In this brief incantation, my objective is to re-conceptualize the nature of my beliefs and how I must re-imagine them in order to achieve my goal of healing.
A belief is a rigid, semi-static structure in my secondself cavity. The sum total of all my beliefs shape the contents of my awakening and my performance in the same the way that a bowl holds and shapes the contents within it. My awakening experience conforms to the beliefs I hold at any moment. Or said differently, I view my awakening experience within the context of my beliefs. If I believe I am a single person among other persons, within a larger world, I will interact with people very differently than if I believe I am the creator of it all.
I have concluded that I am the creator of all the contents of my awakening experience. However, despite my conclusion, I still harbor beliefs that prevent me from acting upon it. There is a conflict between what I know and what I believe. Put another way: my conviction does not fully support my conclusion.
Beliefs are secondself growths that either support or retard my healing. My beliefs that I am a person among other people, in a place among other places, at a time among other times, is an example of a cancerous growth. Any belief that I hold that reinforces my identity as a person is cancerous because I know that I am not. I know that I am not a person, and that this awakening experience is an illness. I know that the core feature of my awakening is desire, and that my beliefs are what shape my approach to satisfying this desire. I know that as long as I believe that the satisfaction of my desire will be found in people, experiences, and possessions in my awakening, I will continue to experience this awakening moment.
I know these things, but I do not believe them yet. The difference between my knowing and my believing is conviction. Herein is the secret to treating my illness: conviction. I can treat my malignant beliefs by systematically strengthening my convictions that support beliefs that align with my true identity. My true identity is that I am the creator of this awakening experience, and that I am not truly here. I am not a person experiencing personhood; I am a writer lost in his own writings. I am not a small person experiencing a larger world; I am the being who imagined this world, and I have forgotten that. I have somehow become so deluded that I have
What do I do next? I have to withdraw from the imaginary, and simply and precisely describe the contents of my awakening as I experience it. The cancer thrives on my ignorance of what I am truly experiencing. I ignore what is happening, and become fascinated with all the movement in secondself and thirdself. I stop looking at the projector, and look at the projection. Eventually, I forget that I am the projector. I forget that I am the creator, and believe that I am a creation. I can undermine all the cancerous beliefs I sustain by persistently examining my moment and describing it. At some point, my articulations are so simple and obviously true that they undermine all the delusional and cancerous beliefs I maintain.
It is a sort of existential surgery; my focus becomes my surgical performance, and my simplified and articulated convictions become my scalpel. The beliefs that reinforce my personhood are the cancer; and my conviction that I am the creator is the surgery to remove them.
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