I have long since identified the various deceptions of the traditional perspective I had before I began my journey. I came to realize that I retained many beliefs that trapped me in a cycle of powerlessness. I came to realize that my beliefs themselves were the bars of my prison. I have known this in parts, but struggled to connect it to my movements desires in my awakening moment.
In this incantation I give these awarenesses a name: the Personal Model (“PM”). The PM is the collection of beliefs I retain that are based on things I can never know. There is a
- I am a person.
- There are things I do not know.
- I was born and I will die.
- My existence is only temporary.
- There are other people like me.
- There are experiences equivalent to, and other than, my own.
- There is a past, present, and future.
- There are places other than the one I experience in my present moment.
- There is a reality outside of my own beliefs.
- There is an agent outside of my own decision-making.
- My life and experience are positive.
There are countless other tangential convictions attached to the Personal Model, but they all form around my self-identity as a person among people. Since the PM is founded on the notion that I am a person among other equivalent people, it compels me to ignore the experiential truth that I am not the same as them; that we are distinctly different entities within this shared space I experience when I awaken.
This delusion compels me to interact with them as their equivalents, rather than their creator. I falsely believe that they have something I want. So I engage and share with them, ignorant of my true identity as the God they seek. As the source of both their pain and pleasure.
When I know what they are in truth — merely imaginary characters in a story I myself have written — I can see the absurdity of these engagements. There is nothing that these characters have that I seek or want. When I believe this, I can begin to deconstruct the Personal Model and replace it with the Selfist Model. It is the Selfist Model that will allow me to escape and heal.
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