As I search for the truth, I seek clearer ways of describing myself. I seek out an explanatory vessel in which I can capture and hold the truth without it leaking out. My descriptions were once complicated, full of countless loopholes, fallacies, exceptions, and unknowns. Yet over time I refined it by patching holes, simplifying my language, eliminating unknowns, and accounting for exceptions.
Recently, I have settled on the idea of my awakened existence being an “emanation” and a “projection”. The introduction and refinement of the triself model have been particularly useful as it gave me an environment where I could place the projector and the projection. I explained my secondself as the extruder through which my firstself was extruded outward as my thirdself extrusion. I described my second and thirdselves as “smoldering”, which to this day, I still find useful and accurate in explaining my actual experience. Recently I wrote that my secondself and thirdself are like water falling over the edge of a waterfall. Presumably, my firstself is the waterfall itself, but that of course, opens the question of where the water came from and went to after falling.
Though these descriptions capture important facets of my awakening, and the triself model is eminently useful, they are clumsy. Incomplete analogies open too many additional lines of questioning, and the more technical descriptions are difficult to imagine. I seek a degree of precision such that it directly correlates to my direct experience right now. I need only imagine until it directly overlays my experience without any imagination required. Writing and imagining are the adjustment action of a microscope, bringing the subject into greater focus. Once it’s clear, the truth will literally augment my reality because I can directly visualize it as integrated.
After many years of tinkering, I have achieved this with the triself model (i.e., firstself, secondself, thirdself) to the extent that I can physically demonstrate it. And while the triself model captures the essential boundaries, it is the movement in both secondself and thirdself which continue to defy easy description. The movement I have described as an emanation, a waterfall, an extrusion, and “smoldering”.
The biggest challenge comes in accounting for time-based constructs such as my memories of what happened yesterday. That something happened yesterday, I would not practically reject, for it will inform what happens today. I accomplished some work yesterday, and so today I will continue building on that, and tomorrow I will experience the consequences of my efforts today. Then there are the hardened time-based beliefs, such as my birth, and that others were born before and after. This impacts all my relationships with people as I observe and accept that they are older or younger than me, and I adjust my behavior toward them.
The triself model is useful and accurate, but the concept of change and motion over time is the detail that I have not satisfactorily accounted for. And while I have given various definitions of time, none of them have stuck.
In my moment today, I believe I have finally articulated a convincing explanation of time. It takes two parts. Firstly, the idea of a projection is correct. I am projecting my secondself and thirdself. And though I experience it as projecting outward, that is only because I do not consider my thirdself projection as my own self. That is to say, I do not see my physical environment as part of me. Why? Because I imagine that the mountains on the horizon are distant from me. And I believe that being distant makes them separate from me. Why do I believe they are distant? Because I have to move my own thirdself body and the contents of my secondself to reach them. The same goes for my bed. I do not consider it me; I consider it a separate object.
However, the proof is that I can close my eyes around anything I see, no matter the distance. When I close my eyes, those physical objects disappear, not because I shut out the external light source that allows me to see them, but because I am effectively “turning off” the one-dimensional layer upon which they are projected. My ability to “close my eyes” is not the movement of a body part to protect my eyes from an outer world; it is my native ability to stop projecting my thirdself. I am ending the projection.
But when I do close my eyes, why does the world persist? It persists because I still very much believe I am here. I still manifest my secondself, wandering around my thirdself. As I come to realize, understand, and believe that all parts of my awakening are me, I will not explain my projection as moving “away from me”, for I am all of it. I will understand that my thirdself projection — otherwise known as “the world” — is, in fact, a flat projection on the interior walls of my being. Experiencing this is a matter of conviction. With conviction, I will experience my thirdself less as a space I am moving around and more as a panel I am projecting but can turn off at will. With conviction, I will experience the essential “flatness” of these characters and places I have long considered multi-dimensional.
The second part of understanding time and time-based impressions, such as memory and the hardened beliefs associated with it, and how it is formed. The truth of my being is always present. It never stops existing because I never stop existing. The only thing that changes is how I see that truth. My firstself being is infinite and characterless in all directions. The best way to explain my firstself sensationally is as the sense of “space” around every part of my thirdself body and secondself. No matter where I focus my attention on my body, I sense space beyond it. That sense of space is my firstself. It is omnipresent and never goes away. However, my secondself mind and thirdself body are deformities that prevent me from seeing the truth of my nature because they bend and distort it.
In thirdself, the deformities are my physical body, contorted into this suffocating prison of flesh where I believe I am trapped. In secondself, the prison is built of the mental, emotional, and aspirational constructs that keep me in a state of desire. These two hardened forms twist and corrupt the omnipresent truth of who I am. I experience the construct of time as long as I am in motion. As long as I am engaged in time-based performances, time will be inextricably woven into my direct experience. That does not mean that time is any more “real” if I am in motion; it only means that I will experience it. It is the difference between experiencing wind on my skin as I move versus imagining the wind on my skin. And I move because I desire. I walk because I desire to exercise. I eat because I desire food. I work because I desire money. And I travel because I desire to experience.
I imagine my birth. In believing that I was born so many years back, I accept a timeline of the space in which I exist. I accept that there are people older than me because they were born before me. And I then must accept that there was a time before me, despite my experience that I have always been here. On this same timeline, I can plot events I believe happened and even those I believe will come, such as my imminent death. I can place other events on this timeline, such as personal and professional obligations. I have work I must do if I want to get paid and buy the things I want to survive and thrive.
There is only now, and my existence divides neatly into three layers. My thirdself is the smallest layer. My secondself is larger, and my firstself is infinite. Though they are all parts of me, I am not my body, and I am not my mind. The belief that I was born is a deformity in my secondself, which influences my behavior in my thirdself. The belief that I must have a certain amount of wealth, compels me to move in many different ways to secure and then spend that wealth. My desire for the attention of people drives me to seek out their approval through my engagements interactions. Since people only speak in terms of time, I add them and their imaginary time constructs to my ever-growing internal timeline.
Now I sit still and see the truth that there is only this present moment. I am sitting on my bed in my fully-enclosed cottage, all walls covered, no sense of a world outside this room. I do not want anything from people. I do not want wealth if it forces me to move. I do not believe I was born because I know there is only this moment. I want only to return back to this moment.
What is the difference between these two versions of the same moment? The nature of the projection is the difference. When I maintain various time-based beliefs and performances, it creates a disturbance in the projection that I experience as time and motion. When I am still and focus on the truth that there is only this moment, the projection suffers from fewer distortions, and it is easier to see past the time construct.
The source of the projection is my firstself, which I sense as the “space” all around and within me. My sense of my firstself is twisted and contorted by the hardened layers of my secondself and thirdself. My firstself shines through my secondself and thirdself, deforming into my experience of awakening.
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