Protectors, Guides, and Higher Powers

Excerpted from "Awakening the Below" by Oholomo, available now from Aeon Press!

I was lucky that, when my Descent began, I was almost immediately introduced to Bachué. Thus, my journey into the Below began with a positive and empowering encounter. The fact that I was having such a vivid vision of this goddess was bizarre, and her half-demonic appearance was disconcerting to be sure. But, I had no doubt that the content of the vision was beneficent and supportive, and that allowed me to more easily accept and embrace what was happening.

My friend Lisa also experienced a spontaneous encounter with the beneficent and helpful masculine presences of God and Jesus right at the beginning of her process:

I think that my whole life I felt very misunderstood. That’s been a big theme for me. Once, I felt like everyone was watching me and laughing at me, and I was feeling so horribly embarrassed. I lay in my bed and I was just feeling really small, and all of a sudden, it was just immediate that God and Jesus were here. It was a knowing with my whole experience, an emotional knowing where everything just clicked in. I knew it was them, and I knew that we were all merged. Everything couldn’t be more perfect, you know, just amazing.

I felt it physically that there was this masculine energy just coming behind me and holding me, supporting me, comforting me, and offering me this soothing newness when I felt so alone. It felt completely real. Actually, it kind of scared me a little bit because it literally felt like a physical person by me, like actual physical touch.

I was never raised religious or anything like that, but I feel that energy all the time now. And I feel them a lot when I walk, like somebody next to me. Towards the end, Jesus has been coming in and teaching me different things. And then, recently, he told me to see all men as him. And, he’s been giving me like hints and clues about how to open myself more or how to go deeper into the awakening. It’s been a communication for myself only, just the opening of energetic space. It’s passive, but it’s also active. It’s a total allowance, opening and just allowing. That’s how I kind of describe it.

Other people are not so fortunate as Lisa and I, and may spend time struggling alone in the Below without any helpful beings who can provide guidance. For this reason, I think that finding a beneficial higher power is a top priority. The Below is a dark and fearsome place, but a powerful and compassionate being can hold your hand and light the way as you traverse the underworld.

If you don’t currently have a guide, who can you call upon to be one? There is no one right answer, no single highest being that is a good fit for everyone’s unique imaginal configuration. The right answer is to reach out to whoever will work for you. If you’re unsure, one exercise I sometimes suggest people do is what I call the “crashing plane thought experiment.” Imagine or visualize that you are flying in a plane when suddenly both engines fail. You start plummeting to the ground, and there is no chance of survival. If this were to actually happen to you, in that minute or so that you have left to live before the plane meets its fiery end, who would your desperate heart spontaneously call out to for help? Who might possibly have the power to perform a miracle? Who would you wish to hold your hand as you die?

If there’s someone who comes to mind while doing this thought experiment, then try calling out to that being for help in the Below. If it’s not a particular entity, but an abstract quality such as Truth, Love, or Compassion, then go ahead and use that. However, if nothing in particular comes to mind, then you can also just make a general call. In one of your practice sessions, when you have built up some psychedelic momentum and your sensory channels feel particularly open, try asking for a higher power to make themselves available to you.

Who will hear your call and emerge as your helper(s) may not be possible to guess beforehand. Remember the story I told about how I automatically assumed that my guides would be Asian deities, and how I initially rejected outright the idea of working with María? Since that time, I have also developed a close relationship with the Buddhist goddess of mercy, Quan Yin. But I also am very intimate with the radiant Pagan sun goddess Sol, who I had never even heard of before she appeared to me. A whole panoply of other guides, including angelic feminine goddess figures as well as power animals, have all become a regular part of my imaginal world, but I would never have guessed that they would play such a central role. Remember also Jack’s story about initially misunderstanding Kali’s intentions to nourish him due to her frightful appearance. My point is simply that help may come in the form you least expect, so don’t reject whatever guidance comes to you just because it doesn’t fit with your expectations.

That being said, you don’t want to just jump into a relationship with a powerful being willy nilly. My suggestion is to make the call for a higher power and see who shows up. When they do, if they are a being of light that is universally recognized as beneficial — a Buddha or bodhisattva, Jesus, Virgin Mary, a Hindu deity, Ramana Maharshi, etc. — then you can trust them.

But, what if the being who answers your call is not one you recognize? In this case, I would advise that you spend some time asking them questions. Who are they? What kinds of energy do they embody? What kinds of values do they stand for? Is there another being standing behind them that is even more powerful? If so, what are their qualities? Also an important question to ask any being is will you be able to “break up” with them if things don’t work out? (The answer better be yes — no truly beneficial being will require vows of fidelity or other kinds of obligations.)

Take a few days and do some research, or return to ask them more questions and get an increasingly better feel for who this being is. Only when you’ve fully vetted them and feel very confident should you let them into your life and let them advise you on your journey. And, once you do, remember you are spiritually sovereign and don’t ever let anyone — no matter who they are — force you into something that isn’t right for you. Your relationship with a higher power guide or protector should always feel beneficial, supportive, and empowering. You should never feel like you have taken on the inferior role in an asymmetrical relationship, or like you have lost any of your autonomy. A true guide or protector strengthens and nourishes your boundaries and personal power, never depletes or diminishes them.

As you dwell in the Below, you will continue to meet more and more beneficial beings who can serve different types of functions in your journey. Some of these will be more powerful than others. In my case, María, Quan Yin, and Sol are at the apex. For me, they are all actually manifestations of different facets of the Mother, by which I mean the absolute highest, most sacred and holy goodness in the cosmos. In addition to them, various ancestral and animal spirits provide specific types of assistance. The jaguar helps with journeys into the underworld; the owl with death and ghosts; one ancestral guide with absorbing troubles and generating blessings; another with enhancing my perception of the imaginal; and many others. Each one of these beings has their own particular potencies, and are called forth to meet particular circumstances. Bachué, my body deva, is the overall container or embodiment for all of these beneficial powers, the vehicle by which their blessings come out into the world. Of course, your pantheon and how you see them fitting together will be totally different than mine. As it should be. Since no two of us are exactly the same, no two imaginal worlds will line up perfectly eye-to-eye!

Once you’ve worked with your guides for a while and have developed deeper trust in them, it may be symbolically and emotionally significant to make a commitment to them in some way. Here’s Jack’s story of how he got a tattoo as an act of commitment to his dragon guides:

This tattoo was kind of like a blessing and imbuing of the quality of the Dragon into me, into my skin. It was like a sign of my commitment to the dragons.

I’ll often channel them and they’ll say things to me like “Our greatest obstacle in supporting you is you. You know, it’s humans resisting us and preventing us from being able to support them because humans subconsciously believe that they have to do everything by themselves, and don’t realize that they’re part of this cosmos, which is a single living being. We can do a lot of the work for you, if you allow us to, and us doing it for you is the cosmos doing it for itself.”

And I’d share those ideas with others and the words would flow through me, and it would feel so right and so true. But then when it came down to it in my life, I wasn’t letting the dragons do that; I resisted them; I assumed I have to do everything by myself and that I couldn’t call on them to support me. So even I didn’t actually fully trust them and wasn’t fully committed to our relationship.

So I got this tattoo as a symbol of my commitment. And now I can feel the connection growing stronger. I can kind of feel it on my skin, almost like the dragon energy is moving through me. And the dragons have told me how they are like arteries that flow the Kundalini, the lifeblood of the cosmos, through your body. And the dragon looks like he’s made of ink that’s flowing up my arm in that way. So, getting the tattoo made us come closer, and it was meaningful on many different levels.

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