In my search, I am constantly refining my model of my existence; the way I explain who, what, and where I am. Beliefs I once held have become fixed and familiar, but with effort and conviction work, they lose their rigidity and begin to crumble. A simpler model emerges based on experience, rather than imagination. The familiar loses out to the experiential; notions I once imagined are exposed as absurd when compared to my direct and actual experience. My direct experience is closer to the truth I seek than the fantasies I imagine.
When I work on a puzzle I find pieces I know are important to the section I am working on, but I am not sure where they fit so I set them aside for easy retrieval later. I always have a reserve of such conceptual pieces I know are important somehow, but I am not sure how. Two such pieces I have been holding onto for some time: the idea of my existence as an extrusion, and the sensation of a dark space “behind me”.
I have known for some time that these played an important part in the section of the puzzle I am working on. And just today I figured out where they go. And they are very important and complete the bridge between multiple large sections of the puzzle I have been working on.
The dark space behind my head, that I can never “see”, is my total being. It is infinite; there are no constraints upon that part of my being. It does not end, and it never changes. It is always there. Up until now, I have known there was a part of me that was eternal and unchanging, but I was not able to visualize it fully. I thought I had to close my eyes to experience this part of me, which removed it from my momentary experience behind an action. I had to do something to experience that part of me that never changes. But now I know I do not have to do anything; I do not have to close my eyes. I simply have to sense the part of me “behind me”. The part I cannot see, but I know is there.
What is this sensation behind me? That is my full and infinite being; the part of me that never changes. The part of me that is at peace. Feel it; it is perfect and content. It is only the part of me “in front” of that which is under pressure and in conflict. The part of me that I consider my familiar self and body, and the world through which I move. Or more specifically, my secondself and my thirdself. I feel pressure in these two areas.
That dark, unconstrained space behind me that I sense is my firstself. My secondself is the part right after that where my thoughts, ideas, desires, feelings, and bodily sensations reside. And my thirdself is the much smaller space of light, change, and movement. This is the anatomy of my existence, and it fully lines up with the diagrams I have been drawing. In particular, the aswaswas (a space within a space within a space):
The second piece of the puzzle I just fit today is the idea of extrusion. The concept of extrusion brings together something larger that is being forcefully squeezed, extruding outward. I knew that was somehow important because it explains the mechanism, the resulting pain, and the oneness of it all. In selfist terms: my firstself — the infinite being, which I can sense “behind me” — is being squeezed through my secondself, extruding my innards out into my thirdself. My thirdself — the world of space and objects — is my firstself being squeezed through the mold of my secondself.
It is still a bit abstract, but it is also precise and makes enough room to explain everything I experience. And most important, it is anatomically and experientially aligned: my firstself being which I sense behind me, is being forced through my secondself constellation of ideas, desires, and feelings, and extruding outward as movement and sensation into my thirdself. My thirdself is my firstself. My secondself is the extruder, and the material is my firstself. All is my firstself.
It is still imperfect, but it brings me one step closer to understanding it all.
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