Profile 3 (2nd I'll interpret)

So this is from the third comment, the one I pasted from an email. All of the "note:" sections are from the respondent. The bold numbers following some of the answers are her ratings for the (b) answers that she listed as tens. For these numbers, 1 is her top priority rather than the higher numbers meaning a heavier weighting.

By this point, I am starting to feel very solid on what I want my items to address, so I may be ready to rewrite them after writing Profile 3.

1E. a. 4 b. 6
Note: This feels oddly competitive. Is there another way to phrase it?
9E. a. 4 b. 5
16E.a. 8 b. 10 (5)

Laughter, fun, curiosity. Yes, this phrasing is comparative. A Zen koan asks, "At the top of a 100-foot pole, what is your next step?" I am curious to know whether feeling oddly competitive about this item is a sign of a certain type of hesitation or just good feedback. Most of us learn to censor our emotional responses to such a great degree that the drive towards genuine spontaneity becomes part of what we need to untangle and express as adults. (I will certainly have to decide on whether or not to keep this unpopular phrasing.)

What stands out to me here is that the curiosity item, 16, is rated as much higher than those for laughter and fun. That tells me I probably need to look at my word choice. But a flag goes up, and I wonder whether this individual's playfulness has been pushed into the intellectual/verbal realm too much.

7P(R). a. 6 b. 8
14P. a. 3 b. 4 Note: Sounds pretty dang rigid to me. See George W. Bush for details.
17P. a. 4 b. 10 (9)
Note: I’m having a reaction to “everything”. What about “important” “critical”
”essential” or something. Or even – without discipline, very little is accomplished…

Mental avoidance, setting one's mind, and discipline. The responses to this section make me wonder about this person's sense of certainty. There's a negative reaction to the "everything" in "Discipline is everything", but not to the "anything" in "I avoid thinking about anything that makes me uncomfortable." Number 7, the item on avoidance is the only one that I would score in reverse--that I'd expect folks to not see this as a strength. (That may be another item on which I could improve the phrasing.) What's more, avoiding is not only ranked higher in the (a) column than the (a) scores for discipline and setting one's mind, but the only other (a)score that low is number 19: "I am very aware of my own emotions and others' emotions without feeling overwhelmed by emotions." Are my items phrased well enough here? Does this really mean that discipline and mental persistence and emotional awareness/equanimity are low while avoidance is high? Well, that is a question to ask directly. How much is this culturally supported out here on the West Coast, and how much of this is trouble differentiating decisiveness (yes, being the Decider) from rigidity? The response for #19 looks like evidence, but if this were Clue, I'd suspect without accusing...just yet.


3U. a. 7 b. 8
Note – this is a little difficult in terms of distinguishing how I think LIFE is, and how I think I am…..
11U. a. 6 b. 9
21U. a. 6 b. 9

Planning, intentional relaxing, and complicated problems. Uh-oh. More evidence. Dealing with complicated problems, 21(a), is listed as a 6. That's the second-highest (a) score this person was willing to claim consistently--other than the only 8, which concerned curiosity. Curious, willing to think about complicated problems, and good at mentally avoiding anything uncomfortable. We might have a strong mind here with a gentle soul. Gentle is fine, sometimes good, but I really wonder about centering, strength, certainty, and resilience. I've met fragile people who are surprisingly resilient, so that is not my first concern--decisiveness and persistence are. (The strengths part is coming up.)

5A. a. 7 b. 7
Note: This is interesting. I think in my case, I would prefer to feel that I am focused more on one thing at a time, or able to prioritize better, and multi-tasking less.
10A. a. 7 b. 10 (8)
19A. a. 3 b. 10 (7)

Multi-tasking, integration, and emotional awareness/equanimity. This note on 5 supports where I've been headed with this profile. That makes the meaning of #19 increasingly important; do you get a low score for awareness of emotions or for being easily overwhelmed? Prioritizing and decisiveness should be simple enough if one is willing to consider complicated problems without difficulty. But that avoidance thing comes back in. While a psychoanalyst might head in the direction of father issues and dominance/authority, we can instead look at familiarity with a focused state of mind and strength of focus. I'm not against that sort of historical psychoanalytic delving, but we have choices about how to address ourselves and our lives. Rather than running off to "confront" someone, we might confront mind itself.

The three (a) scores for this section have a wide range for this person's responses. Item 16 stands out from that group by a wide range as well, but that seems to be simply because of the safety involved with intellectualizing. There might be a very strong connection between this person's apparent lack of identification with the Purpose level and wide range of scores at the level of Appreciation and mindfulness here. Mindfulness may be somewhat lacking in potency if concentration is weak. Concentration tends to be weak when emotional certainty does not back it up.

Shift gears with me. When we compare the rankings of what she finds important right now (bold numbers following her other scores), we see the top four in the higher/subtler levels of Clarity and Nonconceptuality. We can also see that her Clarity level scores--6(a), 8(a), and 13(a)--are consistent and high. She rates only her curiosity as higher. This consistency is remarkable and certainly related to her high value on inspiration. There is also a very consistent rating of (a) scores through the levels of Understanding (#s 3, 11, 21) and Appreciation (#s 5, 10, and 19).

This profile, then, is light in the ass so to speak. It's also very hopeful. It looks like all the tools, except mostly concentration, are available for a comparatively inspired life. But to give that inspiration more staying power, it will take working on power.

The top priority, #20, "I can actually feel strongly that my soul is close to God," is listed as an (a) of only 4, low for this respondent. This probably shows some degree of idealization, of wanting to lean into something good and perfect, someone good and perfect and strong (perhaps inhuman and untouchable and therefore unassailable), as well as a significant sense of lack in that area. How much of this desire can be answered by knowing what one wants from oneself and others, knowing what is possible from/with oneself and others? (The comment for #12 (near the bottom) is very suggestive as well.)

That's probably enough for putting up on the Internet. The next step with this person is to find out whether she uses her meditation as avoidance-time for fluffy feeling-states and imaginings or for intentional relaxation (which would be helpful and enjoyable). From there, it becomes a process of figuring out how to toughen up without getting callous. With anyone who has a strong rejection of the Purpose level states, it usually takes kid gloves to find out in which ways they are willing to "take their medicine". It looks like the medicine here is all about gaining certainty by doing one's work, experiencing and affirming the positive Purpose-level feeling-states like confidence. It looks like there is only a little "misguidedness" to clear up--less about one more intellectual endeavor/distraction and more about feeling power.

6C. a. 7 b. 10 (3)
8C. a. 7 b. 10 (2)
13C. a. 7 b. 9

2N. a. 6 b. 10 (4)
15N. a. 6 b. 9
20N. a. 4 b. 10 (1)


4*. a. 5 b. 8
12*. a.xx b. xx
Note: Hmmmm – if God is everything, yes. But,I do believe there is evil and unkindness in the world. And misguidedness. I’m not sure how that fits in. I think that I prefer the definition of God as the ultimate good, and in that case, I would be a firm no on all action being done by God. But I don’t know how that fits with the 1-10 rating, either personally or where I wish to go…
18*. a. 4 b. 10 (6)

Profile 2 (first one I'll interpret)

This note is an interpretation of the scores and comments in Emily's "witty von wittington" response. Everyone who responded wrote in comments after a number of questions, and I expect that to continue as long as I use this type of questionnaire. Rather than trying to simply say that respondents are "at" some level of development--which makes sense to me only in the crudest way--I am interested in how individual people feel spirituality as well as how we express our different strengths and interests. Along with developing into maturity and perhaps actualization, our personal interests change as well. There are times when sitting in nirvikalpa samadhi is not nearly as appropriate as acting decisively--like when you see a toddler wandering into a busy intersection. So besides actualization being valuable, wisdom includes acting from sometimes "lower level" internal states (which can be measured as distinct from other, "higher" states). Rather than racing for the top or arguing over who/which is best, I am at least as equally interested in what fits, what works. I am invested in what makes myself and others unique as well as development. I'll cluster these responses by level. See if you can see how the three items for each level relate to one another. It might be worth taking one level at a time and considering whether it looks to you as if it does signify a significant developmental step. (Think about developing from a toddler to Gandhi or someone else you respect.)

1E. 7/5
Would it be too different of a question to write “I laugh as much as or more than most people I know”?
9E. 3/6
16E. 6/10
Laughter, fun, curiosity. These are all about unimpeded interest and exuberance. All mammals learn best through play and this feels good too. Mammals have more attention-energy than they need to survive, and this is expressed through emotion (which reptiles are limited in at best), creativity, and playfulness. When we don't have enough food energy to power our massive brains, we feel less exuberant and don't learn very well.

The difference in these responses may be due to how the questions in this section are phrased and/or due to differences in one's perceptions of strengths and personal interest. Is she less interested in laughter [1E:(b)5] than curiosity [16E:(b)10]? Or, more likely, she may not like the comparative phrasing--as her comment suggests--on item number one. For number 9, it's quite possible that she doesn't like rating ANYTHING as better than "anything else in the world", so I need to think about how I phrase my questions and how I introduce someone to the questionnaire in general.

7P(R). 4/1
14P. 2/6
17P. 4/5
Mental avoidance, mental determination/rigidity, and discipline. In most psychological circles, avoiding thinking about something is seen as a fairly immature means of coping. Discipline and rigidity fit a distinct internal state that can be very helpful or just as easily harmful. And most people are genetically predispositioned as well as culturally indoctrinated (relative between cultures) to appreciate or avoid this state. It seems that men are more likely to get stuck in this focused/driven/purposeful state of mind, but once women decide, they are often as easily able to stick to their purpose. In fact, depending on how great the distractions and obstacles, women may be more flexible and able to stick to a purpose. So this state has neurological underpinnings influenced by sex differences in the brain that have nothing to do with actualization. That means that this level or type of state can be beneficial to both men and women, but if we make mistakes, we may be more likely to make different mistakes. We stereotype "women's prerogative" and men's stubbornness as well as "fragile male egos", but there may be a fundamental neurological backdrop to these stereotypes. The mistake men may be more likely to make--fighting against their own testosterone (often somewhere around 25x what women have) and often being used to competing in explicit dominance hierarchies--the mistake of getting stuck in a ramrod state of mind. Along with all the social power and size differences between men and women, women's brains may actually be better suited to taking a lot in at once without getting locked in. So men may have more training in being mindfully aware of their situations and emotions while women may have to train themselves a little more in sticking to their chosen purpose (when it is fitting to choose one). From another angle, men may be more likely to get stuck at Purpose-level reactions while women may seem more responsive to whichever way the wind blows. This respondent lists low scores for the most part at this level.

Basically, the point is that it is helpful to be have each attentional ability at a high degree of competence wherever you start concerning genes, background, intention, and development. We often develop our ability (to stay focused on a single purpose at this level) to what we want to believe is an acceptable level for us. And we may find that a better level of competence is hard to work for. Without considering what is possible, we cannot decide on whether that hard work is worthwhile. Even if large groups of women would train towards competence and excellence with a different emphasis than large groups of men, excellence looks similar. We can see the argument for different emphases in women's criticism of hierarchical patriarchal systems within the meditative traditions. I do believe there are simply some things that women are better-endowed for training women and vice versa. Then there are also the things that are more difficult for different brains (of the same or different genders) that we simply complain about because they are difficult to do. Regardless of where we begin on any of these abilities, excellence is excellence.

By rating where we are at and comparing that to where we want to be, it is possible to look at what types of intention and training might be best for us as individuals. Some folks are happy enough with competence and they don't find the situation conducive to working harder. Men may try to ignore or else complain more about their wives' desire for greater awareness of the emotional situation and greater openness (which is a higher level ability). Complaining is a waste of attentional resources.

3U. 4/1
11U. 6/10
21U. 6/9
Planning, relaxation, and complex thinking. "Cognitive dissonance" and "tolerating ambiguity" are the watch-words for this level and type of mental state. We all know that too much complexity (rational, conceptual, understanding, etc.) driven by too much internal or external compulsive pressure (Purpose level) makes for poor thinking and stress. Think of test anxiety. In sports, we talk about having a "sense of urgency" (also Purpose level pressure) as being a good thing. The ability to intentionally relax allows us to moderate our stress levels when we are dealing with perceived pressure and conceptual complexity.

This respondent seems to value spontaneity [3U:(b)1] as well as the ability to relax [11U:(b)10]. I'm not sure, until she lets me know, if it is ironic that there are probably some obvious ways in which she could diminish the Purpose-level pressure in her life by looking at what she can plan better. It is possible--but not up to me to say definitively--that she may undervalue planning and the stick-to-it-iveness that comes from strongly valuing and training in the Purpose level (items 7, 14, and 17). It is possible that avoiding planning and sticking to obvious purposes in some areas may allow her to be more spontaneous more of the time without encountering the obstacles that avoidance allows to grow. Although that is very vague on my part, because I am unsure as to whether that is accurate or not, it is something I need to ask about. If we can consider her weaknesses in the space of possibility and potential, we can figure out what potential is most important to her right now as well as what is likely to be effective for her. And because everyone has different strengths as well as hidden strengths, working with possibilities benefits me as well. We can easily work on my weaknesses as hers. Staying with what is realistically possible allows us to bring our combined strengths to bear on improving individual weak spots. Profiling dialogically will helpfully aid in coming to a common understanding of what our relative strengths and weaknesses are. Good will or communion between us allows acceptance and appreciation of individuality. That's the next level.

5A. 5/8
10A. 8/10
19A. 5/9
Multi-tasking, integration, and nonjudgemental awareness of emotion. If we have a decent ability to relax when we choose (previous level), we are more able to face our complex world and complex selves. People mentally reduce situations in rigid ways when they are over-burdened; when we do that, we have a hard time recognizing viable opportunity. Besides learning to intentionally relax, we can benefit from mindfulness. And since no one really wants mindfulness to NOT add to our happiness or wellbeing, I speak of mindful appreciation. Appreciation and mindfulness together lend themselves to a more complete sense of integration IF THEY ARE PRACTICED WITHIN THE RIGHT UNDERSTANDING. Supposed mindfulness--lacking a ready acceptance of emotional complexity--will likely become only a psychological ability to distance oneself. Because that distance is more comforting than distress or feeling overwhelmed, this is a fairly common problem. While that distance may be less harmful physically, personally, and socially than distress, it should not be seen as mindfulness. This respondent lists a strong sense of integration [10A:8/10] without claiming any great ability to multitask [5A:(a)5]. For 19, without knowing her, I would wonder whether she is unaware of the emotional situation or if she is easily overwhelmed. If she is unaware, we would want to work on emotional awareness and mindfulness--perhaps looking for a psychological block to emotional awareness. If she is easily overwhelmed by her awareness, that is very different. That would probably involve being willing to accept certain personal limitations for now and working on strengthening her awareness with the ability to intentionally relax. We might also have to work on how intentional relaxation is different than supposed "mindfulness" practice that would only encourage her to avoid her situation. Avoidance takes away from intentional deployment of attention, and I believe we are better off being able to connect our intention with our energy with our actions.

By the different scores in this section, we can see that she values this type mind-state or level of development [(b)-scores average 9]. We might also be able to lean on her sense of integrity or comfort with "don't-know mind" while improving concentration or memory for multi-tasking and relaxation or awareness concerning the emotional situation. Because she lists her (a) responses as comparatively low at the Purpose level, that may signal for a focus on how concentration (the attentional ability gained and developed at the level of Purpose) needs improvement. We should at least run down that possibility.

6C. 6/10
8C. 5/10
13C. 6/9
Inspiration and vitality, clarity, and flow or "the zone". This state and stage are probably best described cohesively by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in the book called FLOW. While I'm not sure if he makes enough valuable distinctions, his presentation is by far the best picture of this level I have seen. At this level, we are starting to feel a great deal of clarity and freedom, which is very inspiring. We continue to improve our differentiation between a fairly rough-and-ready type of ecstasy, like lust, from a lighter feeling of bliss. If we do not pay attention to this distinction, because of the blissful influence, it is easy to get "stuck" in the habit of chasing excitement. It is helpful to emphasize the value of the mental and emotional clarity and freedom rather than the excitement. It is also helpful to continue with our mindfulness practice so that we can enjoy the excitement--mindfully rather than in an addicted manner.

Because it seems to me that there is a lot that can be done with this respondent at the level of Appreciation, my tendency would be to focus there. I want to introduce the idea of mindfulness being the basis for consistent inspiration and introduce aspects of Clarity, but working into Clarity would not be my primary objective unless I have misread the results. When the lower levels are sufficiently healthy in our lives, peaks into higher levels are much more likely to occur spontaneously. As we develop--if we are able to establish these levels in our lives as healthy cycles or habits--the desire for more that is so quintessentially human leads us upwards, pointing to increasingly subtle and perhaps powerful domains. But if those domains are preferred over things such as food, sleep, and good relations with the people around us, we fall into using spirituality or consciousness as a drug. This demeans both the value of where we are now as well as the aspirations towards authentic spirituality. Further talk about the higher levels would be mostly conceptual rather than being "filled up" by personal experience. There is enough to appreciate with where we are now and no reason to fear that further growth is unlikely. The conceptual discussion of higher levels may be helpful, but I would not want to suggest a specific religious--or nonreligious, for that matter--interpretation of those levels. At the point we are primarily discussing conceptions rather than predominantly personal experience, my impact shifts away from consultative to educational. In my experience, it is much harder to determine whether extra education is more helpful or distracting and depends heavily on the individual.

2N. 6/10
15N. 6/10
20N. 5/5

4*. 4/4
12*. 5/5
18*. 4/4

Profiling Updates II

Now that I've got a few full responses, it may help to both interpret individual responses and also compare these different friends' reactions. Since I know the three people who have sent me responses so far, it is similar to having a normal psychological assessment/introduction to them. Because we are all so incredibly complex and growing, this doesn't make me feel much more or less confident in my responses or the system I apply. I am relying largely on the system and largely on the dialogue. Without dialogue, no system of interpretation is meaningful.

The first item I want to address in this note is presentation. This blog page format is clearly not the easiest to work with. Kristin found a web-place to put together online surveys, and we may eventually translate to that format and link there. I personally tend to prefer paper, but this got the ball rolling. We'll look at taking the format further after next week--when I'll be consulting with a few peers in person on what specific improvements to make. Hopefully, my online interpretations will give them food for thought before then. Much of what I normally include in my interpretations will necessarily be censored in the interest of anonymity. Essentially, then, these interpretations may be somewhat bare-bones but you all can imagine me asking some very personal questions and taking my person-to-person responses a couple of levels deeper/closer.

The second thing I want to address here is the question: what do the letters following the question/item numbers mean? They simply help me remember which items supposedly relate to which levels of experience from "E" Exploration/Creativity/Play through "P" for Purpose to "*" signifying Abiding. I can't see any reason to keep these letters on the final form, but I may decide to cluster the questions for each level together.

Profiling Updates

With the way I asked this so far, it is too normal to rate where you'd want to be on many of these items as 10s. It might be helpful if I had asked for a 1-100 rating (instead of 1-10) with no repeats so that all these things end up prioritized in comparison to one another.

Other items it might be helpful to include: intimacy, focus/distraction, willingness/flexibility, liberation from “shoulds”, enlightenment, flow, confidence, sexual freedom/happiness, centeredness/nonfragmentation, nonattachment, sense of personal connection, ecstasy/bliss/transcendence, compassion, reduce reactivity/”thinness”.

Let me know if you come up with other questions that seem really relevant or if any of these other items should be included.

Hopefully, I'll have this beyond a rough draft within a week. Thanks for the feedback so far!

Spiritual Profiling: the Questionnaire

The following is a relatively simple set of questions, but it may take some time to finish. This is more about what you want than where you have been, but history and experience are very important in being able to answer.

Answer each statement with a number between 1 and 10. There are two ways each question should be answered, so for each question, you will have two answers. You may want to note them something like "1a" and "1b". One of the statements is, "Peace is everything." The first response is to show how much you believe that fits you as you are or how much it fits life as it is. The second response is to rate how much you would like that to be so. (If peace means everything to you, but you don't always feel peaceful, your answers may be 1a:3, 1b:10.)

These questions are directed at measuring attentional abilities that can be defined in neurophysiological terms, cognitive science terms, and through various meditative traditions. Once we have a somewhat personal picture, we can direct that somewhat vague measurement towards specific personal progress. The attentional abilities I refer to are: exploration, concentration, relaxation, mindfulness, inspiration, harmony, and serenity. Although serenity seems more like a psychological state than an ability, attaining serenity is an ability that can be practiced and improved. So we can see that attention is important, but intention is also central. For those interested, a personal explanation of these abilities may be more helpful than a conceptual or abstract explanation.

Please feel free to write in comments concerning any individual item along with your answers for that item. At the end, if you like, tell me what you think of the questions as a group or what you felt might be missing.

Here are the questions.
1E. I laugh more than most people I know.

2N. As much as any emotional feeling, my internal experience is characterized by a sense of openness.

3U. Failing to plan is planning to fail.

4*. Peace is everything.

5A. I am able to multi-task without getting lost.

6C. I am inspired with the simple feeling and energy of being alive.

7P(R). I avoid thinking about anything that makes me uncomfortable.

8C. My heart and mind are clear.

9E. Fun is better than anything else in the world.

10A. I have a strong feeling that everything fits together even when I don't know how.

11U. During work and at the end of the day, I am able to stay relaxed when I choose.

12*. All action is done by God.

13C. I enjoy losing myself in difficult tasks that I am really good at.

14P. Once I make up my mind, that's how it is.

15N. I am always aware of a vast freedom in life.

16E. I love learning new things. People think of me like Curious George.

17P. Discipline is everything.

18*. A still mind is the greatest gift or possession.

19A. I am very aware of my own emotions and others' emotions without feeling overwhelmed by emotions.

20N. I can actually feel strongly that my soul is close to God. (Not applicable for anyone who does not believe in God.)

21U. It doesn't bother me to think about problems that are too new or too complicated for me to understand.

Spiritual Profiling: Your Profile

I have a system, but no one completely knows someone else's profile. Because it's a good system, it allows for privacy and dialogue. We can all improve in our openness to exploration, our concentration, understanding, appreciation, clarity, nonconceptual awareness, and sense of abiding. Because I'm not you, I don't know where you want to begin, what you're strongest and weakest in, how fast you want to and can go, etc. But I have studied the obstacles to this type of growth and also the types of training that make people strong and capable.

Rather than presenting myself as an expert on what anyone needs, I have tried to formulate an approach that allows disagreement and encourages criticism right from the beginning. I know, perhaps better than anyone, how much unfulfilled potential I have. That makes me both proud and humble. It also makes me open to improving everything I can about what I do. So I love criticism.

Rather than laying out any quick-fix techniques, I've worked to formulate a self-driven sense of lifelong development. Since I've still got more years to live, I'll be improving my approach as I go. I'm working on a questionnaire that breaks down the benefits one gets from various attentional abilities into about thirty questions or so. Each question wants two responses. The first is a rating from 1-10 on how important each benefit is. The second is a rating from 1-10 on how good you already believe you are at achieving that benefit. I'll post it when I get a chance.

Questions? Comments? Jokes?

Spiritual Profiling: the Gift of Love

Lorna Smith Benjamin has been working with suicidal clients in Salt Lake City for something like 25 years. Last I heard, after decades of working with some of the most unhappy people on earth, she only had one client commit suicide. Those results are astounding.

She has a very unique way of looking at unhappiness. Her basic idea is that people are unhappy when they are not allowed to give the gift of their love. They make attempts to share what they feel is best in themselves with others, and those others refuse it. The closer we want those people to be, the more it hurts when they refuse. That's the gist. Unrequited love.

So far I've piled up a few problems, especially: toxic situations, lack of education concerning attentional abilities, lack of training, and unrequited love. Notice none of these problems look like they cannot be addressed. But, just as we have little common knowledge concerning training our attention, we have little awareness of all the ways in which our unhappiness can be seen as coming down to unrequited love. (Check Smith Benjamin's books or website for more of an explanation of how that works.)

I've already said or hinted that we can all get better by improving our concentration, noticing certain tricks that our minds play, developing or maintaining some degree of equanimity with one another, presenting problems in ways that suggest solutions, and improving awareness concerning feelings. I've mentioned the first- and third-person approaches to, or perspectives on, spirituality. And the second-person type of spirituality fits really well with this idea of love.

The second-person approach to spirituality is dealing with "you" as spiritual. It's about how we deal with other people, beings, and our planet as spiritual. And like Rumi, we can seem to speak directly to God (You) whether we see God in everything, in nothingness, or as somewhat separate, beyond, or above. One of the happy eventualities of my focus on first- and third-person types of spirituality is that my system does not prescribe HOW you SHOULD feel divinity as personally existent. I see that as only my business if you want to make it our business, if you include me in the "you"s you address concerning spirituality. This is part of my respect for equals. I assume that you are enough of a human person to have an individual-yet-connected relationship with God if such things exist, and you are enough of an individual-yet-connected person to have a feeling of direct connection with spirituality if those other things don't exist. In other words, your religion is yours and your spirituality is pretty much yours if you don't want to include me. I respect that. I don't want anyone trying to force me into a burkha, and as far as I can tell, I still like pork.

But it is also part of my feeling that I want to be able to love anyone I come in contact with. This isn't something morally good about me. I think it's basic to who we are, like having eyes and skin. Part of why we need some degree of psychological and spiritual strength is that we've all been given strong emotional reasons for pulling back our love, for withholding. Freud made anal retention a commonly used concept. What do we call love-retention? We say, "That's life, c'est la vie." I disagree with that sentiment, though. I say that's death. It's emotional death to not love. And hatred is just love's crippled cousin. Hatred lives, but when it lives within us, we are maimed.

I say this to show what spiritual profiling is. It includes at least two directions. The first is the sense of personal growth through appreciation and inspiration and perhaps onto something like serenity and enlightenment. The second is the removal of obstacles to the occupation of putting all of our energy into that movement. In other words, many of us have to heal before we can fly. In doing so, we don't need some imperious person telling us why we're weak of what is wrong. We need healing. Some of us need to connect with others first. Some of us need time alone. I don't know what any other person needs completely, and I don't try to tell people how they should believe or feel towards others or towards divinity. I offer training.

Spiritual Profiling: Trained or Untrained

Your tastes, abilities, and experience are vastly different from mine. You say po-tay-toe, I say po-tah-toe. We may all have similar descriptions of what inspiration can feel like (see the book FLOW: The Psychology of Optimal Experience), but it takes different things at different times to get us inspired. At one moment, you come home from work and simply want to fall onto the couch with someone you love and be held close. At another moment, you want the challenge of a difficult game: chess, basketball, ultimate fighting, cards, whatever. And at another moment, you simply let your mind drift into the natural beauty of the mountaintop or forest.

Some people don't actually get high on the things I get high on. It's hard for me to understand that, but I know it's true. Some people love stuff that I also can't understand, that I have no feel for. Sometimes I can learn to appreciate what they do but sometimes not. Over the last fourteen years, I've been focused on how people learn to appreciate and what influences meditation can have on how we live. I don't know if meditation can be considered a normal or "natural part of who we are, but it is done in some form in every culture. The simplest way is to just breathe deeply and let your stomach relax. Contemplation and prayer are similar ways of being more intentional and sometimes more self-aware than we tend to be in our daily lives.

My focus has been on what Wilber has called the first- and third-person approaches to spirituality. I have been very curious about meditating and what I can experience within myself or as myself, checking out what it might mean to say that "I" am spiritual. That's the first person approach. The third person approach has included a curiosity concerning evolution, the human body and nervous system, brain states, the influence of different chemicals, etc. For the most part, I have set up a system of understanding that focuses on these first- and third-person perspectives. That has allowed me to sidestep all of the arguments concerning which tradition or culture is best. So rather than speaking in terms of values or preferring one religion over another--since all expressions of religion are deeply rooted in separatist types of cultural traditions (due to historical societies separating themselves from the global university of humanity)--I try to speak about attention.

No society or historical culture has cornered the market on attention. In fact, while many argue over whose God is best or whose values are best, attention is often largely ignored by religious folks. Surprisingly, attention is also only considered secondarily in modern educational systems even though psychiatrists and psychologists are willing to diagnose Attention Deficit Disorder. As far as I can tell, attention is fundamental to learning anything. And yet we don't teach people how to improve their attention directly. Most often, we teach various topic subjects and simply HOPE that kids will improve their attention along the way. When I was in middle school, we joked about some kids just carrying their texts around without opening them as if they thought they might learn something by osmosis. Teachers liked to use that joke. And yet, no teacher that I had directly taught how to improve attention, as if they thought we would simply pick up attentional skills by osmosis.

I had never heard another person use the phrase "attentional abilities" before I started using it with friends and fellow students. It's probably been used somewhere, but it's not commonly used. Even more crazy to me is that I have rarely if ever heard people speak about improving attentional abilities.

Attention is an important idiom, then, because it is not claimed or owned by any particular culture. It's not a "Western" cognitive science concept because it's been used in Asian cultures for millenia. It's not an "Eastern" idea because it has been studied for decades by neuroscientists working in a "Western" scientific paradigm. At least, it was described as "Western" during the postcolonial decades of the latter half of 20th century. As if experimentation and learning in humans did not originate in our common ancestors in Africa. Just as every culture has something to add concerning how to train attentional abilities, every one of us has our own experience of attentional abilities and limitations. In other words, you already know what I'm talking about even if you haven't used these terms and phrases before. You've already felt your attentional abilities, including some of your limitations.

Contrary to the medical-based terminology, there is no such thing as a deficit in attention. Attention is never not happening in some way until you're dead. But it's interesting to think about it. When you dream, you pay attention to dream sequences. People knocked unconscious and in comas even have accurately reported what has happened around them when they were "unconscious". There is even an interesting example of consciousness in deep, dreamless sleep from Advaita Vedanta. In other words, consciousness has different forms or qualities at different times, but since it is always there throughout your life in some way, it cannot accurately be said to be deficient. (Consciousness and attention may be somewhat different, but maybe not. We'll leave that for later.)

Because attention always apprehends something in some way, and because it seems that mind (as a metaphysical category, I suppose) always moves, we can say that our attention is deficient in certain ways, but we are never actually lacking attention itself. It is hardly reasonable to say that students who are uninterested in some topic that they aren't paying attention to are deficient in attentional skills. They are skillfully paying attention to something else, even if that something is only daydreams. The social situation is agreement-deficient in such a case, with teachers assuming (for no good reason I can discern) agreement and then perhaps diagnosing a deficiency in concentration on their chosen subject. Perhaps we could say that the students are deficient in interest or involvement.

Having said that, many people are diminutive in their ability to maintain concentration. Lots of factors can play into this, but we've all had times when we have been unable to concentrate. Some people seem born with an innate strength in concentration, while others are apparently born with relatively weak concentration. If we do not teach and practice concentration, we have little to no grasp on how much of concentration is innate and what can be learned. (So I don't disagree with the actuality of ADD even if I'd call it something else, but we're only beginning to sort out where folks are weak in concentration and where our society is weak in being able to teach concentration. ADD may be largely--certainly not only--a deficiency in social flexibility teaching competence.)

ADD is an excellent example of why I talk about intention, self-awareness, and meditation in terms of attentional abilities. Just as we may have a hard time maintaining our concentration on grammar, most of us have a hard time maintaining our concentration on retaining a certain amount of equanimity in dealing with others, a certain feeling of generosity, or even the avoidance of feeling irritated. MANY adults feel themselves, and sometimes their friends, to be more mature than most other people. Isn't that curious? We often believe that other adults simply do not have the maturity to handle adult-type interactions, and because of their lack, our own lives are made more difficult or less satisfying. This is possible through an interesting trick of the mind that is no more than a simple trick once you see it. We see it in others as they convince themselves of something that isn't true. We might even notice it in ourselves. And it is only possible through a certain deficit in concentration.

So another point about attention is that I don't have to describe someone in ethical terms (as over-proud, self-righteous, etc.) in order to describe their faults in a way that allows progressive change. Because my mind plays the very same trick on me (I remember where I do well and where others don't more often than not), I can actually benefit from people helping me notice when it happens. We can act as if our minds doing this naturally is some form of evil in humanity, or we can be curious and amused by it. And once we recognize anything concerning how we deploy and experience our attention, we can do something about it whereas if we are inherently evil that is harder to address.

I'd say that if adults cannot learn enough concentration to maintain a degree of equanimity within themselves, they have little place to criticize kids (that's the same old mental trick). The functional question in all of this is: how do we do it? Because I've phrased the problem in attentional terms, an attentional solution lends itself to the problem. I've briefly listed what I see as the significant developmentally-outlined attentional abilities here.

Since we cannot "see" our own subconscious clearly, we may not be able to say correctly in which abilities we are most lacking. We may know what we are strong in, though. The interesting thing for me is that, since we are all complex human beings, if we are too deficient in any of these areas, we will not only be somewhat unhappy, but we will also create social problems for ourselves. The unfulfilled desires that lead to unhappiness are the personal or internal signs of unfulfilled potential, and the social problems we are a part of are the social or external signs of that same unfulfilled potential. Why do I say this? Because inspiration is your birthright and creating inspiration is an ability.

In the movie, "Man on Fire", Denzel Washington's character makes the point that there is no such thing as being tough. "There is only trained and untrained." If you haven't felt inspiration to be a significant part of your life, it doesn't mean that you are evil, broken or weak. You are either trained or untrained.

Spiritual Profiling: Respect Between Equals

Chances are, if you preach at me, I won't listen. I'm not looking for a preacher. And since I'm talking about dialogic aspects of communication, when I flip that sentiment around, I can hardly expect someone else to listen if I'm going to be preachy. This fits with Lao Tzu's point in the Tao te Ching that there is no such thing as "moral high ground". Essentially, even if your position is right, but then you feel like you're better than someone else because of a position, you ruin the moral authority in the position by mixing what's right with your own hubris. Same goes for me.

At the same time, you're better than me at a lot of things, I'm sure. I don't even have to know who I'm talking to to know it's true. I may not already know what you're better at than I am, but if we get to know each other, we'll find things. Flip that around, and I can walk with a certain amount of humility-pride because I know I'm probably better at something than everyone I meet. It's not modesty or a put-on show. It's simultaneous pride in myself and in humanity as well as humility in knowing that, as another amazing human being, you must also be better than me at something. So there's no point in hubris but enough pride for everyone. Part of why that's important is that, since I know my own strength, I don't have to try to exploit your weaknesses so as to look comparatively good; I can just find the areas I excel in. Beyond that, if we can agree to communicate like reasonable adults, chances are that we'll actually be able to learn from each other and improve due to our relative strengths (and weaknesses).

All that is pretty simple, but it's also rare to find adults who actually want to interact with each other this way. We get all caught up in comparative status and trying to clutch some little pride that we often miss seeing the ways in which we can grow. When we only want to compete, then pointing out where others slip up is an attack. But if I can actually take any criticism as a chance to grow in some particular way that I need to, then there are no attacks beyond physical violence. We still might compete, debate, challenge one another--but there aren't any attacks per se.

Where I was raised, this was called "being the bigger man". As kids, we often tried to claim that we were bigger men than someone else. But as we came to understand this phrase better, we knew that it involved not acting like we were bigger. Somewhere around there, it started just seeming like being men. Since I also appreciate women who don't try to act like men, we can speak of acting like adults.

I may seem to have gone far afield from spirituality to anyone familiar with my general focus on formlessness and samadhi. Maybe that's a sign that I'm growing up still. I'm becoming more and more interested in the process of moving towards those peaks rather than simply focusing on conquering the mountain, so to speak. There is a riddle or teaching question asked by the Sufis: why does God make his saints to look like everyone else? The proposed answer is: so that you will treat everyone like saints. I've got to admit, I'm not there yet. But getting there fascinates me.

It's also been said that before you can walk, you have to learn to crawl. That seems to fit psychologically and spiritually. Wherever we start from, we first get moments of how we want to actually be, then the effort it takes to stay aware of wanting that, then the discipline of giving up our emotional reactivity in particular moments in order to be mature, and perhaps we eventually gain a certain willingness to roll with the punches without giving up on our aspirations.

Because of how our minds work, aspiration feeds our motivation to overcome adversity. Adversity gives us the psychological and spiritual pressure it takes to gain the strength it takes to be able to hold onto and communicate what we gain. "Only the tested can inspire the fearful." We all benefit from the wisdom and experience of those who have already fought the good fight. Those who made the ultimate sacrifice in their fight, as well as those who have lived to fight another day. Folks who have overcome adversity feed our aspiration. Anyone who has overcome adversity knows something about the strength of intention. Anyone who has faced adversity and temporarily lost could have some aspiration for improvement along with some experience to build from.

The reality of human life is that it all gets jumbled together. We can't separate out the moments we shine from those where we stumble. It's all me, all one. (If you feel otherwise, stick around, Grasshopper.) And yet, I love the Muslim focus on Judgement. Their idea, if I understand correctly, is that everyone will face God on their day of Judgement and every single thing they have ever done will be weighed and measured. All of what they have done correctly will be weighed against every single sin, and their actions, thoughts, and feelings will either lead them to God's grace or punishment.

It's very liberating to say that it's all one. And at the same time, I also know that every time I practice doing what I believe is right, it feeds that sense of rightness within me. Every single time--no matter how small or seemingly inconsequential--I feed my weakness and iniquity, it grows stronger within me. How other people act affects me, but they are judged in their own way. How I respond to them and affect them influences what I feed within myself. Perhaps there is some ultimate judgement on a given day, but I doubt it. It makes more sense to me to believe that this lifetime is my "day of Judgement". I already am punished by feeding the shit within my soul and spreading it around me. I already am rewarded by acting right and knowing when I do. Maybe it all comes to a metaphysical head, but whether it does or not, it's the same to me. (If you don't believe in judgment or karma, have some kids, and see where they are when they reach forty or so.) Because that is the case for myself, I am willing to learn to crawl if I must, but I'll be damned if I'll keep myself from learning to walk.

Being who I am, though, I may need some help along the way. I'm not looking for some guru to be God for me. Just as I'm not writing for those who want to be only beautiful and fragile, I'm also not writing for those who are looking for moral escape. They will get what they get. I'm looking to find others who want to improve and I'm looking to contribute what I can. I'm looking for others who feel the same, who feel equal in that aspiration.

While anyone can claim such a standpoint or motivation, communicating it needs some form, it needs to actually happen. The question I've been asking is: what is a good way for me to share what I know and can do? When I flip that question around, assuming I'll be communicating with spiritual equals, I ask: what is a good way for us to contribute what we can know and do with and for each other? The question takes that somewhat complex form because I will need something different than what anyone else needs. Sure, we all need love and support, food and air, etc., but if we are to recognize and uphold our individual potentials then we will need to find our different tastes of inspiration.

Spiritual Profiling: The Beast Lives

Nothing that can be said to be spiritual can be inanimate or dead. The beast lives. And just as spirit may not be limited to any form, still, for us to feel "spirit" or "spiritual" there must be some touch, some tangibility, and therefore some form. To that end, it can be helpful to share some common assumptions. Also to that end, it helps to not see any of us as limited to those assumptions. Not only, then, does my understanding of the process need to move forward, but the dialogue must as well. Just as those who saw the Great Depression moved beyond the Great Depression, we will move our dialogue beyond those basic assumptions and yet remain somewhat shaped by those assumptions.

This is very important. If we include the expectation of change right from the very beginning, then it may turn out that the followers are actually leading and vice versa. It may be that we'll find that a beloved basic assumption becomes the greatest obstacle to further progress. In other words, everything is up for grabs. When that is the sort of situation we face, how can we know we aren't just flapping around like a fish out of water? How do we know we aren't flopping further and further from our stream the harder we try?

When there is no way to be sure that up isn't down and left isn't right, when quantities may turn out to be the opposites of what they first seemed, we might still be able to rely on qualities. I may not know where I'm going, but I might know if I'm moving fast. I may not know if I'm fast or slow, but I can say whether it feels right. This is a different way of seeing things and making decisions. It can seem so complicated as to be impossible or so vague as to be ineffectual. In other words, it still needs a foundation, or we could say a vehicle. So I'll give a comparison or two.

The guru traditions basically send the message that you must give up everything you used to know (the sky is blue, grass is green) so that the divine wisdom of the guru can set you straight (the sky is you, the grass is grass). In other words, we give up our normal way of knowing things and simply replace it with someone else's. Wouldn't that be nice? But until Jesus obviously returns, I still havent' found that enlightened of a guru. Or maybe I'm just a skeptic. Other "expert"-type paradigms abound. "Listen to the physicist who knows physics more than you, follow your President, eat your peas", etc. All of these sorts of approaches are of one paradigm: something outside of you knows better--at least for now--than you do.

I'm willing to admit that physics experts know more than me, but most physics experts--while they may be somewhat arrogant about their intelligence and learning--don't claim that I should give up all of my worldly possessions and follow them because they are my moral superior (so they're different from gurus, better in a way). I appreciate that about anyone who does not equate power with betterness. More power means more potential for damage or corruption, so rather than looking at quantities as my reference point (more/less), I tend to look at the qualities of application. If you use your small amount of power well, I congratulate you. If you use a large amount of power poorly, I won't resent you--I'll criticize. Now, it has been somewhat unpopular under the aegis of white guilt and post-colonial relativism to NOT criticize those with little power. I am either part of a backlash against that sort of spineless apologetics or a step in a better direction. Personally, I don't care whether you like my position. Between emotional adults, positions should not be addressed the way teenagers talk about someone else's clothes or tastes in music. So I also don't care if you like my position. Both of those opinions are worthless to me. But if you go a step further with your opinions (or, let's say that you have a position, and I have to do better than simply say "cool" or "sucks"), you bring detail. You tell me something I don't already know about my position, you point out what I can't see ("Yes, your ass does look fat in that, Todd.")

My response will not be: you shouldn't pick on me because I don't have much social power. My response is simple, usual for me. "So what?" Only, this is not a rhetorical "so what?". I mean it. Why do you say what you say? What are you looking for? How do you want that to affect me? Most of us, when we speak, we speak because we feel an internal impulse more than because we say something that we think will have certain affects on those we speak to. I cheer, "Go Eagles!" because I want to feel excited and support my football team, not as a measured way of convincing Cowboy fans to convert. (I have another sort of message for Cowboys and their fans.) That type of communication is appropriate at the stadium, and much beyond that was normal at Veteran's Stadium. It just doesn't do much more than show us whether we're on the same side or not, whether we're headed for the same party or not--after the game or after school.

I wonder whether your comment is higher quality than mine. And I'll be honest; I want to be the best. But the best what? I don't want to be the loudest asshole. And being the loudest doesn't seem to fit with being expert. Einstein wasn't great because he could shout, but in the stadium, noise matters. I want to yell so loud that Tony Romo can't even be heard by the center right in front of him. I want the Cowboys to go down...in flames, if possible. But Einstein in that crowd is just one more person either yelling or not.

It goes without saying that I'm no Einstein. I'm not being modest. The folks who know me well know I'm not modest. But that's how it is. Einstein was no quantum mechanist, either, but he did all right for himself. Probably no one else is going to care as much as I do about my purpose. Probably. (I'll save that caveat for later.) But I'd like to work it out. If I can be happiest as an Eagles fan, then maybe that is what I want to stick to. Maybe that is where I want to deploy as much of my attention as possible. But maybe there's more. Maybe I can be an Eagles fan AND something else besides. I don't know if Einstein had a favorite team, but tons of people are sports fans and more. Do you love the game? Is the noise you make moved by that love, by passion? Besides expertise, passion counts. Passion makes qualities tangible. If I can't feel an interest in, say, psychology more than the 700-level fans feel for Donovan McNabb (our quarterback), their passion may say something my intellectual expertise does not. For me, if I am a passionate football fan and only care in a half-assed way about psychology, then I may be a great fan and a mediocre (if fairly intelligent) psychologist. Most of the folks in my stadium section would tell me that they wouldn't want to see me as a therapist if I didn't care about them.

Sorry for the sports analogy, but sometimes it helps to talk about meatheads. I still care almost as much about my high school football practices as I do about getting a master's degree. I'd like to think that I care more about the future of our planet than I do about whether I played with honor, but that's not always the case. "So what?" It almost always a relevant question. If Einstein told me about relativity before it became a big thing, I'd have asked him that question. And maybe he'd have clued me in. Is my point starting to come across? An expert who's an asshole isn't less of an asshole for being an expert? And, he's no less of an expert for being an asshole. On both counts, quality matters. We just usually make exceptions. If you can find a good mechanic, that's where you take your car, even if he's an asshole--as long as he doesn't overcharge.

I've got a couple of points coming together here. Because we're all connected to some extent, you may put up with an honest, expert mechanic who's an asshole. It's just business, and good business if his prices are reasonable. But you might invite a deacon you like to your Christmas party and leave your mechanic uninvited, alone on Christmas Eve--except for his good friends Johnny and Bud. Quality means different things in different situations. You become a lower-quality host at your party if you invite too many assholes (or too many deacons, probably).

So the fact that qualities change in different situations doesn't faze us in the least. You don't want some nice deacon with the best of intentions checking your car--you want an expert mechanic who isn't trying to pull the wool over your eyes. You don't want some honest asshole at your parties, you want decent people who want to have fun. Quantities pretty much are what they are, but the importance of qualities changes depending on where we are. We are so used to dealing with this that we often don't even notice. My basic point is that assholes can loosen up or straighten out and party animals who always show up straight-laced on Sunday mornings may be more fun than rock stars. Everything changes, but many, many of us get stuck as caulking--as if we don't want change to happen. Because the world is what it is, we can't fear the wrong types of change; we have to be the right kinds of change. And in order to work on what the "right types of change" are, we have to find some way to get together on it that doesn't take away how you bring something different--sometimes better, sometimes worse--than what I bring. Every form changes, but there is something beyond and within form.

Spiritual Profiling: The Background

To the same extent that psychologists and law enforcement personnel can improve their performance by profiling patients and alleged criminals, people can improve their own developing sense of spirituality by utilizing the idea of a spiritual profile--if this is done in an adequate way within an adequate understanding.

There are differences between psychological profiling and spiritual profiling that have to do with intention and the unconscious. The most basic components of our personalities are genetic--which I will call temperament. We all have a physically-based genetic platform for experience called temperament. Most psychologists do not simply measure temperament. When most profiling is done, it includes the nurture/experience aspects of our personality as well as what nature has already given us. The basic direction that the nurture influences move in means that, given a healthy family and challenges that do not overwhelm us in tragic or horrifying ways, we can grow up to be healthier individuals than if we are traumatized from early on. (This is a generally accurate rule, but there are always those resilient, heroic types that flourish in exceedingly difficult situations; they are the exceptions that prove the rule.)

So we have what many people recognize as "second nature"--anything we have learned young enough or practiced completely enough that we can do it, think it, or feel it without really putting too much effort in. This involves most of our personality habits, including personality disorders. While a genetic weakness may predispose us towards addictions or antisocial behavior, that aspect of temperament is different from the eventual behavior. So far, then, we have spoken of the two most basic aspects of personality and experience.

Beyond what we have done habitually or somewhat unconsciously, we all at least have moments where we feel it is possible to be more self-aware and more intentional in our actions. While I have not met anyone whose self-awareness is complete, we all know something about being self-aware. There is a crucial difference between being aware of our personality habits and being aware of our intention. I might know that I have a tendency to drink too much without having the intention to change my behavior. This recognition of conscious intention allows for a third level of personality--intention. Even for many people who are very clear regarding their intentions, many do not have the will and/or creativity to achieve their particular aims. My focus on spiritual profiling is all about increasing emotional resilience, clarity of intention, force of will, creativity, and the ability to draw on social resources in order to achieve particular aims including spiritual aims.

While a lack of self-awareness or lack of willpower has sometimes in the past been used to castigate those found lacking, this sort of negative social stigma and/or shame is an inefficient application of social power. It may be "right" in a certain way to put people down for their weaknesses, but it is also stupid to the extent that it applies social potential to an end that cannot be held as valuable (that of demeaning others). Castigating others is most often a strange form of beating one's hairy chest while castigating oneself directs attention from being able to address one's situation--actively--towards a sense of helplessness, shame, and depression. (While there must be a place for chest-thumping and shame, those two are usually over-indulged.)

Can't we all just get along? No, certainly not. I doubt that will ever happen. But we can learn as much from critics and enemies as from loved ones and friends. Personally, I find enemies to be as much of a waste of time as the demand--in some groups--that we all agree or none of us can move. I'm neither a hater nor a communist.

While we can conduct personality profiling on those we deem dangerous to our interests, because spiritual profiling involves a move to incorporate intention and willpower, it is necessarily dialogic. It can not be done to anyone; it is always done with someone. (It may be possible to become an arhant or developed meditator without a great deal of interactions with others--meditating on one's own--but it is impossible to see one's own unconscious. That is part of why I think spiritual development may be possible without a great deal of dialogue, but that development will be thin, lacking in areas.) While we might become more self-aware by ourselves, spiritual profiling is dialogic, conversational, open to the public as it were.

Clearly, I am aligning myself with a certain social-liberal type of worldview where diversity is good. I am also aligning myself with a certain application of hierarchy that allows large organizations to move effectively. Unlike many liberal apologists, I am not opposed to crushing resistance from small, viral types of organizations like Al-Qaeda. I'm all for presenting the invitation to dialogue as much in "enlightened" self-interest as in goodwill for all living beings. If you/I have nothing to offer the larger group, or if we are simply restricted to such an extent in our current situation that communication can't occur well, sometimes it makes sense for the group to move on anyway--sometimes in many directions at once.

My basic understanding in dealing with people is that intention and self-awareness are good--almost in and of themselves. Anyone who takes this position must be able to answer the question, "What about serial killers who are very aware of their intentions to continue their macabre vocation?" Simple. They are clear on their intentions but not so much aware of their vast potential as human beings. Just as individual meditators may be somewhat thin in their development, serial killers are thin in their intentions if they are not able to notice the moments within themselves when they wish for more. The same is true of politically-motivated terrorists, idealists, religious fanatics, junkies, etc. We are all missing something, but fanatics rarely want to admit WHAT they are missing in public. Junkies are ore likely to admit, but not necessarily more likely to change without help, etc. Intention alone, then, may not be so great, but intention and self-awareness together are potent and good. (I think that pretty much covers the basic assumptions.)

Self-awareness involves history--that second level of personality, the nurture and experience part. This means that our personality always changes somewhat. Think of the generation that faced the Great Depression and WWII. They were shaped in their habits and choices by living through such times. Furthermore, they continued to learn and adjust, often living into and through the 50s-70s which were much different socially and economically from the 30s. My point here is that even the nonconscious aspects of our personality change throughout time; just getting older makes many people less fanatic and more relaxed. My generation grew up without cell phones, but now it seems impossible to live without one. Cell phones change the way we communicate, which necessarily affects how we connect and how we feel about one another. So that second level of personality changes. Perhaps in my lifetime, scientists will have figured out not only how to replicate genetic material but also how to manipulate it in living beings. If this is done on a widespread scale within an individual body, we might even change genetic endowment (temperament)--the first and most fundamental aspects of personality.

Next point. Most of us have unhealthy habits, perhaps low self-esteem or narcissism, a sense of entitlement, biases and bigotry, an inability to communicate well with the other sex (or our own), etc. Most of us lack in something. What's more, when we feel that lack, it usually involves also feeling a desire. While we can nonconsciously feel this desire as the desire to be different than we are, we can intentionally decide that this is a desire to change or improve who we are; there is a difference in whether that points to a passive response ("this is just who I am") or an active response ("this feeling means I want to change if that's possible"). Now, some people take self-improvement too far and act as if everything about you has to do with what you want and decide. It may be good for us as a global group that this fanatic fringe is out there, but I am glad I'm not part of that fringe.

It takes time to grow physically, psychologically, and spiritually. (I'll address instant enlightenment individually for those who want to raise that objection, but I can debate that idea by simply saying, "Show me.") What's more, time alone is not enough. We need healthy types of food to grow--physical food, social and psychological food, and spiritual food. (Many may recognize that the majority of these ideas either are Ken Wilber's or are parallel with Wilber's progression. I'll get to my own additions later; Ken's ideas are amazing even if I haven't purchased an ILP packet from his company.) Just as we need a certain amount of gravity and exercise--forces pushing against us--in order to grow strong bones and muscles, besides foods, we absolutely need adversity (force opposing our intention) to grow psychologically and spiritually. Without adversity, we may be beautiful but weak or fragile. I'm not writing for those who want to be beautiful and weak or fragile. The psychological equivalent of bone strength and muscle tension is "resilience". I like having delicate emotions, but I have also needed emotional resilience in my life. We can be delicate and subtle without being fragile or weak.

Food, time, and pressures. There are different types of psychological pressure as well as different amounts. Social pressures are huge in our lives. And we can all recognize malicious influences in ourselves and others. Malice is a pressure, but it is not necessarily a good food. Just as we decide to not eat just anything a cow would, for example, we psychologically have to decide what not to internalize. If we do not have the psychological strength to refuse to internalize certain influences like malice, then we must eventually face those toxins within our psyches. This is another part of why resilience is unavoidable. And just as our bodies have immune systems, we can recognize that our minds and hearts do as well.

Too much pressure or too much toxicity is bad for anyone. Too little pressure may not look like a problem on the surface, but it lends to weakness, slackness, a lack of healthy (psychological) "muscular" tension. And, if we do not face any negative emotions in our social groups, we will have little empathy for those who have had to face toxicity. This results in situations where the toxicity is retained and repeated--such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. At some point, the situation is so toxic, that one identifies as much with one's hatred of the enemy as with one's love of self and family. This sort of identification is large-scale suicide. In Israel and Palestine, there are many people who are willing to kill their own if it means bloodying their enemies. When you want to kill your own, you get what you get. I can understand but not support such an emotional position. If my own family had been dealt what some Israelis and Palestinians have been dealt, it is possible that my own psyche would be that toxic. But it is what it is--toxicity. It is impossible to claim psychological toxicity as spiritual purity. When your heart sees enemies, it is not full of God. Too much toxicity is bad for anyone. Being force-fed toxicity is not the same as being intentionally evil.

On the global scale, then, progress is not so far from what happens on an individual scale. It is still human decisions backed by human emotions supported by human intentions. How, then, can we deal with personal and political differences that are not nice, those that are not going to be covered during a pleasant conversation over a game of chess and a cup of coffee? Well, I don't need to tell you since you already know. Every culture I've looked at has stated that one must consider oneself and also face the world. When we have toxic personalities, we often avoid considering ourselves in the light of full self-awareness. We identify the toxicity as us (our own limited self-image) and/or the world, but the toxicity remains as the unavoidable basis, the "facts of life". THAT position DOES involve a lack of willpower, creativity, consciousness, and purpose. I don't denigrate anyone who takes that position, but I simply cannot know what I know of myself and others and believe in that position whatsoever. That position is blind and stupid, a result of too much toxicity and not enough of the right foods and forces.