defend

Understanding My Interpreter Through My Intention

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Within the First-Second Degree of Illumination bubble, I have an interpreter that defines my reality based on my intentions. Intention may be the aspect of mind that divides right from wrong – duality. My interpreter may be that aspect of mind that seeks to validate my intention. Providing meaning – by comparison – and making sense of – by defending – my resulting experience.

How can ONE experience division without fragmenting Humpty Dumpty-style? What if, by interpreting itself in terms of separation, ONE could experience fragmentation without being fragmented? No pieces to put back together again – and no need for all the king’s horses and all the king’s men.

Perhaps my inner interpreter – that applies meaning to intention – provides me with this appearance of separateness without separating me from all that is – ONE.

An illusion, I grant you – though a useful one that I experience as sensual feedback, attention, awareness, and purpose. Much more than this, I suspect it may also involve imagination and intention.

Thus, my interpreter presents my ONE consciousness with meaning that appears as individuated consciousness, from which sense of separation causes conflict, the desired effect.

In this duality, an interpreter offers me a means to choose what, how, and why I experience, deepening my belief in who I am through my intention.

This conflict may not be within my interpreter, rather, with my intention.

Does my interpreter define everything based on my intention?

In the order of my creation – What, How, Why, and Who – it is the Why of my creation that tends to hold the intention of judgment, the basis for interpretation of Who I am.

For example:
What = a person. How = feedback about that person from my senses. Why = my intention to judge them to validate… Who = I believe I am based on my intentions.

Creation may flow according to cause and effect: Cause is in the intention, Process is in the interpretation, and Effect is in the experience. Through continual feedback, the flow becomes self-sustaining.

When I want to understand my interpretations, I must question my intentions, the source of those interpretations. By following my creation backwards from effect to cause – Why, How, and What, I inevitably come to my intention.

Example questions to back-check my defenses of past truth from effect to cause:

  • Why am I defending this particular interpretation?
  • How am I defending this particular interpretation?
  • What intention am I really defending in this particular case?
  • Who am I that needs to defend these things?

Measuring Values Creates Polarity

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In a First-Second Degree of Illumination bubble, values rule! Values and comparisons seem to work well together. I don’t think I would have the ability to choose without them.

Comparing values may be an ambiguous, non-standardized way for measuring what deserves my attention. To make a measurement, one needs a scale upon which to make a comparison. Scales involve polarity.

One type of scale requires polarities that define the outer limits or extent of the most extreme expected measurement. Another requires a balance point between two polarities. Each type of scale requires common content and context in which to make a measurement. Hence, the old saying, “You can’t compare apples to oranges…”

I seek what validates my preset values. The amount of attention I invest in a thing is the measurement of its value on that preset scale. In this way I can compare worthiness in terms of threats and benefits to my survival on a scale I understand.

Chronic value measuring keeps my mind occupied in creating and maintaining a standard, a quick reference guide to survival. At the top of my standards list is the greatest threat or benefit to my survival.

My need to be right creates polarity and a lifetime of measuring values

I believe I know how I should understand my reality. I have learned to trust my ability to measure values and accept them as accurate and true.

Polarity demands certitude

When I get close to certainty of my value judgments, I’m getting dangerously close to valuing myself at one end or pole of that scale. The closer my attention is to the poles of my value scale, the less likely I am to be fluid with my measurements, and the more likely I am to become certain and immovable. Certitude tends to lock down my scale – including its polarities.

To investigate this phenomenon, I like to get quiet and ask my inner wisdom:

  1. What do I value?
  2. How do I measure it?
  3. Why do I measure it?
  4. Who am I as I move towards polarity?

By asking these questions within, my deeper mind can search for its truths and help my conscious mind…

  • know and understand the real me.
  • reveal misunderstandings I’ve created that have supported a false me.
  • stop measuring myself, knowing I need no setting of values.

My Reflexive Reality

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Inside my First-Second Degree of Illumination bubble, I live in a reflexive reality. By reflexive, I mean that which refers back to itself without conscious thought. For example, before I’m consciously aware of it, I perceive a need in myself, I create a way to fill that need. I then justify that need with the means I use for its fulfillment.

From a thought/action perspective, I set intentions based on choices before those intentions ever manifest as physical reality. The more convinced I am of who I think I am, the more my reality reflects those intentions, which begin to look like more clearly defined patterns. These patterns of reality manifest as reflexive characteristics that further convince me that I was right about who I think I am. Self-referential and without conscious thought.

Questioning my reflexive reality

Reflexive questions inside the bubble –

  1. What do I need? – (I identify with my need)
  2. How do I intend to fulfill it? (I take action on my need)
  3. Why do I need to defend what I need? (I justify my need)
  4. Who am I as a result of defending my need? (I am my need)

What if I question those questions? Would I release my need for a reflexive reality and expand my thoughts to Third Degree of Illumination? What might happen if I asked at the end of each question, “Is that true?” For example –

  1. What do I need? – (I identify with my need) “Is that true?”
  2. How do I intend to fulfill it? (I take action on my need) “Is that true?”
  3. Why do I need to defend what I need? (I justify my need) “Is that true?”
  4. Who am I as a result of defending my need? (I am my need) “Is that true?”

When I can honestly answer these questions with a “NO,” I can move to accountability in Fourth Degree of Illumination.

Why I Play the Memory Match Game

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When playing a game, I’ve found it useful and beneficial to know that I’m playing (awareness), that I understand the rules (how I play), and that I comprehend its purpose (why I play).

I must play the Memory Match Game because I need to be in control of my world, which I do through matching up past beliefs to present ones. For this reason and because I’ve automated much of the Game, I can become unaware that I’m playing.

Read more Why I Play the Memory Match Game ›

Fear and Completion pt 1

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Stop what you’re doing!

Right now!

Feel interrupted? Do you feel some body sensations, too? How much do you recall of what you were thinking just before stopping abruptly?

Life is made up of processes that appear to have a beginning and an end – even repetitive processes. We acknowledge in patterns a starting point and an ending or transition point.

A process is a thought or action that has a measurable beginning and an end to its specific function – like a bedtime story that has elements of a beginning and an ending. We tend to expect ends to beginnings.

Read more Fear and Completion pt 1 ›