My experience of time is my experience of desire.
As I sit here incanting, I remember something familiar, but also very distant. It is a memory I had forgotten. A sensation that once defined my existence, but has since transformed into my familiar experience when I awaken. A time before I accepted my life the way I do now.
It was a time when I was still grasping for the thing I wanted, but unable to close my hands around it. Yet I still had not given up on grasping it because I knew that it was right there in front of me and once I achieved it I would have everything I wanted. It was so close; just right there. And then I would be complete.
But slowly I began to realize that I could not so easily grasp it. And it was moving further and further away from me. I was getting smaller and smaller. Things that were fuzzy and undefined and amorphous began to clarify and separate around me. Things emerged that became people and my body emerged along with limitations. There were things that were me, and there were many others that were not. Things that were mine, and many others that were not mine. What I was reaching for grew more distant as my awakening moment became more defined in terms of what was and was not me, and what was and was not mine.
I finally accepted that what I wanted which would complete me was not mine. I would have to find it, earn it. In truth, it had never left; what I wanted was to not want. My desire was to not desire. But I allowed myself to forget this and believe that my desire was far from me. I accepted that there was no guarantee that it would satisfy my growing desire. That it would alleviate this suffering I experience when I awaken.
As I move closer to a singular, sensational description of my existence and the underlying structure within everything becomes more clear, all the words I have created begin to collapse. I no longer need five words to describe one thing. Desire is time. My desire has created time. What was once so close I could touch it but not become it, is now as distant as the mountains on the horizon. Time and desire are one; as I desire more and understand less, time and the obstacles between me and what I seek grow. As I concentrate on the end of my desire, time contracts and I can feel what I seek next to me.
Awakening is me falling backward into a hole of my own creation and imagination. I have become confused, believing that what I seek is deeper in this hole I have created and fallen into. I think I see what I have always wanted just ahead, but always there are more obstacles between me and it. Always more people to maneuver around, more places to see, and more targets to hit. Time expands as I desire. The hole does not have what I seek. As I climb back out, time will reverse.
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