Back in 1990/1991, I underwent a series of intense spiritual battles as I fell inward to face my own demons and shadows. I was finally exhausted from all the internal confrontations and tribunals. There was almost nothing left of my ego and psyche. I was unemployed, feeling trapped and without any sense of a future. I could not go on any further. I needed a sign from God that this was not all a delusional mental illness going on in my head. I wanted proof that there was something more profound and legitimate occurring. I prayed heavily for a sign. It did not matter what the sign was, but I needed something solid. It could have been a priest showing up at the door or a Bible levitating through the air, but I needed some sort of proof.
Within those two weeks of intense praying for some sort of sign, I awoke one night at about 2AM with the feeling that there was presence in the room. I opened my eyes and looked up at the ceiling. The square ceiling light was not on but to the left of it, something was occurring. It first appeared as a luminescent cloud-like substance near the ceiling coming out of a slit in the fabric of space-time and then widened into a hole in which more started pouring out – it looked like an illuminated fog. I shook my head back and forth and blinked my eyes a few times to try to snap out of it, to try and stop whatever was occurring, but it continued. Then I saw two snake-like tails or legs moving within the portal. I remember thinking, “OK...if I am hallucinating…why the heck am I seeing snake-like movements? This makes no sense.” The tails or legs were at first adjacent to each other as they started to come out of the portal. The one in the background may have had a slightly smaller diameter than the one in the foreground. I cannot distinctly remember if one was coming out of the portal while the other was going in, but their color was a very dark black with some shades of dark grey on the underside. My mind was interpreting them as snake-like, but the movements could have been something going through phase shifts of time as it came out from a different reality and into this one.
As the serpentine appendages moved, something else started to appear. At first it was a greyish-oval blur, but then it started to form and focus into a face. The face appeared from the side as almost lion or dog-like, with a few spots of stubble or broken whiskers. It then turned towards me and started to change more into a grotesquely wrinkled hobgoblin, a withering hag or old man of decay as it came at me. It opened its mouth and started to lower itself towards me with a howling, screaming expression. No doubt, it was terrifying beyond words.
I was terrified and did not know if it was merely a hallucination or something beyond. I felt as if it was coming to destroy me. I knew fighting and resisting its attack would have been pointless for it was far more powerful and greater than I. If these were my final moments of existence, I’d rather die with feelings of love than in a state of terror. Having nothing else to lose and feeling like I had no future, in a final act of desperation, I lowered my ego and changed my internal emotional state from fear and into love – I was undergoing an ego death. If this entity was going to destroy me then let it feel the sacrifice of my offering of love towards it. As I projected love onto it, its advancement towards me suddenly stopped, almost as if it was startled by my response. The horrible face then either dissipated, pulverized or changed into ravishing beauty. The new face that appeared was an ivory porcelain-like whitish mask with dark pupil-less eyes. The dark snake-like tails or legs were no longer present, but this elegant whitish smooth face that was now before me had golden silky wisps or wing-like glowing strands flowing from it – a discharge of divine radiance. We stared at each other for about 5 to 10 seconds but it felt like an eternity. Then the side of its lips curled upward into a comforting smile of grace. It was not just a smile of a greeting, however, but a flirtatious come-hither and “join me” – a sort of spiritual foreplay. I then felt this wave of love come from it as it overwhelmed me with both ecstatic and erotic bliss. It was the most comforting and embracing feeling of joy that I had ever encountered. It told me that everything was going to be fine for I had passed its test, if that is what it was. I then found myself rising out of my body almost as if we were both merging together. As this was happening, the whiteish face of beauty was reversing back into the portal from which it came and I was travelling upwards along with it. I then fell back asleep and do not remember anything after entering the portal.
When I awoke at dawn, I was somewhat in a state of shock, for I did not know how to process what had occurred. It was although I had successfully purged the manifestations of all the demons within and freed my true self – I had released the trapped immortal Daemon within. Whatever entered the room a few hours earlier may have been demonic, but whatever left was certainly benevolent and angelic. I did, however, know that this was the sign. It told me that God and the spiritual realms are real and that is all that I needed to continue with my life mission and conclude that there was something more to the madness going on in my mind. The vision saved me for it allowed me to cross over from a madman to a mystic. I never told my counselor about this visual experience for I did not want the risk of her telling me it was just a hallucination and nothing more. It was the only thing holding me together at this point.
The first time I ever told anyone about the experience was about 2004 to my future wife. The second time I told anyone about the experience was in the summer of 2019 to one of my best friends from childhood during a road trip to the state of Maine. Then, in 2020, I came upon Gnosticism, the notion of a Demiurge and Sophia. I was raised from an orthodox Christian path and did not realize how similar my encounters were to those described in Gnostic scriptures, such as The Nag Hammadi Library. I often wonder if I underwent a hieros gamos (sacred marriage) and entered into the bridal chamber when going through that portal. Perhaps I was seeing a reflection of my own soul. That was the only time in my life that I had such a vision and experience, but I can still occasionally sense that divine being nearby.