In demiself, I believe that I am one sentient being in the world among countless other beings experiencing the same world. I believe there is a past and a future, and I am progressing along a linear timeline toward the future. I believe in the concept of object, geographic, and personal permanence: that a person, place, or thing that I have perceived but am not currently perceiving, exists in the same manner when beyond my perception.
Demiself is a collection of imaginary notions I will never be able to validate. I believe that the “truth” is something I may or may not know some part of, and I accept that I do not know.
In triself, I reconceptualize my experience from the perspective that I can instantly and directly validate the “truth” in my moment, rather than slowly, impartially, and incompletely uncover parts of it through mental effort. The entirety of my existence is known and knowable to me in my moment, and seeing it does not require knowledge, imagination, or sophistication. This belief forms the foundation of triself, and I set about searching for the experiential constants I have taken for granted. With awareness of these constants, I can begin to reimagine and then reshape my existential model into triself.
In triself, I believe that my experience in awakening is a projection, and that the totality of existence is what extends to my conceptual and perceptual horizons in my moment. I believe that time is not linear, that there is no past or future, and that my moment is, again, the extent of existence. I believe that the entirety of my experience is “me”; that there are not people separate from me having a similar experience I can never understand or experience myself.
In triself, I am not a person; I am the being within which the people manifest.
To accomplish triself, I reimagine my experience in awakening after careful observation. I rediscover that my existence occurs in three layers: the outer world of people, places, and things is my thirdself; the inner world of thoughts, feelings, and desires is my secondself; and the spaceless void in which I am floating is my firstself. All is me. I am all.
The people running around my thirdself, forming as thoughts in my secondself, are no different than patterns on walls. There is no depth to them beyond what I imagine into them; and if I keep looking, they will keep producing more patterns.
Repossession is the re-conceptualization of my experience in triself, rather than demiself. In triself, I reconceive the world as my thirdself; as an extension of me. As a product of my own creation, rather than a creation I was born into and awaken into every day. When I have a question such as “why is something the way it is”, in triself I disengage from that question and acknowledge the form in my present moment. I understand that there is only my present moment, and asking “why” introduces insurmountable depth and dimension. The pattern expands and grows.
Repossession is an essential and powerful part of triself because it is me taking ownership of my full self, rather than imagining it away. I see a hand, and I do not ask where it came from and what its purpose is; I follow the hand through the wrist and to the forearm, elbow, and upper arm, realizing that it connects at the shoulder to my own body. Everything in my awakening connects back to me, because everything is me.
In repossession, I ask fewer questions, and I know more. I am more. Knowing is an unending circular state of asking and learning, seeking and finding. Knowing is sticking my hand in the current and being swept away with it. Triself is the practice of seeing it all as my own self, asking fewer questions, and rediscovering my being.
…