It must have been about a week ago. I had just gone to bed, and as I lay there in between waking and sleep, in my mind's eye an image of a devil began to assemble itself. It didn't really look like this drawing, it was really cartoonish and over-the-top, but it managed to be kind of frightening to my dozing mind-- like, "Why the f___ is this happening?"
Suddenly, rather than giving in to fear, I relaxed and experienced a great upwelling of love, and the image of the devil completely vanished.
It was sort of unexpected. It wasn't as though I made a decision to "love my enemy," or something like that. I think that if I had done it intentionally it would have been shaky and weak and I would still have been secretly scared doing it. Instead, it just happened, seemingly without any conscious decision or effort on my part.
If I were to say, "I love the devil." it would sound like I was trying to be cool and scary. Or, it might sound like I was giving myself over to "evil," or trying to draw power from some dark, destructive archetype. But, the experience wasn't like that. It wasn't as though I was sacrificing something of myself, or making a deal. Instead, it was as if I had opened a channel to some immense, hidden reservoir that exists apart from-- or maybe at some deeper, collective-unconscious kind of level of-- myself, and everything was transformed. I felt as though I had been removed from the drama of the situation and was able to see objectively the humanity and the just-isness of this fellow and the role he was fated to play.
It was empowering, but not in some tough-guy vanquishing hero way, but more of a there-is-nothing-to-fear-everything-is-OK-we're-all-one kind of way. Reflecting on it later, I was reminded of a dream that a friend of mine related to me back in high school: He was confronted by a terrifying bear, and he started to run away from it, but then he turned around and embraced the creature instead.
Maybe it was some kind of Jungian "integrating of the Shadow" moment for me. I don't know. Do I seem more individuated to you?
2 comments:
sounds more like faith to me, and an all-around good experience as well. I'm sure there are many who could use that right about now, and to be able to embrace/accept some of the crappy stuff going on would be helpful as well. Very topical KP!
I had a dream a coule of nights ago wherein I saw a spider monkey in a parking lot. A chimpanzee started taunting the spider monkey. For this I rebuked the chimpanzee. In response, the chimpanzee jumped on my head. I threw the chimp off before he could do anything terrible like chew my eyelids off, puffed myself as much as possible and roared at him. The chimp scampered off.
Maybe I should've hugged him instead. But then I might not have eyelids right now.
And that still might not stop the spider monkey from jumping on my back ...
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