I am skeptical about the parasite construct.
My goal is to craft a definition of my awakening that is so clear and concise it directly lines up with my actual experience. I have created an isolated hermitage that allows me to filter out all non-essential distractions, including light, people, motion, and all the change that happens outside. I do still spend a substantial amount of time in front of screens, but that time is largely spent writing these incantations and working. I have created a space where the truth of my awakenings can bubble to the surface smoothly, unhampered by distraction. The “parasite” is the conceptual result of that isolation.
I need to evaluate this construct. What is a parasite exactly? A parasite is a being that lives on or in another being (the host). The parasite derives its nutrients from the host at the host’s expense.
Who is the host and who is the parasite? The host is Firstself. Me. My true self. The author of this story I awaken into. The creator: God from the perspective of the world I create when I awaken. I am still rediscovering how to “see” Firstself because I have ignored it for so long; taken it for granted as an unimportant artifact of my existence.
The parasite is my secondself and thirdself. My secondself is the layer of my experience “closest to” my core being. It is an “inner space” of thoughts, feelings, imagination, invisible sensations, and most importantly, desires. It is all the content of my awakening experience that I sense within, but do not see. My thirdself is the “container” of my “inner space” as viewed from my eyes, all the way to the spatial horizon of my visual field. The parasite extends in two layers: in secondself to my most distance memories and aspirations, and in thirdself to my most distant physical place.
Describe the host in more detail. The host is my core being and true self. When I speak in first person with intention and full self-awareness, I am speaking about my Firstself. Firstself is best summarized in my awakening language as “I am”, and nothing more. Firstself is everything, everywhere, and everyone. Firstself is the origin of my entire awakening. I can feel Firstself in every moment as the infinite sensation of space “behind me”. When I close my eyes, it is Firstself I “see”. Firstself is the totality of existence; there is nothing beyond Firstself. I am Firstself.
Describe the parasite in more detail. The parasite is this entire experience of awakening into a place where I am finite, demipotent, and constantly under assault by a sense of desire. I experience the parasite as pulsations, throbbing: a cycle of awakening and asleepening, over and over again. When I awaken I set micro-sized goals, but at the highest level I am confused because I believe things that I cannot even directly experience or validate. My convictions do not align with my experience, creating a sort of dysphoria.
What makes this relationship parasitic? I believe that awakening is an affliction because I do not want it at the deepest level. I have always felt a great unease with “being here”. It is only recently that I have been able to clearly articulate that “being here” means awakening, and that there is an existence beyond awakening that I do actually want. I sense somehow that that my secondself and thirdself are temporary, while my Firstself is permanent. And out of that comes the notion that my second and thirdself are collectively my awakening experience, and that this is being caused by a single malignant force, which seems best described as a parasite.
Where does the parasite come from? My first response is “I don’t know”. But my second, more authoritative response is that it does not matter. It does not matter because I know two things: I do not want to awaken, and I want to go back to who and where I am before I awaken. Questions such as how, where, why, and such conspire to deceive me into believing that the ultimate authority and decisiveness I do possess is secondary to these imaginary questions. An imaginary reason for the source and backstory of this pain is trivial and meaningless when compared to my fundamental desire to escape the pain.
Where the parasite came from and how it attached itself to my being is irrelevant. It is not useful for me to imagine beyond my moment. My moment is always right now, this very present experience I have. And in this moment, I can distinctly sense three layers to my experience: my Firstself most prominently “behind me”, but all around me when I close my eyes and I know what I am looking at; my secondself as a layer of thoughts, feelings and desires “within me”, and just in front of my Firstself “behind me”; and a third layer of visual objects, light, and motion just “in front of” my secondself layer. This is my triself.
When I carefully decompose my experience I can see my triself as three distinct, but interlocking layers. I know that the smaller two — secondself and thirdself — are where my pain is. I do not need to know why they hurt, only that they hurt and I no longer want them. The parasite description most accurately describes the experience from my perspective. I can see how my eyeholes open up into a space, and I know that space is only there when my eyeholes are open. The content through my eyeholes is painful, and I want it to stop. It does not seem to want me to stop; my secondself and thirdself are united against me ending the pain. They seem to want me to be right where I am, captive to them. I Firstself never move, yet my secondself and thirdself are in constant movement, as if they have dug deep into my flesh and are holding on. It is from my Firstself that my secondself and thirdself draw their essence.
This sounds like a parasite, so I will stick with this description until I find something better.
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