In my time honored tradition of avoiding one problematic thing by immersing myself in another one, I made another attempt to pass the flames of the Path of Daleth again. I reckoned that if the angelic blessing was going to be dumped on my head willing or not, I might as well take advantage of it.
I did not think I would be able to transition to Binah. The headspace is different. The awareness is different. Sometimes I make it, but what I bring back is in an incomprehensible language that I only have the feelings of but can’t transmit the memory of in any humanly comprehensible way.
I was surprised to open my eyes and not only find myself standing on the waters of Binah, but to be softly glowing myself as well.
Mary was waiting for me.
I did not immediately notice my form had clothes, or that those clothes were as black as my form under them was glowing. I only noticed a shimmer of a shadow far behind Mary. The exit of her realm and the entrance to the path ascending the mountain.
“Mary…” I took a step towards her. If I meant to kneel or to merely take her hand, I don’t know. She was suddenly before me with her right hand soft upon my forehead. My forward travel was immediately arrested and I found myself falling to my knees. I cried out as my legs buckled.
“Mary!” I pulled at my clothes over my chest. Nondescript and indistinct save for their greedy blackness and lack of hue, they ripped loudly in my hands as I rent them in frustration so completely, they fell away from me to sink under the surface of the waters that were solid under me.
Mary said nothing, smiled gently, and without any motion of pushing, pushed on my forehead just so much further. As I fell, I cried out again.
“Mary!” I fell prone on the ground. It was difficult to move. I was naked lying on the surface of the waters that Mary knelt over. I did not care that my form was reflecting my physical body I had left behind. I did care that the form was somehow restrained and I flapped uselessly at my form in a vain effort to remove this false skin from my spirit.
Her right hand never moved from my face. Her left hand held back her robes as she leaned over me. In a voice as soft as the waters around us, she spoke. “No. Not yet.”
“MOTHER!” The strength of my voice surprised me, but it was all the strength I had left. My power completely spent, I had nothing to resist Mary’s tender push against my face.
She pushed me under the waters where my form and my mind dissolved almost immediately after being engulfed. I knew nothing else, not even the nothing of unbeing after. I only knew it had ended when the alarm woke me in the morning.
In the hours between “dreaming” this and writing it up, I have arrived at the hypothesis that the dissolution of form is what has been necessary from the beginning. And not just form, but anything that is not part of the desire for unity that this quest has sparked within me. As I am learning from other encounters, holding on to the past or to any construct formed of lies will hinder or even prevent my unification with my recovered (recovering?) pieces. I may have been able to bring parts of my conscious self to Binah, but I am not sure any of those parts will be able to ascend higher from it.