Visions of Heaven and Hell
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| "The truth is like a Lioness, you don't have to defend her. Let her loose and she will defend herself." |
In 2016 I took part in a three day Ayahuasca sacred ceremony. I've since been back twice. It was a beautiful, terrifying and healing experience. During this three day retreat I had an extraordinary series of visions like nothing else I've ever experienced. I've been reluctant to talk about them lest people would accuse me of lying or think me delusional or worse. But they happened and I don't appear to have gone mad.
Visions are regarded by mystics, and those who study mysticism, as the least reliable source of divine knowledge. This is because they are, like any spiritual experience, completely subjective. Visions come through, and perhaps are the product of, the depths of the subconscious mind. The meaning and significance of any vision is rarely objective truth, but a subjective expression of the state of the recipient. Not unlike dreams, but carrying more significance and potency as they are experienced by the conscious mind rather than the unconscious.
So I present this writing here merely as a very brief and inadequate record of an extraordinary experience. I do not need to know, nor care, how "real" any of it is or was. However, I am happy to let the experience change me and work in.
I looked into the fire and I was all ashes. I have been unmade.
I made friends with death and the destroyer and I think I'm no longer afraid of death. Death makes things new. As strange as it seems death and the destroyer are good and they're on our side.
I felt the rule of heaven. We've won.
I saw angels and gods and they helped. I was bitten by the snake of beauty, but I couldn't look at beauty. I don't think you can, I think you die.
I was in the mouth of the lion.
I've never felt more ill than I did on the second night. But the third night was gentle. Agony and torment but never too much.
I saw the trickster and I did not go mad. I danced with the nightmare.
I saw the mouth of hell, but I wouldn't look and I won't go there. And I felt heaven destroying hell. Hell is not something to fear. Hell is good, it is where the evil goes. First we must rescue the people trapped there.
I saw people choosing hell, choosing ugliness. And we must let them.
I spoke death to evil men who must die before we can be free.
I went very deep, right to the edge of the realms of the dead, and that made me very ill. However, I felt that there was a path there and a path back and that gave me much hope.
I saw and felt the godhead incarnate who was dead and yet lives and who makes all things new.
"When it comes to life, my most considered conclusion, the one on which I have spent the most time and effort and the one of which I am most firmly proud, is that I really do not understand in the slightest. Not one little bit."
Visions are regarded by mystics, and those who study mysticism, as the least reliable source of divine knowledge. This is because they are, like any spiritual experience, completely subjective. Visions come through, and perhaps are the product of, the depths of the subconscious mind. The meaning and significance of any vision is rarely objective truth, but a subjective expression of the state of the recipient. Not unlike dreams, but carrying more significance and potency as they are experienced by the conscious mind rather than the unconscious.
So I present this writing here merely as a very brief and inadequate record of an extraordinary experience. I do not need to know, nor care, how "real" any of it is or was. However, I am happy to let the experience change me and work in.
I looked into the fire and I was all ashes. I have been unmade.
I made friends with death and the destroyer and I think I'm no longer afraid of death. Death makes things new. As strange as it seems death and the destroyer are good and they're on our side.
I felt the rule of heaven. We've won.
I saw angels and gods and they helped. I was bitten by the snake of beauty, but I couldn't look at beauty. I don't think you can, I think you die.
I was in the mouth of the lion.
I've never felt more ill than I did on the second night. But the third night was gentle. Agony and torment but never too much.
I saw the trickster and I did not go mad. I danced with the nightmare.
I saw the mouth of hell, but I wouldn't look and I won't go there. And I felt heaven destroying hell. Hell is not something to fear. Hell is good, it is where the evil goes. First we must rescue the people trapped there.
I saw people choosing hell, choosing ugliness. And we must let them.
I spoke death to evil men who must die before we can be free.
I went very deep, right to the edge of the realms of the dead, and that made me very ill. However, I felt that there was a path there and a path back and that gave me much hope.
I saw and felt the godhead incarnate who was dead and yet lives and who makes all things new.
"When it comes to life, my most considered conclusion, the one on which I have spent the most time and effort and the one of which I am most firmly proud, is that I really do not understand in the slightest. Not one little bit."
