September 7, 2022

 The difference between regular imagination and the Imaginal is vividness. The images in regular imagination are mental pictures for the most part whereas the experiences in the Imaginal had a much deeper impact. They hit me in the heart, especially, and are usually extraordinarily vivid.


Last night when I was drifting off to sleep, I had a strong image present itself. It was in a cabin in the woods, somewhere in the upper Midwest. It was night and the cabin was mostly dark. A young, voluptuous and stylishly-dressed white woman reclined on a leather couch. She was wearing clothes from the late 1950s or early 1960s. She seemed unconcerned.


Seated in the shadows was a young black woman. She was equally stylish but far from unconcerned. In fact, she was terrified. I got the sense that she and the other woman were performers. Perhaps the white woman was also a prostitute but the black woman was not. I am pretty sure she was a mother.


They were waiting for someone, someone who would most likely kill them - or at least kill the black woman. The atmosphere was tense, filled with dread and expectation. It was almost intolerable.


The scene stayed with me through the night but didn’t evolve until I meditated in the morning. I didn’t witness how the black woman died; I only felt her fear and dread. I do know she died, though, and was stuck. It wasn’t difficult to go into the liminal space to find her because there was so much blackness. Once there, we had to deal with the fear. It was so palpable that it affected me as well. It took work to remember the gift of blackness, the stillness, the non-dual experience of dissolving into loving nothingness. This makes death less frightening and more generative.


There was also sadness and grief, although I wasn’t really equipped to work with that. Those would be up to her and perhaps another friend she had yet to meet.


We exited the blackness to radiant white. It was like the usual crossroads but not bleak. The white was saturated with gold and a man stepped out of the white/gold to welcome her. He was wearing ornate robes of white and gold, had a halo and carried a golden staff. I recognized him as a holy man, possibly even Jesus. He was black like her…and like me, I realized as I looked down at myself. I understood then that I had changed to match her expectations, taking the form of someone she trusted. Clearly, given the nature of her death (which I strongly suspect was at the hands or gun of a white man), she would trust someone who looked like her. I guess this explained why there had been no resistance from her when I met her, only acceptance and a sense of ease.


So, maybe this is a permanent thing? This changing form depending on whom I meet? It certainly seems like it and it definitely smooths the whole process. I felt nothing but happiness seeing her join the holy man who was there to lead her onto the next phase of her journey.


***

Popular posts from this blog

Introduction

Image
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&#
Read more

April 23, 2024

  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
Read more

February 27, 2024

  No Imaginal sex today for once. ;-)  I was really planning to have a simple meditation but it didn’t work out that way. I became aware of the Black and then I realized I was surrounded by a pack of what I thought at first were black wolves. Their eyes glowed light blue, the color I have come to associate with the Land of Souls, for lack of a better name. These weren’t wolves, though, because, while they seemed menacing at first, I soon realized they were just agitated. They appeared to be huskies which are sort of wolf-like so I can be forgiven for mistaking them. In any case, the black dogs surrounded me, barking insistently and pleading for me to follow them.  I was still in the realm of the Absolute but it was a border region. All I had to do was look outward and I could see the edge of the realm. Up ahead was a shining blue-white beacon. It was so beautiful that it brought tears to my eyes. One of the dogs took my wrist in his mouth and pulled me toward the beacon. As we approach
Read more