World Viewz

 

One of the very, very useful  understandings that came out of the early years when Adi Da was working intimately and directly with devotees was his description of the basic types of social and emotional adaptations that human beings develop as a way of "coping" with life.

You've no doubt come across others who have developed personality schemes and so have I. While it's true that these are generalizations and that people don't often fit entirely in a neat category, I have found that there is a basic life strategy that I and all others have decided on. For example, my basic strategy is the "peculiar" strategy.

Over the many years in the community, as a devotee, this has had a very powerful positive affect on me. You get to see how other types find pleasure, the way they are, and not expect them to be different.

When I recognize a "vital" character, for example, I am not nearly as easily offended by their behavior and don't now feel "superior" in my sort of "interior" orientation.

Of course, Love and Sadana (Hard Work) allow for transcending some of our patterns and over time, the development of true equanimity (mentally, bodily, and emotionally) makes for a different kind of life, where love and kindness predominate in relationships with others and with self.

 

 

SOLID

PECULIAR

VITAL

PRINCIPLE MOTIVATING MOOD

Fear

Sorrow

Anger

STAGE OF LIFE

First Stage

Second Stage

Third Stage

ASSOCIATED WITH

Vital shock of birth

loss of self-security and loss of power over others on whom one depends

struggle with motives of independence and dependence and aggressive effort toward genital victory

CHARACTER

obsessively self-controlling and other-controlling

alternately idealistically (and thus mentally) self-controlled and chaotically self-indulgent

characteristically vitally (or physically) self-indulgent

FOUNDATION MOOD

fear of being controlled by others (or conditions outside the body-mind-self)

yearning to be effectively touched or loved and a call and hysterical need (or search) to be controlled, or restored to balance by a positive controlling influence

chronic effort to resist, refuse, or avoid the controlling influence of others (or even the mind) on the bodily existence of the conditional self

REACTION TO FEELING OR ACTUAL EXPERIENCE OF BEING

too much controlled by others, especially adults

neglected, denied love, and denied a positive controlling influence

too much controlled by others, especially adults

"STYLE" OF REACTION

passive and rather infantile

hysterical and rather childish

aggressive and rather adolescent

STRATEGY

mental (or mentally "solid", or strategically, and, principally, by means that exploit the conceptual mind, invulnerable)

emotional (or emotionally "peculiar", and, perhaps, or sometimes, even hysterical)

vital (or "vitally", and, perhaps, or sometimes, even "grossly", physical)

DOMINATE CHARACTERISTIC

hyperactivity of the conceptual mind

excessively "romantic" (or even sentimental) and idealistic (or unrealistic) expectations (that are inevitably frustrated) and the loss of balance

obsessive and compulsive vital-physical self-expression

see more on the three primary characteristics of the Solid, Vital and Peculiar personalities

 

Above these frontal-line emotions is the heart, or love. And there are greater energies beyond that, and of course there is a greater participation beyond the frontal line.

This sequence of dramatizations is a very natural, even ultimately mechanical, sequence that you can observe and point out in others. This does not mean, of course, that you just go on to love from anger. You could drop back into sorrow, and drop back into fear. However, when emotion becomes anger, you feel that everything has come to an end.

The root of this dramatization of reactive emotion is the feeling of love itself. All these' emotions are a play upon a basic feeling of affection, a love feeling. Having put love on the line, you are afraid, you get sorrowful, and then you are angry. You tend to drop down from anger into sorrow and wanting to hold on again.

"Mutual love conducts the Radiant Power of Life, and it purifies each of us of our accumulations of independent, subjective, and mortal experience"
Intimacy Is the Healing Principle

If you are ever going to establish a firm intimacy with anyone, you must deal with all these emotions and become emotionally clarified. In your egoity, you rarely get in touch with the core of true feeling, or love. Your capability for detachment and lovelessness is exactly what you must deal with. The realization of actual love changes all these egoic complexes.

 

 

 

Views: 200

Reply to This


© 2024   Created by Robert Dakota.   Powered by

Badges  |  Report an Issue  |  Terms of Service