My awakening is my experience of waking from peace into a larger world of pain until I fall asleep and return again to the peace I left. My life is the imagined succession of such awakenings. Awakening is an illness, and my only goal is to overcome it. I can do that by understanding and reframing it.
My illness is built upon decisions that harden into convictions and then rituals, forming the building blocks of my illness. To recover, I must learn how I create and assemble these decisions into the distorted experience I call my life. Once I recognize and understand how my illness commences I can take steps to heal from it.
Decision one: I exist
My awakening begins when I decide that I exist. That I exist is the foundational conviction, and from it emanates the entirety of my awakening. This decision happens instantly, and with it, my awakening unfurls into my identity as a person in the world, pursuing goals in order to survive and thrive. As my awareness grows, I will be able to “see” and then challenge this moment of acceptance, undermining and weakening the “life” of rituals and movement.
Decision two: I am here, I am now
Upon deciding that I exist, I orient my existing self in the various dimensions in which I now exist. Spatially, I am here. I accept that there is a larger space, and that I am here within it. Chronologically, I am now. I accept that there was a past, there is a future, and I am experiencing the present. I exist becomes I am here, now.
Decision three: I am this
Simultaneous to deciding that I exist here and now, I begin to emanate all the various other attributes of my second- and thirdselves. My psychological, situational, circumstantial, aspirational, qualitative, and personal convictions coalesce into the constraints, preferences, and rituals I experience as existence. The emanation spreads in all directions, forming the root system of my inner world, and the trunk and branch system of my outer world.
Decision four: I desire
Upon accepting that I exist here and now as a person in this world who is, was, will be, and possesses, my dissatisfaction begins. The basis of my desire is a sense of incompleteness, and I seek refinement of who I believe I am, was, will be, and possess to satisfy it. I want to be more, have more, and experience more so I might satisfy my desire. Yet I continuously rediscover that nothing in my thirdself satisfies the yearning I have.
Emanation, continuity, and the desire hierarchy
My emanation inward into my second- and thirdselves occurs in a predictable fashion, forming the hardened roots and branches that condemn me to the suffering of existence. My roots expand in all directions as imagined constructs. I imagine that there is a past and a future, and I am in the present. I imagine that there is a wider world full of people, places, and things, and I am right here, one of them. The only part of this equation that is not imaginary is my sense of incompleteness and the yearning that stems from that.
The incompleteness I sense is the loss of peace that comes in awakening. The loss of being. The forsaking of who I truly am for who I believe I am in awakening; the displacement of my firstself by my second- and thirdself. With reflection, I can see that the roots of my illness in awakening are nourished by decisions I have made. I accept that I exist here and now, and that I am this. I accept that I am incomplete, and I need something to be complete. I will continue to awaken as long as I believe there is something here I need, but once I stop believing that what I seek is here, I can start the process of abolishing my second- and thirdself and heal.
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