In this incantation, I unravel how my present moment defines all that I experience—including memory, identity, and aspiration—by exposing them as real-time projections shaped by belief. I explain how my past and future are not linear truths but active stories I sustain to modify the texture of now. Whether it’s pride, shame, longing, or hope, each emotion lives only in the present narrative field I animate through belief. As I awaken, I recognize that characters, settings, and histories arise from what I choose to imagine and focus on. When I stop believing, the story dissolves and a new moment emerges.
Everything is happening in this moment. My memories of the past are not actually things that happened, but projections I am generating right now. If I feel bad about something I did, it is not because I truly did that thing in the past, but because I am currently projecting that story into my narrative field. My experience of memory is a live rendering of a story and my acceptance of that story in my present-moment. The narrative field changes with what I project into it, and my sense of the past is no exception.
If I feel pride over something I once accomplished, I am actively choosing to project that pride and that accomplishment into my now. And yes, when I do so, my circumstances—my momentary context—seem to change accordingly. The story thickens, reshapes, grows. The memory and the emotional response are simultaneous creations of the present. If I remember working hard to achieve something, the conditions of my present moment will reflect that hard work I believe I did. It will reflect my belief in myself, and all those I have projected around me to believe the same.
This is true not just for shame or pride, but for the people I imagine were involved. If I remember doing something wrong or something meaningful involving someone else, I project both the people and the experience of a “shared memory”. I fabricate the shared memory, the social dynamic, the emotional texture, and its imagined consequences on my condition and relations—all of it, right now. I project those characters into my narrative field and assign them roles within my story live in real time. These are not actual people from an objective past—they are current surface projections formed from my own focus. If I stop believing in that story, or decide that I do not want that memory anymore, I can stop believing it. I can stop projecting the characters in which that story lives. Some of the characters will simply reflect my desire to reform my present moment, while others will hold onto it. Those that wish to hold on are those that I let go of.
The same logic applies to goals and accomplishments. I am always attempting to change my present moment by inserting new stories. When I form a goal, I imagine a different present condition or circumstance, and then begin reshaping my current narrative field to move toward that imagined condition. I fabricate memories to support this change. I create reference points. I simulate cause and effect. All of this is done in the now, but it creates the sensation of the passage of time; that I am moving away from something and toward something else. But really I am just re-engineering My present moment by rebuilding my narrative field in the present.
My awakening life is not a timeline—it is a canvas. There is only this present moment. And if I don’t like the way this moment feels, I project new stories in order to alter it. The past and future are just tools I use to reshape now. I think I’m working toward something, but what I’m really doing is attempting to shift the emotional texture and structure of the present narrative field. There is only now. And everything I do—every memory, every regret, every success, every desire—is simply a technique to change what I see and feel in my only moment. If I want a different story, I must simply stop believing the stories I have written into the past. If I want a different future I must simply stop believing in the fears I am writing into my present moment. All I have to do is tell a different story. I am the author, after all, and if I want a different moment I must simply understand that the past of regrets and shame and the future of fear and anxiety, are just stories I am writing right now. I just have to change my beliefs and rewrite the story. It is all happening now.
How does it work? I can close my eyes right now in my darkened room and there is nothing in my spatial cavity—no form, no scenery, no physical context—but all the stories I believe are still loaded into my inner mental cavity. They remain present, stored as active projections in my narrative field; memories. These stories persist not because they are real, but because I continue to hold them, to believe in them. Before I awaken—before My focus returns and My character reanimates—there are no such stories. In My prewakening, I simply exist. I just Am. There is no timeline, no spatial map, no memory of how I got here or why. That is the state of pure being.
It is only when I awaken that I inflate these stories. They form into beliefs, memories, characters, and external conditions of my moment that define and color my moment. They construct the scaffolding for My current moment. In truth, I am here, in this cottage in the Himalayas, not because of some independently existing sequence of events, but because I believe that I made a series of choices that brought Me here. That belief fuels the entire visible and invisible infrastructure of this moment.
Consequently, I project the villagers, the mountains, the weather, the customs—all of it. They are echoes of My belief, reflections stitched together to support the story I am telling Myself. Meanwhile, other characters—those associated with a different story, such as My former life in America—are now embedded deeper in My narrative field. They are further out, existing more faintly, less accessible in My direct experience. I have pushed them outward into distance, both temporal and spatial. They are less present not because they are gone, but because I am no longer sustaining them with focused belief.
I believe that I am here because of all these choices I made, all this travel I did, all these accomplishments, and preferences. That is why I am here, I think to myself. But it’s not. I am here because there is no where else to be. Not because I did this, that, or the other. I am here because this is all there is. The story I tell myself is just that; a story. The only truth to this story is the truth that I give it. These stories cannot impact that I am here in any way, only how I experience it.
This is how My awakening works. I fabricate a story which forms the narrative field of my moment. Then I animate the context, fill it with the necessary characters and sensations and events to support it. And when I stop believing in a story, its surface begins to dissolve; I begin to “forget it” which I experienc as think about it less often. The characters embedded in that story begin to fade from my temporal and spatial cavities. The places recede, and My entire narrative field reshapes in real time without the forgotten, disbelieved story, obeying the beliefs I continue to hold. Doing and acting are me changing the story; remembering is me sustaining a story; and forgetting is me releasing a story.
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