Spiritual Blogs

There is the dark void, where I am nothing. Everything begins and ends with the dark void. So deep that there is no existence until some spark breaks it forever, only to suddenly descend again into an endless night. That space we barely touch when sleeping but without dream, a total lack of form and perception. I am fully immersed in this until there is no separation between it and I. There simply is no "I", and it could never truly be called an "it".

Now there is light, subtle but totally shocking, yet I am calm: At that moment, I know how to move in and out of the void. A haze breaking through, golden and red, a fine dusty fog. Dim rays of sunlight start to become apparent, then shadows of old buildings crumbling into rubble. It is warm and I am floating, gliding evenly high up in this rusty mist. I see wispy, ghostlike figures swimming alongside me in this current. So many of us, rising up into orange sky like a thousand short fingers of smoke, gently sucked up by a god. They are crying but they love me deeply, they love the ruins below. They are telling me they do not want to leave but they must: The ruins are too sad to be amongst any longer.

Then the void settles back in, or rather I slip back into it. Time is so fluid that I can not say what has happened, or if what will happen has become the past. The blackness is not a divider or a boundary, it is underneath everything, around everything. The most ancient state of tonic that demands dissonance for it to have any meaning.

***

The sound of a cool ocean, slow deliberate waves breaking on some nearby shore. The smell and texture of moist air passing over my lips, my face, my hands folded over my solar plexus. I can not see or move, or fully feel where I am, but there is a sense. I know this place...

An image flashes through my mind's eye, an eye that does see something: A massive gleaming building towers over a cliff-side above a rocky shore. It is like no structure I have seen in this life. Long, tall, rectangular, rounded at the top. The two long sides tilt slightly inward in an A-shape, covered with many giant windows framed with thin bands of shining silvery metal. Several much smaller structures cluster around it, but otherwise it is surrounded only by deep green temperate pine forest on the one side, deep turquoise sea on the other.

It looks like the future, but it feels like the past...

A memory comes, and I am surprised to find I can not seem to remember anything of who I am beyond my small incarnation, as if looking in a mirror through near total darkness. The memory is of what felt like a dream when I was a very young child, but now seems far more real than any dream. I was an ancient man with a flowing white beard, wearing a white gown of some kind. I was with a group of other men and women, equally aged and similarly dressed, sitting placidly in seats facing outward on a slowly rotating round platform. Everything was white, with a gentle white light coming from every direction so that I could not discern the outline of a room. There were other people also dressed in white, but faceless, who were bringing small objects up to each of the elders and placing them in their throats somehow. When they came to me I could see the objects were made of smooth clear glass in the shape of a round-pointed oblong , about the size of a human throat. They were suspended in cubic glass cases by some means I could not detect. I was told that this was a new soul I was being given, and the dream ended there, or at least my memory of it.

Somehow I know that this is the same place. It is like a hospital for souls, where they go to be "born", to "incarnate", and to "recover", but it also has other functions. I remember now another much more recent dream, of being educated in a place like this with young people. They were all very beautiful, brilliant, attentive, and happy. But there was also a sense about them that they were very old and wise, though they looked so youthful. The education was of a deep spiritual nature, yet with a scientific aspect to it. So esoteric it would be impossible to give any example, like the physics of all existence but with less mathematics than ordinary physics.

Then it comes to me: It is also a research institute which studies consciousness, I am one of the researchers. On this realization, I become aware of the room in which I am lying. I can see from a vantage point slightly above my face. I am certainly not in my body but I can not look down on myself. I feel very groggy and still can not move, yet somehow can shift my field of vision. It is an odd paradox: Feeling my body lying frozen there, misted by salty ocean air, yet when I move it does not. I can feel myself moving but at the same time can feel this body being still.

I am in a very long and tall room that faces the ocean. It looks like morning, the sky is overcast. The style is of an American or European hospital circa 1950's. There are wheeled beds set along my side of the wall, all facing the windows, all with people in them. More are being brought in and it feels as if the room is running out of space. Somehow I know they are like myself, but the way they lie is impossibly contorted, arms and legs mangled together, bodies bent in countless unnatural ways.

"We found you like this," says some voice into my mind, no person in this place is saying it.

Then the void returns, the endless depth of it crushing all memory and experience. There is only now, only nothing, only infinity.

***

Floating up into the orange sky with my spectral family.

"We are leaving," they sadly sing.

"But why, why must we leave them to crumble?" I feel to them, and we all feel it together. We are angels of some kind, I can see we all have shimmering, vague outlines of wings. But it is the energy that makes me feel they are angels. There is so much love in them, but so much grief as well.

"You know why we can not stay," and then I know: We came to help these people, these poor souls who lived in the ruins, and they would not listen to us. There is a pang of anger with those who claimed to watch over them, who represented them, and who misrepresented themselves. They had been given so many chances to do what they knew was needed, each one met with resistance or deceit. It is inconceivable to us how any people could be so unconcerned with their own survival, and now that neglect has led to their utter destruction by their own hands. Our heartbreak is so great we can not stand to watch them do it any longer.

***

On another surface of the void I am in the hospital room at the institute. A young man and woman are talking softly, she is crying. They appear to be very good friends, he is trying to console her. Two very young girls stand quietly with their mother, holding hands and looking at the floor wistfully. I recognize them from my life, but they are very different people here in the institute. The man is Elof, a wonderful person I had met mostly at musical events in the forest. He danced wildly, took hallucinogenic drugs copiously, philosophized deeply. We had wonderful dances, trips, and conversations on several occasions, but were never very close beyond when we met by chance. Here he is something other: A brilliant scientist wearing a white lab coat, a researcher of consciousness like myself, very calm and certain, but sad. I know now that we work together, and we are working on a very important project. He is my best friend, which is why he is so close to the woman: She is my wife.

Her name is Elsa, in my life she was a single mother of the two girls. She had little help so was very disorganized, tired, and sometimes stressed, but so warm and kind. So beautiful that men would literally circle around her and ply her with compliments. She would sit radiantly, keeping them politely at arm's length, and I never worried they could hurt or manipulate her. She and I also had deep talks, several very close days, but nothing like a romance ever blossomed. I am struck by the fact that here, the two girls are my daughters. I had not wanted marriage or children, not at the time. I knew those were things I wanted eventually, but never had any desire for them. But now it is so real. I can barely stand the anguish at not being able to reach out and touch their faces, ruffle their hair, hold them in my arms. And my wife...

I can only hear a little of what they are saying.

"I'm so sorry," says Elof with the most sincere apologetic tone. "This sometimes happens with these kinds of consciousness experiments." More sobbing from Elsa, and he hugs her warmly. "I promise you, we're doing everything we can to bring him back."

And then I realize what is happening: This project we are working with...is my life!

***

Blown into the void again by this understanding, then pulled right back out of it. My "real" body is actually lying in a bed in my apartment, I can feel it there, it is a warm summery morning and birds are singing. I can move it but when I do, I lose awareness of everything else. If I stay still, I can also feel my body at the institute, frozen in the bed, unmoving. My third, out of body awareness in the hospital room fades in and out depending on my level of stillness, but now I am mostly blind again.

I can not remember details, but realize that I have somehow gotten lost in an experiment. I was to go from the institute into what I have believed was my life, but I lost all consciousness of the true reality. At that moment I ceased to be aware of my surroundings there. My body might move or speak, but only as if sleepwalking, expressing my reactions to this life I was stuck in. I feel a powerful urge to wake up out of my life, to come back to my wife and daughters, and my dear friend.

"Doctor Elof," I try to signal to him (that is what I call him in this other reality), to let him know I am aware of his presence. "Doctor Elof, I'm here! Can you hear me?" but all I can manage is to croak the throat in my false life. The body at the institute will not move, as if I am not connected to it. I try harder but can only barely move my lips, no sound comes out of them. He and my wife notice the movement and come near, the two girls as well.

"Why won't daddy wake up?" the younger one says, starting to cry. And then Elsa weeps as well, I can feel her warm tears dripping on my face in contrast with the cool breeze from the open windows. The grief is so strong, I struggle to speak, to let them know I am here.

"I'm trying so hard my loves!" I can feel my false mouth muttering. "I don't want anything but to leave this illusion and be with you, to tell you how much I love you and never leave you again!" Still there is no motion from my body there, and in desperation I plead to the universe to return me to my real life and my family.

"We found you like this," whispers a voice in my mind from somewhere, and I am dissolved again into the void forever.

***

I am somewhere that has no shape or form, the institute is gone, but it is not the void. There is warmth, there is an "I", and I feel the presence of two beings with me. I can sense they have been playing the rolls of my friends in that reality, but they have dropped their facades and this institute world I was so involved in. I can't tell what they really are, but I know they are my friends and that they love me more than any person in my life has. It is beyond love, beyond family, beyond any notion of romance. I am feeling more disoriented than ever, but still calm in a way I have rarely experienced, perhaps from their presence. They feel so familiar, such ancient beloveds.

"Do you understand, love?" they swoon with indescribable care in their voices, but it is not speech, they are speaking into my mind. "We don't want to see you so caught up in the illusions!"

A wave of understanding crashes over me. I knew my life was an illusion in the mind of creation, a great dream nested inside an even grander dream. I had glimpses of this fact, and the fact that really there was nothing else except dreaming. But I had forgotten this often, and became very involved with and attached to people, places, situations, experiences. I had entered the void and these other realms because I was so frustrated with the way I was managing my life and unable to get past certain things in it.

In a moment of such clarity and emotion, I understand what these beings are showing me. They have brought me through a psychodrama in order to illustrate exactly that which I was seeking: Any illusion can bind one if allowed to become immersed in it without the proper level of detachment. And what is more, this illusion is based on other illusions that are "real": This institute still feels like a real place that I can remember in my soul. But the scenario involving Elof, Elsa, and her daughters, this was geared to trigger attachment inside me so I could more fully know the lesson they were teaching.

As if in response to my understanding, and my feeling that the institute is real, they begin to show me things. Pictures flash through my mind, so many and so fast it would be impossible to relate them all.

"We found you like this," they whisper, showing me the row of beds with all the other patients, contorted and broken. This image is overlayed with flashes of a similar situation, but alarmingly alien. Instead of beds, there is an endless row of glowing greenish cocoons, slightly transparent, all docked into some aetherial system. They seem biological in nature, as if grown around the beings inside, who, instead of being "human", are more like energy creatures. I feel an understanding that these are "souls", souls like my own, and they vibrate as being ill or broken. Slightly insectoid human angels are tending these cocoons very carefully and lovingly, these seem to be creatures like the two I am interacting with.

There is a sense that by entering the void and these other realms, I have done something dangerous: Fleeting images of myself staggering through the hospital at the institute, knocking over IVs, tables, beds, disturbing the patients. The unspoken message is that I should not be awake walking around or I might hurt the others who are not yet recovered, that I am not fully recovered myself. And that I have been a repeat trouble maker who had to be put back to bed on several occasions.

I suddenly feel very distrustful of these creatures, many thoughts of "The Matrix" movie and David Icke's information fly through my mind. I wonder if these are the reptilian controllers that have been so often accused of manipulating earth and our entire reality. The situation I am seeing does seem to fit those theories in a way. But the feeling of pure love and care from them is so powerful and genuine, it seems impossible for them to be falsifying this part of their energy that was present all along.

A moment back at the institute where Dr. Elof is steadying a table I have knocked over. He looks at me, smiling kindly, and then with a clownish feeling his face changes. First his eyes bulge, skin turns greyish, and a cartoonish pair of bolts like Frankenstein's monster pop out of the sides of his neck. This face disappears and melts into another, greenish and reptilian, with garish neck flaps popping comically up and down like a Frilled Lizard. At first I am taken aback by these faces but realize he is gently making fun of me, that they are nothing like what my fears are accusing them of. Further, I can feel that they are not the insect-like humanoids I saw tending the pods, this was also a metaphor provided by my frame of reference for reality: They are not physical.

"We found you like this..."

There is a series of pictures depicting some kind of horrific destruction, as if a planet or star were exploding on a spiritual level, energetically shattering everything near it. There are beings of crystalline blue-white light, fractured and writhing from the shock, in complete panic and disorientation.

"...Unable to create reality, unable to live in or process it," they are saying. "So we put you all in this highly plastic dimension for your healing."

On some level I understand what they mean by this. We were like them, perhaps we were the same type of beings. Something terrible has happened to us and we no longer have a grasp on the universe, we are broken to the point we can no longer look after ourselves. What we call reality is actually like a hospital for awfully wounded children that need to be taken care of and protected from any energy that would interrupt their recovery. There is a great feeling of protection, as if they are saying to all the creation: "Do not disturb these children!"

"How long...?" I ask, and immediately realize that time is non-existent to them, or at least immaterial. At the same time there is a definite feeling that they have been watching over us longer than we could conceive of in physical time, and that they are waiting for something.

"We do not know how to repair the damage," they continue my line of thought. The telepathy is so strong I am barely a separate mind. "We are waiting for God," which I find hilariously amusing, as if it has a laundry list of tasks and is very busy. "...And She will get here when She gets here, so you may as well have a cigarette if not smoking stresses you out so much." I am flabbergasted by what they are telling me.

"You mean all this time," I can feel my physical body mumbling in astonishment. "ALL this time, ALL this life and living, ALL THIS?! It has all been waiting to wake up from some kind of spiritual coma?!"

They kindly feel with me a sense of incredulity and amusement with the insanity of how creation actually works, how bizarre and unreal its function can be. Their sense of humor is superb, but there is something very serious about them. I can feel this patience, yet a great fatigue at having cared for us so long, even though they will never die or grow old.

"Why?!" I feel my physical body mumble again. "Why would you spend all this time watching over us, poor wretches that were never your responsibility?" And the feeling of love is overwhelming.

"Because you are, just as we are. What else could we do?" And I understand: When they stumbled upon us in this state, they saw themselves. They understood what this meant, the condition we were in, and that if they did not help us maybe nobody would. There was no telling what could happen to us without our awareness, like a person sleepwalking through the busy downtown of a metropolis at night. We could have been lost to drift forever in the void and never rejoin them, our sisters and brothers of the universe. To them, such an idea is unthinkable, so heartbreaking to lose forever these other parts of themselves.

And in a moment that reflects the scenario at the institute, they tell me they will always be here waiting for the moment we can wake up and embrace them. I can feel tears of joy and love flowing down my physical cheeks, such beautiful, unconditional love and oneness with them.

Then the void folds over me again and I am nothing, dead to every world, alive to the black nothingness inside and between all spaces.

***

Flying slowly upward into the rusty mist above the ruins, the ruins I now know are of my world in ordinary life, sweet Terra Earth. I can see now these beings are very different from the two I had just been interacting with. Even in this astral bubble of symbolism, I can feel we are still in the hospital of reality, and they are also patients. But somehow they are much more aware than the humans I know, they are certainly not human. And I can feel now that I am also not fully human either, something about me is different, is like they are.

"We can't just leave them here like this!" I cry out with my heart to them, and they reflect the feeling.

"There is nothing we can do to save them," they sob into my mind. "If only they would have listened to us, we tried so hard to help..."

I project to them the feeling of devotion shown me by the care-takers of the "highly plastic dimension", and for a moment they halt their ascent. There is a strong sense that if I absolutely refuse to go, they can not leave either. We are one. This is my argument for staying, even in the face of total failure: What else could we do but stay and love these people? They are, like we are!

"This is why we always loved you," they sing, slowly floating back down, the ruins becoming alive, green forests unwithering below. "You just never give up!" And in a comical paradox I realize it is true: In life I was so yielding and let things go so easily, but in my core I am one of the most stubborn beings in the universe.

"But when you wake, tell all of those children you know," they whisper, fading away.. "It is up to them now. They must all be on their best behavior!"

And once again the void swallows me entirely, I am nothing in a sea of nothing. There is only the pregnant emptiness, ready to give birth to another new reality. Deafening undifferentiated silence and blinding blankness. All things begin and end with the dark void...

(This is a true story. It is the morning of August 30th, 2008)

You show me

the light inside myself

because you understand

your own.

You give me a reason

to wake up,

because now I know

you will be there,

smiling,

when I do.

I have been searching everywhere

for you,

my beloveds,

my dearest eternal Friends.

Had I but known

that you were here all the time

gathered around my bedside,

and holding my hand.

Saying gently,

"Come back to us,

love.

Please,

wake up

and speak to us!"

That's why it's so beautiful

to be with you here,

now,

in this dream.

You remind me

why I wanted to dream

of you,

with you,

and why I'm waiting

to awaken:

I too,

am sitting by your bed,

stroking your head

with love,

whispering

"Wake up,

my dearest."