In this incantation, I examine why I forget when I awaken and how the subsurface turbulence blinds me. I see that my desire arises from forgetting my being, and only in a still, undisturbed awakening can I reclaim my knowing. As I shape my reality, I realize that even fulfillment may not satisfy me—for I am both the creator and the created, questioning the meaning of the joy I orchestrate.
In my incantation “Stories within stories”, one of my most important insights comes at the end when I ask myself why I keep forgetting when I awaken. I write:
Forgetting and Awakening – Why do I forget my outer reality each time I awaken? Is this forgetting imposed by my inner reality, or am I choosing it? I forget because my inner reality has grown so vast and overwhelming that it consumes my entire awareness. Its pain is immediate and seemingly inescapable—like smashing a finger with a hammer, where the pain drowns out all other thoughts. My awakening is filled with suffering in countless ways, forcing me to confront it before I can become aware of anything else. Only by addressing and alleviating this pain can I begin to remember what I truly am and become aware of what and where I am.
This highlights my need to awaken into a calm, featureless space where the pain of my awakening is numbed enough that I can remember where I came from. The moment I am thrust into an awakening filled with movement and turbulence, my connection to my outer reality is severed and I assume the personal, forgetting the supernal.
As long as I believe I have something to accomplish in here, I will experience this turbulence. As long as I interact with the subsurface, imagining something beyond the surface of my moment – beyond the shapes of my present moment – I create the conditions for time and movement; for the eruption of urgencies beyond my present moment, wholly imagined. Once I can awaken into a featureless moment, calm, unmoved by my subsurface ruminations is the point at which I will be able to turn around and look at who I am and what I truly desire. That my being is what I desire, and that it is my forgetting my being that creates the desire I feel when I awaken. My awakening desire is my ignorance of my being. The desires that arise in me when I awaken are a result of not fully knowing who I am.
When I remember who I am, fear will have no place here. No insecurity, no anxiety. No longing, no isolation, no loneliness. The things I believe I want, the experiences I fear missing, are merely threads in a story I am weaving. It is my own hand that shapes the narrative of my awakening. What I seek is already mine—I need only to write it into being. And yet, when I finally do, I will find that it does not taste as sweet as I once imagined. My characters may rejoice, but when I recognize that it is my own hand orchestrating their joy, what satisfaction will remain for me?
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Desire and Identity – If my desire arises from forgetting my being, does fulfilling my desires serve as a distraction from true knowing? Or does each desire point me back to what I have forgotten?
Everything in my awakening points me back to the truth of who and what I am. So while fulfilling my awakening desires serves as a distraction from my true knowing, it also points me back to what I have forgotten. While I am feverishly pursuing my awakening desires it is more difficult to pay heed to the truth of my being, but when I do finally arrive and my moment slows, the question arises: what is the point of all this? And it is then, in that moment of reflection, that I will start to look behind me toward the truth.
The Illusion of Accomplishment – What compels me to believe there is something to achieve within my awakening? If I fully accepted the present moment, would the notion of accomplishment dissolve?
What compels me to believe is my condition that something is missing and I wrongly believe that what is missing is something I don’t have in here, in my inner awakening reality. The depth of my sensation of missing something is equivalent to the degree to which I seek its resolution in my awakening. If I fully accepted that I am complete and that my moment is all there is, I would seek no inner accomplishment for I would know that there is nothing I do not have. I have everything because I am everything, but I struggle to accept that, and that is why I strive.
The Mechanics of Time and Movement – How do my subconscious imaginings create the conditions for time and urgency? Can I exist within time without being bound by it?
In my moment there are two layers of experience: that which I experience right now is the surface; and that which I imagine exists beyond the surface is the subsurface. Time arises out of the interplay of these two layers. My dissatisfaction with the surface prompts me to imagine a subsurface where that dissatisfaction is gone. My conviction that subsurface contains my satisfaction compels me to move toward it, which I experience as time and urgency. Time is not something I “exist within”, but rather an artifact of my movement to change my surface into something I believe will satisfy my desire. Time does not bind me.
The True Object of My Desire – If all I seek is already mine, why do I still feel the need to pursue it? What would it mean to desire nothing—to exist purely as I am, without the impulse to shape or chase?
I have forgotten who I am and that I am everything. My awakening is my act of forgetting that. It is painful, and there is no useful way to explain why I wake up and why it happens, only that I do and that I do not want to. When I move in my awakening I am pursuing that which I think will heal me. By knowledge of what I truly want is ahead of my behavior – this is my latent manifestation. It means that while I know what I am pursuing in my awakening is not going to deliver what I seek, I still do it anyway. There is a delay after my realization and my change of behavior in my awakening.
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