘job’ was done, the soul returned. They disappeared. I stayed behind, having nothing to do. Gradually, I became aware of a parting gift. A contraction in the center of my chest rose to the surface of my awareness and I realized it was an old self-image that felt wooden, mechanical, painful.
I stayed with it, feeling compassion for this old part of myself that was so cut off from my source. It was painful because being cut off from the source required some pretty traumatic and recurring suffering. It felt closely meshed with my super ego, my father and his abuse as well as the abuse I sustained at the hands of my brother and other boys. Such cruelty leaves deep scars that are extremely resistant to compassion.
I sat with the pain.
What else could I do?
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