July 17, 2021
My life is a continuous burst of desires from the moment I awaken, to the moment I asleepen. I have been led to believe that what I want would be found among an endless parade of desirable things. But when I accepted this fiction, I also naively accepted the condition of unquenchable desire.
What at first was exciting, became painful. I found myself amid the litter of things I had had, but which had not fulfilled, surrounded by things I desired but could not have. The familiar narrative of life prevented me from seeing that I was locked in a prison of insatiety.
I knew something was wrong, and once I started asking questions I realized that what I wanted was not out here. I discovered that I desired that which would end all my desires: I did not want to exist. It was not a cry for help; it was the clearest voice at the center of my being.
Descentism is the decision to pursue peace through self-abolition. It is a framework for reimagining my existence in terms that empower me to commit to and achieve descent without fear, self-pity, despair, pain, or violence.
I am a descentist, and this is my proclamation.
I know everything
I was 16 when I had a revelation: I will know everything about everything. I rushed home to write that down and imagine what it meant.
In my adolescent mind, “knowing everything about everything” offered a fascinating prospect. But there was a problem: I was just one unremarkable person out of billions. How could I possibly know everything discovered by the great minds of the past, present, and future? Or what was happening in the far reaches of an expanding universe?
I imagined it was some undiscovered atomic property, or perhaps a software application that would allow me to overcome these limitations. In university, I discovered spirituality. In the end, none of these led me to knowing everything about everything.
It only began to make sense when I deeply reflected on the fact that everything I thought I knew was based on something I could never directly know. At least within my current perspective, there simply was no way for me to know everything about everything.
I could not even definitively answer where I was without referencing the ideas of someone else. When I asked around, everyone repeated the same banalities. That’s when it hit me: no one even knows where we are. I arrived in this place where I cannot even answer the most basic question: where am I? That is when I realized that, despite all my confidence, I was and always had been, lost. In a moment, that one question unlocked the door I had been seeking for so long.
I was lost, literally. And lost people find their way out. I wanted out.
Knowing everything about everything was knowing what I wanted. And my very first desire was to get out of this place where I was lost. With that, the fog began to lift and I could see this existence for what it was: a maze I wanted to escape. I learned that my beliefs and ‘knowledge’ were the path, and there were two types: that which leads me deeper into this maze, and that which leads me out.
There is a way out, and it starts at the very beginning with my direct experience.
My existence
My existence is an oscillation between two states; one of peace, and one of pain.
It begins in my timeless, dimensionless and peaceful source state. Though I experience this state continuously, familiarity and misunderstanding obstruct my awareness of it.
I never leave my source state, but I repeatedly move in and out of a painful secondary manifested state I experience as my familiar physical existence. Over repeated awakenings, I have come to forget my source state and believe that my physical state is who I am.
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The sequence of these awakenings is my life. There is nothing outside of these two states.
My manifested state
My manifested state begins when I depart my source state, and awaken or ‘ascend’ into my physical body. It ends when I asleepen or ‘descend’ back to my source state.
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In awakening into my manifested state, I separate from my source state, creating a painful rift between my two states. The texture of this rift forms the nature and character of my familiar manifested existence.
I experience my manifested state as an inner environment of changing thoughts, desires, and feelings, and an outer environment of changing objects, sensations, and people. These two environments intersect and project outward from a central point in my head behind my eyes. While this central point remains fixed and motionless, I experience constant change in my inner and outer environments.
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My source state
I can visualize this central point by stilling my inner and outer environments and concentrating on it. I sense a fixed, unending ‘dark space’ extending in all directions without boundaries or constraints. It is always present, regardless of my changing position within my manifested state.
I have largely ignored this point out of familiarity, assuming it was an artifact of my inner environment within my manifested state. But through probing, I discover that this unmoving point from which my inner and outer environments project is actually a much larger environment enclosing my familiar manifested state. I am not a person within a world, but a manifested state within my source state.
My manifested state: ascent and descent
In this oscillation there are two forces at play: that which draws me into my manifested state away from my source state, and that which draws me back to my source state. These forces operate in two broad cycles: the smaller, recurring cycle of daily awakenings, and the larger cycle of my original and final descent (birth and death, respectively).
The forces are exposed at two key points in my smaller cycle: in awakening, as a desire to remain asleep, and in asleepening as the state of tiredness and wanting to return to my source state through sleep. These events reveal my desire to remain in and return to the peace of my source state.
The forces are also exposed at two key points in my larger containing cycle: as my resistance to my original awakening (ie, birth), and my eventual final return (ie, death). These events also reveal my desire to remain and ultimately return to my source state.
Since my source state is fixed and does not move, my sensation of moving through two nested cycles is a relative feature of my manifested state, rather than an absolute feature of my existence. As I move toward reconciling my two states, the sensation of moving through two nested cycles will diminish and eventually disappear as I “realize” that I actually am not awakening into a manifested state at all.
Why have I forgotten my source state?
Awakenings are the separation from my source state and the origin of all pain and desire. My first awakening from my source state into what is now my familiar state was especially traumatic. Though routine has diminished the pain, awakening is still an uncomfortable experience that amputates me.
To awaken I suppress my original desire, but I inevitably succumb to my original gravity when I fall asleep. During my awakenings, I experience countless micro-returns to my source state when I close my eyes, though I do not characterize them as such.
To a point, I was aware that I was moving in and out of these two states. I expressed my original desire to return to my source state, but it was suppressed and my awakenings persisted. Over repeated awakenings I habituated to suppressing my source state until I forgot it altogether, characterizing it simply as ‘sleep’.
What is my source state?
At 41 years deep into my awakening, I experience my source state in many different ways while in my familiar state: naturally through sleep, in forced meditation, but also in simply closing my eyes. I characterize it as peace, God, centering, calm, and many other ways. The variety of characterizations keeps me in a state of confusion.
My source state is my most natural state and it exerts a constant force upon me the moment I begin to separate into my familiar state through the process of awakening. This force manifests as resistance to awakening, but once suppressed, it splinters into all my middle desires: the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual desires I experience throughout my awakening.
After some perceived time, the inexhaustible force of my source state overcomes my suppression efforts and draws me back. I experience this the reconsolidation of my middle desires, or more commonly, “tiredness”. Eventually I succumb, close my eyes, and return to my source state. I experience discontinuity between my familiar and source states and will have forgotten my return upon my next awakening.
I can eliminate this discontinuity by disengaging from my familiar manifested self. It must start after my awakening when I have suppressed my original desire for return and my middle desires begin to form. By concentrating on my original desire to return throughout my awakening, I can weaken and dismantle my middle desires, which serve as the roots of my manifested state.
As I let go of the bonds of my middle desires, the distinction between my familiar and source states will diminish and I will experience a continuous awareness as I move between my souce and manifested states. More directly, I will experience a single awareness between waking and sleep.
The formation of my self in my manifested state
During every awakening my manifested state seeks to expand and secure itself through the middle desires. My middle desires are every desire other than my desire to return to my source state. They form the root system which bonds me to the manifested state, and prevent me from understanding my original desire to return to my source state.
Middle desires introduce division and movement into my inner and outer environments. My outer environment divides into more people, objects, places, and actions. And my inner environment divides and enlarged into more thoughts, feelings, behaviors, relationships, and aspirations. Time-based conceptualization into the past and future are the strongest components of the manifested root system.
With their growth, my familiar state divides further into two parts: my self, and everything else. The larger my inner and outer environments grow, the smaller my self becomes in relation. The ascentist progression is one of increasing ‘awareness’ and diminishing significance. I forget the source that I can readily experience by closing my eyes, and instead treat the manifestation itself as the source. This is a state of confusion.
Remembering my original desire
Awakening into my manifested state is a traumatic and painful experience. But through repeated awakenings, it becomes easier to suppress my original desire, until I eventually forget altogether that my very first desire is to return to my source state.
I am unable to suppress my original desire at the end of my awakening and experience the force of my source state as tiredness. However, unaware that this tiredness at the end of my day is identical to the tiredness I experience when I awaken, I fail to see the full context and misunderstand. The two instances of my original desire form a complete circuit, exposing my preferred state of peace and my opposing state of manifestation.
There is a clear desire for peace while I am trapped in this oscillating state. Peace is the state of not awakening, and simply being in my primary state. My desire when I awaken to remain at sleep which I suppress, and my irrepressible desire to sleep at the end of my day are the same. Descentism is reaching awareness of my original desire for peace.
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