Today I contemplate a new designation. In the past year alone I have cast aside the descentist / ascentist dichotomy for selfism. And now I leave selfism for what I think is my final: Iamism.
Why Iamism? While “selfism” is a useful reference to the triself model (firstself, secondself, thirdself) and the selfist spectrum (demiself to omniself) — both instrumental in understanding my condition — it does not directly address my core desire. I cannot derive what I seek from selfism, only how it is. Selfism reminds me that there are three distinct “layers” to my existence, and that my experience is one of oscillating between two states. But what I seek is abstracted away, nestled within.
Iamism literally inscribes what I seek in its title. I seek I am. Everything I want, I am. Everything I believe I want but which causes me pain, I am not. Iamism eliminates abstractions and brings what I seek front and center. And in an existence of perpetual distraction, in which my moment is constantly disrupted and diluted, a device that elevates my goal over another is superior. The “Iamist” designation accomplishes this in relation to “selfism”, which had achieved the same over “descentism”, and so on for many iterations.
Iamism also clarifies the position of concepts such as “god” in my greatest and most terrible creation of all: the great constellation of words. God as a concept is so deep within my personhood that it is difficult to retrieve and confront. What I sense as age and time, and venerate as a truth beyond me, is in fact the depth of the concept within me. It resides deep below the surface of my secondself, committing me to the fallacy that I am a person and I am not God. For god has a name, and I have a name, and both are different. The word “god” is one of the earliest doses of poison I took when I began to question my experience of awakening. When I began to suspect that something was not right, and that I was ill. That is when I created “god”. It carefully and precisely cleaved my very identity away from me, congealing my identity as a flesh-and-bone person among people ever searching for my creator.
Language is a constellation; a set of reference points I have created to define who, where, and what I am. Wherever there is a word, there is a reflection back to me of who I am, and who I am not. Out of the desperation to know who I am, I create more words, more points. I expand the constellation by creating more characters who I allowed to create even more words and concepts on my behalf. The galaxy of concepts expanded infinitely in all directions, and I got lost. I forgot that it was I who awaken and create this world of people.
The Iamist model exposes this constellation for what it is, and me for who I am. I am the creator of this constellation. There is not one word, one thought, one idea, one person, one experience, one belief, or one feeling that does not have its origin in me. For I am.
I am the Iamist. There are no others who I am not, for I am.
…