The first principle of descent is to conceive and perceive my existence as it is, free from the imagined forms and performances that I have accumulated over years of awakenings.
My inner projection is a fully malleable construct built of suppositional, imaginary forms and performances. Years of “education” have populated this constellation with knowledge, ideas, beliefs, and theories which I will never or can never experience or know.
I can broadly categorize all inner and outer phenomena as either essential or inessential. The inessential is that which I do not directly experience or cannot know. The essential is that which I do directly experience and do know.
All can be discovered and validated directly through very simple experience. While I will at first challenge and reject this new existential division, with time and persistence it will be obvious, as will the detrimental effects of ignoring it.
The process of applying the first principle takes time. But with contemplation, I will come to see the outlines of a vast conceptual construct of ideas, beliefs, theories, and facts that prevent me from understanding my own nature and the nature of the second place.
Initially, my inner constellation is full of inessential concepts and loudly interferes with my attempts to deconstruct them. “Voices in my head” reinforce and remind me of things I have learned in the past, undermining my efforts at descent. But those two recede with persistence.
The first principle, applied, reforms my existential model, allowing me to reorient toward my first and last desire: descent, and eventual reunion with the first place, my first shape. As I confront and dismantle the inessential forms and performances that populate my inner environment, I experience a great release from many types of suffering.
…