Is need the universal causal element in my First and Second Degree Illumination bubble? How can I identify needs and bring understanding to my causal experience?
Sometimes it seems I’m going in circles, trying to figure out why I keep recreating the same conflicts resulting in the same need for resolution.
In my repetitive reality, I apply accepted patterns from the past to present process regardless of appropriateness. I run the same patterns of needs over and over, hoping for a different outcome, yet expecting only one.
I think, What comes from a thing is a reflection of what it came from. And what reflects comes more of the same.
Perhaps my ability to choose has a hidden agenda, one that seems to contradict itself: I can not not choose without comparing. When I turn what I choose into something I need to defend, I could be defending that choice forever! As my defense responses become automatic, I can no longer re-choose that thing. I can only choose to defend it or to defend my defense of it. My only apparent freedom is in choosing whether or not to defend my defense.
The Need for Value
I create ways to experience and “measure” who I am as value compared to the values I assign to others. In the bubble, I constantly compare and compete over values. That value is assigned by me and makes conflict possible. My judgements of right/wrong, good/bad, of sufficient value and insufficient value. Then with reasons based on agreement, I justify the value of my existence compared to…
My perceived lack defends my need for gain, my need to compare loss and gain, my need for conflict over loss and gain, my need for purpose within my reflexive bubble existence. All a zero-sum game in which need supports more need that in the end results in nothing. Do I see smoke and mirrors?
How can I change a second degree bubble defense into a genuine third degree choice? Once I defend what I choose, my freedom to choose again about that is either to defend or change. And once I’ve chosen I automatically defend for or against other defenses.
To break the defensive cycle, I might ask some questions to elicit options and help pull Self out of the reflexive quagmire:
- What else – could stop my need to defend?
- How else – could I behave than defensively?
- Why else – could I be non-defensive?
- Who else – could I choose to be when not defending?
