I could exhaust a thesaurus trying to describe where I have been every night this past week, and I would completely fail in describing the first glimpse of awareness. I haven’t publicly written because of any forbiddance placed upon me. Nay, I have been greatly encouraged to try!
But what words can hold the cooling of the body after the breath of life leaves it? What words can pass on the descent of consciousness after all connection to anything physical has been stripped away? What metaphor can serve a darkness that is blacker than black but so bright it blinds?
I wasn’t. But I was. What entered died. What came back is different.
I struggled with conveying the visuals of the Path of Vau, and the emotional challenges it tempered me with. What terrifies me is nothing to y’all. What loosens y’all bowels amuses me. It was hard to convey the depths of my reactions. Some asked me why the very last test, where I had to allow the flood to drown me, was the hardest, even after the test of emotional abandonment. It’s only drowning after all, as many times as I have died in my dreams, this is just another way, right? (No.)
But this…
There are no metaphors, no similes, no analogies that can capture the shape of the shadow cast on the floor. Everything I have tried to come up with has been as useful as a series of polished bronze mirrors trying to reflect sunlight into the heart of a labyrinth. And failing.
Where I have been, human cognition isn’t. I return empty handed and babbling wild-eyed madness. Only those that have been where I was know of what I speak. Forgive me this failure.