Everything I sense, imagine, believe, desire, and experience from the moment I awaken until the moment I asleepen is a distortion resulting from the disorientation of not knowing who, what, or where I am.
In this state of disorientation, I attribute truth and reality to that which is neither. I decide that the most true things are those which are the least consequential, while disregarding those which are most consequential.
My imagined existence that I awaken into every morning, and asleepen out of every evening, is a state identical to the act of a child physically spinning around in circles until he is dizzy and disoriented. Asked to describe the world, that spinning child would struggle to remain on his feet. But were that child to be raised in a spinning state, he would adapt to the movement, find a balance, and eventually rise to his feet and begin walking.
Upon learning to crawl, stand, and then walk, this child’s growing sense of balance in this spinning state would bring a sort of stability and order to the chaos that once made him sick. He would learn to see and then describe the many patterns of his circular movement — artifacts which reliably repeat themselves in his spinning state.
Over time, this being would forget that he is spinning around. He would forget the disorientation and sickness because he would develop inner and outer limbs to stabilize himself — physical arms and legs to move around a spinning outer environment, and mental, emotional, and spiritual limbs to move around an inner environment. Together, these inner and outer appendages would bond him deeply to his circular motions.
I am that child. And the truth of my nature is that I am not this person I identify with every morning I awaken. This “body” I awaken into is an artifact of this illness that arises from this circular spinning; I am the being that pre-exists and contains this body.
This body and its inner environment of ideas and emotions and outer environment of people, places, and things, is an artifact of my state of circularity. While I have created a comfortable balance and no longer experience the most painful effects, I remember that underpinning all of this is an unwanted condition I must overcome.
My only goal is to recover from my illness. I must loosen and then deconstruct the various layers of distortion that have congealed around my true being in my state of circularity. The circularity is always moving, changing, dynamic. It is imagined, desired, fleeting, and based in time. The circularity is inessential. The polar opposite is fixed, unmoving, unchanging, desire-free, and timeless. This is the essential.
My recovery from my illness requires me to remember the essential, and the move toward it. The path is the route between the fixed essential that does not change, and the fluid, always-moving inessential I imagine. As I move along this path, the edges of the distortion will become clear to me, and I can slowly work through them.
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