This Beings' Recounting in His Own Words
Although I no longer see ‘beginnings or endings’ of things and phenomena, (causality just isn’t that simple) to recount what happened regarding the events described here, there is a starting point as all narratives must begin somewhere.
Please understand, that for me I see that there is only a cyclical or spiralling unfoldment, like an eternally opening lotus flower.
All phenomena are processes that have no knowable beginning or ending but are always somewhere in the middle of infinity.
However, to Start the Recounting…
It began back in 2010, I was in my early 40s during a period of upheaval with significant changes afoot in the lives of my family and myself.
It was winter, and I had just started to live at the bottom of our garden in a yurt that I had made. This lifestyle change—to adopt living in a circular structure, close to the elements, all year round, was I believe, pivotal in what started to unfold.
There is something primordial about living with the elements surrounding us- the weather in all its diverse forms, separated by just a few layers of canvas, yak felt and wooden poles. Living ‘in the round’ as our ancient ancestors used to, flicked some switch deep inside me. I started to become aware of a line of perception opening up within me, a powerful deepening of connection to my human, genetic and ancestral-line origins.
I became aware of or ‘saw’ radiating circular row upon row of faces disappearing off into the dark and murky distance (past?). They all faced inward, all with their attention towards the centre where I was, I was being watched by many nameless faces of the past.
I felt a call that I needed to start incorporating a personalised ritual more regularly into my life again. Although rather ad-hock and clumsy at first, the intention, was pure of heart- It was ‘to give thanks & honour for Great Spirit, The Earth & all the beings upon and around Her’. Into this reinvigorated regular spiritual practice, (Bacti-yoga, Puja or whatever you call it) I was particularly conscious to regularly include thanks to the ancestors as well.
During a change in my life’s direction, I reconnected with my dear school friend and we started spending more time together. Synchronistically she also found herself precipitating a deep healing awakening and unfolding in her life, we began weaving our rituals spiritual lives and ultimately our lives together.
I (we both in our own ways) found perhaps not surprisingly, that living more simply like this, with a much deeper connection to the Earth, far enough away from much of the trimmings of modern civilisation, surrounded by abundant nature, and little to no electrical disturbances, enabled us to begin to peer through the pervasive veils of our perpetually distracted perception.
A greater realignment started to occur, with ever-deepening experiences which began unfolding for me of what is termed as ‘the self’, our connection to all life, and the Cosmos. We were both becoming more and more profoundly aware of something unimaginably greater than ‘The sum of all the parts’.
With this growing awareness came a sense of being profoundly safely held by something unknowable, eternal- whole and All-Encompassing. Initially, this healing was through reconnecting more deeply with the rhythms of the sun, moon, planets and seasons. This enabled our organic ‘vehicle’ to reboot in many fundamental ways: the inner circadian clock comes back into alignment and bit by bit the voices of nature, the wild, the elements and the Cosmos started to become more ‘audible’, with ever-deepening comprehension and integration.
Old psychological barriers began to dissolve naturally as part of the process of meditative and mindful, self-reflective daily practice. Although the letting go and dissolving of deep-seated and unskillful characteristics of the conditioned mind, past traumas and all forms of outmoded beliefs, takes much inner work to relinquish, this seemed like a good start. I have found that the ‘ The Great Work’ is an ongoing process, never complete but going on in ever-expanding ways with the occasional quantum jump of perception and relational dynamic that enabled deepening levels to open up to my perception.
First Contact
Into this alchemical cauldron of midlife transformation, a faint voice, vibration, a kind of tune or song started to resonate within me. Calling up from the very deepest parts of my subconscious and somehow related to an ancient ancestral line. It slowly started to register in the corner of my mind's ear, sometimes there sometimes barely discernible. Notable for its different cadence from all of the others.
‘Sounds and noises’ were coming at me from the background of my being; it kind of gently called to my attention. It was much more subtle than anything else that had grasped my attention from the subtle realms before. I sensed or felt it deep inside my bones and connective tissue, and it hummed around inside the echo chamber of my mind. Initially only distantly at irregular times, usually just before I dropped into sleep.
The ‘sound’ seemed to be vast but also distant and remote. It elicited a feeling of melancholic soulfulness even sad at times. It became very recognisable to me as it would always leave me feeling slightly lost and lonely for a while, yet it also had power and beauty- discordant yet paradoxically harmonious at the same time. reminiscent of a synthesiser playing harmonies of one single yet fractured voice sounding like several, singing together yet slightly out of sync. An untranslatable and disturbing lullaby; forlorn, abandoned, echoing down in a deep dark well or cave.
As I became more aware of it as a thing, I started to discern that was not just my mind regurgitating vignettes of my memories, (it was far too weird and alien feeling for that) I got the sense of someone or something that had been cast into an infinitely dark, unknowably vast and deep chamber alone. The vibrations that resonated up through me (for they were coming up from below, deep in the Earth) seemed to be the only reference that I could discern were the echoes of a lonely lament that returned to me again and again. It would come and go sometimes nothing for weeks, then I would get a period where it would be almost continuous like a saddening musical tinnitus.
Over time (months), this vibration came slowly more and more into a cohesive form for me, sometimes it sounded like some kind of untranslatable poetry or song. Strangely it was alien and yet the feelings it imparted were completely relatable a heart-breaking lament. it was a persistent anomaly, I simply could not put my finger on what its allusive nature meant.
It took me a while to come to terms with the fact that no one else was experiencing it, but neither was I losing my mind.
I did several crosschecks with my partner and other sensitive and trusted friends and accepted that it was strong persistent and visceral enough for me to be experiencing something that for me at least was subjectively real, even though clearly no one else could hear it even when I could, but that neither was I losing my mind, although there were times when I questioned these others affirmed that I remained from their outside perspective my ‘normal’ self... having my mind to some degree put at rest by the soothing words of others I became mentally freed up to pursue my usual naturally inquisitive way.
I started to come out from these experiences with certain queries in my heart/mind:
“Who and what is the source of this vibration so deep within me and yet also from far below my feet?"
And then a less clearly formed question—
What is the ‘Deva of Humanity?’