wholeness

Choice, Belief, and Defense, Oh My!

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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?

How Biases Are Choices

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Biases limit my ability to select from a wide range of options down to just those I feel I can defend. This fools me into believing I’m making a free choice from all the available options.

However, I’m actually defending as few options as necessary to make me right or, at least, not wrong. Over time and practice, this becomes a pattern of behavior that narrows my perspective, turning choice into confirmation of rightness.

Perhaps it’s impossible to make a “free” choice when my need/fulfillment is to validate my rightness. Because rightness tends to feel like wholeness, I don’t feel limited by bias. I feel justified – whole! That which I validate validates me!

Biases – a Twofold Defense

One side intended for and the other against. This alludes to paradoxical thinking, in which I fight for what’s right by defending against what’s wrong. Bias weights one side over the other.

Could choice actually be a form of defense? When I make a choice, I also create a defense for that option and against others. Perhaps my defense is present before I make the choice. In that case, I’m double-defending my selection with bias.

For example, when I choose vanilla over chocolate ice cream, I have a preconceived reason. Maybe I think the vanilla tastes better than the chocolate ice cream because of a bias.

Bias offers complementary defenses for and against that must validate each other for me to consider each as an option. That is, what I like and don’t like counter and so validate each other. Even weighing one over the other, the end result is validation of separateness, which appears as my choice!

“Why” is at the root of my biases, which I defend as truths. This sets the stage for proving biases as truths. Thus, more than affecting my choices – biases ARE my choices.

Punishment and Reward in Limited Awareness

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In classical (Pavlovian) and operant (Skinner) conditioning, a subject learns to behave in a certain way through a system of punishments and rewards. In nature, an individual interacts with their environment in this way and learns how to adapt.

I must assume I can create wholeness within limitations. That’s to believe that if I do, have, and/or be enough limitation, I’ll achieve wholeness. That’s a world of hope. And a paradox!

I feel motivated to seek for and to validate more separateness. In the mastery of separateness I might then be initiated into the experience of wholeness. My service to my intention meant I could get a sense of wholeness as a reward.

Options

My only options in this dimension of separateness are how to defend it. Yet, I must seek separation to find wholeness by comparing them. Since I cannot attain the unattainable – I’ll settle for a substitute – an illusion of wholeness.

What if all that – environment, systems, and conditioning – is within me. As the perceiver of my universe, I might act/react as conditioner of my own behaviors. I may be more in charge of my world of limited awareness than I once thought!

I wonder if I develop much of my definition of wholeness by trial and error. Another way to learn is by observation, which allows for choice by association.

Trial and error development sounds a lot like conditioning. Freud observed that we tend to seek pleasure and avoid or escape pain. That’s a perfect setup for conditioning by punishment and reward in a system of learning by trial and error.

When I behave in compliance with my conditioning, I feel good – I get a dopamine blast as a reward, I feel whole. Conversely, I suffer a punishment for misbehaviors and feel separate.

Who applies that punishment or reward? Nature? My society? What if it is my own intention?

It’s All in the Comparing

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Comparing Is Natural

What are you doing right now? Notice the comparing you are engaged in after reading that question. Comparing is so natural to us that we are mostly unaware of just how much of it we’re doing.

All comparing is based on relationships between you and not you. Whether obvious or invisible to your senses, you’re always comparing.

We can compare because we are capable of separating our own experiences from those of others through judgments. Yet, we are just as capable of imagining the experiences of others, which seems to increase judgment capability.

The Dual Purpose of Comparing

Along with judging differences, which builds walls between right and wrong, there are judgments of sameness that help build connections. Practicing the latter can reveal how difficult it can be to create connections outside judgments of right or wrong.

Some of the ways duality shows up in comparing my reality of me to myself and me to others –

Me compared to myself:

  • Yesterday to today and tomorrow
  • Who I think I am to who I should be
  • My accomplishments to my failures
  • My intentions to my outcomes

Me compared to others:

  • Differences in authorities
  • Skills and talents
  • Education and training levels
  • Wisdom and understandings
  • Changes over time – who we were yesterday, are today and will be tomorrow
  • Who I think I am to how another should be
  • Accomplishments
  • Intentions and outcomes

In my bubble of limited awareness, I naturally compare what I perceive. From my perceptions, I create the need to divide and define every thing to validate that need. I assign a boundary to everything that I perceive can be separate from all other things. Thus, I divide up what I perceive as one whole – making separate through perceptual differences.

Knowing I Resist

Those perceived differences form the boundaries that define the means of resistance between me and everything else. Because I divide up wholeness, I can see more clearly how I associate likenesses and differences between things. Yet, knowing in some ways that they are the parts that make up the whole.

By seeing the contrast, I can experience relationships! Those relationships that define my defenses are my experiences. This allows me to define my reality and therefore my purpose within that reality.

My purpose is tied to my ability to maintain resistance, another word for defense, which includes:

  • Perceiving separateness
  • Dividing wholeness into things
  • Assigning boundaries
  • Perceiving characteristics that validate separation
  • Making sense of separateness as reality
  • Giving separateness a purpose in connection
  • Validating conflict
  • Resolving conflict by creating similarities
  • Supporting and focusing on similarities
  • Connecting similarities to create flow
  • Appreciating creations without judgment
  • Releasing the need to defend
  • Embracing change

Thus, I more clearly see who I believe I am. Because I’m capable of dividing wholeness into separate parts, I’m equally capable of uniting what was never truly separate. The connection of one thing to another begins a new adventure – that of putting back together what I have divided.

A Definition of Wholeness in Terms of Separation

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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!