From the moment I awaken until the moment I asleepen, I am in pain. Sometimes the pain is cutting and unbearable, while other times it is subtle and suppressed beneath a fleeting comfort. But always, it is there beneath the surface of my moment.
What is this pain? The pain is my awakening itself. It is the fact that I leave a place where I am at peace and arrive in a place where I am not, and the subsequent procession of experiences I call life or existence. The entire collective experience of my awakening moment is the pain. It is the deep realization that I have lost something, and I want it back.
Naturally, I seek to heal this pain and restore my peace. How do I do that? It is a process I have gone through. First I must believe that I can, in truth, heal this pain. I must believe that I am not consigned to this pain. My pain is a treatable condition. The only way to end the pain of my awakening is to understand it so I may treat it.
I must then see that my entire awakening is itself the pain. I must overcome the notion that parts of my awakening are “good”, while others are “bad”. This is a delusion and prevents me from seeing the truth that my entire awakening is a disease. There are no parts of my awakening that I must preserve. My entire awakening is my disease.
I must then understand that my entire awakening experience is predicated upon my desire. My desire is a constant fire within me, and its presence indicates that I am ill. If I desire, then I am ill. What is my desire? My desire is the fact of my separation from peace. My desire is the state of being here, in this awakening moment. My desire is this life and existence.
My desire and awakening are one and the same. As long as I awaken, I will desire. And as long as I desire, I will awaken. The other half of my experience of desire is the peace that I seek. The peace that I have lost by awakening. My two halves seek reunion, and my desire is the force between them. My desire seeks the restoration of my two halves. And once restored, my desire will end; the force will no longer exist. The desire that drives me through my entire experience seeks its own demise; it seeks my return to the place where I no longer desire. My desire is for the end of my desire, and it is the fundamental nature of my awakening.
Selfism is my practical strategy for harnessing the force of my desire to restore harmony. I cannot prevent my desire from achieving its end, but I can thwart and delay it. Selfism is my model for removing all of the obstacles that impede my desire from achieving its end. I have erected countless physical, mental, emotional, and aspirational obstacles
My awakening is my separation from peace. The pain I feel is that separation, and my constant seeking is the force that seeks my restoration. My true being is the timeless peace I am before I awaken and after I asleepen. The pain I experience is my separation from my true being in the process I call my awakening. And the desire I constantly experience in my awakening is the force seeking restoration and peace.
My desire is a force that constantly seeks my restoration. It cannot seek anything else. My awakening performance is an act that obstructs the force of my desire from healing. My performer impedes my desire for health and peace by seeking that which is contrary to my true desire. The performer harbors false desires.
I am accustomed to speaking from the perspective of the performer. When I speak as Marc, and attribute “I” to the performer, I depersonalize the “true me”. I embrace and behave as the character, and not the actor. I perform as the creation, and not the creator. So I must embrace the Creator Perspective, and dissociate from the Creation Perspective.
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Notes:
Selfism is based on the premise that understanding my desire to understand my existence is integral to finding what I seek. My understanding of my existence must necessarily be personal, from my own experiential perspective, and devoid of any imaginary elements.
I can see clearly that there is a difference in potency between the various parts of my awakening. The most potent is what I would call myself. As I focus on elements of my experience either mentally or physically that are not “of me”, the potency decreases rapidly. The more “distant” or removed a subject is from me, the less potency it retains.
For example, a thought about a personal memory from the past is an element of my Secondself. An imaginary element. It’s potency is less than my own awareness of my being in this here moment. A similar imaginative exercise, but directed toward an experience that is not even my own, but something I read about someone else, is even less potent. The same goes for the physical chamber.
My directness of experience determines the potency of a focus. As a focus exits my own experience – real or imagined – it’s potency diminishes. Potency is vital because it …
My moment is the shape of my experience. A potent moment is one in which I focus on my own direct, actual experience. An impotent moment is one in which I am focused on distant, indirect, and diluted aspects of my moment. In my moment, I am. Always. And if I focus on my being, the shape of my moment changes. It comes in. It cinches. It gets smaller. It becomes more compact.
The shape of my moment is all that there is. However the lining of my moment is elastic, and can be endlessly contorted and stretched with my efforts, giving the appearance of a larger continuous chamber. But I only have to withdraw to the most potent area of my experience to realize the nature of these two chambers I awaken into.