In this incantation I take the next step in explaining time as a projection and distortion of my moment.
I must start with what is the most authentic truth I can experience: I am. That I am never changes, fluctuates, or distorts. It is the one persistent aspect of my being that remains rock-solid no matter my condition. My presence is the only stable part of my experience. I call this my firstself.
Beyond my stable, non-moving being, there are two spaces I experience in my awakening that are in a state of constant change: my inner world of thoughts, beliefs, feelings, aspirations, time, and sensations; and my outer world of color, light, objects, and space.
The composition of my being is thus: an unchanging, unmoving firstself giving way to two dynamic, omni-motional spaces. I must think of my secondself and thirdself as projections within or from my firstself. I experience these projections as substantial, and essential, and they have a depth to them in the way a body of water would have a depth. The surface is what I would see if I paused my moment. It is the thirdself space of objects and light in front of me, plus the secondself space of ideas, beliefs, and desires behind me. Beneath the surface of these two cavities upon which I project my secondself and thirdself, is the subsurface where I project my beliefs, memories, and values. A memory from 10 minutes ago is closer to the surface than a memory from 20 years ago. And as I observe them, moving around in the fluid of my subsurface, they bend and change and distort.
My awakening is a single, smoldering moment with two fluid-filled chambers. The surface of these two chambers is where they converge into one, and what I would experience as the barrier between the “outside” and my “inside”. That thin membrane, where I outside and inside meet, is the surface. On one side of that membrane is the sensation of a pulsing energy coursing throughout a body-shaped race course. And on the other side of that membrane is a visualized environment of light, color, texture, and forms in constant movement.
I, in firstself, create everything in my moment by painting the surface and the subsurface both. The surface is what I sense now, and the subsurface is what I believe to be there. This disparity between my surface and subsurface is what creates my sensation of existing through time. I falsely mis-characterize my subsurface as a memory of past events which occurred but cannot be accessed or retrieved presently. The core delusion is my insistence that these separate events happened, and my present moment is a consequence of them.
There is no linear timeline through which I am moving. My memory is not a recollection of events that happened, but rather stories I am telling myself in my moment and believing. I am not a product of my past; the past is a product of my present moment. The past events I “remember” are flourishes I project into the surface and subsurface of my moment. I am the author writing the lives and stories of all the characters around me right now. But the problem is that I have forgotten that it is me writing those characters, and falsely believe they are being written by some other force.
I did not see my family one year ago. I am projecting that story one-year deep into my secondself. I forget that I am projecting, creating, and instead believe the fabricated context of the story: that I am observing a story that I have not written being told. There is no other storyteller. I am the storyteller, and time is the most pernicious of all self-deceits. I need to understand and believe time projection to over come it.
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