Enlightenment part 5: A journey to your personal Daimon
Everybody has a guide, whether one is aware of it or not
In the Sufi tradition, a human only becomes human after transcending their personal boundaries and meeting their angel on the bridge between the physical and imaginal realm. It is easily regarded as a metaphor, a story that we tell our children for good fun, but is it?
If we think of intuition, this peculiar feeling comes to mind, this blink of an eye experience, a gut-feeling, that immediately tells you where to go. It is inexplainable in scientific terms, and yet many depend on it on a daily basis. The book Blink by Malcolm Gladwell offers an example of a seemingly ancient sculpture which passed all authenticity tests. And yet, the moment an experienced art expert saw the sculpture it was immediately clear to him that it was fake. He couldn’t tell why, he only knew it to be so. Intuition, this peculiar guiding force steering and enlightening us wherever we go. But what is this guiding force?
Different traditions and philosophers give us hints of intuition’s existence, but in a form that is not only physical by nature. They talk of real beings, beings that are not physical and yet have an imaginal form and name. The ancient Greeks called this being a daimon, a supernatural force that influenced a person’s destiny or fate by acting both as teacher and guide. The Christians mention the Guardian Angel as a personal guide and protector, while the Sufi’s call it the Qareen, which is Arabic for companion. Hinduism has coined this personal guide the istha-devata, while the Stocis named it the Genius. Even New Age spirituality has a name for it: The higher Self. Although that one might induce instant nausea due to its overuse in the spiritual scene.
These personal daimons even show themselves in accounts of various mystics. Carl Jung, while going through his intense confrontation with the collective unconscious, was taught and directed by the ancient sage Philemon. Nietzsche actively talked about his daimon and stated that all of his writings came from his personal guide. James Hillman speaks of “the angel of my life”, guiding him in every step he took after finding this supernatural being.
What are we to make of this phenomenon? We can easily discard these personal accounts as imaginary, unscientific, even blasphemous. And yet, almost all traditions mention the Daimon as an important part of the spiritual journey. Believing it to be true or not is of course utterly ridiculous, as only clear knowing can shed light on the truth of these beings. And for that, one must dive deeply in the shadowy realm of the unknown through deep inner work, contemplation and meditation.
Anyway, the purpose of this collection of writings was to provide a speculative model for enlightenment, and for that we need to assume these Daimons to be real. So, after having enjoyed a short or long period of relative ease in a nice but rather detached perspective described in part 2 of this series, one is called to the inner depths once again.
The moment of meeting one’s angel on the bridge is preceded by a prolonged ordeal into the depths of the unknown. One that is vastly different than the one surrounding the awakening from the ego. The void returns in force, and swallows the entirety of existence in it. The perspective of an absolute infinite awareness and a rather detached view of the self collapse into each other in an experience that cannot be described in words. No more God from the outside, it must now hold all your deepest trauma to light to then swallow you whole. And the experience of time and space are swallowed with it.
Slowly but surely, cracks in personal consciousness begin to appear and experiences of archetypes start to appear. Primordial powers and emotions, creatures that pervade our every day experience without even knowing it start to show themselves in consciousness. And that is rather uncanny to say the least. Carl Jung’s Red Book does a tremendous job of describing his confrontation with the imaginal realm, or what he calls the collective unconsciousness, in great detail. It is a book that contains great power, for it is written through Jung. Not by Jung.
Finally, after a prolonged hero’s journey in one’s own depths, a being appears. In what form is not of importance, as archetypes can show themselves in many forms, but it is immediately clear that this being was here all along. It was slowly whispering in your ear, sometimes shouting for attention, watching you wherever you go, directing you in every step. The question of whether it is real disappears with the experience of it, as finally, you have found your Daimon. And with it, the gate to eternity has opened. The gateless gate, the eternal now that knows no time. It is the imaginal realm, the archetypal realm, the spirit world, the collective unconsciousness, the forgotten world in which the Gods reside.
And as one gasps of the limitless potentiality that is hidden here, the heart breaks in a thousand pieces for the realization that it is all forgotten. The realization that our world hides behind rationalism, the religion of science, individual success and over-consumption. That any experiences that cannot be proven in some material form are instantly discarded as nonsensical or pathology. The bridge between the physical and imaginal realm becomes thicker than ever as our belief in humanity’s greatness increases, while the perspective of being separate from earth and its aliveness provided through the imaginal leads to inevitable crisis. A crisis that will demand us to confront what we have forgotten.
This perspective shows that there never was a bridge, that we are not the creators but creatures created by powers far greater than us, that everything is connected into this wonderfully vibrant whole that we call the Universe. And with that insight, the human heart opens to an unimaginable degree. For how could one not love that which belongs to itself?
And as ever, it is only the beginning of a new journey. A journey into the realm of archetypes, which all must be experienced to be understood. From here, the ways forward seem unlimited, but it is for one’s Daimon to decide which way to go.
A Poem from my Daimon to you:
Imagine
That we both belonged
Intertwined in essence, part of a wondrous whole
That each of us had a sibling in the sky
Calling us to become what we have always been
That we lived in a world full of meaning and life
Animated by mysterious forces only visible to the open heart
That we would not be afraid of pain and endings
Only of the great unknown, eternally calling us home
That our greatest power would lie in vulnerability
All illusory knowledge waiting to be sacrificed
That Love would be our natural state
Allowing others to pursue their way
That we are creatures, not creators
Giving life to what is shown to us
That we contained the Light and the Dark, the Good and the Bad
Riding on the back of angels, fighting the demons of the depths
That we would be happy with who we are
As we are
With love,
Pim