The essence of my awakening condition is a matter of my self-awareness. From the moment I awaken to the moment I asleepen, my secondself is assessing my self-awareness: who, what, where, and why am I? All of my “internal” thoughts, ideas, feelings, preferences, and desires are a response to this endless self-assessment: am I, or am I not? My entire experience arises out of the interplay of this endless probing. The restlessness, anxiety, and pain at the core of my being is the result of not knowing and believing who I am.
My secondself is a painful and cancerous condition of not knowing that I am. At the precise moment, I awaken I leave the peaceful sanctuary of omniself and being and enter the chaos of demiself and becoming. I leave the state of actual godhood and enter the state of imagined personhood. I stop being and start questioning. My “awareness” begins as the belief that I am, but quickly erodes into a nonstop barrage of I am not.
My awakening is the experience of looking into a mirror and inventing ever more elaborate ways to explain what I see. I cannot stop looking at myself, for there is only me to look at. And in that process, I get lost in my explanations. I forget that I am the one looking in the mirror; that the mirror is my own confusion. The longer I look in the mirror of myself, the more I believe that I am not. I am not here. I am not enough. I am not satisfied. I do not have enough. I am becomes I am not.
The defining quality of “I am” (shortened, Iam) is its potency. It is the one thing I can say and think with absolute, unwavering conviction. It is indisputable, above all doubt. Iam is not given to me by anyone else. It can be affirmed, but it cannot be taken away. I have complete sovereignty over my designation that I am. I am is the most potent and solid conviction of my secondself.
But in my awakening, constantly looking out upon a self I do not recognize as myself, I begin to believe that I am not (shortened, Iamnot). I abandon the solid ground of Iam for the turbulent, chaotic, and painful experience of Iamnot. I am not content. I do not have enough. I am not finished. I am not ready. I am not healthy. I am not useful. I am not recognized. There are endless permutations of Iamnot, all of which erode my self-awareness and bring pain, distancing me from the truth of Iam.
To escape the pain of awakenings, I must look toward Iam and understand that it is everything I want. And I must let go of Iamnot. I must let go of the desirable things of the world, for they are but fouled pieces of my own flesh, carved away from my own body and offered to me by creatures I have crafted from my own being.
The world is my sheath. My throne. I sit atop it all. The world comes from me, for I am.
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What is a “loop of truth”?
A loop of truth is the distance between my secondself utterance, the processing, and my final realization of its truthfulness. A larger loop of truth will draw me far away from the truth that I am all. A shorter loop of truth will lead back quickly. “I am” is the shortest loop of truth.