My wife and I have been talking about my longing for spiritual answers and spiritual experiences, and iot became clear that one of my poblems was that I don’t really make space for God in my life. I’m busy all the time- when would God have the chance to get in on the conversation and let me know what’s up? It’s tough because I’m a married law student with a baby, so I have a lot of demands on my time (and when I have free time I’m reading or blogging or watching movies or playing games or whatever).
Although one of my problems is notbeing sure how to approach God in a way that is not a self-fulfilling prophecy (I doubt, for example, that if I pray to Christian Jesus for guidance that he is going to tell me to become a Muslim). However, we concluded that meditation coupled with open-ended prayer was probably appropriate for my current situation.
So last night we sat down and meditated. And it was interesting. I’m not going to call what happened a Mystical Experience, since I didn’t feel, well, pierced to the center by it or anything. But it certainly seemed not insignificant.
Following Jeff Lilly’s lead, I engaged in the “going to your room” exercise to the extent that I could remember how to do it. After centering, I visualized myself getting into an elevator, pressing a button, and going down. All kinds of scenes flashed by as I descended, and the further I went down, the more difficult it was, as in making the elevator descent was actually requiring mental effort.
I got to a point where I decided that I had gone far enough for a first try, and I opened the door and stepped out. I was in a dark hallway, with black velvet curtains. As I pushed through them, I found myself back in my room, and octagonal log-cabin affair with a comfortable old bed with a quilt on it, and two doors. outside was the familiar mountain-and-forest environment, with the crisp fresh smell of evening in the woods. Out the door I usually use (the other door I have never gone through), was a familiar path, leading away towards the woods.
I say “familiar” because this is the way i have always visualized my room.
I decided to go out and walk that path and see what I could see. Maybe I’d run acruss a Mr. Tumnus-style faun like Jeff did! In fact, I seemed to see a small figure of some kind dart into the trees off in the distance.
However, as soon as I began walking along the path, I felt the presence of a figure walking next to me. I had the impression of dark, curly hair, a rough tunic, and maybe a mental impression of sandals. This ficure seemes immediately significant, so I turned to look at him.
I was confronted with a horrible decaying face of death, sort of like Jasmine’s true visage at the end of season four of Angel. It was startling, and it shook my concentration. I chalked it up to my imagination (“and then… a ghost!” hahaha), and tried to focus back where I was.
I tried to look again, with the same result. the same horrible face of corruption and death looked back at me. After the third time, I decided to talk instead of trying to look.
“Are you God?” I asked?
“Yes,” came the answer, in a faraway voice, almost like someone talking into a coffee can.
I tried to formualte a question, like should I become a druid, or should I return to Mormonism, but I couldn’t get a question to really make any sense or come out of my mouth.
“I have so many questions I would like to ask,” I finally managed to say, “but this isn’t the time to ask them, is it?”
“No.” And the figure looked at me, his face veiled, and he had yellow eyes that looked at me out of the darkness so piercingly, I had to look away. He said “You are here to experience Me.”
Suddenly back in my real mind, I felt like my consciousness was fraying at the edges, like I was dissolving from the sides into everything else. It tried to hold on and let go at the same time.
The figure then raised his arms and exploded into light and fire, and there was a brief impression of a shape of a pheonix. The flames surrounded me and surrounded everything, and blazed until I slowly came back to my normal state, back to my living room with my wife.
Like I said, interesting.
Sailing to Byzantium 
Interesting Blog I’ve stumbled upon here, and seems to quite reflect something many of us all went through. That searching for Truth. And to be honest, I think that if anyone admits they found Truth, with all capital letters, they probobly lied.
As far as your recent posts regarding the meditation of “death/god” and commenting upon the gain of freedom but loss of clarity, I think you’ve begun to touch upon an archetypal theme present throughout historical mythology and cultural/spiritual stories. One I personally stepped through, and presume is a pretty common situation among other “spiritual quests”.
That is, that to advance along our LifePath, one must face a sort of “death” where the old tenants of ourselves are cast aside in order to embrace the new. Even in mundane life, such things happen all the time.
Teens let go of the comfort of parental oversight and strike out on their own. Single folk abandon a bit of freedom in order to settle down and raise families. It is similar in a spiritual path.
At first, it’s rather difficult and confusing. I personally bounced around a bit stiudying everything I could on various pagan, monotheistic, and other Faiths, having come from being an almost-ordained minister at my church. Now, I feel rather secure in my place, which incorporates attributes of both the christian upbringing I had, with more pagan and rather druidic nature-spirituality.
But I had to go “through the fire” in order to really accept what I actually beleived and realize it’s better on the other side of that “uncertainty” wall. It’s the climb over it that hangs you up. 🙂 Keep on climbing, and don’t be afraid to grab a couple of different rocks until you find one that helps you lift up and over!
[…] them and wish that they had similar experiences when meditating. I was struck in particular by this incident that Kullervo mentions on his blog, in which he tried a visualization and ended up with his time wasted by one of those […]