INSANE IS THE NEW NORMAL: POST THIRTY-NINE

Camas Lilies and Shooting Stars

THE VIRGIN AND THE INFERNO

    Once, when my family was fishing in the North Fork of the Kings River, I experienced an overwhelming desire to search a large, flat stone on the other side. I risked my life leaping across the river from one rock to another, and I didn’t even know what I was looking for. Alone on the other side, I suddenly heard a male voice claim that I was searching for something Native American. Confused, I had a short conversation with a disembodied voice that intimated that I would search in the future for the remains of Native American cultures. I was eleven at the time. Nobody I knew then would have used the term “Native American.” The term I had always heard was “Indian.” I had no clue then that Native Americans had lived for thousands of years along that river and all over the rest of North and South America. Over four decades later, I discovered several Native American village sites several hundred yards from where we had fished that day in 1971.

Pounding Stone by the North Fork of the Kings River

     That was not the first time along the Kings River that I had heard a disembodied voice predict the future. The predictions came true, as if the future is predetermined, and we each have a destiny. My destiny for several decades was to wander beyond modern cities along the trails of an ancient civilization that was nearly wiped out in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The last Native American encampments in the hills reportedly occurred in 1917, about forty years before I was born. In my thirties and forties, while I wandered through the hills, finding one Native American village site after another, I also encountered stunning arrays of wildflowers, ecosystems where all creatures are connected, and sublime mountain peaks—another order of existence that revealed to me over and over the majesty and harmony and tranquility of nature and the cosmos. I began to commune with the subtle energies of nature that every culture throughout recorded history has personified as Gods and Goddesses and Angels. I escaped the mind-forged chains of a left-brained society and even became left-handed after I mentally purified my aura.

Pink Fairy Lanterns and Fiesta Flowers

     There are moments when you realize that you are fulfilling a destiny. Recently I had a vision during a ritual that reveals why I have experienced toxic overload, chronic illness, difficult relationships, and other forms of misery and insanity, why, in other words, I have ended up attracting so many subtle, negative energies. In order to survive, I have had to learn how to eliminate them through mental purification. During my recent vision, I realized that I can extend that knowledge by using a form of mental purification associated with Tiphareth, the Christ center on the Tree of Life, to help cleanse the collective consciousness of humanity to some small degree. 

     When I was growing up, I experienced an overload of toxic chemicals on several occasions. For instance, when I was a boy I drank from a hose that my father had just used for spraying a pesticide on the lawn. Another time, I have no idea what I ingested, but after a normal day, I went completely out of my mind after I went to bed. I hallucinated that my arms and legs were twisting into impossible positions until I finally blacked out. Then I sleepwalked into the family room, turned on the TV full blast and screamed that I couldn’t stand it anymore, even though, at that point in my childhood, I was not at all “troubled.” My worst exposure occurred after I fell in love with art and started painting with acrylics in a small, poorly ventilated bedroom. The paints were so potent that in the eighth grade I was sent to the office because a teacher suspected that I was under the influence of drugs. (I was totally drug free.) After a while, I started having headaches that were so severe that I passed out in the front yard and on public easements in the neighborhood. A doctor realized that the fumes from the acrylic paints were causing the problem. Unfortunately, by then I felt weak, spaced out and sick most of the time. I also started displaying symptoms of celiac disease and had reactions to dairy, eggs, and corn as well. Because many of the foods I ingested were toxic to my system, I became deeply depressed. Soon after I turned seventeen, my father died, and I was devastated by grief. When I became a father at the age of nineteen, I was chronically ill, severely depressed, debilitated by unexpressed grief, and weakened by an overload of toxic chemicals. I was destined to be a magnet for subtle negative energies, not just for a few years, but for decades.

Pounding Stone with Pestles, Kings River Watershed

     I finally came face to face with the black energies within my aura in my early forties after I started meditating. In my mind’s eye, I could see them clearly in my chakras and different parts of my body. I discovered I could eliminate the negative energies through a process of mental purification, which resulted in regeneration on the emotional, mental and spiritual levels. I still, of course, continue to struggle with celiac disease, which forces me to eliminate negative energies periodically. Due to this continued need for mental purification, I have become quite good at it. More importantly, during my recent vision, I realized I could take the process to another level.

     All Gods are one God, and all Goddesses are one Goddess, and there is only one true initiator: I have discovered that a Goddess or a God can show itself to you in unexpected ways that reveal spiritual principle. For instance, I began a recent ritual by invoking the Egyptian Goddess Isis (who has nothing to do with the terrorist organization ISIS, short for Islamic State of Iraq and Syria). After the ritual, I was left a bit disoriented because the energy was so powerful that it seemed intended to change me fundamentally, not just to heal me. So, the next day, I again invoked Isis: When I asked how I could serve Her for the highest good, the Goddess unexpectedly appeared to me in a vision as the Virgin Mary and gestured toward an inferno raging nearby. Startled because I never would have expected Her to show me a holocaust, I thought at first that She was revealing the end of the world. I imagined a nuclear war, but I did not see a mushroom cloud, just an intense fire in a huge pit in a neighborhood reduced to rubble. I thought it might be hell, but that didn’t make sense because in the ritual the day before Her energy had bolstered me, so why would She be leading me toward destruction?

     In my mind, I moved toward the inferno, and I felt strangely compelled to leap into the fiery pit. As I did so, my flesh was lacerated by the flames, but instead of burning up completely, I found myself nailed to a Calvary Cross, an unfolded cube of space and time saturated by black human energies of hatred and bigotry and cruelty. Suddenly I rose on the cross above the flames and found myself suspended above the sun. Black energy, like a cloud, floated toward me, and, as it neared, I could see numerous snarling, bestial faces inside of it. Then the cloud penetrated me, and in my mind’s eye, I could see blackness spreading throughout my aura. After the blackness engulfed me, the cross and I plunged into the sun, burning up completely. I remained a point of light for a while and suddenly found myself on the ground again near the inferno. The neighborhood was no longer totally in ruins: A few buildings were now standing near trees that swayed a little in the wind, but the pit of fire and many blackened ruins remained.

North Fork of the Kings River in Wet Year

     Some aspects of the vision were a little disconcerting, even for me. First of all, Isis, an Egyptian Goddess, came to me in the form of the Virgin Mary, wearing a red dress and a dark blue robe. On reflection, I remembered that in the Qabalah, both the celestial Isis and the Virgin Mary are associated with the Supernal Sephira on the Tree of Life known as Binah, the womb of creation. Binah, as a state of being above the Abyss on the Tree of Life, remains above manifested creation, which is one reason why the Goddess who is the Mother of Christ experiences immaculate conception. As the Mother of Christ, Mary also knows horrible suffering and the meaning of sacrifice. Isis, in other words, came to me as the Virgin Mary due to the Mysteries of Sacrifice, one of the spiritual experiences of Tiphareth (the Christ-center). The figure of Mary could more effectively emphasize the nature of my own individual sacrifice. During my vision, Isis, as the Virgin Mary, was gesturing toward the inferno as a way to suggest that I could serve Her by doing my part on the spiritual level to help cleanse the collective consciousness of humanity.

     I had an unexpected vision of the Virgin Mary a decade ago during a chakra toning exercise (described in a previous post). During that vision, I found myself in a light-blue robe strolling on a path in a monastic garden. I noticed a small statue in the distance and walked toward it, thinking that it might be Christ on the cross. I found a crucifix, which turned into a stone statue of the Virgin Mary, and I knelt down in adoration. The vision took me completely by surprise because I had never considered myself a Christian, either before or after my spiritual emergence, yet the vision suggested that I am inclined to honor elements of Christianity as well as the feminine aspect of creation, which has indeed come to the case. In my recent vision, as I was invoking Isis, I first envisioned a stone statue of the Virgin like the one in my previous vision a decade ago, but then the statue turned into the flesh and blood figure of Mary in a red dress and a dark blue robe, standing near the inferno.

Native American Village Site: Pounding Stone in the Background, House Pits in Sunlit Area at Left

     An aspect of the Mysteries of Sacrifice is the elimination of negative energies. As an act of regeneration, which Christians call redemption, the Christ takes on and eliminates the sin (or negative energy) of humanity. Even though the story of Jesus has always moved me, the Christian elements of the vision startled me because I have thought of myself more as a pagan Qabalist. Nevertheless, an individual can access the cosmic forces represented by the Tree of Life even if he doesn’t believe in any particular myth or religion: The subtle cosmic forces exist no matter what stories and belief systems human beings have created to explain them. When an individual contacts the energies of a Sephira such as Tiphareth, the powers communicate spiritual principle through association chains of abstract and mythical symbols that are deeply ingrained in the collective subconscious. Based on my experience, an individual who accesses the state of consciousness known as Tiphareth can experience the archetypal Mysteries of Sacrifice on the astral plane and help to eliminate negative energies from the collective consciousness of humanity.

     I scanned my aura the day after the ritual and realized that, even though the black cross and I had burned up in the sun during my vision, dark energies still enveloped me. So, I spent the next three days in meditation mentally purifying my aura on the etheric, astral, mental, and spiritual levels. When I was done, I suddenly had a picture in my mind of the neighborhood restored completely—the inferno was gone. I, however, had nearly made a huge mistake: I’d believed the day of the ritual that the dark energies were all consumed by the fire of the sun during my vision, which turned out to be symbolic. The dark energies were not symbolic, however, and they were not burned up by the sun. A person who cannot effectively scan the aura for the purpose of locating and eliminating impurities should never attempt to play a part in regenerating the collective consciousness of humanity during ritual. The real work of purification occurs during meditation when the ritual is over. Unknowingly leaving dark energies in the aura can quickly lead to destruction, even if the individual has the best of intentions. A degree of psychic ability, which in my case developed after a process of mental purification, is an absolute necessity in this type of spiritual work.

Wind Poppies and Chinese Purple Houses after Rough Fire

     For many hours immediately after the ritual, the vision of the inferno disturbed me deeply. I finally recognized that the inferno is not anything specific in the present, past, or future. Humanity has created holocausts all over the world, most notably in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In recent history, governments have killed millions through mechanized warfare. When attempting to understand the meaning of the inferno, I thought immediately of World War I and World War II, then the Korean War and Vietnam, and the “actions” in Central and South America, and then realized that, on top of all the other conflicts, the U.S. is currently bombing at least six countries, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Pakistan, Syria, and Yemen (and Somalia as well in 2016.) At one point, to me the inferno seemed to be the aftermath of a bombing raid, and I felt horrified, but then I realized that the inferno could also represent subtle negative energies raging in any neighborhood or region. (Racially based hatred and resentment, for instance, has persisted for years in my neighborhood.)

      This vision echoed the theme of another recent vision that I experienced during ritual meditation, during which I forgave my adversaries one by one. I took a cross steeped with negative energies from each enemy into myself and then let each cross drop into the magma below the earth, where it burned up; then one by one my enemies were filled with light and a golden crown appeared on their heads, and a golden, equal-armed cross over their hearts, and a golden plate and chalice on a white tablecloth in front of each one of them. I had invoked the Goddess in that ritual as well, and She on one level was revealing over this series of visions that we need to see each other as magnificent, harmonious, and abundant spiritual beings, not as enemies in perpetual warfare, or the entire world could end up an inferno.

     Claiming that my destiny is to manifest Christ-like qualities might seem pathological: The average rational person might conclude that I have a messiah complex or delusions of grandeur. Some rational people, atheists and agnostics, reject all spiritual experience as incredible or pathological, and might dismiss this description of my spiritual experience, and religion in general, as an elaborate way to mess with people. Others might believe that physical or psychological manifestations of the spiritual life are merely the result of pathological obsessions. Take, for example, the stigmata. To them I reply: I was once exactly like you. Another group of people might consider what I am describing as a type of insane blasphemy, a pathological rejection of the Church. To them I reply: I consider myself a pagan Qabalist who honors elements of Christianity; I was, after all, invoking the Egyptian Goddess Isis. The vision was no doubt more startling to me than it would have been to a Christian.

Shooting Stars in a Meadow

     Jesus says in Mark 10:35-45, "For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many." The whole premise of the Christian religion is that a man died taking on the negative energy of humanity, essentially as an act of regeneration, and soon after was resurrected, an event that symbolically suggests the birth of the higher self. Tiphareth, the Christ center, is the Sephira on the Tree of Life that represents the higher self. One of its magical symbols is a black crucifix in the center of the sun. In terms of the trinity, Tiphareth is "The Son." Kether, above Tiphareth on the Middle Pillar of the Tree, is the Crown of Creation, "The Father." Yesod, the Foundation, immediately below Tiphareth on the Middle Pillar, is "The Holy Ghost." Below Yesod, Malkuth, the Kingdom, completing the quaternary of manifestation, is "The Bride." The sacrifice of Jesus awakened knowledge of the higher self in the collective consciousness of humanity. And the Son, the higher self, through the Vision of Harmony, one of the spiritual experiences of Tiphareth, shows us the Father. 

     It is important to note that the Qabalah (or Kabbalah as it is more commonly known) predates Christianity. Traditional practitioners believe that its earliest origins predate other world religions. The Tree of Life continues to evolve in the modern Qabalah to include all spiritual traditions.

     Jesus emphasized often that he was the Son of Man; in fact, the phrase appears over a hundred times in the Hebrew Bible. And he most certainly was a man who knew the Qabalah. The end of the Lord's Prayer references three of the Sephiroth on the Tree of Life: Malkuth (the Kingdom), Geburah (the Power), and Gedulah, another name for Chesed (the Glory). If he knew anything about the Qabalah, he would have recognized that any son of man, or, in other words, any man or woman, can manifest the energies represented by the Tree of Life. Through the Mysteries of Sacrifice, Jesus brought the archetypal energies of Tiphareth, the Christ center, to manifest in the Kingdom, the physical world. This magical act, as I mentioned earlier, is the basis for the Christian religion. A modern Qabalist would say that his act of sacrifice and regeneration was so powerful because he fulfilled the archetypal role of the Savior by giving his own life in the process, thereby deeply affecting the collective consciousness of humanity, and we can see that this act still resonates with a large number of people, especially in the West. Jesus led by example, by making physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual sacrifices that ignited a movement based primarily of two Sephiroth on the Tree of Life: Tiphareth and Kether. His goal, in other words, was to awaken the higher self in order to clear a path for mystical union with God. Two thousand years later, it seems that a person who does not consider himself a Christian should, without criticism from Christians, be able to follow the example of Jesus by performing a similar sacrifice on the inner planes as a way of serving humanity.
     I should emphasize that I have no credentials. My knowledge is based almost entirely on personal experience and study. In fact, I was an atheist until my spiritual emergence fifteen years ago when my third-eye unexpectedly opened, and I realized that I had become engulfed for decades by dark, subtle energies due to chronic illness and despair. After I discovered how to get rid of the negativity, I experienced a totally unexpected sense of regeneration, and I had visions of symbols that led me to the glyph of the Tree of Life and revealed the basic structure of esoteric banishing and invoking rituals. I had a Jesus allergy, but I discovered during my spiritual emergence a healing force of harmonizing love associated with the Sephira of Beauty (Tiphareth) on the Tree of Life. I have since experienced the Vision of Harmony and the Mysteries of Sacrifice, the two spiritual experiences associated with Tiphareth, the Christ center. I am not a respected authority on anything. I have admitted many times that I have a serious physical illness that has resulted at times in great psychological distress. I am not rich or famous or powerful, but I suspect that only a nobody could have my destiny. The only claim I can make is that I continue to have spiritual experiences that resonate with the ancient Tree of Life, and that I continue to experience what I consider a miraculous sense of rebirth due to my spiritual practices.

Possible Pestle next to Pounding Stone, North Fork of the Kings River

     I may be foolish, but I’m imagining a core group of people, perhaps only a handful of dedicated, knowledgeable individuals, who have developed the ability to eliminate negative energies from the collective consciousness without themselves suffering any adverse effects. If those individuals work with the harmonizing energy of Tiphareth through the Mysteries of Sacrifice on the inner planes, there is no telling what sorts of positive effects might occur. Due to all of the holocausts and the explosions of cruelty, violence and hatred across the globe, the infernos continue to rage. I am convinced that, following the example of Jesus, people working together on the inner planes can deeply affect the consciousness of humanity, eliminating negativity and creating a type of morphic resonance that enables others to recognize the magnificence, harmony and abundance within each of us, as well as the unity of all of creation.

     Dion Fortune states that mystics eventually learn to work entirely on the inner planes. Before my spiritual emergence I never would have believed in the existence of inner planes or mind over matter, yet through mental purification I have opened up other dimensions and healed myself, more than once. (See previous posts.) I also now believe it is possible to heal humanity to some degree by eliminating negative energies from the collective consciousness, but since countless negative energies exist in human societies throughout the world, it is of course only possible for one individual to eliminate a small portion of the overall amount, but I believe even that little bit can make a difference. There is an old saying that if there is peace in the individual, there is peace in the home. If there is peace in the home, there is peace in the community. If there is peace in the community, there can be peace in the world.

     Today, during my ritual, I leaped into another inferno and discovered that I wasn’t in a city neighborhood: I was at the Native American village site next to the North Fork of the Kings River. At one point in California history, there was a great deal of brutality and rapaciousness, and a black cloud lingers in those areas where genocide took place. I spent the entire afternoon in meditation trying to eliminate the black energy that I took into my aura during the ritual, but some still remains. There is still much work to be done.