In this incantation, I explore desire as the catalyst for my experience of time and selfhood, presenting it as the force that drives my awakening into a world of action and narrative. I differentiate between the Premoment—a state of desire-free stillness preceding conscious awareness—and Unwakening, my conscious or unconscious return to this state. I describe my inner and outer realities as interconnected, both arising from desire, and how time-based desires trap me in a loop of projection and pursuit. My goal is to reduce these desires, stripping away the complexities of my awakening to return to a simpler, featureless existence free from the illusions of time and attachment.
Desire as the Engine of Time
My desire is the animating force behind my awakening, compelling movement, action, and the passage of time. It gives rise not only to the changing world I perceive but also to my experience of personhood within it. As I act upon my desires, I disturb the still waters of my awareness, creating the shifting experience of personhood in a dynamic and changing world. My identity and sense of self takes shape in response to the desires I pursue and the consequent actions they compel me to take.
The Premoment and Unwakening: Distinctions in My Awareness
The Premoment is the state of pure being before I project my moment of awakening. It is the point of stillness before all my movement begins—before the projection of my inner and outer fields that form my awakening moment. My Premoment is free from any notion of personhood or creative impulse. It is what I am before I awaken and fill my reality with desires, people, possessions, and ambitions.
Unwakening is my conscious withdrawal from my awakening moment back toward my Premoment. It is my form of meditation—a state of deliberate or unconscious retreat from the noise and complexity of my awakened experience. There are two types of Unwakening:
- Unintentional Unwakening: This occurs naturally as I tire at the end of my day, where the exhaustion of my desire-driven activities causes my awareness to settle back toward the Premoment. It is a slow, unconscious fading of my desire to move and create, slipping into stillness.
- Intentional Unwakening: This is a conscious choice, undertaken when I am wide awake. In these moments, I intentionally resist the urge to follow or create new desires and withdraw from the projections of my moment. This is a more challengin task, requiring me to confront my desires directly and disengage from them, choosing to remember the peace of my Premoment rather than the complexities of my awakening.
The Premoment and the Elusive Boundary
The boundary between my Premoment and my moment of awakening is elusive, a barely perceptible shift that happens almost instantaneously. As I awaken from sleep, I transition from the stillness of desire-free peace and otherlessness to the complex projection of self and a world of otherness. This moment marks the birth of my personhood—the birth of this person who navigates a world beyond containing him to achieve his desires. Currently, this boundary is subtle and easily missed, but as I reduce my attachments to my awakening desires, I will become more attuned to the shift. Eventually, I will wield the power to recognize and stop my awakening before it fully takes hold, maintaining a closer connection to my Premoment.
The Practice of Intentional Unwakening
Before I am able to control my shift between premoment and moment at the time of my awakening, I will become familiar with it through intentional unwakening. Intentional unwakening is my conscious retreat from personhood and desire while awake. It is my form of prayer, meditation, and contemplation—practices that keep me centered in the stillness beneath my projections. I engage in this practice every morning after my awakening, grounding myself before desire takes over. I return to it each evening before unintentional Unwakening occurs, reminding myself of the peace that exists without movement or need. These moments of intentional unwakening are acts of remembering—recalling who I am beneath the fluctuating sense of self that desires and engages with the world—and believing. Intentional unwakening requires me to actually believe who and what I truly am, the creator of my awakening, and then to return to that desire-free state while in the throes of an awakening.
Time-Based Trinkets: Recognizing Desire’s Traps
My experience of personhood is shaped by time-based trinkets—the objects, experiences, and narratives that stir desire within me, leading me into the traps of time. These trinkets give form to the self I project in my awakening, creating stories and expectations that convince me fulfillment lies somewhere in the future. Yet, when I am idle, unmoving, and free from want, I am no longer caught in these narratives. I experience myself closer to my Premoment, where my personhood fades and I return to a state free from desire—a state where time’s illusions lose their hold on me.
Inner and Outer Worlds: The Manifestation of Desire
My inner and outer worlds are intimately linked, both springing into existence when I desire. Desire is the trigger that animates both fields of my awareness. For example, if I experience the internal urge for a sweet treat at the ridge, this inner desire will manifest as a series of outward movements: leaving my cottage, ascending the mountain, encountering people and places along the way until I achieve my goal and eat a sweet. This simple desire generates an entire sequence of actions, interactions, and perceptions—a complete moment of time unfolds from a single inner spark. Desire is what bridges my inner intention and my outer experience, setting the stage for every moment I experience.
My journey from the vivid complexity of awakening back to the stillness of my Premoment is gradual. It begins each day when I “burst” from the contentment of my Premoment into my moment of awakening, where the inner longing for something more propels me into action. In this state, I forget the contentment of my Premoment and convince myself that what I seek lies out here, in my awakening world of discontentment and desire.
My awakening is a chamber of amplified echoes—people, places, things, and experiences are reflections of my own projections, yet they captivate and hold me. I become attached to these echoes, believing they contain what I need. The path back is difficult because it requires letting go of these attachments, one by one, until I remember the peace of featurelessness. I must release the belief that anything within this awakening moment holds what I am truly seeking.
As I remember who I am—the stillness of my Premoment—the process of Unwakening quickens. I more rapidly recognize the trinkets of my awakening for what they are: distractions, echoes of my own projections. The journey is a gradual stripping away, a conscious choice to reject the things I once valued. As I disentangle myself, my desire diminishes, and my awakening moment becomes simpler, quieter, and less consuming. Eventually, I will dwell in a featureless space, unmoved by the false promises of desire.
Conclusion: Every Act of Creation as an Act of Desire
As I lessen my desires, my experience of awakening will shift. Right now, I am heavily engaged in the world that appears when my eyes are open. My inner world is vivid, constantly interpreting and reacting to the outer projections I create. There is a dynamic interplay between my inner and outer selves, each influencing and shaping the other. I am caught in this interaction, my movements driven by the ceaseless cycle of desire and response.
But as I withdraw from desire, I will move less. My attention will shift away from the outer projections and return to my Premoment, the state of existence when my eyes are closed—when I am not yet driven to create or possess or achieve. In this Premoment, I am what I am without the burden of desire. It is a space of pure, untainted being. As I begin to Unwaken, I will spend more time in this featureless space, one that does not draw me into its narrative. When I open my eyes, I will project fewer features. My awakening will be marked by a simplicity that is not distracted by the complexities of desire.
All acts of creation are acts of desire. Even as I write in my journal, I do so to explain—to understand something that I do not yet fully grasp. This act of explaining commits me to a search, a movement toward the answers I seek. It pulls me deeper into a timeline, rooting me in a particular narrative where my desire for understanding shapes the flow of my thoughts. Creation, in any form, is a response to the gap between what I am and what I yearn to know, achieve, or become.
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