In this incantation, I describe the dichotomy between my conceptual being—comprised of thoughts, beliefs, and identity constructs—and my actual being, which is my true self. The illusion of separation between these two constructs creates an awakening illness, where I mistakenly believe that my secondself (thoughts, desires, and feelings) and thirdself (sensory projections of space and form) are my true identity. My journey to healing involves dissolving these projections, collapsing my conceptual being, and allowing my actual self to emerge in its authentic, unified form.
My awakening illness is caused by a dichotomy that forms my awakening experience:
- My conceptual being is the collection of thoughts, ideas, reflections, and beliefs about my identity and direct, first-person experience.
- My actual being is true, authentic identity.
While these two feel different, they are in fact one. My entire awakening is little more than the experience of separation between these two constructs: my beliefs about who and what I am, and my actual identity. As long as these two diverge, and I believe I am something other than what I in truth am, I will continue to awaken. My journey to heal and recover from this illness I call life is nothing more than the convergence of my conceptual and actual being. Or rather, the collapse of my conceptual being and re-emergence of my actual being.
In the illustration below my direct, actual being is the solid sphere, and my conceptual construct is the amorphous, cloudy debris layered on top. In this way, my secondself of thoughts, desires, feelings, and time and my thirdself of space, form, light, color, people, and movement are the cancerous growths I seek to remove. My awakening experience is one in which I believe that these growths (i.e., my secondself and thirdself) are my true identity, and I forget how to even see my true being.
On occasion I will be sitting or lying down and experience the “shell”; the continuation of the behindme into the aboveme, belowme, and frontme. I can intuitively feel how the entire aroundme connects together. I can sense beyond the intellectual divisions that divide the physical objects of the space in front of me from the abstract constructs that float around in my secondself mind. The idea that the behindme and aboveme exist as a vast space independent of my projection is also beginning to recede in favor of the simulation logic scenario, in which the features of thirdself do not physical exist until I project and manifest them. What is behind me? The same thing that is to the left and right of my computer screen. The physical world is constrained to my thirdself viewport in the same way that my applications are constrained to my laptop screen. That part of my sensory experience that persists when I close my eyes — namely my physical bodily sensations — is a non-visual, low-resolution projection.
At least for now, the triself model still appears to be useful. In fact, It had always accurately captured the outline of my awakening, but what is changing is my ability to directly experience my awakening in those three levels. Until recently it had been fairly abstract; I was not able to directly superimpose it upon my experience and observe the degree to which they “matched”. My awakening experience and the abstract triself model were two very separate things. Now they are beginning to converge, and my experience and the model are fusing into one singular growth.
I run into what I will call “the body problem”: I contend that I am projecting thirdself and that it does not exist if I am not projecting it. Yet when I close my eyes, why can I still sense my body moving around the space I occupy? Don’t I de-project space when I close my eyes? Not completely. Because my limbs and body are all part of the projection; they are part of its mechanics. My body is as much a part of thirdself as the ocean floor is a part of the ocean. They are not separate things. My body isn’t some object existing in a visual space; it is a fundamental part of the entire apparatus, from my mind through to my body and then the projected cavity that appears to extend outward from my head region. From secondself I project the entirety of thirdself, which includes my sensational apparatus I refer to as my body. I can think of my body as the root system of my mind, and the world I think of outside of it as the foliage.
My secondself mind is the projector, and everything including my body and thirdself are part of the projection. My body is the low-energy projection… it requires the least amount of energy to “turn on”. It forms the trunk and everything “outside of my body” forms the remainder of the growth. The aboveme and behindme are unaffected by the growth. What I call secondself is the strongest part of the root system, which then grows outward into my body, and through my “eyes” into the sensation of a space. My body and is a sort of hollowed out cavity within my flesh; my sense of being “within something” is the sense of my true flesh up against my imaginary, diseased flesh. The area I experience as space is a denser, more sophisticated growth that I experience as a spatial dimension, or blossom.
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