June 7, 2025
It’s been a while since I’ve had a journey. I don’t know why that is but I never seek out these journeys so I guess I’m not in control of when I have them. I don’t know who decides, probably no one. It’s probably more a case of the being available and being needed aligning.
This morning I first found myself in a very green place. It was like a glade in the midst of newly-leafed sugar maples. The leaves were fresh and vibrant green, almost chartreuse in color. It felt like a near realm, sacred but not out of reach of humans, although I suspect they are mostly dead when they find themselves there.
I stayed with my meditation and gradually sunk deeper into the ground. The earth below was completely black. This wasn’t the pure blackness of the Absolute, although it wasn’t separate from the Absolute, either. (Nothing can be truly separate from the Absolute, after all.) I was among many. They writhed around me, human and wormlike at the same time. They were blind but responded to my presence even though my own body was pitch black as well. Just by being in their midst, I felt the stirring of hope.
I don’t know exactly who these beings were but I suspect they were the souls of the damned. (Damned by their own actions/karma, that is, not by the judgment of a harsh god or devil - you know I don’t believe in divine punishment. We punish ourselves enough without needing a god to do it for us.) In my experience, ‘hell,’ if you can call it that, is not a permanent state because no one is beyond redemption. The cosmos is an infinitely dynamic and ever-changing place, the only constant I am aware of is Being itself and even that’s a bit of a stretch. You have to kind of cross your eyes and ignore a bunch of stuff in order to perceive it as unchanging or constant.
Even though hell isn’t a prison, nonetheless there are many who are trapped there. My presence in this dark, dank hell was subtle because there was no fanfare and yet I could feel how it kindled a kind of hope and wonder among these blind, wormlike beings.
There was nothing to do but remain where I was and after a time I emerged from the hell realm into one of pristine, untrammeled sacredness. This was a different kind of sacred than in the first realm. My very presence there felt wholly new, hence the untrammeled part. There were beings present, most likely angels, because they referred to me as, ‘Son of Adam.’
That term gave me pause and I wondered about it. This place felt like one of the most divine place I’ve yet visited. A place out of reach from humans, one that was available only to a soul with a particular kind of development and with very particular kinds of sensing. I got the strong impression that I was the first human ever to enter it and felt incredibly touched and humbled. I couldn’t stop crying and yet I knew my being there really had nothing to do with me in particular. No, it wasn’t about me. Yeah, it’s great when the soul develops but this was about the collectivity and not the individual. My presence in that place meant that I had opened the doorway to others.
I could feel my soul very clearly as a portal, spanning innumerable realms. It was like a breath of fresh air blowing through all of those realms from the lowliest to the most sublime. And the victory, if there was one, was for all humanity and not me.
Much was said without words. The beings in that place were at pains to explain the connection between my presence there and my presence in hell. The connection was the key, the hope for all beings. I understood that one of the sacred capacities of the soul was to bridge realms, erasing divisions and offering hope for all to eventually transcend their conditioning and be free. That is the true hope and promise of the human soul.
I could feel how my soul could experience a vast range of states and senses and feelings. Its potential is indeed limitless and, if there is anything to be in awe of, it’s the potentials and capacity of the soul. Such a wondrous organ of perception! How did it ever come to be? It’s truly a miracle of Being.
The journey wasn’t over.
After a time, I found myself with a king. He was a sad kind who looked like the kind in a pack of playing cards, almost as if he were a cardboard cutout. I felt sad seeing him because he struck me as a paper king without a kingdom. I immediately recognized that he was a shell, an image worn by a deceased soul that covered up a rather grim truth.
I don’t know for sure but I sensed this man had killed himself. Further, I think he had accrued a massive gambling debt (hence the guise of a king from a pack of playing cards) and he committed suicide out of despair.
What to do but sit with him? I couldn’t fix anything but my presence had an impact on him. Slowly, a body covered by a sheet like a corpse at a morgue was revealed and he realized that he was in fact dead. (I think he didn’t realize that when I first met him.) He was devastated, of course, and I held him as he wept.
Slowly, the scene around us darkened into deep blue. He grew afraid because he could sense we had entered a river of souls and they were flying past us in a blur. I held both of his hands in mine and led him onward. Gradually, the deep blue of the soul river gave way to a pale white glow, the glow of the Crossroads.
I looked down and realized the man was gone and I was holding an infant. Further, my own body was that of a woman, probably someone he knew. Perhaps his mother or maybe someone else he trusted as a child? I’ve found that the dead almost never see me as I really am.
Rather than entering the Crossroads proper, I blinked when we emerged into a castle tower. Before us was seated the White Queen, a.k.a., the Woman in White. I smiled as I got her joke: The man had appeared as the Red King and she was appearing now as the White Queen. Cute. She beckoned me over and I surrendered the baby to her. She accepted him and nuzzled him against her bosom where he promptly began to suckle.
The Woman in White proceeded to tease me, speaking to me in very formal language like that of a queen. She asked banal questions and laughed when I asked her why she was being that way. “You never come and visit me anymore,” she complained, feigning a pout. “I haven’t had cause,” I explained. “It’s nothing personal. You know I am fond of you.” “Are you?” she asked, drawing me closer and patting me on the butt. I swear one of her fingers actually caressed my butthole, too, something that struck me as her demonstrating how familiar she was with me. It was her way of telling me that nothing was off limits between us. I tried to imagine one of my human teachers ever doing the same and couldn’t. It just wouldn’t be appropriate. However, here with the Woman in White, everything, it seems, is allowed.
***
