January 1, 2025
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 trope and am no longer playing along with it.
Further, I’ve used spiritual work as a way to bypass the ugliness, difficulty, suffering and complexity of the Kosmos. It is possible to escape into blissful states and temporarily forget the ugliness and suffering. This is a spiritual bypass and it’s useful at times. Also, spiritual work schools specialize in giving you a taste of this Nirvana as a way to keep you hooked on their teaching, paying their bills, keeping them in business. Even the best and truest schools do this. They often imply that if you were just a little purer, a little more worthy, you would have access to this state all the time. This is a cruel farce.
It is possible to experience all sorts of beautiful and transcendent states; however, I’m realizing that frequently these states are mixed in with everything else and the net effect can be both icky (to use a highly technical term) and overwhelming. I feel like I’ve been systematically chipping away at my strategies of dissociation and distraction, learning how to open to as much of the full force of Reality as I can without checking out. I believe this is a continual process and it helps grow the soul, strengthen the centers and prepare us to strike out on our own. After all, once we die, we may discover we are all alone and can only rely on our soul to guide us.
This morning near the end of my meditation, I found myself in a dark wood filled with contorted (but still beautiful) trees. They were in the shape of gaping skulls, covered in moss and overgrown, such that no light reached the forest floor. I studied the moss-covered ground and realized there were innumerable skeletons littering the forest floor. These were the remnants of lost souls who can come to the forest seeking treasure.
I surmised that they were after treasure when I saw there were little golden trinkets here and there scattered amongst the moss. There were jewels as well, a king’s ransom of wealth. There was also something off about these golden trinkets. Well, it wasn’t so much there was something wrong with them, it was that something was wrong with the overall forest. Rather than the trinkets being scattered over the forest floor, I realized the forest had grown up over a vast, sleeping giant whose armor was made of gold and covered in jewels. The skeletons of the lost souls had come here for the treasure only to be disappointed and die.
As I became aware of the forest covering the body of the sleeping giant, I could feel its heartbeat pulsing beneath my feet. I knew that I’d been called here to wake the giant but didn’t want to destroy the forest, too. There didn’t seem to be a way to wake the giant and spare the forest, though, and this saddened me. Even though the forest was dark and dreary and had grown up out of greed, it still was beautiful and I didn’t want to be the cause of its destruction.
What to do but sit there and wait. That’s what meditation is all about anyway, right? As I took a seat and meditated, the forest around me slowly transformed into pure gold, finally resolving itself into a vast, arid desert composed of long, windblown dunes. Before me stood an angel, neither male nor female but beyond gender. The angel, I knew, was the formerly sleeping giant. They were clothed in gorgeous, radiant armor, covered in jewels. As I stared, they extended a hand to me and pulled me up off the sand.
I stood and the angel took my hand, leading me across the dunes. Much language was spoken between us but there were no words. The feeling between us was light, carefree. I asked why it was walking with me when it could fly and it laughed, saying that it wanted to hold my hand and couldn’t do that in flight.
We approached a town full of earthen and sun-scorched buildings on the edge of the desert. It was bustling with people. “There are the souls who were lost in the forest where you found me,” the angel explained. “They are living here for a while. This is just a temporary locale but a necessary one.” When the people we passed turned to stare at us, I thought they were staring at the angel. “Oh, no!” it corrected. “They all know me well. It is you they are staring at.” “Why?” I asked. “Because they have never seen anyone quite like you before. A mortal who has realized that their mortality is the source of their true strength, one who knows his Being.”
The angel led me to a fountain/well in the center of the town. “Come, sit here.” It patted the stonework next to the fountain. “What do you see?” I approached and sat down, looking into the clear water. “It’s very pure, very pure,” I said. “Almost like it’s liquid gold.” “Ah, yes? Tell me more? What do you see when you looked into the water?” I leaned over and saw that my reflection was a shadow in the water, pure, dark and black. I looked back up to the angel. “I see the Absolute.” It nodded. “Good. Your nature. Go on, keep looking. What else do you see?”
Of course, the Absolute was a signal. I’ve learned a little during these journeys. As I stared into its depths, I found myself tumbling into the clear, pure water into night. I landed on a hard, stone floor. Above me was the golden light of the well and, illuminated in the glow, was a sort of sepulchre. The face of the milky blue stone had been cut into the shape of hooded woman. As I leaned over it, the stone crumbled, revealing a ragged skeleton with desperate eyes and shriveled, decomposing skin.
A horror, right? Well, maybe. But also a dear one. I cradled her in my arms and then we both disappeared into utter blackness. The wellspring of the Absolute, so annihilating and yet so lifegiving. Such a paradox!
Slowly, the blackness gave way to a familiar cold, white light. The Crossroads. I sort of expected this is where we would end up. Ahead of us, a pathway into the whiteness of the Crossroad opened and we walked toward it, hand in hand. I was a little surprised that the angel had followed us and was walking behind.
“You opened the way for me,” it explained. “Thank you.”
The Woman in White and the man who I sometimes I meet here were there, waiting. The Woman reached out her arms to the woman I was leading and she ran to her. Soon, they were disappearing down the roadway, heading towards who knows where? The angel, however, walked toward the man. I saw that his form was not human at all. I can’t really describe how he looked, only that he did not possess any form I recognized. I soon realized that this was because he was there for the angel, not for me. His form, no doubt, was one that was meaningful to the angel.
As the angel walked toward him, his body changed. He lost his wings and no longer shone with a golden light. He was mortal now, I suppose, although I can’t claim to really understand what was happening. Some sort of transition, no doubt, but one that I wasn’t party to.
“Thank you, friend,” he called out, waving goodbye as he joined the man (who wasn’t a man at all.) “You have given me a great gift.” With that, they were gone.
What to do but meditate. I sat down on the ground and meditated, sinking deep into the loam until I was completely covered up, alone in the heart of the earth, the depth, the…
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