I suffer because I defend what I can’t justify. How is it I can still suffer even when I am justified?
I learn that being right has its price – sacrifice of reality.
When I believe I’m right, I tie up my energies in maintaining my position since being wrong is not an option and is in direct opposition with being right.
I experience wrongness as failure, against which I employ a strenuous and energetic defense. Failure implies a lack of wholeness. I attempt to overcome unwholeness with defense, a diversion of my attention – intention away from wholeness resulting in a perception of even more unwholeness (lack) and less available energy.
More attention on defense => Less attention and awareness of available energy => More Suffering!!
My diversion from attention to who I truly am becomes my cause for suffering. Constant vigilance takes my flow of energy and funnels it into more need for defense.
It becomes more and more difficult to maintain my self-imposed reality of need to prove wholeness by requiring a sustained self-image of that need. I don’t understand what and who I am – a stressful awareness.
Over time and with this futile attempt at recovering wholeness, my energy feels depleted, thus insuring suffering while simultaneously contributing to a positive causality loop of need for defense => suffering => need for more defense…
My defense takes on two causes – 1) I need to be right and 2) I need to not be wrong. These are cause for emotional and mental pain – a state of personal torment that loops between causes 1 and 2.
Due to the law of Cause and Effect, I WILL experience the result of my looping attention – a causality loop in which need feeds ever more need without satisfying any – the essence of suffering through attention.
For example, when I say the statement, “You always do that!” I might ask myself “Is that true?” Same for the word “never” – “You never…” – “Is that true?” When the answer to that question feels true – “Yes, always!” or “Yes, never!” – be aware you are defending pattern-loops, which cause suffering-loops.
