Awaken toil untoil unwaken

In this incantation, I confront the layered nature of my selfhood as a grotesque cavity filled with physical, mental, and temporal residues that bind me to illusions of value. I see clearly how my possessions, memories, and desires form a strong plaque that hardens into identity, separating me from the truth I seek. By methodically clearing out these cavities of their possessions, beliefs, and memories I return to the original entrance where true clarity resides. There, freed from plaque, I can finally encounter what is real and eternal.


My goal is just to systematically clean out the cavities. Like a giant dentist i have to identify all the rot and clean it out, remove the cavities until they are clean. There are a lot of deposits. My physical cavity is full of things in places. Things in places that I attach value to. The things are objects and possessions, but also spaces I live in. People and even animals I treasure. They are all experiences that I value, all plaque. Momentary configurations that give me value. That give me experiences that I want. That give me some part of what I think I am looking for. But they are not what I am looking for because what I am looking for is back at the entrance to the cavity. Before the cavity. Everything here in the outer space is plaque that traps me here.

My mental cavity is where it all comes together… the relationships between all the plaque harden and form there…. The root system that keeps it all hard and in place. I value my enterprise because of a complicated web of values which, in truth, are all misplaced because there is nothing that it can give me that I truly want. 

… Awaken, toil, untoil, unwaken

There is nothing here that I want. It is all plaque. Plaque that I have given meaning to, but that has no meaning when I step back to the entrance. I need to get back to the entrance and I will see it. 

I must let go of the things I own and possess physically… this empties my thirdself cavity. But I must also then empty my secondself cavity, the things and objects I own here. Beliefs, desires, and memories. I look at pictures and journals and I believe that is me. That is mine. That is some historical record of my activity. But that is not true. I did not do those things. I did not say those things. Because I can only be what I am now in this moment. There is no past where I did those things I write in those journals that are 25 years old. I did not do that. I am not of that. But as long as I believe that I did those things I will be held captive by them. That is the plaque. The physical plaque is that which I possess and inhabit physically, and the mental plaque is that which I possess and inhabit mentally. 

… I need to let go of my memories as much as I let go of my physical things. I value my memories more than my physical things but they are no more important or truly valuable. Just as I cannot truly possess things, I cannot possess memories. Those things did not happen. All that I am is right now. It is my memories and my things that shape the cavities I awaken into. I must let go of the physical to confront the temporal. And I must let go of the temporal to return to the eternal.

I awaken and toil. I must then untoil and unwaken to return.