Self-Realization and Other Awakenings

realized I had been living my life in a fantasy where I
was somewhat like a soul inside of the body, separate
from the world.
When I saw that the ‘I-thought’ pointed to nothing,
pointed to an empty set, I also saw that all other
thoughts based on this imagined dichotomy of inner
and outer, of self and no self, actually pointed to
nothing.
I saw directly that language and learning
superimposed a network of thoughts upon our
perceptions, and these thoughts mediated between
the activities of my imagined ‘I’ object, and the
imagined objects of the external world. I saw that all
thoughts are merely the map by which we think about
reality, and were not the reality itself, which we
barely saw.
Almost always, always, I saw the world through a
network of thought. This network assumed a
distinction between me and the outer world. I was a
ghost in the machine of the body, operating in the
world.
All words and concepts are “lies,” superimposing
an order on a reality that had no shape or stability,
and which always conflicted with someone else’s
understanding and “lies.”