Imaginal Journeys in the Underworld

  The issue that’s been arising for me over the past couple of weeks has to do with my desperate attachment to sanity. I cling to my sanity with a sense of desperation, betraying my belief that my own mind is the source of sanity, rather than Being. This is similar to my mistaken belief that life arises from the physical body and that the ego self is the source of action. Life doesn’t arise from the body and the ego is not the real doer. Likewise, sanity does not originate from my mind. Still, this is a deep-seated belief, one that I hold onto with a passion infused with terror. The Absolute causes us to confront all of our attachments. In the past thirty years of doing spiritual work, I’d experienced many, many, many kinds of death of attachment. Ego death, death of my attachment to my body, death of my attachment to life, death of my attachment to my object relations, instinctual pleasures, etc. Of course, you don’t just experience a death of an attachment once and then you’re do...

  I spent much of the meditation teaching myself not to resist the darkness that was consuming my consciousness. It wasn’t all that different from other kinds of darkness I’ve encountered on these journeys but it triggered an instinctual fear in me that harkened back to my very early childhood. I was always afraid of the dark when I was growing up. I think this is because of my inner experience, that of being surrounded by a ravenous darkness filled with unseen and unspeakable things. It terrified me. I equate it with the stark and absolute isolation I experienced, born into a family of people who were entirely blind to their inner nature. I faced an unhappy choice: Either become like them and enter into a life of suffering or resist and be consumed by darkness. Needless to say, it wasn’t much of a choice. What infant/toddler could tolerate being devoured by darkness? It was either insanity or depression and I chose depression. Depression because that was what joining the so-called...

  I’ve been aware of the weight of my superego lately and it reminds me that it’s not just my own but one that’s been inherited from past generations, most recently my father and mother but they received it from their forebears as well. I feel like the voice of mental commentary in my head is mostly my superego and I’m growing tired of its chatter. It thinks it's so witty! Well, it feel old and trite to me. I like meditation and other times like during physical activity when it disappears and there is nothing but silence. Sitting during meditation today, I held the weight of the superego in a light but curious fashion, not trying to do anything to it other than invite understanding. This is the essence of inquiry and it never fails. What is revealed is almost always unexpected, yet it also makes sense.  I see my habitual, cynical, witty persona as being informed by my superego. It is characterized by disdainful, distancing, acerbic and sardonic thoughts. There is a weariness t...

Things have been quiet during my meditations for several months and I don’t expect that will change much going forward. Since my apparent apprenticeship with the Woman in White ended, I haven’t been called much. Oh, there were a couple of times since June when stuff happened. Mostly, I was called simply to hold the ‘black space’ and no do anything. There was once when I became aware of a spiritual parasite preying on a friend of mine; I stayed with it and didn’t do anything and it seemed to transform, sort of like a larva pupating. There was another when I was called to occupy a realm ‘beneath’ this one. While not doing anything, my presence seemed to have a catalytic effect. There is no way to prove any of this and I just hold the experiences lightly. They are too vivid to be dismissed as regular imagination but am I really perceiving things correctly and clearly? It’s an open question. Since there’s no way to prove anything, I guess it will never be known. Today, I ‘saw’ a black flam...

I know how crazy these entries must seem to, well, just about anyone who reads them...if anyone is reading them. I know how I would feel reading them if I didn’t have the experience to back them up. Still, I’m familiar with wild fantasies and fever dreams. I’ve certainly been guilty in my younger days of living in a fantasy world. The difference between fantasy and these experiences is that fantasy requires energy to maintain. Also, you have to keep reminding yourself of the fantasy or starts to fade and get distorted (even though it was distorted from the beginning.) For me, these experiences are quite different from fantasy. They don’t feel like inventing or wishful thinking. Instead, it’s like unlocking memories that lie tied up in my soul. I sit in meditation and don’t go anywhere, simply stay with the nothingness of my experience. Eventually, I become aware of a pattern of tension in my body, usually in the chest area, and I feel uncomfortable. I don’t want to stay with the experi...

  I’ve been spending the last three weeks or so hanging out in Death Space when I meditate. It’s taken me a little while to figure out why but I think I know now: When we experience the death of a loved one, we have the opportunity to revisit the times in our own lives when we’ve experienced death or a death-like state. In my case, I can remember two past lives and so the experience of those deaths has been present with me when I meditate. In this current human life, I had an encounter with Death Space that was devastating and had a profound effect on my life’s trajectory. It’s probably the reason I became interested in the inner work. When I was born, my mother was depressed and she continued to struggle with depression throughout my childhood. She was never diagnosed or treated so the depression was pretty rough on all of us but I felt it very acutely. Probably due to my experience being murdered in my previous life, I felt like I was flung into Death Space when I was born. My mo...

I suspected that I’d be called during this morning’s meditation. I could feel the pull of the call last night so, when I sat down today, I wasn’t surprised when I opened my ‘eyes’ and saw a curtain billowing in the night breeze. I was standing at the entrance to a formal garden. The French doors were open. I parted the curtains and stepped outside onto the terrace where I first thought the moon was rising. After a little while, though, I realized the moon was actually a gargoyle who was crouched down, hugging his knees. His body glowed silver white like the moon. He straightened as I approached and held out a clawed hand. I took it and he cradled me in his big arms, flapping his leathery wings until we were aloft over the garden. Below us was a night city, soft lights twinkling in the darkness. We flew to the edge of the city where it ran up against the sea. Then the gargoyle took flight over the sea, spreading its great wings, as we sailed over dark waters. It was quite beautiful and ...