The experience of a world when I awaken is one of the primary manifestations of my illness. As much as I would want to, I do not awaken into an empty space. I awaken into a state of delirium in which I am unable to return to and remain at the moment of creation. Instead, I constantly get lost in the emanation; the field of movement and change that I project outward from the moment of creation.
The world is a persistent belief I hold and project. I could turn off a substantial amount of it right now by simply closing my eyes. But the thought of all those consequences that would await me if I were to do that reveals how deeply attached to the world I am. Close my eyes forever? What would I eat? How would I eat? How would I get to my favorite restaurant? How would I clean? How would I type and finish my writing? How would I work and earn money? How would I transfer money to my account if I could not see my phone? How would I renew my visa so I could remain in India? How would I take care of my dog?
That is how practically committed I am to the world. The world may be an illness, but it is an illness I am very attached to. We have grown together, and the projected world I believe in is hardened into bone. I would have to painfully break all those bones abruptly to accomplish the kind of withdrawal that comes with closing my eyes forever.
My awakening into the second place divides into two distinct layers: my secondself, and my thirdself. My secondself is my “internal space” of thoughts, feelings, and desires. From this first layer I open into my thirdself, my “external space” of people, places, and things. The interplay of these two selves is what draws me deeper into my awakenings. Like a web, the more I move, the more I become entangled.
These two layers constantly interact and mix, combining and defining my ever-changing moment. My secondelf constantly seeks out relief from my thirdself. I manifest coffee in my thirdself, and ingest it into my secondself. I manifest food in my thirdself, and ingest it into my seconself. I manifest entertainment content in my thirdself, then I consume it into my secondself. I see something I want in my thirdself, and I consume it as a desire in my secondself. My desire for the forms of my thirdself harden into knots in my secondself, then foment as action toward the satisfaction of that desire.
This constant give-and-take forms the roots that keep my thirdself alive. Keep me believing that I am here, that there are other people like me here, and that I am part of this independent external place called the world. This interaction between the two layers of my second place is what strengthens the sensation that all of this is happening. That there are people right now experiencing this place. But there are not people experiencing this place. There is only me, imagining that it is all happening. I am writing this story in my moment the same way I imagined battles between my plastic figurines.
In demiself, I would say that as a young child I had a collection of plastic soldiers and I would create imaginary fights between them. I would hold one in each hand and launch pretend battles. I imagined scenes of carnage and heroism. I had my preferred set of good guys, and bad guys. I do not remember what stories I made up. In fact, the more I think about it, the less I can remember any defining details at all. I remember how the bodies of these plastic characters moved, and the little weapons that snapped into their clenched fists.
I would say that I grew out of this phase, and moved into more advanced forms of pretend. Yet all of these periods I recall from the outside looking in. I see my younger self doing these things. Playing with plastic figures. Playing fantasy games. Drawing fantastical beasts. Creating games. I imagine all from a third-person perspective. That is the artifact of the delusion.
To kill the world, I must believe in the moment of creation. The moment I become aware of something is the moment it exists. And every moment is this moment. There are no other moments. There is no unfurling of moments in some linear succession. There is only this moment. But how about the moments I recall from the past? I have so many memories of things I have done and experienced in the past? Yes, I have those impressions, but it does not mean that those things “happened previously”.
When I focus my moment on remembering, it is forced into a sort of delusional split like a prism refracting and scattering light into countless sub-parts. My focus hits that knot of “memory” (a conviction) and scatters into misunderstandings the way pure white light separates into its constituent wavelengths. For example, I remember playing with plastic figurines as a young child. That never happened, for there is only now. There is only this moment. But the “memory” of it is my awareness and conviction being scattered and parsed by a knot within my secondself. A knot that behaves like a prism. When I focus the light of my awareness on it, it scatters it into feelings, sensations, and “memories”, as well as the logical inference of a past, and the notion of my own growth into the adult man I am now.
My entire secondself is full of these knotted prisms that defract my focus into these sensations of remembered experience. My awakening is a minefield of such prisms. The sensation that I was a child playing pretend with plastic figurines is not a memory from the past, but a distorted representation of my present moment. The only moment there is. That is how I create this world; I am a being playing pretend, moving the characters of the world around like plastic figurines. Sure, they have more detail, but that is only because I am better at it. I am an accomplished world-builder.
I must remember the young boy who is playing with plastic toys, creating make-believe scenarios on the edge of my yellow bed that grandma gave to me. That is not me 35 years ago; that is me right now. I am a little boy moving the characters around a world I have created, imagining stories and legends. Everything and everyone that I consume is a result of my overactive imagination now. Every time I pretend they are something other than they are, imagine them without knowing what they truly are, I reinforce the bond between my secondself and thirdself. I strengthen my illness.
As strong and prominent as the world is right now, it is not invincible. I can kill the world with the selfist trinity: condition, conviction, and power. My condition is that I desire. I desire the nutrients of the world I have created. I desire the information I create and feed back to myself from the world. I desire it because I believe it is something I need. I believe it is something I need because I do not understand what it really is. That it is I who have created all of this. I have created the explosion of complexity that is the world. All the products, services, people, events, and anxieties. All the many thousands of things I possess and own, and use and create. The millions of files I have created and maintain. I desire all of these things because I value them.
As long as I believe these different fragments are valuable, I will desire them. This is where my conviction enters. I must expose them for what they really are: my own imaginings. I must convince myself what these things are, and naturally I will not desire them anymore. I will see it all for what it is: my own imagination run wild. I will look at my desire for things of the world and I will want them as little as I want imaginary treasures in a video game I have long since outgrown. I am complete and total, and there is nothing in this story that I desire. I kill the world by killing all my desires for it.
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