misattribution

Following the Resistance

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Inside the First-Second Degree of Illumination bubble awareness, I resist change. That resistance can feel exhausting. With unconscious practice and acceptance of it, fighting against change becomes a necessary truth to defend. In this way, change as the enemy becomes my ultimate truth.

I’ve been told change is inevitable – I feel the need to prove that wrong. Thus my bubble motto: “I must resist change in order to exist as I am.” My first thought is to resist and see how that goes later on. Yet, later on, I find that allowing for change once in a while can be okay. Some changes can seem like the enemy when my way is sufficiently out of harmony with those changes. There have been many changes I have fought against and later accepted. If later I can accept those things I once resisted, can I accept other changes right away? Could it be as simple as putting a hold on my resistance, even if temporarily?

How Do My False Equations Affect My Resistance?

If what I project is what I want to experience, then underlying my want is a fear of change. Could I just perceive I no longer fear change? Unlikely! Because it is sufficiently out of harmony with my motto.

I want what I perceive I do not have. I feel incomplete and stand in need, which sets me up to fear that I must change to feel whole. It’s a paradox!

That experience of filling a need happens within me before I project it outward. I feel the effect of that projection as fear, which I should and must embrace. The fear of what I’m projecting brings on a fear of change. In this way I can create and predict how I will feel based on an assumption of who I am and how to fix who I am through my expectation.

I interpret change as dangerous. Why? – Because it means I must change – refer to my motto above! The process of manipulating my life story information is risky business. My story is only as useful as the meaning I assigned to it when I lacked understanding – which was and still is based on assumption and expectation.

My story represents my cohesive misunderstanding of the causes and effects of my misinterpreted experiences. These evoke thoughts and emotions I’ve attached to those experiences which play a pivotal role in my story. Pivotal because I think and feel more positive or negative about life as I choose to interpret it.

I do this by attaching a misattributed cause to a misattributed effect in order to make my cohesive story into a false equation. For example, “By not calling me back (cause), you have hurt my feelings (effect).” – which is an assumption based on my need to prove the rightness of my motto. This is the same formula used in, “By doing that (cause), you have proven to me that you don’t care about me (effect).” – which I use to confirm my expectation based on the same need.

Assumption = Expectation

These false equations are recipes on how to cook up a perceptual disaster from ingredients that include copious portions of assumption mixed anxiously together with an immeasurable quantity of expectation!

Yummy! Following the resistance, let’s enjoy a feast on false formulas!

Personality Type by Third Degree Question

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Might I be able to identify a personality type by dominant usage of Third Degree of Illumination question type? Referring to our 4-question model of inquiry:

  • A What type might focus more on things, ideas, etc.;
  • A How type might focus more on ways and means, goals, and methodologies – engineering;
  • A Why type might focus more on emotions, empathy, and certainty;
  • A Who type might focus more on interpersonal relationships, authoritarianism, etc. –

Might a long list of personality characteristics be made from these? I wonder.

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Convincing Words and the Third Degree

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I tend to use the word, “so” as one of several convincing words to end questioning. Same with the words, “because” and “then” – transition words that move a concept from consideration to conclusion. I use them as Second Degree of Illumination defense to avoid Third Degree of Illumination inquiry and convince myself of my rightness within my First-Second Degree of Illumination bubble.

I use convincing words to invoke consensus as a defense and to halt further investigation. As a conjunction, the word “so” means, “and for this reason; therefore.” (Google) “Because” as conjunction means, “for the reason that; since.” (Google) “Then” and “therefore” conjunctions essentially mean the same as “so”.

Convincing Words and the End of Inquiry

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Separation as Sacrifice of Self

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Separation hurts. I don’t like it. I think it would be SO cool to be whole and to live in wholeness, oneness. You might say I aspire to that great and lofty goal. Besides, it sounds pretty amazing to say, “I AM WHOLE.” Especially coming from a background in which one is expected to earn their way in the world – honoring the struggle. It’s what I’ve come to believe in. And yet, now I question, “Is it true?” Hmmm… I wonder…

What I believe in, I defend. When my belief in being separate is challenged, I defend it by imagining “me” separate from “not me.”

I don’t see my behavior as defensive. Rather, I view what I do as being proactive towards self-preservation and my only means of saving myself from disappearing completely. To me, the sacrifice of “me” was in the becoming “not me.” I felt compelled to separate self from oblivion.

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Misattribution Games

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As we’ve discussed before, I’ve gotten pretty good at misattributing a cause to an effect – mostly due to the fairly complex nature of nature and my willingness to apply reductionism rather than take the time to fully understand my world.

Time to have some fun with that… using intentional misattribution.

Turning Cause and Effect on Its Head – the Misattribution Games

Let’s start by looking at the word “because” – in English, the word “because” joins together cause-effect relationships. Something is so BECAUSE something else is so. Some action occurs BECAUSE something else happened or is so:

Effect –> BECAUSE –> cause.

The underlying belief is that I can determine THE cause by observing AN effect. The inverse holds true, too: that I can determine outcome from cause (a known action will result in a known outcome) – BECAUSE I do a certain action, I know what SHOULD occur.

I had a sort of death grip on my cause-effect relationships – my “shoulds.” I needed something stronger than a wish to break them.

In the following games, I challenged my most treasured and sacred cause-effect (if this then that) relationships, exposing them to my conscious awareness and no longer operating quite as automatically. And I had some fun while I was at it.

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