Imaginal Journeys in the Underworld

  Today, I was back in the stable, only this time the Christ Child wasn’t the forefront; it was the others who were present, or rather the atmosphere of love, dedication, companionship, camaraderie, purpose and holding. For most of the meditation, I was just aware of concentrating. Finally, I realized that I was trying to focus on something - the belly center, my heart, whatever- and just let go, allowing my awareness to open up. At that point, I realized that the surrounding atmosphere of my meditation was subtly different and, at the same time, similar to yesterday’s meditation. Rather than blackness, I was aware of dark brown. It’s the quality of light that pervades an indoor space when there is just a little light seeping in. The environment felt warm, cozy and crowded. I was aware of many beings crowded together in an enclosed space. These beings included a whole range of entities from animals to humans to non-corporeal beings. Not all of them were Christian but I got a strong sen

  Take this entry with a grain of salt. I’ve been aware of my superego again, fussing in the background, sending me messages about being too isolated, too much of an outlier that I no longer have much to relate to ‘normal’ people about. This is a common theme of superego attacks, convincing me that I’m such a loner that I’ll end up alone in my old age, probably choking to death on a chicken bone and my body won’t be discovered for weeks. I defend against the attacks, of course, and also realize that (as I’ve pointed out before), my superego has a vested interest in keeping me in the range of ‘normal’ behavior. It has no clue about spirituality and all this business with the Imaginal seems at best like an overactive imagination and at worst as downright dangerous to my superego. I’m sure it hearkens back to my childhood when I was often ostracized and attacked for being weird. My superego learned its lesson well from those years and is doing its best to goad me back to the safety of the

I need to preface the next part of this entry by admitting that I’ve been concerned about the presence of the entity who has been accompanying my meditations since August 27th. I’ve written about ‘him’--I suppose he is male, although does gender really matter when we’re speaking of non-human entities who have no role in reproduction?--in previous entries but will recap here for the sake of clarity. When I meditate, this entity sits on my left side with his ‘hand’ covering my left hand. I can tell he’s not human because his presence is pure and unchanging, quite unlike us messy, human souls who are constantly morphing from one thing to another. We might be pure, too, but we’re invariably a bit sloppy. This entity has no specific form and is generally quiescent, content just to be there while I meditate. Occasionally, he’ll give me a nudge when I get distracted but that’s it.  At least that's the way he behaved for the first couple of weeks. Everything changed on September 12. He ste

WARNING: While this blog is generally SFW, some entries contain sexually explicit/queer content. NOTE: It's best to read this blog starting with the first entry on January 3, 2021 , and then proceed chronologically. It will be a lot less confusing! I have been a student of the Diamond Approach (DA) since my mid twenties. I've dedicated my life to that path and have found it to be incredibly effective at piercing through the veil of the ego and revealing the sublime nature of reality. For those of you who aren't familiar with it, DA is a spiritual path elucidated by A.H. Almaas. It combines depth psychology with elements of Sufism and eastern mysticism. In my opinion, it's one of a handful of effective spiritual teachings. Students invariably experience release from their habitual, constructed self and delve into some deep and profound dimensions of reality. I can't do it justice in just a few sentences but you can check out the school's website here if you&#

  The theme of recovery and redemption continues. Today, I first found myself in a deep, green forest. I had just been listening to the radio and there an interview with Robin Wall Kimmerer so it’s not surprising that I found myself there. The experience was brief; one of being surrounded by all of the spirits of the forest and gradually being drawn to a bright campfire, discovering as I approached that the light came not so much from the fire as the beings around it. They were the ancestors of the first people, the ones we call Native Americans. And they welcomed me despite the fact that I am a colonizer and a defiler of the Earth. There was an acknowledgement of these facts but also a recognition of the importance of my being there. There is a divine cycle that takes place when the soul of a living person visits the spirit world, both the human world and the spirit world are renewed and there is an exchange of energy that is cleansing. I didn’t dwell there long because there was unfi

  I suppose I will never settle the debate over whether these experiences are just confabulations or ‘real’. It’s not possible to prove any of them and it’s not possible to disprove them, either. I’ve had contact with one Johanna Rabin, a fellow Diamond Heart student who has had similar experiences. Hers differ from mine in that mine tend to involve souls of the dead and hers mostly are with other entities. After comparing our experiences, she named something that I found helpful: Underworld, middle world and overworld. Her experiences tend to take place in the middle and overworlds whereas mine usually take place in the underworld. The lost soul, journeys through the Bardo, meetings with ‘dark angels’ like Lucifer - all underworld stuff. Or, if you like, stuff on the ‘dark side’ rather than the light. Although I have to clarify that by dark, I don’t mean evil or sinister. I have written about how I have an affinity for darkness over light which is why I resonate with the Absolute. My