Welcome my friend.
The following is a guided visualization based on a near-death experience described by Carl Jung in his memoir Memories,
Dreams and Reflections.
Jung experienced this vision as he hung on the edge of death after a heart attack.
We'll start with a brief relaxation exercise and then I'll guide you through Jung's vision as if you are experiencing it for yourself.
Feel free to replace the particulars of his vision with your own and let it unfold as it wishes.
Begin by getting comfortable lying down or sitting with your spine straight,
Your heart area open,
Your body relaxed and at ease.
We might start with two or three full complete breaths just releasing any tension you may be carrying.
Letting it go.
Full gliding inhalations and long slow relaxed exhalations.
Surrendering yourself to relaxation.
Invite protective benevolent energy to encircle you.
Surround yourself with protection,
Sense of peace and well-being.
You're safe here.
Nothing can harm you.
Let yourself settle into deep restorative stillness.
Letting stillness of the body cultivate stillness of the mind.
And stillness of the mind supports stillness of the body.
And as if on a slow elevator ride,
Allow your mind to drop down gently descending into your chest area.
Letting your awareness rest comfortably in your heart.
Breathe as if you are breathing in and out of your heart area.
And just enjoy this experience.
Enjoy the safety.
Enjoy the relaxation.
And now in your mind's eye,
Picture everything in the room slowly receding,
Getting smaller as if you are being gently drawn up and out of your resting body.
This requires no effort on your part.
Simply imagine you are being lifted tenderly passing through the ceiling,
Through the air,
Through the clouds,
Up into the atmosphere.
Until you are high up in space,
A thousand miles above the planet's surface.
And from here,
Behold the planet beneath you.
You see the curve of the earth bathed in glorious blue light outlined with a silvery gleam.
A great expansive ocean spreads before you,
Glinting and alive.
Continents come into view,
Spotted dark green like oxidized silver.
You see the reddish yellow of deserts,
The shimmering peaks of snow-covered mountains,
Majestic and awe-inspiring.
The planet is even more beautiful than you could have imagined.
Just rest for a moment in this immense beauty.
You are safe here,
Surrounded by love.
When you are ready,
Turn around to face outer space.
And notice something enter your field of vision.
A block of stone,
Like a meteorite,
The size of a house,
Floating peacefully in space,
Just as you are floating peacefully in space.
It's made of a kind of stone you have seen before on earth,
Luminous and beautiful.
You move closer,
Reach out to feel its texture.
It's a kind of temple.
The door opens and surrounded by your protective,
Benevolent spirits,
You approach.
As you near the entrance,
You have the feeling that everything is being sloughed away,
Everything you've aimed at or wished for or thought,
All of the ways you've tried to fix yourself or fix others.
The whole phenomenological display of your earthly existence falls away like a tree gently dropping its leaves in autumn.
But something remains.
Everything you've ever experienced or done is still in you.
You are experience itself unfolding,
An effervescent bundle of what has been and what is coming to be.
You are the awareness that witnesses your experience.
You see clearly that you are not any of the things you left behind,
You are experience itself.
You are stripped down,
Empty,
And at the same time fuller than you've ever been,
Whole and complete.
There is no longer anything you want or desire.
You exist in a pure form.
You are all that you've lived.
Everything seems to be past now,
There are no regrets.
The outer trappings of your life have dropped away,
But the essence of who you are has not changed.
At the entrance to the temple,
You take two steps up to a small antechamber.
To the right of the chamber,
A wisdom figure sits silently on a stone bench.
The figure wears a white gown.
To the left is the doorway to the inner sanctum,
Surrounded by fragrant oil lamps with small burning wicks.
The tiny flames encircle the doorway like a wreath you are invited to step through.
You sense you are about to enter an illuminated room where you will meet all the people to whom you belong.
Inside you will at last understand the historical nexus your life fit into.
You'll know what had been before you,
Why you came into being,
And where your life was flowing.
Perhaps until now,
Your life seemed like a story that had no beginning and no end.
As if you were a historical fragment,
An excerpt for which the preceding and succeeding text was missing.
Maybe your life seems to have been snipped out of a long chain of events and many questions remained unanswered.
Why has my life taken this course?
Why have I brought my particular assumptions with me?
What have I made of them?
And what will follow?
You sense the answers reside inside.
There in the inner sanctum,
You will learn why everything has been this way and not otherwise.
You'll meet the people who know the answers to your questions.
As you contemplate entering,
Something catches your attention.
From below,
An image of a person floats up from the earth.
Someone in your life who you know and deeply trust.
They appear to you,
Their likeness framed in golden light,
A kind of avatar of the real person.
As if they are appearing to you in their radiant,
Primal form.
A silent exchange of thought takes place between you.
And you understand this person has been delegated to deliver a message to you.
To tell you there is a protest against your going away.
You must return to earth,
To your life.
The tree of your life has not dropped its leaves permanently.
A new springtime awaits.
In your expanded form,
Going back to earth may feel like returning to a box system.
From up here you can see how behind the horizon of the cosmos,
A three-dimensional world has been artificially built up.
In which each person sits by themselves in a little box,
Like a prison.
Floating here in space,
Nothing tugs on you.
You are free,
Weightless.
Yet you are told to return,
To let the tree of your life flower and leaf out into a new season.
The glimpse you have experienced here will never leave you.
Moments of bliss will return to you at unexpected times.
As if you are floating in space,
Safe in the womb of the universe.
Filled with the highest possible form of happiness,
Of bliss.
And you may return to this antechamber whenever you wish,
To ask for guidance,
To ask for wisdom,
To respond wisely and joyfully to the life on earth you've been given.
This space is always available to you.
For now you are to gently descend back down to earth,
And so you move through the atmosphere,
Gently through the clouds,
Recognizing everything around you as enchanted,
As full of life,
Full of consciousness.
You can see blue halos of light around all living things.
Back on the earth you alight in a garden of pomegranates,
As if you are attending a mystical wedding.
Light beings are present,
Full of joy.
Bride and groom are you.
The marriage is you.
Your earthly and spiritual selves blissfully joined,
Never separate.
The garden fades and a new scene appears,
The last image of the vision.
You are walking in a wide valley all the way to the end,
Where a gentle chain of hills begins.
The valley ends in an amphitheater tucked into a green landscape,
And there in this theater the sacred wedding is celebrated.
Dancers dance,
And upon a bed of flowers the lovers consummate their union.
Your eternal self and your current life joined in love.
Returning to the world of boxes may feel challenging.
At times the physical world may feel crude and clumsy,
Limited spatially and spiritually.
You may at times fall prey to its hypnotic power,
As if it were the only reality.
You may mistake the three-dimensional box-like universe as all there is.
Yet what you have seen you can never unsee.
You have touched non-temporal experience.
Past,
Present,
And future are one.
You exist simultaneously yesterday,
Today,
And tomorrow.
You are forever interwoven into an indescribable whole,
A speechless unity.
Your continuity withstands the current of life and of time.
Let this experience give you courage.
Offer an unconditional yes to things as they are,
To you as you are.
Affirm your own destiny.
My friend,
When incomprehensible things happen,
You will endure.
Your inner truth will endure.
You will cope with the world with love.
You will know yourself to be love.
Blessings to you,
My friend.
Thank you.
