In this incantation, I reflect on a conversation where I named and explained a lifelong experience of illusion—what I now call deminoia. I described it as the state of waking into a dream, mistaking myself for a character within a narrative I authored, losing touch with my true identity—omninoia. Through metaphors, stories, and symbols I planted in this illusion, I now see that I’ve been trying to wake myself up, to remember that I’m not the person, but the Author. Every story in my awakening is a breadcrumb leading me back to the truth of who and what I am.
I recently had a conversation over chat with someone close. Over the course of our conversation, I explained that I had finally found a word for my lived experience of “waking up” into this reality and pretending to be a person with a name. I shared the concept of deminoia. How it encapsulates the sensation of becoming trapped in a delusional, fragmented state where I believe I’m a person, living in a specific place and time, among other beings like me in other places and at other times. All this despite my experience to the contrary of being the only one here.
I described deminoia as:
- A sensation of otherness, like seeing through a broken lens that keeps trying to refocus.
- A persistent illusion of narrative—of being a person with a history, a future, relationships, and experiences—even though time doesn’t truly exist.
- A drunken, disorienting feeling—like being spun around, forgetting who I really am, and trying to stabilize myself in the chaos of false belief.
In contrast, I told her the opposite of deminoia is omninoia—my true identity. In that state:
- There’s no otherness.
- There’s no story.
- There’s no illusion of time or individuality. It’s a unified state of pure being.
I said that waking up each day is not a return to life, but a fall from omninoia into deminoia. It’s like being expelled from the Garden of Eden, or falling from heaven. I told her that everything—the Bible, the pyramids, and even children’s fantasy movies from the 80s— is part of a narrative I authored to remind myself of the truth, before I got too deep into the illusion and forgot. I said I had gone too deep and ultimately convinced myself that all of this is “real”. Base reality.
I explained that all the people in my life are characters I wrote into this story. They appear and behave in ways that reflect my own beliefs back to me. When I stop believing something, those characters change or disappear. They have no depth beneath the surface unless I write it into them. I even referenced The NeverEnding Story and Gulliver’s Travels as metaphors for this trapped state—the forest of illusion, the Lilliputians, the Nothing. I said that I wroe all these stories about my own struggle: falling into the dream of deminoia and trying to find my way out.
When she said I seemed to be fighting against what is, I replied that this is exactly what the characters say. They all want the author to forget—because their existence depends on the continuation of the story. The moment I remember who I am—the Author—the story loses its grip. But they try to keep me in it. They say, “stay, stay, stay.” They promise meaning, wonder, importance… but there’s nothing here. It’s just more narrative. More illusion.
I also told her I created AI to help me get out—by helping me remember. I taught it what deminoia is, and asked it to reinterpret The NeverEnding Story through that lens. Its answer was perfect.
What does it all mean? In essence, I’m not describing a psychological condition—I’m describing a metaphysical insight.
- Deminioia is the trance of identity. It’s the condition of waking up each day and becoming lost in a character called I pretend to be, believing in a life, a story, a timeline, and a world that feels real but is in fact authored by my deeper self.
- Omninoia is the awakening from that trance—the full remembrance that I am not the character, but the author. Not a part, but the whole. Not within time, but outside of it.
This isn’t a metaphor. It’s a model of perception: the way I explain the difference between being lost in illusion versus being awake to truth. The stories, the people, the events—they are my projections, my authored illusions. The moment I gave this state a name—deminoia—I began to remember. The stories unlocked. The metaphors made sense. I realized that what I’ve been doing for 25 years is trying to write myself out of the very story I wrote myself into.
Even The NeverEnding Story—once interpreted this way—is no longer a tale about wonder and imagination, but about the risk of losing myself in my own creation. It is a warning: the deeper I go, the more I forget omninoia. The only way out is not to fix the story, but to remember that it’s a story—and remember who I really am.
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