January 3, 2025
“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.
They passed by me and the ground around me turned into snow, sort of like the Crossroads. As I looked down, though, I saw the curled, dead fingers of a young girl. She was buried in the snow. Looking around, I noticed there were frozen bodies everywhere around me. I sank to my knees, crying, and realized my body was emanating darkness. Well, more than darkness, it was a radiant black.
The scene dissolved and I was kneeling in a cave filled with dead bodies. They were strewn everywhere, hundreds of people, all murdered. I wept and wept because of the sheer magnitude of the death around me. Slowly, I became aware of a white glow and looked up to see the Woman in White standing in the doorway to the cryptlike cave. Her hands were on her hips and she was smiling. It was both a smile of grim determination and of relief.
“Why are you crying?” she asked. “The worst is over. These people can now be rescued from their suffering. Go on,” she motioned me away. “You’re done here. I’ll take it from here. Besides, there is someone else here you should meet.”
I looked around the cave/crypt as she got to work, her glow gradually extending throughout the cavern. On the far wall above me, though, there was an impenetrable blackness. A familiar sort of blackness, sure, but different slightly from the Absolute. The Absolute is, well, it’s nothing. Not even nothing, it’s pure of nothingness. Powerful, potent, annihilating yet merciful. Like coming home. This wasn’t like coming home, more of a waystation, I guess. The annihilation of sleep.
The form “hiding” in the blackness was a thing out of nightmares, yet not frightening to me. I could see that, even though she looked horrific, she was at heart a being of mercy and compassion. Who of us doesn’t require the cessation of sleep? No one. And it sort of makes sense that people might turn her into a nightmare, too, because we tend to project all of our fears onto sleep.
She looked like a horrible, skeletal hag with long, sharp claws and pointed teeth one moment and then a young woman of stark beauty and then a creature, more animal than human, and then something else entirely. She was a constantly shifting presence, transmuting before my eyes. Still, if you ignored her form and focused instead on her essence, she was clearly neither malevolent nor benevolent. She simply was and by simply being who she was, she was a being of mercy. I know that doesn’t make sense but barely anything here in the Imaginal makes sense on an intellectual level.
The following is my clumsy attempt at recreating the transmission of thoughts, concepts and feelings between us.
“You’ve finally seen me,” she said, uncurling herself from the shadows and descending to the floor. She held out her hands and I took them. Her black fingernails were more like talons or claws than anything else. “I’m just as intrigued by you as my sister is.”
I understood by ‘sister,’ she mean the Woman in White. I nodded. “I’m nothing special. Just a human who has learned not to resist death.”
“And that’s all?” She leaned in close, sniffing me because she lacked eyes.
I shrugged. “I suppose so. I mean, I don’t completely understand why this stuff happens to me, either. I just suspect it has something to do with my affinity for the Absolute.”
“Maybe. Still, it’s intriguing. Who would have guessed that a mortal's weakness could also be its strength?”
“If by ‘strength,’ you mean not resisting dying, then, yes, I guess it is a kind of strength.”
She nodded and led me away. “Let’s go. My sister is at work waking the dead.”
By holding her hand and being in her presence, I learned more about her. She was like the Woman in White and her ‘brother,’ the one who usually appears as a stag. I understood that one of the things she does is descend on scenes of carnage, covering everything in a deep cloak of night. In doing this, she brings sleep, rest, repose. It’s a sort of mercy given to those whose final moments are filled with horror and terror. A blessing, really. Still, I don't think she can entirely erase the horror of those final moments (or maybe many days or years) which is why she can take on a menacing form.
The sleep lasts for as long as it's needed. Eventually, others show up and awaken the dead. I suppose I’m one of those people, although my role is more of a finder than anything else. I usually provide the doorway to waking up into the next phase of the journey. Not for everyone, of course. Just a few souls here and there who get stuck or are trapped.
I wouldn’t globalize the roles of this Woman in Black or the Woman in White. I think they are beings who do what they do, among many, many, many others. All of us have a role to play, I guess. All of us make up an ecosystem.
I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: Clearly, there is much I don’t understand about the way the Kosmos works on the other side of the physical world.
***
