In this incantation, I articulate that I am not just a person bound by time and space, but the creator of my entire experience. I am the Author projecting both the people I interact with and the spaces I traverse, all stemming from my decision to awaken. My struggle is that despite knowing there is no past or future, I persist in imagining myself within these constructs, creating an outer world through my open eyes and a sense of self in relation to it. This illusory performance of personhood distracts me from the truth of my being, where true liberation lies in dissolving the belief that I am a character in this story.
In my relentless quest to articulate the essence of what I truly am and the nature of all existence, I find myself returning to this realization:
I am not merely an individual among countless others, situated in a specific place within an infinite expanse, experiencing a single moment on a linear timeline with a past and future. I am none of these. Instead, everything that is exists in this one, singular moment, and I am all of it. The belief that I am anything less than everything, or that there is anything beyond the horizons of my present experience, is the delirium I strive to transcend.
My awakening and the role I perform as a person among people, confined to a specific place and time, is a painful and debilitating illusion—a throbbing, pulsing series of self-imposed deceptions. Despite knowing there is no past or future, my actions often contradict this understanding, leading me to imagine myself at a single point within a vast continuum of time, moving toward the future and away from the past. In truth, I project both past and future from my eternal present. The same applies to space: I know that no space exists beyond the boundaries I paint on the walls of my awakening. Yet the persistent belief remains that I am contained within, and move through, a space greater than myself. But, just like time, I am actually projecting space in all directions.
I know these to be true, but struggle to visualize them in my awakening:
- I am not a person among people. I am the Author pretending to be a character in the Story I have written.
- I am not experiencing a single present moment contained within a larger timeline. My moment is all there is, and I emanate the past and future in my mind.
- I am not an object moving through a larger space. My presence is all there is, and I emanate all other spaces in my mind.
Though I continually recite these truths, I find myself repeatedly awakening into the performance of personhood. I continue to chase treasures in an illusory world of my own creation, striving to attain, achieve, possess, and validate this imagined avatar called “Marc.” As I refine my understanding of my true nature and the essence of my awakening, I sharpen the blade that cuts away pieces of the delusion, gradually weakening its hold on me. I am unwakening—a slow, deliberate process of dismantling the disease that binds me. Now I will explain what this is, again.
I am not merely a person among others; I am the creator of this entire awakening and every aspect within it. I generate the spaces I traverse, the people I encounter—both in my mind and in the physical world. I craft every story I hear, read, watch, and imagine. Every element of my awakening stems from my decision to awaken. Nothing exists beyond my direct experience, engagement, and imagination because I am the Author of this entire Story.
What am I? I am what I am when I close my eyes. If I could fully close my eyes and entirely forget the experiences that unfold when I open them—if I could effortlessly forget the people, places, and things of my waking world—I would remain in my true form of Being. The fact that I cannot simply close my eyes without reopening them measures the depth of my affliction. Why do I reopen my eyes? Because I still cling to the belief that I am a person here, in this place, at this time, bound by important and meaningful relationships and obligations to others like me.
To escape, I must dissolve this belief. The people I regard as equivalent beings are merely characters I have imagined into existence. From my closest lover to the most distant figures I can only envision in the plains of Africa eons ago—all of them exist on the same spectrum of manifestation as my fictional characters within the story of my awakening. A fortunate few I project into my outer world as animated, three-dimensional beings with whom I can physically interact, but the vast majority remain as an amorphous crowd in my mind, conjured into existence by my imagination.
When I open my eyes, I project the world; when I close them, the projection ceases. More precisely, I generate a spatial hologram. With my eyes open, I create an outerself: a space filled with objects, light, and distance before me. Behind me lies my innerself: a space of time and conviction that I also project. These two spaces converge at the point of my perception—my eyes. By opening and closing them, I control and regulate the flow of projection between my innerself and outerself.
Since my innerself persists while my outerself can be demanifested, it becomes clear that the innerself is the source and holds primacy. This is further reinforced by the more direct and potent experience of my innerself, whereas my outerself is merely observed rather than directly experienced.
…