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Learning to understand the symbols of the inner reality and integrating it with the waking world. (25/6/2004)

Osho tells us that the physical body and each of the subtle bodies has its own symbols of dreaming and its own reality. Some experiences are significant signposts along the journey towards truth. Over the years I have had many wonderful experiences in either a dream, an altered state of consciousness or a meditation, and I have often wondered about the reality of these experiences. There have been countless times where the experience was so intense and so real it had to be more than a construct of my imagination. For example:

In a dream last night there was the symbology of an inner landscape. The dream started with back street market stalls. In one stall there are tree seedlings on display. Their beauty attracts me to a doorway at the back of the shop, which gives me a view from the top of a hill over a rocky hillside down to a plain and out to the ocean. The scene is too beautiful for me to fully grasp and I just cry at the awesome beauty. Now I understand that the symbology represents a glimpse of the 'energy' of my inner world.

In a number of breathwork meditations I experienced an intense feeling of love for Osho and an old lover, Viharo. The love is so intense that it is experienced as being too beautiful. It is almost too painful to experience, it brings tears to my eyes and hurts my heart. The difficulty I face in relaxing totally into these types of experiences is probably because of painful memories that have not been healed, hence when the kundalini energy moves it becomes blocked at a chakra causing pain.

I have also had many dreams of being in love with 'old lovers' usually Viharo. There is such an intense and overwhelming feeling of love in the dream that sometimes the feeling stays with me for the day. Interestingly enough I don't have this feeling for these women in the waking state. Now I understand that the dream imagery, once again is symbolic and a way of interpreting the love energy that is within me. The challenge that faces me now is to find a way to integrate these inner experiences with that of the everyday waking reality.

The movement of the kundalini energy will be experienced differently for everyone and the way that it is experienced will be coloured by our model of the world. So for some Indians, where the serpent was a potent symbol and everyday occurrence it came to represent the kundalini energy stored at the first chakra. Snakes however, were not a part of Buddha's world during his life as a prince as much as flowers, so Buddha uses the symbol of the flower to represent the kundalini energy.

To try and use a symbol from another culture or era, is to impose something upon ourselves that is not meaningful. It is 'borrowed knowledge' and not our personal experience of truth. We must learn to recognise and understand the symbols that our subtle bodies present to us, as being a representation of the divine territory.

Abby Eagle

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