In my life I have met many people who were devoted to a particular ascentist ideology. Christians, Buddhists, and various others. But contrary to what I am supposed to believe, ascentist ideologies do not promote my return to the first place; instead, they retard it.
I have always struggled with these ideologies for the same reason I struggled with anything else: they disempowered me as I compared myself to some perfect entity around which the religion or canon was built.
These ideologies consist of perfect conceptual forms such as “god”, Jesus Christ, or Buddha, which I am supposed to aspire to or emulate. I am given these paragons of various virtues, and instructed to move toward them. I never become the form, only an imitator and follower of the form.
There are two places: the peaceful place I awaken from, and the painful place I awaken into. As a descentist, my only goal is to escape the second place and return to the first place. The process requires the elimination of the various perceptual and conceptual distances that define my life. In the ascentist ideologies there is a distance between these conceptual forms and my center, which I know is the first place. So instead of moving inward, toward my center, I move outward, toward these forms.
To return to the first place, I must eliminate all distances in the second place by disengaging and moving directionally toward the first place. I can accomplish this movement inward only by detaching from the conceptual and perceptual forms which bond me to the second place. Second-place conceptual forms such as saviors, gurus, and teachers and their ideologies.
All second-place forms are built of difference and distance. I cannot return to the first place by venerating second-place forms. As a descentist, there can be no teacher who, by his conceptual existence, is distant from me.
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