Imaginal Journeys in the Underworld

  I don’t know why but this seems to be the week of teachers appearing during my meditations. Today, I was sitting and, as always, not seeking an experience. I became aware of a black flame arising from a fractured rock. It was not a pretty place, a burned-out and hellish landscape. A figure coalesced from the smoke, rising above me. Even though it looked evil, I didn’t feel any reaction to it and didn’t feel threatened. As you know, nothing is quite as it seems in the Imaginal and yet everything is knowable. Maybe not completely knowable but knowable to the extent of our capacity at the time. This figure had burning yellow-gold eyes. I was drawn to the light in them and soon found myself transported into a golden realm. I was at the bottom of a long, golden staircase with bodhisattavas sitting across from each other on each step. A golden figure stood before me, inviting me to ascend the stairway. I climbed and climbed, seeing a seated figure on a lotus throne (or at least what I ...

  “The Visit from an Old Teacher” I didn’t want to go anywhere this morning when I was meditating but got called somewhere nonetheless. This turned out to be a connection to my lifetime before I was the one I call Lucas. In that lifetime, my parents died when I was a young child and my brother joined the army, sending me into the care of a monastery. It was rather bitter lifetime and I don’t have many happy memories from it. In the end, I’m pretty sure I died of some sort of disease, probably when I was in my early forties. My dead body was cut into pieces and fed to vultures. A sky burial. This last bit is important for today’s experience. I ‘awoke’ in a dead place, kind of like a Chinese Buddhist temple or an Asian Buddhist temple at least. Nothing fancy. I was sitting in a long, covered walkway. The courtyard was open and the outside was suffused with bluish light. This color I have come to associate with the souls of the dead. The temple radiated a sickly green light. I looked ...

  I’ve been sensing into the Pearl Body, the form the soul takes as it individuates. It is like a physical body in some ways. For instance, your physical body simply is without you having to do anything about it. The Pearl Body is the same; i.e., it has its own ontological existence and doesn’t require any effort on your part to create or maintain. This is in contrast to the ego which requires a constant input of energy and needs to cathect to the physical body in order to substantiate its existence.  The Pearl Body, like the physical body, has senses that correlate to the physical senses. It is an expression/development of the soul so it is an organ of experience…just like the physical body. It has a definite form, even if that form doesn’t arise in physicality. It grows and develops like the physical body. In other ways, the Pearl Body is quite different from a physical body. For instance, it is both a portal and a sort of container at the same time. It doesn’t age per se, a...

  One hallmark of my personality is a pervasive sense of contempt for other people. I’ve been aware of this for a long time and periodically have insights into why I feel this way. It’s like a blanket that covers and colors my experience. I guess psychologists would call it a projection or an overarching identification/object relationship. When I inquire into the reasons for this contempt, I come up with a lot of reasons. I feel like over the years I have worked through a number of them and yet the projection remains. Lately, it’s been very noticeable to me. It is so bad at times that I consciously avoid looking at people for two reasons: 1) To avoid seeing them and therefore feeling their suffering and 2) to avoid being intruded upon by their neurotic spinning. When I meet people I am struck by these two things: Neurotic spinning and suffering. Sometimes, it’s too much to bear and I have recently begun to suspect that what makes it too much is actually this overlay of contempt. If...

  “The Bodhisattva of Sleep” Once again, I didn’t seek out an experience this morning but one found me during meditation nonetheless. As usual, it came near the end of the meditation so at least I had a good 40 minutes of nothing-in-particular. I saw a twisted hellscape of a ruined forest. It was utterly destroyed but some sort of disaster. It wasn’t fire, though. No, the trees were snapped and twisted like they had been sheared down by a great wind but, even worse, everything was coated in black, tarry blood. It smelled awful. As I stood there, watching, I saw a bluish white glow that resolved into a great white stag. I knew this stag, of course. He is like the Woman in White but not quite as friendly. The stag was taking point, followed by a pack of white wolves who were trailing along behind him, not hunting him but forming a V behind him in the shape of an arrow. As they progressed across the ruined forest, they left only pure snow behind them; they were cleansing the place. Th...

  I’ve realized a couple of things lately: 1) I’m in a place where I need to learn how to trust my own soul’s guidance even though there is no one in my physical life who can verify its trustworthiness. 2) The Kosmos is much vaster than I even imagined and, at least the portion of it that I’m party to during these journeys, is both beautiful and disturbing. I’ve always relied on external guides. I can’t think of time, other than the past several years, when that hasn’t been the case. I’m uneasy trusting my own soul. Part of this is the curse of doing spiritual work because spiritual work schools specialize in making you second guess yourself, never allowing you to fully trust your experience. They do this for their own survival and other reasons. Even the Diamond Approach is guilty of this. You’re never quite there. Never quite whole. You always need more teaching to set you on the right path. Without it, you’ll fall into darkness and things will run amok. Well, I’m tired of this t...