October 5, 2021
After this morning’s experience in the Imaginal Realm, I think I now understand at least a part of the reason I am called there to help lost souls. It seems so simple that I’m surprised I didn’t figure it out before. Let’s see if I can sum it up in a sentence or two.
The vast majority of humans don’t engage in spiritual work, especially not the kind of work that I do. Because of this, almost no one has a direct experience of the Divine, let alone know themselves to be made up of the Divine. In the Diamond Approach, we refer to this as recognizing our true identity as that of the Absolute. After many trials and tribulations, we come to know ourselves as the Absolute. This involves nonduality and it's pretty esoteric. Suffice it to say that even people who are deeply engaged in spiritual work rarely experience this. I don’t know why it takes so darned much work, so many years and tears and so much difficulty...but it does. Perhaps it’s because we humans are still pretty primitive when it comes to our spiritual evolution. If we survive as a species long enough, it’s possible that thousands of years from now it will be much easier for us to know ourselves as the Divine.
Not only do most people not do spiritual work but most don’t have many spiritual experiences in their lifetimes and they may not recognize such experiences when they have them. Many people identify as religious but I’d wager that the majority of these don’t have many religious experiences. Given this, the most intimate experiences that most of us have involve other humans, not spiritual states/entities/The Divine. We live our entire lives thinking that the height of intimacy and contact is with another human being.
There’s nothing wrong with this but it’s only part of the story and it means that we don’t see that this intimacy is merely a surrogate or a reflection of the true intimacy with God. Once you have experienced intimacy with God, you recognize that all other forms of intimacy are merely training wheels. The intimacy of the Divine is present in all forms of intimacy, it’s what makes the experience real and touching and beautiful and fulfilling. Usually, we don’t see this, though.
Many, perhaps the majority, of humans die without experiencing ‘true’ intimacy. This means that they are invariably met by entities who represent the intimate connections of their life on earth. I imagine most people meet dead relatives and loved ones. I can’t say whether these entities truly are relatives or loved ones, only that is the way they appear to the soul of the recently deceased. These entities serve as a guide for the soul, taking her on the next steps of her journey. Where that journey leads, I can’t say but I think it usually involves reincarnation.
Those who were religious and had genuine religious experiences probably meet saints or angels or demigods or other religious figures. Those who were deeply engaged in spiritual work and learned to know themselves as the Divine probably don’t meet anyone; they don’t need to! They already know their inner nature as the nature of God and they can continue their journey unaided. Or, if they are greeted by another entity, the entity is most likely not there to guide them; the entity is there for another purpose.
Some people are special cases. Maybe because of the nature of their demise (murder, suicide or extreme trauma) or maybe they perpetrated great evil or maybe because they had trouble forming solid relationships or maybe they were overly attached and that attachment wasn’t reciprocated--the reasons are probably myriad--some souls get stuck or lost and need a helping hand. This helping hand needs to be in the form of another human soul because that is the only way they can be reached. If another entity reaches out to them, they may not even recognize them as a helper, if they recognize them at all.
It is these special cases that I usually meet. Sometimes there is a guide with me when I meet them, sometimes the guide shows up a bit later. But invariably I am the one who reaches out to the lost soul and pulls them out of their ‘hole’. I’m usually not involved beyond assisting in freeing them. The freeing seems to be my role and emissaries of the Divine take it from there. I generally don’t have any special connection or relationship with the lost soul beyond simply being another human. It’s probably important that I know that my innermost nature is Divine; otherwise, I can’t imagine being able to both reach out to them and free them from their stuckness.
Today, I kept seeing brown. Brown seems to be a theme because there have been a number of experiences involving that color. Internally, I associate it with the color of ego experience. The ego structure often shows up in my mind’s eye as varying shades of brown.
This brown was initially of mud. I felt like I was in a dead marsh filled with dead grasses, dead trees. Everything was brown and dead. The leaves on the marsh bushes hung lifelessly. The mud was a decayed brown.
In the mud was a rotten corpse, although this corpse wasn’t dead exactly; it was animated. I won’t describe it too much because I’m sure you can imagine what it looked like. It’s hair was matted with mud and hung lankly. It was quite simply grotesque, although probably because I recognized her as a lost soul, I wasn’t grossed out.
The corpse responded amorously to my presence and I didn’t recoil. One thing that I enjoy in the Imaginal is being fully present and permeated by the experience. I could feel the longing, the hunger for contact and the love in this hideous creature. Clearly, she’d been locked away for a very long time, or at least it felt like a long time to her. She must have known she was dead because her body was decayed. Perhaps she had become so identified with being dead and the despair of being lost and alone that she developed an identification as a restless corpse.
I embraced her lovingly. At this point, I knew she wasn’t seeing me--they almost never do--but someone for whom she longed. Perhaps it was a long-lost lover who never reciprocated her affections? Or maybe her actual lover hadn’t bothered to find her? I don’t know. What I do know is that the scene shifted and we were in a gothic castle. She was still a corpse but this time she was clad in a long, red gown. The feeling was like a fairytale: The princess waiting for her prince charming...only a little twisted because she was a rotting corpse.
I stayed with her. I was touched by the experience and also aware of how deeply we hold onto these mythic archetypes. People haven’t lived in castles for centuries and yet the fairy tales live on in our unconscious minds. The days of royalty are long gone and so many women identify as being princesses. The archetype seems just as alive today as ever.
I have no idea how long in actual time this woman had been dead. I don’t really know much about her and probably never will. Hell, I don’t even know if she’s more than just a figment of my imagination! In any case, there wasn’t much of a resolution. I got the sense that she was open to being free of her delusion but wasn’t ready to let go yet. In any case, we remained in an intimate embrace and I just held her.
