I have long known that the most detrimental elements of my awakening is my relationships with people. I was always aware and resentful of the way that people influenced me. From personal friends to the larger popular organism of society, the establishment, and authorities, it is their nature to want to manipulate and change me. Consequently, from a young age I preferred to be alone, and was careful not to get too engaged with them. I eschewed partnerships, and past a certain point in my childhood, stopped building the types of relationships that
In my early 20s I made the decision to leave my hometown and country permanently. All my relationships from my first two decades of life are frozen from that period. While I continued to return to my home country nearly annually, and kept in touch, the sense of distance eroded them. Since then, nearly two decades on, very few have survived. Those that have are the closest of friends and family. This past year, I have shed all but two family members, and even those are moving into an even lower-interaction state as I deliberately avoid maintaining them. This past week, I semi-sabotaged one of the last childhood friendships I have maintained. And though there is a tiny bit of regret in that, overall I know it’s the right path, for that relationship was a constraint. To be a participant in that relationship I had to accept and act out a certain persona that is not true.
Relationships are built on the premise that we are all people sharing certain interests. As I heal I realize that I do not share the presumptions underlying those interests. Take a close family member, for example — one of the last I remain in touch with. Her and I both seek a truth that can free us from the mundane. That is where the similarities end. Her truths are trapped within limiting beliefs and conspiracy theories about how the world secretly works. She spends her time trying to understand something she can never, by definition, know because it is not part of her own direct experience. She is limited to being an imaginer, rather than a knower. A supposer, rather than a knower. I have tried to point this out, but naturally that only exacerbates differences and conflict.
I must demanifest all relationships in my awakening that are based on the assumption that I am this person I perform when I wake up. As I abolish this person, I must also abolish this person’s beliefs, interests, and relationships. I will end the last few remaining relationships I maintain by simply letting them fade away, but also through disagreement that will prompt mutual withdrawal, as I most recently did with an old friend. All these people are just ideas in my head; secondself forms I will never again manifest in thirdself. These relationships draw out performances that I no longer recognize as myself, and must I terminate them to heal.
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