mindfulness

Need Fulfillment and Conservation of Energy

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I PERCEIVE THEREFORE I AM. A cause-and-effect cycle that acknowledges the pattern of existence. HOW I perceive matters. My sensing is influenced (taken over) by belief – in order to conserve energy. How does this apply to need fulfillment and the conservation of energy?

Belief subverts sensory input through the power of imagination and expectation. My beliefs set up defenses to deal with the difference between sensory feedback and my expectations. Thus, I mostly perceive what I expect to perceive – which is what I already believe and defend.

Living within an Energy Budget

My experiences depend upon my ability to fulfill my needs. Fulfilling those needs provides a platform from which I can give meaning to my life in terms of value.

Efficient defense of my real needs helps conserve energy by protecting, preserving, and repeating only what actually fulfills real needs. The disciplined mind understands the difference between real and imagined, and so conserves energy.

The energy between need and its fulfillment allows energy to be applied to wants. The more efficient I am in fulfilling needs, the more energy I have available for fulfilling wants.

Effective Need Fulfillment

I actually have few real needs. I can imagine more – as I might when I turn a want into a need – yet that doesn’t make them real in terms of survival value. Efficiency dictates that I get maximum need fulfillment with minimal wasted effort. The disciplined mind seeks to fulfill only those needs that are real. Thus, fulfilling the dictate.

My Energy Budget Formula in terms of value:
What I can have – what I need = Energy available for optional wants

My defense of value gives meaning to my life and reason for my being. What seemed to start out as an existence by chance, becomes a life of predictable cycles, deliberate repetition of thought, and patterns of behaviors. This effectively eliminates the necessity for choice in need fulfillment and results in a significant conservation of energy.

The cyclical characteristics of everyday life validates my efforts to conserve energy. My value rests in my ability to predict, order, and defend my preferences.

I can, with confidence, make my daily experiences less surprising and more in my control. And fewer surprises means more reliability on my defenses and less challenges to my beliefs.

Thus, I get a rich life experience, expanding choices with the exploration of wants, and fewer needs to defend. Holding onto my value while conserving energy in need fulfillment.

I Need to Compensate for My Lack

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I’m experiencing limited awareness because I compensate for what I lack. I compensate for what I need by defining them in terms of specific lack. For example, I need air, water, food, protection, and etc. to live in limited-awareness.

One of my first awarenesses is that I live in an environment – “not me” – to which I must relate. All this exists within the limited framework of me and my environment. This restriction on understanding applies to my perception of threat and benefit.

This restriction sets up my world view – how I behave, what form I take, why I do what I do, and etc. It also sets me up for a world-view of lack and a need to compensate for it.

Defending My Awareness

Once I become aware of what and how to get my lack filled, I defend that awareness without question – problem solved. This defense expands my awareness of other defenses of those truths while narrowing my perspective. At some point, I become so convinced I’m right in defending that my truth becomes the truth.

There’s a flaw in my limited-awareness strategy. Defending my compensation for a lack as a solution to it does not solve the problem of lack.

I perceive a problem, I apply a strategy to solve the problem, and I perceive a result. This is a mathematical equation in the form of a program. Due to limitations in awareness, I can never be 100% certain. No defense can compensate for lack of awareness. Thus, at some point, I’ll find that my equation is in error and I’m left with a solution that isn’t a solution.

In my rudimentary mathematical mind, I approximate truth and accuracy in what works for me. This is the essence of belief.

Circular Reasoning

Trust in this circular reasoning affects my perception and awareness for which I feel a need to compensate. Expanded defense and its compensation do not, however, get me any closer to the truth.

I compare the values of what I lack to serve the most vital first.

For example, air is the complement for needing to breathe. The complements are solutions to the needs they fulfill. Needs their complementary fulfillments are the paradox that makes up my existence. The result of existence is compensation and the defense of it,

From Need to Compensation for Lack

Compensation for lack begins and ends with a cycle from need to fulfillment. Every system must compensate for itself to validate its existence. The following are three interactive aspects of a system:

  • Need implies a state of lack requiring fulfillment.
  • Lack specifies the implications that need can only generalize.
  • Compensation – awareness and action taken in response to need through an application or a means of fulfillment (like feeding); sense of completion (like satisfaction).

My belief that I exist in limited awareness defines myself as lacking. This greatly affects my perception and my need to compensate. Thus, I am always in compensation of my definition.

A Wholeness Measurement Problem

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How would one measure wholeness? Before birth, I acted as a separate entity – “I”. That “I” prepared to come into a reality of many separate entities – a perspective within a social structure. Likewise, my body is a collective of separate parts that function as a whole society. These social environments have similar rules, regulations, and boundaries.

Within my bubble of awareness, I could think of my separate self as a fractal within a system made up of fractals. Each fractal element mimicking the demands and understandings of the larger collective fractal. This continues outward to the fractal-like systems beyond earth. Each element with its own yet similar set of rules, regulations, and boundaries.

Before conception, I am parts that when brought together, form one body and mind. Yet, within me, there are competing and complementary systems working to experience what can’t be experienced individually. A society shares the same cooperative and competitive processes that a single human experiences from moment to moment.

The Problem-Solving Paradox in a Separation/Wholeness Paradox

What if the “problem of being me” is in the solution to the problem – me? The problem appears because “I am” appears as a separation problem for wholeness. Perhaps the objective of life is not to solve the problem of separation. Maybe instead, to appreciate that problem in its solution.

On the other hand, what if wholeness is a problem for separateness? From the perspective of separation, wholeness might appear as non-existence. No borders, no definitions, no me, no you, no perceptions – nothing! Separate “me” might see that as death, a problem that avoidance of its awareness might solve!

I wonder, could interpreting what I think of as separate actually be my definition of wholeness? I wonder too if the reverse is the case.

A Wholeness Measurement Problem

With all the ways to experience separateness, my mind is evolving to interpret things in systematic measurements. I have conditioned myself to believe my senses and opinions as accurate forms of measuring my world.

Grouping is a wholeness measurement problem that assigns individual value according to that of a group and visa versa. In this case, my measurement of each individual represents my evaluation of the whole group. I also evaluate the whole group based on an individual in the group. Which I use to compare my value to anyone in the group or to the entire group. “My group” is good and “your group” is not, for example. You must be bad because you belong to a group I don’t like. And, I don’t like anyone in your group because I don’t like you.

This short-circuits any measurement I might make of any individual to that of the group and visa versa. The essence of prejudice – a measurement problem of measuring me.

The Problem with Measuring Me

It’s easy to see how prejudice can spread by grouping things and people together. The measurement problem is one example of how I experience the problem of being me. This makes me question my comparisons of “me” vs “not me.” I can see from this example just how wrong I can be.

Thus, the wholeness measurement problem becomes the problem of measuring me, an immeasurable entity. I have no reference from which to make that measurement except me. One cannot measure something against itself. I cannot measure myself against myself embodied in any perception I have of any person, place, or thing.

How would one measure wholeness? Measurement requires separate points from which to measure. Wholeness would include all points as one point – no separation means no measurement.

Thus, we are immeasurable.

The Law of Selectivity

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The law of selectivity is the concept that for any given set of options there is a best option. It’s a law because, moment-to-moment, I must make a selection. From where my attention goes to what flavor of creamer I put in my coffee, I must choose and defend.

This is the essence of Bubble Awareness in which I select from two or more options and defend one. Any choice based on this law keeps me in the bubble of limited awareness. Thus, the law perpetuates itself.

My fundamental intention to be whole is like a Don Quixote quest for that best option that I know is “out there somewhere.”

How Does The Law of Selectivity Appear?

This law is a perceptual illusion, a characteristic of an intention to validate separation from wholeness with a purpose to achieve it. It is characterized by limited awareness that appears as judgments, choices, definitions, and any perception I defend.

I understand this law in the concept “or” – as in left or right, up or down, this or that, me or you. That is a setup for comparisons like me compared to not me. And defense in the form of reasons, justifications, logic, and evidence. Thus, choices require defense.

What Do I Know?

Because I believe there is a best option, I suppose I can know what is best and, so choose it. That’s quite the logic leap to make from limited awareness!

I use the concepts of need and rightness to make that leap. Due to my need to be right, I suppose that satisfaction of my need is the best option. I assume I’m choosing the best option when it’s based on the need I feel at the time I make the choice.

How True Is That?

What if there was another option? How about the options I didn’t consider? In a realm of infinite possibilities, why select only one option? That limitation to one option is based solely on my belief in and defense of the law. What might happen were I to consider another option – some or all possibilities?

Nevertheless, my belief in and defense of the law gives me the perspective I have – the experience of me. It gifts me with an illusion of me I can trust as real.

The law of selectivity fulfills my intention to be whole in a reality of separation. The law gives meaning to the meaningless, purpose to the purposeless, and reality to the unreal.

Confusing Wants and Needs in Lack Fulfillment

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In my world of limited awareness, I perceive a reality of separateness because I believe I lack wholeness. Wants and needs serve my mind as tools to validate this perception and belief. That is, unless I’m confused. Because my mind knows only wants and needs, it may see everything as a problem of lack to be solved.

“I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.” (Maslow, 1966, Law of the Instrument cognitive bias)

My sense of separateness, along with a desire for wholeness, subjects my problem-solving mind to serve that paradox. The paradox defends my belief in lack fulfillment.

The concept of achieving wholeness out of separateness is “The Impossible Dream.”  It’s an invitation to live in a paradoxical reality of want and need fulfillment.

A Paradoxical Intention

My paradoxical intention applies want and need to my experience to achieve no want or need. Wants and needs can feel confusing, even when I‘m confident I know the difference. Like when I know I’m choosing and when I’m not.

My initial intention is a general sense of lack of wholeness. My mind adjusts the general and undefined sense of lack by defining intention as wants and needs. And by attaching what and how I achieve fulfillment as a means for want and need to express as manifestation. My mind uses want and need as tools to serve intention.

  • Want expresses intention to increase or gain – using more options.
  • Need expresses intention in terms of survival, a defense against loss – using fewer options.

I get confused when I think my want is a need and vice versa. Both wants and needs support my intention to be whole. They define reasons that motivate me to advance towards my image of wholeness.

Thus, mind solves the paradox of intention by creating an image of wholeness my intention senses has been served.

Unconfusing Wants and Needs in Lack Fulfillment

My intention to be whole results in a general perception of lack. My mind sees lack as a problem and gets to work solving it. To find and apply a solution, my mind categorizes intention into definable expressions of wants and needs.

Needs define intention as a survival problem with few options. By narrowing the field of options, need applies a specific direction for fulfillment toward survival fulfillment. Want tends to broaden awareness to expand options for fulfillment.

To clear the confusion and become aware of my hidden intentions, I might question my wants and needs. Those concerns that don’t qualify as needs must be wants. For example:

  • What do I need? (What action/thing do I feel will satisfy my intention to live?)
  • How necessary is it? (For example, “How likely is it that I will actually die if I don’t fulfill the need?”)
  • Why do I need it? (What are my justifications? What lack do I feel this fills?)
  • Who am I with and without fulfillment of this need?