In this incantation, I explore the nature of my awakening moment, where I confront the duality of my existence as both a demiself and an omniself. The demiself, a fragmented, finite being, experiences the pain of disconnection from the whole, while the omniself knows that everything—every form, every being—is an extension of the self. By choosing to accept the subsurface of my moment, I engage in the illusion of separation, projecting complex histories and meanings onto the forms before me. Yet, to awaken fully, I must recognize that these projections are mere creations of my mind, and the true reality lies in the surface of the moment itself. My awakening is the conscious decision to either accept this illusion or dissolve it, reclaiming my wholeness and acknowledging that everything I experience is of my own making.
The most critical part of my unwakening is deciding how to experience my moment. My moment — or my awakening — is an experience of otherness; that I am part of something larger. My awakening is the experience of a distinct self that I am, and everything else that I am not. The pain and yearning I feel at the very core of my awakening experience is the same shock I would feel if my legs were suddenly amputated from my body and I was looking upon them. My awakening is thus a moment of extended horror as I look upon my severed being. In denial that I am actually a dismembered whole, I suppress the truth that I am everything (omniself, godhood), and accept a false reality that I am only part (demiself, personhood). I experience the pain of being vivisected, but instead of confronting that truth I accept that I am not the parts of my body which have been amputated. Every time a new piece of my flesh is ripped from my being I suppress the pain of it by pretending it was never me.
This denial amounts to a coping mechanism, and I seek to find a balance between the truth of who and what I am and the pain of my awakening. I seek refuge from the most painful elements of my awakening moment and fabricate a fantasy identity of being one person among many, in one place among many, at one time among many. I accept the essential otherness of my awakening, and ignore what is plain to see if I look: that I am everything. As my limbs are ripped off I pretend they were never mine, never me. They were always part of some other being, somewhere else.
To overcome my denial and restore my severed body parts, I must first learn to identify the denial as it is happening. I can see it in my moment now; I do not have to study or prepare for it. I only have to choose to carefully separate out the surface of my moment from the subsurface. I imagine the surface of my moment as the particular texture, shapes, color, movement, and character of my outerself right now. It is not the texture of my moment five minutes ago, five days ago, or five years ago. The surface of my moment is only right now. In other words, the surface of my moment is what appears to be happening within my moment. Only. Nothing else that I can imagine. The dog on my bed right now is completely and entirely that form on my bed now. He is not a creature I have spent seven years of my life with.
I need to switch from focusing on the changing contents of my moment, to the structure in which these changing moments occur. In other words, I need to look away from the ever-changing scenery in front of me and toward the device upon which this scenery is playing. Or rather, away from the changing user interfaces on my laptop screen to the hardware screen itself. The difference between these two modes of experiencing my moment is the difference between fantasy and reality. Demiself awareness and omniself awareness.
In demiself awareness I engage with the contents of my moment. I see separate objects in spaces and interact and engage with them meaningfully and intentionally. I imagine that there is much more beyond the fleshy clay in front of me than its visual qualities. I imagine that fleshy clay is a person like me, with an entire history and life experience beyond my direct experience that occurred at different places and times, and that we are only sharing one single small interaction in our much larger personal journeys that will play out separately. In other words, I project a massive subsurface beyond his immediate texture and shape I experience. I project a deep subsurface I can only imagine. My outerself is a giant mirror reflecting my innerself back to me. I am not a being moving through a massive space called the universe that exists independently of me; I am the only Being there is, and my outerself is a direct mirrored reflection of my innerself. What I call my eyes are fantastic devices of deception; channels through which my innerself spills out into a great textured screen I call my outerself.
I can accept that there exists something beyond the surface of my moment: other times, other beings, and other places that I do not directly know. Or I can accept that the entirety of everything is reflected in my present moment, and it is my own imagination that is nourishing the subsurface. In the former, I am engaged with the changing shapes on the screen; in the latter, I am looking toward the screen itself and not the lights, colors, shapes, textures, and spaces I project upon it.
To come back to my moment and restore myself I must therefore contain the subsurface. I manufacture subsurface within innerself, and then project it into outerself, believing what I see is true. I decide to imagine that this fleshy form in front of me is equivalent to me, has a history unknown to me, and then I promptly forget that I made that decision and instead take it at face value. I am the decision-maker. I decide whether the form in front of me is a momentary pattern, or a person I have known my entire life, embedded in a complex web of shared memories and unshared experiences. As long as I believe in the subsurface I will experience attachments. I am a writer who has written characters in a story, then forgotten that I created the characters, gave them life and all their characteristics, conjured up all imaginary shared experiences, and have become dependent on this imaginary intimacy. I have forgotten that I wrote these characters and become lost in these shallow, artificial relationships with pieces of my own flesh.
The way out is to accept that what I am actually experiencing in my moment is all there is. There are two ways for me to experience my awakening moment: accepting, or rejecting the subsurface. I will explain how this will look.
I awaken and decide that today I will accept the subsurface of my moment. What does this mean? In short, accepting the subsurface of my moment means that I not only directly interact with the surface-level contents of my moment, but I also imagine many dimensions existing beyond those surface-level experiences. For example: my assistant Ankush just knocked on my door to take my dog for a walk. At the surface level:
I hear a chime and the hairy little form, wagging its tail, runs to the door.
Beyond the surface level, much more happened:
Coming down the mountain from his own cottage, Ankush rang the bell outside my cottage and my dog Maurice excitedly went to the door to greet him.
I can extend this entire moment in countless directions:
Ankush is a younger person with a family and nearly 15 years experience working for me.
Ankush is presently living in a cottage up the mountain.
Ankush bought the bell in the Almora market a few months back.
I can remember and recall endless detail about Ankush, his associated family, our shared memories together, the cottages in which we both reside, the bell he rung to get my attention, his daily walks with Maurice, Maurice and my time with him, and much more. I can recall sights, sounds, colors, words, engagements, and countless other experiences that hang off of every single node in my moment. But these only exist in my imagination; forgetting how “real” and “solid” they feel, I cannot touch any of these things. I cannot substantiate any of this at all. I believe they happened, but what does that mean? All I truly know is that they exist as beliefs within me.
My moment exists in mindself / innerself as a constellation of nodes which blossom into worldself / outerself visually, physically, and formally as its texture and shape. Not all innerself nodes emerge visually into outerself, but they do impact it. For example, I will interact differently with a lump of clay than a long-time friend. A lump of clay is inert substance lacking any qualities I would engage with. However, I believe a long-time friend is different from a lump of clay and we possess a relationship extending back into our childhood, and I feel compelled to treat the person as an equal being. I ignore the lump of clay. What underlies that distinction between clay and person in essence is a decision that I have made that one is superior to the other.
To come back to my moment is the equivalent of looking at the fixed screen and not the changing projection. It is recognizing that there is no qualitative difference between the blanket on my bed and the person standing before me unless I decide there is. It is un-imagining the subsurface below the surface that keeps me engaged and trapped here in my awakening moment. To escape this story that I have written, I must remember that I wrote every single chapter, every character, every light, color, sound and word. There is no authority greater than me for I am the writer. My characters cannot in any way remove me from the story, but I can remove them.
I choose to awaken. I choose to open my eyes. I choose to look. I choose to think. I choose to identify as a person. I choose to value and differentiate all the forms in my outerself. I choose all of this. I have always been here. I am always here. I choose to observe, participate, interact with, and most importantly of all — imagine — that there is something beyond what I can directly see, know, and experience. It is my choice that creates the subsurface. Everything in my awakening is the result of my own choice. My own decision. My entire moment is the result of my once choice to Be, which I express as my awakening experience.
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