"Most go out-of-body during sleep and they don't remember it when they wake up."~ Robert Monroe
Out of body, you can experience other worlds, meet the dead or even the living. It might seem so real to you. Well, maybe it was. Have you ever dared to see or experience the wonders beyond this world?
"I indignantly answered, "Do you call light what we men call the worst darkness? Do you call day night?"
To this my soul spoke a word that roused my anger, "My light is not of this world."
I cried, "I know of no other world!"
The soul answered, "Should it not exist because you know nothing of it?"
― C.G. Jung, The Red Book: Liber Novus
Do you imagine what lies beyond the normal boundaries that you traverse? If so, does that scare you?
"If we do not have the depths, how do we have the heights? Yet you fear the depths, and do not want to confess that you are afraid of them. It is good, though, that you fear yourselves; say it out loud that you are afraid of yourselves. It is wisdom to fear oneself."
― C.G. Jung, The Red Book: Liber Novus
To face ourselves, we need to go to a "desert," either physically or mentally. What would await us there? It doesn't have to be a place. It can be an ordeal that we're trying to work through. It can be a moment where we are alone in our rooms and feel dejected and lost....
"Everything to come was already in images: to find their soul, the ancients went into the desert. This is an image. The ancients lived their symbols, since the world had not yet become real for them. Thus they went into the solitude of the desert to teach us that the place of the soul is a lonely desert. There they found the abundance of visions, the fruits of the desert, the wondrous flowers of the soul. Think diligently about the images that the ancients have left behind. They show the way of what is to come. Look back at the collapse of empires, growth and death, of the desert and monasteries, they are the images of what is to come. Everything has been foretold. But who knows how to interpret it?
When you say that the place of the soul is not, then it is not. But if you say that it is, then it is. Notice what the ancients said in images: the words is a creative act. The ancients said: in the beginning was the Word. Consider this and think upon it.
The words that oscillate between nonsense and supreme meaning are the oldest and truest."
― C.G. Jung, The Red Book: Liber Novus
Confront your own desert.
And I'll share a story of mine:
"This was a "dry" time for me. I was in a rut that I couldn't climb out as if my world were silent. I knocked on inner walls, begging for a door to another world. Does anyone hear me?
In De Lege Libellum Aleister Crowley writes, "But this Dryness hath its virtue, in that thereby the Soul is purged of those things that impeach the Will: for when the drouth is altogether perfect, then is it certain that by no means can the Soul be satisfied, save by the Accomplishment of the Great Work. And this is in strong souls a stimulus to the Will. It is the Furnace of Thirst that burneth up all dross within us."
No, I wasn't on a level of crossing the Abyss, not even close, just facing the ordeals in life when one has to get serious, has to commit to doing the Work. When one is on the path, there might be trials by one's situation or sickness or feeling hopeless. At times over the years, I went momentarily blind, as if in a sea of blackness and I wondered if the universe had a twisted sense of humor...Sometimes maybe one needs to lose sight for a moment to see better...to see deeper." —Ishtar of the Star
Sometimes, after we visit and then leave the "desert," we find new creativity, new hope, new strength. It might have been a respite that was badly needed, and even if not pleasant, it renewed in us what needed to be renewed.
Look at the world. We are flooded with artificial images, fake lives on social media or acting on TikToc. You can engage in it, but don't get lost in it. Know what is real. We can lose who we are as well as our reasons we are here, if we lose touch.
Take a brief pause from it all. See the images from your soul for a while.
"Everything has been foretold. But who knows how to interpret it?" —Carl Jung
If we forget where to look, we'll lose the cues from our own mind and being. We will lose our personal blueprint as well as how to interpret it. That is why we lose our way and become lost.
Take a moment to visit a "desert," and find what is waiting for you. Then, never let it go.