Imaginal Journeys in the Underworld

  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...

  Sex in the Imaginal Realms can have as many motivations and flavors as in the physical world. I was taken aback this morning by a sexual encounter that was sweet and pure in the religious sense but that also has left me a bit dazed and humbled. Before I get to the naughty bits, though, I’ll describe the lead up. Most of my meditation today dealt with a teaching I’m receiving about my early childhood. I’ve been working with a multilayered object relationship/super ego attack/underdeveloped soul structure around groups. What was my earliest group? My family, of course. Like a lot of queer people, I have always felt ambivalent about groups. Mostly, I don’t trust them. My experiences as a child from babyhood to young adulthood in groups left me scarred. I have been seriously injured by group activities and behaviors to the point where I have a really hard time believing there can possibly be such a thing as a healthy group. Of course, I’ve developed a whole constellation of object re...

  Illusion. It’s not that deep of an understanding but I’ve realized life in the physical and spiritual realms are filled with illusions. How many masses of people in the physical world are suffering under delusions? Basically everyone, including me, depending on the day and time. And the same is true in the spiritual realms. Lots and lots of illusions and delusions. The so-called lost souls are lost because they are trapped in a delusion. They find me one way or another in order to be stripped of that delusion and liberated. I’ve also realized that these journeys into the Imaginal realms are a byproduct, not a result, of my inner work. The Work is about not just following the Truth but embodying it. Once we embody the Truth, we are enlightened. Literally enlightened. Our soul body emits the light of Being. We need this light in order to see at times but mostly this light, the Light of Truth, is for the benefit of others.  These souls are drawn to me in the Imaginal because of...

  I needed a break from all of the drama of the journeying. It happens. Sometimes I just want to meditate and just meditate. When these moods come over me, I receive the space I need. I don’t want these journeys to become an identity that I wear. I don’t want to be special. I simply wish to be human. In fact, I don’t want to want anything. Wanting disconnects me from my humanity and propels me into the realm of ego. When there is no wanting, no identity, things are simple. And I feel at home. I realize how I can’t separate my inner life from the outer one. Both are important and both have their place. And they are interconnected in complicated ways that I don’t understand. But one thing is clear: Inner life is life, too. It’s not just the stuff happening in the physical world that matters; it’s all important. That said, I still don’t have any deep conviction that the journeys that happen during meditation are anything but dreaming while awake. If they were just dreams, though, they...