Many people seek visions and spiritual, otherworldly experiences in deliberate ways. Obviously if you can find someone to guide you and teach you in person, that's ideal. There are lots of other resources out there, and with patience and sense, a person can learn a lot from books, guided meditations and so forth.
Of course it doesn't always work like that. Sometimes things just happen. It's most likely that unexpected spiritual experiences will come in times of crisis, brought on by fever, sleep deprivation, extreme stress and the like. It's when life breaks us open that we're most likely to have these unsought experiences, and to be obliged to question our own sanity.
When you've gone on a deliberate process of visualisation, there's nothing unsettling about having visions. When your brain feels like it is falling apart because you've not slept in days, and you don't think the wolf you can see is real even though it looks real… that's a whole other kind of experience. It's widely said that the difference between spiritual practices and madness is that the spiritual stuff you do deliberately and can come back from on your own terms. I've also read a few people exploring what happens to you when what occurs is more like madness. I've found Jez Hughes especially helpful on this score, and Gabor Mate has powerful things to say about it too.
There's a power in being ambushed by the unexpected. When you're doing things in an organised and controlled way it can all feel like a pleasant psychological process. That can be fine - there's a lot of benefit to be had from visualising and contemplating in deliberate ways. But at the same time, if you want experiences of wildness, of the numinous, or the divine, that's never going to feel entirely safe or within your control. Spiritual experiences are often at their most real and affecting when you haven't actively sought them or tried to shape them.
It helps a lot if you have some support for all of this. If your culture frames visions as insanity, then you have limited options for how to deal with your experiences. It's good to connect with likeminded people and find what support you can. It's good to have people you can trust to help you make sense of things in a spiritual context when it feels like you might be going mad. People who can be there for you during the days when you have to get on with your ordinary life even though you have been eaten by owls. People who can help you be in pieces when a spiritual experience has torn you apart in a needful way. People who can hear you when something on the edge of dream stitched you into the landscape.
There are things we cannot be taught and cannot be prepared for. Some things can only be known through experience. I've been walking a druidic path for twenty years at this point, and was actively Pagan for years before that. I've studied meditation, I've taken guided journeys and I've read a lot of books. In recent weeks I've had to re-learn a lesson about being open to extremity. I cannot both protect myself carefully, and be torn apart by owls. I've had quite a few years of living cautiously and being very shut down, and I know that's changing.
I'm not here to teach anyone how to do what I'm doing, but I feel strongly called to share the stories of what is happening. I have no definite sense of what my current journey is about, or for, but I do have a strong feeling that I should write about it and share whatever comes to me. I won't necessarily explain what comes from where, I think I just need to put these visions into the world and trust to that process.
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