Merging Into Union
Part Eight
You’re Never Alone — Meeting Your Spirit Guides
A Relational Path to Becoming One
One of the primary aims of many mystical paths of spirituality is to come into union with the divine. This is sometimes distinguished from the mystical practice of communion—which literally means “union together.”
When we talk about connecting with spirit guides, we are primarily in the realm of a 2nd-person relationality. The “I” interacting with the “You.” Which, in this case, is a mystical personal presence in the non-physical realm. We are welcoming into our “We” the very real and spiritual presence of these guides, the mystical in personal form—alongside our embodied, material human brothers and sisters. In this way, our communion is richer, wiser, and more complete.
But it is also true that our spirit guides can offer another pathway into the nondual. Into union.
In one way of “approaching” union—and things can get pretty complex and varied here—the emphasis is more on going beyond our identification with our smaller self through some kind of process of dissolving. In another way, we might come into union through particularity, through the merging of divine and human in an intensification of interrelationality and interbeing. This is the union of eros, of convergence, of exaltation in no longer being two—while also being much “more” than one.
Rather than continue to talk about such things (where language often begins to fail anyway), today I want to offer a little more of my own experience and story of how my guides have brought me into both communion and union—and maybe, as well, something that doesn’t really fit those categorizations.
I share with some trepidation, not primarily due to the vulnerable, intimate nature of these experiences. For they are not “my” own and in this way are not private. But in the past, I’ve felt myself hold back for fear of appearing grandiose or self-acclaiming. I have a particular aversion to pretension and arrogance, almost certainly from my religious upbringing.
But what I’m coming to realize is that my own desire for authenticity necessitates not only refusing to hide what is untrue or lacking, but also to not keep hidden that which is true and most substantial—despite any sense of incredulity or skepticism it might evoke.
So here are my stories of merging into union. And merging into something new. It involves both of my primary spirit guides in my life so far, and it starts with Jesus Christ.
Christ in You
“For you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God” (Col. 3:3)
When I was 25 years old, I found myself in the start of a dark night. Interiorly, in non-ordinary reality, I experienced myself as dwelling or journeying in a vast cave of emptiness. Like Moria in Lord of the Rings, there were great columns holding up the desolate cavern. I lay on the cold stone, exhausted and unable to stand. And Jesus was there with me, like he often had been throughout my life.
I wanted him to fill the space. I wanted him to rescue me. To take me back to the land of the living. What I heard instead was, “Let yourself die.”
For the next eight years he was gone but not absent. My mystical journey took me through death and awakening, expanded my sense of God to great new vistas and experiences, and liberated me from my past religious confines.
And on the other side, where did Jesus fit for me now?
He was still a dear figure for me, though his presence felt different—if I even sensed it at all. I knew it wouldn’t be the same as before, and in truth I didn’t want it to be. I was different now. The old arrangement felt . . . incomplete. Or lacking.
This wasn’t why I decided to go see George for a hypnotherapy session, but it may have been one of my unknown-at-the-time reasons. While my primary guide at the time was Danu (more about her to follow), it was Jesus who appeared first.
He was glowing with radiance all around him in a way I’d never felt or experienced from him before. And in particular, a bright circle of light shone from his forehead. The next thing I knew he was above me (I was laying down), and he drew his forehead to mine. The light poured into me, opening my third eye and filling my whole body with “the light of Christ.”
Afterward, and ever since, I now experience his presence no longer next to me, but through and within me. Like an overlapping energy field, this is Jesus Christ as he is for me now. Keeping in mind the distinction from part 2 in this series, I experience now both the Living Jesus in his resurrected, personal presence, and the Christ—the divine interfusion in material being—together. In, around, and through my body.
This is a constant presence and reality that I can feel at any and all times. Not that I live in or from that reality all the time—but it is always there. I am never separated from it. There is never anything keeping me from living with Jesus in Christ.
In some ways, maybe I shouldn’t be so surprised. Isn’t this the mystical reality described all throughout the Christian scriptures? “In Christ” is the apostle Paul’s favorite phrase, using it over 100 times in his letters. Christ in you, the hope of glory.
And isn’t Jesus the archetypal Christ? The primary and personal presence for Christians of this immeasurable divine reality living in human form? The union of God and humanity in particularity. Who better to bring us into Christ consciousness?
There are, perhaps, different pathways to come into this union in both the universal and the particular. The Living Jesus, in his resurrected mystical presence, is “Jesus Christ.” A spiritual embodiment of the personal presence of God who loves to be with us.
And he is still incarnating today.
The divine life becoming life divine.
“Danu” by Heather Healy
Being Born Again
“Merging with a powerful figure is widespread across religious traditions, is dramatically empowering, and is increasingly used in psychotherapy.” – Roger Walsh
While Jesus is the primary “spirit guide” for Christians, there is no reason that we need be limited to him alone. For many who met Jesus through institutionalized religion, the disentangling process can sometimes be arduous—and we may need other forms of the personal presence of God at times in our journeys. This was the case for me for many years. Before I came back to a sense of Jesus-with-me as I described above, I needed another form. I needed a goddess.
I wrote a little about Danu last week and how I was seeking the divine feminine. Not only did she appear in a way that surprised me, with a real feminine fierceness and strength (along with tenderness and compassion), but she has also continued to surprise with what she brings to me and brings me to.
With Danu, I experienced a different sort of merging into union. This has followed a more shamanic pattern and process, where the act of merging often follows a “swallowing” or “being swallowed” by the spirit guide (as I learned from my integral, shamanic-yogic friend LaWanna).
At first, I felt Danu both near and far from me. Even as I felt her comforting hand on my cheek, she seemed perched in the cosmos—present with me in this space beyond reality where she had taken me at the time.
In a mystical state of consciousness, we have access to entering “non-ordinary reality.” Most often, we experience this consciousness where we are and in relation to our current physical surroundings. But we can also sometimes find ourselves traveling or being led to another place. This is known as “journeying” in shamanic parlance. I’ve experienced both with Danu.
And then one day, she too brought herself face-to-face with me. In her forehead was a window, an opening through which I could see a blue sky. It looked mostly like our own, but with a slightly different hue. And a different energy. It was another reality.
This window was also a tunnel. Rather than my previous experience of Christ coming into me, this time I was “swallowed” into her. And I settled in the space of her womb. I can’t quite tell you how I knew this was the place I found myself, but I knew. There was a gestation period—shorter than I expected. Before very long at all, maybe a few weeks, I was being birthed. Another tunnel. Another light. New, but from the same sky I had seen before.
After a brief time of being held in her arms like a newborn baby, I now find myself standing with my back pressed up against her legs. Like a young boy in a strange new land, slightly cautious as I try to get my bearings in this new reality. And yet, it is not an entirely different world. I’ve been born again, into . . . how can I describe it? My eyes are still adjusting to the light.
When Jesus talked about being “born again,” he was directly or indirectly using language that is present in shamanic traditions. The concept has been so tainted by evangelical and traditional Christianity that it may be irredeemable—at least for the time being. Rather than a mental belief or spoken incantation that brings about some kind of cut and paste relocation on an invented cosmic ledger, Jesus was referring to a deeply mystical spiritual transformation into a completely different experienced reality than Nicodemus had been living. A rebirth of spiritual consciousness.
Into a new heaven and a new earth.
Into Union and Beyond
So I very much realize that all of this might sound a little strange to many. It might be too “out there” for some. And that’s ok. If you have spirit guides or are open to that spiritual reality, you definitely don’t have to pursue or allow any merging that you don’t want or are not ready for.
Telling my story is not meant to be prescriptive in any way. But if it helps open up an avenue of possible spiritual experience and exploration for some, then that’s great. If not, always feel free to follow what fits for you, where you are being drawn.
This type of coming together with a spirit presence is always within our agency. We should only be open to it with the most integrated, divine guides of love. It is not a “possession” in any way—for there is no taking over by the spirit we join with. It is a reception of the energy and quality of presence received from your guide, often leading to new capacities and qualities or significant transformation. It is always healing and loving. To the degree that we welcome any sense of inter-consciousness, we always retain our agency in the co-created new reality of being.
You can find yourself having these sorts of mystical experiences with your guides any time you are in a state of awakened consciousness or what’s sometimes called “non-ordinary reality.” Some of these experiences I’ve shared happened while practicing in a WeSpace group. The collective energy and holding can be a powerful container of support and an energetic source of input and co-creation for participating in mystical reality with our guides—even into union, along with our more common experiences of communion. Both are valuable and profoundly important.
This is bringing the “We” into the experience of the “All.” We don’t enter union only from a starting point of individuality. Actually, many of the spiritual practices and approaches toward union that are primarily intra-personal or trans-personal often take years of dedicated effort to experience transformation. The value and power of deeply mystical inter-personal practice have often been neglected or lost.
It takes dedication, intention, and support as well to come into these transformations and awakenings of consciousness—but is often more readily accessible and available through the collective field of energy and presence. For we are not truly separate to begin with. The WeSpace is not only a reality we practice entering into, but also a resource of support for deeper perception and cultivated mystical awareness.
Mystical union is not a spiritual ultimate for only the elite and esoteric forms of spirituality. It is not just for the monks and the nuns, for the professional meditators and the gurus. We are all mystics, if we can only remember. Every one of us has all we need to come into union. And our best spirit guides can be a way of helping us arrive.
But then even that is not the endpoint. It is only a new beginning to a new reality.
Christ in you, the hope of glory.