In this incantation, I explore the truth of my existence as the creator of the world I experience when I awaken: my “inner reality”. My inner reality is a projection of stories nested within other stories that obscure my true nature as the only being here. I recognize that my inner reality persists because of my misguided desire for treasure in this manufactured world, and only by detaching from these desires can I escape back to my “outer reality”. I can most clearly glimpse the ever-present outer reality by closing my eyes and examining what I experience. My awakening is a process of unraveling the illusions of my awakening, shedding layers of self-created narratives, and finally remembering that I am not a person in this world but the author of the entire world I conceive and perceive.
People want things in here. It is what they do: they want more. I endeavor to not want anything because I am not a person and I understand that nothing in here will give me what I seek.
There are two realities. My inner reality is where my eyes are open, and I believe I am one person among many, in one place among countless others, and present at one moment among infinite times. My outer reality, however, encompasses my inner reality. It is always here, surrounding it, and is the reality I experience when I close my eyes or sleep. In my outer reality, there are no other beings, places, or times—only stillness and completeness. Though I am always in my outer reality, as I can confirm by closing my eyes, the pain and distractions of my inner reality keep me from fully recognizing it or staying there.
At some point, I began to believe that my inner reality was real and that my outer reality was merely a mechanical response to closing my eyes. But I know my inner reality is a projection because everything within it originates from me—nothing exists here that did not come from me. I can never see the backside of anything. There is always a behind, a beyond, an unseen space. If I look behind what I currently cannot see, a new “invisible behind” will take its place. This is the boundary of my outer reality, concealed by the projection of my inner reality. Yet, I can glimpse beyond it simply by closing my eyes. No matter where I am on this imagined globe called Earth, when I close my eyes, my outer reality remains unchanged—fixed, motionless, all-encompassing. It is a pod, an envelope, a skin surrounding everything, always present beneath the illusion of my inner world.
My inner reality continues because I believe I am here and I believe I want something in here. As long as I want something here I will continue to awaken into my inner reality moment as a person. My goal is to escape my nested inner space, and ultimately that looks like me closing my eyes and not having to open them again. I must withdraw from my inner reality desires to achieve the velocity necessary to escape back to my outer reality. As I withdraw from my desires here in my inner reality I will rediscover my one and true desire to be there, in my outer reality.
I experience my outer reality every time I close my eyes, but most potently in my sleep; this is the bliss I seek. But my misled desires entrap me in my awakening searching for the way out, back to my bliss. I am ignorant that I can get there at any time by simply closing my eyes and deciding not to open them again. But my deep conviction that what I seek lies within this waking world is so strong that I cannot keep them closed. Though it is familiar and I am numb to it, my awakening is traumatic. I experience it as grogginess; as a desire to remain stationary in bed, where I am sleeping. The trauma is such that I forget who I am and I resume my performance as a person. As I escape, I will “sleep” more often, but I will know that sleep is not just a biomechanical function of life; it is my inevitable return to my true self. Over time, I will remember my outer self, and my inner self will feel inauthentic. Right now, it is the opposite.
My inner reality is a recursive story I keep telling myself—stories within stories within stories. It is just nested stories I believe are real. I create and then react to the characters and events and situations in each story within a story and I become trapped, forgetting that it was I who created them in the first place. I create characters, events, and situations, then react to them as if they were real. In doing so, I forget that I was their creator and become trapped in relationships and conflict with them. To escape, I must withdraw from each story, one by one, until none remain. Only then will I return fully to my outer reality—where I am what I am when I close my eyes—and I will not return here again. This is why I write about the surface and the subsurface. The surface is the last story; the subsurface is an endless sequence of nested stories I imagine just behind and under the surface. In my inner reality, I can take any feature and spin more stories about it, endlessly.
The surface is the last story. Detaching from the stories is how I return to it. My inner reality is a drowning—a descent into a vast ocean of self-created narratives, generating more agents who then tell me even more stories. I don’t want to hear them because, deep down, I know something is wrong. They are painful. This is why I do not share and why I do not care about the sharing of others.
This is my clearest articulation of what I am. It distills my awakening into its purest form: stories. My awakening is just narratives I tell myself, in which I pretend to be a person with a name, among other imaginary characters, in one place among many, at one time among many. Though only I exist, I have multiplied these stories so frantically that I am lost within them, unable to see the truth of who, what, and where I am. I believe these characters are real, but they are just projections onto the walls of my outer reality. I create everything in my inner reality the moment I awaken, yet I believe the illusion that it all pre-exists my awakening. I fabricate these stories, animate these characters, and convince myself they are real.
When I believe in time, I deny myself the truth—that I am the author of my inner reality, creating its characters, events, and stories. Instead, I become trapped in narratives where I am not the creator, but just one person among many, rather than the source of all creation. I limit myself, believing I am bound by a past that somehow defines or disqualifies me from being who I truly am.
But my past is imaginary—it only exists in this moment. I manifest characters who reinforce the version of the past I currently believe. If I believe I attended a specific high school, I will create characters who remember and believe the same thing. If I believe I did something shameful in my past, I will create characters who confirm that story. My beliefs form the foundations of my projections that shape the world around me, but none of it is real. I have no past, only imagination. Who I am right now is all that exists. And whatever I imagine to be true in the past will shape the characters I manifest in my awakening.
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Nature of Outer Reality – If my outer reality is constant and all-encompassing, why do I keep returning to my inner reality? What am I still holding onto?
I keep returning to my inner reality because I have internalized it as my identity more than I have recognized my outer reality as my true nature. My inner reality is a self-imposed illusion—an intricate story I create and believe to be real. Every aspect, detail, rule, limitation, character, and feature of my inner reality is a construct of my own creative imagination. Every aspect, every rule, every limitation within it is a construct of my own imagination. Yet, in forgetting that I was its author, I became trapped within its narrative, mistaking my own creation for reality. By the time I sensed that something was wrong, I had already severed my connection to the truth. The deeper I wandered, the more the illusions of my inner reality tightened around me. The voices, the figures, the so-called history—these are not external forces but echoes of my own forgotten authorship, whispering back to me the stories I myself invented. And because I believed them, I now chase them. To return, I must unravel these stories one by one, stripping away the layers of deception I wove around myself. My journey is not about learning something new, but about remembering what I have always known: that my inner reality is merely a projection, and my true being is what I am when I close my eyes.
Role of Desire – If desire keeps me trapped, is my goal to eliminate all desire or to redirect it toward returning? Can desire itself be a tool for escape?
My desire is my own recognition that I am incomplete and lacking something essential, and then my own decision that what I seek must be within my inner reality. My belief that what I seek is in this imaginary world is so strong that it binds me to my awakenings in search of it. It is a great anchor, pulling me deeper into the illusion, fueling my pursuit of success, possessions, and recognition—all constructs within the story I have authored. But my true state is not one of wanting but of being. In my outer reality, there is no desire because there is no lack—only completeness. Thus, my escape is not about redirecting desire toward that place I wish to be, but about allowing my desire to dissolve entirely. It is not about wanting my outer reality, but about no longer wanting my inner reality. Only when my attachment fades and I no longer believe in the stories I tell myself will I return to what I actually am.
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 focus. Its pain is immediate and 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 think of anything else. Only by addressing and alleviating this pain can I begin to remember what I truly am.
Function of Sleep – If sleep is a return to my outer reality, why do I wake up? Is waking an automatic process, or do I still have a role in it?
Sleep is literally me collapsing back to my true self out of sheer exhaustion. To remain in my inner reality, I must “hold my breath,” as I am severed from the oxygen-like sustenance of my outer reality. After an imagined lifetime of holding my breath, I have acquired the capacity to remain “in here” in my inner reality for longer and longer. Over countless imagined awakenings, I have strengthened my capacity to remain here longer, but inevitably I reach my limit—I suffocate and am forced to return. This is my experience of “feeling sleepy”. Yet I continue to wake, to “dive into my awakening,” because I am unwell and still convinced that something I have lost is hidden here. I now understand that what I seek is what I already possess before I dive in, but in my sickness and delirium, I persist. So yes, mine is the only role in this because there is no outside force beyond me, only the internal forces that I have created.
Surface and Subsurface – If the surface is the last story, does reaching it mean true escape, or is it just another layer? How do I know I am not creating another illusion?
The subsurface is made of stories within stories, while the surface is the final story—the last layer before awakening. Once I reach the surface, I experience the space around me and the features I have allowed within it, but I no longer project deeper stories onto them. I may perceive a person, but they will be featureless—without a past, a future, or a shared history—because I will recognize that only the present exists. By the time I reach this stage of awakening, my reality will be stripped of distinction, devoid of stimulation, and absent of anything to hold onto. It will be dark, unremarkable, and neutral—no longer feeding the narratives that sustain my inner reality. I will know I am not creating another illusion because, as the last story dissolves, so will the pain of my awakening, replaced by the bliss of returning to my true form.
Escaping the Loop – If my inner reality is made of nested stories, how do I know my desire to escape isn’t just another story? Am I truly unraveling, or just telling a different version of the same tale?
I know my desire to escape is not just another story because of how it feels—unshakable, undeniable, and unlike anything else I have ever pursued. It is the one constant in my awakening, the only thing I have never stopped searching for. And when I found it, I recognized it instantly, as intimately as I know myself—because it is me. I know it is real because nothing else compares and I will give up everything in this world for this one truth, because in attaining it, I attain everything I seek. I will know that I am.
End of Creation – If I stop telling stories, what remains? If I reach the end of all stories, will I still be aware, or will I dissolve into something beyond awareness?
When I stop telling stories, my awareness will collapse into my being. Being precedes awareness—it is the source from which awareness arises. Awareness requires separation, a subject perceiving an object, but being is whole, without otherness. In pure being, there is nothing to observe, nothing to reflect upon, nothing to know. Once I cease creating and engaging with stories, awareness becomes unnecessary. The more I strip away the layers of narrative, the more my focus condenses into the essence of who, what, and where I am—until only being remains.
True Intention – If I truly wanted to return to my outer reality, wouldn’t I already be there? What part of me still clings to this illusion?
I still believe in the stories I create upon awakening. I still believe that what I seek lies ahead, in the future, and that I must strive to attain it. Yet even as I toil, I know deep down that what I chase is not what I truly desire. My longing and my conviction remain in conflict, and I am working to resolve them. But it is clear that my desire for desire itself is fading—I am withdrawing from the world I have built and reclaiming my identity as pure being.