Imaginal Journeys in the Underworld

  Another day, another teaching. Sometimes, it’s true, I don’t much care for the teachings I receive. Today was one such instance, although I can’t deny the truth of what I perceived. The parasites were back, attached and feeding on me as they were yesterday. They had changed somewhat. Rather than appearing like maggots, they looked like a weird and disturbing combination of black, shiny insects and wolf pups. As I sat and meditated, the teaching began to unfold before me whether I liked it or not. I was in essence the ‘pups’ mother and they were suckling on me as pups would upon their mother’s teats. I realized that some mothers probably do at times perceive their children as parasites, voraciously consuming their vital fluids. There was a positive and negative way of viewing the experience. On the positive side, my essence was like the life’s blood to these pups, I was learning what it was like to be a mother, something that’s not really possible in the physical world for a male…...

  More parasites. There is something going on here with parasitic ‘demons’ that apparently I need to figure out. As you know, I take an ecological view of these entities that feed off of human (and non-human) souls. If we didn’t have mosquitos, bats and birds wouldn’t have food to eat. They are a necessary part of our ecosystem. In the Imaginal, they don’t kill - I think that death is something that only exists in the physical world. Or maybe death exists everywhere but it’s different in the Imaginal. So, parasites don’t get eaten by other entities like they do in the physical world. However, they do appear to have the ability to transform; i.e., evolve and develop. This is still just hypothetical but it’s what I’ve got so far. Anyway, this morning I was sitting and slowly became aware of three entities watching me. They were kind of creepy. One was sort of feminine, like a female vampire. One was definitely masculine - big and muscular. The other was more classical demonic. He rem...

  An interesting journey on this Christmas Day. It wasn’t Christian at all, definitely pagan, but you’ll see there were some common elements as well as some very stark differences. I was meditating and found myself in a winter wood. I was on a cliff overlooking an evergreen forest. It was night, cloudy but with a hazy moon shining through the clouds. Everything was blue, gray and silver. Very beautiful. Above: The forest god looked sort of like this, only more radiant and less threatening. The little frightened guy is most definitely not me! I found myself gliding over the wood until I alighted in a glade. Immense, straight tree trunks rose around me. It didn’t feel cold here, being sheltered from the wind. At first, I thought the silvery white light was coming from the moon but soon realized a creature was approaching me from within the wood. This creature was softly radiant. It was a giant stag, much like the God of the Forest in the Japanese anime film, Princess Mononoke . This ...

  I was distracted through much of my meditation today, although I could tell that someone was trying to get my attention. In the last ten minutes of the meditation, I was finally sufficiently still inside to answer the call. I was standing in a foggy swamp. Tendrils of mist swirled around me. The air was still and heavy. The water was fetid. All around were the trunks of drowned trees. The water and air were almost the same color, a grayish blue. I am making it sound forbidding but it wasn’t. Also, it wasn’t scary. This is one of those places in the Imaginal that serve as a boundary between realms and I’ve visited many of them over the past two years. It possessed its own eerie beauty. As I stood there, a crystalline, white dragon descended and peered into my eyes. I knew this dragon; it was the same dragon that had appeared before Griffin and me almost two years ago at the beginning of these trips into the Bardo. If you go back to that journal entry, you’ll read that Griffin–horn...

  The young man from yesterday was back again this morning in my meditation. I smelled him before I saw him. His personal odor was very familiar to me. I savored it for a while, trying to figure out who he reminded me of. It was similar to the pungent, spicy odor of my first childhood friend, James. And also reminiscent of my first gay crush, Michael, when I was 18 years old. It wasn’t exactly James’ or Michael’s odor but it was close.  When the boy appeared, he looked very much like Michael Foley had when he was 19 years old. Medium height and stocky build with sandy brownish blond hair. I still have feelings for Michael after all of these years. Does one ever really get over their first love, especially when it was unrequited? The boy was appreciative for me helping to free him and his guardian from the parasitic desire demon and he really wanted to demonstrate his affection. He would have made love to me if I had allowed it. I certainly found him desirable but his presence ...

  On Saturday after my meditation during which I met up with Griffin, he remained available to me for a few hours afterwards. We had an interesting “conversation”--it really felt like a conversation even though there were no words. He had a complex mixture of emotions around our relationship ranging from deep love and delight to resentment and anger. Basically, even though he treasures me and would never wish to not be bonded with me as a soulmate, he is also suffering and hurting as a result of our union. He has never been particularly introspective and thus doesn’t have a strong motivation to do the inner work on his soul. He’s more externally focused and couldn’t really be described as intellectual. It takes him a lot longer to learn things and he feels like he weighs me down. Additionally, when we were alive together in our previous lives, he feels like he gave and gave and gave, taking on an almost traditionally feminine role in caring for me. He cared for and protected me and...

  You can’t say that the Divine doesn’t have a sense of humor. In fact, I’d say that the Divine’s humor is downright gallows humor at times. I say that because it frequently throws situations at us that are both laughable and heartbreaking. Today’s meditation was a case in point. I have been residing in the sea queendom of the goddess I wrote about in the last entry. That was the deal: I agreed to stay and, in exchange, she let the soul of the young girl go free. So, it’s been a pretty uneventful week. I’m aware of being in the depths of the sea and being observed, critically, I might add. I get why this is happening; the goddess is curious to see what it is about me that is different, what it is that has changed since I’ve been embodied. This is part of a larger unfoldment going on among the old gods. They were watching what happens to those of us who become embodied, becoming human and mortal for a period of time. How are we different when we return? Is this a good thing? Is it w...