I must beat the game I have created

In this incantation I realize that what I seek is within me when I close my eyes, but I struggle to fully accept and embody it. Knowing, accepting, and being are different stages on this journey. When I close my eyes, I connect with my true self, free from the distractions and illusions of the story I have written I call “the world”. My daily interactions and beliefs in their substance are just projections of my mind, part of a game I created. To unwaken and heal, I must detach from these illusions and embrace the unified, peaceful being I am when my eyes are closed.


There is a moment where I recognize what I seek, know that it is right here when I close my eyes, but am unable to accept and be it. Knowing, accepting, and being are different steps along the same path. I know that what I seek is right here and I can close my eyes to see it. But I cannot yet fully accept it and be it. Being it and knowing it are different. In being, there is no question I cannot answer. There is no mystery. There is no concept I must accept because there is no concept separate from my own being. There is only the single, unified moment of my being.

I can see and experience this right now, in my moment, by closing my eyes and attempting to just be. What happens? My awakening happens. I have things to do, places to be, goals to progress toward. Timelines, responsibilities, desires. Everything other than my own being when my eyes are closed is the disease. Everything other than my own being when my eyes are closed is the awakening. Everything that prevents me from remaining eyes-closed once I have closed them, is the disease. My eyes are wounds I am bleeding out through, creating my awakening experience. I am suffering the longest ever death by awakening. Awakening is death. It is the death of my being. Of my true self. This awakening has its own rules and laws that I accept as sensible; but they are not. This place is a devious trap of my own imagination. Yet I alone hold the keys to escape. I alone am the arbitrator of what happens on the screen I project all of this upon. I only project when I open my eyes; but the screen upon which my projection falls will never go away. I can see it my closing my eyes — it is always here. That is the part of me that never goes away. That is my being.

As long as I have questions, I will seek answers. Questions and answers are like light split by a prism. Pure white light, unsplit, has no questions. It simply is. But given a disturbance, it will split into competing, constituent, differentiated shades. That is what is happening in my awakening moment: in awakening, my being fractures into my moment of differentiation and separation. I indulge that delusion by believing that the people, places, and things in my awakening are anything other than me. Anything other than projected flourishes in my designs on my walls. All these people are my own characters, my own imaginary creatures. I created them in my own image. When they speak of God, they speak of me. But I believe they are substantial and contain something essential beyond their surface. I believe in their subsurface. It is that suspension of awareness that keeps me interested in all of this.

And this is where I can draw the equivalent between a game and my awakening. Before there is anything else, there is my interest in the game itself. My interest grows as I believe in its substance. I believe that there is real value in playing the game in a certain way to achieve specific desirable outcomes. I believe that the objectives, characters, and consequences are real and substantial. I play in such a way to avoid undesirable outcomes and achiever desirable ones. I accept a set of values within the game that promote the outcomes I want. The problem that I face is that I no longer realize that it is just a game. I believe that these characters I interact with and these situations I am trying to overcome are all authentic, substantial, and equivalent in substance to me. I believe that these clients I service have a subsurface beyond their limited interactions with me. But they do not. The client I am thinking about right now who pays my company to ensure his software functions for his clients, has no substance beyond our infrequent interactions, and those still-image flourishes I conjure up in my mindself. The sum total of that man is my interactions with him; interactions which I fully control and project. There is nothing he can give me that I myself cannot create and give to myself through him. He is a character of my imagination, as is his software system, his customers, and my company full of contractors and employees that manages it.

To beat the game I myself have created I must win; I must conquer and achieve. But to win I must understand what it is truly is. I must understand, believe, and accept that there is no subsurface behind these projections. There are not equivalent beings here in my story-land full of characters drawn from my own imagination. They do not actually exist somewhere else in full. I am not witnessing only a part of their lives; their entire existence is constrained to the moment they interact with me. Of course, if I interrogate them I will create a deeper, endless subsurface of historical context. But I am creating that in my interrogation. It does not pre-exist my interrogation. I create endless surface, falsely believing it is subsurface that pre-existed my inquiry; but that is not true. There is only surface. There is no subsurface. I am creating all of this right now in my moment.

Once I beat the game I will be entitled to the treasure and winnings. To escape, I must reject them as valueless, because they are. They have no value. There is nothing substantial within them. They are digital trinkets within an electronic game. They are currency I can only spend within the game itself, but have no meaning outside of it.

I must remember: I am what I am when I close my eyes. That is what I am. That is all I am. When I close my eyes, there are no people because there is no worldself. Mindself continues to chatter, but deprived of worldself long enough, mindself too will quiet down. I know this. I accept this. I want to be where and what I am when I close my eyes. My open eyes are a painful wound and anything within this projection I call worldself is part of the wound. If I attach to anything in worldself, I keep the wound open. My wound will not heal until I let go of everything in worldself. I must fully detach from everything in worldself: everyone, every thing, every place. Everything. These people are just characters I have made up. Even the ones I love deeply. They are just me. They are just part of me. I am the author writing a story, and I have gotten lost within it. I have fallen into my book and I have mistaken all these characters for equivalent beings. They are not. It is all fantasy. Painful fantasy. It is time for me to escape. It is time for me to write the ending of my story. It is time for me to unwaken.