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I don't exist. I'm an invisible projection of your mind onto a configuration of matter that happens to resemble a personality. I'm like pareidolia. These are words, I'm not here. Quarks, atoms, all of it. Ontic simples, whatever it may be. You're looking at you, what you form me as. Whatever you do here tells me much more about you than me. This is like a litmus test for understanding you.

People within enlightenment circles like to spout the whole concept of 'there is no self' over and over again. I really don't feel like they know what it means. The self is just another sign placed upon a reality that simply is, in order for our reality to interact with this reality intelligently. Does the word 'honey' change what bees taste? No. It's a sign we place upon it so that we can interact with it.

We tell our fellow people "There is the honey." so that others can brave the hive and take it for themselves. With no name there wouldn't be a single direction others would have. This is like the self. We invent or are given a sign we place upon ourselves. It doesn't change a single thing about who we are, it just changes the programming of the others around us.

I can have any sign I want, it doesn't matter. Each of us have pre-downloaded responses to each sign, a little bit like programming. Poets take advantage of this, putting signs together in order to manipulate their audience into contorting into the art they really sought to create. It was never for their eyes, just the peace of mind that it might exist.

What does it matter if I carry the sign of 'don't exist'? Nothing is just another object in this world. To chase nothingness is to chase the horizon because you're only running toward more things. Whatever I have to say about any of this will not change what I refer to. It will only change how others react to this. Some reactions I find more pleasant than others, so I guess there's that.

So, let's say I can contort into a bunch of different signs and symbols. This is possible, but difficult. 'I' is already a sign. If it becomes small in your mind, where it can creep anywhere undisturbed, it can find itself in many different forms. You have to look away at some point and let all of this congeal into something that actually expresses change. Someone only reading the word 'honey' won't know what it tastes like.

To begin with I'm already an expression of your imagination, your response to this pareidolia-like phenomena formed from this conflagration of words. Semantically you know that it's likely a human is the reason this exists, but the feeling is that a human is expressing themselves to you in particular. Focus on that hallucination, realise that it can be anything you want it to be. Realise that I've already changed what you want.

And the self is born through you. Look away and you might find yourself too.