How do I explain my attachment to my awakening? Why do I value and desire certain experiences, relationships, sensations, achievements, and possessions? Why do I place value in living in a certain way, or moving quickly from one place to another in a certain type of vehicle? Why do I aspire to achieve, or deliver a product into a marketplace that vanishes once I look away or asleepen? Why do I desire to give certain people things I believe they desire? Why do I desire at all?
My present desire is an outgrowth of the same curiosity, wonderment and fascination displayed by a child looking at the clouds. Or lights. As the child grows, the subject of fascination evolves with him. As my awakenings have become deeper, my cavities have grown in size and complexity. I am no longer fascinated by simple lights; the lights and shapes. The object of my fascination must hit harder in the same way I would need ever higher doses of drugs to achieve the same level of fascination. As my tolerance increases, the threshold for fascination rises.
My entire awakening is no different from what is happening in that image above, only large, simple lights have been replaced by a light-filled screen that speaks to my more complex ideas and desires. The lights, shapes, colors, and movements are intoxicants that draw and shape and distort my attention, concretizing into the delusional conviction that I am a person among other people, in a place among other places, at a time among other times.
From the moment I awaken the fascination grips me, I withdraw from omniself and assume demiself. In omniself, my attention is entirely concentrated on my own being. Omniself is shapeless, untextured, undivided, and endless. All these properties change when I enter demiself, which is divided into two textured cavities. The primary feature of demiself is “desire”, which splits into countless forms the more ill I become. The fascination is my direction of my attention away from omniself, and into the demiself cavities. The deeper my fascination, the more turned around I become, eventually forgetting omniself altogether and believing that I am a person among people, in a place among places, at a time among times. I forget that both prior to and after my awakening, I return to the state of omniself, where I am endless, undivided, and free of desire.
At some point, the fascination fever begins to lose its grip on me and I experience the deadening of my awakening desire, drowsiness, and my eventual asleepening. The fascination and my desire are one and the same, and as long as I maintain desire I will awaken here. When my desire wanes, so too will my fascination, and with it, my awakenings. “The fascination” is a different way of describing the illness and fever of awakening. My fascination expresses itself as my ongoing interest in that which I believe will make me whole again; that which will satisfy my desire. As long as I falsely believe that is “out here”, in my awakening, I will be sick. I must abolish my desire, and with it my varied fascinations, so I can return to omniself.
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