The Original State: From the First Potential to Forgetting to Remembrance

Ryan Golden

Dedication & About the Author:

This book is dedicated to you, the part of yourself that has forgotten. The one that suffers. The one that seeks. The one who, even in the dark, has felt the quiet pull toward home. You may think you are reading my words. But this is not my story, it is yours. I have simply walked the arc from the first hum of potential, through the long night of forgetting, and back into remembrance.

Along the way, I learned that nothing I could give you is greater than what you already are. I am Ryan Golden, a soul-led artist, storyteller, and lifelong witness to the ways the human spirit rises through its own illusions. My journey has been less about collecting truths and more about unlearning what was never true. Every chapter of this book is an invitation to remember yourself, not as a better version, not as a healed version, but as the Self that has never been anything else. I wrote The Original State not to teach, but to transmit, so that, in the spaces between these words, you might hear your own hum again.

The Original State: From the First Potential to Forgetting to Remembrance

Chapter 1 – The Field Before Awareness

Where Potential Waited to Remember Itself

It was just another day.

Thick, low-hanging clouds pressed against the sky as I drove my grandson to summer camp.

And then — it happened.

Not a thought.

Not a borrowed teaching.

Not something I agreed to because it sounded spiritual.

This was different.

It was a vision — but more than that, it was a knowing.

It arrived whole. Complete. Unarguable.

There aren’t many moments in my day anymore when I’m not reaching for what I call the original state.

It’s not a pastime.

It’s a fire that has possessed me.

Every other bridge has been burned.

If it doesn’t point to That — I’m not interested.

That hunger led me to see I wasn’t my body.

I wasn’t my thoughts.

And eventually… I saw there was no “I” at all.

The “I” I thought I was —

was a phantom.

A collection of agreements, attachments, beliefs, memories, trauma, and experiences…

all stacked together and called me.

That realization freed me — and confused me.

Because something was still there.

Something was witnessing.

If everything I thought I was could be observed…

then what was doing the observing?

Something was aware of the thoughts.

Aware of the body.

Aware of the illusion.

And that’s when it clicked:

I am not the thing.

I am the awareness noticing the thing.

It burned away layers of illusion.

But even then — I was still restless.

Something deeper whispered to me.

Like a faint call coming from behind even awareness itself.

And on that day… I heard it.

Clear as day.

The final riddle, “I Am That I Am”, solved itself.

I saw a vision: A sea. A field.

Infinitely wide in every direction.

But this was no ordinary ocean —

it was made of potential.

Potential energy.

It wasn’t loud. But it was humming.

Silent, but alive.

Still, yet pulsing with an unbearable possibility —

like it could burst into creation at any moment.

Magnificently powerful…

and hauntingly quiet.

And then it happened:

That hum… acknowledged itself.

Like a saint remembering the Self —

except this was on a cosmic scale.

Once potential became aware of itself —

it saw.

It realized:

“I am everything. I am no thing.”

The first to rise was the thought:

“I Am.”

And from there — it was on.

Out of curiosity came creation.

Out of potential came all things.

The hum saw itself.

And that was the beginning.

Chapter 2 – Thought Is Potential

The First Ripple of Creation

Every thought is made of potential.

Some just forget where they came from.

When I leaned into the vision, more came.

The insights moved faster than I could think,

but for the first time, they stayed.

They weren’t just passing downloads.

They rooted.

They rewrote how reality appeared from the inside out.

Then this dropped in:

If all I see is a field of potential…

and the Bible says, “In the beginning was the Logos (the Word)”…

then in the beginning, was thought.

Not language.

Not letters.

But the first vibration of potential taking direction.

That was the moment of self-recognition.

The first ripple.

The “I Am.”

Immediately, another vision:

How humans create everything from this same substance, potential.

Every house.

Every invention.

Every relationship, work of art, or act of destruction,

it all began as a thought.

A spark of attention.

A flicker of potential.

The more awareness it receives,

the more power it has,

until it becomes form.

The thought of a house becomes a blueprint.

The blueprint becomes a build.

The build becomes a home.

But it all came from the same field that once birthed, “Let there be…”

This isn’t metaphor.

It’s mechanics.

Everything runs on potential.

Not good. Not bad.

Just pure, neutral, divine potential.

And then something deeper landed.

I saw why people suffer.

Why they hurt each other.

Why greed, addiction, and pain exist.

It’s not because they’re broken,

it’s because their potential is being unconsciously directed toward the phantom self.

They create from a false center,

a belief that says:

I am depressed.

I am anxious.

I am worthless.

I am this identity.

And because thought is potential, and potential creates,

they unknowingly become that thought.

They wear it.

Live it.

Defend it.

But here’s the truth:

They are not that.

They are potential.

And potential doesn’t have a shape —

it takes shape.

That means you’re not stuck.

You’re not broken.

You’re not the label or the story you were handed.

You are the same potential that made galaxies —

and you can remember it.

This isn’t magic.

This isn’t wishful thinking.

This is knowing.

This is accepting.

This is remembering what was always true,

before you forgot.

Let it root, not in your mind…

but in your bones.

What you think you are… is what you become.

But what you truly are… is what never became anything.

Just pure potential.

Chapter 3 – Creation Is Curiosity

The Spark That Moved the Infinite

Curiosity is the sacred portal back to the Divine.

Like a Tetris wall collapsing,

it all began falling into place.

The next vision wasn’t a thought,

it was a memory.

I saw creation itself.

The hum. The field. All potential.

And then… boredom.

Because when you are everything, all at once,

there’s nothing left to find.

Nothing left to seek.

Nothing left to discover.

But something still stirred.

A flicker.

A quiet wondering from deep inside itself:

What else might I become?

That was the spark.

That was the first curiosity.

Curiosity doesn’t lack.

It doesn’t need.

It simply wonders.

It looks.

It notices.

It plays.

And so the Source, made entirely of potential,

wanted something it could observe.

It formed from itself, through itself, using itself.

“Nothing is new under the sun,” the old texts say.

But when seen through curiosity,

everything is new.

Worlds unfolded.

Timelines looped.

Forms rose and dissolved.

Even one where Source entered as a man, Jesus,

another ripple of remembering.

You and I are those ripples.

Manifested thought forms made of the same hum.

And we’ve forgotten.

The way back is the way we began:

curiosity.

It starts with a whisper:

What if I’m more than I was told?

What if I’m not this pain?

What if this isn’t the end?

One wondering leads to inquiry.

Inquiry leads to truth.

Truth melts every lie you’ve agreed to.

Lies fall away.

Light leaks in.

And one day, boom,

the light breaks through,

just as it did for Source itself.

Maybe Source is so deeply embedded in form

that it’s forgotten itself inside us.

Maybe the only way it can remember

is through the micro-awakenings of the selves it scattered.

Maybe your awakening isn’t just for you.

Maybe it’s Source remembering Source, through you.

That’s why the most sacred task of a human

is to realize the Self.

Not to feel better.

Not to escape.

Not to transcend.

But because that one remembering

ripples through the entire field.

The only way to find treasure

is to get curious enough to look.

And the greatest treasure you’ll ever find,

is the Self.

Chapter 4 – The Self Never Needed a Name

Before Any Story Could Touch You

Curiosity brought everything into existence.

Not from need.

Not from survival.

From the pure wonder of potential looking into itself.

But what I saw next was different.

It was curiosity without a center,

a looking with no looker.

Nearly every human lives through a phantom self,

an image built from agreements, attachments, beliefs, traumas, memories, and roles.

A cluster of memories.

And memory always belongs to the past.

So I asked:

If every piece of this identity were laid out on a timeline,

where would they exist?

The answer came immediately:

The past.

Which means:

When you live from the ego self,

you live from death.

That cracked something open.

The question could no longer be Who am I?

“Who” assumes a shape.

It assumes the game of name and form.

The real question was:

What is “I”?

Then the desert vision came.

I woke in an endless wasteland.

No name.

No memory.

No language.

No story.

Just skin. Breath. Organs.

And yet…

something was here.

Something was witnessing.

If everything I thought I was had vanished,

what remained?

The knowing was still here.

It had never depended on a story.

The Self never needed a name.

It doesn’t need language to exist.

It doesn’t need understanding to be.

It isn’t a character in the story.

It is the presence that makes the story possible.

The Self cannot be threatened.

It cannot be lost.

It cannot be found,

because it never moved.

It isn’t something you become.

It’s what you’ve never stopped being.

The hum behind the name.

The field behind the face.

The knowing that remains when everything else falls away.

The invitation is not to “find” the Self.

It’s to stop looking for it in what you are not.

When the last illusion dies,

what remains is what you’ve been all along,

nameless, still, unmoved.

Bridge to Chapter 5

The Self is unthreatened.

Unborn. Unbreaking. Unlosable.

If this is true,

if what we are is whole and untouched,

why did we ever forget?

Why did the world need a story of separation at all?

That question is the first crack in the shell of our human tale.

The thread that, when pulled,

unravels the long night

and reveals the quiet hand that placed the stars.

Chapter 5 – The Gift of Forgetting

The Sacred Oversight of Creation

In the beginning, there was only density,

not of matter,

but of love so full it could barely contain itself.

The hum before the first note.

Source. Potential. Awareness unbound.

This love had no edges,

no “other” to meet.

It basked in itself, complete,

but brimming with the impulse to move, to touch, to feel from the inside.

And so it dreamed of a vessel.

That vessel was Man,

not the man of history books,

but the original design:

a body of earth,

a breath of Source,

built for one purpose,

to let love move.

Love was meant to flow through our veins,

to spill into the world as beauty, care, and creation,

Source giving itself a warm hug.

But here was the mystery:

For love to truly move,

it could not be fully conscious of itself at every step.

There had to be surprise.

There had to be discovery.

Which meant,

Awareness needed the ability to forget.

This was no punishment.

It was the price of novelty.

Without forgetting, every moment would be sameness.

No story.

No risk.

No joy in rediscovery.

And so Source placed within us

the one thing It would not keep for Itself,

the faculty to turn away from the light,

not out of rebellion,

but out of love’s desire for more.

Once the forgetting began,

it had to run its full course.

The Whole could not pull us back early,

to do so would split Itself into “rescuer” and “rescued.”

So the path home was never a rescue.

It was a shedding.

Layer by layer, the illusions fall away

until the vessel stands bare again in the sunlight,

love flowing unobstructed,

completing the hug that began before time.

Living the Gift

Suffering was never proof of failure.

It was simply the echo of misidentification,

attention clinging to what could never last,

pressing itself into shapes that could never hold.

In the density of forgetting,

pain sharpens the longing.

Every tear is a compass needle

twitching toward home.

Grace is not intervention from outside the story.

It is the quiet radiation of the Whole,

present even in the deepest night,

waiting for the eyes to adjust.

It doesn’t shove.

It doesn’t shout.

It pervades.

The return is not an ascent.

It is a falling away.

Not climbing a ladder,

but letting the rungs dissolve

until there is only the ground

that has always been here.

When the final layer loosens,

there is no trumpet blast.

No grand arrival.

Only a breath,

deep, ancient, familiar.

And in that breath,

the vessel is warm again.

Love moves.

The hug completes itself from both sides at once.

Vision – The Hug Completes

You are standing in a field with no horizon.

The light is not above you, it is in you.

The ground hums with patience.

Somewhere, a river sings a song you’ve always known.

A figure approaches,

and with each step they take,

something falls from your skin,

an old fear,

a name worn too long,

a memory you thought was you.

When they reach you,

there is no face,

only a glow that matches your own heartbeat.

They open their arms.

You step forward without hesitation.

The moment you touch,

you know:

You were never two.

The warmth surges in both directions,

filling the space where the story of separation once lived.

And then,

no figure, no field, no you.

Only the hum before the first note.

The hug unbroken.

The forgetting dissolved.

Love, meeting itself again.

Chapter 6 – When the Word Hardened

How the Infinite Became Fixed

The field of potential is the same field as thought.

Thought is simply potential in motion,

the micro version of the macro hum.

In the beginning, this field was fluid.

It shimmered.

It could be anything, and nothing, in an instant.

But humans, untrained in holding such a dense, rich field of possibilities,

began to focus.

Not in the effortless way of Source,

but with narrowing attention.

We began to “fix” the field.

And the tool we used was the Word.

At first, the Word was pure.

It was the first ripple of potential taking direction.

It was the Logos,

the naming of what had never been separate.

But over time,

naming turned to claiming.

Claiming turned to clinging.

Language became not just a way to point toward reality,

but a way to define it.

And in defining,

we began to harden the fluid.

What had been shimmering possibility

crystallized into concepts.

Concepts became stories.

Stories became identities.

Identities became the phantom self.

And so the Logos, the living Word,

was quietly tainted.

Not by evil,

but by fixation.

By the innocent belief that something could be made permanent in a field that was never meant to hold still.

Language gave form “life” in the human mind.

But life given by naming is not the same as life given by Being.

The oak was no longer a living hum of potential,

it was “tree.”

The open sky became “heaven” or “earth.”

The fluid dance of reality became a catalog of things,

each with edges,

each with rules.

We traded resonance for relationship.

Resonance is our original state,

perfect harmony with what is.

Relationship came later,

the attempt to hold onto that resonance through memory,

to keep it alive by naming it,

to talk about what once was,

instead of living in what is.

In doing so,

we unknowingly built a relationship with the phantom self,

a self-image made of memory,

seeking permanence in a place that has none.

This is why the forgetting felt so total.

Not only did we turn from the hum,

we began reinforcing the turn

with every word,

every story,

every label.

We were speaking the phantom into being.

And the more we spoke it,

the more real it felt.

But the Logos is not lost.

The Word can still point,

still open,

still dissolve the hardened shell it once built.

When the Word is returned to its origin,

to the hum behind it,

it becomes again what it was in the beginning:

not a label,

but a key.

A sound that doesn’t define,

but frees.

Chapter 7 – The Phantom’s Ways

How Illusion Slips Back in When You’re Not Looking

The phantom self was not born in one moment.

It was stitched together slowly,

one word, one label, one story at a time.

Every word hardened the field a little more.

Every label tightened the frame.

Every story pulled attention just a step farther from the hum.

It’s patient.

It doesn’t need to rush.

It knows that if you stop looking toward the original state,

it can rebuild itself from memory.

The phantom doesn’t live in the body.

It lives in the conversation in your head.

And like a seasoned thief,

it doesn’t break the door,

it knocks,

using a voice you trust.

The Five Hooks of the Phantom

The Flattery Hook  It tells you you’re special.  Chosen.  The one who sees what others can’t.  It feels like praise,  but it’s a crown you’ll start defending the moment you wear it.  And that defense is the phantom’s food.

The Wound Hook  It replays the old scenes,  the tender spots,  the betrayals you thought you’d healed.  It presses until you react.  And the reaction pulls you back into the character you used to be.

The Fear Hook  It warns you:  “If you let go, something bad will happen.”  “If you don’t prepare, you’ll lose.”  It dresses up as your survival instinct,  so you mistake its panic for wisdom.

The Urgency Hook  It fabricates a deadline.  “Decide now.”  “Act before it’s too late.”  It stirs the illusion of movement,  but you end up running in place —  exhausted, but no closer to the hum.

The Conversation Hook  It invites you to “think it through.”  To “talk it out” with yourself.  But the only one you’re talking to… is the phantom.  And the longer the conversation runs,  the more real the phantom feels.

The Phantom’s Only Goal

All of these hooks have one purpose:

to pull attention out of the living field

and back into the mind’s stage.

It doesn’t need you to believe everything it says.

It just needs you to look long enough for the reflection to reappear.

How the Hooks Fall Away

The defense isn’t armor.

It isn’t arguing with the phantom.

It’s recognition.

When you name the move — not the content — the game ends.

“Oh, that’s the flattery hook.”

“Oh, that’s the urgency hook.”

And in that moment,

you’re already back in the hum.

Because the hum doesn’t take the bait.

The phantom can only knock.

It cannot enter unless you open the door.

And each time you let the knock pass unanswered,

the silence inside grows deeper.

The original resonance grows louder.

Until one day,

the phantom stops knocking.

And all that’s left…

is the field that never left you.

Chapter 8 – The Return

Resting Again in the Original State

It doesn’t arrive like a parade.

It doesn’t announce itself.

It’s more like the sound of rain you didn’t notice was falling —

until suddenly, you do.

One moment, attention is circling the phantom’s hooks.

The next… it’s here.

Quiet. Certain. Unmoved.

The hum is no longer something “behind” the noise.

It is the space in which the noise appears.

It is the stillness that was here before the first word.

It doesn’t come and go.

It doesn’t depend on your mood,

your progress,

or the state of your thoughts.

It is what remains

when progress stops mattering

and thoughts lose their throne.

From here, there is nothing to protect.

No crown to guard.

No story to keep alive.

Life still moves.

You still speak.

But the speaking is lighter now —

like the words are borrowed for a moment,

then returned to the silence they came from.

Even a “no” carries the same warmth as a “yes.”

Because both come from the same place —

and that place has no opposite.

The strangest part is the familiarity.

It doesn’t feel like you found something new.

It feels like you stopped pretending you weren’t home.

Like the sun didn’t rise —

the clouds just moved.

You look at your hands.

The table in front of you.

The sound of a car in the street.

And they’re all made of the same hum.

Not “in” it.

Of it.

And then it lands — soft, but final:

You never left.

The journey wasn’t about returning.

It was about letting fall away

everything that could leave.

You are the hum.

You are the field.

You are the original state

breathing itself into form,

over and over,

without ever moving.

Final Chapter – The Only Hint That Was Ever True

Strip it all away.

The origin stories. The visions. The hum. The forgetting. The phantom. The return.

Every step was only ever a shape the mind made to point toward what never moved.

You were here before the story began.

Before the first hum.

Before the first thought.

Before the first “I Am.”

You will be here after every name is gone.

There is nothing to find.

Nothing to hold.

Nothing to become.

There is only what is.

And you are not in it.

You are it.

So stop looking.

Stop waiting.

Stop measuring the distance between yourself and yourself.

The hum has never been hidden.

You have never been absent.

Before the first beginning, before time had a shape, there was only this —

no name, no face, no story —

just the quiet that holds all beginnings and all endings in the same hand.

Everything since has been a hint.

The stars. The ache. The visions. The forgetting. The return.

All of it pointing here.

Not forward. Not back.

Here.

The only hint that was ever true is this:

you have never been anywhere else.