thinking error

Is Reality a Trick of the Mind?

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Could my reality be a trick of the mind? Repetitively doing what’s right can build confidence in a shrinking bubble of limited awareness. That sense of confidence in my rightness builds patterns of defense for my beliefs. At some point, confidence becomes its own defense. Could confidence be a trick of the mind?

Who determines rightness? I do! What defends rightness? Confidence does!

Inner conflict results when one’s thoughts can’t come to an agreement. Each side seeks to win the argument by referring to rightness – the most confident wins.

What happens when your expected outcome turns counter to your intention, plan, and purpose? No matter how right or confident you feel? Backfire! When a backfire happens, you’re faced with an aha moment – an opportunity to question your intention, plan, and purpose.

OR – you can continue defending your position with the hope that you’ll recover your investment in your confidence in it. This is the default option! And it’s a trick!

Confidence Defends Confidence

How does my mind use confidence to turn intention into a convincing REALITY? Once accepted, I defend my reality with more confidence. Thus, confidence becomes its own defense.

From the perspective of my bubble of limited awareness, I believe I must protect myself from threats and compete to survive. This belief presents itself as a figurative story that validates my trust in my perception of it as literal reality. It’s a trick of the mind:

For every experience, I have to set it up by imagining and believing that it can happen. Then, I make my experience happen and judge it. I defend that judgment with emotion and reason, which convinces me that my experience is real.

How Reality May Be a Trick of Mind

I use my memories of being convinced in the past to convince me of the reality of my current experience. I do this by comparing the real past to the real present. The trick is in the comparison: perception of the past is imaginary. No matter how real that memory seems, it is a current fantasy.

How can I compare a nonexistent past, present, and future in an imaginary present to defend a belief? It must be a trick of the mind. Confidence holds it all together!

Perhaps all “reality” is a trick of the mind.

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.

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?

Need Authorities and My Need to Abrogate Accountability

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In my world of limited awareness, I obey a lot of authorities. Wants and needs appear to me as one type of authority. Wants appear as passive authorities I can question while needs appear as active authorities I cannot question.

Symbols of Authority

I add the word “need” to add emphasis and/or authority to my want. For example, “I want a new phone” states a desire. “I need a new phone” adds demanding authority to my want. Questioning the desire for the new phone can lead to greater understanding of the want or need behind that desire.

What greater authority than that of life/death? I don’t have to BE in danger – just FEEL that I’m in danger – to invoke the authority of need through fear. Thus, need assigns authority to fear to increase need’s influence just as fear assigns authority to the need of it.

This brings us to choice where under the rule of authority, I have no choice – I must obey without question. I don’t question need because I’m obedient to its authority. It’s as simple as that!

The authority of need seeks to avoid a WHY question: “Why must I…?” I assume the need is justified, so I have no need for the question. Thus, I assume rather than ask.

Assumption limits awareness within contexts. “I need a drink” could mean something different depending upon the context. For example, a fellow crawling in from the desert vs a guy sitting at a bar. In both cases, however, the word “need” connotes a lack of awareness of options. It also invokes an appeal to authority rather than reason to answer a why question.

Have you ever been around a “needy” person? Maybe you felt drained afterwards. Both you and the person you judged as “needy” accepted the authority of need. UNTIL one or both of you questioned it.

Do I Need Authorities of Need?

I recognize authority in that or who I believe has power over me. I can ratchet up the value of anything or anybody by adding authority to them. By needing authority, I add authority to authority. I increase my desire and, so assume my obedience to authorities over me when I feel the need to!

Authority of need acts as a justifier and question killer. Need justifies defense without question – ruling by assumption. Add need to any of the following to avoid questioning them – giving them a boost with the authority of need. Thus, I remove choice from the equation. For example:

  • Wants/desires – I want a new phone vs I need a new phone.
  • Fears – I must be afraid of a real threat. I feel afraid, so the threat must be real.
  • Assumptions – “I expect (need) this behavior from you…” and “You’re a [negative judgment that seeks to satisfy my sense of need]…”
  • Obedience – I must (rather than want to) go to the store (to satisfy my need to eat)…
  • Patterns and Predictions – That must happen because this happened… because I need it to…
  • Responses – You did something I don’t like so I must over/under-react…
  • Traditions – I’ve always done it this way… so, I need to continue in order to preserve the tradition.
  • Symbols – This pattern must mean this, so I can assume this meaning… In a world of ambiguity, adding need to symbols adds security while seriously reducing the field of possibilities I’ll consider.
  • And a whole lot more!

Using need as authority is another example of how I seek to use creativity to abrogate my responsibility for my creation.

How an Intention to Be Whole Keeps Me from Wholeness!

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Why do I need to do anything? Why do I have needs? What intention for my life would I have to have in order to believe I need something that will fulfill that intention?

Let’s investigate the most fundamental of all my intentions – the intention to be whole and complete. In my bubble of limited awareness, I may sense that intention as a desire to return to wholeness. This sets up a condition of lack and motivation to “move forward” towards wholeness. It’s a deficit situation in which needs play a critical part.

This situation derives from my fundamental intention to be whole. This results in a symbolic value equation that provides an experience of relativity I call life:

I + something = more whole than just I alone.

Intention Rules!

Holding the equation as objective truth, I can NEVER achieve wholeness. I’d be forever seeking and never arriving. There is never enough!

As my lack equation led me to this point, I’m left with motivation to “improve” on my way to the ultimate goal – wholeness. That sounds great until I realize it’s a paradox in which achieving and defending wholeness results in less than wholeness.

One might see need in this paradoxical way, too. Fulfilling a need eliminates it while making it real. Thus, needs are relative rather than absolute or objective.

Values, too, must be relative – rather than objective or absolute.

Because my equation is a paradox, there MUST BE another way to understand. What if I were to consider another equation:

I = Wholeness

From that equation, intention may become irrelevant – I am having the entire experience I’m having – no need to seek it. I’m feeling all the feelings I’m feeling – no need to seek more. I don’t have to seek wholeness because I already am whole.

To see yourself as whole, you would see everything else as whole and a representation of you and yourself as representing everything as whole. From that perspective, values, like intentions and needs, are irrelevant.

To quote from a scene in “The Incredibles,” “When everyone is super, no one is.” One has an entirely different experience when value comparisons are irrelevant.