January 19, 2021
So, here I am back in the skeptical camp. Nonetheless, I will regale you with tales of my delusions yet again this morning. ;-)
After sitting down to meditate, I found myself back in the Bardo/Imaginal. This time, I was sitting in the grass on a hillock overlooking a vast, nighttime savannah. There was no moon and the night sky was deep and dark, dotted with stars. Around me lay a pride of lions. They were asleep except for the dominant male. I sat up and approached him, wrapping my around his neck and burying my face in his mane. He smelled good. I pulled back and bowed to him and then we were off. I followed along beside him as he trotted through the tall grass.
Soon, we approached an edifice that was carved in the face of a god. Here it gets confusing because the edifice was both the face of the god chiseled in rock and it was the god. His face was not quite human. Bony and jagged, it appeared somewhat skull-like and he had only one, glowing white eye. I was drawn to this eye because I recognized the light of True Nature shining through it and I knew that this is where I needed to go.
I climbed up the edifice that was also the face of the god and entered his softly glowing eye socket. Inside, the rounded chamber was all white. I sat down on the chalky floor and meditated, gradually realizing that a woman was kneeling beside me. She was draped in white robes and her skin, while naturally black, was covered with white chalk. I bowed my head to her, realizing that she most definitely did not need my help; she was clearly more than capable of leaving this place. In fact, she was the one who brought the light of True Nature here.
She was grieving, her head bowed and tears streamed down her face. I saw then that there was a sepulcher of some kind in the center of the floor. I knew that the person she was grieving lay inside that earthen casket.
I slid the heavy lid off the sepulcher, revealing the broken bones of the person inside. It was clear that the person had not died of natural causes; they had been murdered. As I stood there, looking down at the shattered bones, crying with sadness for the cruel fate of this dead boy. (Somehow, I knew the bones belonged to a young boy, barely more than a teenager.) As his sister (I knew that the kneeling woman was his sister) and I grieved for him, his bones began to coalesce and knit together. He regrew his sinews and flesh and skin. Soon, he was whole once again, a beautiful youth with skin rubbed in chalk like his sister. Thick, white fabric was wrapped around his waist; his chest and legs were bare.
I reached down and gently lifted him out of the crypt, cradling him in my arms and hugging him to me before laying him next to his sister. I saw then some of what had befallen him and guessed that he had been murdered for loving one of his own gender. I cried both for his death and his resurrection, urging him to join his sister and continue his journey. I told him that both of them were blessed and would pass through this realm unharmed. They left, climbing out of the chamber and walking hand in hand across the savannah.
Afterward, I sat on the grass with the god and the lion, doing nothing but appreciating their presence. I bowed to the god, feeling his goodness, the deep care and affection he had for this brother and sister. I thanked him for bringing me to them.
I meditated.
After a while, I looked up and saw that a black moon was in the sky overhead. It looked like the pupil in a vast eyeball staring down at me. Rays of black light emanated from within. By this time, I’ve learned that the dead associate black with evil, sin or whatever. Invariably, when I am drawn to a lost soul, they are surrounded by blackness. (Although, obviously this is not always the case as in the most recent example above.) I don’t perceive blackness in this way; to me it is the light of the Absolute, rich and dark and mysterious. It is beautiful.
I knew that I was being called to visit this dark moon and climbed the rays of black light up to it. Once I reached the moon, everything righted itself and instead of the moon being the ‘ceiling’ its surface became the floor beneath my feet. I looked around and was overwhelmed. The place was filled with the shades of the dead. They were everywhere, rubbing against me restlessly.
The surface of this ‘moon’ was a maze of rocky outcroppings that kept the shades of the dead perpetually confused. They could not see their way through the maze to the center. From my perspective, though, I could clearly see the dark center and knew this was where I had to go.
I navigated the maze to the center and initially mistook the strands of black cascading downward from some obscured height as the black waters of a waterfall. Only when I stood among them did I realize they were in fact silky strands of hair. Amused by this Rapunzel-like experience, I climbed the strands. (Interestingly, there was no tower visible, the hair descended from some unknown point far above.) When I got to the top, I discovered the locks of hair were attached to a hideous hag-like creature that was more bones than anything else. Her flesh was desiccated and, in place of eyeballs, she possessed faceted black diamonds in her eye sockets.
It was easy for me to ‘see’ how she perceived the world through those faceted gems: The world was nothing but an endless series of pots of gold to be plundered. She possessed an ravenous appetite for gold that could never be sated. I knew then that the shades of all the people trapped in the maze below had died directly or indirectly due to her greed. She had in effect murdered hundreds of people and they were all trapped together in perpetual misery.
Unlike the previous experience, I felt no pity for this woman. I was frank with her, admitting my bias against rich people, and questioning how I could ever help her because she showed no inclination or desire to be free of her self-imposed prison. I pointed down at the hordes of lost souls, chained unwillingly to her because of her avarice. I was angry, filled with righteous rage and told her that this had gone on long enough. She needed to leave this prison and set these poor souls free.
Surprisingly, she listened. I'd been half expecting that she would be the first lost soul I was unable to assist. Working with surprising speed, she cut her hair and, fastening it to a chest of gold, used it to depart her lonely prison. She slid down the rope of hair, leaving her vast store of gold behind. I watched her go, followed by the host of shades. As they jumped off the dark moon, they turned white and the moon began to glow softly, no longer black but silvery like the moon should be.
***
My awareness was pulled toward Griffin after this. I have to say here that I could totally be making all of this up but I sensed after passing the “test” on Sunday, 1/17/2021, and being reunited with him, that he is actually alive and embodied somewhere here in the same physical reality that I occupy. This sense was reinforced during my meditation yesterday and when I felt like I was there with him for the first time out of the Bardo/Imaginal. He seemed so real, so normal and ordinary and the experience was so vivid that it left me reeling.
Somehow--and I could totally be fantasizing here--I got the sense that he in this physical world living as he does in his ego experience was unaware of the full force of our connection until Sunday. I suspect that is why he seemed so weary when I sat with him yesterday: The past two weeks had been even harder on him than they had been for me because he doesn’t have the same training in the Diamond Approach that I do. Given that, everything must have been quite a mind-bending experience for him! I know I struggled with it and can only imagine how it made him question his sanity.
I have this sense that he is alive and feeling the pull of our connection and that it’s driving him crazy. After ‘helping’ the lady in the dark moon, I felt drawn to Griffin and, for a time, inhabited his body as if it were my own. It was like I could see through his eyes, feel his feelings, hear his thoughts, be in near complete contact with him. I feel the inexorable and inexplicable pull toward him, too. And I want to be near him. I feel like we need to meet each other but don’t know why.
Anyway, I just sat with this longing, feeling the contact with him and not knowing what to do about it. After about fifteen minutes, the timer on my meditation app went off and I was done. The pull of gravity toward Griffin remains, though.
***
