In this incantation, I outline the truths of my awakening. I wake into a physical body and space, driven by desires that range from basic needs to deeper, existential cravings for peace. My awakening is filled with efforts to satisfy these desires, but most lead to temporary relief, not the permanent peace I seek. I realize that my imagined past, convictions, and goals are constructs that shape my present, but they don’t hold the truth I need. To heal, I must withdraw from these false desires and focus on my true desire: the complete end of desire, and the peace that follows.
As I get ready for another draft of the selfist model, I am preparing the list of what I know.
I experience awakening. I have the experience of waking into a physical body and space. My moving body extends outward from an unmoving presence. My awakening is everything after this unmoving presence.
I do not immediately know what I am, where I am, or why I experience this awakening. While I awaken here, I rely on a preserved memory to inform me what I am, where I am, and what I am to do here. I cannot directly access these memories, but believe them to be true all the same. As I examine these “memories” and “convictions”, they begin to crack, and I see that they are only true if I believe them to be true.
My awakening is driven by a constant, unsatisfied desire. I always have a desire, which fractures into many different types. I have bodily desires to breathe, eat, gratify, avoid pain, and move. I have mid-term desires to buy groceries, clean my home, and keep my workers working so I can bill more to my clients. I have longer-term desires to launch a successful product. My deepest desire of all is existential – to survive and persist. If I trace all these desires, they all lead to the same source: my desire for peace.
I want to permanently satisfy my desire. I spend my entire awakening trying to satisfy the miscellaneous desires that arise. Some can be satisfied physically and immediately, while others require more effort and planning. The majority of my effort is spent working toward goals that I believe are rooted deep in my past.
My desire is to end my desire. I know that the complete satisfaction of my desire is the end of my desire. Peace. I know that the peace I truly desire lies at the end of all my desire.
I spend much of my awakening doing things that will not permanently satisfy my desire. My awakening is filled with efforts that will not lead to the end of my desire, such as working, traveling, learning, and socializing. I do these things because I am not fully oriented toward my desire to end my desire.
I believe many things that are not, upon examination, true. I have many ideas and convictions that I cannot immediately justify or validate, and that fall apart upon scrutiny or with new ideas.
Truth is a determination that I make. I am the sovereign of truth. Truth is something that I assign to an idea, thought, or construct.
I can use truth to permanently satisfy my desire. Truth is the way I can end my desire. How? By assigning and then following it. Truth is a path I build and then follow. The strongest truths most directly lead me to the end of my desire I seek. The weakest truths will lead me away from the peace I seek.
My present performance is largely dictated by an imagined past. I spend the vast majority of my awakening beholden to imagined truths, commitments, and values. Most of my day goes to work. I work because I have obligations to my clients and workers. I have clients and workers because I believe I want the money that comes from them. I seek money because I believe that is what will give me the peace I seek.
To heal, I must withdraw from my false desires, and embrace my true desire. I know that these false desires I pursue around wealth and success will not deliver me the peace and healing I seek. So I must withdraw from these imagined constraints and commitments and desires and focus on what I know to be true: there is nothing in my awakening that I truly desire because nothing out here will give me the peace I truly seek. I can only find what I seek by removing my desires, one by one. Social desires. Aspirational desires.
I must understand what my desire is, confront, and overcome it. There is nothing in my awakening that I truly desire. All of it is designed to keep me here, trapped. I seek only peace, and I can only achieve that by escaping my awakening.
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