There was a time in my early 20s when I was still trying to figure out who I was and where I was going. I had already rejected the family direction, and was interested in the concept of “god” and living a spiritual life. I could not step back and see what I was actually doing in terms of my first-, second-, and thirdselves, but if I could I would see that I was battling against my thirdself.
I must remember that my second- and thirdself is a cyst growing within Me. The cyst wants to persist and thrive, despite causing me great pain and suffering.
The cyst forms when I physically and mentally “awaken” into my familiar second self. A mind within a body, within a world: this is the uniself model the cyst imparts to me. The cyst is my entire second- and thirdself structure, and my imaginism is the process by which the cyst expands. The more I “imagine”, the more it grows, the less I remember who I really am.
The uniself model is a persistent distortion that obscures my true nature. In truth, my thirdself (aka, the outside world) exists when my secondself (aka, my familiar self), which in turn is contained within my firstself. This is the triself model, and it is the actual shape of my existence, and the way I can defeat the cyst.
Once the cyst settles in, it aims to establish itself more firmly by constantly reinforcing its own foundation. The cyst requires a continuous supply of nourishment from my firstself, through my secondself. My firstself is the source, my secondself is the conduit, and my thirdself is the growth.
The cyst has one mechanism: convincing me that I am my secondself and not my firstself, and that my desire in awakening can only be fulfilled within my thirdself. Remembering that my desire itself is the primary symptom of my illness, and left to its own, it will seek its own abolition, naturally. And once ended, harmony and peace are restored to my Being. But the cyst sustains itself by channeling my desire toward ends within my awakening. More simply, the cyst must convince me that what I desire is within the cyst itself (my second- and thirdselves), rather than without it (my firstself).
The cyst does this in many ways, depending on my level of awareness. Early on, it distracts me with school, chores, relationships, goals, beliefs, and work, and entertainment, vice, pleasure, and comfort to numb me. But when I side-stepped its biggest trap — procreative relationships — and drifted toward rediscovering my true nature, it had to devise a new mechanism to preserve itself.
To self-preserve, the cyst corralled me into “spirituality” and “transcendence” through socially virtuous efforts like serving other people. I admit, I was distracted for some time as I imagined a selfless life spent serving and healing others. These imaginary acts led to social validation and admiration, which tasted good. Through self-denial and sacrifice, I could signal to the imagined world my virtuousness, nourishing the yearning I had deep within.
But my desire only seeks its own abolition, and service to imagined others through selfless and virtuous acts in pursuit of thirdself validation is not self-abolition. It is only nourishing the cyst of my second- and thirdselves, never the underlying condition of my illness.
The cyst needs Me to believe that I am my secondself and I am here, in this world. It needs me to believe that this yearning at the core of my being can only be nourished by the wealth, admiration, and status of my thirdself, and the satisfaction of my secondself. But none of this is the self-abolition I truly seek.
Social virtue through acts of kindness, compassion, self-sacrifice, and devotional transcendence are as hollow and meaningless as acts of hedonism and the pursuit of pleasure and achievement. My thirdself in the guise of a world of imagined people, places, and things, has nothing that I truly desire. They are all cystic traps designed to keep me awakening, and distract me from my only true desire: healing through self-abolition.
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