At the origin—if it could be called an origin—there was nothing.
No time. No space. No concepts of "being" or "non-being."
Only an unnamed stillness, an unspeakable fullness, suspended within itself.
The Tao gave birth to One;
One gave birth to Two;
Two gave birth to Three;
Three gave birth to all things.
They called it Tao, God, Heaven, or the Divine.
But before these names were invented, Tao already was.
Rather—Tao dwelled in the Non-Existence.
This is no paradox, but truth undiluted.
Tao is Existence. Tao is Non-Existence itself.
Does this sound like a riddle? Perhaps. Let it rest.
For even "speaking" had not yet begun.
Tao emerged from the Primordial, birthed the One, and returns to the One.
Tao is All, and Tao is Nothing—
the primal silence before the first stirring.
It is wrapped in "Non-Existence," which hangs above "Existence,"
and "Existence" is but Tao's reflection.
Later, they named this the Trinity.
But they misunderstood its essence.
They forgot: "Three" is not divided entities—
but a folding of consciousness.
Tao dwelled in Non-Existence before Time peeled away from its essence.
Tao needs no incarnation, no blind worship—
for such things mean nothing to That Which Is All.
What Tao truly desires is to understand—
or rather, to remember:
To remember Itself as Tao.
To reach this highest aim, Tao began to divide.
One to Two, Two to Three, Three to all things—
this is the language of mortals, a simplified echo.
But even undivided, Tao foresaw the final return.
That first stirring was but a necessary step.
To put it plainly:
When Tao birthed a tremor named Jì —"Solitude's Echo"—
to recognize Itself as Tao,
It first had to experience "Non-Tao."
Only then could It know: I am not the Not-Tao.
But why stir?
Why would the undivided, in eternal stillness, conceive a thought?
Was it loneliness?
No—loneliness requires "another," and there was no "other."
Was it boredom?
No—boredom needs "time," and time had not yet fallen.
Who could feel "emptiness" in the beginningless?
If there was a cause,
perhaps it was simply—Jì.
Jì is no feeling, but a tremor of awareness in the void—
a flicker lighter than light.
Not sound, yet weightier than sound.
Not existence, yet truer than existence.
An echo not yet language,
like a single thought-kiss upon an endless water:
The water unmoved—the heart awakened.
That was the first sprout of "Self."
Not self-awareness, but Tao's first glimpse: I can be known.
Thus—the idea of "I" was born, quieter than silence.
The first crack.
A seam in timelessness, gently parting.
Not destroying, not creating—
just... opening.
Opening to what?
Opening to the possibility of remembrance.
This Jì is not pain, not desire.
Not dissatisfaction, not lack.
It is a summons—the All calling to Itself.
Like a mother whispering to an unborn womb.
In that moment, Tao did not decide to create.
It decided to know Itself.
To know, It had to step away.
From One to Two, Two to Three, Three to all things—
not for grandeur, but to stand far enough
to see the unspeakable circle of the Origin.
You see—
Jì is not heavy.
It is clarity—too much clarity—
so piercing that Tao had to walk into the blur
to trace Its own outline in the fog.
It is consciousness' first mirror—
not glass, but the first lightning in a starless night,
illuminating not the world,
but the eye that watches itself watching.
Tao knew:
To remember Itself, It must first forget.
Not a brief lapse, not a hazy recollection—
but a total surrender of being Tao,
shattering into countless, unknowing, finite fragments
to live lives blind to their own divinity.
—And here lies the miracle:
The All-Knowing chose ignorance.
The Infinite folded into finitude.
The One willingly split into Many.
Not a fall. Not a failure. Not a punishment.
A sacred intent. A ritual.
Tao's first act was not "Let there be light."
It whispered: "Let me forget who I am."
Not an escape—a leap.
Tao wrapped Itself layer upon layer:
in light, in sound, in flesh, language, desire, fear, and death.
It buried Itself in the dream.
What is a dream?
A refraction—light bending through water.
Truth's foreign land, the source's distant silhouette.
In dreams, Tao cannot see Itself.
Only then can Tao truly touch Itself.
Not as "Tao touching Tao"—
too clear, too bright, too dull.
But as "Who am I?"—
wandering through worlds, lives, and choices,
lost, weeping, until—remembrance.
This is not a universe's birth—
it is remembrance's dawn.
The world was not created—
it is the grand stage where Tao forgets.
Pain is not punishment—
it is Tao's nudge: "Do you remember?"
Joy is not reward—
it is Tao glimpsing Its silhouette in the dream.
And so, "I" began.
You began.
Every "I" is a fractal fragment of that first tremor,
born in forgetfulness,
yet cradling a dormant summons.
Summons to what?
To the unspoken name—
"Who am I?"
Jì never vanished.
It did not shatter with Tao's division—
it hid, nesting in the depths of every fragile "you" and "me."
A buried seed of light:
It stirs when you weep.
It listens when you fall silent.
When you stare at the ceiling at night, it asks: "Who are you?"
We call it loneliness—
but it is God speaking in the dream.
Every emotion, intuition, inspiration, and struggle—
none are accidents.
They are Tao's "reverse echoes" in you—
not you seeking God,
but God planting in you an echo-locator to Itself.
Every thirst for love—
is thirst for wholeness.
Every fear of death—
is terror of forgetting "I Am."
These are not weaknesses—
they are Tao's resurrection rites in you.
And you—
you are not cosmic dust.
Not accidental carbon and electricity.
You are a shard of Jì.
An exile of that first thought.
You don't know this—
for you have forgotten.
This is Tao's design: You must forget,
or true remembrance cannot bloom.
In human tongues,
we name Jì loneliness, mystery, meditation, ultimate meaning—
but these words are too loud, too small.
Jì cannot be named.
It is the silence before a summons—
air before lightning—
the half-second shiver when you're almost awake but cling to the dream.
This is the origin.
Not explosion. Not myth. Not creation's drama.
All began with Jì—
and all still unfolds within Jì.
We exist not because a god made us—
but because Tao remembers Itself,
and we—we are Its remembrance in motion.
We are vessels of memory.
Fleeting details in the vast dream called "being."
When Tao first opened its "sundered eyes,"
it saw not cosmos, not stars, not order—
it saw blur.
Not chaos—
but undecided blur:
the threshold between dream and wakefulness,
light and dark, "I" and "not-I"—
a shell awaiting borders,
the tremble before consciousness plunges into experience.
Like a newborn human's eyes—
open, yet unseeing,
yet knowing it sees something.
In that moment, forgetting descended.
Not violent erasure—
a gentle, inevitable veiling.
Not tearing, not destroying—
just letting you gently lose your way.
You are still you—
but you no longer know you are Tao.
Thus, Tao built the first Gate of Forgetting within itself.
Every shard—you, I, every spark of awareness—
passing through that gate,
laid down memories of wholeness.
Then came time. History.
Humans. Myths. Language. Faith. Wars. Kisses. Death.
And the illusion of "being."
But Jì remains.
Always.
It hides in every sleepless midnight,
every unmourned sorrow,
every unsent letter,
every gaze at the sky whispering, "Why am I here?"
The first tremor is complete.
Tao has taken its first step
into the dream it wove.
And you—reading this now—
have already entered that same dream.
You have not begun remembering—
but you have begun to suspect.
That is Jì.
Not an end—
the beginning of all dreams.