Imaginal Journeys in the Underworld

I know how crazy these entries must seem to, well, just about anyone who reads them...if anyone is reading them. I know how I would feel reading them if I didn’t have the experience to back them up. Still, I’m familiar with wild fantasies and fever dreams. I’ve certainly been guilty in my younger days of living in a fantasy world. The difference between fantasy and these experiences is that fantasy requires energy to maintain. Also, you have to keep reminding yourself of the fantasy or starts to fade and get distorted (even though it was distorted from the beginning.) For me, these experiences are quite different from fantasy. They don’t feel like inventing or wishful thinking. Instead, it’s like unlocking memories that lie tied up in my soul. I sit in meditation and don’t go anywhere, simply stay with the nothingness of my experience. Eventually, I become aware of a pattern of tension in my body, usually in the chest area, and I feel uncomfortable. I don’t want to stay with the experi

  I’ve been spending the last three weeks or so hanging out in Death Space when I meditate. It’s taken me a little while to figure out why but I think I know now: When we experience the death of a loved one, we have the opportunity to revisit the times in our own lives when we’ve experienced death or a death-like state. In my case, I can remember two past lives and so the experience of those deaths has been present with me when I meditate. In this current human life, I had an encounter with Death Space that was devastating and had a profound effect on my life’s trajectory. It’s probably the reason I became interested in the inner work. When I was born, my mother was depressed and she continued to struggle with depression throughout my childhood. She was never diagnosed or treated so the depression was pretty rough on all of us but I felt it very acutely. Probably due to my experience being murdered in my previous life, I felt like I was flung into Death Space when I was born. My mother

I suspected that I’d be called during this morning’s meditation. I could feel the pull of the call last night so, when I sat down today, I wasn’t surprised when I opened my ‘eyes’ and saw a curtain billowing in the night breeze. I was standing at the entrance to a formal garden. The French doors were open. I parted the curtains and stepped outside onto the terrace where I first thought the moon was rising. After a little while, though, I realized the moon was actually a gargoyle who was crouched down, hugging his knees. His body glowed silver white like the moon. He straightened as I approached and held out a clawed hand. I took it and he cradled me in his big arms, flapping his leathery wings until we were aloft over the garden. Below us was a night city, soft lights twinkling in the darkness. We flew to the edge of the city where it ran up against the sea. Then the gargoyle took flight over the sea, spreading its great wings, as we sailed over dark waters. It was quite beautiful and

  Another morning, another teaching. I’ve been feeling guilty (read that as my superego has been beating me up) about being short-tempered, irritated and impatient with my coworkers. I have been under stress and sometimes I can’t help but to take it out on them. I know it’s wrong and damaging but sometimes I can't stop myself. I’ve always struggled with the bad versus good split. In spiritual work, this shows up as feeling like I have to be pure and perfect in order to merit transformation. Only once pure and perfect will I have earned it. Now, the teachings during my meditations over the past three years have been counter to this belief with the overarching message being that perfection is not required. In fact, it’s an impediment. The Divine needs us to be imperfect. It’s required. We need to make mistakes. We need to hurt each other. We need to do bad things. Only by experiencing the pain and heartache as a result of these things can we truly know the wisdom of love and Being. T

  This morning’s experience was of the trippy, fantastical variety reminiscent of my first journeys into the Imaginal. I even went back to the white and cobalt blue city that I visited in my initial excursions into the Bardo. I started off thinking about how very strange most of the people are who do spiritual work. It seems like the people with the healthy egos don’t do spiritual work even though they are the best candidates. Instead, it’s a thieves' den of broken and unstable people (I don’t exempt myself from this classification) and these tend to have egos that aren’t well suited for the extreme dissolution required for spiritual transformation. Consequently, the broken become seekers and it takes them a very, very, very long time to in general to truly change. Most barely shift their perspectives at all. It’s kind of dispiriting. I began my meditation with that thought on my mind. After sitting for a while, I heard a voice, the voice of the Divine in my heart. It said, “I call

  Sex in the Imaginal Realms can have as many motivations and flavors as in the physical world. I was taken aback this morning by a sexual encounter that was sweet and pure in the religious sense but that also has left me a bit dazed and humbled. Before I get to the naughty bits, though, I’ll describe the lead up. Most of my meditation today dealt with a teaching I’m receiving about my early childhood. I’ve been working with a multilayered object relationship/super ego attack/underdeveloped soul structure around groups. What was my earliest group? My family, of course. Like a lot of queer people, I have always felt ambivalent about groups. Mostly, I don’t trust them. My experiences as a child from babyhood to young adulthood in groups left me scarred. I have been seriously injured by group activities and behaviors to the point where I have a really hard time believing there can possibly be such a thing as a healthy group. Of course, I’ve developed a whole constellation of object relati

  Illusion. It’s not that deep of an understanding but I’ve realized life in the physical and spiritual realms are filled with illusions. How many masses of people in the physical world are suffering under delusions? Basically everyone, including me, depending on the day and time. And the same is true in the spiritual realms. Lots and lots of illusions and delusions. The so-called lost souls are lost because they are trapped in a delusion. They find me one way or another in order to be stripped of that delusion and liberated. I’ve also realized that these journeys into the Imaginal realms are a byproduct, not a result, of my inner work. The Work is about not just following the Truth but embodying it. Once we embody the Truth, we are enlightened. Literally enlightened. Our soul body emits the light of Being. We need this light in order to see at times but mostly this light, the Light of Truth, is for the benefit of others.  These souls are drawn to me in the Imaginal because of this lig