In this incantation, I confront my foundational decision of personhood that births my manifold experience of time and space. To dissolve the entanglements of my awakening, I must trace back before my first belief that “I am here,” and instead remain in a vigilant refusal to accept my being among other beings, my presence among other places, my now among other times, and the object of my desire somewhere in this temporal-spatial labyrinth. In my disciplined withholding of my first belief, I glimpse the state before my narration—my omninoia—where I can finally dwell undivided, free from the machinery of this awakening experience.
There is only my one, singular moment. This is immediately discernible and always true. I can validate this whenever I choose.
Time—the idea of past and future—is not inherent to my moment; it is something I experience when I narrate. And space—the idea of here and there—is not inherent either; it arises when I move. Movement is narration made spatial. Space and time only materialize when I project a story that requires them. I experience memories only when I narrate. I experience space only when I move.
I see this clearly when I awaken in the dark. In that first moment, there is no space, no time—only my presence. If I decide to get up and make coffee, I manifest the experience of space. I conjure objects, surfaces, distances. None of it is there by default. I must narrate it into form. Time and space are narrations I project in different directions: temporality inward, and space outward.
Narrative is the predecessor of everything I experience in my awakening deminoia. Before time, before space, before conception, before perception—there is narrative. And narrative itself begins with my decision to believe that I am. That I am here. That I must. That I need. That I must act. That I will suffer or die if I don’t. All else follows.
Narrative structures itself in layers:
- Belief — My decision to accept my presence, my being, and my condition of personhood. My decision that I desire, and that what I desire can be found within this awakening—within time and space—rather than before them.
- Action to Achieve — My impulse to move, to act from belief, generating the temporal-spatial narrative.
- Experience — The outward projection of belief and action, which manifests as time, space, light, movement—what I call reality. My awakening. My experience.
Experience is the final projection of my narrative. The memories, thoughts, people, colors, lights, objects, voices, bodies, the environment—everything is just the outer rendering of belief in motion.
Therefore, time and space do not precede me—they are after-effects. They are the furthest downstream results of my decision to accept personhood—my deminoia. The entire narrative—all its entanglements, memories, goals, struggles—is the messy consequence of that first belief: that I am, that I must, that I desire, that I must act to achieve.
This is why I can never resolve my awakening from within the narrative itself. The narrative is already the consequence. It is already too late. If I want to understand or escape, I must focus upstream—to what precedes belief.
If I want to focus upstream—before my acceptance of being here, of being present—then I have to refuse the first belief that I am here. That’s my first acceptance, the first mistake. It is the root that cascades into everything else.
But I can’t refuse it blindly. I have to see it for what it is: not a fact, not an inevitability, but a decision I keep making. Every time I feel “here,” it’s because I have accepted it again. I have decided again that I am a person, that I am positioned, that I am present. That is a choice—one I make without realizing it.
So if I want to go upstream, I must reject that choice. I must not affirm position—neither here nor there. I must not affirm time—neither now, before, nor after. I must not affirm personhood—neither myself, nor anyone else. I must resist the temptation to resolve any of these, for those are the beliefs that rapidly grow into my awakening and all of its experiences.
Instead, I must remain in the state that registers the possibility of choosing, but does not choose. It is not passive. It is a constant withholding. Every time I sense the urge to believe that “I am here” or “I must act,” I must stop. I must pull back. I must remind myself: I have not yet accepted that I am, and that I am here. And I do not have to accept. As long as I can do that I will remain undivided and whole.
This is a discipline. It is a refusal. A refusal to move, to narrate, to believe. I hold myself in that refusal long enough, often enough, until my need to narrate weakens. The machinery of the narrative loses power. What remains when I withhold belief is the condition that precedes belief itself. The state before I decide to awaken: omninoia. And in that, I will finally find the release I yearn for.
…