October 10, 2021
“With freedom comes responsibility”
Days go by and I’m simply meditating. It’s fine, I love meditating and feel like my practice continues to deepen. I’m still aware of the entity to my left, holding my hand as always or at least since August 26. I can ‘see’ the various blockages that arise in my field of awareness like when my instinctual drives get triggered, ego structures emerge, fear contracts my experience, all manner of things that can dampen clarity.
Today, I was meditating like always, simply aware of my experience and nothing particularly Imaginal. I should note, however, that even when I’m simply meditating, I’m aware of what I call ‘Life 360’ - the full experience of living which includes death. It feels like a fullness, like a body-based understanding of the way life and death are the whole. Death isn’t necessarily just an ending, although it is certainly a transition. And life isn’t simply the opposite of death. In fact, I don’t really see life and death as being opposites at all. They are related, perhaps they are the same ‘world’ just viewed from a different perspective? A holistic perspective.
Humans generally are terrified of death. It is perceived as cold, hard and impenetrable and inescapable. We project all sorts of terrifying things onto it, most of which are not true or at least not fully true. As I’ve mentioned before, I have yet to experience anything terrifying in the realm of death - if you want to call it that. Through the many years of my student in the Diamond Approach, I have experienced many, many deaths on many, many occasions. I believe these experiences of dying and being reborn have made it easier for me to submit to death without (too much) fear. (I know that I am still afraid of physical death, although perhaps I am less afraid than I have been in the past.)
I get the sense that I am being guided and trained through my experiences in the Imaginal. My teachers arise in different ways and different forms. Sometimes they are very distinct and powerful like my experience of Jesus and sometimes they are subtle, almost imperceptible. Sometimes the teacher is True Nature (God) herself, no individual entity but a pervasive divinity that shapes and contains all experience. Sometimes they are entities I don’t recognize and don’t have a distinct form but are nonetheless individual consciousnesses...like the being who holds my left hand each day while I meditate. So far, he has only revealed his true power on one occasion but his presence is always there with me; he is my mentor, teacher and guide. Or at least one of them.
Today, I was sitting there, minding my own business, when I became aware of eight eyes watching me from the blackness. They were black and shiny; spider eyes. I was being regarded by an immense spider. I immediately bowed to her because I recognized her as one form of the Divine Mother. In this form, though, she was not human, although she didn’t necessarily reject humanity. I got the sense that she transcended all beings throughout the cosmos, whether they were human or from other worlds and dimensions.
She watched me for a long time with her glittering, unblinking eyes. I got the sense she was ‘tasting’ me, feeling into my presence, weighing me. While I could feel her love for me, it was a variety of love I haven’t experienced before. It wasn’t personal in a human sense but it wasn’t impersonal or universal, either. Maybe this is the way that love is expressed when one isn’t a human or tied to the human realm? It certainly seemed like it.
Gradually, she approached, ending the huge, furry palps on either side of her head. These weren’t fangs, there was no sense of dripping poison. Rather, she extended her palps to feel my face, neck and shoulders. It was an intimate moment, one in which I felt only love and care and mercy and curiosity--on both of our parts. When she rested her palps on my shoulders, I felt much like when Jesus had blessed me by placing his hands in the same spots. This Divine Mother, however, was of an entirely different order than Jesus. Jesus is concerned with humans and the human realm; this Mother is concerned with all beings everywhere.
As she rested her palps on my shoulders in blessing, I could finally see beyond her. Behind her was an infinite web, sparkling and luminous and gorgeous. It was the Web of Life and all beings (or most as I will get to in a moment) were part of it. I couldn’t help but admire its beauty, pulsing with luminous beauty, so infinite and yet so weightless.
Within the web, I spotted cocoons, rather like one sees in spiderwebs. When a spider catches its prey, it will sometimes stun it with poison and then wrap it in silk, leaving it to devour later. This was a spider and a spiderweb but, like my experience of hell, I recognize it was all about life as well as death. This ‘spider’ wasn’t there to poison hapless victims and then drain them of life. Instead, she was their protector and guardian. Her web provided the required support amd holding that living beings require to survive in the depthless eternity of Being. Many, probably the vast majority, are wrapped in protective cocoons where they exist in a dreamlike state, believing it to be real life. Occasionally, one will wake up from within her protective cocoon and begin to work toward freedom.
A cocoon is an apt metaphor because, when the living being wakes up, it begins to metamorphose, eventually transforming into a whole new kind of being. Just like an adult butterfly barely resembles a caterpillar, so does a mature soul barely resemble the soul in its infancy. (I know the butterfly/caterpillar metaphor is a tired one but it’s also quite apt.)
As I gazed upon the wondrous Web of Life, feeling both awe and a little sadness--(What of those poor cocoons? There were so many! How would they ever free themselves?)--the spider spoke within my mind.
“Look above you,” she said and I looked up, gasping in amazement as the enormity of the cosmos opening up over our heads. It was so vast and dazzling and filled with unfathomable wonders that I couldn’t help crying. (I’d been crying pretty much this entire time, mind you. I just cried harder.)
“This is for you,” the spider said. “All for you. You are free now. There is no place you may not go.”
I was blubbering like a baby at this point, overwhelmed by the preciousness of this miraculous gift.
“This gift,” she continued, “comes with great responsibility.” She inclined her head back toward the Web of Life with its trillions of captive beings. “In return for your freedom, I ask that you do everything you can to free my children, whether they are humans, animals or any other being you encounter in your journeys. Will you do this for me?”
How could I say no? It is and always has been my deepest and fondest wish for all beings to be free. I know it’s an enormous undertaking, one that will take a very, very, very, very long time. But we have an eternity, right? And there are many others with me. I have many companions on this quest and together we will assist each other and all other beings. And every time a being achieves its freedom, our job gets that much easier. Liberation, after all, is contagious and has a magnifying effect.
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