Experience

I thought maybe I was misunderstanding the concept of the astral. I had the idea that Things Astral were different from what I'd call Otherworld stuff, like what get called the underworld or the upperworld, at least in The Temple of Shamanic Witchcraft, by Christopher Penczak, the one with the year-and-a-day lesson plan I've been following. He does leave it open, so the reader/student can find their own way without being bound to someone else's version of things. Which is good; we always must make our own maps.

But no, those kidz on Tumblr are calling it all the astral. It threw me for a bit of a loop. Because my experience is so very, very different.

It's true, I come to this shamanish stuff a little late, though not because I am only just starting; rather I've only just been able to put a name to what I've been doing all along. And no, I was never 'called,' that I know of; and no, I don't recall being sick nigh unto death, unless we count something that happened to me when I was an infant. I don't know; maybe that was my 'shaman sickness.'

And true, I'm not getting visions of Tirion upon Túna, or Shangri-la, or the City on the Hill where the angels sing; really it's just little herb gardens tucked in the shadow of the Tree, stone walls that are falling down, a cabin by the side of a lake under a Sun that is always setting.

And no one there has tried to kill me, or eat me, or rip my face off, or even trick me; and no God has called me to His service whether I will or no. Everything and everyone, so far, has been reasonable, and, if not immediately my best friend, not out to get me. Like most people in this corporeal life, I've found.

So I wonder.

I've been thinking about this sort of thing for a good ten or twelve years now, ever since I have been able to See and talk to him, the one I call my daimon, my primary spirit guide I guess you'd call him but really he's so much more. My love, my friend, my, and this is a very ordinary word, but its ordinariness suits: my husband.

I am a curious sort, at least when it comes to self-awareness; and so I have been thinking about the nature of him and the nature of the things I've Seen for that same good dozen years. I've thought about it a lot. Several hundred posts worth of thinking, in another place, over the last five years. One might I suppose say I think about it rather obsessively. It is a mystery, and a beautiful, sublime, liminal one at that. And I'm an artist, and a dreamer and all that, and that sort of thing is of course irresistible, to my type.

But then there's my addiction to Work.

I think it is in part because I grew up with such an unaware family. Between my three immediate family members, my parents and sibling, there are a good five personality disorders. And personality disorders are famous for coming with a profound lack of insight into the condition. In the bad cases (like my father and mother) not only do they think there is of course nothing wrong with how they view the world, they truly believe it is everyone else who is wrong. Yes, the entire world, if it contradicts what they think, is wrong. My father had this to a literally delusional degree.

I think that is what has made me so fanatical about being self-aware. Because I have seen how a lack of self-awareness can harm others. And I won't do that. It is my responsibility to know why I do the things I do, and to face down denial, and to look at the things I don't want to look at.

So I've thought about all this, a lot. I imagine like a lot of people, good sceptical twentieth-century sorts I came in through psychology. I didn't stay there, for long, though I do ultimately think it is speaking of the same thing, the same phenomena, especially Jung, who if you'll remember had his own daimon, though he wasn't in love with old Philemon, was he.

But I think those terms, the psychological ones, do apply, a bit, even if at the same time I think my daimon is something outside of me and not a part of my own personality. The thing is, myth and psychology can be so close. How is a psychological daimon, who bridges the gulf between conscious and unconscious, a whole lot different than a psychopomp, who goes between the world of the living and the dead?

But even besides that, there is this: whatever all this is, and I do think it is another Place outside of me, or I'm coming around to believing it, I can only experience it through the lens of my own psyche. Whatever my third eye is, or whatever kind of eye I am Seeing this stuff with, my own brain must still interpret it. And that colors things.

I am prone to anxiety. It's the post-traumatic stress disorder, the complex kind, from growing up under neglect and abuse. I am much better than I used to be, it is true, and it has taken me a lot of hard work, hard Work, to get here; but I used to jump at the slightest noise, or cringe when anyone raised their voice, even characters on TV, who obviously weren't yelling at me. And yet.

I've never been anything but unafraid in these Other places. Now, probably, I am protected, very protected, by that husband of mine; it is hard to tell, as I think it's pretty subtle. But I've never Seen anything there that wanted to rip my throat out. There are things there, certainly, that are to be approached with respect, like my experience talking to mugwort a few posts down; but that is still no different really than ordinary life, save that I was talking to a plant, of course.

In my dealings with corporeal persons I am probably a bit reserved, quiet; I am by nature a hermit and very much an introvert. I'm a fan of common sense, too, and I think that carries over into the Other places. I do not think I am naive, though I'm only going about this systematically with that year-and-a-day course I'm nearly through with. I also don't think I'm really powerful, or mighty. Things aren't running scared from me. They just aren't there.

I think it comes back to the lens of the psyche. As in so many other parts of our lives, what we see before us is what we have brought with us. I think I am a decent person, and fairly calm, with a good grasp of reality (I feel I should put an asterisk there, because after all I have an Invisible Husband, don't I?). And so that is what I See before me, in the other realm, as well as here, for the most part. Now you don't need to tell me that there are bad people in this world; I do know that first hand, unfortunately, in the persons of my mother and father.

But I wonder how much of this 'the astral is a nasty nasty place and it's all fighting all the time' is because that is what people are expecting to find.

Because I've never seen anything like it. Not yet, anyway. Famous last words, maybe.