Hi all. Have just read through the thread as I've been away for a while.
I can't add any specifics from experience other than to say that I've known from a very young age that through a long series of accidents, mishaps and illnesses not to mention a life long tendency to hang it out on a motorcycle that I've been very well looked after.
I'm probably being saved up for a very big one!
One thought that does strike me is this. Depending on your particular belief system you can describe angels and other spiritual beings in many different terms. Buddhism has a huge range of Buddhas, gods, demons, devas and other beings. Christianity tends towards saints and angels. Angels have been developed into a whole system of belief by some within the new age. Hinduism has it's own families, as did Egypt, as do native traditions all over the world. It goes on forever.
We know meanwhile that mind creates. That the reality we perceive is of our own making, that while lots is specific to ourselves that it also shares lots of commonalities with what's perceived by others. e.g. our shared view of the world.
So it seems very likely that what we each perceive in terms of spiritual beings is a reflection of our own life experience and/or beliefs.
I like the view that says that despite local appearances there is only one. One mind, one God, one source that at the relative thinking mind level manifests our combined internal (esoteric) and external realities (which are actually all a part of the same whole) in terms that we can make sense of - drawing on our personal store of archetypes, images and so on to paint whatever picture it needs to communicate at our level.
One which is of course relative or dualistic since that's what we're set up to perceive - when we do perceive absolute realities not based on subject/object time/space (e.g. Monroe's focus 15) we struggle to make sense of them beyond sensing pervasive love and the like.
You could say that the creative intention is the mind of God in action, that what manifests (internally and externally) is God inasmuch as we can perceive he/she/it. (that view kind of brings a different and rather more pointed slant to what polluting the earth and harming its inhabitants means, doesn't it?)
In this model all these spiritual entities are the forms that aspects, tendencies or archetypes within this universal mind manifest in so they can communicate and act in ways we can perceive in the relative. This includes negative (wrathful) as well as positive (peaceful) entities - the polarities must exist in a relative world. It also provides for the possibility of various levels of beings ranging from those directly involved at our personal levels (guides, angels and the like) back up via ever higher levels of merging to God.
It's perhaps worth saying as well that the ordinary (e.g. the brick you trip over in the street) is just as much a manifestation of the divine in this model as the appearance of some entity in a dream. Both have the ability to heavily influence your life.
This isn't an original view, it's the teaching (at a slightly higher level) of most of the great spiritual traditions. But it does suggest that there's a point beyond which our trying to map out and rigidly cling on to the existence of a permanent world of objectively existing beings becomes pointless. Downright unhealthy in fact. It just becomes another restrictive belief system.
The nature of the cosmic ordering service is such that in order to work with us it'll just serve up whatever objects and entities it can draw on from our belief systems. Need a devil so you can work your fear of evil - no problem. Need the blessed Theresa to intercede on your behalf - no problem. Need a channeling from the Pleiades - no problem either. Need a visit from a grey - at your service.
Ultimately we seem to exist within and are a part of it seems a very magical reality created by the interchange of mind and energy. Einstein got as far as showing us that matter and energy were interchangeable. Modern quantum physics has shown us that these are both ultimately controlled by intention - that existence is built from the interpaly of mind and energy.
Best of all our experience and that of thousands of years of exploration has shown us that this is ultimately a loving intention.
Robert Anton Wilson used the term 'chapel perilous' to describe this ever shifting but very wonderful hall of mirrors. All that's required us is to lighten up and join the dance....
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