Copyright © 2010 by William R. Mistele. All rights reserved.  

 

Toward the Realm of the Undines

 

Consider our relationship to the element of water. We have oceanography. We explore the bottom of the sea, name the fish, study their habitants, the ocean currents, the tides, etc.  We know about fish from fossils that lived hundreds of millions of years ago.  We can reconstruct and run simulations on how the ocean was formed.

   Does this not give us some sort of understanding of undines? If

Consider water as a symbol for feeling, we as human beings are still locked inside of our skins. We have no embassy in the realm of undines.  

    The undines feel no real connection to humanity.  To put it bluntly, from the point of view of undines the human race has not awakened to the beauty of this planet.  We are part dead, almost like zombies when it comes to feeling.  How so?

  An undine can sense immediately what another undine is feeling.  It can do the same with any life form including human beings.  From the point of view of an undine, a human being is weighed down by the world; human beings are enslaved to their material possessions; feelings appear to be unwelcome; sensory delight is almost a burden;

  Though human purposes are well-defined, the mind is strong, and the commitment to work and to build are at times amazing, the human soul and heart are like an animal trapped in a cage.  Fear, hunger, and craving are boiling and seething just beneath the surface of consciousness waiting to explode with violence and rage in any moment.

   You can pick up a rock and make it into a brick, a statute, a fence, part of an oven, a staircase, etc.  You can make a fire and cook a meal, boil water, refine iron to steel, or send a spacecraft to the moon.  You can breathe air and use its vibration to sing, to speak, to communicate, and in so doing to convey a precise idea from one mind to another mind.

  But put your hand in water and what happens? You can use the water to wash yourself, cleanse a wound, drink, water plants and fields. 

   But when an undine puts her hand in water she feels the entire sea and the life within it.  She has visions of past, present, and future.  She has the power to take a feeling, a dream, or a vision and amplify it so that it appears before her in its full power and perfection. 

   When an undine puts her hand in water, if she relaxes and if she lets go, she feels united to a sea of ecstasy.  This is the difference. 

  Some great curse or bioengineering mistake has been mankind’s fate that we have as yet not learned how to feel these things. 

   The realm of undines, then, is hidden from our consciousness.  It is like it does not exist.  We have a few stories about mermaids.  But these stories barely hint at what I have described.  The stories are on par with Santa Claus—they are fun up to a certain age and then we put them aside, no matter how much we may have enjoyed their wonder when we were young.

   To make it simple, let me break it down into three steps: the movement from where we are to entering the gate of this magical realm.

 

First step

 

The first step occurs when we experience a delight of pure sensuality so enchanting the ego is overcome and we completely let go into feeling and sensation.  This occurs, for example, when rafting down a river such as the Little Colorado.  There is no sign of civilization.  Time is measured in the rock formations of cliffs stretching back through geological ages.  The river has flowed for millions of years and you are part of that flow.  Your social identity is still real, but it is on hold, like a shirt or a coat you hang up in the closet when you come home.

  Here, drifting, floating, flowing, you can just let go.  It is a set of sensations—and the entire environment is arranged to amplify your feelings.  

   Or, who has not as a kid jumped into a puddle or when older went for a walk knowing you would become soaking wet in the rain?  Here again the sensations take over.  In a sense, the rain makes you part of the cloud that reaches down to the earth.  Thoughts are secondary to the experience.  The experiences and feelings vary, but hidden within them is the awareness that the body and nature are not separate. 

   How about floating in a lake at night?  Water can amplify feelings.  If you feel fear, you can imagine drowning.  If you feel relaxed, the entire lake spreads out around you relaxed and at peace.  If you try for serenity, your body, the lake, and the night sky of stars begin to blend, flowing in and through each other like a dream that has no end.  

   You can reflect upon your own experiences with water.  But this is the first step toward the gate into the realm of undines.  You will know that you are at this point when you can relax, close your eyes, and imagine some scene from nature.  And then you feel that the energies of nature are flowing through your body, extending and amplifying your sensual delight and the feeling of being alive.

 

Second Step

 

The second step in moving toward the gate of the realm of undines is to embody in some way the experiences of the first step.  Sensual delight and the feeling of release may come and go.  But these things can increase until they become a permanent presence inside of us.   

  These things can be found in works of art.  Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata or the Ninth Symphony with its Ode to Joy; in Van Gogh’s Starry Night; in songs such as in Silent Night’s, “all is calm, all is bright,” or “Oh beautiful, for spacious skies ….”

    They can be found in a negotiator who places himself amid conflict because he loves resolving conflicts.  He loves the act of creating peace.  It can be found in a relationship where there is “a secret sharing heart to heart” with a happiness or peace like a pool of still water in a cave beneath a mountain or flowing hidden and quiet like an underground stream.    

    The inner feeling within oneself reaches a level of strength in which it is no longer dependent on the events of the external world to nurture and to sustain it. 

   I sometimes meet individuals who have a sense of well-being that has reached this level.  Their inner feeling of peace shapes their lives.  Past, present, and future flow together and are joined.  The events of the outer world do not interfere with the feeling of being whole and complete that already exists inside of them. 

   Their identities are not shaped by their relationships, by their careers, or the social roles they assume.  They use their role in society as a way to express themselves always sensing that who they are and what they feel inside is forever independent and free of these outer activities. 

   You will know when you have reached this place, this second step toward the undine gate in this way.  If you sit still and relax, you will be able to sense in some way that is effortless and spontaneous that you are joined to nature from inside your self.

    In some practices, the individual imagines walking through woods or down a path until he or she comes to a clearing, a grove of trees, or a stone circle.  But in this step you are the grove or the stone circle, a lake, a waterfall, a sea, the moon, the stars above, the rain falling, etc.  The vibration of nature in some way is in and a part of you.  It is there in a permanent way.

 

Third Step

 

In the third step, you see the light from the realm of undines shining through the “gate” leading to that realm.  You are witness to the existence of another spiritual world.  When you see and experience this, you are standing free of human history and civilization. 

  This is called transcendence.  You are outside of time.  The   human world is still present, but you view it from a completely different perspective. 

   Great writers sometimes have a feel for this.  They focus on the most difficult situations in life.  They study and concentrate on every little detail.  They want to understand why people hold on with such strength to the images with which they identify themselves. 

   The writer sees the individual’s self-image as a reflection in a mirror.  It appears briefly shaped and illuminated by circumstances as arbitrary and malleable as a dream.  But people do not realize that. They cling to these images as if without them nothing else would exist.  They do not realize that they can cast them off and becomes something completely different—with different feelings, thoughts, and actions. 

   So the writer takes his observations and makes it into a play, a drama, a movie, or a poem.  He tells a story and says, “Look, see what I see—human beings make choices based on these influences.  But they forget that they are the ones choosing which influences to accept and which to reject.” 

   In the third step, when you look out your window at bright snow lit by the full moon, you may see “radiant beams from God’s holy face.” Or you may see shining “an inner peace with the universe that the Church has never known.”

   You may actually want to go out and dance naked in the snow.  Wild deer may walk up to you and lie down next to you and fall asleep.  When the entire world is wrong, you can still feel an inner peace and joy welling up from inside of you in spite of the destruction caused by human beings.   

  You sit down with a Hindu, Chinese, American Indian, or Tibetan masters.  When they look at you, they see some deep longing inside of themselves already embodied within you.  You are not the product of a human spiritual tradition.  Something from the Otherside, the Next World, is shining and alive inside of you.    

   You will know when you reach this third step because there are moments when you feel outside of time, looking at the human world with the light of another realm.

   And you also feel a sense of wonder touching you.  It conveys to you this message: you are meant to take the person you are and recreate it into something new, from a dream or vision you find in your heart. 

  The light from the realm of undines conveys this message: the universe exists to fulfill the purposes of love.  When you feel that energy you feel that the part of your self that was missing is now restored.  


The Gate to the Realm of Undines

 

How do you know when you have made it to the gate?  Easy.  Undines appear right next to you.  You share in common with them the way they feel and perceive.  They accept you because you have their vibration. 

   You can communicate mind to mind with thoughts.  But the connection is more a matter of embodying a watery vibration.  Let’s do a test.

   Take a few minutes and slowly move with your awareness through different images of water in nature.  Become mountain stream, a waterfall, and a pool.  Become a lake, a river, and the sea.  Become an iceberg frozen in an arctic bay or a small bay in an island in the tropics.  Drop your mind down into an ocean trench, become the sea.   

   Notice the different vibration produced in your body as you identify with each of these ways in which water appears in nature.  If you meet or imagine an undine next to you, match her vibration.  Let her energy flow in and define what you feel inside of you.  Learn from the other.  Extend your senses and feelings though the way the other perceives and feels. 

   Long ago when I first met women with a profound sense of well-being inside of them, it took me decades to learn to produce those feelings inside of myself.  But now I go to the source of such feelings as they derive from the energies underlying nature and as they exist within the astral plane.  We are meant to learn from each other.  We are meant to flow in and through and give birth to each other from the gifts we give and from the life we share.