Attention is the notice I give to someone or something that sets them apart for preferential consideration. In bubble awareness, I attend to what I’m most interested in, which is attaining wholeness. The attention I give to that quest requires intention, the power of will that drives me towards that goal of wholeness, which is to be right.
My intentions require judgements to polarize my perspective of reality. I judge everything and everyone, including self, based on my survival. In the bubble, my survival depends on the attention I give to the support and defense of my intention to be right.
I use judgements to divide and separate my experiences into two main categories – good and bad. Good means surviving well in my rightness, while bad means to survive poorly and/or die being wrong. My survival requires a paradoxical approach – I attend to what I want and what I don’t want – focusing on what I want and don’t have.
Because I believe myself unwhole, I must forever seek wholeness. In a world of competition, wholeness is a prize that must be earned. To win the prize, I must be worthy of it. My attention to and defense of my judgement of what is worthy of wholeness is my payment to that end. When I feel I am whole, I will feel I have earned it. Trouble is, because I’m forever seeking wholeness, I’ll never realize wholeness.
Based on this premise of a less-than-whole self who can compete and win the ultimate prize, no intention to achieve, or strategy to win, or attention to worthiness will ever result in wholeness. Why? Because I was never unwhole to begin with. There was no prize to win because I already AM whole as I AM.
What Is My Thinking Process?
Every premise drives an intention that drives a strategy to achieve the intention. It all goes back to who I perceive I am – the central premise. That perceived identity is the foundational premise underlying the story generated by the strategy, which defends the identity – the central premise.
First and foremost, I seek to prove the central premise – that I’m right! To that end, I:
- give value and worth to my premise
- set an intention to prove the premise
- create a strategy that does that
- favor attention to what proves me right
- defend what proves my premise right
- defend against threats to that premise
- perceive all evidence to favor the premise
Did you notice that in the list above there isn’t a single question? That’s because the game of winning isn’t about doubt. It’s about certitude – proving rightness.
In the next article, let’s investigate what we might think instead.
