3/24/24: I wrote this over the course of a week between August 15-19, 2023.
I am lost
I repeatedly awaken from a painless first place into a painful second place. My pain has many forms which synthesize into a powerful desire to escape this painful second place and return to the painless first place.
This is not Home. I want to go Home.
I am lost because I do not know where I am without referencing things I do not and cannot know. I know I am in pain because I want nothing more than to end this experience and return to a place I know is Home. And I know there is somewhere else pain-free, because that is where I want to go. If Home did not exist, then I would not want it.
If I were to wake up lost and in pain, I would want only to return to the place before the pain started.
My Escape
I am lost. I am in pain. I want to go Home. But how?
I stop and assemble my thoughts. To escape the second place I must separate what I know from what I do not know. I must understand the nature of this second place I awaken into so I can make a map.
I start with what I know.
I know that I am lost and in pain. I know that I want to return to the place before the pain started. The painless place of peace I call the first place is Home. It is my destination. This is what I know:
- I am.
- I am in pain.
- I want the pain to go away.
I always exist, I am experiencing this pain, and I do not want to be in pain anymore.
The Deception
But if I am in pain here in the second place, and I want the pain to go away, why do I continue to come here to the second place? Why can’t I just go to where I am not in pain?
In seeking relief from the pain, I have mistakenly come to believe that the peace I seek is in the people, places, and things of the second place. As long as I believe that what I want is here in the second place, I will return here.
The only way to escape the second place and return Home is to realize and believe that there is nothing out here that will give me the peace I seek. I must want the peace of the first place above and before anything in the second place.
As I let go of my second place desires, my awakening will become more shallow and it will begin to fade away. As it fades, the first place will come into focus, and it will get closer as I let go of the second place. I will know then that it is my own grasp on the second place that keeps me here. I must let go of the second place to see and return to the first place.
- I cannot find release from my pain in the second place.
- To end my pain I must let go of the second place.
The second place is the pain I feel, and the first place is the healing.
The Pain
Why do I hurt in the second place? By understanding how the second place forms I can clearly see why it hurts.
The first place is not a place at all; it is my true, authentic, and eternal body. It is always here, but when I awaken, it is squeezed and distorted into what I call the second place. The second place is the experience of my eternal body being ripped apart, leaving me feeling that I am only a small part of it. The second place is my sensation of peering out into my splayed innards, which I call the world. My desire for peace is my desire for bodily integrity.
When I asleepen again my eternal body is once again restored and I return to peace. The second place is not a place, but the painful condition of being repeatedly ripped apart, restored, and ripped apart again.
My Condition: Desire
I experience two distinct periods: peace when I sleep, and desire when I awaken
I experience two periods: asleepening, and awakening. When I am sleeping I am in complete peace and desire nothing. When I awaken, I experience and express continuous desire I cannot satiate.
My state of peace is when I sleep and have no desire. My state of desire is when I am awake and have constant desire. I can better refer to my two states of asleepening and awakening as peace and desire, respectively.
I have an awakening experience I call existence
Upon awakening into desire, I experience a multi-dimensional bloom I call existence. My existence is the totality of everything I experience in awakening, including my inner thoughts, feelings, sensations, beliefs, and desires, and my physical sensations sight, smell, sound, touch, and taste. When I refer to my awakening, I am referring to the totality of all aspects and features of my experience when I am not asleep.
In awakening, my fundamental experience is “desire”
The fundamental component of my awakening period is “desire”. I always want something I do not presently possess or experience. I act in different ways to satisfy my desire. The degree of discomfort I experience with relation to my desire ranges from highly pleasurable on one end to highly painful on another.
My first desire is to not awaken
My first palpable desire is to not leave my asleepening condition, but I seem powerless to prevent my departure. As my awakening progresses my singular desire fragments into innumerable desires. My first desire is usually a physical urgency to relieve myself, followed by thoughts about my pending responsibilities and goals, interspersed with desires for certain comforting experiences such as preparing and consuming coffee.
My awakening is a continuous failed effort to satisfy my proliferating desires
My entire awakening is structured around identifying and satiating my numerous and evolving desires. As my awakening progresses, my desires take on new dimensions and I project my desires into an imagined future relief from present discomforts. For example, I accept the present discomfort of working so I can acquire an imagined future of relief.
All the words and expressions I use to describe my awakening can be traced to this desire-relief cycle. All words I use are expressions of desire. I accept responsibilities because I desire experiences I would not attain otherwise. I give in to physical desires because it would be painful not to. There can be a vast spectrum of desire by different measures, but fundamentally desire is the sole force underlying my entire experience. I structure my awakening moment around desire in one form or another.
I am ill and trapped in a cycle of desire
I spend my entire awakening trying to satisfy my proliferating desires. I satisfy some immediately, while others I can only satisfy in an imagined future after many more awakenings. But no matter what I do, I am never completely satisfied.
I want nothing more than to satisfy my desire, yet I continuously fail to do so. I am trapped in a cycle of desire. I am ill.
I want to recover and overcome my illness
I know that my desire to end my desire hinges upon attaining a state in which I have no desire. I know that my current performances will never satisfy my desire. I conclude then that what I seek is not here in my awakening. I am ill, and what I am doing is only making it worse. I must find another way to overcome my illness.
My Orientation
I seek permanent release, not temporary relief
There are two levels of satiation: relief, and release. Relief is temporary satisfaction of my desire, and may or may not lead to the proliferation of new desires.
Release is the permanent satisfaction of my desire, and leads to the end of my desire.
I have been trapped in a series of nested cycles of relief. I must end these relief cycles to gain permanent release.
I must understand my condition in order to overcome it
There are two outlets of desire: relief, and release
I always desire, and then act to satisfy it. My awakening has the following components:
- Desire – The fundamental force within my awakening
- Conviction – My belief that a specific inner or outer performance, acquisition, achievement, or experience will satisfy my desire
- Object – That which I desire
- Performance Belief – That which I believe I must do to satisfy my desire
- Performance Act – That which I actually do to satisfy my desire
- State – My state with regard to my desire
…
- Desire – A constant sense of wanting something I do not have.
- Conviction – Beliefs that I carry around with me and direct my desire.
- Performance – My movement both in Secondself and Thirdself to relieve my desires.
- Imagination – This one is tricky, but it is an expansive Secondself function that expands my awareness beyond my moment
My Location
I can divide my awakening experience into two distinct regions
In my awakening there is a region comprised of light, motion, change, and objects. I experience it through an oval-shaped portal that is “in front of me”. I commonly refer to everything I see and sense through this portal as the world. I will refer to this region as my Thirdself.
There is a larger region that wraps around the Thirdself portal and is more direct, immediate, and potent. In this region I experience thoughts, ideas, beliefs, physical sensations, feelings, and desires, and commonly call this “myself”. I call this my Secondself.
In my awakening, there is a third region
Aside from Thirdself and Secondself, there is a third region I call Firstself.
Unlike Secondself and Thirdself which have specific types of content that constantly change, Firstself is constant and never changes. It is the sensation of self-awareness, and being present in this time and space. Though I may not focus on it, Firstself never moves or changes. I do not suddenly begin thinking from another perspective, feel that I am not here, that I am not in this moment, or that I do not exist.
I can visualize Firstself by closing my eyes to demanifest Thirdself content, and calming my mind to demanifest Secondself content. Firstself is the dark, infinite, and amorphous cloud that surrounds me. It is like a clay. The moment I open my eyes the dark amorphous clay crystallizes into all my Secondself thoughts, ideas, feelings, and desires and Thirdself objects, sounds, light, movement, change, and space.
When my eyes are open, Firstself is the sensation that there is always something more, or just beyond what I might familiarly call “myself”.
Thirdself is contained within Secondself, which is contained within Firstself
The totality of my awakening experience is divided into these three layers: Thirdself, Secondself, and Firstself. Each of these layers has distinct characteristics that separate it from the other two. Taken together they can account for my complete experience of awakening. I refer to these three layers as the Triself.
I can measure these three layers in terms of their potency. The more potent a feature of my awakening, the more I “feel it” and the more essential it is to my being. In this way I can clearly distinguish Thirdself features as the least potent, Secondself features as more potent, and Firstself features as the most potent of all.
In the True Model, Thirdself is the smallest and least potent of all layers because its content constantly changes and I can demanifest and remanifest it easiest of all. The portal in which I experience thirdself is small relative to the rest of my Secondself and Thirdself. While the thirdself portal seems to open up into a space of immense size and depth with an abundance of detail, in truth it is relatively much smaller in size and potency than my Secondself.
I imagine that I move around in this larger space that contains me, but in truth I only experience this outer space through this very small portal and I intuit its larger size through perspective and distance.
augment, magnify, and distort my perception.
Experientially, the portal is small relative to my inner space, which wraps around it
I only experience my three self regions through myself
These are all unchanging features of my existence. People do not have that. They may purport to have it, but I can validate directly that they do not. There is no reason for me to assume there are multiple Firstselves.
The concept of the mind-body divide exposes my assumptions of a reality independent of me
I commonly think that everything I experience as the “outer world” is separate from me (Thirdself), and everything before it is my own personal “inner world” and part of me (Secondself).
This conceptual divide between what is me and what is not me supposes an external reality independent of me. To believe this, I must believe that this external reality that is not me exists whether I am experiencing it or not. That if I suddenly am not here to experience this place, it will continue to exist.
I also assume that this outer world (Thirdself) is experienced by other beings, but my own inner world (Secondself) is private to me. I call this the mind-body divide.
I cannot directly validate that there is an outer world independent of me and that this space I currently inhabit would persist if I were not here to experience. My direct experience clearly informs me that I am the only being like me who experiences Triself. I cannot directly validate that there are other beings exactly like me who also experience Firstself, Secondself, and Thirdself.
I must decide if I value experience or imagination more
I can choose to construct an understanding of my awakening existence based on experience or on imagination.
My imagination is a critical but detrimental feature of my Secondself.
Secondary Contemplations
All thirdself content has counterpart secondself content
All content within the thirdself portal has a corresponding construct within my inner space. Some thirdself content, such as a familiar person or animal, produce a higher quantity and quality of secondself content than less familiar content such as a new place or an unremarkable and unknown person.
When I focus on a thirdself feature such as a pair of my shoes, I first register secondself recognition, which can be rapidly succeeded by other secondself sensations. I look upon an inverter across the room and I experience secondself satisfaction that I can make it through the frequent power-cuts with electricity, but also annoyance at how loud it is when it charges.
All thirdself features or events engender some sort of counterpart secondself features and events, usually starting with recognition. The same can happen in reverse. I can start with a secondself idea of something that does not exist in thirdself, and then perform the acts necessary to create it in thirdself.
There are two distinct existential models
In my awakening I sustain a secondself conceptual model of who I am, where I am, and what this experience is. I use this model to preserve continuity in my changing moment. There are two models of my awakening.
The False Model is based on assumptions, beliefs, and imaginary truths that I cannot directly validate myself but which I accept as true. For example, I may accept that I am one person among billions of others who is temporarily experiencing a world that pre-existed my birth and will endure long after my death. I may also suppose that all people have roughly the same internal experience of awakening as me. I cannot directly know any of these suppositions, therefore they are imaginary.
The alternative is the True Model, which rejects the imaginary in favor of the experiential that I can directly and instantly validate myself. For example, since I cannot ascertain that people are the same as me, I accept that I am not a person. Also, given that there is only one present moment, I do not believe that I am moving through time. Consequently, I do not believe I was born, nor do I believe that I will die. Rather than being based on imaginary suppositions I can never directly validate, the True Model is based on accurately describing my experience as it is.
The False Model posits that there is a stable, independent external reality that I can evolve to understand better with logic and tools. It also assumes that
The True Model posits that the only stable reality is
While in the False Model I willingly surrender my authority over the truth, in the True Model I understand that truth is merely a determination I make.
I have accepted these constraints and thus I have surrendered sovereignty over truth.
These two models produce very different behaviors in me when I apply them. I believe this variance between my actual and conceptual experience engenders much of the discomfort I feel and is a source of a great many of my desires.
The primary difference between the two models is coexistence, origination and validation
There are three key difference between the True Model and the False Model: the origins of existence, coexistence, and validation of truth.
Coexistence. In the False Model I believe that I coexist with other beings like me called people. Despite irreconcilable experiential differences, I believe that I am one of them and that we are sharing this experience together. In the True Model, I believe that these experiential differences indicate differences between myself and the characters I call people.
People exist in secondself as conceptions, and thirdself as perceptions.
Origination. In the True Model, the origins of my awakening experience is me, and therefore the entirety of what I would call existence or reality is the same as my experience. My experience is the entirety of all that exists, and I am the central originating source of it. This is consistent with my actual experience and does not rely on anything imaginary. I am always here, always the center of everything I experience, and without my participation and observation, there is nothing. I can close my eyes and demanifest everything around me, but everything around me cannot do the same to me. I am the central and essential component of everything in existence.
In the False Model, I maintain a great number of imaginary beliefs based on abstract ideas I can never directly experience or validate. For example, I believe that I am one of billions of people, past, present and future without ever experiencing those people or the passage of time. I believe such absurdities as I inhabit a massive unknown universe of immense proportions, though I will never witness that. I believe I was born, though I cannot experience it. And I believe I will die, though I am always here.
The True Model is based on accurate description of my experience I can directly and instantly validate myself in my moment. The False Model is based on tenuous beliefs I can neither directly or instantly validate. There is certainty in the True Model, but only doubt and skepticism and uncertainty in the False Model.
In the False Model, there is an imaginary divide between the outer place and the inner place
The mind-body divide only exists within the context of the False Model
The mind-body divide only exists if I believe in the False Model which sustains that there are other equivalent beings experiencing the same space as me but from other angles and perspectives.
In the True Model, there is no meaningful divide between secondself and thirdself.
In the False Model I maintain a divide between the outer world of thirdself and the inner world of secondself. I perpetuate this false divide by accepting that I am what I experience within this body, and I am not what I experience beyond this body.
In the True Model, I do not maintain any such divide exists. I can clearly see that the entire inner and outer regions extend from and are contained within me. While it is true that I experience those forms within my thirdself region differently than those within my secondself, that does not render one “of me” and another “not of me”. Instead, I can better explain the forms of thirdself as experientially less potent than the forms of secondself.
I perpetuate the False Model by using imaginary constructs in my language
I extend and perpetuate the False Model by using language that reflects imaginary constructs I do not and cannot directly experience.
- I am not the same thing as people. They exist in thirdself and secondself, whereas I always exist and am the origin of secondself and thirdself.
- When I use first-person plural pronouns such as we, us, our, or ourselves, I extend the False Model by grouping myself in with people, which I am not.
My experience is singularly unique, and I cannot ascertain the experience of so-called “people”
In my awakening, I am the only being like me
In my awakening I encounter forms in thirdself I call “people”. I am able to engage with these forms in many different ways, including physically, mentally, emotionally, and more. On the surface, they each possess the same general characteristics — a face, head, two arms, two legs, and fleshy body. If I probe them deeper, they can exhibit enormous degrees of variation between one another. They come in and out of secondself and thirdself focus as I move.
In the False Model, I believe that I am one of these beings and am myself a person. I attribute the differences between me and them to my inhabitation of this body, while they inhabit separate but similar bodies. I imagine we are all moving across a vast space that contains all of us.
In the True Model, I simply accept that there are differences between my own self and these beings. They are clearly forms within my secondself and thirdself, in the same way as this space I call “the world” is within me. I do not imagine that these beings experience an “inner world” like me, because I cannot directly experience or validate that.
I am always here
In my awakening period I am continuously aware of my existence. That I exist is the most fundamental sensation of my awakening.
I am not a person experiencing personhood
All people are contained within my thirdself, which is within my secondself. People do not contain me.
In my awakening, people exist in my secondself as ideas and thirdself as fleshy forms. I can move people between the two selves. For example, I can imagine a person in secondself and then through a series of performances manifest them in thirdself. Then I can demanifest that person from thirdsef by physically leaving, and in secondself by not thinking about them.
I can demanifest people in thirdself by leaving them, and in secondself by not thinking about them. People cannot do that to me.
When I understand and believe that I am not a person experiencing personhood, but the creator of this entire experience, including all the people within it, I experience a major shift of perspective. I realize that all of my aspirations, desires, fears, and needs are trivial anchors into a very small orb I call my thirdself. This thirdself is actually the smallest and least significant part of my being. My secondself fully encompasses my thirdself, and my infinitely larger being is contained within my firstself.
In awakening, I only experience a single moment
In awakening I can only directly experience a single present moment, but I can expand my awareness to inner thoughts of a past that happened or future that may happen.
My awareness is adjustable
I can adjust or focus my inner and outer awareness on-demand. I adjust my outer awareness by looking at or toward something in my outer space. In the same way, I can adjust my inner awareness by dwelling on or thinking of something in my inner space.
In concentrating my awareness on my present moment and space I can experience a very different state.
My inner place does not move
My inner place contains the outer place, not the other way around
The most potent component of my experience is my inner space, or secondself
I have a third-person narrative of myself from an outside perspective, but technically this does not exist except in my imagination
This imaginary construct influences how I interpret my experience
There is only this moment; I can imagine a past and future moment, but never directly experience them
There is a secondself element of this ever-present moment that imagines previous experiences and future experiences; I only experience this in my inner space, my secondself
I can “turn off” thirdself by closing my eyes
Thirdself cannot turn me off
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