Checkmate!

I've come back to this thread to say that a strategic response to a situation and indeed a strategic identity is a way to lose freedom for the promise of getting there in some future moment or reclaiming a freedom believed lost as a result of the analysis of the moment at hand.

I'll add that this is the normal ,but is not the original nature of human being. Yet if it is the predominant belief structure it must be worked with to open it up to a more direct and less obstructive communication - or there will be no communication.

Such strategic analysis accepted and reacted from as true operates as a conditioning reflex that becomes in a sense and automatic response that maps out the situation in terms of definitions and meanings made and accepted in the past. Indeed the range of such judgements and strategies constitute one's sense of identity in the world; our conditioned sense of self. The sense of freedom of such an identity is freedom FROM perceived threat and freedom to maintain self-protection and prevail over such threat or at least keep it at bay.

The resort to offensive strategy as effective defence then follows and is justified by the perceived threat, and wounds from the past become valued and restated as value in supporting one's offensive or justified strategies of prevailing or manipulating outcomes and behaviours.

The 'chess game' of reading the strategies of others and developing counter strategies becomes the box within which thinking then has to operate to have any validity. One strand in the overall game of strategies is that of libertarianism. All strands operate and support each other as an identity in struggle or game of power - where power has been redefined in terms of minds that are equated with or limited to bodies, acting upon each other, along a set of meanings arising from the belief and experience one is not free, whole, and worthy.

THAT such conditioning occurs and becomes our personality construct is observable. But the capacity to observe it in act - within our own consciousness is itself an awakening of consciousness at a level that is not enacting the identity of conditioned reaction but free to accept it, or allow and invite a fresh perspective that is a current take on the whole situation - accommodating to one's readiness and willingness to accept and act from a perspective of wholeness. This is a spontaneous event and not the result of machinations of mind - and yet it may be filtered through machinations of mind as part of accepting it is in fact what is desired.

The be free flowing presence may be similar to being 'in the zone' because its spontaneity is in a sense quite thoughtless and selfless - yet not as a result of any denial or coercive intent to suppress or diminish thought or self. there is simple a sense of getting out of one's own way and allowing a unified desire - that is no longer oppositional to but embracing of all that is present in relevance and resonance to the current theme of focus and desire.

Oppositional will is a key idea in the redefinition or the negation of free will - which is prior to any idea or definition about it. Indeed  minds that think they are bodies may define freewill in body terms to act without restraint  - without opposition - and yet also to limit and restrain the acts of others that do not support or ally with their own ideal or idol or model of conditions that must be met for them to feel themselves free.

The shifting balances of meanings, judgements, reactions and perceptions that operate as the 'balance of power' themselves become the object of attention - to come up with strategies of negative cooperation in which self-limitation is imposed and accepted as an attempt to equalize or bring parity wherein specific points of focus are partially addressed at the level of behaviour - if not at cause. Such 'sharing' and 'equality' then becomes a new arean of offensive manipulation through which any minority 'victim' can become a proxy for a third party agenda to use to undermine existing levels of integrity and function - and indeed engage naked enslavement plunder and coercive dominion in the guise of regulatory capture and control through the ideas and identities developed in the attempt to become free. Checkmate!