I spent two nights awake while I was sleeping.
This may sound strange, and it certainly was odd to experience, but the state of your awareness is independent of the state of your body. This is not lucid dreaming, that is a different experience.
I lay in bed, and I gradually became aware of another world. A timeless place full of light. A distant horizon, like a sunset just out of view.
My body drifted away into slumber. My awareness of the room and the bed and the covers fading into nothing as the sleep overtook me.
But the other world persisted. Silent, still, and bright.
I wondered how long I would stay like that. If it would be the whole night. It seemed like forever.
No sooner did this thought cross my mind that I again became aware of my body and it was morning. There was no break in continuity of awareness.
I opened my eyes and went about my day.
This repeated the following night.
I have continued my journeys into the Underworld.
The following are accounts of some of the experiences.
Buffalo have carried me on their backs as they stampede through a tunnel.
We arrive at a cliff, and I dismount.
The largest of the herd approaches. He lowers his head and snorts, offering death.
I nod in acceptance.
A horn gores me through the heart. I am lifted into the air, and together we charge off the cliff.
Tumbling through the air, past an enormous waterfall, the darkness below reveals a lake.
We crash into the water and sink beneath.
She is seated on a throne.
Greater in stature than a human, but not a giant.
In front of Her floats a stream carrying corpses along one by one, like they were on a conveyor belt.
Her face is as if She is wearing a porcelain mask.
She removes it, and behind it is the night sky.
Her breath and heartbeat is the motion of the Stars.
My Star descends, and, as it touches the Earth, She reveals it as a tree, which grows fruit.
I am floating down a jungle river.
I make it to the shore and am greeted by a golden scorpion.
As I lay on my back it crawls onto my face, tail arched above its head, and waits.
When I am ready, it strikes. One sting in the center of the forehead. One in each eye.
It pushes my now-dead body back into the water and watches as it floats away.
Further along, men pull it out and hang it up on a rack of wooden poles. They toss white powder on it, coating it completely, before pulling it off and carrying it to a burning pyre.
Ashes float away into space.
They are pulled into a black hole, from which there is no escape.
At the center of pitch darkness, She is seated cradling a crying baby.
I approach and place a hand on Her shoulder.
The baby stops crying.
She feeds it and places it into a crib.
With a single kiss, She is pregnant.
I sit next to Her, holding her hand, for a long time or for only moments.
There is a feeling a partnership in some manner. Mutual comfort and protection.
We stand, and She adjusts my clothing, the way a Mother would.
She gives me a tall glass candle.
There is a temple within the Underworld.
It is made of black stone, in the style of a ziggurat. But you do not climb to the top.
There is an entrance at its base.
I will not say here what is inside.
I am once again with Her.
She shows me a cosmology.
She sits at the bottom of the Underworld. The night Sky is Her reflection. The darkness which the light penetrates.
He is the Stars in the sky and the light within which the darkness arises. The Earth is his reflection.
One in the other. Recursively infinite.
The Sunset is the Divine Child. The Star descending to the midpoint, touching both the Sky and the Earth.
It is the Path it illuminates. A golden thread leading the way home.
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