Conversation with an ascentist

This is a hypothetical, ongoing conversation with an ascentist.

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… August 29, 2021

Ascentist – What is descentism?

Descentist – Descentism is the realization that there are two places: the first place I awaken from, and the second place I awaken into. It is the realization that I seek something, but what I seek is not here in the second place. What I seek is the return to the first place. This is my essential desire.

Ascentist – Why is the “essential desire” so important?

Descentist – I experience life as a constant flow of desire. There are moments of calm, then moments of extreme urgency when my desires surge. But always from the moment I wake up, there is mental, emotional, or physical desires of some sort layered together. And I am forever chasing after one thing or another that I want, starting with the desire to move my body out of bed and prepare for the day, to the crescendo reached in the middle of my day when I am furiously working toward a collection of desires I call my “long-term goals”. All these desires keep me moving, but their achievement never satisfies the yearning I have.

My essential desire is the sum total of my desire, that if satisfied, will end my desire. It means I can escape this painful, desire-based hamster wheel of awakenings.

Ascentist – How are you relating “desire” and “pain”?

Descentist – Desire is a state of being. At any point in my awakening, I desire. My desire can be expressed inwardly in terms of aspirations, ideas, and emotions, and outwardly in terms of physical needs and wants. When I see a car I want, I experience an inward aspiration to possess it. If I see a person I physically desire, I experience an inward and outward aspiration for intimacy with that person. I am constantly in state of desiring not to be physically harmed. I can nourish these desires and pursue them, coordinating various mental, emotional, and physical performances to achieve what I seek. There are peaceful moments when I desire very little, and then there are extended periods of noise as my mind and body want many things I do not have and cannot even define. These are the most painful. Desire is the barometer of my pain; the more I want, the more pain I feel. The less I want, the more peace I feel. There is a direct relationship between desire and pain.

Ascentist – So your definition of pain seems to be a mental pain associated with not having something you want. What about physical pain?

Descentist – It all exists on the same spectrum — inner and outer pain. They are just different manifestations of the same thing. As I said, I have a deeply-embedded desire to avoid physical pain.

Ascentist – So descentism is a form of desire and pain management.

Descentist – That is one way to say it. But descentism offers more than just a solution for coping with and reducing existential pain. Descentism is a path for understanding the source of my desire and pain, and then taking steps to end it.

Ascentist – By dying?

Descentist – Yes, by dying. But dying with my eyes open, knowing that it is my essential desire. I call this descent.

Ascentist – Is descentism is the only way to achieve your essential desire?

Descentist – Descentism is just a loose collection of observations, beliefs, and techniques that, together, help me remember who I am, what I want, and how to get it. I could just as easily rename or change them. Any principles that enable me to make sense of the two places, and lead me out of the second place back to the first place where I am free of desire will produce the same results.

Ascentist – What about religions: do they lead us back to the essential desire?

Descentist – I would go back to the beginning: ascentism is movement toward my inessential desires. My inessential desires trap me here, in this series of awakenings, chasing but never finding the peace I truly seek. Ascentism is any belief system that leads me deeper into the second place; religions are ascentist. If my goal is to create a family, feed the hungry, proselytize my beliefs, lead a “just life” by the standards of this imagined world, or create a legacy in the second place, then I am ascentist in my actions. But I am not a scholar on the great religions, and they do not factor into descentism in any way, so I won’t engage that question.

Ascentist – But I want many things, and what you call your essential desire is not relevant to me.

Descentist – I do not speak for you, and your words do not in any way change my own understanding. I do not need to account for the words you say. But there was a time when I once believed that what I wanted was here, in the second place. I would awaken here every day and do the things that were supposed to help me get what I wanted. Notably, school, work, and various social engagements. I was supposed to want a ‘rich life’ full of relationships, success, and experiences. If I would have asked myself back then to give all that up and to instead pursue self-abolition, I would have thought that was crazy. It took many years of contemplation and self-examination to see through the decades of ascentist indoctrination. To see that what I wanted was not actually in here in the second place. When I finally did, I realized that there was something I wanted above all else, and that, if satisfied, I would want for nothing else. To see that essential desire, I must first learn how to see through all the secondary, inessential middle desires.

Ascentist – So are you suggesting that you are more ‘advanced’ in some way than me?

Descentist – No. I am merely trying to answer your question within the context of my own experience. I am not interested in imagining how you and I compare in any way, for once this conversation is over, you will no longer exist. You are a device I have conceived for enabling this discussion, nothing more.

Ascentist – Is that an insult?

Descentist – No.

Ascentist – Is descentism cold?

Descentist – What do you mean by ‘cold’?

Ascentist – Your answers seem robotic, detached, and emotionless.

Descentist – Descentism, first and foremost, is a shift away from ‘what I imagine’ to ‘what is’. When my inner environment is full of forms I can only imagine but not actually know, it becomes difficult to see my descent because I get caught up in inessential performances. To appear engaged, attached, and emotional, I would have to put on such a performance. A performance which isn’t particularly relevant to the information I am trying to convey.

Ascentist – And by “inessential performances”, in this case you are referring to saying things in a gentler way so as not to offend or insult someone.

Descentist – Yes, but also in saying certain things that I know not to be true just to be agreeable. For example, talking about the great religions — I know those are imaginary constructs.

Ascentist – Who gets to decide ‘what is’?

Descentist – I do. I get to decide everything. My first great power is my power to decide what is and is not true. That is a power that ascentism takes away from me, but descentism returns.

Ascentist – You mentioned “secondary middle desires” a moment ago. What are these?

Descentist – There are basically two types of desire – my essential desire to return to the first place, and everything else. Everything I want here, in the second place, is a middle, or inessential desire, unless it is my essential desire to return to the first place.

Ascentist – What kind of person will descentism make sense to?

Descentist – This concept of “descentism” in its familiar form began when I realized that what I wanted was not out here in this world. I wanted that ineffable thing more than I wanted anything out here.

Ascentist – You changed the subject from an imaginary other person to yourself there. You did not tell me what kind of person this would appeal to. Why?

Descentist – You and I are here now, that is all I care to speak about; I keep it very close to the surface of this direct experience we are having now. I do not need to imagine some other hypothetical type of person and how they might hypothetically react to what I know is true. That is the trap of imaginism.

Ascentist – What do you mean by “imaginism”?

Descentist – Imaginism is a form of delusion where I spend my moment conceiving imaginary people, events, experiences, and stories. Imaginism cuts me off from my moment, compels me to conceptualize and then desire things that I do not actually want. Imaginism is the dark forest of the world that I get lost in.

Ascentist – And what do you mean by your “moment”?

Descentist – My moment is how I experience my essential identity, my first self, while I am awakened. It is always here; it is a timeless, desire-free nucleus that is at my very core when my eyes are open; when I close my eyes, I can see that my moment is actually all around me. My moment is my essential desire, what I seek.

Ascentist – How does imaginism draw you away from your moment?

Descentist – My moment is what is. It is the source of absolutely everything, from my physical body to those mountains in the distance, and every idea and thought I could possibly have. My moment is my essential being, and imaginism is the distant branches and leaves, and the twisting turning roots stretching out in every direction. I seek return to my moment; the branches and roots are painful. Imaginism is the roots and branches.

…

Ascentist – What does a descentist do exactly?

Descentist – My illness manifests as this “life” I live in this “world”. As a descentist, my goal is to understand what keeps me awakening here into this illness, and then overcome that. I do this through prayer, contemplation, and disengagement.

Ascentist – In other words, you are focused on dying.

Descentist – “Descending” is a better word.

Ascentist – Why are you uncomfortable with the word “dying”?

Descentist – It isn’t about my comfort, it is about accuracy. While I imagine that descending does end in my so-called “death”, it expresses much more. “Descent” is mindful and intentional self-abolition – it is the process of healing. “Dying” implies no such intent.

Ascentist – So to answer my original question, as a descentist you are focused on your descent, which is self-abolition in order to heal. Is that correct?

Descentist – Yes.

Ascentist – How does that look different from what a so-called “ascentist” might do?

Descentist – As an ascentist, my goals were oriented around the second place: working, aspiring, achieving, acquiring, socializing, traveling, experiencing, et cetera. All the experiences, pleasures, and possessions I sought were in the second place. But as a descentist, from the moment I wake up I know that I am ill, and that I want to heal. I know that healing means ending this experience of awakening into the second place. I know the second place is a sort of painful delirium that I want to overcome. And I know that all these ascentist activities retard my healing process, and in my experience, only exacerbate the pain.

Ascentist – How does traveling to a far-off country, or loving someone, or laughing with friends, “exacerbate pain”?

Descentist – There is a habit of accentuating the highlights of the second place, and downplaying the rest. I enjoy laughing with friends as much as anyone. But why do I enjoy it? I enjoy it because it provides relief from an otherwise painful experience. If my entire second place experience, from the moment I woke to the moment I fell asleep was never-ending joyous laughter with friends, I might think the second place was something other than an illness. But it’s not. The majority of my life is various types of pain, boredom, dissatisfaction, yearning, and suffering, punctuated by brief moments of joy, contentment, pleasure, pride, or relief from that suffering. When I do the math, life is overwhelmingly painful.

Ascentist – Is it right to expect that your life should be only joyous moments?

Descentist – You misrepresent what I have said. I don’t seek perpetual “joy”. I just want the peace I have in the first place, which I leave every time I awaken here in the second place.

Ascentist – But that’s just life – we have to take the good with the bad right?

Descentist – No, I don’t. That’s what this world tries to tell me, and what I accepted for many years. But why? Why do I “have to take the good with the bad”? Who declared that? On what authority does this mandate stand? That is just a platitude. If I have a wound, I fix it. I don’t just ignore the pain and trudge forward until I am numb to it, because then I do even more harm.

Ascentist – Is that what you think people are doing — ignoring the pain of life until they are oblivious to it altogether?

Descentist – That is what I have done. From the moment I first awakened here I did not want to be here. But an endless parade of coercive social, familial, and academic performances numbed me to the pain of being here. Once I was an “adult” and free of many of these coercions, I began to question and rediscover my painful condition. I knew something was wrong, and I began to heal myself rather than trudge forward on the intended path – the ascentist path.

Ascentist – Have you been successful in that pursuit?

Descentist – Yes. I know I hurt, I know why, and I know what I want. Those three realizations make the illness of the second place much less painful and easier to endure.

Ascentist – Summarize those realizations.

Descentist – I know that my core state is one of pain and suffering. I know that I suffer because I am here in the second place, which is an illness. I know the way to heal the pain is to return to the first place.

Ascentist – So in summary: you suffer because you are ill with life, and the treatment is your death.

Descentist – I would say that I know that my life is an illness, and I heal by descending. Descending is displacing the second place with the first place.

…

Ascentist – Is your life really that bad?

Descentist – Relatively speaking, my life is exceptionally good. I live in stunningly beautiful places, on my own terms. I have the means to do whatever I want every single day. I do not have any persistent anxieties, and I have my mind under control. I do not want things I do not have, which was always one of the greatest sources of pain for me.

But that’s not the point. Imagine I’m ill, in the best hospital in the world, with the most advanced facilities and professionals trained to comfort and assist me. I take medicine that numbs most of the outward symptoms of the pain, and relative to other less fortunate patients, I’m content because I’m comfortable and well looked-after. But I’m still sick because I wake up in a hospital bed every day. I wake up ill, every day.

Ascentist – Do you think your pain comes from having such a comfortable, care-free life?

Descentist – By that, you mean, if there were more struggle, might I be more content?

Ascentist – Yes.

Descentist – No. I have had periods of great struggle, and I am grateful that I am here and not there. Comfort and the easing of my pain arrived with a greater understanding and acceptance of my core condition. In descent, I will take steps to never struggle again.

Ascentist – How many close relationships do you have?

Descentist – I have a few, but I do not engage with them very often. Usually they reach out to me.

Ascentist – Is loneliness part of the problem?

Descentist – No. I have lived an entire lifetime around people, yet still felt lonely. I have lived away from people but wanted them nearby, and felt lonely. The secret is being away from people because I want to, and then the loneliness subsides.

Ascentist – Explain that.

Descentist – Relationships are coercive performances. Take for example a friendship from my childhood. When I engage with that person, we both agree to behave in certain ways, talk and laugh about certain things, and generally observe a set of rules we’ve developed over the years. The same goes with family members, which are the most coercive of all. Stepping outside of those roles and performances can be very difficult, uncomfortable, and disruptive to the relationship.

I often held on to such relationships because I thought I wanted them, or had grown comfortable with them. And when I was away from them, I found myself lonely without them.

But once I examined all my relationships and discovered how much pain they actually caused me, I was able to turn away from and de-manifest them. The self-examination was critical because I discovered who I actually am was not the same as who I had to be around those people.

Ascentist – So with self-examination, you discovered you were someone very different from who you were around those people, correct?

Descentist – Yes. And there generally was no room for change within the relationship, so I simply detached from them. Those that allowed me the freedom to evolve, or which were so narrow they did not much impact my descent, have remained intact.

Ascentist – Was that difficult?

Descentist – That was a long time ago for me, and I’m sure it was challenging at the time. But I knew that I did not want the life that lie ahead of me; I knew that all those relationships I had were not capable of giving me what I wanted, and in fact were hindering me from finding it. I had to do it.

Ascentist – When you look at all your friends and family, decades later, do you regret not having them in your life?

Descentist – No. I see people who are no closer to understanding their condition than when I knew them. I see people embroiled in conflict, chasing phantom dreams, searching desperately for comfort of one type or another, toeing the line that life is something it isn’t. They all look like actors in commercials to me; donning fake smiles and snapping pictures of happy moments to sell themselves and everyone else the pretense of normality.

Ascentist – Do you think they think this way?

Descentist – I don’t imagine things I cannot know. But I remember when I used to repeat the big lie to myself and everyone around me. I remember smiling all the time and banishing “negative thoughts”. I remember the forced optimism.

Ascentist – What is “the big lie”?

Descentist – That living is somehow normal and healthy. It isn’t. Life is an illness; a malignant, overgrown tumor.

Ascentist – How would your relationships think about this?

Descentist – I don’t imagine things I cannot know. But had you told my 19-year old self this, I probably would have responded with some theatrical concern, and tried to cheer myself up.

Ascentist – Why?

Descentist – Because, where I come from we are uncomfortable when people are not “happy”. We think the default state is happiness and optimism, and any other state is a mental illness.

Ascentist – Why can you see this, but no one else can?

Descentist – I don’t imagine what other people see, but I can explain why it was so difficult for me. I had layers and layers of distorting beliefs and behaviors that prevented me from even knowing that I was in pain. To put it in context, when I arrived into this world I was screaming and crying in terror and agony because I did not want to be here. I wanted only one thing: to return to where I was. But that was not allowed and I was coerced to remain here. That screaming baby never went away; he just learned how to pacify, subdue, and ignore the pain of awakening here in this place. To rediscover that pain and terror, I had to tear away all those layers of pacification and ignorance, a significant undertaking. But once I did, I could see the world and it’s treats for what it was: a place I never wanted to come to.

Ascentist – Can’t our appreciation of life evolve? Can’t we look on the positive side of things and find something worth living for?

Descentist – Go ahead. I did that for many years. All growing up I was “optimistic”, looking on the bright side, for that “thing” worth living for. But the bright side never delivered. I only found relief when I looked within, and accepted my core condition. It wasn’t easy; I was raised to dream and aspire and believe that I was here for a reason. But I could not dispute the impact of allowing myself to consider that this place was something else. I could not dispute the answers that came through revelation and changed my entire outlook, and in the process gave me the peace-of-mind I had always wanted.

Ascentist – So is your reason for being here to find truth amid the suffering?

Descentist – That’s a silly, circular question with no answer. In descent, such exercises are de-manifested.

Ascentist – So there’s no reason for you or for any of this?

Descentist – In my descent, discussing “my reason” with you right now, is as useful as counting the bumps on the walls around us.

Ascentist – So then you do believe in utility and usefulness because you think discussing “reason” with me is useless.

Descentist – I do what is useful to my descent. Pondering my “reason” is not useful.

Ascentist – Is it possible that your philosophy will evolve and completely contradict what you are now so certain of?

Descentist – The details change from day to day. I am constantly refining my vocabulary, or trying to characterize things more accurately. But my core condition of wanting to return to the first place will not change.

Ascentist – How can you be so sure?

Descentist – How can you be so sure you will die?

Ascentist – Because it is inevitable.

Descentist – That is the same level of certainty I have about my essential desire.

…

Ascentist – Do you literally believe that you are God when you sleep?

Descentist – Yes. That is a literal statement: I am God when I sleep.

Ascentist – How can you say that?

Descentist – I can say and believe anything I want to say and believe.

Ascentist – But what led you to this conclusion?

Descentist – Once I realized there was nothing outside my direct experience, I had to figure out how everything fit into that container. With time and contemplation, I realized that “God” was everything that I wanted: the absence of desire, and in turn the absence of pain and conflict and everything else that comes with it. Then, it was only a matter of time before I realized that I had peace when I slept. So I connected the dots and re-discovered that I am god when I sleep.

Ascentist – What do you mean by “nothing outside of your direct experience”?

Descentist – As an ascentist, I subscribed to the idea that I was one of billions of people and life forms temporarily inhabiting a planet in a vast solar system and universe. But that idea only exists in my imagination; I can never directly experience or validate it. Embracing my omniscience is a critical part of descent, so something had to give: either I had to figure out how to know everything that I imagined but did not directly experience, or I had to reconsider the nature of the imagined. Obviously there is no way to ever know “everything” if I believe there are things, places, events, people, and knowledge beyond my direct experience. So after careful contemplation, I decided that the imagined is a sort of distortion, and inferior to the experiential. This led to a breakthrough in my understanding of my existence.

Ascentist – That is a lot to process. Allow me to try to break it down. You believe that the entirety of existence is only what you directly experience. So what about all the stuff that I know exists, but that you do not directly experience?

Descentist – It is imaginary.

Ascentist – But if you come with me for a day, I can show you things you can only imagine right now. Would they exist then?

Descentist – Existence is elastic, like a rubber ballon. If I go along with you, I will stretch my existence, and in doing so, experience the new formations that you show me. But it’s just the same clay in different shapes.

Ascentist – But when I leave you, I still exist. You know that, right?

Descentist – No I don’t. When you leave me, “you” will be an inner form.

Ascentist – What is that memory?

Descentist – A form in my inner conceptual environment. But I do not imagine a physical, existential substance beyond this idea. The form of “you” changes from something in my outer physical environment to something in my inner mental environment.

Ascentist – Your mother is not here with us right now — is she physically present somewhere else?

Descentist – The form of my mother is now an idea in my inner environment. I would not imagine that form physically somewhere else, for I cannot directly know or experience that. I can manifest my mother physically by going through a number of directed movements. But until that time, she will remain a form in my head.

Ascentist – That is an odd way to think. It means that once a physical object is no longer in your direct physical environment, you believe it transforms into an idea.

Descentist – But isn’t that what happens?

Ascentist – In some way, for you, yes. But even though that object is no longer in my presence, I know it still exists in its physical entirety outside of my presence. I know that it doesn’t lose its physical properties.

Descentist – How do you know that?

Ascentist – Because when I leave your presence today, I will still exist as a physical form. So logically, I would extend that same nature to every other object.

Descentist – We are not talking about what you know about yourself; we are talking about what I know about an external object once it is no longer in my outer environment. These are different things.

Ascentist – Yes, because I have the common sense to assume that because I continue to persist when I move, every other object would behave the same.

Descentist – But you don’t know that. You are ignoring what is for what is imagined. That is the root of the ascentist condition: the belief that there is something outside of my direct experience. Once this way of existing takes root, we can only become smaller and smaller observers or a larger and larger “universe”.

Ascentist – In child psychology there is a concept called “object permanence”, which is the realization that an object still exists, even if it is hidden or removed from one’s perception. According to this theory, a baby develops this ability within their first year of life. It seems like descentism is the voluntary regression of object permanence.

Descentist – I am not deciding whether a thing exists or not when it is removed from my perception. More accurately, I am redefining “existence” into something more closely related to my actual, direct experience. In descending, I seek to close the gap between what I directly experience and what I believe. In ascending, I fill the gap between my direct experience and what I believe with imagination and supposition. And literally, you are a physical form sitting in front of me now. When you go away, you will literally be a mental form in my inner environment. I am merely describing my existence as it is, rather than how it can be imagined.

Ascentist – I see. So as an ascentist I would assume that when I leave, you still exist somewhere as an enduring physical object. You would not assume that.

Descentist – Correct. I would not think about it.

Ascentist – That seems disabling, and I’m not sure I understand the importance of it. Why is this decision significant?

Descentist – If I believe that nothing exists outside of my experience, then I can know everything. But if I believe that what exists is beyond my direct experience, then I can only be an observer.

Ascentist – But I can share many things that you do not know.

Descentist – You could. And then I could de-manifest you.

Ascentist – But that’s absurd; you’re just putting your head in the sand and saying there’s no sun.

Descentist – Yes, there are apparent absurdities. But keep in mind that at the heart of descentism is the decision that what exists is what I experience rather than what I imagine.

Ascentist – I’m not sure I grasp either the import or the logic of this. I will have to revisit this.

…

Ascentist – What do you mean when you say “inessential”?

Descentist – Keeping in mind that everything in the second place is forms and performances — basically, the things in my mind, the things in my natural environment, and the things that I do. Essential forms and performances are those that are either unavoidable or critical for me to descend. Inessential forms and performances are those that are unnecessary for me to achieve my essential desire through descent. Such as comparing myself to you. Or various philosophies and ideologies I learned in school. Or new scientific discoveries. None of those things are essential, and therefore I choose to de-manifest them. I let them go.

Ascentist – Does that mean you think those things are not real? You think the scientific body of knowledge is unreal?

Descentist – The word “real” is imprecise and useless because it implies that something is or is not. What I can say, is that all those forms are imagined, in the way that I can imagine touching your shoulder. If I choose to imagine all these scientific facts, then at that point they will be “real” to me.

Ascentist – So then biology is not real? It’s imagined? I’m confused.

Descentist – I’m sure if I read a book on biology, and use the prescribed tools and procedures, I could corroborate the descriptions therein. But describing does not change what is. It just complicates, distracting me from what I really want: peace. This shared reality where I am a small, temporary observer of a massive universe of infinite complexity, billions of other people, and a history stretching back billions of years, disempowers me. It prevents me from knowing anything because I believe that what I know is only a tiny, temporary, insignificant fraction of what is. In other words, I imagine there is all this stuff out there that I do not know. So by simple math, I know very little. So my entire perspective is based on this imagined situation in which I know very little.

Ascentist – I’m still confused.

Descentist – As you and I sit here and speak, we can assess the tangibility and “distance” of all the various forms we conceive and perceive. For example, my hand touching your shoulder, is directly tangible to us both. It is immediate, and solid. If we simply talk about and imagine my hand touching your shoulder, it is less tangible to us both, and therefore “further away”.

We can employ this same exercise to assess the essence and tangibility of any type of form we can conceive or perceive. The theory of a big bang happening billions of years ago is highly intangible. Not only do I have to imagine it happening, but I can never directly experience it. It will forever live in my imagination as an intangible inner form.

But the center that exists behind my eyes, right now, where the “observation point”, is the most tangible thing I can experience. It is always there. It does not require imagination once I find it. The difference between these two forms — the big bang I imagine and the center I experience, is one of essence. One is essential, and one is not.

Ascentist – Okay, so it is not that biology or science is or is not real, it is that they are intangible, or “inessential”, as you say because I cannot directly experience them.

Descentist – Yes. But beyond my ability to directly experience them, one helps me achieve myessential desire, and one does not. That is the core of “essence” as used in the Descentist Framework.

Ascentist – So inessential forms are those which I cannot directly experience, and which lead me away from rather than toward the first place. As a descentist, you de-manifest inessential forms because they keep you here in the second place. You de-manifest, not by declaring the forms are or are not real or unreal, but by simply withdrawing from them altogether.

Descentist – Yes. I do not need inessential forms in order to achieve myessential desire of returning to the first place.

Ascentist – So what would you say about climate change?

Descentist – I can imagine it. But I cannot and do not directly experience it. I can only “know” climate change through others who I do not know. So that increases the distance of this form from my center, which is the most essential. Therefore, it is clearly inessential.

Ascentist – So, you don’t care.

Descentist – It is less “I don’t care” and more “I don’t manifest”. “I don’t care” implies that it is, but I just don’t take a stand. I don’t give that topic that much even. I don’t manifest it.

Ascentist – One way you are not manifesting it is by not even saying the phrase, “climate change”.

Descentist – Correct. I don’t want it in my mouth or my mind, so there is no need for me to utter the phrase. I don’t manifest it.

Forms operate like how we imagine infectious viruses operate. We can “catch them” the way we imagine we catch a cold from someone. If someone starts talking about a form, we manifest it. We catch it. We become infected by it. Potent forms, such as those which frighten us, can create enormous pain. Such as “climate change” — that is a very painful type of formal infection because it can engender enormous mental suffering.

Ascentist – So then you don’t recognize climate change as a global phenomenon that many believe endangers the 7 billion humans inhabiting this planet. You instead see the concept of this phenomena as the agent of harm to the individual who manifests it. As an infection, spreading pain in the form of fear and mental anguish.

Descentist – Yes. This second place is literally an illness. That is not metaphoric. So inner forms such as “climate change” or various political beliefs, generate enormous fear which is one of the most painful symptoms of the second-place illness. Just as I might wear a mask around a sick person who is coughing, I’d wear a mask over my ears and eyes to avoid catching the concept of “climate change”.

Ascentist – Okay that makes sense.

…

Ascentist – So if life itself is the illness, then what does that say about the conditions the ascentists recognize as illnesses, such as cancer and various other diseases?

Descentist – To clarify, that is analogous to treating my swollen tongue as the disease, when I actually have oral cancer. The second place — or life as you just called it — is the originating disease. Everything else I experience here is just a symptom of that illness.

Ascentist – Allow me to express my understanding of forms. According to the Descentist Framework, forms are the fundamental building block of the second place. Forms include the thoughts, feelings, and desires of the inner environment and the various people, things, and places of the outside environment. Forms act as agents of the illness and anchor me to the second place. They keep me sick. is that correct?

Descentist – Yes, that is one way to say it.

Ascentist – So then is there a way to treat ascentist-recognized illnesses through the management of the forms I manifest?

Descentist – Yes, absolutely. Life is the illness. Life is the disease. The Descentist Framework is a medical treatment for the disease that is life.

Ascentist – Does that make you a doctor?

Descentist – You can call me whatever you want.

…

Descentist – I do not have anything to say about that topic. That is an imaginary, hypothetical situation that is inessential to me right now.

Ascentist – What about those who do?

Descentist – Also imaginary.

…

Ascentist – What does it mean that descentism starts when I realize that what I want is not out here?

Descentist – There are two parts to this. The first part is that the second place is built on desire. I want something. At the very bottom, I want to be here. It is why I can’t will myself to stop breathing, or my heart to stop beating. I want to survive. I want to live. At the top, are the higher-order desires. I want a loving partner and family. I want to be wealthy and famous. And there are countless other desires in between. Some are fleeting, some are longer term. But the second place is all built on desire — it is my desire which keeps me waking up, and moving around this second place.

The second part is realizing that fulfilling these desires that I have accumulated over a lifetime of awakenings, is failing to satisfy some amorphous yearning at the core of my being. At some point, after years of forming, pursuing, achieving or failing to achieve these desires, I can confront the possibility that there is some desire that is deeper than all the desires I have out here. If I look long enough, and do the work, I will realize that that yearning cannot be satisfied out here.

At that point — and only that point — descentism can make sense.

Ascentist – So if I believe that what I want is here in the so-called “second place”, I cannot understand descentism?

Descentist – Perhaps I can understand it. Intellectually, it isn’t very challenging. But as long as I hold onto the belief that what I want is in here in the second place, I will remain here. Descentism is a force; I can resist it, or I can give into it.

…

Ascentist – So you want to die?

Descentist – I want to descend.

Ascentist – But aren’t those effectively the same thing? What is the difference?

Descentist – Descent may conceptually include my physical death – the end of the second place. But it is more than that. It is my return to the first place. It is the end of my desire in the second place. “Death” is a limited concept, stripped of meaning beyond the end of my physical body. It is a word that describes a performance given by one who believes many incorrect things about that performance. In short, “death” is an ascentist concept. The concept of descent is much more meaningful.

Ascentist – So what does “descent” mean then that makes it so different from “death”?

Descentist – Descent is the process of symmetrical self-abolition. It is the move toward the end of the second place in an organized and systematic manner. Descent is experienced as the gradual disengagement from the second place until the second and first places are one. “Death” implies no such process — it merely refers to the final event when a person in the second place ceases to awaken here.

Ascentist – So then death is still an event in descent?

Descentist – Conceptually, yes.

Ascentist – So descent is the phase between my realization that what I want is not in the second place and my physical death?

Descentist – Yes, partially. Descent starts the moment I begin willingly moving away from the second place and toward the first place. It does not require descentism, for everyone dies. The descentist chooses to embrace descent in life. The ascentist will resist up until the very last moment of acceptance, and even then may experience deep sadness and pain. As a descentist I warmly welcome my descent for I know it is everything I want.

But descent is a nested experience, and it actually happens every single awakening, sometimes multiple times. It starts the moment I experience tiredness and lasts until I fall asleep. In sleep I return to the first place. But I also experience micro-descents all throughout my awakening. Such as when I close my eyes.

Imagine the second place as a small house within the first place. When I am in the second place and my door is closed, I forget about the first place. But when I open the door, I remember the first place. If I go outside, I become the first place. That is what sleep is — it is going outside the little house I call the second place. When I close my eyes, meditate, or even momentarily remember the first place such as when I pray or become aware, I am opening the doors and windows of the second place. So, descent is happening all the time, not just when I die.

Ascentist – So the movement between the first and second places is not linear; it is happening all the time, like a radio wave.

Descentist – Yes. My existence is a constant oscillation between the first and second places. I am always in the first place, whether I know it or not. But my experience of the first place is diminished by the illness of the second place. Sleeping is my purest experience of the first place while I am trapped in the cycle of awakenings.

…

Ascentist – Isn’t descentism entirely egoistic and narcissistic?

Descentist – Those words might mean very different things to us, so let’s simplify our terminology and use a word we might share a definition for. Is descentism ‘self-centered’? Absolutely, for it is a framework entirely centered on the only thing I directly and absolutely experience – ‘me’.

Ascentist – Is that a good thing or a bad thing?

Descentist – Again, you provide only a binary set of options I reject. In fact, I reject the need to qualify the self-centeredness of the ideology at all. My descent requires me to root out the imagined and focus on the actual. Deciding whether the self-centeredness of descentism is either good or bad, is time wasted on imaginary propositions what will serve no real purpose in my descent.

Ascentist – But if this self-centeredness is bad, mightn’t it be good to know that before one dives in?

Descentist – Descentism is a practical pursuit of myessential desire, and rhetorical exercises like this antithetical to that.

…

Ascentist – So are you saying that earth doesn’t exist?

Descentist – No. The conceptual form of ‘earth’ is not an essential one for me, and therefore I do not manifest it.

Ascentist – Do you think the planet is under threat from climate change?

Descentist – That would be another inessential form that has no bearing on myessential desire to stop my awakenings. Therefore I de-manifest it.

Ascentist – But surely you know what I am talking about when I say that phrase ‘climate change’.

Descentist – Of course. I once had strong opinions on the topic before I began my descent. I had very strong political opinions all throughout my life.

…

Ascentist – How would you explain descentism to a young child?

Descentist – Very easily. Children are closer to their own last awakening where they clearly understood their preference for the first place over the second place. Whereas the older we get, the more distant that memory becomes. I would simply share that there are two places: the place we awaken from, and the place we awaken into. And that we are lost out here in the second place, and all we want is to get back to the first place. Descentism is a framework for minimizing our suffering while getting back to the first place.

Ascentist – That’s everything?

Descentist – Yes. There isn’t much more. All the words beyond that are for battling the confusion that comes with learning and acquiring more conceptual forms. Children can more clearly see the two places, whereas adults have a lifetime of taking the first place for granted.

Ascentist – Isn’t this a terrible thing to tell a child?

Descentist – I’m pretty certain any ascentist parent would find this repugnant, and any government would prosecute me if I engaged in these kinds of discussions with children. But children become young adults. I will speak to the children by appealing to the young adults to not procreate.

Ascentist – Where does all this lead? What is the social objective of descentism?

Descentist – Descentism is a collection of ideas in my mind; it does not have a social objective. That said, it is obvious to anyone who has realized that what they seek is not out here. And as it spreads, we will see the social change as a significant percentage of the world withdraws from it.

Ascentist – How are you so certain?

Descentist – At some level, everyone knows there is something missing here. Many of us are not ready to confront that, but many of us are. Descentism answers every question we have, and provides a clear objective and a path toward achieving it. That will appeal to many people.

…

Ascentist – Should we be angry at those who brought us here – our parents?

Descentist – Ultimately, I know that I am the cause of my being here. While it will take time to understand how that works and what that means, I know enough to know that blaming these people for some imagined event is

Ascentist – So you don’t think you were born?

Descentist – I don’t think about it at all. I know I woke up this morning, and I know I am here now. I don’t need to imagine something I can never know. A critical part of descending is withdrawing from all performances I can only imagine but never know. My supposed ‘birth’ is one such performance I can only imagine. To return to myself, I must ‘deflate’ and ‘contract’ both my inner and outer environments here in the second place. One of the easier steps is to let go of imagined events such as ‘my birth’. All that is important as I descend is what is right in front of me. I weaken the illness by killing all of its roots.

Ascentist – How does that impact your relationship with your parents?

Descentist – The love and warmth I feel for these forms, my parents, is part of me. I carry it with me everywhere I go. That love has returned to me, and is no longer wrapped up in these forms I occasionally visit or think about.

Ascentist – But what about them?

Descentist – I do not imagine into them. That is part of the disengagement, which is essential to my descent. As an ascentist I had a rich inner life full of imaginings that took me away from the first place. When I would think about people — such as my parents — I would imagine them, see them in my mind, perform reactions to them. None of that was essential, and it only took me away from the first place, which I can feel right now behind my eyes inside my head.

Ascentist – So you don’t empathize with them?

Descentist – These forms you talk about are not even here; they are merely imaginings you and I share. All that is here right now is you and me. To see what is, I must withdraw from what I imagine.

Ascentist – So when you see them, you will say the same thing?

Descentist – What I am saying is that your fixation on my birth, my relationship with my parents, and some future scenario in which I meet my parents, is all imagined. It is not. You are trying to extrapolate meaning from imagined forms and performances. If I engage in those fantasies with you, then I leave my center, the first place, and I must manufacture these forms and performances you refer to. Every time I do that, these forms dig into my manifestation, and I deceive myself into believing they are essential, when they are not.

Ascentist – So then you don’t have parents? And you won’t ever meet them again? I don’t follow your logic here.

Descentist – As a descentist, I know there are two places: the place I awaken from, and the place I awaken into. I have one goal: to descend back to the first place. Is that clear?

Ascentist – Yes.

Descentist – That goal remains with me, at all times. I must always remember that, even when I am speaking to you. Or to anyone else. I must remember my descent. Is that clear?

Ascentist – Yes.

Descentist – I know that the second place is an illness. And I know that this illness manifests as forms and performances. These are all the things in my mind, and in the world around me. Everything that exists out here, and I feel, and I think, is a form. Is that clear?

Ascentist – Yes.

Descentist – So I am speaking to you right now about forms that only exist in my mind — namely, my mother and my father. My parents. You and I share those imagined forms. We both imagine that I have parents. And we also are speaking about my birth — an imagined event, or performance, that you and I both believe happened. As a descentist, anything that is not, is imagined. And right now, the past, and these forms you speak of, are imagined, for they are not. Therefore, by engaging in these imaginings with you, I am feeding the illness, for the illness is forms. What I seek is the formless first place. Is that clear?

Ascentist – Yes a bit. So what you are saying is that anything that is not now, that you and I together can see, touch, feel, is imagined. And by engaging in this imagination, we are somehow manifesting this so-called “second place”. Is that right?

Descentist – Yes, more or less.

Ascentist – So you are not denying that you have parents or that you were born?

Descentist – I’m just not engaging those imagined forms and performances with you. For that act of imagining is contrary to my objective to descend back to the first place.

Ascentist – So if you cannot speak or think about anything that is not now, how do you get anything done? How do you run a company?

Descentist – It is not that I can or cannot speak or think about a thing. Descending is a gradual process of letting go. I spent an entire lifetime ascending, building a reality based on imaginary forms and performances. I did not withdraw from all of it at once, but rather in pieces. So for example, those relationships I had which were less important, I simply withdrew from. Those performances will never again enter into my manifestation. I dropped aspirations — performances which create my future — that I could see through. I retained some, but dropped many others. Disengagement and descent is a layered process, just as engagement and ascent were.

Ascentist – So in other words, as you descend you systematically disengage from some areas, while retaining others which you still require for one reason or another.

Descentist – Precisely. For example, I will continue to engage with regards to my business, for I have some aspirations, such as the desire to descend myself, without relying on some outside form to pay for my life. However, my goals there, are much more compressed than they once were. I once aspired to wealth and greatness through my work; but now I only aspire to a certain level of resources so I can sustain my body while I descend.

…

Ascentist – Have their been any practical benefits to penning and following the Descentist Framework?

Descentist – Yes. There are basically two, and from them I can derive countless subsidiary “benefits” that I experience every awakening. Firstly, I know what I want, with absolute clarity. And secondly, I know how to get it. These two “practical benefits”, as you call them, have a ripple effect. When I know what I want, I am not unknowingly lost. And when I know how to get it, I have a plan. The source of all my pain in the second place was being lost without knowing I was lost.

Ascentist – So on a day-to-day basis, how does that manifest?

Descentist – Before the Descentist Framework, I was constantly and literally moving around in my head and in the world, relentlessly searching for something. I was always thinking about one thing or another — plans, ideas, etc — because I intrinsically believed that activity would lead me to what I was searching for. And similarly, in the natural world, I was always moving from place to place. Traveling, moving, exercising. I wanted to improve this, or accomplish that. I had various lists of achievements I valued, and I was tied to them. If I did not get one thing or another that I wanted, I would be injured and disappointed. There is none of that anymore. I don’t think or do anything that doesn’t make sense in terms of my one goal. Of course, I am still here, with certain relationships that I maintain. I still do activities from time to time which may not be aligned with my descent. I still seek distractions in the form of entertainment. But I am always aware of my goal to descend. That brings unspeakable peace to my presence in the second place.

…

Ascentist – How is the descentist explanation of life, the world, and existence any different from all the others out there?

Descentist – I can find my answer anywhere. But the difference between the answers is how it empowers or disempowers me to satisfy myessential desire. If I believe in some scientific theory, such as the big bang, all I can be is a temporary speck of cosmic dust in an unimaginably massive universe. I would believe that I know very little to nothing, and I’m just sitting on the fence waiting for others to figure it out. That is the most disempowering and painful way to experience the second place.

However, if my answer allows me to know right now, then my experience of the second place changes dramatically. I can see a way for satisfying myessential desire right now, which brings incredible relief. And I can align my beliefs and activities in the second place with myessential desire.

We all want the same thing here: peace. That is ouressential desire. It is what motivates our every thought, desire, and action. A worldview that is divorced from thatessential desire leaves one lost and floating, untethered to anything solid and essential. One would believe he knows next to nothing, so his time in the second place just becomes a series of distractions and pursuits that are not really hisessential desire. That is the reason there is a proliferation of interests, hobbies, crafts, and various types of entertainment and amusement, and an excessive focus on work. Ascentists find themselves lost in a world they do not understand, so they anchor to small performances and forms to find meaning. But no matter how many of these they engage in, at the end of the day the ascentist feels like something is missing.

A descentist worldview that is based on theessential desire exposes the truth of this place, and such distractions are revealed for what they are. When I know that everything I want is in the next room, the room I’m in and all of its toys become less important. As a committed descentist, I will have a diminishing set of second-place interests. As the reality of the completeness of myessential desire becomes clear, the toys and distractions of the second place seem more and more trivial.

The key difference between all these perspectives is how they align with myessential desire. Ascentist world-views introduce and sustain many forms that clutter and obscure my understanding. Descentism unclutters and clarifies, so I can clearly see how everything relates.

…

Ascentist – According to descentism, we all want the same thing. What is that thing we all want?

Descentist – We all desire peace. Peace can be described in many ways: the absence of desire, the end of pain, God, heaven. The first place. Or sleep. But we are all in various stages of realizing that.

Ascentist – What do you mean by “various stages of realization”?

Descentist – Everyone has a working definition of peace. But those definitions vary from person to person. I once thought my peace was success, wealth, social recognition, and the freedom to financially do whatever I wanted. Others are just trying to make it through the day. Some might define their peace as healthy, loving families. All of these definitions of peace are based on second-place forms, and therefore inessential.

Ascentist – So who are you to say what will and will not make everyone happy?

Descentist – This isn’t about happiness. It’s more akin to an inescapable natural law. The Source is exerting a constant gravitational force upon me, pulling me back to the first place. This first force manifests as theessential desire, but is challenged by the second force which keeps me in this cycle of awakening. When I give in to the first force, it feels right because it is what I want more than anything.

…

Ascentist – If we don’t want to be here, then why are we here at all?

Descentist – “Why” is the wrong question. “Why” is circular, and an answer would not change the fact that I am here. Or that I am in pain. Or that I seek peace. Or that the peace I seek is in the first place.

Ascentist – But what if there is a reason we are going through this, and it is vital that we make our way through it?

Descentist – What might that reason be?

Ascentist – I don’t know, it could be anything. Perhaps this life is a lesson

Descentist – That is not an answer. That is speculation, and leads to countless additional unanswerable questions. They never end. It remains an unknown, which diminishes and disempowers me. I have two facts on hand: firstly, I am in pain and I don’t want to be here. I know this. Secondly, I don’t know why I’m here, but I have some ideas. Where should I put my faith? Do I act on what I know? Or do I wait until I find the reason why?

Ascentist – So I should just stopping asking “why”?

Descentist – “Why” serves a purpose. In my experience, it was by asking myself “why” among other questions that I finally arrived at an awareness of my actual condition. At that point, “why” no longer served a purpose because I knew what I was: lost, and in pain. That is actionable knowledge.

Imagine I wake up in a cold, dark, unfamiliar forest. I don’t know where I am. But I do know that I am lost and in pain from cold and hunger. Do I spend my time exploring why I am in this cold, dark, unfamiliar forest? Or do I act to change my condition? I act, of course. Because I know I am lost and in pain, and it doesn’t matter “why” I am in this forest.

Ascentist – Perhaps you put yourself there. Perhaps if you remember “why” then you will remember how to get out.

Descentist – Precisely. That is the appropriate role of “why” in my descent: remembering. But that remembering can either help, or hinder me. Upon waking, if I don’t know where I am, but I do know that I am lost and in pain, I would act to find my way out. If I am unable to recall why I’m there, I would still try to find my way out. I would not sit idle, imagining every possible scenario. I would accept that I don’t know why I’m there, find my way out, and continue to search for clues in hopes I might remember.

Ascentist – Okay, so you don’t stop asking “why”, you just ask in a specific order?

Descentist – Kind of. The “why” does reveal itself. But I never lose sight of what I know: that I am in pain, and I want peace. “Why” is like the dynamic scaffolding that helps me make sense of my experience and accept my condition. My condition remains, regardless of the answers I find.

Ascentist – So do you ever know the “why” of it all? Why this has happened?

Descentist – I’ll demonstrate the final “why”. What I know is that there is a formless place of peace. In this place, there is no time, and therefore there is no movement or division. That is the first place, and that is where I want to be. In that place, “why” does not make sense, because “why” divides. “Why” is a feature of the second place; it has no meaning in the first place. So if I know that “why” does not exist in the place where I want to be, then I accept that I must let go of it.

Ascentist – That makes sense. So “why” is a device that divides into question and answer. And the place or state that you seek is a state without division. So you are preparing for that eventuality by focusing on your active condition rather than hypothetical existential questions.

Descentist – Yes. If I try to ask myself a question when I am sleeping, it doesn’t work. Question and answer are very much a feature of the second place, not the first place. That is not to say that, in the course of my descent, I do not pursue answers to questions I have. But as I progress in my descent, the usefulness of those questions and answers is continuously changing. The question I sought an answer for yesterday, is no longer relevant today. I got what I needed, remembered something, and dropped it. When I look back on earlier contemplative writings, I can see how my questions failed to express what I now know. But I can see how they helped me then. Fortunately, I never stopped refining my questions.

Ascentist – So then you are forever refining the question you are asking yourself.

Descentist – That is one way to put it.

Ascentist – So in this evolving process, is there a final question? A final question that, once answered, releases you from all other questions?

Descentist – The questions help me scale the mountain of self-awareness. Upon achieving that self-awareness I seek, where I know who and what I am, the questions fall away. I suppose, theoretically, I could imagine a final question to fall away as I

Ascentist – What is that final question?

Descentist – Some variation of “who am I?”. With the corresponding answer being the complete and total belief and conviction that I am.

Ascentist – And what does that look like?

Descentist – Be clear that there will be no camera around to capture the moment I am who I am. So thinking about this event in the third-person is a distortion of the actual moment. But from my perspective — the only one there is — the moment that final question falls away, and I know and accept, the first and second places fuse together. The second place ceases to be, for all is one. All is me. I am all.

Ascentist – So at that moment you will be “God”?

Descentist – If by “God” you mean everything, then yes.

Ascentist – And who is this person sitting in front of me now answering questions?

Descentist – God, in a state of illness. God who has forgotten who he is.

Ascentist – And what am I?

Descentist – You’re just another form in an endless parade of forms I experience every time I awaken.

Ascentist – You mean a form like a flower?

Descentist – A pattern. A swirl. Something I imagine is separate and interesting. Something distinct.

Ascentist – And when you reach that moment where you are who you are?

Descentist – I won’t experience you as a separate, interesting form.

Ascentist – This sounds like death.

Descentist – Yes. It can be described as death from the second place.

…

Ascentist – How does the descentist view the “modern life”?

Descentist – The modern life is an explosion of distractions to keep us from reflecting on the fact that we have no idea where we are. Hobbies, interests, entertainment, activities, and occupations — all are diversions from the only question that matters: where am I? And in turn, who am I?

…

Ascentist – Should descentism be taught to children?

Descentist – I will not myself directly share any of this with children, for I do not interact with them.

Ascentist – But on a hypothetical level?

Descentist – I don’t want to manifest this hypothetical situation.

…

Ascentist – Is there a Church of Descent?

Descentist – If you mean like a congregation or community of people who all believe in descentism, then no. Descentism is a personal return to the essential. Second place relationships are going to be one of the the primary obstacles to that return.

Ascentist – Would you take disciples or students?

Descentist – I might assist another descentist to understand the descentist treatment, but second place students will distract me from my own descent.

…

Ascentist – So the implications of descentism impact virtually every aspect of social interaction, such as polite discourse. For example, we assume that when we interact with other people there will be a certain amount of polite listening as a courtesy, even if we are uninterested in what that other person has to say. To a descentist, that is to be avoided, correct?

Descentist – Yes. Conversation is an opportunity for transmission of infection. So I will quickly de-manifest relationships where I am exposed to inessential infection. If the other person is talking about forms that I do not manifest, if I cannot leave the situation I will take precautions to protect myself from infection.

Ascentist – What about this conversation?

Descentist – We are discussing descentism, so if anyone is infected it is you. I would not listen to your ascentist beliefs.

Ascentist – So then it is a one-way relationship?

Descentist – Unless you are also a descentist, or have some insights I can benefit from in my own descent, yes. I would not be interested in discoursing with you.

Ascentist – So we come back to that self-centeredness again.

Descentist – What you call “self-centeredness” I call self-defense. I know that ascentist beliefs propel me deeper into the pain of the second place. And I know every time I consume second-place forms and performances I have to pull myself out again. So it is better for me if I simply avoid exposure to those who are infected.

Ascentist – Do you feel any obligation to help those who are “infected”?

Descentist – I write, and anyone can read it. Aside from that, no. I have never met a person who shared this understanding. And if I did, I don’t suppose we would have much to talk about. Everyone I have met is ill, and I have nothing to exchange with them.

Ascentist – Does that include your family and friends?

Descentist – That includes everyone. I still maintain some ascentist relationships, but every year those become more tenuous as I disengage.

Ascentist – And ultimately, what happens to those relationships?

Descentist – Ultimately, they disappear into the very fabric of my existence; shapes I no longer see or perform for. Noise. Part of the ambience.

Ascentist – And how do they view you?

Descentist – I do not manifest that.

Ascentist – Meaning, you do not think about that hypothetical situation because it only clutters your inner environment.

Descentist – Yes. I do not think about how anyone else might see me in the future — that is layers of inessential imaginings that will not help my descent in any way. Firstly, those people are not manifest right now. Secondly, I have no way of knowing what they might think. And thirdly, the future is completely imaginary. It all all inessential, and therefore I do not manifest it.

…

Ascentist – Suicide is illegal, and the promotion or celebration of suicide is considered morally reprehensible to most, and perhaps outright illegal in many jurisdictions. How do you think the world will react to descentism, with its promotion of suicide?

Descentist – You have mischaracterized a few things there. Firstly, descentism does not promote anything because there is no concerted effort toward spreading this information. It is merely written down and shared. And secondly, descentism does not condone suicide or death, but rather descent. Death by suicide and descent are not the same thing.

Ascentist – But the ends are the same, aren’t they?

Descentist – Not to the descentist, no. Descent is the deliberate pursuit of self-abolition which starts the moment I realize that I seek something, and what I seek is not here in the world, and ending the moment the two places merge into one for me.

Ascentist – But that’s death, isn’t it? Isn’t this just a cult of death?

Descentist – If you are interested in understanding it, then you should put some effort into it. All of the major religions promote very similar pursuits which are taken up by their holy men and women; descentism just puts it into a modern context and language supported by practical guidance.

…

Ascentist – Is descentism a religion?

Descentist – All religions, at their core, offer a prescription for attaining an enlightened state. In some sense, descentism is like that. However, religions have accumulated a lot of baggage in the form of orthodoxy, mythology, ritual, tradition, and various interpretations, not to mention their massive followings. Descentism is a practical set of instructions for treating the illness of life. Descentism is a treatment, not a religion.

Ascentist – What does descentism treat? And what does the cure look like?

Descentist – Descentism treats the illness of existence; of a continuous cycle of waking up into this condition called “life”. The cure is experienced as the cessation of that sensation of waking up into this second place.

Ascentist – What are the symptoms of the illness that descentism is treating?

Descentist – Waking up is the main symptom, along with a will to self-preserve; a will to continue waking up despite also wanting to return to the first place. Then everything that follows until I again return to sleep are the secondary symptoms.

The so-called “will to live” and the desire for sleep are contradictory, and indicate the illness. My essential desire is to be at the first place, but life is a disease that repeatedly flares up and explodes into this condition called life, or my awakening.

…

Ascentist – How do you expect the world to respond to descentism?

Descentist – I don’t really. But I suppose the world will sense a mortal threat to itself and respond accordingly.

Ascentist – They will go after you, and they will look into your history and speak to people from your past and publish everything they find. How will you handle that?

Descentist – I don’t consume any of that, so I will be prepared. Unless someone comes knocking at my door, I won’t experience anything.

Ascentist – And what will people find if they look into your past?

Descentist – An average person with failures, shortcomings, good and bad ideas, and a few redeeming qualities I inherited from strong parents. But I know who I am and every awakening I get closer to who I am, and who I thought I was fades away.

Ascentist – Is that your way of shirking responsibility for your past?

Descentist – No. My past is a wound that heals a bit more every awakening. I let the healing process work itself out.

…

Ascentist – Is descent then your purpose?

Descentist – No. Descent is not the purpose of a descentist. It is my nature. If I throw a rock into the air, and I watch as it temporarily ascends before descending back to the ground, I do not say that rock’s purpose is descent. I would say that the rock merely resumed its nature at rest.

Ascentist – But the rock really cannot do anything other than descend in such a situation. How is that related to a living person?

Descentist – You are leaving out a vital element of the simulation: the imaginary person who threw the imaginary rock into the imaginary air. The imaginary person and the imaginary rock are all second place forms. The throwing and imagined movement is a performance. The fact that the rock, and even the person throwing the rock, will all come to rest, is the force of the first place.

My second place self has the appearance of some will over my path, but the first place is always there, exerting a force on the second place to return. This is the universal law – I will return to my first self. No matter how high my ascent, I will descend.

…

Ascentist – How do you feel about those who have more than you? Or who have more than others?

Descentist – You must be talking about social and political inequalities. I once took such differences very seriously. But once I rediscovered that I already had everything I wanted, the value of all these things in the second place diminished considerably.

Ascentist – But what about all of the people in poverty and troubling circumstances. I am sure you have seen poverty.

Descentist – Not only have I seen abject poverty, but I have myself experienced it. But what about them?

Ascentist – What consolation is your philosophy to those who are experiencing such poverty or political disenfranchisement?

Descentist – I am not seeking to console those imagined people. I am not with those people, nor am I speaking to them. Right now it is just you and I here speaking. So that is what is important to me.

Ascentist – But surely you believe that these suffering people exist?

Descentist – If I imagine all these suffering people with you, that is precisely the moment I leave my descent and resume my ascent. The moment I begin imagining is the moment I stop knowing.

Ascentist – So what about your own suffering from the past, imposed on you by social condition?

Descentist – I am not suffering right now. Or rather, I have managed the suffering down to a tolerable level because I have reoriented toward the essential. My experience of suffering was greatest when I was ascending. And when I was ascending, I spent much of my time imagining situations like you are describing now, fanning the flames of pain.

Ascentist – So you are saying then that you simply ignore all the suffering of the world? All the unjust inequalities perpetrated to the people of the world by the elite and the ruling classes?

Descentist – I wouldn’t say I “ignore it”, as that would imply I believe it is happening. I neither believe nor disbelieve it is happening. I withdraw from the construct altogether, and focus on what is before me now.

Ascentist – So that is effectively putting your head in the sand and ignoring what is happening.

Descentist – You are the one who is imagining something that neither of us are experiencing.

Ascentist – But I can read books, watch videos, see reports, and learn from other people who are directly suffering or directly observing the suffering of others. So I know it is happening.

Descentist – Yes, if you look, you will find many things. But why do you look?

Ascentist – Because I want to learn, and I want to help.

Descentist – Why do you want to learn and help? When I “learned” and “helped” I was in the most pain. The more I learned, the less I actually knew. The more I looked, the less I saw. Nothing made sense to me. I was trapped in a swirling eddy of inessential knowledge without anything solid to anchor to. That was painful. It was only when I resisted the urge to look and learn about imagined events that I found the most solid thing there is. And once I grabbed onto that, everything began to make sense.

Ascentist – So as they say, “ignorance is bliss”.

Descentist – This proverb implies there is something outside of my awareness that I am ignorant of. But there isn’t anything outside of my awareness unless I believe there is. As I descentist I am aware of this choice, and its implications.

Ascentist – Let me get this straight. I believe there are suffering people who do not have the essentials to live healthy lives because they are oppressed by others. But you believe that is all part of an imagined reality in my head?

Descentist – It is. Look around yourself right now. Those suffering people are not here. Therefore, that is the definition of imagination.

Ascentist – But I will show you on the internet right now.

Descentist – Precisely. You have to take some action to show me so I can also imagine these things happening.

Ascentist – Then we can fly to those places, and I can show you first-hand.

Descentist – I don’t doubt that we could conjure up all kinds of suffering folks to validate the things you are imagining now. These imagined forms are infectious — I can catch them as easily as you can talk about them. Then they become part of my existence, and I have to endure the pain and burden of bearing them in my imagination.

Ascentist – So they do exist, but you just don’t want to be aware of them.

Descent – No, that is not what I am saying. I understand the difference between what is, and what is imagined. I understand that forms and performances are the source of my illness. So to descend I must withdraw from inessential forms, and that starts with those on the periphery in my imagination.

Ascentist – I’m not following the difference.

Descentist – Both the ascentist and descentist fixate on what is and what is not. The ascentist is willing to confer existence upon things he can only imagine, whereas the descentist is not. The ascentist believes that his ability to know and believe is informed by what is. The descentist understands that his ability to know and believe creates what is. And finally, the ascentist believes that what is, is independent of what he wants. Whereas the descentist believes what he wants and what is are inextricably intertwined.

Ascentist – That is something to think about.

…

Ascentist – What does it feel like to descend?

Descentist – Descent feels like going to sleep, for it is the same thing. I descend at least once every day when I fall asleep. I experience falling asleep — or asleepening — as a gradual, then total detachment from all second place forms and performances. As I progress further into my overall descent, I retreat from more of the inessential forms and performances of the second place. This is the same as sleep.

Ascentist – So then descent is like falling asleep in life?

Descentist – Yes, I could say that. It is a peaceful and calming experience; the eyes of my life are gradually closing, and I sink into the comfort of my essential bed. The conflicts and chaos of my earlier life are resolved by simply not existing anymore. The second place proceeds faster in some ways because it is less memorable, and slower in others because there are fewer forms and performances.

Ascentist – It sound peaceful.

Descentist – It is peaceful. It is the most peaceful experience I can have here in the second place. But it can also be boring as I withdraw from distractions I once filled my hours with.

Ascentist – How do you cope with the boredom?

Descentist – I usually pray, or engage in low-level movements such as walking that serve the same distracting purpose. All the while, I become tolerant of time without distraction and less movement.

Ascentist – Aren’t these distractions too?

Descentist – Yes, they are all distractions — praying, walking, hiking. But there is a qualitative difference between the mindful distractions of descent and the mindless distractions of ascent I once occupied my time with.

Ascentist – What are some examples?

Descentist – When I was lost, I engaged in all kinds of distractions such as excessive planning and thinking, starting projects, pornography, overworking, over-sleeping and overeating, consuming various types of media and entertainment, indulging concepts and ideas I could never know. Fantasizing. Thinking about people who I did not and never would know. In a day I would experience anxiety, restlessness, insecurity, obsessiveness, lust, envy, shame, and various emotional titillations. I knew I was in a cycle, but had little self-awareness or control.

Ascentist – And now?

Descentist – Now my existential wavelength is very different from before. My inner and outer projections do not change as much and aren’t as deep or wide as they once were. I do not spend my time imagining things, people, events, or experiences I can never know. I do not imagine a past or future beyond utilitarian purposes. My center is more concentrated around the essential. I am still here, so I must function, but the various superfluous inner and outer performances that once consumed my time are no longer there.

…

Ascentist – If you never wanted to be here, in life, do you blame your parents for bringing you here?

Descentist – No. That is inessential. To arrive at blaming my parents for bringing me here, I have to perform a tremendous amount of manifestation. I have to first imagine that I was born. I have to then imagine that I was born because two people conceived me. I have to imagine the entire world in which they existed, and the entire world up to the point I am in now. Then I have to be angry and resentful, and direct that energy at two forms who aren’t even manifest right now for me.

I have never “blamed my parents”, but I once maintained other such inessential performances that I have since withdrawn from. The essential demands my full attention; it is right here, now. Always. It never leaves. To carry around anger, blame, and other such ideas, is to hold onto the second place. In descent, I aim to focus on the only thing that is: the essential. To do that, I withdraw from all the various inessential forms and performances I once maintained.

Ascentist – So the inessential are the bonds that keep us tied to the second place.

Descentist – Yes. The inessential is everything that is not the essential. The essential is the first place; who and where I am when I sleep. When I am there, or who I am there, is free of inessential bonds. To return to the first place, I must disentangle myself from all these inessential bonds I have created. That would include the long chain of notions that would lead me to “blame my parents for my birth”.

…

Ascentist – So if descentism is right, are all other ideologies and beliefs wrong?

Descentist – You are asking if one conviction is more true than another. My conviction is not about truth. Rather, my conviction is a tool that I can use to navigate the second place, much like a fish might use its fins to swim around the lake. My conviction is my primary tool for navigating the second place for it puts everything else in context.

My entire life I have always been looking for answers. Before I articulated what I now call “descentism”, I would always feel underwhelmed when I had found one. I would find an answer, and then think “now what?” Nothing happened because my beliefs were impotent. They left me no closer to the true answer I sought, and in fact always led to new questions.

But my descentist conviction is potent, and allows me to contextualize my entire existence. While I still have questions, they are tapering down because I know the final answer.

Ascentist – What is the difference between these two types of convictions?

Descentist – There are two types of conviction: ascentist and descentist. An inessential conviction is based on a larger imagined second place I can only observe without fully knowing. Ascentist conviction is expansionary in nature, and I accept that there is always more to know.

Essential conviction is contractionary in nature. It is a set of beliefs that simplify and reduce the size of the second place.

Rather than believing I am a small observer of a massive cosmic universe I can never know, I am the entire first and second place. Essential conviction is not imagined; it is known.

Ascentist – What does this mean, practically speaking?

Descentist – As an ascentist I believe there are things that exist but I do not know. As a descentist, I do not believe there are things that exist that I do not know. I believe that everything that there is, is what I directly experience.

Ascentist – Give me an example of an ascentist conviction.

Descentist – Take Christianity. If I believe that the Bible is actual history, then there are so many things I cannot know or directly experience, and therefore are ascentist. Starting with Jesus Christ as a historical figure. I do not know that man, nor can I. Or all those places and historical events in the Middle East — I cannot know or experience any of those places or events. Anything that I cannot directly know or experience, is ascentist in nature because it divides my existence into that which I can know, and that which I cannot know.

Ascentist – So descentist conviction does not leave any room for ignorance or uncertainty or indirect beliefs and suppositions?

Descentist – Correct. Descentism is destructive in that it will seek out and eliminate all beliefs, notions, and ideas that render me an ignorant observer, for I hold the conviction that I know everything. But I must also note that I spent most of my life acquiring and consuming ascentist beliefs and ideas. So in descending, I have to confront, challenge, and remove these inessential layers.

Ascentist – How is descentism practical at all if I cannot even hold any positions in which I do not know something?

Descentism – The foundation of descentism is the realization of my essential desire: I do not want to awaken. I believe that awakening here into the second place is an illness, and my only purpose is to treat and overcome it. Every other goal, desire, and purpose I might have is inferior and secondary to that one objective: to return to the first place. If I accept that, then descentism is pure practicality because it allows me to sweep aside all the inessential distractions of ascentism and focus on my only objective. In light of my one objective, descentist conviction is actionable. Ascentist conviction is not.

Ascentist – If my conviction is ascentist, then who or what controls me?

Descentist – There is no “who” involved in controlling me. It is my own decision whether or not I know everything, or I know nothing. If I choose to know nothing, then my experience of the second place will be expansionary. I will not have a full understanding of my existence, and I will consume and behave in ways that further my illness and increase my distance from the essential. If I choose to know everything, then my experience will become more peaceful as I come to learn the nature of my existence and accept my true, essential desire.

The difference between ascentist and descentist conviction is proximity to and direction toward my essential desire. My essential desire is to not awaken here; that was the very first desire I ever had, and will be my very last desire I ever will have. The descentist aligns his actions and behaviors toward the achievement of his essential desire; the ascentist aligns his actions and behaviors toward the achievement of lesser middle desires.

Ascentist – Is there another type of essentialist conviction other than descentism?

Descentist – “Descentism” is just a name I’ve given to a set of techniques and conclusions surrounding one basic idea: I do not want to wake up here. The achievement of that desire is the objective of so-called “descentism”. Descentism is mental scaffolding that helps me understand, accept, and perform my descent.

…

Ascentist – What would you say to those who suggest you are depressed?

Descentist – I would not say anything because I do not manifest such people.

Ascentist – What if I say that you are depressed and should look on the bright side, or seek treatment?

Descentist – Then this conversation is over, and we would part ways. A critical part of reorientation is de-manifesting forms and performances that undermine my descent. A person who offers insufferable platitudes such as “look on the brighter side”, or encourages me to “seek treatment” is a form I would de-manifest. Sharing my descentist views with such a person is a performance I would de-manifest, as well.

Ascentist – So then you are not open to changing your mind?

Descentist – I will follow my descent wherever it leads me. But anything that you share with me is inessential, part of the illness.

Ascentist – How will this impact your relationships?

Descentist – The first tenet of descentism — the so-called “essential desire” — is the absolute, unassailable conviction that I do not want to awaken here anymore. The measure of my descent is my determination in achieving that objective. How do you think this ideology would fit into a “relationship”? Relationships are about tolerating outside influence; as a descentist, there is no such room for such an engagement, for it would inevitably turn into an exercise to coerce me away from my essential desire.

Ascentist – So as a descentist you do not want relationships?

Descentist – Correct. The only relationships I maintain are transactional in nature. I do not seek to “get to know” other people. I do not start conversations with people I do not know. I keep to myself and avoid engaging or attracting people who show any interest in my second self.

Ascentist – That does not sound healthy.

Descentist – If you take as your premise that life is desirable then naturally you assume relationships are an important and healthy part of it. But assume for a moment that you know that life is an undesirable illness and your only goal is to treat and overcome it; what then is a relationship?

Ascentist – I suppose it would depend on the nature of the relationship. If that other person does not share my conviction that life is an undesirable illness, then that relationship would likely be full of friction.

Descentist – Correct. It would be full of friction because that other person would take it as their goal to change my mind. To coerce and influence me. They would insist that I am unwell or depressed and in need of help.

Ascentist – That would be frustrating.

Descentist – Yes, it would be unwanted and unwelcome, and I would have no need or desire for such relationships.

…

Ascentist – What is the ascentist condition?

Descentist – The ascentist condition is one of observation as he makes his way toward the inessential. The ascentist believes his existence is a series of nested cycles. He learns to master these cycles, with varying success.

Ascentist – And the descentist condition?

Descentist – The descentist condition is one of creation, or manifestation as he makes his way toward the essential. He understands that the cycles are a distortion because he has anchored to the fixed essential. It is that anchoring wherefrom he derives his perspective.

…October 3, 2021

Ascentist – How do you deal with covid?

Descentist – I do not manifest it.

Ascentist – You don’t think it’s real?

Descentist – It has nothing to do with real or unreal; it is a matter of manifestation. Covid, like everything else, is a form which has its own inner and outer performances. A form is a hardened inner concept or outer percept around which I perform, or move, in certain prescribed ways.

A form is like a rock placed in a stream. Once placed, the water moves around it — the movement is the performance. If I place it there, covid becomes a rock in my stream. The masks, the precautions, the fear and anxieties, the vaccines, the opinions and public debates — all are inner and outer performances around that hardened, rigid form.

As a descentist, the second place is a painful knot of forms and performances I seek to relax and release so I can return to the first place. Covid is just another form I do not manifest.

Ascentist – So then why did covid arise?

Descentist – It is the thrashings of the second place as it is relaxed. As I withdraw, disengage, de-manifest, and descend, I relax forms and end performances. A release here, creates space over there, and new forms arise to fill it. Covid is such a form.

Ascentist – You think it’s all about you? You think the entire world is going through this pandemic because of your own choice to descend?

Descentist – What is the world? There is nothing outside of my direct experience.

Ascentist – I’m not sure how to respond to that.

…October 3, 2021

Ascentist – Forms and performances seem critical to understanding descent. What are forms and performances?

Descentist – I am everything, called the essential. The essential can be thought of as an elastic clay that takes two shapes: the first shape when I sleep, and the second shape when I awaken. I create these two shapes.

In waking, my second shape hardens into shapes called inner and outer shapes called forms and performances. A form is a hardened bit of inner or outer essential around which I perform, or move. A form can be either an inner concept like “the universe”, or an outer percept like my father. All outer perceptual forms have a counterpart inner conceptual form, but not vice-versa.

Forms are hardened and rigid; I have coerced the essential into these shapes. I then have move around these forms. The movement can be inner or outer. Take for example, a family member. Around this family member, I have strict performances I must observe that govern and constrain my movement. My father was a major, obstructive rock in my stream, and around him, my performances were highly restricted and constrained.

The descentist treatment, in one light, is the systematic removal of hardened conceptual and perceptual forms. I can remove them by converting outer forms into inner forms.

Ascentist – What do you mean by “you remove them”?

Descentist – Take for example an overbearing family member who I live with. As soon as I can, I de-manifest the perceptual version of that form. I remove them from my manifestation, and convert them into inner forms, which I can then release.

…October 4, 2021

Ascentist – I have read through a lot of your materials, and I’m pretty sure I can find a lot of contradictions. Why is that?

Descentist – I have been exploring the nature of my existence since I was a young child. And most eagerly, for the past 20 years. Many of the things I said or wrote in the past I have since rewritten because I’ve found them to be incorrect or inaccurate. Even in the past several weeks I’ve altered the terminology I use for important concepts. I make an effort to update my materials, but in truth it is very difficult to hunt down all the changes that need to be made to remain 100% consistent. And sometimes, the changes alter the meaning of the piece, so I decide to leave them as they were originally written. My proclamation is an evolving expression of my understanding of my existence.

Ascentist – Is there one definitive piece that you can hold up as the de facto authority on this matter?

Descentist – I have been chasing that concept for many years, but I am not sure if that is the objective anymore. I do think, when my proclamation is complete, I will have a single piece that represents all I have to say on the matter. But that doesn’t mean that I will invalidate or discard all the earlier pieces I wrote. Each expression has played a part in my evolution.

Ascentist – Do some of your earlier expressions make you cringe?

Descentist – I’m not sure “cringe” is the right word, but yes, I often struggled with concepts that are now much easier to explain. But there has also been a very clear consistency. I can look back at my journals from 20 years ago and find words, phrases, and sentences that resonate with my deepest convictions today. My early writings were often wordy and technical, and I wasn’t able to connect my experiences to everyday language or events. There would be moments of clarity, in which I’d write something concisely, but then I’d relapse back into jargon-filled circumlocution. I often find it hard to follow my earlier self, but in the midst of those cloudy, tempestuous storms of articulation, I recognize a clear thread of logic and conviction that I am follow to this day.

One thing I’ve learned from my experience of looking back at my own writing, is that I can measure my own conviction by the clarity of my expression. I imagine my conviction as a continuum; at one end is a belief I might agree with instinctually, or at the gut level, but be utterly incapable of articulating in words. And at the other end is a conviction so clear and strong that I can express it concisely and meaningfully. It is the difference between “I believe” and “I know”.

Ascentist – Do you think that applies to other philosophers and their writings?

Descentist – I think you know what I, as a descentist, will say to that. But let’s forgo that for a moment and I will re-engage this shared reality and comment.

If I read other philosophies and am not able to grasp them within a few passes, then I know it is not fully developed.

Ascentist – Plato? Aristotle? Niezsche?

Descentist – Now we are introducing forms. I think I have made my point clear using my own writings as the subject. Extrapolate and apply to other forms as you’d like.

… October 4, 2021

Ascentist – You have written about a “final proclamation” — the last version of this artifact that you are expressing. What is this, exactly?

Descentist – The definition would probably change day to day. Every day I write and express myself more clearly than the day before. Hypothetically, my proclamation will be complete when my conviction is so thorough that I need not write anymore.

Ascentist – So it is all about you? You are writing for you.

Descentist – Of course. I am the audience for my writings.

Ascentist – But what about all the other people who will read and respond to your proclamation?

Descentist – Imaginary. I write because I seek a clear understanding of my existence, which is the subject I write upon.

Ascentist – What is the format of your proposed “proclamation”?

Descentist – As I write, I am constantly reorganizing elements into a hierarchical framework. At different times, I have called it an ideology, a framework, and now a treatment. I’m sure I have labeled it in other ways as well. But I suspect the final form will be a systematically structured set of instructions for descending, supported by all my findings.

… October 4, 2021

Ascentist – If all that exists is what you directly experience, then what is everything else? I could find endless things that you do not know.

Descentist – When you say that you could “find endless things” that I do not “know”, what you are saying in descentist parlance is that you could show me novel forms. You could introduce me to a person
I have never manifested before. You could open a page in a book I’ve never seen before, and cause me to read and imagine the ideas written therein.

Yes, if this is your definition of “knowing”, then there are infinite conceivable and perceivable forms “I do not know”. I could sense or think in any direction and come up with some “new” form I had never sensed or thought before.

This is inessential knowing, or ‘formation’, and it has infinite variations. It is creating, imagining, sensing, experiencing, or otherwise manifesting an endless variety of inessential forms and performances.

The other type of knowing is essential knowing, and it is only concerned with the first shape, and understanding and overcoming the rules of the second shape. It starts with knowing my essential desire to return to the first place, and extends into treating my second place illness.

Ascentist – So according to descentism there is a qualitative distinction between essential and inessential knowledge?

Descentist – Yes, a practical difference. The second shape is an illness. I awaken into this fever, and my only objective is to overcome and heal my illness. Knowing about 15th century British poetry, or even modern technological innovations, has nothing to do with healing myself. It only leads me deeper into the second place, or if nothing else, diverts my attention away from my healing.

Whereas performances like prayer and contemplation which untangle the knotted forms of the second place and help me to return to the first place are essential in nature.

So yes, I can manifest endless inessential forms, but those forms do not change my essential desire to heal and end my awakenings into the second place.

Ascentist – So in this way, you are capable of categorizing and dismissing basically all of humankind’s knowledge. From the sciences to the humanities, history, current events, even diseases like Covid. All of it, to you as a descentist, is inessential. Correct?

Descentist – Yes. None of that has anything to do with the essential. Essential knowledge has a few important properties which differentiate it from inessential.

Firstly, it is self-centric, meaning that it takes the fixed, timeless point at the center of my being, behind my eyes in my head, as the center of existence. This effectively exposes the imagined places I once believed existed as an ascentist; the galaxies and far reaches of the universe. It also exposes the imagined construct of time, because at this fixed point, there is no time.

Secondly, essential knowledge is directly and instantly experiential, meaning that I can immediately experience and understand it. It is not knowledge trapped in time and performance. I do not have to study books for 5 years to understand and contribute to and validate it. I do not rely on second place “authorities” to tell me I can directly experience and therefore understand it.

There are other properties, but these are the most important that clearly distinguish essential from inessential knowledge.

Ascentist – So when I say that I can show you many things that you do not know, in your mind you regard that as technically true, but practically insignificant.

Descentist – Yes, it doesn’t matter. I can spend the rest of my life examining and describing the forms on a single tree in my yard, yet be no closer to healing. In other words, inessential knowledge is impractical and useless.

Ascentist – Well, you can only live the life you do because of inessential knowledge like science. The so-called “inessential knowledge” that produced air travel and the modern world you inhabit.

Descentist – Yes, that is the depth and width of my second place illness, that those things are all part of my awakenings. Highlighting my usage of and dependence on inessential knowledge doesn’t change their nature or my essential desire to return to the first place.

Ascentist – It seems almost superstitious to me…

Descentist – Yet it’s not, because you can validate it all yourself. And you understand that if awakening is an illness, then logically, all of this inessential knowledge that we value so much is little more than a distraction. None of it alleviates my condition.

Ascentist – Yes, I can see that. It really isn’t too difficult to understand once you take as your primitive conviction that life is an illness. If that is the foundation of your worldview, then it is logical, because every thing, idea, person, behavior, desire, and action out here in the second place merely perpetuate or encourage it.

Descentist – Yes, that is it.

 

 

Ascentist – But what about all these new forms we can find by looking and examiningg? All th

Descentist – They are only fascinating if you value them.

Have you ever reached a point where nothing could faze you?

 

… October 5, 2021

Ascentist – So if I follow your descentist treatment, what will happen to me?

Descentist – I don’t imagine what will happen to you. But I will tell you what has happened to me.

At the deepest and most meaningful level, I underwent a total transformation that I experienced as awakening every day lost and in pain, to awakening every day with a sense of awareness and an ability to understand and temper my pain.

Prior to this transformation, when I was lost, I was caught in endless cycles of desire and disappointment. My awakenings were spent pursuing various desires, many of which had grown into cancerous proportions. In my best of times, my time was moving toward what I believed was my desire. But in the worst of times, my time was spent reflecting on my failures. I spent almost all of my time lost in my imagination – either of the past, or the future. I had countless “projects” that I thought were important. I craved social validation — I wanted the world to know how great I was. I wanted to participate and contribute.

I always bounced back after a disappointment, but they got harder to recover from over time. I often thought of suicide to end the pain, and took steps toward that end.

In my last depression, while planning my suicide, I decided to also try to understand life in parallel. Continuing my earlier work, I finally ended up with what is now descentism. Part of it was having a project to distract me from the pain, but that gave way to a set of understandings about why I hurt and what I could actually do about it. The relief didn’t start immediately, but when it did, it was pronounced and lasting. I re-learned how to exist; how to manage my mind. I challenged and let go of ideas and desires that had trapped me. And most importantly, I keep pursuing answers.

There is still change in my life; I frequently move, and I do not have a place I would call my sanctuary. I crave a single place where I can just let go. I still need to work some, but that should end within the next couple of years. By that time I will also have completed my final list of inessential obligations.

I am still fairly early in my descent. There are a few people forms which surround me from time to time. Once they are gone, I will enter into a new phase of my descent.

Ascentist – What is your “final list of inessential obligations”?

Descentist – This is a set of things I believe I must complete before I can enter into the next phase of my descent, which is sanctuary. There are three main items, each of which will require funding. I can manage two of the three, but not all three. So, I have to toil a bit longer to be able to accomplish all three.

Ascentist – Why do you have to do these three things?

Descentist – Symmetry. Two of them are obligations I entered into when I was an ascentist, so I want to honor that man I was. And my final obligation is raising the funding necessary to find, build, and settle into my final sanctuary. These are all dependent on toil.

…

Ascentist – Surely you didn’t just wake up one day and become an ascentist. How has this manifested in your life?

Descentist – Looking back, I can see that it has always been with me, but it has taken a lifetime to articulate. Firstly, I have always been trying to express something since as early as I can remember. I didn’t have the words, but I knew I had something to say.

Perhaps the most obvious and enduring quality is my dislike of people in general, popular interests, and communities. I have had many friends in the course of my life, but it wasn’t until I was completely away from people that I realized how much anxiety, dissatisfaction, and pain they brought into my life.

I also realized early on that I was uncomfortable in social groups. I can recount many relationships that faded once my friend joined larger group with interests in specific hobbies, sports, or social aspirations. I preferred one-on-one relationships based on our interest in one another, and resented the intrusion of other interests into our relationship.

Hero worship, competition, and extreme focus on outside achievements, people, objects, and experiences turn me away because they distract me from the only truth that matters: my descent. I could not articulate it all those years ago, but it was clearly driving my behavior. I could never tolerate being around people who talked and thought about other people places, or events that weren’t us. Like watching sports and cheering on players I do not know or who will never think about me. I felt undermined, lost, and diminished; I wanted to talk about serious matters like life because I wanted to reach an understanding.

Turns out that is just not possible with other people. People are distracted by all the shiny forms.

The last person in my life I am close to is into a trendy outdoor sport. I watch him, and the way he sizes up and relates to other people. Members of his community emulate one another and their idols like clones. They have the same values, tastes, desires, and attitudes. You lose the individual and interact with the group, and that is tiring. The real person who is in pain and wants to understand his essential condition is lost in a performance he has no idea he is doing.

I always remember every time I wake up here that I don’t want to be here. My only goal is to get Home, to the first place. Not worship or lionize celebrities, win competitions, talk or think about people I do not know or who do not think about me.

Ascentist – And why do you continue to have this person in your life if you are uninterested in joining his performance?

Descentist – He is one of my last obligations. So once those are fulfilled, I will de-manifest him and focus on my sanctuary.

… October 6, 2021

Ascentist – How important is solitude and social isolation for descent?

Descentist – Imperative. People are the most distracting of all inessential forms because they can draw you deeply into them, away from the essential. Once I start looking at and thinking about other people, I’m not looking at and thinking about the essential.

Ascentist – Is it possible to have relationships and descend?

Descentist – With ascentists, no. An ascentist is someone who is lost and doesn’t realize it. They would be terrified and frightened by the prospect of descent because they have spent a lifetime consuming the fear-of-death narrative. They will try to “help” me, thinking I’m ill or in need of positive encouragement. I must simply de-manifest these forms. There is no room for ascentist forms within my descent.

Ascentist – How about a descentist relationship?

Descentist – I have thought about that, and how it might look. But I just don’t see it as practical.

Ascentist – What if you were sought out by aspiring descentists who read your material and wanted to learn from you?

Descentist – I definitely do not want students or acolytes around me, even if they want to learn. People are inessential, and in descent I seek a formless existence for the remainder of my awakenings. People do not fit into that.

Ascentist – What if you all are descending together?

Descentist – I see only distraction in that scenario as we build relationships around our inessential forms. In descent, I am searching for the way out of this place, and consider every form around me an anchor of some sort, holding me here against my essential desire. I have to confront the nature of my second place existence.

… October 10, 2021

Ascentist – Having spent so much time in India, you must have encountered a lot of spiritual people.

Descentist – I’ve seen such people, but I wouldn’t call them “encounters”. I avoid people generally, but even more so those who proclaim their spirituality in any way.

Ascentist – Why?

Descentist – Because nothing can be gained or earned by discussing my beliefs, or ingesting someone else’s.

Ascentist – What do you mean by “ingest”?

Descentist – Literally just that: consuming other peoples’ ideas and beliefs. I don’t really care about other people and their beliefs.

Ascentist – Isn’t that anti-social?

Descentist – So what? The vast majority of my “emotional reactions” were performances; role-based behaviors I had acquired by observing others around me. When I examined them, I discovered that I really didn’t feel what I was exhibiting. In descending, my emotions have stabilized to the point that my outward and inward performances match more closely.

…

Ascentist – I’ve heard it said before that people who contemplate suicide have trauma in their past. Is that true?

Descentist – The “people” construct puts me off that question. Perhaps the question you are asking is if I believe my desire for self-abolition relates to earlier trauma I may have experienced.

Ascentist – Yes, that question is fine.

Descentist – Sure. Every awakening is traumatic. Life is a long painful series of unwanted awakenings and movement. Life is an illness, and suicide or self-abolition are options I consider for overcoming it.

Ascentist – I understand your perspective, but I am talking about an early childhood trauma.

Descentist – I too know what you are talking about, but your entire perspective is a misunderstanding, and by indulging it, I incorporate those misunderstandings into my own.

Ascentist – So you don’t think that you are compensating for some early childhood trauma?

Descentist – I do not need to fabricate some imagined trauma to understand why I do not want to be here. I have only to recognize that it is peace I seek above all else, then realize that peace is not out here. Peace will never be here. So clearly, as long as I awaken into this state I will not have what I want. In other words: being here is the opposite of what I want. I know that right now, right this moment. There is no need to imagine some unknowable past trauma.

…

Ascentist – What is the most powerful thought?

Descentist – I’m not sure about the “most powerful”, but one that I have found very useful time and time again is that I both know and have everything I want and desire.

Ascentist – How are these powerful thoughts?

Descentist – Because they reveal my own completeness, but also my illness. I am everything I want; my failure to see that is my illness.

…

Ascentist – A lot of what you say seems “anti-scientific”. How do you respond to that?

Descentist – Science as the idea of a consensus of knowledge built around testing and validation is irrelevant to my descent. Let me break this down. In descent, I value peace above all else. I find peace by descending, by ending my awakenings into this second place. How exactly does “science” relate to my descent? To peace?

Ascentist – Well science explains life and death, all the biological and physiological processes –

Descentist – Nonsense. These forms are unnecessary and impede an experiential understanding of my existence.

Ascentist – How?

Descentist – I do not need these words and concepts to understand what is most important to me: peace. They do not help me. In fact, they lead me deeper into the second place, furthering my confusing by distracting me from the path.

Ascentist – What about all of the technology that you rely on, that makes your life possible, and depends on science?

Descentist – What about it? It’s only there if I think about it. And I do not.

… October 17, 2021

Descentist – One way to describe the second place is as the state of being perpetually dissatisfied. Or having constant desire.

Ascentist – I am satisfied, and I want nothing right now.

Descentist – Are you? Stop everything right now. Stop moving, thinking, doing.

Ascentist – I don’t see the point.

Descentist – The point is that you cannot stop. Boredom will arrive first, then your biological needs and eventually responsibility and obligations will arrive. These are the manifestation of desires unmet, and they keep me moving and reveal my essential dissatisfaction, my core condition.

Ascentist – Aren’t you conflating needs and desires; biological with financial, professional, and personal?

Descentist – Everything that compels me to move either mentally, emotionally, or physically, shares one quality: I desire it. In pursuing these desires, I believe I will get something that will satisfy me.

Ascentist – Well, I “need” certain biological things. I have to do them — it is not a choice.

Descentist – If the desire is so inescapable I would call it a “need”, it does not change that I exist here in a state of constant desire. These “needs” are my foundational desires, and all other desires are built on top of them. And I accept that, upon doing them, I will gain a certain amount of relief. I know that these desires will return again, but somewhere along the way I have accepted this state of temporary relief in place of perpetual satisfaction.

Ascentist – Yes, I accept that I must do certain things in order to gain temporary relief. But if I don’t use the restroom when I need to, what will happen? And if I don’t work, I can’t eat and I can’t pay my bills and I can’t take care of myself.

Descentist – What will happen is that I will experience increasing discomfort, and then pain in one form or another. In the case of physiological desires, I will likely succumb to them at some point. But that does not mean they are not desires.

Ascentist – Okay, I accept that my existential condition is one of constant desire. And my perpetual dissatisfaction is what keeps me moving. But I’m not sure I would characterize my entire life experience in this way.

Descentist – Name one thing that is more fundamental than the constant desire which keeps me perpetually moving and dissatisfied.

Ascentist – …

Descentist – I am not able to to find anything, for desire fuels every single thing I think, do, say, want in my second place. What is my desire?

Ascentist – According to Buddhism, suffering is the result of my attachment to my desires. And my desires are an attachment to my “self” or ego, which is not my true nature.

Descentist – I could say it that way. But I do not introduce inessential forms like “Buddhism”. I make this my own. I desire because here, in my second place, I am not in my first place. Desire is the state of not being who I am. I can only be who I am in the first place. Anything in and of the second place leads me away from the first place.

The essential condition of the second place is an endless layering of desires, causing various degrees of discomfort, temporary comfort and relief upon attainment. But the desire is constant, starting with the beating of my heart and drawing in of my breath and extending all the way up to my greatest worldly aspirations.

Ascentist – Yes, I can see now how my life, or the second place, is the state of being perpetually dissatisfied.

…

Ascentist – What is the nature of the second place?

Descentist – If I look outward to understand the nature of the second place, my conclusions will be tainted by the beliefs I have accumulated over a lifetime. If I look backward to understand my origins, my conclusions will be tainted by the assumptions I carry around with me now. To understand the nature of the second place, I must look at it as it is now, at this very moment. And I can do that from starting at the first place.

For example, looking backward with my present understanding of the second place, I believe that I was born and nurtured by a man and a woman who pre-existed me. I imagine that I learned all of this early on in my childhood, and have carried this conviction around with me ever since. It is a part of my existential framework; how I believe things are.

The second place is composed of layers of conviction, just like this one of my parentage. The layers at the bottom are compacted, hardened, and very difficult to challenge, and those closer to the top are more malleable and easy to change. But they are all still beliefs, reinforced by my movements during my awakenings. For example, every time I see my mother and call her “mom”, I reinforce this mythology I have accepted of being born to her. The same goes for all other beliefs I hold. Every time I invite these beliefs into my moments, I reinforce and harden them. But if I disengage from them, they start to weaken and fall away.

That is the nature of the second place. It is whatever I believe it is.

Ascentist – So you are saying that you do not have parents? I’m not clear. What ab

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Descentist – You are jumbling up the order of things. You didn’t start having to work at a job, did you? No, if we are here now, our existence started by being fully cared for; we offloaded those responsibilities. At that time, there were no such “responsibilities” — we simply experienced a growing body and changing existence — the idea of “responsibilities” is what we see when we look backward with all the values and beliefs we have now. But with experience, and the introduction of time, and other distances, as I was beginning to be small, I was accumulating desire for something I did not have but I wanted. That was pulling me away from the peace I did have. My life is my experience of losing literally everything, where I was everything and wanted nothing; losing all of that, and then trying to claw my way back to it by desiring. But the trick of this illness is that the “desires” I have are tricks of the illness itself; they will never deliver me back to the peace I seek; they will only keep me running around in cycles. The fact is that as an ascentist I have accepted the condition of insatiety.

Ascentist – I’m not following.

Descentist – I started as whole and complete, perfect and at peace. I had no desires. Now, looking back in reverse, with the beliefs I have accumulated over a lifetime in the second place, I think that I was cared for by parents who preceded me and cared for me. But that is not actually what happened. I was perfect and whole, and then I began to fracture and fragment. The parents came as I began to fracture and fragment and leave my peace. I left my peace, broke into a million pieces which I now believe are me and a big outer world that I am within. When I “look back” from this perspective, I make sense of what I see from what I now believe rather than what actually happened. From this angle, it looks like two people who preceded me created and cared for me, nurtured and raised me. I imagine that all the way back and come up with all kinds of ridiculous absurdities that just make me inconceivably small. But when I look from the center outward, rather from from outward back toward the center, I see something very different. I see that I am essentially whole and complete and at peace; it is my beliefs and desires which are wrong and do not allow me to see who I truly am and what is actually happening.

Ascentist – How did we get from my desires to my having never been born? This is mind-blowing and I don’t think I fully understand what you are saying or the implications, but I know it is significant. But how did we get here?

Descentist – I first want to point out that you have accepted the condition of insatiety. Then I proposed that ascentist realizes that this condition of insatiety is an illness, and that my only goal is to treat it. The second place experience is one of nonstop desire; I accept this desire because I am looking for the peace that I lost by awakening here. But I have forgotten what is I seek, and am looking outward at things that will never bring the peace I seek. They may bring temporary relief, but the desire always returns. It starts with every single biological desire that I control and don’t control, starting with breathing, then moving to eating and everything else. I accept these conditions of existence, and I accept these desires as integral to my existence. But what I then showed, is that they are not integral; they are purely part of my condition. These desires are incapable of delivering the peace I truly seek and that will give me everything that I want.

Ascentist – Okay so I can see the condition by simply recognizing that no matter how much I eat, I won’t be satisfied. My hunger will return again. And my entire life is a composite of such desires. I have accepted this as the nature of my existence. However, the descentist knows that is not my true nature; that is merely a distortion — a lie I believe. It is an illusion. And insatiety is not my true nature.

Descentist – Correct. My true nature is totality. Peace. For I am god. I merely have to remember how to look at this experience and reverse it. For now, I am lost, and when I look back I cannot see my way. I cannot remember how I got here. But if I look in the correct way, then I can see it for what it actually is.

Ascentist – By this logic, I wasn’t born.

Descentist – Correct. I wasn’t born.

Ascentist – Why did you just use the first person? 

Descentist – Because anything else would be a distortion. But I did not start at nothing and become this observer in a massive world we are all learning about together. I start at everything, and am reduced to this insignificant nothing in a distorted projection.

Ascentist – And all your memories?

Descentist – Memories are me looking back from where I am now. And I am always now. Memories are imagined distance.

Ascentist – But they happened to you, right?

Descentist – All that is, is now. I experience the illness as backward and forward projections, but there is only now. That is demonstrable. My objective is to disengage from those distances, concentrate back on the now, the center. And by doing that, the distortion will begin to crumble.

Ascentist – And how does desire relate to that?

Descentist – Desire is the illness, the condition, that keeps me here. I continue to enter this state because I continue to search for something I want, having forgotten that what I want is what I have before I come here. I have to shake free of that delusion in order to grab onto the solid essential. Once I have grabbed and anchored to the essential, I can pull myself out of this trap.

Ascentist – You keep waking up here because what you think what you want is here?

Descentist – Yes. And I must let go of those things I desire out here, from relationships to possessions to aspirations. All are hollow; they do not give me what I seek. They are very small broken parts of a much larger whole which I have before I awaken here.

Ascentist – And I’m not seeing how the past and all my memories fit into this.

Descentist – There is only now. My now. And all that exists, is here now. Right now. That what I am experiencing is everything. With my changing state, parts of my now were taken away from me; I pushed them far away from me, made them unreachable. Like the past. Or future. Or any number of things I imagine but do not directly experience. All of my now that is devoted to this imagination, effectively becomes unusable; it makes me smaller. It is the infection. Yes, it is the infection. All the imagined, is the infection spreading throughout me. My life that I remember is the fever taking over. When I imagine all these times before, I am in the middle of a fever. So, I must remember that there is only now; even my “memories” of a past are the now, but with the disease of distance added. To descend, I must reclaim all that now from my imagination, from all this distance. I must reclaim all those “memories” by disengaging from them, letting them go. The fever will subside and my second space will begin to collapse. The shape of the second place will begin to get smaller.

 

 

 

… November 13, 2021

Ascentist – Do I exist?

Descentist – I don’t care to even explore that question.

 

 

 

…

Ascentist – Do you believe in god?

Descentist – What do you mean by “god”?

Ascentist – I think you get to define “god” yourself.

Descentist – I am god when I sleep. In wakefulness, “god” is the desire for peace. In waking, satan is the desire for relief. These are just two words of many I can use to define these terms and experiences.

 

… November 15, 2021

Ascentist – What is consciousness?

Descentist – I don’t use that word, but I would say it is the period of wakefulness that interrupts my sleeping. And the awakening is an illness. So consciousness is a state of illness.

 

… November 20, 2021

Ascentist – Is everyone God?

Descentist – I can say that. But it produces an enormous distortion that prevents me from accurately describing and solving the problem.

Ascentist – The “problem” being the illness – my condition I want to overcome as a descentist.

Descentist – Correct.

Ascentist – Why is it so important to “accurately” describe my experience?

Descentist – The same reason it is important to accurately describe a map I am trying to navigate, or a maze I am trying to escape. Or a road I am driving on. Or any obstacle I am trying to overcome. If I find myself looking at a puzzle, and I cannot explain it correctly, then I am not going to solve it. Every explanation, is technically correct, but some jumble the order, others enhance or minimize certain features. All of this leads to confusion.

Descentism minimizes and eliminates the distortion so I can better navigate and overcome my condition.

Ascentist – How is saying “everyone is god” distort my understanding?

Descentist – Because if I say and believe this, I probably carry around a distorted understanding of both “god” and “everyone else”.

The theistic personification of God renders him impersonal and remote. The pantheist and panenthiest view de-mythologize the concept of “god”, but in the process they massively increase his/its size while minimizing and reducing the person. God becomes everything, including the entire universe. The “universe” in this context is massively inflated to include not only my direct experience, but everything imaginable in the imagined past and future. That would include the awareness and experience of “everyone else”, a group of billions, of which I am only one. It would also include experiences that neither I nor anyone else have, do, or will experience — all the imagined fantasies of science, for example. I, as the pantheist, am a small, temporary observer of something incomprehensibly large. In the end, it isn’t much different than theism: God is massive and I am tiny and temporary.

Descentism resolves the distortion by simply describing my actual experience. Descentism trusts that what I actually and directly experience is what is. As a descentist, I don’t use words like “subjective” and “objective”, which skew and denigrate my direct experience in favor of a shared experience that only lives in my head. It puts my direct, actual experience above my imagination, because it is, in fact, superior. What I touch and feel is “closer” to the truth than what I imagine to be the truth.

So the saying “everyone is god” is not something I would put any credence in.

Ascentist – What would you say, then?

Descentist – There are three basic shapes in my existence. My first shape is immovable and complete. It contains all other shapes. I experience my first shape in two ways: when I asleepen, and when I awaken.

When I am asleep, I am body-less and desire-free, and experience my first shape as pure peace. When I am awake and my eyes are open, I experience my first shape most strongly as the singular point of awareness behind my eyes and within my head.

When I am awake and close my eyes, my first shape expands to an endless, dark enclosure around everything, concentrated most keenly behind where my eyes would be, and as points of awareness throughout my body. My first shape is what I would call “god”.

My second shape is the inner environment I awaken into, including my inner self, thoughts, ideas, feelings, yearnings. It extends throughout my body as various sensations I feel internally.

My third shape is the outer environment I awaken into, starting with my outer physical body and extending outward to all other places, people, objects, and things.

There is a clear relationship between the phenomena I experience, and when I put them in proper perspective, it becomes clear how to heal my condition.

Ascentist – So in conclusion, the popular phrase “everyone and everything is god” is a distortion.

Descentist – Yes.

Ascentist – So you would say that descentism is correct and everything else — what you call ascentism — is incorrect?

Descentist – No. I would say that descentism is the shorter, less painful path home.

Ascentist – But we are all going “home”, as you say.

Descentist – By “we” you are referring to imaginary forms, which I do not engage.

Ascentist – Why not?

Descentist – Because that would be distortive. Forms that exist in my imagination only are where the greatest distortion occurs, so I aim to remain in my innermost second and third shapes.

… November 24, 2021

Ascentist – What is christian descentism?

Descentist – Christian descentism is traditional Christian beliefs viewed through the descentist lens.

Ascentist – I do not see a relationship between Christian theology and descentism at all. How do they relate?

Descentist – All conceptual forms and imagined constructs can be related. They are infinitely flexible.

But more specifically, our bible begins with “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth”. And when I awaken every morning, the first thing I become sensationally aware of is the weight and presence of my physical body.

Every awakening I am ejected from the garden of eden, or peace, and given human form where I have desires, needs, and insecurities. My third space is full of forms created in my image, yet not me.

Biblical descentism is the translation of the bible into a story about my awakening and asleepening.

Ascentist – What about Jesus?

Descentist – In my first shape, when I sleep, I am God. As I awaken into my second and third shapes, banished from the garden, I descend from heaven to chaos as Satan, doomed to a repetition of hellish awakenings. Satan is my illness. But when I begin to remember who I really am, I become Jesus and return to my first shape. Jesus is the period of my awakening during which I descend; during which I return to sleep, to my first shape. To God.

Ascentist – So Jesus was not a man born two thousand years ago in Bethlehem?

Descentist – If that is what I choose to believe, then that is what Jesus is. Whatever I believe is what is.

Ascentist – There is so much more to the Bible than just the book of Genesis

… November 26, 2021

Ascentist – Why are you doing this? Why are you “descending”?

Descentist – I have to. I know my core condition is pain and desire, and I want to be healthy.

Ascentist – In the most common language, without any jargon, what are you doing?

Descentist – I am choosing self-abolition. And I am describing that process, and how it manifests.

Ascentist – To most people, death is the worst possible thing. Yet you are choosing it willingly. Why?

Descentist – Because I understand it. I understand that my core condition of pain and desire is directly caused by awakening here. The peace and freedom I imagine is my memory of pre-life. That is where I am healthy. My life is an illness I am trapped in and I seek to overcome.

Ascentist – And death is the process?

Descentist – Death is just a single event I imagine at the very end. In life, I stand on the side of a steep mountain I climb every awakening. I don’t want to be on this mountain, and I know that there is no top, that the ascent is never-ending. I know that the mountain is the problem, the source of my pain. I don’t want to jump off the mountain; I want to consciously turn around and descend it, comfortably.

Ascentist – But descending effectively ends in death.

Descentist – Descent is the process of remembering who, what, and where I am, and effectively ends in being who I am. The concept of “death” from the ascentist perspective is a distorted characterization that fixates on my second and third-shape transition.

… December 3, 2021

Ascentist – Were you born?

Descentist – Birth is a conviction of my inessential identity. But to my essential identity, my “birth” is what it is: an imagined event.

Ascentist – But everyone was born. Everyone has parents.

Descentist – That is one of the foundational beliefs of this existence. If I forget a thing, or can only imagine it, then it is part of the inessential and is not essential.

Ascentist – Then how did all these people get here?

Descentist – These “people” are just shapes; they are far from the source that is within me.

Ascentist – That is all very self-centered, isn’t it?

Descentist – “Self-centered” is one of those characterizations I am supposed to be afraid of, and do everything I can to avoid. It enforces the inessential, keeps it alive. But it only has power over me if I imagine that it is important. If I give it value. Value is just imagined importance. And I give no value to that characterization.

Ascentist – So then if you weren’t born, if we weren’t born, then what are we?

Descentist – I am here now; that is all that matters. What is now. The more time I spend in an imagined past, the more lost I become. If I know the nature of the past, why would I spend any time there? Descent is grabbing onto the most solid thing there is — what I want, who I am, where I am. I grab onto that, and I pull myself out of this place. I pull myself out of these unwanted awakenings.

Ascentist – So you just forget the past?

Descentist – Basically, yes. Some “memories” and beliefs are more rigid and persist longer. They float around in my inner environment, distorting my essential identity. They are elements of confusion, like ripples in water, reflecting and diffusing the light of the essential. But by not engaging or indulging them, they slowly die away, giving me a better view of my source, my essential identity.

… December 6, 2021

Ascentist – What is covid?

Descentist – I have to understand the concept of “covid” to clearly see what it is. As always, I must start at the very core of my existence, and trace the path outward to this “covid” concept.

I start at source, My point of awareness. My essential. This is All. It is timeless, desire-less, peaceful. I return to this state when I sleep, and I can close my eyes and see it all around me when I am awake; it never moves or changes; I only forget it when I awaken and move

So I must be awake to both conceive and perceive this concept. This covid only exists in my awakening.

From there, I trace a line to the layers of movement and excitement which introduce this concept into my existence. That layer is consumption of media. That is the entry point.

Once injected, it begins to invade my inner environment. I nourish and keep it alive by seeking out, then creating and consuming additional information about it.

Then I in turn manifest characters in my direct outer environment who respond to and amplify this conception. Movements such as talking about it, consuming media, wearing masks, and other such actions keep it fore of mind, and prolonged exposure brings conviction, fear, and illness.

This amplification will continue as long as I keep it alive.

Ascentist – So you don’t believe in the infectious disease theory?

Descentist – I watched this so-called “infectious disease” enter my life as an idea. Something I imagined. It is still only imaginary.

Ascentist – To you.

Descentist – There is only Me, so I don’t need to add that qualifier.

Ascentist – Will you get the vaccine?

Descentist – No. By seeking out a vaccine, I am introducing then keeping that concept alive within me. I will transform the concept into percept, and that is when the disease will consume me.

… December 7, 2021

Ascentist – Why not kill yourself to descend faster?

Descentist – Because I’m not sure that faster is important. What I am sure of, is that I don’t want to be here, and I want to end this.

Ascentist – But wouldn’t killing yourself solve all your problems?

Descentist – If my hand hurts, I don’t cut it off. I nurture and heal it.

Ascentist – But why are you nurturing and healing something you want to end? Something that you don’t want?

Descentist – I am following the path back to Myself; the path that I can see. I don’t see a path ahead of Me through suicide. I suppose if I saw that path, then I would take it. But that is not the path I see.

Ascentist – Why?

Descentist – The same reason I do anything. It just makes more sense to me. I am going home. I will overcome my illness. But I am going to go the way I came, because that makes sense. Asking myself “why” when there is no immediate and obvious answer, does not change the shape of the path ahead of me.

Ascentist – If your path led to killing yourself, would you?

Descentist – What does that mean? That is all imagination. Imagination is me leaving the clear path I am on to wander around and get lost in the dark forest of confusion. I do not go there. Again, my path is clear before me, and I stay on it. It is the path of descent, and it proceeds slowly, incrementally. Every day, if I stay on it, I see a bit more of Myself. I get a little closer to the Home I seek. That feels right to Me, and I will continue this way.

…

Ascentist – What is the true desire?

Descentist – The true desire is what I seek. What I want. It is all that I want.

… December 12, 2021

Ascentist – Why are you doing this? Why are you “descending”? What is it that you are fixated on?

Descentist – I have always wanted something so badly. My entire life has been awareness of this deep yearning, and efforts to satisfy that. No matter what situation I found myself in, I was keenly aware if it would impede my achievement of this thing I wanted; if it threatened this thing, then I would withdraw from it.

For most of my later childhood and adolescence and into my early adult years, I believed that this thing I wanted was something worldly; I believed it was my own greatness. I believed that I wanted to achieve something, and that upon doing this, I would find the thing that I was looking for.

Ascentist – How did you express this yearning you had?

Descentist – Mostly, it was expressed when I was alone, writing in my journals. Throughout my life I would create and then become absorbed in these massive imaginary worlds. At first, when I was really young, perhaps 7 or 8, it was a literally a fantasy world I called “Maracia” — a place of kings, wizards, and various fantastical creatures. That evolved into sophisticated digital role-playing games and other combat-based games in my teens, but by the time I left high school and entered the workforce, it quickly changed into information systems for my employer. Within a few years it had transformed into a much larger digital vision. My entire identity was wrapped up in the achievement of this fixation at any point in my life. My favorite activity was spending hours alone just adding details to these growing dreams, captured on paper.

Ascentist – What threatened this yearning that you had?

Descentist – Many things did. Mostly people and relationships. I had relationships, but I remember knowing that they wasted my time, pulled me away from what I truly wanted. I remember looking at friends and peers who entered into long, protracted relationships, and how they would become completely consumed with them, to the point they could think of nothing else. That was a clear threat to my time alone, and so I steered clear of relationships, and those I did enter were carefully segregated from my alone time spent imagining the shape of my yearning.

Ascentist – What has changed?

Descentist – Back then I believed that my options were limited, and thus my expression of this yearning was also similarly limited in scope. Rather than focus on who I was and who I am, I was constantly focused on who I was going to become.

The past was represented by all the people around me — people who wanted to tie me down and cage me. Relationships were built on agreements I outgrew, and change was painful. But I knew that in order to find what I was seeking, I had to change, so I withdrew from relationships.

Instead, I believed that what I wanted more than anything lie in the future; it was a version of me that I had not yet created. It reflected the message all around me; “you can be anything you want to be”. I took that message to heart, more than anyone around me, and put my entire effort toward nurturing that future me. I neglected my past and present self in favor of the future person I would be.

But there came a point in my early 20s, after some serious disappointments, when I began to question my focus on this future self. I began to lose faith that what I sought was locked away in the future, and I began to turn inward. This inward reorientation was leading me back toward myself, and this would turn out to be what I was truly searching for.

Ascentist – Back to my original question – in summary, why are you doing this?

Descentist – I am doing this because I have always been aware of my original desire for peace, which outweighed every other aspect of my experience. Although I got lost in my middle desires, I eventually saw through those, and was able to resume the path.

… December 18, 2021

Ascentist – How does desire work?

Descentist – There is only this moment, only now. However, my state changes with my movement away from and toward this moment. When I move away from this moment, the now, I am ascending. And when I move back to and toward this moment, I am descending. Desire is my compass that leads me back toward who I am, toward this moment, toward now.

My desire seeks its source, in the same way that a rock thrown into the air seeks the ground. My desire is my gravity. My desire seeks its natural resting place and resists movement.

Ascentist – What is desire’s natural resting place?

Descentist – Who I am. This moment. Now. God. Source. Origin. Everything. There is only me. There is nothing else. In movement, that truth is fractured into a million pieces and I believe I am only part of something larger. I identify as a small piece of everything, forgetting that I am actually the source of everything, not just a small piece.

And I can see this clearly by just coming to my center. It is not difficult; I simply withdraw from my inner and outer environments, arriving at the point behind my eyes, within my head, where my conceptual and perceptual spaces intersect. And then I can close my eyes; that dark peace that extends in all directions is who I am.

At this moment, if I can get there, my desire evaporates. I have no desire when I am at the center. Now, once I begin to leave my center, engage the imaginary forms of my inner space, and the various forms and shapes of my outer space, my desire will return along with the distortion that inverts my actual identity.

Ascentist – You are saying that this little exercise of “coming to your center”, as you say, exposes how desire works?

Descentist – Yes. My desire is the force behind my separation from my true self. I experience desire as I move away from my center, and I can demonstrate that at any moment by performing this exercise. If I ever forget, I can do this and remember. When I forget this, I get lost. I forget that I created all of this when I awaken. I forget that I will destroy all of this when I asleepen. My desire is the gravitational force drawing me back to peace.

Ascentist – But I desire many things, and none of those things are what you describe. I want a house. I want a partner. I want to see the world, and experience new things.

Descentist – If I am seeing many desires, then I am firmly in the middle. As I ground and return to source, I see the unity of all my desires. As I awaken, my desire is one: to return to sleep, where I am at peace. And as I asleepen, my desire is one: to return to sleep, where I am at peace. It is all the time in the middle where my one desire splinters into countless smaller desires I can individually count and characterize. Like wanting a house, a partner, and various experiences. You maintain those desires at this point, but by the end of the day, those desires will all blur together and eventually coalesce entirely into one desire: to return to peace through the act of sleeping.

Ascentist – Yes, but they don’t end. I will still want them tomorrow.

Descentist – That is your state. That is the cycle you are trapped in, and it is why you awaken here. That is the state of your condition, of your illness. As long as you maintain those desires, you will awaken here and move toward them. But the gravity of desire will bring you back. It always does.

Ascentist – So back to my original question: how does desire work?

Descentist – Desire is the force I experience when I separate from who I am. From source. From origin. From god. From Me. From peace. Desire seeks its own abolition and destruction; it is the resistance I experience when I move away from who I am. If I lose my way back to the center, my desires fracture, multiply, and overwhelm me and take control. My experience in my awakening becomes jumbled, confused, and painful as I forget where I came from and where I am returning to. I come to believe that my condition of never-ending desire and pursuit of relief in my awakenings is my identity, forgetting that this is an illness. I forget that I am not this condition I awaken into; I am the entity to which this condition is happening.

… December 26, 2021

Ascentist – What is covid?

Descentist – Covid is the inessential attempting to re-engage Me, reorient Me toward it and away from the essential.

Ascentist – You think this is all about you? This is a global pandemic affecting the lives of billions of people.

Descentist – All of that is imaginary. That is how the inessential engages; it serves me a set of imaginary rules and circumstances that I cannot possibly contest, and then controls the narrative.

Ascentist – What rules? I can show you other people.

Descentist – Yes, and I can decide whether or not to be shown. The first decision, the decision to create, is mine. That is the rule that I am breaking. You believe that all of this stuff is out there. I do not. I can certainly create that stuff by following your advice and looking for all of those “other people” who are sick and impacted by this imaginary disease. Or I can choose not to.

Ascentist – That is the decision to ignore, not to create. By ignoring reality you are not somehow un-creating what other people are experiencing. You aren’t changing what is real.

Descentist – Yes I am. That is exactly what I am doing.I hold the very first decision: the decision to create. That is my power of omnificence.

Ascentist – But that is just lunacy, ignorance, and stupidity.

Descentist – And that is precisely the reaction I am supposed to fear, reinforcing my compliance with the rules. Your contempt and mockery are tools of control. Look how angry and upset you are that I am exercising my first decision to create. You are incensed that I would suggest that I have creative control over my existence. Because that threatens everything that you are. You are just a shape I am imagining; a conversation I am having with myself.

Ascentist – But it’s not just your existence, is it. It is my existence too, and I can plainly see that this disease is spreading across the world.

Descentist – Again, I possess the first power to decide. And I decide what is and is not real and is and is not happening. And I have decided that what you would have me experience is a state of illness that depends on believing certain imaginary things and not believing others. Namely, believing that there is something outside of my direct experience which I do not control, and that I then must respond to it. I do not

Ascentist – So then you are immune to covid? What are you saying?

Descentist – Right now, this idea only exists in my mind. It is imaginary. That is all that matters. I do not need to engage further on the topic because it is only imaginary. Now is all there is; this disease, and all of these hypothetical situations, are conceptual constructs, and I have the first power to transform them from conceptual into perceptual constructs.

Ascentist – In the clearest terms then, what is covid?

Descentist – “Covid” is an effort of my inessential self to undermine my reorientation toward my essential self. It started when I realized that I was lost, and will never go away. In fact, it will be joined by other emergencies, all intent on re-engaging me, and convincing me that I do not, in fact, have the first power.

Ascentist – What is the “first power”?

Descentist – My first power is my power to decide, believe, and move. It is the power I have that will lead me back to health.

Ascentist – But you don’t get to decide what is and is not true.

Descentist – That is exactly what I get to decide, because that is my first power. And you can contest all you want, and then I will decide to demanifest you, and all others like you. As I have.

Ascentist – And then everyone will think you are stupid and insane and you will be ridiculed and ostracized.

Descentist – All imagined. I do not imagine these events, and therefore I do not fear them. I do not create people who might behave in these ways you are suggesting, and should I accidentally manifest one of them, I will de-manifest them shortly thereafter.

Ascentist – In other words, ignorance is bliss.

Descentist – No. I am not ignoring anything. I am exercising my first power to not create something. There is nothing outside of what I create conceptually or perceptually.

Ascentist – We have different opinions on that, and anyone I know would think that is insanity. Just because you don’t believe there are sick people dying from this disease, doesn’t mean it isn’t happening.

Descentist – That is precisely what it means.

…

Ascentist – What are other people?

Descentist – People are shapes I imagine.

Ascentist – So your mother is just a shape you imagine?

Descentist – Yes. Until I perceive her, then she is a shape I both conceive and perceive.

Ascentist – What is a shape?

Descentist – To me, “shape” is sufficient to explain it. With an increase in words comes a decrease in understanding. Everything I conceive and perceive is a shape; a form with various properties I either believe or do not believe. Shapes are knots of substance and value within the tissue of my existence. Beliefs, possessions, people, ideas — all are shapes of substance.

Ascentist – And how did these shapes come to exist?

Descentist – I created them when I woke up.

Ascentist – So your mom did not exist before you woke up?

Descentist – No, of course not. When I am my essential self, I have no mother. I have no parents, no physical body, no ideas or aspirations. When I am not awakened, I am at peace. When I am at peace, there are no shapes.

…

Ascentist – How do you explain all of these frameworks of knowledge like science, math, and other the social sciences. All this knowledge that we have.

Descentist – If I tell you to spin around and around and then explain how to get to the next city, ?

Ascentist – Well, I would be extremely disoriented, and perhaps even sick. The world would seem different based on my condition of being disoriented. It would be difficult, if not impossible, to find my way around in that state.

Descentist – That is what those systems of “knowledge” are. They are states of extreme disorientation arising from “spinning around”, conceptually. Perceptually spinning around causes pain in the form of physical illness; conceptual spinning around causes pain in the form of confusion, anxiety, depression, and a sense of being lost.

… January 6, 2022

Ascentist – What is school?

Descentist – School is ascentist indoctrination. It starts after my parental forms have effectively suppressed my self-awareness that my awakenings are an illness. Schooling takes over after I have achieved a fear of my original desire for peace (aka, a fear of death), and learned basic self-preservation, and continues and extends my ascent. My schooling shaped my origination around materialism, aspiration, and consumption.

Ascentist – So school is a bad thing?

Descentist – School only further re-orients me away from my essential desire for peace, compelling me to grow outward toward the endless pursuit of relief. My beliefs of existence shapes my values, then my desires, and actions. In school I accepted that aspiration, possession, and accomplishment would satisfy the yearning I had. And so I built a set of values and desires around those things.

Ascentist – Does school do this to you, or do you do this yourself?

Descentist – It is all me. It is a phase in my ascent during which I expand outward.

… January 7, 2022

Ascentist – What is “god”?

Descentist – “God” is source. And more directly, god is my first self from where my second self and second place originate. I am god when I sleep, and when I awaken I forget this and my experience of that forgetting is what I experience as life. My desire for peace is me trying to wake myself up from this illness I awaken into. All of my desires out here, are manifestations of my forgetfulness; but my first desire to return to sleep when I awaken and my last desire to return to sleep when I asleepen, are my true desire for peace, for my return to my first self.

Ascentist – So then you are god?

Descentist – I am god when I sleep. When I am awake, and alive, and experiencing this place as my second self, I am ill.

Ascentist – What am I?

Descentist – You are a form that I am engaging; a shape within my existential tissue that I have manifested at this moment.

Ascentist – So then to you, I’m nothing apart from what you conceive and perceive.

Descentist – Literally, yes. Anything else would be imaginary and therefore untrue to my experience. The key to the truth is simply seeing and acknowledging what is.

Ascentist – What about when I leave and go about the rest of my life.

Descentist – That is imaginary. You are a shape in front of me now, and that’s it.

Ascentist – What good exactly is a perspective like this? How does this help you at all?

Descentist – Directly. My one desire is peace. I know that my awakening is an illness, and in order to recover from my illness, I must heal myself my finding my way out. All my desires for relationships, comforts, achievements, possessions, or experiences here in my awakening only pull me further away from the peace I seek, the health I seek. Imagination is one such aspect of my illness; it causes me to look away from where I am, and to forget who I am. I am not in the future. I am not in the past. I am right here, right now. Yet I am lodged in this imaginary place where I have goals for the future and memories of the past; I’m stuck, trapped, in this web of pain and illness. Imagining you as anything other than what you are is simply feeding this illness. The way to combat my illness is to withdraw from it. Withdraw from what is not. Only now is. What you are to me, is a form, and nothing else. I can certainly imagine all kinds of things about you, your life, your past and future. But that’s just experiential elasticity; it never ends. I can look or think in any direction I want to, endlessly, and get lost in the looking. Yet, I never move. I’m always right here, right now. That act of imagining is the act of sickness. Withdrawing from imagining helps me heal, and find what I actually want, which is peace.

…

Ascentist – What is “origination”?

Descentist – Origination is my how I understand my existence. I either know exactly what it is. Or I don’t.

Ascentist – How can you know?

Descentist – I know because I decided that I can know.

Ascentist – But how can you know everything; I’m sure I can find endless books you have never read.

Descentist – Everything there is to know, is right here, right now. This place, this strange room, is elastic; it takes the only thing there actually is — this moment, this now, my first self — and it stretches it endlessly, distorting it in all directions, inner and outer. Everything there is to know about this place and all of its distortions, can be found in the beginning and ending, which are the same thing: now. All these middle distortions do not change that beginning and ending. Those books that you talk about, will have the same beginning and ending; Me. I know the beginning and the ending; I wake up from Me, and I fall asleep to Me. That is the beginning and the ending, and that is all there is to know.

Ascentist – What is “the strange room”?

Descentist – The strange room is this place I awaken into and asleepen out of.

Ascentist – And where do you awaken from and asleepen to?

Descentist – The first place. My first self. Who I am. I could say god.

Ascentist – So you are god?

Descentist – Always.

… January 8, 2021

Ascentist – Why is “where am I?” the first question of origination? Why not “who am I?”.

Descentist – “Who am I?” is not the first question I would ask upon awakening into a strange room because it is not unknown. I know who I am in relationship to my desire; I am who is bereft of what I desire. I am who is desiring.

This is a known. The first question I would ask is “where am I?” because that is the first unknown. “Where am I” is an expression of my pain of being somewhere I do not know, and includes a clear objective to know where I am so I can find my way back to where I want to be.

Ascentist – How do you go about answering that question, “where am I”?

Descentist – I start with what I know. I did not ask this question until I had been here a long time. So, I had actually accumulated a lot of “knowledge” that wasn’t really knowledge at all, but rather imaginism. Imaginism is circular, inconclusive fluff that leads me nowhere except further from the first question. Imaginism distracts me by hiding the first question behind a lot of stuff “out here” that does nothing to address or satisfy my essential yearning.

Ascentist – So what is the difference between what you know and imaginism?

Descentist – Practically speaking, one is what I directly experience, and one is what I imagine. At some point, the two converge. But right now, I can see a distinct difference between the small room I am sitting in, and the imaginary construct of a vast earth full of billions of people, and a universe full of trillions of galaxies. Clearly, I know this room I inhabit right now, and clearly I only imagine this earth full of people and universe full of stars.

But imaginism is also happening when I am thinking about someone who is not present with me. Or when I imagine another person’s internal condition, thoughts, intentions, or desires. Any time I must imagine something I cannot directly know, I am engaging in imaginism.

Ascentist – How does this help you with the first question?

Descentist – Well, I know this room. I am here. I withdraw from all the other imagined constructs like earth, the past, the future. Anything that I do not directly experience, falls into the realm of the unknowable, the imagined. I withdraw from that, because I cannot know it, by definition. I cannot know that I am on a massive rock orbiting an even larger hotter ball of gas, which is in turn orbiting within a solar system, and on and on. I cannot know these things, and therefore, in building these fantasies into my concept of where I am, I am naturally limiting myself to a condition of ignorance. So I start with this room, and the things I do know, and search for the answer there.

What I eventually learn is that the thing I know most, that is most powerful and strong in my direct known experience, is this sensation in my head — it is this center from which all other inner and outer forms and constructs emanate. it is behind my eyes and inside my head. It is a point. That, I know. That is the most significant thing in my existence because it factors into everything I do. It is always with me, never leaves, never changes. It is the rock of my existence.

When I anchor to that rock and build my entire existence around it, the answer I seek comes. I want that. I want that fixed, timeless, desire-free place. That is where I want to be. This condition I awaken into, where I am disconnected from that rock — that is a place I do not want to be. So all that remains is ending this condition. Ending this illness that separates me from who and where I actually am.

Ascentist – Why am I here, then?

Descentist – I am here. I am who I am. But in awakening, I am ill, and I am separated from who I am by a force that

Ascentist – But why?

Descentist – Why is a circular device that crumbles before being. When I experience my being, “why” does not matter. Why is a mechanism of the inessential; endlessly circular, forever unattainable. Why only reveals the elasticity of the inessential I give birth to every time I awaken.

Ascentist – So you want me to simply accept what you say without any understanding of why?

Descentist – I do not want you to do anything. When I asked why, I knew very little. When I experience my being, I can see why for what it is: a persistent, bloodthirsty mosquito I find hard to ignore. I swat him away, but they multiply. Sometimes I can ignore them, and many other times I cannot. But they never leave. This is whyism, a condition of my illness. The answer I truly seek is not in response to a “why”; it is a realization that comes before any “why”. Why is a distraction that keeps me from being who I am.

Ascentist – That is hard to understand.

Descentist – Who I am, Where I am, is this point of stillness, timelessness, and freedom from desire that I can point to behind my eyes and within my head. Peace. Everything I experience from the moment I awaken until the moment I asleepen, flows from this one point. I can visit this point at any time in my awakening. I can return to this point right now. This is who I am. This is where I am. Peace. God. Source. The essential. This is the core Me.

But in my awakening, I will eventually leave my peace. Leave this point. Assume the inessential me — the body, the mind, the aspirations, the world, the imaginings. All of it. Whyism is the hoard of inner mosquitos in that inessential me — they bite me. I cannot ignore them, I swat at them. Yet they still find a way to get me. They draw me away from the essential Me as I chase them down.

When I am my essential Me, I can clearly see whyism for what it is. When I am essential Me, why does not matter. When I am experiencing pleasure, do I stop and ask why?

Ascentist – So in effect, you are saying the act of being my essential self is more important than the answers to my inessential questions of “why”.

Descentist – Yes. Being is superior to asking. All answers I seek can be found in my being.

Ascentist – And being is…?

Descentist – Being is surrendering to who and where I actually am; it is the point at the very core of me, before the point where my inner thoughts, feelings, and ideas start, and before the point where my outer body and environment start. More directly, it is simply refocusing on that point behind my eyes, within my head, where I can experience timelessness and freedom from desire.

Ascentist – And you think this point of being is the center of everything?

Descentist – Literally, yes. It is. Experientially, that is the brightest point of my existence. That point exerts the strongest gravity upon me.

… January 9, 2021

Ascentist – So where are you then?

Descentist – I am Now. But I believe that I awaken into this world, and I am in a specific place within this world. The difference between these two beliefs is the illness that I seek to overcome.

Ascentist – What do you mean by you are here “now”?

Descentist – Now is a timeless, spaceless, desire-free place. But it is also who I am before I am anything else. Who I am is where I am.

Ascentist – So you believe you are Now, but you also believe you are in India, in the world, in the universe, right?

Descentist – Correct. They are two sets of beliefs, one is waxing and one is waning. But this division between my two answers is most noticeable symptom of the problem.

Ascentist – What is this division? What is causing it? And what is true?

Descentist – Well, I know that I am “now” because I can directly experience it. I return there when I sleep, and I can go there at any time, with my eyes open, or closed, when I am awake. This is the first place, and I just need to understand what it is I’m experiencing by seeing and validating the continuity.

However, there are very persistent conceptual and perceptual environments which I also experience upon awakening. These are the thoughts, feelings, and desires within, and the people, places, things, and sensations of this outside world. This is the second place.

So which is it — where am I? Am I in the first place, or am I in the second place? That is the first question I need to resolve.

Ascentist – Why do you need to resolve it? Why can’t you just be in both places?

Descentist – Because that is the confusion that has given rise to all the pain I feel and want to overcome. All my various pains can be traced directly back to this one unresolved question: where am I?

Ascentist – And so then, where are you with regards to this question?

Descentist – I know that I am now, but I still suffer awakenings. I am consciously descending, and in that process, reducing the difference between the two. In ascending, my conviction that I am in the second place grows; in descending, my conviction that I am in the first place grows.

Ascentist – And what is your goal?

Descentist – My goal is to end my suffering and confusion by descending. To not only know that I am now, but to experience it. Now is peace. Now is god. Now is what I seek. To return, I must stop my awakenings.

Ascentist – What if you cannot get back?

Descentist – That is imaginism, and I do not engage in imaginism. I am already here in the first place, I just need to heal by demanifesting the second place.

Ascentist – What is the second place?

Descentist – The second place is an illness and confusion that arises from me spinning around and having lost control. The inner and outer worlds are the residual distortion resulting from the spinning around.

Ascentist – Why are you spinning around?

Descentist – Asking why is not meaningful.

Ascentist – But can’t knowing why help you understand how to stop it?

Descentist – Knowing that I am is sufficient for stopping it. “Why” is a question in search of an answer, which will lead to more questions, and then answers. Ad nauseam. Understanding comes not from answers, but from experience. Being is the path, not asking.

Ascentist – So then what would I do with my “why” questions? Throw them away because of some abstract reasoning?

Descentist – It is anything but abstract. Once I knowingly experience being, the questions did not matter anymore. They did not stop, but I was able to withdraw from them more easily and not get distracted.

Ascentist – How is that?

Descentist – Because once I know my being, I know what is not my being, and I know what will and will not lead me back to my being. I do on occasion still ask “why”. But once I see it carrying me away from the instantaneous understanding I achieve by simply being, I know that it is an inferior form of knowledge, and I readily and willingly discard it. Being is infinitely more important than asking. I will take being over questioning any day of the week.

Ascentist – Is this practical?

Descentist – It’s very practical. I was once consumed with questions. I assumed that a head full of questions was a good thing. But I was wildly confused. That which I thought I knew was useless for solving the one problem: knowing where I was. Now, I do not have a lot of questions. Questions have recessed to the background as I focus on being.

…

Ascentist – At what point does a normal person leave ascentism to become a descentist?

Descentist – For me, the potential and desire have always been there. And had I been able to select descentism as an option, I surely would have gone this direction much earlier. But there was no such expression readily available to me. I read many things that made sense, even profoundly. But connecting the dots between those pearls of wisdom and my daily life was impossible. At some point, the various ideologies, religions, and philosophies were impractical.

The catalyst for me, that pushed me beyond intellectual dabbling, was in realizing that my desires had outgrown my ability to achieve them. That led to the idea that maybe what I wanted wasn’t out here. Then it was just a matter of deciding to spend an increasing amount of my time and effort searching for what I actually wanted.

Ascentist – And this led to your “search for yourself”, as some might say?

Descentist – Yes, more or less. A period of trying to understand something I could not see. Trying to say something I had never heard. Trying to grasp the meaning of my existence. I knew that I wanted my life to make sense, and knew that I would never find what I was looking for in America around the people I had grown up with.

Ascentist – How did those relationships affect you?

Descentist – They were toxic to my search. All of them. I could handle them in small amounts. But relationships are one of the most potent aspects of my illness. Relationships draw me away from my Being, and into the second place. I bond to them, which directly weakens my connection to my Being. My second self is nourished by relationships, but at the expense of my first self.

Ascentist – So are relationships bad?

Descentist – Relationships are detrimental to Being.

Ascentist – Perhaps you had the wrong relationships?

Descentist – Imaginism. All relationships, by definition, diffuse my concentration outward, away from my essential. Anything out here, in my awakening, that I value directly competes for the nutrient of my concentration.

Ascentist – So then people who are in relationships cannot Be?

Descentist – I cannot, no.

…

Ascentist – So what is all this stuff I can readily observe and experience? All the videos of distant places and countless people doing so many different things. All the knowledge in books of past societies and people; the languages, the mathematics, theories. Everything. What is all of this?

Descentism – It is all imaginism. Imaginism is elastic, and with effort and action I can transform the conceptual into perceptual.

For example, I can jump right now. I know I can do it, and if I took the steps to do it, I would jump. I would manifest that. This demonstrates all the features of imaginism. I am imagining something that is not. I could do it, but I am not. If I do it, I would have transformed the conceptual into the perceptual.

Origination applies all of the same logic and rules to any other kind of inessential performance. For example, if I chose to, I could enroll in a university and study quantum physics. But I am not right now, nor am I conceptualizing quantum physics. Therefore, at this moment, that potentiality of studying quantum physics, and quantum physics itself, hold the same level of substance as my conceptualization of jumping.

I can jump. But I am not jumping. I can study physics. But I am not studying physics. Neither the jump nor the physics have any substance until I manifest them.

Ascentist – By that logic, there are no dinosaur bones or ancient civilizations until you conceptualize them, correct?

Descentist – Correct. If I do not conceptually or perceptually move to manifest these things, then they are not substantial.

Ascentist – What do you mean by “substantial”?

Descentist – They have no substance.

Ascentist – Is that the same as being real?

Descentist – No, I avoid that word “real” because it is too familiar and too easily abused. Reality is whatever I believe is real. Substance is anything with a conceptual or perceptual form. The moment I conceive a topic, I imbue that concept with substance. When I ponder deeper on that topic, I am stretching that concept, filling it with even more substance. The tissue of the second place is very elastic — I can pull and stretch and magnify it endlessly. And if I’m not careful, I can get lost in the endless shapes I can create. Demanifestation is the de-substantiation of both concepts and percepts.

… January 24, 2022

Ascentist – How does origination relate to descentism?

Descentist – Origination is the way I make sense of my existence. There are broadly two categories based on my general sense of where the origin is: ascentist, and descentist.

Ascentist – What do you mean by “origin”?

Descentist – The origin is where I decide existence starts and ends.

Ascentist – What do you mean by “decide”?

Descentist – Literally, that. It is my decision where I choose to believe my existence originates.

Ascentist – So you don’t think there is any objective origin?

Descentist – By “objective” you must mean a truth or fact that may be outside of or beyond my awareness.

Ascentist – Correct.

Descentist – No, what I believe is what there is. If I believe that there is some objective origin beyond my awareness, then that is my belief. That is ascentist origination because it leaves a gap between what I directly know and experience and what I believe is truth. This is my experience-conviction gap.

Ascentist – How does origination impact this experience-conviction gap?

Descentist – The larger I imagine existence to be, the smaller I imagine myself to be within it. Ascentist origination places me as a diminishing observer of a massive and unknowable existence. The more I ascend, the more I learn, the smaller I become. The “imaginary we” replaces the “experiential I” as the lens through which I see my existence. This is ascentist origination.

In descentist origination, I move backward, and the “experiential I” replaces the “imaginary we”. The “size” of existence moves toward the size of my experience of existence. I let go of the imaginary in favor or experiential.

Ascentist – So just because you begin descending, you believe that the things you no longer think about do not exist?

Descentist – Yes, literally.

Ascentist – How can you prove that?

Descentist – Prove to myself, or to others?

Ascentist – Both, I guess.

Descentist – I do not need to prove anything to others, for others are part of the imaginary. The only proof I require is my direct and actual experience.

Ascentist – So in summary, the descentist believes that existence is only himself and his direct and imagined experience. Whereas the ascentist believes that existence exceeds his direct experience.

Descentist – Basically, yes. As a descentist, I know that all of existence originates within me. I know that my inner and outer experiences are forms projected on the walls of my first self. I can validate this by closing my eyes and observing that the visual projections disappear. Yet despite disappearing, I remain “within” an all-encompassing “space” I can sense around me. This space is persistent, but nothing else is.

Ascentist – I would say that the objective reality persists, but my subjective experience is what is changing.

Descentist – Of course, that is the ascentist perspective. Ascentist origination places the objective outside of me.

…

Ascentist – What is the descentist view on climate change?

Descentist – All these ongoing and forthcoming catastrophes are imaginism. These emergencies are my illness trying to re-engage me, draw me back in.

Ascentist – So, it’s all about you? The entire world revolves around you? The climate is changing because in your philosophy you are withdrawing from the world?

Descentist – Yes, of course. Literally. I know where origination occurs; I can experience it at any moment, right now. I can feel, see, taste, smell the origin. That is the only constant in existence. Everything else is derived therefrom. Me descending is a mortal threat to my the entire existence and therefore will draw out increasingly fearful forms and performances as this.

… January 26, 2022

Ascentist – What does a descentist do with his family?

Descentist – My family are some of the earliest forms within my third-self. They are extremely engaging and rigid, binding me into a set of performances and behaviors I outgrew long ago. So I de-manifested them as early as I possibly could. More directly, I moved away from to another country. Conceptually, I have maintained relationships with a few of them, but they are not deep.

Ascentist – Why would you do that?

Descentist – As comfortable and familiar as those third-self forms were, I would not have been able to understand and articulate my condition had I remained engaged with them. I suffer from awakenings, and I seek release. My third-self family forms have no role to play in my release. They are purely artifacts of an ascentist existence, not a descentist reorientation.

Ascentist – How would they feel if they heard this from you?

Descentist – That is imaginism. They are extensions of me; they are part of my third self that I are not part of my reorientation toward release.

Ascentist – Imagine how that would impact your mother, who gave birth to you and loved and nourished you.

Descentist – No, I won’t imagine that. This imaginary situation you want me to participate in, is designed to entrap me in a performance out of fear and shame. I am supposed to feel guilty of the pain I am supposedly inflicting on another person by de-manifesting them. And then I am supposed to respond to that guilt and shame by changing my behavior and doing something that will foil my reorientation. Because I know what this place is, and I know what these forms are, I no longer give in to such fears. The truth is very easy, and it is very easy for me to ignore such manipulations because I know what they are.

Third-self engagement draws me away from my reorientation toward my first self. My third self desperately wants me to re-engage it. By reorienting, I am starving my third self of the oxygen it needs to exist and thrive. My third self is the most toxic manifestation of the cancer of my awakenings. So I have to choke off the blood supply to my third self. My family forms, and all older relationships, are part of the trunk of that cancer.

Ascentist – So you do not feel any shame, remorse or guilt by turning your back on your family?

Descentist – I wouldn’t use that phrase, “turning my back”. I have chosen to de-manifest them so that I can reorient toward my release.

…

Ascentist – What do you mean by your “three selves”?

Descentist – My three selves is my latest expression in a line of many before it. But to date, it seems to be the most concise.

Everything in existence can be classified within my three selves. My third self is everything I perceive outside of my body – the natural environment I move around. My second self is my physical body and my inner conceptual space. And my first self is the timeless, spaceless, dimensionless, desire-free point from where everything appears to originate.

Put another way, my first self is the origin which projects through my second self out into my third self.

Ascentist – How does all this work?

Descentist – My existence works in layers. I experience my second self moving “within” my third self — my physical body moving around the world. My second self moves because it is a state of illness, which I experience as a constant, painful desire. My second self wants to heal, and the movement is the pursuit of that desire.

Early on in my illness, ignorant of my condition, I seek temporary relief from the pain in my third self. I do this in various ways: entertainment, pleasure, distraction, achievement, drugs, relationships, and various other experiences. But all of these movements only nourish my illness, which expands into an ever larger “world” full of more people, more places, more possessions, more problems, more conflicts, more decisions. The more I seek relief to heal my illness, the larger and more painful the cancer of my third self becomes.

My third self is a malignant tumor, and I must choke off the oxygen feeding it. To do that I must realize that my pursuit of relief only feeds my illness; only release will heal me. To gain release, I must reorient toward my first self by withdrawing from my third and then second selves.

Ascentist – How do you withdraw from your third self?

Descentist – My third self is a product of the movement of my second self, which is itself a product of my imaginism. My desire for healing compels all movement of my second self, which manifests in all of the various third-self forms I experience. The people, problems, things, events, everything. To withdraw from these manifestations, I must remember my desire for healing, and believe that my first and last desires are the only way to achieve it. Naturally, I will lose interest in my third-self forms and turn away. The same will happen with my second self, until all collapses into my first self.

Ascentist – How does your first and last desire relate to all this?

Descentist – My first and last desire every single awakening are the same: to return to peace, to the first place. To be my first self. This is the only path to healing. All my middle desires are the enemy of my healing, and keep me trapped in this illness I experience as a succession of awakenings.

Ascentist – So, to heal your illness, you must overcome your middle desires.

Descentist – Correct. All my middle desires are oriented toward my third self, which is the cancer. Only one thing will heal me: the first place. The return to my first self.

… January 29, 2022

Ascentist – How do I know if descentism is working for me?

Descentist – By “working”, I suppose you mean “true”. It is simple. Descentism is premised on the notion that if a proposition is true, then I can directly and instantaneously validate it. As I re-learn how to understand my daily awakenings, and I remember my desire for peace, I can see the pain and suffering of my awakenings diminish. This is the most important reinforcement that I have, and I can directly and instantly validate it at any time.

… January 30, 2022

Ascentist – The use of a separate set of pronouns for descent seems strange and sounds like you are speaking

Descentist – No, it has nothing to do with “multiple personalities” or personas, or some sort of dissociative disorder. Descentist pronouns are simply a grammatical structure that reinforces an accurate existential model.

When I speak with the standard ascentist pronouns, my very speech divides my existence into shapes I do not actually believe in. Firstly, it supposes that “I” am a member of some collective of beings called “people”. So I — the person who is thinking and writing this right now — is the same as every other person I meet or imagine. But experientially, that simply does not hold water. My experience of myself is very different from my experience of what are called “other people”. So the descentist pronoun structure removes this equivalency.

The ascentist pronoun structure also divides the category of people into three subsets: first, second, and third person. First person is me, or an imagined me or group to which I belong. Second person is any individual or group of people I am directly addressing. And third person can be an individual or group I am talking about but not addressing directly. As a descentist, I reject this structure because it is fully imagined and assumes equivalency between these various forms.

Ascentist – Then how do you divide things, if not into yourself and other people?

Descentist – My existence basically has four layers: my first self, my inner second self, my outer second self, and my third self. This directly mirrors my actual experience rather than supplementing my pronoun model with imaginism.

Ascentist – How does the ascentist structure “supplement your pronoun model with imaginism”?

Descentist – As I mentioned, the traditional pronouns assume that all speakers are part of the same existential category. I, we, you, him, her, and they are all assumed to be people. But my direct experience tells me that they are not all the same thing. Firstly, I do not experience my own self in any way the same as I experience you, him, her, or we. I directly experience myself in infinite dimensions; but you are merely a shape in my field of vision that I can interact with. I do not experience anything within you that I experience within myself.

Ascentist – But that does not mean that we are not both people, categorically.

Descentist – Why not?

Ascentist – Well, look at us – we both have physical bodies. We are both here. The vast majority of our individual experiences are identical. We speak the same language. This is so simple it almost seems almost silly.

Descentist – All of those statements you just made require me to imagine things that I do not experience. I haver to imagine that you are just like me, even though I do not directly experience you in that way. Descentism is a model of how my existence is experienced, not imagined. As such, the descentist pronoun structure makes certain types of statements difficult or non-sensical because they it is based on experience, and not a collection of suppositions.

For example, I have no idea what you are thinking. Yet, in the traditional ascentist pronoun structure, I can write and speak at length about what you might be thinking. I can fabricate an entire story with you as the subject. Creative writing and literature is full of this kind of imaginism.

But, in descentism, I do not seek to imagine such things. I do not want to think about how you might be feeling, or what you might be thinking. It does not make any sense to me to do that. Keeping in mind, my only desire is the end of my desire. To that end, imagining what you might be thinking about, writing about that, and then sharing it makes no sense to that goal. So if I wanted to say the same thing in descentist, I would have to break it down. “You” are a form in my third self. You take on the Thi, te, ty, tine, tyself pronouns. These pronouns take on the traditional first person verbal conjugations. So “you are” becomes “Thi am”. In descentist, “you” simply do not exist as a separate entity from “me”. I speak about both of us essentially in first-person. This necessarily limits what I might want to say about the ascentist “you”.

Ascentist – So your language literally limits what you can talk about.

Descentist – Yes. It is actually difficult to figure out how to say many things in the descentist model. Usually this corresponds to a statement being nonsensical from the descentist perspective anyway.

Ascentist – Then how do you intend to explain descentism to others if you are limiting your vocabulary and parts of speech?

Descentist – I don’t. Sharing the concepts of my second self with the forms of my third self is irrelevant to my descent. It would be like explaining my goals to the designs in the wallpaper.

Ascentist – And yet here you are, explaining it to me right now.

Descentist – Yes, here I am. Descent is a transition. Every day I learn, orient a bit more toward my first self and away from my third self. Even now, I still spend much of my awakening in ascent, and in those times I am perfectly happy to use traditional speech patterns to explain myself. But that desire is tapering down, and a day will come when I feel no need to talk to the wallpaper.

… February 1, 2022

Ascentist – So if a sizable number of people decided they were descentist, how would that impact the world?

Descentist – You are asking me to imagine my third self behaving independent of my second and first selves. Hypothesizing like that is ascentist, so not something I engage in.

Ascentist – Many times in the past you have been willing to imagine and discuss this scenario. What has changed now?

Descentist – What has changed is that I have moved further into my descent, and I know what happens when I engage in imaginistic activities like the one you just suggested.

Ascentist – What do you mean by “imaginistic”?

Descentist – Imaginism is when I conceptualize events I do not, cannot, or will not ever directly experience. This kind of movement runs contrary to my one desire for release, so is therefore ascentist.

Ascentist – Explain the logic behind that.

Descentist – As a descentist, my one objective is release. I understand that the desire I feel every moment of my awakening is a desire for release; for permanent, lasting peace. So, any movement toward my release is descentist. But any movement that does not directly lead to release, is relief. Relief can only provide transitory, temporary, non-lasting distraction from my pain. Imaginism is one such relief-oriented movement.

Ascentist – Please clarify what you mean by “movement”.

Descentist – Anything I do conceptually or perceptually in my awakening. I move conceptually by thinking, wanting, enjoying, disliking, feeling. I move perceptually by physically moving.

Ascentist – Okay, but I do not understand how imagining a hypothetical scenario contradicts your stated goal of descent.

Descentist – Put it this way. My true desire for release is evident in every single awakening. I wake up into my second and third selves and I remain here until I am no longer able to resist my desire to return, and I fall asleep, or “asleepen”.

What my first and last desire tells me, is that I want to return to my first self. I do not want to experience my second and third selves. I suppress my original desire when I awaken here, and succumb to all of my middle desires. That is a measure of my illness — my suppression of my desire for my first self for my middle desires.

My middle desires are all for relief, not release. These middle desires are what keep me ill, keep me awakening into my second and third selves. So to descend, I must simply eliminate my middle desires. Not engaging in imaginism is one of the easier middle desires to eliminate.

Ascentist – How is imagining how your philosophy would affect the world a “middle desire”?

Descentist – Remember, every movement is an expression of desire. You asked me to imagine this hypothetical scenario. If I complied, and imagined that scenario with you, then I would be moving, conceptually. I would be expressing a desire to build out this imaginary situation with you so that you and I could further this conversation. That is the middle desire, expressed.

Ascentist – So your desire to build a conversation with me is the pursuit of relief, which is antithetical to the pursuit of release?

Descentist – Yes.

Ascentist – And earlier when you imagined scenarios like this in discussion?

Descentist – I had not progressed as far in my descent then. I did not realize the impact such engagements had on me. But now I understand how imaginism impacts me. My goal throughout my awakening is to refrain from antagonizing my suffering, not increase it with imaginism.

… February 20, 2022

Ascentist – You recently wrote that you are the “existential designer”. What is that?

Descentist – Existential design is just one way of characterizing my awakened state using familiar words and concepts to make it more real. It traces the beginnings of everything in my experience back to my moment of awakening here. My awakening was the creative event. My awakening.

Ascentist – To you. From your perspective your awakening created everything here.

Descentist – What else is there?

Ascentist – There’s me. And everyone else I can assure you is real and who also woke up this morning.

Descentist – That is all imaginary. But anyway, existential design is the expression of the the truth that I created all this by awakening, and it is my choices and decisions which determine the nature of the wallpaper in my second and third selves.

Ascentist – Wallpaper?

Descentist – My second self and third self are just moving wallpaper. I awaken into this labyrinth of walls, and all the people, places, and things around are the wallpaper on those walls.

Ascentist – What do you mean “everything around”?

Descentist – Everything I experience in my awakened state. It’s all just background substance. Designs, forms, and movement which I created when I awakened, set into motion, and then intercourse with.

Ascentist – So you do not think there is any substance beyond the surface of your observation?

Descentist – That is one way to put it. All my sensations and experiences, collectively, are the walls of my prison. My first self is fixed. No matter where I am, my first self is stationary, in the same place at the center of my awakened state. Then the second layer is my second self, through which I project everything else, the third layer, which is my third self. I design the experience of my second and third selves by moving. When I know what I seek — release — I can design an existence that begins to emulate the peace I desire. When I do not know what I seek, I design and experience in pursuit of endless relief from the pain of my awakening.

Ascentist – So you mean “existential designer” literally.

Descentist – Yes.

… February 22, 2022

Ascentist – You have now started using the world “triself” and its derivatives exclusively where you once used several other words, including “descent”. Why have you changed?

Descentist – Triselfism more fully captures the concept I have been trying to express. I have used many words and world clusters in the past to imperfectly explain this concept that I can now summarize with just a single, simple word.

Ascentist – What word, specifically, does it replace?

Descentist – Many. But starting with “descent”. Descent is still a useful word, but it really only captures a mindset and velocity, not necessarily an entire model. Descent identifies my orientation toward my first self, and therefore is useful in capturing that. However, it does not capture the entire model of my existence like triselfism does.

Ascentist – So then you are no longer descentist?

Descentist – I have not fully committed one way or another. I know, for example, that I am still ascending at this moment because I am operating a business and engaging a small amount of third self forms. Therefore, I still “want” something in my awakening. So that means I am ascending. However, in many important ways I am descending. I do not, for example, engage deeply in a broad number of topics and matters that disempower me. I do not dwell on or think about or even believe in a distant past. The same goes for the future. That has allowed me to concentrate my awareness more closely to my present. So while a part of me is ascending, another part is descending. In that way, calling myself a descentist belies my actual orientation at this time.

Ascentist – So then what are you?

Descentist – I am a triselfist. I have rediscovered what this existence is, and as I absorb that truth, I am reorienting toward it. That reorientation is uneven and nuanced; there are parts of my second self that are contracting inward, descending. And there are parts of me that continue to expand outward, ascending.

Ascentist – That makes sense.

Triselfist – …

… March 12, 2022

From this point forward, I will replace the terms Ascentist and Descentist with Uniselfist and Triselfist, respectively.

Uniselfist – How does morality play into triselfism?

Triselfist – By morality, you mean the system of right and wrong values and behavior?

Uniselfist – Yes.

Triselfist – A morality framework lives in the very far reaches of the imaginistic part of my second self. It is a structure that exists largely as a collection of imagined events, scenarios, and stories of people, places, and situations I will never directly experience. From those imagined stories, I am supposed to extrapolate a set of rules to moderate my own decisions and behavior in my awakenings.

Uniselfist – Clarify what you mean by “the very far reaches of the imaginistic part of my second self”.

Triselfist – The morality framework you are talking about is something I imagine. It is not here, right now unless I imagine it to be here, right now. It is literally a narrative built upon years of, in my case, biblical and social stories I learned. If I do not think about it, then it is not there. In triselfist terms, it is inessential; something that, if I do not focus on, is not there.

Uniselfist – But there are examples of good and bad behaviors and values, aren’t there?

Triselfist – I can certainly imagine them with you right now. I could sit here and open up a newspaper and find many examples of behaviors of individuals, groups, and governments that we might both agree are morally wrong.

Uniselfist – So then by your own admission, as a triselfist, you do have a morality framework, correct?

Triselfist – I have the residue of one, but I no longer maintain it.

Uniselfist – What do you mean by residue?

Triselfist – It is leftover from the period of my awakenings in which I was a uniselfist. The structure is still there; I can call upon it at any time. I could theoretically, sit down with you in front of a news aggregator, and call upon that imagined moral framework, and label each of participants in the various news stories of the day as behaving either morally or unjustly. I can do that. But as a triselfist, I do not do that. I do not exercise that muscle because it misdirects me, away from my true yearning for lasting peace and toward conflict and relief.

Uniselfist – This is what it always comes down to for the triselfist: does the action move you toward permanent and lasting peace, or transitory relief.

Triselfist – Yes, that is ultimately how I as a triselfist try to make my decisions. And as more of my decisions are made with release in mind instead of relief, the better I feel and the closer I move toward my first self.

Uniselfist – So please refine how morality plays into triselfism.

Triselfist – Morality as a series of concepts based on imagined people, events, and moral lessons, is a structure I am deliberately and intentionally deconstructing for the simple reason that it is of this imagined second and third self. It is inessential, and will not in any way assist me in my descent. It is based on the notion that there is a larger world of people, places, and events outside of me and my direct experience that I do not or cannot know. Yet with this framework, I can somehow relate to and make sense of those experiences.

As a triselfist I know that what I seek is release. I also know how to get it. I know that the very idea that there is a larger world outside of my direct experience will lead me away from the release I seek. And so, if this concept of a larger world full of people facing and making moral and amoral decisions drives me away from what I seek, then the idea and need for a morality framework is contradictory to my goal. It is unnecessary baggage that prevents me from getting where I really want to go: release.

Uniselfist – So, like everything else, in triselfism the morality framework is viewed in terms of how it helps or hinders your essential desire for release. And if it does not support your essential desire for release then you simply disregard it.

Triselfist – Precisely.

Uniselfist – Does that mean that the triselfist has no sense of morality?

Triselfist – To even engage that question and discussion, I have to adopt a perspective I no longer want because it leads me away from my true desire for release.

Uniselfist – How do you conduct yourself in your awakenings? Do you behave in a moral and just way?

Triselfist – I do not harm other people intentionally, if that is what you are asking. I interact with the people shapes of my third self as little as I possibly can, which by default minimizes the amount of damage I could do to them. But in the same way I would not rampage through a field of growing wheat and wildflowers, I would not want to disrupt or harm the people of my third self. If it is important for you, I’m sure you could extrapolate a morality framework from that.

Uniselfist – So your behavior is driven by the

Triselfist – Today I want less from my awakening than I wanted yesterday. Every awakening I chip away at the inessential desires that keep me returning. And with the disappearance of inessential desire there is a necessary reduction in both my inner and outer movement, which curtails any damage I might do to the shapes of my third self.

Uniselfist – By “shapes of my third self” you mean people, animals, and institutions you might conceivably harm.

Triselfist – Yes, anything outside of my second self — this body I inhabit. That is my third self, and I have no desire to have to behave in such a way that might harm the people, animals, environment, or groups.

Uniselfist – Despite your intentions, do you harm any of these things?

Triselfist – It doesn’t matter to me.

Uniselfist – It matters to me, right now.

Triselfist – Then go ahead and explore it.

…

Uniselfist – Why did you decide to replace ascent and descent with uniself and triself? How do you arrive at these decisions?

Triselfist – Note that I will still use ascent and descent, but perhaps not as broadly as I have in the recent past. I replaced them because the uniself/triself construct more accurately and completely describes the perspective I have been trying to articulate for so long.

In my search, I have always looked for ever more precise language. I want to replace metaphor, analogy, and other abstractions with concrete and practical words and expressions. Ascentist and descentist are useful, but express a directionality. But without the spatial context, what use is it to discuss the direction? Where am I ascending or descending to? It would be like discussing the batting averages of two baseball players without consideration of the game of baseball itself.

The selfist model lays it all out within two polarities: the uniself arranges me as a single self among many in the past, present, and future; the triself arranges me as the originating self that births all else. It is very clear. The former is based on imagination, and the latter is based entirely on my direct experience. These two words accurately lay out the environment in which I can move.

Another problem I had with the ascentist/descentist dichotomy is my final acceptance of the fact that part of me is ascending, and another part of me is descending. While I am pulling down the wider walls of my imagined existence, I am still pursuing clearly ascentist goals like the growth of a software business. So by calling myself a descentist, I knew I was being imprecise.

To that end, I have coined new words: I like the word reliefist for ascentist, and releasist for descentist.

These two word-pairs permit me greater flexibility in defining my actual state. I am not purely a descentist. I am a neophyte triselfist who is actively pursing both reliefist and releasist goals.

Uniselfist – How long does it take you to change the words you use, and do you think these are the final words you will use?

Triselfist – It takes time, often months or longer. I have been using the word “descentist” for well over a year. Perhaps two years. And at first, I believe I was calling myself an “ascentist” before I inverted the definitions. It is just a matter of time and contemplation.

…

Uniselfist – Why did you leave America?

Triselfist – This is a question I have asked and answered so many times. Yet, I still continue to search for a more perfect way to express my motives. The Selfist Model gives me the best way to answer it.

Keeping in mind that my decision to leave America was preceded by several years of searching and smaller departures. My search began after I left high-school; I did not know what I was searching for, only that it was important. As my self-awareness grew, I became dissatisfied with the life I had built and desires I had nurtured, until one day a new kind of desire broke through and tipped the scales. When that balance changed, and these new desires outweighed the old, I saw leaving America as the only viable option.

These new desires I discovered were more meaningful than the relief-oriented consumption and production that hitherto had defined my life. I discovered release, and I identified a path that would allow me to explore and pursue that. When I arrived in rural India nearly two decades ago I had forced myself into a very basic existence built around much smaller daily desires, survival, and contemplation. What little funds I had stretched much further. And without family or friends here, I was free of the major reliefist encumbrances: relationships, cultural and social performances.

I forced myself to exist in an environment with far less access to reliefist activity. Though I was depriving myself of relationships, pleasures, and comforts I had once enjoyed, I felt better overall because I was satisfying some part of the deepest yearning within me.

Uniselfist – What do you mean by “reliefist encumbrances”?

Triselfist – Everything I do, think, want, or believe, is a movement within the Selfist Model. All my movements are either reliefist or releasist. Reliefist movements are those I make toward the temporary reduction of my suffering. Releasist movements are those I make toward the permanent elimination of my suffering.

My family was once a major source of suffering and discomfort for me. Consequently, I sought relief either through or away from them. If I was around the family, I might feel ignored or belittled, and then seek attention and approval — both of which are reliefist because they were never satisfied. I was trapped in this performance of seeking validation from those who could provide or withhold it at their own whim. From a young age I more or less extracted myself from those relationships, but I permanently escaped it when I left America and contained and minimized those familial and personal relationships.

The same is for cultural and social performances. The entire American ethos is built around the perpetual cycle of aspirational production and consumption. My existential experience was an oscillation between moments of dissatisfaction and satisfaction.

The never-ending smorgasbord of spectacle and titillation drew my attention outward. What were all these imaginary people doing? What did they say? What do they believe? What should I do? What should I say? What should I want? What will people think of me? It was exhausting, and I knew I had to escape this as well.

I could not have articulated it as clearly then as I can now, but the drive was the same. I felt my deepest desire for release then, but it had not bubbled to the surface of my second self as beliefs, aspirations, words, and actions. With contemplation, it has all become very clear and I can align all my actions and behaviors in my awakening with my essential desire for release.

Uniselfist – Could you have done this from America?

Triselfist – Your hypothetical question is imaginism. But what is real are the difficulties I faced then and the solution I found. It was only because I left that environment where I was in constant search of relief, that I was able to rediscover my essential yearning for release. Then I could systematically clear out the tunnel of my second and third selves that originates within my first self, and more easily detach from and let go of the bonds that keep me in my awakening.

Uniselfist – So what is releasism, in a simple sentence?

Triselfist – Releasism is the process of clearing the obstructions in the tunnel from my first self, through my second and out into my third selves.

… March 19. 2022

Uniselfist – How do you view other people?

Triselfist – It took me a long time to unpack how I saw “other people”. And by “other people”, I mean anyone I physically interact with or mentally imagine who is not me.

The distortion began early. I accepted that I was one self among many; that I was categorically the same as all other people. I imagined that all other people were experiencing life more or less the same as me. I came to accept that it was just a fundamental condition of existence that each person could only directly experience themselves; that the world was populated by billions of people, each constrained to their own direct experience, but collectively experiencing the same one universe.

I did not question this perspective for most of my life, and therefore all my attempts at understanding my nature were thwarted because this is one of the primitive custodial beliefs.

Uniselfist – What do you mean by “custodial beliefs”?

Triselfist – Keeping in mind how beliefs relate to desire: my beliefs inform me what is real and what I can have; my desire is then constrained to that range. So, if I believe I can only have A, B, or C, then I will focus my desires on one of those. Custodial beliefs limit my understanding of what I desire; they confine me to a narrow, circular path of constant dissatisfaction and insatiety. My foundational custodial desire is the idea that I cannot have everything I want.

Uniselfist – Explain more about this “distortion” related to other people.

Triselfist – So, the idea persisted that other people exist and are experiencing life the same as me, but we cannot directly experience one another. The signs of this being false were all around me and popped up in different ways.

For example, I always experienced friction with other people. I complied with certain types of authority in my immediate environment — teachers, employers, clients. But I rejected distant authority — governments, thought leaders, celebrities, religious figures, or anyone who wanted to control what I believed. This was me exercising my conceptual sovereignty.

In my personal interactions with people, I felt belittled in ways I could not express. For example, I would feel diminished when other people introduced a topic in which I had no authority. For that reason, I avoided Christians who deferred to an imaginary historical figure, or most people with ideological certainty.

For the same reason, I never became a follower in a group. I could accept a leadership position, but in every case my group eventually dispersed because I did not offer a compelling reason to remain together.

For many years I misinterpreted this friction and preferences as indicative of a greatness within. “One day, these people will see me for who and what I am”. Technically, that was correct. However, I imagined this greatness in terms of wealth, accomplishment, and social validation, all of which are uniselfist desires. But the end goals was the same: once people saw my greatness, they would not belittle me.

The impetus was correct: other people did not see me as who I was. But the solution was stunted because I was imprisoned by a custodial uniselfist belief system. I believed that what I desired was social validation and treasure. But neither of these things will address the core issue.

It was only with the emergence of the triself model that I could revisit my relationship with people with a non-custodial belief system. I can certainly imagine that I am categorically similar to other people; but I can never experience or validate that. Therefore, it is imaginary, and inessential. As a triselfist, I know that other people are the wallpaper in my awakening. I am not one self among billions of others, past and present. I am an aggregation of three layers, and other people are shapes within the third, and least important layer. The “bloom”, if you wall.

The wallpaper cannot give me anything that I truly desire, and therefore it does not make sense to engage it as I once did. In the same way I do not feel threatened by the plants, trees, and animals around me, I should feel the same about the people.

Uniselfist – That is quite a jump and I’m not sure I follow. So you believe that “other people”, from your perspective, are equivalent to plants and animals?

Triselfist – In the sense that people are shapes in my third self, yes. Clearly other people require a different level of engagement than plants and animals, but fundamentally they are shapes on the walls of my emanation. I am the source of those shapes, so why would I compete with them? Or strive for their attention and validation? How could these shapes that I make belittle me? I create them when I wake up.

So by decoupling my own self-concept from the imagined selves of other people, I experience one of the greatest senses of liberation.

Uniselfist – How does that manifest in your daily life?

Triselfist – It is freeing. I enjoy watching people at times in the same way I like watching movies. I know what they are

Uniselfist – I do not fully understand that or its implications.

Triselfist – It is challenging because the equivalence of my own self and all other people is a fundamental belief that I accepted very early in my emanation.

…

Uniselfist – How do you make the transition from believing you are one of many to one imagining many?

Triselfist – It was not any one decision, but instead an overall move toward healing. Despite conditioning, I grasped the nature of other people from a very young age. I did not trust people, and I resisted their influence. I questioned everyone, and followed no one. I trusted myself above everyone else, always, in every situation.

While I operated on the premise that I was one of billions of people, this skepticism and lack of trust was I resisted the complete loss of my true identity.

Once I escaped the forced educational system, I tasted true conceptual freedom. I sensed the opportunity, and bolted for the exit. Of course I had never learned how to use those muscles, so I floundered around for a few years trying to express this thing I had always known but had been unable to say.

I slowly, but persistently began deconstructing my belief system, arriving at ideas that seemed silly at first. But over time, what once seemed silly began to ring plausible. I continued, discovering more and more of these custodial beliefs I had once accepted as truth, but which crumbled under scrutiny. That strengthened my resolve to discover the truth myself, and I flat-out rejected outward influence by gurus, experts, and spiritual authorities of any sort. I was giving myself space to contemplate and discover.

But at that time in my life, everyone around me had an opinion. The internet was not as pervasive as it is now, so when I left America for rural India, I was truly disconnected in a way that I had never been before. That gave me the space I needed to just listen to a voice I had suppressed for so long, and learn.

The step that came next was when I stopped even thinking about other people at all. I had purged my outer environment of people, so the next step was to do the same for my inner environment.

At that point I was very aware of my preference to neither be around people, or to even think about people who were not around me. Those few people who I did allow around were under strict instruction not to talk about people who were not. I knew this felt right, but I could not express why until I began examining it. And that is when I articulated what was happening.

So to summarize, the first step I took to protect my identity was rejecting the various authority figures in my personal life. As I went through school, the authority figures grew in scale from parents to institutions and world-famous leaders and historical figures, and I rejected them as well. I did all of this to protect an inner voice. Eventually it led to physically isolating myself, and eventually not even thinking about other people.

These were all steps to reclaiming sovereignty over my existence. It wasn’t until recently, after it had all happened, that I could look back and see what I had done. I had managed to escape a existence of mental imprisonment by protecting a small spark of self-awareness.

Uniselfist – How does that look, exactly: not thinking about other people?

Triselfist – I used to imagine how other people and groups might perceive something I said or did. Or how they might perceive some event. Or how they might react to something. I would mentally construct a setting of that person and just follow it. I would get wrapped up in these imaginary thoughts about people who were not even present, allow them to influence me, and detach from my center. I do not do that anymore; when I find myself thinking about someone else, I withdraw and pull back to the origin.

Uniselfist – By origin you mean the point of awareness within your head, behind your yes, correct?

Triselfist – Yes.

Uniselfist – If you are the source of other people, why did you allow this custodial belief system to trap you in this distortion at all?

Triselfist – Asking “why” itself derives from the custodial belief that there is always a reason. But this concept is circular and uniselfist. There is not a tidy, unambiguous reason for everything that can expressed in words. Even if there were, it would not change the fact of my circumstance. All the reasons in the world are torn, tattered flags whipping about in a storm, liable to change at any moment, unexpectedly. It is the base of that flagpole, anchored to the only solid thing I know, that holds the truth. I focus on the base, the root.

And that is simple: I am ill, and this distortion is one of many symptoms of that illness.

Uniselfist – That is a convenient way to sidestep an important question.

Triselfist – Thankfully, yes. Because that question is a convenient way to entrap me in a custodial loop.

…

Uniselfist – What are the four constants?

Triselfist – The four constants are fixed aspects of my existence that

The first is the present constant. I am always here, now. While I can remember the past and imagine future, I can only ever be now.

The second is the origin constant. No matter where I am, I experience a fixed, unchanging point of awareness behind my eyes inside my head.

The third is the desire constant. At any moment I want something; sometimes I don’t even know what I want, and other times I know exactly what I want. But once attained, I want something else.

The fourth is the conviction constant. I always believe, or interpret what I experience. The shape of my beliefs may change, but that I believe does not.

Uniselfist – Why are these important?

Triselfist – Because all these constants one. The present and the origin are the same space and moment: my first self. My desire is an expression of my first self; peace. The further from my first self I emanate, the more painful and confused my desire. And my conviction is my self-awareness.

Together, these four constants define my actual existential state.

Uniselfist – You say that the further “I” emanate, the more painful the desire. What exactly is moving, or emanating. What is the “I”?

Triselfist – The “I” in this case is my emanated self; it is a state of confusion in which I exist as three selves: my first, second, and third self. In direct terms, it is my awakening, daily physical and mental life, and asleepening. If I were to plot all of the inner and outer forms of my experience at any moment when I am awake, that would be the “I” that I am referring to.

Uniselfist – I’m not clear how the conviction constant relates to the desire constant.

Triselfist – I always believe something. Believing is deciding that something is or is not true, and then behaving and acting accordingly. I have accepted my condition of awakening here. I have accepted the state of constantly desiring. I have accepted that I must awaken here and do certain things in order to achieve relief from my constant desire. These are all beliefs; these form my conviction. They form the rules of my reality.

However, conviction is also where I have control. I can fully control what I believe. I can decide that temporary relief is not what I seek, and decide to pursue permanent release. But as long as I believe and choose relief, I will awaken here into my illness.

Uniselfist – So the conviction constant also includes free will: your will to decide what to believe.

Triselfist – Yes.

Uniselfist – What about breathing — isn’t that a constant? Why these four constants out of all of the possible things that are fixed?

Triselfist – I could make breathing a constant, in the same way that I could make any other feature of my awakenings a constant. But breathing as a constant is not very meaningful.

… March 22. 2022

Uniselfist – So you don’t believe that life started as a single celled organism, ultimately evolving into humans?

Triselfist – No, that did not happen. Those are just stories. 

Uniselfist – But I can show evidence… and explain to you how this all happened. 

Triselfist – I know you can. And I can engage and open to you and your stories and allow them to infect and belittle and confuse me. Or I can close them out, disengage, and see exactly who I am by simply looking toward my first self. 

Uniselfist – How can you ignore the evidence like this?

Triselfist – I am not ignoring the evidence at all. I am, in fact directly looking at it. Right now, as I am waking up, I can most clearly see who and what I am because I can see what is most real and most forceful in my existence. And that is my center, my first self. All these stories that my third self tells me are only sensible when I take the bait and allow myself to be lured in. The difference between the two is that I always know my first self and its truth; my third self requires time, engagement, stories, recitation, education. It requires me to believe things that I cannot experience. The truth does not require me to believe anything I cannot directly experience. 

Uniselfist – So then another way to say that is if something is based entirely on your imagination, it cannot be true. 

Triselfist – Correct. If I have to imagine a thing, and cannot directly and instantly know it through my immediate experience, then it is of my third self and it will not provide me the release I seek. 

Uniselfist – So what is all the information I can readily find about the nature of existence that is contrary to what you are saying?

Triselfist – That is the distortion that I myself have created. It only exists if I observe it. I am the constant in all those stories. 

Uniselfist – I can assure you that they exist independently of you. 

Triselfist – How exactly can you assure me of that? I am also the constant in your own assurances. Without me, there is nothing. Everything I can view, understand, learn, and believe draws its very existence from the fact I observe it. Without my observation, there is nothing. 

Uniselfist – Then tell me how all these so-called “stories” with all their extensive scientific foundations, are false?

Triselfist – I didn’t say they were false; I said they were of my third self. And I have the choice to indulge them, or not. To engage them or not. To manifest them or not. If I look at these stories, they will be there. They will pick up right where I left off. But it is all one story.

Uniselfist – To you. 

Triselfist – There is only me.

… March 30, 2022

Uniselfist – How can you explain this concept that there is only you, or that the totality of existence is what you are experiencing right now?

Triselfist – To be clear, that my direct experience is totality is my actual experience. When I trust my direct experience, I do not require additional elaboration or explication. That I am seeking explanation to reinforce my actual experience reveals my confusion.

Right now I am sitting in a chair in my cottage, looking out the window and sipping my coffee. I know that, because I am directly experiencing that. I do not need to explain it, because I fully trust that this is happening right now. My conception and perception that my direct experience is the totality of existence is also as firm as my sitting in this chair drinking coffee. But because I have been lost and confused for so long, I have questioned and doubted my actual experience to the point I need to explain to myself how this works, when all I really need to do is just simply observe.

So I only seek an explanation because I am confused.

Uniselfist – So you are saying that your physical situation of sitting down, looking out the window, and drinking your coffee, is as apparent as the fact that your direct experience is the totality of all existence. Correct?

Triselfist – Yes, that is correct.

Uniselfist – So then all these other experiences by these billions of people in the past and present, are what?

Triselfist – They are imaginary.

Uniselfist – Yet I can show you these people, show you their writings and pictures and videos and stories. I can show you endless artifacts of their existence.

Triselfist – Yes, and I can manifest those writings, pictures, videos, and stories through emanation. Emanation is the process by which I move outward, into, and deeper. I experience it as conceptual and perceptual movement, increasing magnification, and detail. Yet the source, which I experience as my first self, never changes. Never moves. Remains exactly where it always has been. That fixed source is the truth and origin; everything outside of it is merely imagined.

Uniselfist – So what about your aunt who you spoke with last night? Where is she now?

Triselfist – Well right now, that form we’re calling my aunt, is a thought in my head. I can emanate into that thought and even manifest her as a voice on the end of a phone call. And if I really wanted to, I could manifest her as a physical form in front of me by traveling.

Uniselfist – But if I asked your aunt, how would she respond?

Triselfist – This imaginary response of my aunt would have to be experienced by me. Without my first and second selves participating in this scenario with my aunt, even this act of imagining her responding would not exist. So both the imagining of and physical manifesting of my aunt responding require my direct emanation.

That said, humoring this imaginary event for a moment, all forms right now in my existence will manifest as resistance and confusion. This form we are calling my aunt, would present as confused and unaccepting of my conclusions. She probably would not participate in this exercise.

Uniselfist – Because she knows she exists outside of your, what you call, “emanation”.

Triselfist – She does not “know” outside of my emanation. And I have emanated her as an authoritative figure in my life. So my announcement that she is merely a form in my third self that I emanate upon will would naturally disrupt her script and be rejected.

Every single time I awaken here, I can see what is real, and what is not. I know exactly where the origin is, and I know where it is not. The origin is all around my second self, and the my third self is within my second self. I can clearly see and feel these three layers.

Uniselfist – How will that change your relationship with your aunt?

Triselfist – Well I now remember that these “people” are more akin to “voices in my head” than anything else. Since I have remembered and accepted that the totality of my existence is my direct experience, my understanding of the nature of “other people” has changed; reverted back, you might say. There would have been a time when I knew what other people were; they were shapes I emanated into. But I emanated to such a degree and extent, that I got lost in my emanation. I began to believe that reality was the emanation, forgot that I was emanating it, and became absorbed in this tableaux.

So to speak in simpler terms. I am authoring this entire existence right now, as we speak. It is my own imagination that is creating all these characters — you, my aunt, and anyone and everyone else. I am the author of this. I am writing this story, right now. When I first began writing this story, I knew exactly what I was doing. I knew it was imaginary. I knew it was not real, and that I controlled all the characters and events. I closed the book at night, and reopened it again in the morning to continue writing the story, knowing full well that it was only an imaginary book.

At some point I forgot who I was; that I was the author. And when I opened the book, I began to believe that I was a character in this story. And I began to behave like all the other characters in the story. But the author is not the characters. The author can never be the characters. For the characters only exist in the imagination of the author. So I am in the process of remembering that I am the author.

Uniselfist – So back to your changing relationship with your aunt…

Triselfist – I suppose that depends on how I write that chapter. I am still waking up to who I am. To the fact that I am the author of all this. This particular form, my aunt, will soften and eventually bend to this.

Uniselfist – Meaning, that she will accept that you are the author? And then what?

Triselfist – Yes, she will accept that.

Uniselfist – How exactly? By thinking you’re god?

Triselfist – This is all imagined. An unnecessary tangent in my emanation. I have spoken. There is no need to emanate further into this.

…

Uniselfist – You wrote in that in your fifth state of emanation, “people begin to arrive first as intruders, but with time as supportive fixtures in my recovery space”. What do you mean by that?

Triselfist – As I come to terms with the fact that I am the author, I will write that into the story. I will start by telling those closest to me who I am. Repeatedly, and forcefully. And under that sustained outward pressure, those forms will respond. They will either believe, or they will leave, for there will be no room for doubt or skepticism. For when the author remembers, the characters will know and change.

Uniselfist – Is this enlightenment?

Triselfist – I could use that word. But that is a word I wrote into my story from a time when I had forgotten who I was, but was trying to remember. Just like the word “God”; I wrote this word into my story as I began to forget who I was.

So these words are associated with a time of forgetfulness for me. Like a song that brings up a nostalgic memory of the past. I have moved past these words. They do not capture the essence and my direction, so they are unsuited.

Uniselfist – So what do you prefer?

Triselfist – At this moment, I prefer to refer to myself as the author.

Uniselfist – But isn’t the author God?

Triselfist – Sure. But I started writing that chapter on God when I was emanating away from self-awareness. It was an early chapter in which I fully forgot I was the author, and began to believe that I was merely a character in the story of a larger world. So the directional component of my existence when I used the word God was moving away from self-awareness and toward my second and third selves.

“God” is a character I wrote that replaced me as the author. Now I’m heading in the opposite direction, back toward my first self and self-awareness, so I use a different word.

Uniselfist – How again will the people around you react to this?

Triselfist – As I said, they will wither away, or they will blossom.

Uniselfist – But you have done bad things that you are ashamed of. You are just a person like everyone else.

Triselfist – I am who I am in this moment. In this moment, I am the author; my first self. I am not who my second self has been. One of the ways in which I have gotten trapped in my story is by allowing myself to believe that I am what I have written, instead of believing who I am now.

Uniselfist – That’s convenient. So you can just absolve yourself of all your past behaviors?

Triselfist – Yes I can. The story I have written is the story of struggling to remember who I am. There are ugly parts, and there are beautiful parts. But my past is imagined; my present, this moment, is who I am.

Uniselfist – So you divided people into “intruders” and “supporters”. What does this look like?

Triselfist – By intruders I mean people within my third self who do not know or recognize that I am the author. Supporters will be forms within my third self who do recognize that, or at least who do not actively detract from it.

Uniselfist – Do you have any supporters right now?

Triselfist – No.

Uniselfist – But you are convinced that they will come?

Triselfist – They will not come; I will emanate them.

Uniselfist – How?

Triselfist – The same way I create everything; I will emanate them.

Uniselfist – But practically speaking, how will you create supporters?

Triselfist – I do not seek supporters. I am not actively out looking for people to believe I am the author. The supporters will simply appear as I express what I know. I will not do anything other than express this truth that I am the author.

Uniselfist – How are you so sure?

Triselfist – Because I know the truth, and I know how I transform existence around me when I am centered in my first self. And I know that the people forms of my third self will respond. They will either wither, or they will believe because they will see.

…

Uniselfist – So how do you explain this to your mother?

Triselfist – I don’t need to.

Uniselfist – What is your mother?

Triselfist – My mother is very first character I wrote in my story.

Uniselfist – So you created your mother?

Triselfist – Yes.

Uniselfist – She did not create you?

Triselfist – Correct.

To be clear. My mother was my first emanation, my first division. So that form is unlikely to survive as I reclaim my authorship.

Uniselfist – So are you pulling away from that character?

Triselfist – I could say that. I wrote that character when I began to forget who I was, so that character is strongly associated with my being lost.

Uniselfist – Referring to your mother as a “character”; that’s harsh, isn’t it?

Triselfist – No, not at all. You are all characters in the story I have written. I can see that, feel that, know that as plain as anything. I am merely acknowledging what I clearly and unmistakably experience.

Uniselfist – But aren’t you also just imagining your own authorship of this story?

Triselfist – I suppose I could say that too. But there are experiential differences in the quality of my imagination. For example, I can imagine far away distant galaxies right now. Those imaginings are tenuous and short-lived, with zero impact on my immediate and direct experience or first self. However, my experience of my authorship is very clear and influential; I can not only conceive and perceive it, but I can feel it at my existential core. It precedes imagining.

Uniselfist – So I am confused about how you feel about your mother.

Triselfist – Well, the character of my mother will always be written as my creator. That story that I came from her is going to be an integral part of her script; if I emanate into her, she will cling to that, for I wrote her in that way. That is what she is; she cannot be anything else.

Uniselfist – So you do not dispute what she believes.

Triselfist – I do not dispute her performance.

Uniselfist – If I said that to my mother, or any child said that to their mother, I imagine the mother would be gutted.

Triselfist – Yes, I can also imagine that, and then I can let that imaginism prevent me from acknowledging what is clearly, obviously, and existentially true: that I was not born; I was lost.

Uniselfist – So you do not think your mother will be heartbroken by this?

Triselfist – It all depends on how I choose to write that story. But imagining this will not help me grow into who I am.

… March 31, 2022

Uniselfist – Is your direct experience the totality of your existence or all existence?

Triselfist – All existence. There is no experience outside my own existence, and there is no existence outside my own experience.

Uniselfist – So then you are the sole experiencer?

Triselfist – Yes. 

Uniselfist – And how do you know that?

Triselfist – Because it is what I experience. I have no reason to believe that existence and my experience are not one and the same. 

Uniselfist – Well you have me sitting here telling you that I do in fact exist outside of you. 

Triselfist – Yes, you are. But I only experience you as a physical shape in front of me. When I close my eyes I can only imagine you. And after this conversation, you will be gone. Why would I assume that “you” — a form that comes and goes at my will — is somehow equivalent to “me”, which is always here. Always present. Always being?

That is a fantastical leap of imagination to equivalate what I call “me” and what I call “you”. That is like calling the painter and the subject in his painting the same thing. One is creating the other. One decides if the other exists. One gives all shape to the other.

Uniselfist – So you are the creator?

Triselfist – Yes, I am the creator.

Uniselfist – When you say that, do you see the absurdity in that statement?

Triselfist – Of course I do. But that part of me which expresses the absurdity is the part of me that has grown strong at the expense of my true self, and which has obscured my own authorship. It is the part of me I call my imagination, or my second self. It is the cancerous part of me which I call my emanation. So this statement is absurd within the context of the story I have written; but outside of and before that story, there’s no absurdity at all.

Uniselfist – So your second and third selves are the cancer?

Triselfist – Yes. My second self of inner thoughts, feelings, desires, and sensations, and my third self of outer people, places, and things are a cancerous growth. They are an illness I want to overcome. They actively obscure my true nature as the author.

Uniselfist – So how do you overcome this illness?

Triselfist – I must remember and believe who I am. When I look outward through my second and into my third self, I must remember who I actually am and not who I have come to believe I am. As I believe, I will accept and influence the story

I have been the audience the entire time.

…

This post has been continued on Conversations 2.