Time is a major obstacle to my reorientation away from ascent and toward descent. It is a persistent element of the distortion and the dominant factor in the pain of my illness. In ascending, time is a governing force; I believe it is real, and have built my existential model around it.
I know that there is only now. However, I cannot deny the substance of memories and beliefs extending into the past, and desires and aspirations extending into the future. I can find memorials to past actions and relationships, and see my plans and aspirations which will manifest new forms and places I will experience.
When I slow down and withdraw my attention from the noise within and without, and focus on the point of awareness where my inner and outer environments originate, I experience the truth of now. The shapes of my inner and outer environments become fuzzy and distant, unable to penetrate my concentration.
But in a moment of release, I engage the forms of my inner and outer environments, and my concentration again spills inward and outward, manifesting as thoughts of people, places, things, and obligations that exist only in my imagination. The past and future are real because I give them substance. I decide where to concentrate, and my concentration imparts substance.
I can repeat this process at any time; disengage and demanifest, engage and manifest. This is my mechanism for creating everything I experience in my awakening. The substance of everything is entirely dependent on my recognition of and concentration on it.
When I concentrate my presence around my source — the point of awareness I sense behind my eyes and within my head — I escape my past and future. Both my outer and inner environments fall away, become little more than formless spaces I inhabit without definition. The constant feedback loop between my inner and outer spaces slows. I am here, now.
When I am here now, I can close my eyes and see my real body; the dark peace that envelops the entirety of my physical, mental, and emotional worlds. This is what I want. This is what I seek. This is the origin and destination of all my desires. Desires which do not lead me here, to now, lead me deeper into illness.
To descend, I must escape time by demanifesting it.
To escape the past, I must release my attachments; those forms around me which hold value. The imagined past offers relief in the form of comfort and familiarity. The past allays my fears, numbs my pain. Relationships, because they constrain me to an illness.
To escape the future, I must realize that it does not offer me what I seek. I must release those aspirations and desires which hold value. The imagined future only offers relief, not the permanent release I want.
I desire. But what I desire is not in the past or the future. What I want is right here, right now. I have only to close my eyes to see that what I want is all around me. The imagined past and future are the strongest chains of my illness. What I want is not on the ends of them; what I want is me. I am what I want.
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