Choice, Belief, and Defense, Oh My!

There seems to be three operating aspects of my mind in a matrix of thought that processes my experience. Together, they give everything I perceive value or purpose:

  1. Choice represents the comparing and choosing between ideas and concepts based on their value/purpose.
  2. Belief is the expression of a structured combining of similarly valued ideas and concepts used to support one another philosophically.
  3. Defense is the manifestation of resistance to change.

I use this process to guide me to right-thinking, to make sense of my experiences and achieve wholeness or rightness. My process offers me a sense of freedom to fashion my particular perspective into reality.

I can assign judgements of value/purpose to my perceptions of my experience and benefit from them as a sense of wholeness/rightness. The value I assign to my experience represents my personal value. The greater the value I perceive of myself, the greater the value I assign to my experience.

Choice

Ironically, my desire for independent thought conflicts with my intention for interdependent experience. So much so that I can’t:

  • imagine anything without choosing from options.
  • make a choice without comparing its values to other choices.
  • believe what I can’t defend for and against other beliefs.
  • re-choose the same choice.
  • defend what I haven’t chosen.
  • alter a choice without altering its fundamental value.
  • be fully aware of my choices.

If Heisenberg was right, there is always an element of uncertainty involved in any choice that no amount of computational effort can compensate. For example, I can’t know with certainty what will or won’t happen if I take or don’t take this or that action. There are too many possible timelines and outcomes for my limited mind to consider.

Yet, I can’t not try to know either. And because of my instinctive program to survive, I must find acceptable answers through choice. The beliefs I form I then defend with a sense of knowing. That knowing is about being right and being right is being whole.

Belief

I begin with a premise, if I am a living system and can validate that I’m right, I must endeavor to do so. I set myself up to defend a goal to achieve that end. My sense of lack challenges my ability to choose, believe, and defend a sense of wholeness. Wholeness, for me, can exist as value. Value is assignable and can be added up to represent wholeness. I get a sense of wholeness when I add up the value I’ve assigned to my experiences, which I then relate as my value. The more agreement I get for my value, the more value I have.

Defense

My process enables defense to express the collective value of my process through action. Three defined forms of expressing experience validate my three expressed forms of existence. My existence is defined by three expressions of intention:

  • Thought – defends for and against itself in its ideas and choices to create beliefs.
  • Emotion – defends beliefs by stabilizing ideas into feelings that motivate purpose.
  • Body – personifies physical responses that defend choice, belief, and defense.

The degree of value I assign to my needs and their fulfillment relates to the importance of their purpose. The value regulates the degree of energy invested in the defense expressed in the validation of my purpose. Resistance is the expression of need seeking fulfillment. Fulfillment cancels out need when the validation required is met.

Choice may seem to be a straightforward, “this or that” proposition. Yet, it involves such things as comparing the values of my choices with those I’ve previously defended. This I must defend as real to convince myself that my values are right, proper, and justified. Agreement adds authority to my value.

Choice funnels creativity by defining options. Defense of a choice further funnels wholeness to fewer and fewer options. Defining aspects as having value, purpose, authority, agreement, and etc. limits the potential of something to specifics. When I:

  • choose, I limit my thoughts.
  • create beliefs, I limit my creativity.
  • defend something, I limit what I defend.

I’m motivated to seek and find wholeness. The same is true for every operation of my process. The motivation behind my reasoning is why I choose to believe I have sufficient value to prove my wholeness. Each defense I create carries the energy of what motivates me to take action to protect and promote that value.

I interpret that which I believe has value. I use that value to add to mine to feel complete. Starting from a perspective of lack, my beliefs revolve around what reduces that lack. Seeking beliefs that validate my value motivates me to defend those values and convinces me of my wholeness. Is this process useful in actually understanding wholeness?

Expectations, Assumptions, and Illusions of Choice

In my bubble of limited awareness, I assume I’m living my life by making choices. Because of my well-developed senses, I can learn and know what’s best for me. I can know what to embrace or avoid. I interpret these perceptions in terms of the choices I’ve made to validate separation.

For example, “I am me and not others” appears to be an assumption based in choice. I don’t need to choose what is true… it just is what is! In this case, perception is not choice – rather, assumptions based on choice.

When I defend a no-choice position, I discard any options that could be relevant to a choice. A choice can cover many solutions that validate one specific intention. Yet, choices aren’t choices when they are intended to be used repetitively and on the same issues.

Defense and the Assertion of Truth

I intend to be whole. That intention validates my belief that I am not whole now. Assertion of that intention limits my awareness to less than whole – lack in the form of needs and wants.

I live in this limited awareness bubble. My limiting intention: which is to defend the limits that separateness demands – which I may be unaware.

The relationship I have with my intention is one of rewards and punishments. That intention rewards me with a sense of wholeness when its needs are satisfied.

I define the wholeness I seek in terms of defense of my intention that limits awareness. That definition can appear as rightness, satisfaction, purpose, justifications, and other limiting defenses that validate the myriad representations of separateness. My definition limits the definable to how I define it.

Assertion of Truth Defense

My perception that I am limited proves to me that I am. It does not, however, prove the assertion that I am limited. Rather, it’s just an assertion of truth that proves its defense.

A Definition of Wholeness in Terms of Separation

What does it mean to be whole? How do I define it? Why do I feel the need to achieve it? Who will I be when whole?

Fundamental to any discussion about wholeness is the belief that wholeness can be defined. Further, I can know the definition of wholeness. How true is that?

A Definition of Wholeness in Terms of Separation

What if a sense of separation from wholeness is intentional? That separation could be a limitation of awareness that results in an awareness of this experience from my perspective. Wholeness might then be defined in terms of that limitation of awareness. Thus, I might define wholeness in terms of a percent of awareness –

% Wholeness = % Awareness

Might wholeness be who I am as I am that creates the metaphoric reality that represents that being? That is, I am complete and whole as I am in order to have the experience I’m having. Thus,

Wholeness = 100% of my limited current awareness

Individuating Wholeness

Who is the “I” or “me” to whom I refer so often? Why do I view my reality from this perspective rather than from yours, others, or all perspectives? From this perspective, I measure and compare from one perspective. I cannot fathom wholeness beyond that perspective. I can only comprehend wholeness through the lens of individuation – from my perspective. Thus,

Wholeness = A Measurable Commodity to ME

Wholeness as a Process of Elimination

If I just eliminate or replace enough wrong behaviors, thoughts, etc, I’ll BE whole and complete. This is based on the religious dogma of the “imperfect soul” who’s conceived in sin and fallen from grace. The fallen one feels the need to dig their way out of the pit into which they’ve fallen.

This is the “I’ll never be enough” principle. Thus,

Wholeness = Not Me

The Need For Borders

My limited awareness demands that definitions have borders I can perceive. My senses must have enough contrast between this and that in order for me to perceive them as comparable. Perhaps I need a border around wholeness in order to perceive it.

A border serves as a line of defense. I can’t defend a concept I can’t define. Thus, my definition of wholeness must defend itself against rivals to continue. Thus,

Wholeness = Defense

Wholeness By Comparison

What if I don’t need to achieve absolute wholeness in order to experience wholeness? What if I could perceive wholeness relative to others? I’d just have to be more whole than I perceive you are. No absolutes or standards of perfection to measure up to. This is the essence of the wholeness measurement problem. Thus,

Wholeness = Me Compared to Not Me

Comparative Measurements (More/Less Whole)

In such a reality of relative wholeness, I might consider myself whole when I compare myself to a variable standard. In this comparative measurement, “wholeness” becomes a judgment call based on intent. Have I achieved less, enough, or more of what I intend?

In this case, I might view wholeness in terms of somewhat, more, and most. Thus,

Wholeness = Enough

Wholeness By Agreement

I feel more whole when others agree with me. This is a defensive definition based on a need to be right, proper, and/or justified.

This is the essence of groups. My group is the IN or right group and all others are outsiders. I feel whole in my group and unwhole outside it. Thus, when agreement satisfies a need for rightness,

Wholeness = Rightness

Undefining Wholeness

How do I define wholeness from within limited awareness?

Perhaps we might conclude that wholeness is indefinable. As soon as I define it, it’s no longer wholeness. Maybe wholeness is NOT a concept – and all concepts. Everywhere and nowhere. All and none.

Meanwhile, I’m having a great time exploring all that I think it is and isn’t!

 

A Relationship Between Intention and Purpose

In my bubble of limited awareness, I have only one purpose in life: to fulfill an intention to be whole. This intention sets up a perception of lack forever seeking fulfillment.

Perhaps the first need that intention must satisfy in order to continue is its purpose. Intention sets up a structure in which it asks, “Why do I exist?” Purpose makes sense of the structure of intention with an answer in the format of, “…because…”

Intention and purpose set up a process that presents a lack and identifies what will satisfy it. Intention is like one side of a coin representing a deficit. And the other side, the purpose to complete it. In this way, each side of the coin serves as the complement of the other. Together, the two sides represent one coin.

Any action in service to a purpose is in service to an intention.

Seeing Both Sides of the Coin

In our coin example, only one side can be viewed at a time. For each side of a coin, there is a hidden other side.

Due to a limitation in attention, I can attend to only one thing at a time.  This is why I see one side of a coin and believe that’s all there is to it. This works to lock my awareness onto one side of the coin and lockout the other. Thus, eliminating the ambiguity.

An interaction between intention and purpose creates a process. That process results in a manifestation that gives a limited meaning to that interaction.

What am I NOT aware of in this intention? Why am I NOT aware of it?

For every intention, there is a purpose. For every what, there is a why. The flip side – for every purpose there’s an intention. And for every why there is a what. Due to this one-to-one relationship between intention and purpose, I might assume I can connect the dots.

I might assume I know an intention by looking at its manifestation. This assumes the reason why. Conversely, I might assume I know a purpose by looking at its manifestation – assuming the intention behind it. This is akin to looking at the heads side of a coin and assuming the other side is tails.

As a school kid, I lost a lot of lunch money to the kid who had a two-headed coin… Then, again…

What if there is no coin?