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Physical World as a Spiritual Plane

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    Physical World as a Spiritual Plane

    This is going to be very long, sorry. Maybe I should have made this into a blog...

    As some of you may know, I started to explore meditation/journeying again a little while back. This has always been the backbone of my practices and I even once underwent a training program through the Fellowship of Isis because I felt I'd gotten in over my head and needed some guidance from another human being who had experience in this practice. However, in recent years, something started to feel stagnant. I'd gotten into the routine of just enjoying the escapist side.. popping in for a cuppa and a chat, then popping out again. There was very little of any spiritual value going on in my inner worlds.

    Then a few months ago, I started reading Ross Heaven's Spirit in the City again. This reminded me of a type of journeying I'd started to explore in the past: the idea of going into what I term 'the middleworld'. I started this again and was a little spooked to discover it sent me into a kind of waking dream. I gained amazing insight through the two such journeys I had there. Rae'ya suggested that the place I was visiting may not be the otherworlds as she terms it but another part of my innerworlds (where most of my experience is), but also ignited the idea that I might be working in the dreamworlds. When I thought about it, I was always inspired by the 'middleworld' described in the Newford novels by Charlse De Lint, which is a combination of the outer spiritual planes, home to both gods, animal spirits and shapeshifters, and the dreamscapes that exist within the human mind. Coupled with a lifetime of lucid dreams, I'm almost certain that this is what I am experiencing.

    I'm not ready to explore this further yet as it's quite a frightening experience. So I have started exploring other modes of meditation first. I've been pulled aside from Rotokia into a second version of my innerworld. The insights I'm getting there are amazing. I'd love to share some of my experiences because they're incredible, but I'm already finding it hard to keep this post focused. This isn't all though, there is another layer to all of this... (and finally I get to the point of this post.. sorry)

    A little while back, Azvanna shared some resourses on Mindfulness. It reminded me that this is a technique I'd tried before, and as I was having issues with anxiety and panic attacks at the time, I decided to start using the technique. The affects were almost instant. Training myself to be 100% 'in the moment' has helped me to get out of my head and into the real world a little more often. It is very grounding.

    This is all the more important while I am doing so much inner work.. I need to balance this I think, or risk losing myself again.

    Yet the strange paradox perhaps, is that while I find this very grounding, it is in and of itself a form of meditation. In fact, there is an 'eyes closed' guided meditation that I use on youtube (it's in Japanese though unfortunately), that specifically tells you that it can be carried out while awake and going about your daily life.. just like the mindfulness exercises I'd been doing, but perhaps with a spiritual twist, because you're tuned into and very much aware of, the spiritual energy that is running through the whole of physical creation. Being grounded AND being in 'spirit-mode' seems rather contradictory, but this is indeed how I feel.. and more alive and 'real' than at other times, when I'm more focused on what is happening inside my head than the beauty that is all around me, the life that's happening right before my eyes.

    Almost there now..

    Then last night, as mentioned in the 'What are you reading' thread, I read a children's story in my textbook. In this, the mice are told to close their eyes and savour all the sounds in the forest during a rain shower. This was deeply moving, because it seemed to consolidate everything I'd been subconsciously thinking about. It was a mindfullness technique, taught through fiction, via the language of my newly established innerworld, by talking animals.. (all my guides are currently talking animals.. and even the animals that didn't used to speak, like my Magpie guide Hamilton, have started talking).

    Then this morning on the way home, I started doing the mindfulness technique, inspired by the story I'd read while at work. My mind didn't silence this time though, some very concise and clear thoughts rose to the surface. I was still very much aware of everything. The man talking on his phone in front of the gate to one of the houses, the large hovis van that came past and was one of the only vehicles, along with a white people carrier, that past me on the quiet Sunday morning roads. I can even remember the single crow that flew over the houses as I turned into my street.. all very vivid in my mind.. yet my mind was talking, something that would usually make me forget the journey altogether never mind such details.

    The thought I was having was this...

    I keep being told that I'm to explore the concept of being able to walk between different worlds. This started with simply moving between the two versions of my innerworlds. Yet this has now moved to a new stage, that of walking between the innerworlds and the physical plane. The physical plane was always something I couldn't escape, but felt like an outside observer of. I'm now setting out on a journey of exploration, where I learn to experience the spirit(s) that exist in 'the world as it is' (to borrow another term form De Lint).

    So then, imagine my surprise when I woke up, checked PF and read that LunarHarvest is having similar thoughts? Gobsmacked I was.. bloomin' gobsmacked.

    You have to trust me too, that this is just the tip of the iceberg.. there is so much of this 'meaningful coincidence' malarkey going on right now. So, so much...
    夕方に急なにわか雨は「夕立」と呼ばれるなら、なぜ朝ににわか雨は「朝立ち」と呼ばれないの? ^^If a sudden rain shower in the evening is referred to as an 'evening stand', then why isn't a shower in the morning called 'morning stand'?
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