Into the Diamond
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A picture taken of me shortly after completing a journey in the ho rainfoest on the olympic Peninsula in Washington state (circa 2009).
While doing a shamanic journey in the early spring of 2007, my guides showed me an incredible image that traced the long and slow path each soul must take before reaching the ultimate state of full awakening.
However, before revealing this image, my guides proffered an unexpected request.
“We have something we want to show you, but before we do, you must commit to journeying every day for the following six months.”
Praying I’d heard them wrong, I repeated, “Every day?”
“Every day,” they confirmed.
“For six whole months?” I squeaked.
“Yes, every day for six months.”
Twelve years had passed since I first learned how to journey (the shamanic practice of traveling to unseen worlds to seek guidance and healing from helping spirits). And in all that time, the most I typically “traveled” to the shamanic realms was twice a week, and sometimes, when things were exceedingly hectic, only once a month.
My guides’ request would require a time commitment of at least 30 undistracted minutes a day.
Perhaps this might have been a reasonable invitation a few years back—but now?!
My guides were fully aware that I had recently given birth to my second child. My sweet, adorable, and extremely colicky second child—and my first child was still only two and a half years old. If this weren’t enough, we had also temporarily relocated for my husband’s new job training, which meant long days at home by myself while he was away learning the ropes.
It was hard enough to find a few moments to take a shower, much less 30 minutes of uninterrupted time to journey.
“Starting when?” I asked, hoping I would have a few weeks to wrap my head around what my guides were purposing.
“Today,” they answered.
Feeling grumpy and exhausted from a rough night’s sleep, I found myself wanting to argue, but I knew my guides were asking—not demanding. The choice was mine to make.
If you have yet to develop a personal relationship with guides yourself, an ill-timed request like this might appear wholly unreasonable, if not entirely lacking in compassion—and there was a time I would have agreed.
However, having made it to the other side of several of these pop-quiz-style trials, I’d come to realize that the points in my life when I have felt the most overwhelmed, fatigued, and at my wits end have also been precisely the times when the possibility of transformation is at its highest.
These are the periods when the usually well-fortified padding around my ego defenses is worn so thin that it becomes no more effectual at holding my old patterns/beliefs in place than a cotton ball would be at sponging up water from the hull of a wave-harassed boat.
Perhaps change and transformation don’t have to be this difficult for others, but for this stubborn, strong-willed soul, my lessons (at least the big ones) always come when I can least resist them.
While I was far from keen on the idea of journeying every day for half a year while juggling two children under the age of three, I also didn’t want to miss out on something I knew might ultimately prove critical to my development.
Heaving a reluctant sigh, I agreed to their terms.
With that, the guides who had been standing before me disappeared from view. In their place appeared a long partition of strange fabric that initially seemed to be white until a section of it collided with a wave of light and began to shimmer with tiny fragments of color.
Though this was the first time I’d ever seen it, I recognized it immediately. It’s what I’d heard others refer to as “the veil.”
The moment I determined I wanted to pass through it, the veil parted down the center, allowing access to what lay beyond. Immediately after crossing to the other side of the veil, I notice two things. The first was an endless amount of space, like one might see if they looked up into a dark, starless night sky. The second was an unimaginably long column of rings suspended vertically about 100 yards in front of me.
Examining the rings from a distance, I noticed that none of them appeared to be touching. Instead, they were hovering exactly parallel to and equidistance from each other, as if held in place by some invisible and incredibly precise energetic force.
I was fascinated, and my gaze plummeted down, tracing the long succession of rings until they were eventually swallowed up by a sea of darkness far below. Though I could not make out their ending point, I had a sense that the rings continued well past the reach of the light.
As my eyes traveled back up the column, I noticed that the suspended stack of rings ended not too far above me. I also noticed that all of the rings in this extremely long column had exactly the same diameter. That is, except for the last handful overhead, which began to grow concentrically smaller.
Above the final ring, an enormous object was also suspended in the air—a beautiful, radiantly clear, multifaced diamond.
Still uncertain of what I was seeing, I decided I wanted to move closer. The moment I had this thought, my body immediately obliged, pushing me through space like an astronaut with a jet pack. (This is one of the many benefits of journeying, gaining the ability to move beyond the laws and physics of “ordinary reality.”)
As I drew closer, the rings began revealing more details. For the first time, I noticed that each ring had a large number of souls seated around its outer edge.
Then, my guides, who were still out of view, began to explain what I was seeing.
“Each ring represents a mandala. Each mandala encompasses a set of related experiences. Once lived, these experiences ultimately culminate in a higher state of knowing, and a deeper state of empathy.”
As I looked at the mandalas in front of me, for the first time I could see something in their centers. In the middle of each ring, there was a vivid and translucent image that looked as though it was held within something resembling a pane of glass, only the pane seemed more fluid than solid.
These images seemed to represent the overall lesson of each mandala.
Each mandala appeared to be a world unto itself yet was also connected to everything else—all the other rings, the inky vast space, and the glittering diamond above.
In front of each soul seated along the outer ring of the mandala, I could see the “slice” of the mandala being lived by that soul. Each slice appeared to also carry an image. This image seemed to represent a smaller lesson within the larger lesson— a section of the metaphorical pie waiting to be made one with the whole.
Without my needing to ask, my guides elaborated on what I was seeing. “Each soul must sit in every position of the mandala until they integrate that position’s experiences and correlating message. Once all of the experiences of each position have been incorporated, the soul can move to the mandala waiting above.”
Once again, my eyes traced the long string of hovering mandalas in front of me. It seemed inconceivable that anyone could climb through such a multitude of experiences. I asked my guides how long such a process might take.
“An individual can take several lifetimes to integrate the lessons of a single soul position on the mandala, or they can move through several positions in one lifetime. The pace of movement is determined by how much work an individual is willing to put into the lessons waiting for them.”
“And what about the rings down there? The ones that disappear into the darkness?” I asked, glancing far down below.
“Sometimes, a soul creates such devastation and destruction with their choices that they slide back into a preceding ring or even numerous rings that came before. In dire cases, they even fall all the way back into the darkness where they must begin the accent anew.”
The thought of such a fall made my stomach twist with anxiety. Changing the subject, I directed my eyes above me.
“What about the ones up there?” I asked, gesturing to the last ten or so rings that began shrinking in size as they neared the top of the column.
“These are the final rings, occupied by fewer and fewer souls striving for higher levels of purification. After the last mandala of experience and wisdom is realized, they merge with the diamond above which represents ultimate clarity.”
For the first time, within the diamond’s facets, I could see the faces of the divine—familiar representations from all types of faiths—each emerging from the same source of wisdom and unconditional love.
It had been twelve years since I learned how to journey, and I was used to being shown unusual images. Even so, I knew this experience was somehow different.
Though I didn’t realize it at the time, this image would herald the beginning of a fundamental shift in my spiritual perspective.
I took one final look at the rings and the diamond, then thanked my guides before returning to “ordinary reality,” which also happened to be the small, one-bedroom apartment we were renting for the next few months until we returned to Seattle.
After the journey ended, the rings of souls lingered in my mind for several days.
Whether I was gently bouncing on a yoga ball with my newborn son in my lap, washing yet another pile of dirty dishes, or walking down to a nearby bookstore that had a train table that could entertain my older son for hours, I found myself repeatedly retracing the details of the mandalas.
I could see the rings of souls, the bright, translucent panes of images at their centers, and the otherworldly precious gemstone hovering above—and alongside all of this, a feeling of the potential for transformation emanating from within that scene.
As promised (usually at the end of the night after my husband returned home), I traveled to the journey realms every day for the next six months, even when I was covered in spit-up and drool and could barely keep myself from drifting off to sleep.
The journeys that came during that period were intense and varied, and felt like they were preparing me for something (something which I would remain blissfully unaware of for another three years. But that is another story—or rather book—for another time).
However, none of the journeys that would follow were ever so transfixing as the one with the souls, the rings, and the diamond.
Less than two years after I was shown the image that lay beyond the veil—part of that scene would unexpectedly appear again. However, this time it was not a scene in a journey. Instead, it reappeared while I was walking through everyday life.
It happened at a Buddhist monastery in Seattle.
My ever-curious mother was the one who discovered this monastery. Enamored, she encouraged me to visit so I could see its beauty for myself. And indeed, the monastery was both a delight and a visual feast.
According to the man who gave a small group of us a tour of the shrine room, the monastery was built in the traditional style of those in eastern Tibetan. Three of the four walls were painted with a panorama of gentle-hued murals depicting important figures and Buddhist concepts. There were also beautiful statues of founding lamas and enlightened beings, as well as row after row of meditation cushions, and several festive multicolored victory banners hanging from the ceiling (imagine a long, cylindrical kite affixed with rows of bright, narrow strips of cloth that have pointed tips facing downward).
It was here, at this monastery, that I would see the final handful of narrowing rings from my journey. These rings, however, weren’t inside this fantastic building. They were outside, on the top of a white bell-shaped stupa (a structure meant to house the relics of highly realized beings).
At the top of the stupa’s base was a stack of several smooth, thick, golden rings, which grew concentrically smaller as they moved upward. And at their apex—a diamond! Or at least a very large crystal meant to represent a diamond.
A Tibetan representation of the bhumis (the crescent and the circle represent the sun and moon).
This was the very thing my guides had shown me shortly after my youngest son was born.
The only problem was, I couldn’t recognize the object right in front of me. I couldn’t make the connection between the shrinking rings in my journey and these thicker golden disks. Not even with the diamond lofted above them as a clue.
Fortunately, though it would take nearly four more years, the connection would finally become clear.
It happened when I visited the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas in Northern California. Here, I saw a different representation of the same rings I’d seen in the journey. Only now, the rings were red, and around their outer edges sat several small, golden figurines. Each seated in a full lotus position. And these rings, just like those in my journey, eventually grew smaller and smaller as they neared the top of the structure.
Bhumi representation at the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas in Northern California.
At that moment, I realized that what I saw in front of me—and what I had seen in my journey—was a depiction of the bhumis.
Apparently, there are multiple stages of enlightenment, and the bhumis are meant to represent the progression from the initial stage of enlightenment all the way up to the ultimate stage of full realization where one merges with an inconceivable oneness.
In my journey, the bhumis were depicted as the final set of rings that grew concentrically smaller. In contrast, the rings below them represented the innumerable incarnations leading up to the initial entry point into the bhumis.
Looking back at the stack of red rings, I notice that instead of a diamond, it had a figure of Shakyamuni Buddha at its peak. The human being who attained the “diamond mind” (enlightenment), thus becoming one with everything.
It had taken years, but my path had finally led me to this synchronistic moment. By then, my relationship with Buddhism had already taken hold. But what amazed me most was that my guides were beginning to offer up concepts from the Buddhist tradition long before I had any conscious connection to it.
This moment, and so many more like it, deepened my trust and faith that something profound is trying to lead us if only we allow it to. That there is truly help beyond what we see in front of us and ways we can focus our precious attention so that we can cultivate a sense of place and meaning in our lives.
These moments have also helped me understand that everything has its own timing—a timing that cannot be forced. And that there is a reason behind this timing.
The delay in understanding made the epiphany all the more profound for me. It sank ever deeper into my bones and consciousness than it might have had the realization come sooner.
One of my missions in this life is to help others consciously connect to the wisdom trying to communicate with them and guide them. A wisdom that can take many shapes and is not owned solely by any one tradition.
Though it may come to us in different forms, through varying channels, Spirit seeks each of us out. If we make time to listen and hear, it can help guide us through our soul’s seat on the mandala where we currently sit—through our individual lessons and shared learning experiences—helping us embody the grace and wisdom therein.
If you are interested in experiencing a healing session or would like to learn how to connect with your own guides (and yes, you have them even if you haven’t formerly met), please reach out and send me a message. I look forward to hearing from you.