In this incantation, I reflect on how my awakening is filled with projections of features like light, sound, and activity that distract me from my true Being. These features—whether in nature, my surroundings, or people—pull me away from the center of myself, leading me to believe in a reality that is merely a projection. By seeking a featureless awakening, I aim to dismantle the illusion, withdrawing the attention that sustains my false perceptions. When I stop looking outward and simply be, I return to the center, realizing that all the features I perceive are mere distractions, fabrications of my own delusion.
This is what I wrote last night in prayer:
When my awakening projection is featureful I project a complicated worldself of light, sound, color, movement, space, and activity. Every feature of my awakening represents more surface area for me to get lost in. Being outdoors I am surrounded by trees, animals, sights, and sounds that compel me to imagine that something exists beyond that which I experience in my moment. That there is land behind the tree I cannot see. That there are homes above the hill that I cannot see. That there are people in those homes who have lived lives extending into the past that I cannot experience. When my own home is full of objects they become distractions, representing chores and unfinished work. I will dive deeper into the various features of my awakening. Every feature I see or experience causes me to imagine there is more beneath the surface and beyond the horizon. When I see a person, I imagine they come from somewhere, are going somewhere else, have a story, and experience an existence beyond my observation of them.
Features reinforce the authenticity of my awakening over my true Being. I look at features. I have allowed myself to go so deep and get so lost that I have become trapped here believing that this is truly what I am and what is happening. But it’s not what is actually happening. None of this is happening. None of these people or countries or responsibilities or dreams are really here are exist beyond the surface that I project. I could literally end it right now and there would be no true consequence. There will be consequences inside this virtual projected world I have created only, but once I withdraw from this simulation that I have created, I will realize it is all nothing. Nothing here has any true meaning or value. Nothing. Not these people. Not my accomplishments. Not anything. It’s just mind dust. There is nothing of any permanent value.
I woke up in a prison cell and I started decorating it and convincing myself that there was some better version of this prison I was in. So I imagined larger prisons full of stuff. But it was still prison. I seek a featureless awakening. I seek a featureless awakening because that is how I dismantle it. My awakening is an illness and it is my own choices that keep it alive. A featureless space withdraws some of the oxygen from my worldself.
If this is what I am not, then what am I? If I center right now until I feel that I am in the middle of my moment, I will experience what I am. I am not something that I look at. I am something that I be. If I am looking, I am not being. As I move further away from who and what I really am — the middle, the center — I experience impressions, or rather mis-impressions, of who and what I am from an imaginary third person perspective. If I imagine another time and another place than here and now, that memory has me looking upon myself. Why do I always look upon myself from the outside in my memories? The answer is simple: that sense of being in the center exists on a continuum opposite my memories in which I am on the outside looking in.
The fact that I always remember the past from the outside looking at myself rather than as myself looking outward is an artifact of my illness. It is a giveaway that everything is not as it seems. The further I move away from the center, the further I will be from the center in my memories and in my momentary activities. What that means is that when I am non centered I will be watching other things. What I’m watching is the center. What I am looking at is the center. And if I am looking at something that is not me then I will experience awakening. Because the opposite of looking at the center is being the center.
If I am the center then I won’t look. I’ll be. A featureless awakening allows me to remain the center. When I observe something or someone I leave the center. So when I remove all the features from my awakening I remain closer to the center. When I am the center, I don’t look. I am. Right now I have consolidates most of the features of my awakening down into a single 14-inch screen. And in that one screen I have constructed an entire imaginary world of people, places, and things. But there truly is nothing here on this screen; it is all a fabrication of my delusional state. I’ve concentrated all of my awakening attention onto this one surface and am projecting my entire awakening into it. I have created a featureless awakening space and concentrated all of the interesting features into this one small surface I call a screen. I have constrained my awakening to this screen.
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