Imaginal Journeys in the Underworld

  I’ve had a few other experiences lately but haven’t recorded them. They have followed a familiar trajectory, though. I’ve realized that, while I have by no means worked through all of my personal baggage, I’ve worked through the basic ego issues and now barriers are relatively few and far between. Because of this, I’m aware that most of the time when I feel a tension or numbness or pinching or pain somewhere in my chest area, it’s not my stuff that I need to look into; rather, it’s another soul’s conflict trying to get my attention. This feels like the definition of empathy if you consider the empathy is the attunement to the state of another. You don’t need to be physically in the presence of another; you just need to be open and available. Today, there was numbness around the top of my chest. I sat with it and found myself in a beautiful but eerie underground chamber that may also have been under the sea. It was black but there were pale beams of light here and there illuminati...

  This morning I let myself be open to the Imaginal for the first time in a long time. I don’t think this will be a habit because I feel like the thing I need most is to simply hang out in a space of non-doing. A lot happened! First, I became aware of a green and yellow place. It was sort of like a verdant, sundrenched forest. The green was the green of the Green Lataifa; i.e., compassion. And the yellow was the yellow of the Yellow Lataifa; i.e., joy. It’s beautiful that a realm can embody these expressions of Essence. I brought the Black Lataifa with me because it’s the aspect of Essence that I tend to embody for reasons I don’t entirely understand. The Black seems to open doorways, maybe because it dissolves everything. Nothing can stand up to the Black. That sounds harsh but it’s actually an expression of the deep love of the Absolute. By ‘destroying’ boundaries, it brings everything together and makes transformation possible. It is so deeply mysterious. Without it, nothing wou...