Seeing the Above from the Below
Excerpted from "Awakening the Below" by Oholomo, available now from Aeon Press!
As mentioned in the previous chapter, Awakening from Below is a different process than Awakening from Above. Each has altogether different insights, experiences, and goals. Moreover, different people may have different experiences with the relationship between Above and Below. Some people will be thrust into the Below and will become completely absorbed there for a time. Others will feel like they are oscillating between Above and Below or intertwining or blending the two together. As I mentioned previously, the latter was very much what happened to me. It was only after profound nondual awakening experiences that my Descent began. Consequently, the perspectives and insights I had gained in the Above always informed my experience of the Below and vice versa. In fact, for me, both Above and Below were fused together in ways that are difficult to separate out after the fact. I am only talking about it in those terms here because I think it is useful to isolate Above and Below as a relatively separate realms or processes for purposes of clarifying what’s distinct about the Below.
With all of that in mind, here in this section, I want to give you a sense of how the Above can look from Below. In the first place, you should know that it’s entirely possible that, at least at times, the detached transcendence of nonduality (of either the self-as-awareness or loss-of-self variety) is completely shattered. It’s quite common to experience a kind of self/other relationality returning when you’re in the Below, through which you relate and engage with all of the imaginal forces and entities we’ve been talking about. So, for example, even though you have clearly seen that there is no separate self, you may still find yourself engaging in dialogue with bodily intelligence, sexual energies, spirits, ancestors, and others in a second person (“I” and “you”) mode. Or, even though you have significantly dissolved your perception, you still may find that imaginal phenomena have a vibrant, tangible sense of reality. Or, even though you have in the past experienced deep peace and equanimity, you may now not be able to find a detached position from which to engage with the Below; everything may seem genuinely sacred, or terrifying, or both.
The important thing to emphasize here (once again) is that nothing is wrong. Your awakening is not lost; you’re not backsliding; there’s no problem to fix. On the contrary, the process of Descent and your sojourn in the Below actually represents a deepening of your spiritual path. For some unknown reason, you are one of the chosen few who have the opportunity to awaken both the Above and Below. If you haven’t yet finished your work in the Above, you’ll get back to that in due time — whether tomorrow or in a few years. For now, you will need to focus on learning a different skillset to be able to work on the portion of your awakening process that lies in the Below. It may truly be inconceivable from where you sit today, but you will eventually see the Descent and the Below as equally valued and equally inalienable parts of the awakening of your whole being.
While you are down here in the Below, you might continue to experience qualities of the Above and even may see accelerated growth in those areas. For example, insights you gain from dark imaginal phenomena might deepen your appreciation of divinity or open heartedness. In my case, all kinds of imaginal entities enveloped me in fields of radiance and love and taught me how to access aspects of the Above.
To give you just one example, as I was exploring the ancestral burdens and gifts of my paternal grandmother’s line, which traces from South America back to Spain, I felt a lot of sadness and loss. But, I also felt a gentle loving presence that gave hope and solace to generation after generation of women in this lineage. As I was communicating with these female ancestors, they revealed to me that this presence, which they had cherished and passed down from mother to daughter for over a millennium, was none other than the Virgin Mary.
A routine part of how I interact with ancestors is to ask them if there is anything I can give to them or do for them. When I asked them this question, this group of women collectively asked me to honor the Virgin Mary. They explained that their intergenerational transmission of Mary’s blessings had been interrupted by my late grandmother, who had lived a completely secular life, and they wanted me to revive this connection.
This was a difficult thing they asked of me. At this point in time, I had no interest in Christianity, least of all praying to Catholic deities. But, I also I knew enough at that point in time to take it into consideration anything asked of me by my ancestors instead of just saying “no.” So I did it. It so happens that there’s a major international Marian shrine right up the road from my house, and I went up and paid a visit. I bought a small devotional pendant, and brought it home. I wasn’t sure if I was going to actually use it on my altar or just keep it in a drawer, but I was willing to try to engage at least once with what the ancestors were asking of me.
Anyway, to my surprise, the very first time that I called upon Mary in my morning practice, I felt such a strong presence of divine love and protection that I have never turned back. The Virgin Mary (who I, like my grandmothers, call “María”) immediately took her position as the principal manifestation of love and protection in my imaginal world. A few years later, I even made a pilgrimage to the Vatican City and bought a decent-sized sculpture of her that has a central location on my altar today. Most importantly, through engaging directly with the figure of María, I have learned from her various techniques for invoking her loving qualities and imbuing my life with them through a brief daily ritual. She has remained a nearly constant presence in my life since that time.
So, that’s one example of how a teaching from the Below can directly lead to greater engagement and connection with the Above. Another kind of experience that is worth talking about is what is in neo-shamanic circles called “dismemberment.” This is an experience where you imaginally undergo death, either in order to metamorphose into a new type of being or to learn your place in the cosmos. In a true dismemberment, you feel utterly torn apart both energetically and emotionally. Here’s an account Jack told me about a highly emotional visionary experience he had with a past life, in which he underwent dismemberment:
It’s funny because there’s a part of me that rationally can’t believe that this is true, this memory. But every time I speak about it, I almost inevitably burst into tears telling this story. My body feels it so deeply. These memories are very vivid. I remember it very clearly and I remember the emotions connected to it as if it’s my own experience.
I remember in a previous life being the high priestess of a community in Celtic Britain and the responsibility of that, knowing that what I say is going to change what happens to everyone in my community. And I know these people and I love these people.
Knowing that the Romans were invading and had been brutally murdering people in neighboring villages, I went to the woods to perform a sacrifice for divination to find out what I should do. There was this deer that I loved and I could communicate with it telepathically. It had agreed to be sacrificed for the good of the community. So, I killed this deer that I loved feeling so grateful, so much love for this deer. And I did this divination using its organs and blood and found that the best course of action would be for me to turn myself over to the Romans.
So I did that, and they took us, and I remember being burnt alive at the stake. (I don’t know if that’s actually what the Romans did to Celtic priestesses, but that’s how I remember it.) And, as I was dying, I remember feeling so sad. It wasn’t for me; it was for my community. I felt like I’d let them down, I’d failed, and it felt awful.
But, then as I was dying, the spirit of Gaia entered me, and I knew so completely that every single thing that was happening was for Gaia’s evolution, for my evolution as a living spirit of this planet. And that I and all of my community are Gaia, and that all of the Romans committing these crimes against us are also Gaia. And the sense of separation between us completely disappeared, and I entered a state of deep peace, because I knew that nothing was wrong, and everything was happening for love.
And then I died in the body, but my consciousness expanded out into the infinite. And, I saw Lord Shiva as this huge golden deity, so magnificent. And he held out his hand, and in it was a golden orb. And when I looked into it, I understood the nature of creation. That the entire universe is this masterpiece of threads of life, and that I myself as an individual being am one of these threads, and that I’m contributing to this masterpiece that is so incredible. I can’t even put it into words, it’s so beautiful.
And I knew right then that no matter how many times I would have to suffer and die, I would continue to reincarnate because I’m doing it all for the most incredible thing that’s ever been made.
I was also dismembered numerous times by all kinds of imaginal phenomena, spirits, and energies. Invariably, the experiences were difficult in the moment, but powerfully transformative in the end.
Another frequent occurrence in the Below is for imaginal imagery, symbols, and/or body sensations to indicate to you that your “job” or your “mission” is to stitch together the Above and Below into some kind of balance or synthesis. In my own imaginal world, the image of my body as the goddess Bachué — half radiant, half demonic — serves that function. For Misha, it was seeing herself as a winged being:
I was in human form and I had wings extending outward to the sides in the basic shape of a Christian cross (my religion of origin is Episcopalian). Though they were stylized, I knew these were my angel wings. The wing on my left side was a dark black, and the right wing was a bright white. Each shone luminously bright in its own way. Each numinously expressed divinity. These wings/forces were equally present, potent, and balanced, just as my human and divine elements were.
My body was in a twisted posture, with the left hand reaching upward toward a bright glowing orb. My right foot was reaching downward toward the darkness, earth, and the sphere of the unknown. I had a distinct impression of God’s posture in Michelangelo’s The Creation of Adam; with each limb, I was reaching out to touch the Divine. In a way it felt yin-yang like, but with much more complexity and subtlety than the classic yin-yang symbol evokes for me. My dark side was reaching upward to touch and absorb into the transcendent emanating Light; simultaneously my light side was reaching downward to touch and root into the rich mysterious depths of the Dark. This was such a potent image of unification in multiple dimensions that I felt drawn to execute it as a full sized painting.
Another possibility is that imaginal phenomena might even give you direct teachings about nonduality. One day, deep into my Descent, I was doing my usual meditation walk through the neighborhood when I passed by a gruesome scene. A group of men were cutting down an entire line of thick pine trees at the edge of someone’s property. Were the trees sick? Were they just unwanted? I didn’t know, but I had a sudden strong feeling of sadness and compassion for these fallen beings. As I walked by, I made a point of walking up to the truck and placing my hand on the largest of the tree trunks that were stacked there. “May you be well, grandfather,” I said to the fallen tree. “And all of your kin as well.” I continued on my walk, my hand smelling of pine sap.
About an hour later, as I ended my walk and night was falling, I took a side path near my own house. I’d lived in this neighborhood for about a decade, and had used this path before, but it had never struck me in quite the same way as it did on this particular evening. Cutting in-between two houses to enter the shadowy path, I passed through what seemed to be a tree-lined gateway, which gave me the impression I was crossing a threshold into a consecrated area. Then, in the dimness ahead, I saw a circle of eleven trees arranged in a ring around a thick old oak, kind of like they were assembled for a sacred ritual. My imaginal senses fired up, and I felt that something important was about to occur.
As I approached the ring of trees, it seemed that the old oak was calling me to come close and join the circle. I did, and I noticed that there was a stump in the ground, a thirteenth tree that had been cut down. The oak invited me to stand on top of the stump, facing inward toward the center of the circle, and to take my place among the trees. I stood there, a guest among the tree folk, for as long as I could as the moon rose and the stars came out. I could have told you this story back when I was talking about nature and animal spirits, because I was acutely aware in that moment of how hard it was for me, in this animal body, to stand still for such a long time. The trees were showing me that they had infinitely more patience and stillness than I did. As I finally gave up, I thanked them for this lesson and turned to leave, and they invited me to return in the future.
I made a point of passing by that grove every day for the next few months. Each time, I would stand on the stump, stilling my body and mind, and staying as long as possible. I also started sitting at the base of the oak for a while as well, just to continue to savor the stillness even after I could no longer stand. Over those nights, the ring of trees started teaching me to do what they called “listening like a tree.”
As I sat listening to the sounds of the rest of the world passing by with all of the energy and movement of “unrooted” animal life, something happened to my hearing. I experienced the dissolution of sensory phenomena. Sound broke down into a stream of tiny particles. Eventually, I saw that those tiny particles of phenomena were not actually particles after all. They were like minuscule energy packets that imploded upon themselves before they even took shape.
Over time, I would lean closer still and learn to apply these insights not only to hearing but to all the other senses as well. Listening like a tree, seeing like a tree, feeling like a tree, thinking like a tree, and so forth, I would soon experience how the whole of reality appears to be fizzing in and out of existence every nanosecond. How each moment is born out of and disappears back into the void so fast that it never really happens in the first place.
The point of this the story is to give an example of how the Below can teach us about even the subtlest aspects of the Above. The trees in that grove gave me the crucial insight into nonduality and the emptiness of all phenomena, escorting me right up to the very top of the journey of Transcendence. (Come to think of it, maybe I’ll have to rewrite that story about the Buddha yet again, centering on the wisdom of that tree he was sitting under!)