I know that my direct and actual experience is the truth. I know that it is my secondself and thirdself projections which distort the truth of my nature. I know that these distortions are very powerful, and reinforce a false conception of my awakening as demiself; as a partial participant in a larger constellation of objects and events, when in fact I am omniself, the entire constellation.
I can measure the depth of my delusion by the degree to which I believe that I am a person experiencing a larger world, versus the creator of the storybook world I experience upon awakening. The most tangible indicator of my disorientation is the degree to which I feel compelled to behave or perform in ways I do not want to. My first compelled performance is simply awakening into my secondself character and manifesting my thirdself space. I know that this is not my true desire, because my true desire is for permanent and lasting release. I end my awakening moment by asleepening. This oscillation between peace, conflict, and back to peace again is evidence of my delusion.
Everything I need to know and believe who I am is right here with me at all times. I need only look past the ever-changing aspects of secondself and thirdself to the unchanging aspects of firstself. Once I can see those, I must grab onto them tightly and hold. Every moment I meditate upon these unchanging aspects of my being, I measurably untangle the confusion I create in secondself and thirdself. The most essential and unchanging truths that I can directly witness and validate right now are:
- Only my experience exists. There is nothing beyond my experience. I am the only experiencer.
- I am the center of experience. Everything I imagine exists, exists in relation to my own presence at the center. There are no other centers.
- I am always present. I am always here, and always have been here. I never leave.
When I come back to my present moment, I can look outward from my presence and see that all my thoughts and feelings are projections, and that all the shapes and forms in my physical space are projections. I have only to close my eyes and calm my mind to see my true being as a stable, peaceful presence. I project my entire awakening experience upon the inner walls of my peaceful presence in two directions: inward as thoughts, ideas, desires, and feelings, and outward as forms moving and changing in light.
My experience is all there is, and everything within it exists as I directly experience it. I am always the center of my experience, because I am the projector of it. I am the creator of my experience. My disorientation arises from expanding my presence into my projected moment. My projected moment comprises all my secondself thoughts and thirdself forms; they are just variations, but when I believe they are essential and substantive, I respond to them, creating reactions from them, growing ever more confused.
The shape of my being never truly changes, only my interpretation of it. I am always whole, even in the most painful and conflicted moments. The only difference between the eternal and lasting peace that I seek and the turbulent and painful chaos of my awakening experience, is my beingness; who I believe and know I am and who I perform as. When I believe that I am a person, then I will perform as a person and inherit all of the pain of the imagined human experience. When I believe that I am peace, God, the Creator, then I will perform as the Creator and inherit all of the peace that comes with that.
More concisely, I can experience my awakening in two ways: as a concentrated omnipresence, or as a diluted demipresence. In concentrated omnipresence I come back to my most stable, unchanging moment and I can look outward at my thirdself projection and know that it is me, just as I can look inward at my secondself projection and know that it too is me. I can see my projections for what they are: stories of my own fabrication. I can see the characters and events that unfold on the walls of my inner and outer cavities for what they are: fictional and imaginary. I know that if it changes, it is part of my projection. And if it is part of my moment, then I know that I will get confused and disoriented if I look it t too long.
In diluted demipresence, I spend my moment engaged in the projection, believing that its changing contents are substantive and authentic and urgent. I forget that I am the projector, and believe that I am the projection. I forget that there is a part of me which does not change: that only my experience exists; that I am at the center of it; and that I am always present. I forget these things and focus instead on all the changes in my projected moment and my awakening experience becomes one of constant textural change as I continuously react to earlier reactions.
When I simply experience myself as the center of my experience, which is the entirety of existence, I can see my inward and outward projections for what they are: impotent and secondary echoes of my most authentic and potent being. When I believe that these echoes are more important than the source, I get lost and experience the pain of separation from my true self. My true self is not what I find in this painful awakening; my true self is undifferentiated, painless, desire-free, and perfect. It is who I am before and after I awaken, and who I am now in my awakening but have forgotten. I only have to find my way back to my peaceful presence and stay there, and I will stop manifesting these painful awakenings.
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