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.