Characteristics Of A Good Person Quotes

Through the reciprocation of energy, always, and every time, we will get exactly what we put out there to others. Like Karma, whatever we do will indefinitely come back to us in some way shape or form. When goodness is given, it is likely to returned. When you support someone, you will be supported. When you Love, you will be Loved. If you give someone your last dollar, someone will help you equally. This is the law of the universe. What selfless characteristics do you portray to benefit your reality? Expand.

Offence is so easily given. And where the 'minority' issue is involved, the rules seem to shift about: most of the time a person who is female/black/disabled/gay wants this not to be their defining characteristic; you are supposed to be blind to it. But then, on other occasions, you are supposed to observe special sensitivity, or show special respect.

Teachers dread nothing so much as unusual characteristics in precocious boys during the initial stages of their adolescence. A certain streak of genius makes an ominous impression on them, for there exists a deep gulf between genius and the teaching profession. Anyone with a touch of genius seems to his teachers a freak from the very first. As far as teachers are concerned, they define young geniuses as those who are bad, disrespectful, smoke at fourteen, fall in love at fifteen, can be found at sixteen hanging out in bars, read forbidden books, write scandalous essays, occasionally stare down a teacher in class, are marked in the attendance book as rebels, and are budding candidates for room-arrest. A schoolmaster will prefer to have a couple of dumbheads in his class than a single genius, and if you regard it objectively, he is of course right. His task is not to produce extravagant intellects but good Latinists, arithmeticians and sober decent folk. The question of who suffers more acutely at the other's hands - the teacher at the boy's, or vice versa - who is more of a tyrant, more of a tormentor, and who profanes parts of the other's soul, student or teacher, is something you cannot examine without remembering your own youth in anger and shame. yet that's not what concerns us here. We have the consolation that among true geniuses the wounds almost always heal. As their personalities develop, they create their art in spite of school. Once dead, and enveloped by the comfortable nimbus of remoteness, they are paraded by the schoolmasters before other generations of students as showpieces and noble examples. Thus the struggle between rule and spirit repeats itself year after year from school to school. The authorities go to infinite pains to nip the few profound or more valuable intellects in the bud. And time and again the ones who are detested by their teachers are frequently punished, the runaways and those expelled, are the ones who afterwards add to society's treasure. But some - and who knows how many? - waste away quiet obstinacy and finally go under.

The night before brain surgery, I thought about death. I searched out my larger values, and I asked myself, if I was going to die, did I want to do it fighting and clawing or in peaceful surrender? What sort of character did I hope to show? Was I content with myself and what I had done with my life so far? I decided that I was essentially a good person, although I could have been better--but at the same time I understood that the cancer didn't care. I asked myself what I believed. I had never prayed a lot. I hoped hard, I wished hard, but I didn't pray. I had developed a certain distrust of organized religion growing up, but I felt I had the capacity to be a spiritual person, and to hold some fervent beliefs. Quite simply, I believed I had a responsibility to be a good person, and that meant fair, honest, hardworking, and honorable. If I did that, if I was good to my family, true to my friends, if I gave back to my community or to some cause, if I wasn't a liar, a cheat, or a thief, then I believed that should be enough. At the end of the day, if there was indeed some Body or presence standing there to judge me, I hoped I would be judged on whether I had lived a true life, not on whether I believed in a certain book, or whether I'd been baptized. If there was indeed a God at the end of my days, I hoped he didn't say, 'But you were never a Christian, so you're going the other way from heaven.' If so, I was going to reply, 'You know what? You're right. Fine.' I believed, too, in the doctors and the medicine and the surgeries--I believed in that. I believed in them. A person like Dr. Einhorn [his oncologist], that's someone to believe in, I thought, a person with the mind to develop an experimental treatment 20 years ago that now could save my life. I believed in the hard currency of his intelligence and his research. Beyond that, I had no idea where to draw the line between spiritual belief and science. But I knew this much: I believed in belief, for its own shining sake. To believe in the face of utter hopelessness, every article of evidence to the contrary, to ignore apparent catastrophe--what other choice was there? We do it every day, I realized. We are so much stronger than we imagine, and belief is one of the most valiant and long-lived human characteristics. To believe, when all along we humans know that nothing can cure the briefness of this life, that there is no remedy for our basic mortality, that is a form of bravery. To continue believing in yourself, believing in the doctors, believing in the treatment, believing in whatever I chose to believe in, that was the most important thing, I decided. It had to be. Without belief, we would be left with nothing but an overwhelming doom, every single day. And it will beat you. I didn't fully see, until the cancer, how we fight every day against the creeping negatives of the world, how we struggle daily against the slow lapping of cynicism. Dispiritedness and disappointment, these were the real perils of life, not some sudden illness or cataclysmic millennium doomsday. I knew now why people fear cancer: because it is a slow and inevitable death, it is the very definition of cynicism and loss of spirit. So, I believed.

I am, by God’s design, a “feeler.” Everything in the world I interpret with my feelings. I am hyper-sensitive to others’ hurtful words. I find it almost impossible to let what others say “just roll off my back.” I personalize too much of what anyone says to me. This is definitely not a good characteristic, but it is how God created me. I have worked very hard through the years to change this, with very little success.

In general I think we need to move away from the premise that being a good person is a fixed, immutable characteristic and shift towards the seeing "being good' as a practice. And it is a practice that we carry out by engaging with our imperfections.

One of the least likable characteristics of “demonic” personalities is their sense of self-importance. They like to give gifts ostentatiously and offer ritual sacrifices; this legitimizes their wealth and makes them feel respectable and esteemed. They like being generous if it will make them look good.

Mr. Roosevelt liked to be liked. He courted and wooed people. He had good taste, an affable disposition, and profound delight in people and human relationships. This was probably the single most revealing of all his characteristics; it was both a strength and a weakness, and is a clue to much. To want to be liked by everybody does not merely mean amiability; it connotes will to power, for the obvious reason that if the process is carried on long enough and enough people like the person, his power eventually becomes infinite and universal. Conversely, any man with great will to power and sense of historical mission, like Roosevelt, not only likes to be liked; he has to be liked, in order to feed his ego. But FDR went beyond this; he wanted to be liked not only by contemporaries on as broad a scale as possible, but by posterity. This, among others, is one reason for his collector's instinct. He collected himself—for history. He wanted to be spoken of well by succeeding generations, which means that he had the typical great man's wish for immortality, and hence—as we shall see in a subsequent chapter—he preserved everything about himself that might be of the slightest interest to historians. His passion for collecting and cataloguing is also a suggestive indication of his optimism. He was quite content to put absolutely everything on the record, without fear of what the world verdict of history would be.

It seemed...that intelligence wasn't as pure and unalterable a characteristic as people believed. Being intelligent was like being good: you could be virtuous in one person's company and yet wicked in another's. You could be intelligent with one person and stupid with another. It was partly to do with confidence...In a way she had been more confident when she had been eighteen and foolish. At twenty-three, with Michael, she felt less confident and therefore less intelligent.

Surreptitiously, reliance on institutional process has replaced dependence on personal good will. The world has lost its humane dimension and reacquired the factual necessity and fatefulness which were characteristic of primitive times. But while the chaos of the barbarian was constantly ordered in the name of mysterious, anthropomorphic gods, today only man’s planning can be given as a reason for the world being as it is. Man has become the plaything of scientists, engineers, and planners.

You know you’re around a safe, adult person by the following characteristics: She is not threatened by your differences. She has standards, values, and convictions she’s worked out for herself. At the same time, she doesn’t have a “right way” and a “wrong way” for everything. She functions at least on the same level of maturity as her same-age peers. She appreciates mystery and the unknown. She encourages me to develop my own values.

It is a mistake to think of the expatriate as someone who abdicates, who withdraws and humbles himself, resigned to his miseries, his outcast state. On a closer look, he turns out to be ambitious, aggressive in his disappointments, his very acrimony qualified by his belligerence. The more we are dispossessed, the more intense our appetites and illusions become. I even discern some relation between misfortune and megalomania. The man who has lost everything preserves as a last resort the hope of glory, or of literary scandal. He consents to abandon everything, except his name. [ . . . ] Let us say a man writes a novel which makes him, overnight, a celebrity. In it he recounts his sufferings. His compatriots in exile envy him: they too have suffered, perhaps more. And the man without a country becomes—or aspires to become—a novelist. The consequence: an accumulation of confusions, an inflation of horrors, of frissons that date. One cannot keep renewing Hell, whose very characteristic is monotony, or the face of exile either. Nothing in literature exasperates a reader so much as The Terrible; in life, it too is tainted with the obvious to rouse our interest. But our author persists; for the time being he buries his novel in a drawer and awaits his hour. The illusion of surprise, of a renown which eludes his grasp but on which he reckons, sustains him; he lives on unreality. Such, however, is the power of this illusion that if, for instance, he works in some factory, it is with the notion of being freed from it one day or another by a fame as sudden as it is inconceivable. * Equally tragic is the case of the poet. Walled up in his own language, he writes for his friends—for ten, for twenty persons at the most. His longing to be read is no less imperious than that of the impoverished novelist. At least he has the advantage over the latter of being able to get his verses published in the little émigré reviews which appear at the cost of almost indecent sacrifices and renunciations. Let us say such a man becomes—transforms himself—into an editor of such a review; to keep his publication alive he risks hunger, abstains from women, buries himself in a windowless room, imposes privations which confound and appall. Tuberculosis and masturbation, that is his fate. No matter how scanty the number of émigrés, they form groups, not to protect their interests but to get up subscriptions, to bleed each other white in order to publish their regrets, their cries, their echoless appeals. One cannot conceive of a more heart rending form of the gratuitous. That they are as good poets as they are bad prose writers is to be accounted for readily enough. Consider the literary production of any "minor" nation which has not been so childish as to make up a past for itself: the abundance of poetry is its most striking characteristic. Prose requires, for its development, a certain rigor, a differentiated social status, and a tradition: it is deliberate, constructed; poetry wells up: it is direct or else totally fabricated; the prerogative of cave men or aesthetes, it flourishes only on the near or far side of civilization, never at the center. Whereas prose demands a premeditated genius and a crystallized language, poetry is perfectly compatible with a barbarous genius and a formless language. To create a literature is to create a prose.

Science and reason have, from the beginning of time, played a secondary and subordinate part in the life of nations; so it will be till the end of time. Nations are built up and moved by another force which sways and dominates them, the origin of which is unknown and inexplicable: that force is the force of an insatiable desire to go on to the end, though at the same time it denies that end. It is the force of the persistent assertion of one's own existence, and a denial of death. It's the spirit of life, as the Scriptures call it, 'the river of living water,' the drying up of which is threatened in the Apocalypse. It's the æsthetic principle, as the philosophers call it, the ethical principle with which they identify it, 'the seeking for God,' as I call it more simply. The object of every national movement, in every people and at every period of its existence is only the seeking for its god, who must be its own god, and the faith in Him as the only true one. God is the synthetic personality of the whole people, taken from its beginning to its end. It has never happened that all, or even many, peoples have had one common god, but each has always had its own. It's a sign of the decay of nations when they begin to have gods in common. When gods begin to be common to several nations the gods are dying and the faith in them, together with the nations themselves. The stronger a people the more individual their God. There never has been a nation without a religion, that is, without an idea of good and evil. Every people has its own conception of good and evil, and its own good and evil. When the same conceptions of good and evil become prevalent in several nations, then these nations are dying, and then the very distinction between good and evil is beginning to disappear. Reason has never had the power to define good and evil, or even to distinguish between good and evil, even approximately; on the contrary, it has always mixed them up in a disgraceful and pitiful way; science has even given the solution by the fist. This is particularly characteristic of the half-truths of science, the most terrible scourge of humanity, unknown till this century, and worse than plague, famine, or war. A half-truth is a despot... such as has never been in the world before. A despot that has its priests and its slaves, a despot to whom all do homage with love and superstition hitherto inconceivable, before which science itself trembles and cringes in a shameful way.

In what resides the most characteristic Virtue of humanity? In good works? Possibly. In the creation of beautiful objects? Perhaps. But some would look in a different direction, and find it in detachment. To all such David Hume must be a great saint in the calendar; for no mortal being was ever more completely divested of the trammels of the personal and the particular, none ever practiced with more consummated success the divine art of impartiality

Hank Green's Secrets of Productivity: 1.) I have convinced myself that if I am not using all of the tools I have in my disposal to do the maximum amount of good [...] then I am less of a good person than I could otherwise could be. [...] 2.) I intentionally put myself in situations where people who I care about and who I respect rely on me to do things, which is very motivating. [...] 3.) I don't get caught up in doing everything perfectly. [...] I just want to try stuff and if it explodes... it exploded! And I learned! 4.) I love giving other people responsibility. I love putting them in difficult situations and saying: "Figure this out. Help me do this." And if they do it wrong or if they do it differently than how I would have done it, I don't get mad as long as they're learning, because there's no way to get good at stuff except to do it and fail and learn. [...] 5.) I follow and cultivate my own curiosity. I think curiosity is one of the top two or three human characteristics. It's something that I really like about myself. [...] I want to understand stuff! I want to understand people! Following my curiosity so frequently leads me to better life decisions and better business decisions but also - just feeling better! You're never going to feel bad about your whole life if you loved people and you were curious. I mean, that's kind of all I want!

Moral obligations verses Legal obligations. Legally, you must abide by the laws of the land or face the consequences of being fined, imprisoned or both. Moral obligations tend to lean more towards a spiritual nature of a person. Some people perform immoral acts because legally there are no consequences. Morals birth in the heart of the individual. Moral characteristics are developed at an early age and continue into adulthood. It's a disgrace to neglect having good moral character.

No amount of awards will give you character.

Popularity, Fame or money does not mean you are a good person, but your heart, behavior, characteristics and action do.

Be a good person. Everything else is secondary.

One last characteristic of the memoir that is important to recognize is one which also applies to essays, and which Georg Lukacs described as "the process of judging." This may seem problematic to some, since...we connect it with 'judgmental,' often used nowadays as a derogatory word. But the kind of judgment necessary to the good personal essay, or to the memoir, is not that nasty tendency to oversimplify and dismiss other people out of hand but rather the willingness to form and express complex opinions, both positive and negative. If the charm of memoir is that we, the readers, see the author struggling to understand her past, then we must also see the author trying out opinions she may later shoot down, only to try out others as she takes a position about the meaning of her story. The memoirist need not necessarily know what she thinks about her subject but she must be trying to find out; she may never arrive at a definitive verdict, but she must be willing to share her intellectual and emotional quest for answers. Without this attempt to make a judgment, the voice lacks interest, the stories, becalmed in the doldrums of neutrality, become neither fiction nor memoir, and the reader loses respect for the writer who claims the privilege of being the hero in her own story without meeting her responsibility to pursue meaning. Self revelation without analysis or understanding becomes merely an embarrassment to both reader and writer.

Find someone with discipline. Look for characteristics of discipline in your friends. They wake up early, can maintain a workout routine or regimen, they’re a self-starter, etc. No one’s perfect but if you see a few of these signs you’ve probably found a disciplined person.

 The greatest characteristic a Christian can exhibit is this completely unveiled openness before God, which allows that person’s life to become a mirror for others. When the Spirit fills us, we are transformed, and by beholding God we become mirrors. You can always tell when someone has been beholding the glory of the Lord, because your inner spirit senses that he mirrors the Lord’s own character. Beware of anything that would spot or tarnish that mirror in you. It is almost always something good that will stain it—something good, but not what is best.

She didn’t want to ascribe characteristics to her that were not truly hers. A good game designer knows that clinging to a few early ideas about a project can cut off the potential for the work. Sadie did not feel that Naomi was altogether a person yet, which was another thing that one could not admit.

If you’re involved in building and managing a company, we’re asking you to think less in terms of being a brilliant product visionary or seeking the personality characteristics of charismatic leadership, and to think more in terms of being an organizational visionary and building the characteristics of a visionary company.

Science, as I pointed out in the previous chapter, is flexible and nondogmatic. It sticks to facts and to reality (which always can change) and to logical thinking (which does not contradict itself and hold two opposite views at the same time). But it also avoids rigid all-or-none and either/or thinking and sees that reality is often two sided and includes contradictory events and characteristics. Thus, in my relations with you, I am not a totally good person or a bad person but a person who sometimes treats you well and sometimes treats you badly. Instead of viewing world events in a rigid, absolute way, science assumes that such events, and especially human affairs, usually follow the laws of probability.

I call these ingredients “fascination badges” because they’re emblematic of what you represent. So how, exactly, are you fascinating? Seven potential areas:   1. Purpose: Your reason for being; your function as a brand.   2. Core beliefs: The code of values and principles that guide you; what you stand for.   3. Heritage: Your reputation and history; the “backstory” of how you came to be.   4. Products: The goods, services, or information you produce.   5. Benefits: The promises of reward for purchasing the product, both tangible and abstract, overt and implied.   6. Actions: How you conduct yourself.   7. Culture: All the characteristics of your identity, including personality, executional style, and mind-set.

Every disciple is a believer, but not every believer is necessarily a disciple. Anything short of discipleship, however, is settling for less than what God really desires for us. Loving God more than anyone or anything else is the very foundation of being a disciple. If you want to live your Christian life to its fullest, then love Jesus more than anyone or anything else. Either you will have harmony with God and friction with people, or you will have harmony with people and friction with God. You become a disciple in the biblical sense only when you are totally and completely committed to Jesus Christ and His Word. As a true disciple, your life won’t only be characterized by practical results and a hunger for Scripture, but you also will have love for others — especially fellow believers. Without all of these characteristics, you can’t really claim to be His disciple. A person who has been with Jesus will boldly share his or her faith. A person who has been with Jesus will be a person of prayer. A person who has been with Jesus will be persecuted. If for you, the Christian life is all about feeling good and having everything go your way, then you won’t like being a disciple. Being a follower of Christ is the most joyful and exciting life there is. But it also can be the most challenging life there is. It’s a life lived out under the command of someone other than yourself. Most prayers are not answered because they are outside the will of God. Once we have discovered God’s will, we can then pray aggressively and confidently for it. We can pray, believing it will happen, because we know it is not something we have dreamed. A forgiven person will be a forgiving person. A true disciple will harbor no grudge toward another. The disciple knows it will hinder his or her prayer life and walk with God. It is far better to sit down for an hour and talk genuinely with one person than to rattle off trite clichés to scores of people. Attending more Bible studies, more prayer meetings, reading more Christian books, and listening to more teaching without an outlet for the truth will cause us to spiritually decay. We need to take what God has given us and use it constructively in the lives of others. You were placed on earth to know God. Everything else is secondary. The more we know God, the more we should want to make Him known to a lost world. Your life belongs to God. You don’t share your time and talents with Him; He shares them with you! He owns you and everything about you. You need to recognize and acknowledge that fact.

Negative personalities literally bring out the worst in us, for they highlight all the things that are wrong with us. Positive personalities bring out the good in us, by highlighting something they can approve of. We bask in the sunlight of their approval, and the feeling is so good that we start trying to develop other traits and characteristics to draw approval and give us that good feeling all over again.

There are plenty of attributes that separate the great leader from the good manager. Both may put their work before family and friends, survive on little sleep, endure a lifetime of red-eye flights. Look more closely and you will find that the great leader possesses an unusual, and essential, characteristic – he will think and operate like an owner, or a person who owns a substantial stake of the business, even if, in a financial or legal sense, he is neither.

Our egos divide the world into positive and negative, good and bad. Most aspects of our shadows, these qualities that we see as “negative,” would in fact be valuable strengths if we made them conscious. Characteristics that look immoral, barbaric, or embarrassing to us are the “negative” side of a valuable energy, a capacity we could make use of. You will never find anything in the unconscious that will not be useful and good when it is made conscious and brought to the right level.

While women suffer from our relative lack of power in the world and often resent it, certain dimensions of this powerlessness may seem abstract and remote. We know, for example, that we rarely get to make the laws or direct the major financial institutions. But Wall Street and the U.S. Congress seem very far away. The power a woman feels in herself to heal and sustain, on the other hand--"the power of love"--is, once again, concrete and very near: It is like a field of force emanating from within herself, a great river flowing outward from her very person. Thus, a complex and contradictory female subjectivity is constructed within the relations of caregiving. Here, as elsewhere, women are affirmed in some way and diminished in others, this within the unity of a single act. The woman who provides a man with largely unreciprocated emotional sustenance accords him status and pays him homage; she agrees to the unspoken proposition that his doings are important enough to deserve substantially more attention than her own. But even as the man's supremacy in the relationship is tacitly assumed by both parties to the transaction, the man reveals himself to his caregiver as vulnerable and insecure. And while she may well be ethically and epistemically disempowered by the care she gives, this caregiving affords her a feeling that a mighty power resides within her being. The situation of those men in the hierarchy of gender who avail themselves of female tenderness is not thereby altered: Their superordinate position is neither abandoned, nor their male privilege relinquished. The vulnerability these men exhibit is not a prelude in any way to their loss of male privilege or to an elevation in the status of women. Similarly, the feeling that one's love is a mighty force for the good in the life of the beloved doesn't make it so, as Milena Jesenka found, to her sorrow. The feeling of out-flowing personal power so characteristic of the caregiving woman is quite different from the having of any actual power in the world. There is no doubt that this sense of personal efficacy provides some compensation for the extra-domestic power women are typically denied: If one cannot be a king oneself, being a confidante of kings may be the next best thing. But just as we make a bad bargain in accepting an occasional Valentine in lieu of the sustained attention we deserve, we are ill advised to settle for a mere feeling of power, however heady and intoxicating it may be, in place of the effective power we have every right to exercise in the world.

Stepan Arkadyevitch had not chosen his political opinions or his views; these political opinions and views had come to him of themselves, just as he did not choose the shapes of his hat and coat, but simply took those that were being worn. And for him, living in a certain society—owing to the need, ordinarily developed at years of discretion, for some degree of mental activity—to have views was just as indispensable as to have a hat. If there was a reason for his preferring liberal to conservative views, which were held also by many of his circle, it arose not from his considering liberalism more rational, but from its being in closer accordance with his manner of life. The liberal party said that in Russia everything is wrong, and certainly Stepan Arkadyevitch had many debts and was decidedly short of money. The liberal party said that marriage is an institution quite out of date, and that it needs reconstruction; and family life certainly afforded Stepan Arkadyevitch little gratification, and forced him into lying and hypocrisy, which was so repulsive to his nature. The liberal party said, or rather allowed it to be understood, that religion is only a curb to keep in check the barbarous classes of the people; and Stepan Arkadyevitch could not get through even a short service without his legs aching from standing up, and could never make out what was the object of all the terrible and high-flown language about another world when life might be so very amusing in this world. And with all this, Stepan Arkadyevitch, who liked a joke, was fond of puzzling a plain man by saying that if he prided himself on his origin, he ought not to stop at Rurik and disown the first founder of his family—the monkey. And so Liberalism had become a habit of Stepan Arkadyevitch's, and he liked his newspaper, as he did his cigar after dinner, for the slight fog it diffused in his brain. He read the leading article, in which it was maintained that it was quite senseless in our day to raise an outcry that radicalism was threatening to swallow up all conservative elements, and that the government ought to take measures to crush the revolutionary hydra; that, on the contrary, "in our opinion the danger lies not in that fantastic revolutionary hydra, but in the obstinacy of traditionalism clogging progress," etc., etc. He read another article, too, a financial one, which alluded to Bentham and Mill, and dropped some innuendoes reflecting on the ministry. With his characteristic quickwittedness he caught the drift of each innuendo, divined whence it came, at whom and on what ground it was aimed, and that afforded him, as it always did, a certain satisfaction. But today that satisfaction was embittered by Matrona Philimonovna's advice and the unsatisfactory state of the household. He read, too, that Count Beist was rumored to have left for Wiesbaden, and that one need have no more gray hair, and of the sale of a light carriage, and of a young person seeking a situation; but these items of information did not give him, as usual, a quiet, ironical gratification. Having finished the paper, a second cup of coffee and a roll and butter, he got up, shaking the crumbs of the roll off his waistcoat; and, squaring his broad chest, he smiled joyously: not because there was anything particularly agreeable in his mind—the joyous smile was evoked by a good digestion.

Humans never outgrow their need to connect with others, nor should they, but mature, truly individual people are not controlled by these needs. Becoming such a separate being takes the whole of a childhood, which in our times stretches to at least the end of the teenage years and perhaps beyond. We need to release a child from preoccupation with attachment so he can pursue the natural agenda of independent maturation. The secret to doing so is to make sure that the child does not need to work to get his needs met for contact and closeness, to find his bearings, to orient. Children need to have their attachment needs satiated; only then can a shift of energy occur toward individuation, the process of becoming a truly individual person. Only then is the child freed to venture forward, to grow emotionally. Attachment hunger is very much like physical hunger. The need for food never goes away, just as the child's need for attachment never ends. As parents we free the child from the pursuit of physical nurturance. We assume responsibility for feeding the child as well as providing a sense of security about the provision. No matter how much food a child has at the moment, if there is no sense of confidence in the supply, getting food will continue to be the top priority. A child is not free to proceed with his learning and his life until the food issues are taken care of, and we parents do that as a matter of course. Our duty ought to be equally transparent to us in satisfying the child's attachment hunger. In his book On Becoming a Person, the psychotherapist Carl Rogers describes a warm, caring attitude for which he adopted the phrase unconditional positive regard because, he said, “It has no conditions of worth attached to it.” This is a caring, wrote Rogers, “which is not possessive, which demands no personal gratification. It is an atmosphere which simply demonstrates I care; not I care for you if you behave thus and so.” Rogers was summing up the qualities of a good therapist in relation to her/his clients. Substitute parent for therapist and child for client, and we have an eloquent description of what is needed in a parent-child relationship. Unconditional parental love is the indispensable nutrient for the child's healthy emotional growth. The first task is to create space in the child's heart for the certainty that she is precisely the person the parents want and love. She does not have to do anything or be any different to earn that love — in fact, she cannot do anything, since that love cannot be won or lost. It is not conditional. It is just there, regardless of which side the child is acting from — “good” or “bad.” The child can be ornery, unpleasant, whiny, uncooperative, and plain rude, and the parent still lets her feel loved. Ways have to be found to convey the unacceptability of certain behaviors without making the child herself feel unaccepted. She has to be able to bring her unrest, her least likable characteristics to the parent and still receive the parent's absolutely satisfying, security-inducing unconditional love. A child needs to experience enough security, enough unconditional love, for the required shift of energy to occur. It's as if the brain says, “Thank you very much, that is what we needed, and now we can get on with the real task of development, with becoming a separate being. I don't have to keep hunting for fuel; my tank has been refilled, so now I can get on the road again.” Nothing could be more important in the developmental scheme of things.

You must also know clearly what you want out of the situation, and be prepared to clearly articulate your desire. It’s a good idea to tell the person you are confronting exactly what you would like them to do instead of what they have done or currently are doing. You might think, “if they loved me, they would know what to do.” That’s the voice of resentment. Assume ignorance before malevolence. No one has a direct pipeline to your wants and needs—not even you. If you try to determine exactly what you want, you might find that it is more difficult than you think. The person oppressing you is likely no wiser than you, especially about you. Tell them directly what would be preferable, instead, after you have sorted it out. Make your request as small and reasonable as possible—but ensure that its fulfillment would satisfy you. In that manner, you come to the discussion with a solution, instead of just a problem. Agreeable, compassionate, empathic, conflict-averse people (all those traits group together) let people walk on them, and they get bitter. They sacrifice themselves for others, sometimes excessively, and cannot comprehend why that is not reciprocated. Agreeable people are compliant, and this robs them of their independence. The danger associated with this can be amplified by high trait neuroticism. Agreeable people will go along with whoever makes a suggestion, instead of insisting, at least sometimes, on their own way. So, they lose their way, and become indecisive and too easily swayed. If they are, in addition, easily frightened and hurt, they have even less reason to strike out on their own, as doing so exposes them to threat and danger (at least in the short term). That’s the pathway to dependent personality disorder, technically speaking.198 It might be regarded as the polar opposite of antisocial personality disorder, the set of traits characteristic of delinquency in childhood and adolescence and criminality in adulthood. It would be lovely if the opposite of a criminal was a saint—but it’s not the case. The opposite of a criminal is an Oedipal mother, which is its own type of criminal.

For purposes of child-rearing, the crowning achievement of a working attachment is to instill in a child the desire to be good. When we say of a particular child that he is “good,” we think we are describing an innate characteristic of the child. What we don't see is that it's the child's attachment to the adult that fosters that goodness. In this way, we are blind to the power of attachment. The danger in believing that the child's innate personality causes his desire to be good is that we will blame and shame him — we will see him as “bad” — if we find that desire lacking. The impulse to be good arises less from a child's character than from the nature of a child's relationships. If a child is “bad,” it's the relationship we need to correct, not the child.

My Webster’s dictionary defines spirited as: lively, creative, keen, eager, full of energy and courage, and having a strong assertive personality. Spirited—it feels good, sounds good, communicates the exciting potential of these children, and yet honestly captures the challenge faced by their parents. When we choose to see our children as spirited, we give them and ourselves hope. It pulls our focus to their strengths rather than their weaknesses, not as another label but as a tool for understanding. The Characteristics Each spirited child is unique, yet there exists distinct characteristics in which more is very apparent. Not all spirited children will possess all of the following five characteristics, but each will exhibit enough of them to make her stand out in the crowd.

What is most characteristically human is not guaranteed to us by our species or by our culture but given only in potential. A spiritual master once expressed it this way: A person must work to become human. What is most distinctly human in us is something more than the role we play in society and more than the conditioning, whether for good or bad, of our culture. It is our essential Self, which is our point of contact with Infinite Spirit. This Spirit is not to be understood as a metaphysical assertion requiring belief, but as something we can experience for ourselves. What if you, as a human being, represent the final result of a process in which this Spirit has evolved better and better reflectors of itself? If the human being is the most evolved carrier of the Creative Spirit – possessing conscious love, will, and creativity – then our humanity is the degree to which this physical and spiritual vehicle, and particularly our nervous system, can reflect or manifest Spirit. That which is most sacred in us, that which is deeper than our individual personality, is our connection to this Spirit, this Creative Power. Whereas conventional religious belief has the tendency to anthropomorphize God/Spirit, this process consists of the human being becoming qualified by the attributes of God. It could be called the „sanctification“ of the human being. Our human nature is realized through the understanding and awareness that the essential human Self is a reflection of Spirit. To become truly human is to attain a tangible awareness of Spirit, to realize oneself as a reflection of Spirit, or God. The education of the Soul is the Great Work. The beginning of this Work consists of awakening a transcending awareness...

There is one indisputable way to identify a cult, one characteristic they all share. If is not a belief in alien spacecraft or a plentiful supply of Flavor Aid. It is the notion that anyone who does not agree with the group's beliefs or choices, who expresses concerns, who simply dare to ask questions, is deemed "unsafe". Every good thing about that person must be subsumed by the fact that they disagree with me, so I can boil down their character into something vilifiable. For mind control to work, there has to be heroes and villains. It has to be us versus them. In a cult, it isn't good enough for you to say, "I love you, but I disagree with you." You must affirm my choices and beliefs. Only then can you be considered "safe". In a cult, safety means agreement. The irony of course, is that while you are not allowed to have your own opinions about my beliefs, I am allowed to have an opinion about yours.

She was trying hard not to romanticize her daughter’s personality. She didn’t want to ascribe characteristics to her that were not truly hers. A good game designer knows that clinging to a few early ideas about a project can cut off the potential for the work. Sadie did not feel that Naomi was altogether a person yet, which was another thing that one could not admit. So many of the mothers she knew said that their children were exactly themselves from the moment they appeared in the world. But Sadie disagreed. What person was a person without language? Tastes? Preferences? Experiences? And on the other side of childhood, what grown-up wanted to believe that they had emerged from their parents fully formed? Sadie knew that she herself had not become a person until recently. It was unreasonable to expect a child to emerge whole cloth. Naomi was a pencil-sketch of a person who, at some point, would be a fully 3D character.

What’s most original about our city is how difficult it can be to die there. Difficulty, though, isn’t exactly right, and it would be better to talk about discomfort. It’s never pleasant to be sick, but there are cities and countries that support you in your sickness, where, in some fashion, you can let yourself go. A sick person needs softness, he likes to lean on something, that’s only natural. But in Oran, the excesses of the climate, the rate of doing business, the facile ornament, the quickness of dusk and the characteristic pleasures—these all demand good health. A patient finds himself quite alone. Think of the person who is dying, caught in the trap of a hundred walls sizzling in the heat, while at the same minute, a whole population is on the telephone or in cafés, talking about bank drafts, bills of lading, or discounts. You understand what might be uncomfortable about death, even modern death, when it arises in such a dry place.

Now I will tell you what education is according to my reasoning. An educated person is one whose senses are refined. We are born as brutes, we remain and die as the same if we do not become polished. But all senses do not take polish. Some are too coarse to take it. The main base of education is one’s “self-respect”. Any one lacking self-respect cannot be educated. The main bases of self-respect is the willingness to learn, to do only the things that are good and right, to believe only in the things that can be proved, to possess appreciation and self control. Now, if you lack willingness to learn, you will remain as a brute and if you do things that are not good and right, you will be a low person, and if you believe in things that cannot be proved, any feeble minded person can lead you, and if you lack appreciation, it takes away the incentive for good doing and if you lack self control you will never know the limit. So all those lacking these characteristics in their make-up are not educated.

Tom Demarco, a principal of the Atlantic Systems Guild team of consultants ... and his colleague Timothy Lister devised a study called the Coding War Games. The purpose of the games was to identify the characteristics of the best and worst computer programmers; more than six hundred developers from ninety-two different companies participated. Each designed, coded, and tested a program, working in his normal office space during business hours. Each participant was also assigned a partner from the same company. The partners worked separately, however, without any communication, a feature of the games that turned out to be critical. When the results came in, they revealed an enormous performance gap. The best outperformed the worst by a 10:1 ratio. The top programmers were also about 2.5 times better than the median. When DeMarco and Lister tried to figure out what accounted for this astonishing range, the factors that you'd think would matter — such as years of experience, salary, even the time spent completing the work — had little correlation to outcome. Programmers with 10 years' experience did no better than those with two years. The half who performed above the median earned less than 10 percent more than the half below — even though they were almost twice as good. The programmers who turned in "zero-defect" work took slightly less, not more, time to complete the exercise than those who made mistakes. It was a mystery with one intriguing clue: programmers from the same companies performed at more or less the same level, even though they hadn't worked together. That's because top performers overwhelmingly worked for companies that gave their workers the most privacy, personal space, control over their physical environments, and freedom from interruption. Sixty-two percent of the best performers said that their workspace was acceptably private, compared to only 19 percent of the worst performers; 76 percent of the worst performers but only 38 percent of the top performers said that people often interrupted them needlessly.

Not everybody believes in the possibility of political persuasion. Many people see political positions as expressions of innate personality traits - hard-wired into us either by our genes or by an irreversible process of socialization. Why should we waste time trying to be persuasive when people never really change their minds? This is a reasonable concern. The idea that persuasion doesn't work comes from a bad application of good science. A substantial body of research suggests that our political beliefs are shaped by more or less fixed psychological characteristics ... Research like this, however, tells us about the difficulty of conversion, not persuasion. These are not the same things. We too often misrepresent the task of political persuasion by thinking of the most strident partisan we have ever encountered and imagining what it would take to turn that person into an equally strident partisan for the other side. This sort of Paul-on-the-Road-to-Damascus conversion rarely happens in politics. Most people don't change their fundamental values, and if we expect them to, we are going to be very disappointed. But we usually don't need people to change their fundamental values in order to convince them to adopt a particular position. The fact that people have fundamental values makes it possible to persuade them by appealing to those values. But we have to find values that we really share.

329 Leisure and Idleness. - There is an Indian savagery, a savagery peculiar to the Indian blood, in the manner in which the Americans strive after gold: and the breathless hurry of their work- the characteristic vice of the New World-already begins to infect old Europe, and makes it savage also, spreading over it a strange lack of intellectuality. One is now ashamed of repose: even long reflection almost causes remorse of conscience. Thinking is done with a stop-watch, as dining is done with the eyes fixed on the financial newspaper; we live like men who are continually " afraid of letting opportunities slip." " Better do anything whatever, than nothing "-this principle also is a noose with which all culture and all higher taste may be strangled. And just as all form obviously disappears in this hurry of workers, so the sense for form itself, the ear and the eye for the melody of movement, also disappear. The proof of this is the clumsy perspicuity which is now everywhere demanded in all positions where a person would like to be sincere with his fellows, in intercourse with friends, women, relatives, children, teachers, pupils, leaders and princes,-one has no longer either time or energy for ceremonies, for roundabout courtesies, for any esprit in conversation, or for any otium whatever. For life in the hunt for gain continually compels a person to consume his intellect, even to exhaustion, in constant dissimulation, overreaching, or forestalling: the real virtue nowadays is to do something in a shorter time than another person. And so there are only rare hours of sincere intercourse permitted: in them, however, people are tired, and would not only like " to let themselves go," but to stretch their legs out wide in awkward style. The way people write their letters nowadays is quite in keeping with the age; their style and spirit will always be the true " sign of the times." If there be still enjoyment in society and in art, it is enjoyment such as over-worked slaves provide for themselves. Oh, this moderation in "joy" of our cultured and uncultured classes! Oh, this increasing suspiciousness of all enjoyment! Work is winning over more and more the good conscience to its side: the desire for enjoyment already calls itself " need of recreation," and even begins to be ashamed of itself. " One owes it to one's health," people say, when they are caught at a picnic. Indeed, it might soon go so far that one could not yield to the desire for the vita contemplativa (that is to say, excursions with thoughts and friends), without self-contempt and a bad conscience.-Well! Formerly it was the very reverse: it was "action" that suffered from a bad conscience. A man of good family concealed his work when need compelled him to labour. The slave laboured under the weight of the feeling that he did something contemptible :- the "doing" itself was something contemptible. "Only in otium and bellum is there nobility and honour:" so rang the voice of ancient prejudice !

Mom,” Vaughn said. “I’m sure Sidney doesn’t want to be interrogated about her personal life.” Deep down, Sidney knew that Vaughn—who’d obviously deduced that she’d been burned in the past—was only trying to be polite. But that was the problem, she didn’t want him to be polite, as if she needed to be shielded from such questions. That wasn’t any better than the damn “Poor Sidney” head-tilt. “It’s okay, I don’t mind answering.” She turned to Kathleen. “I was seeing someone in New York, but that relationship ended shortly before I moved to Chicago.” “So now that you’re single again, what kind of man are you looking for? Vaughn?” Kathleen pointed. “Could you pass the creamer?” He did so, then turned to look once again at Sidney. His lips curved at the corners, the barest hint of a smile. He was daring her, she knew, waiting for her to back away from his mother’s questions. She never had been very good at resisting his dares. “Actually, I have a list of things I’m looking for.” Sidney took a sip of her coffee. Vaughn raised an eyebrow. “You have a list?” “Yep.” “Of course you do.” Isabelle looked over, surprised. “You never told me about this.” “What kind of list?” Kathleen asked interestedly. “It’s a test, really,” Sidney said. “A list of characteristics that indicate whether a man is ready for a serious relationship. It helps weed out the commitment-phobic guys, the womanizers, and any other bad apples, so a woman can focus on the candidates with more long-term potential.” Vaughn rolled his eyes. “And now I’ve heard it all.” “Where did you find this list?” Simon asked. “Is this something all women know about?” “Why? Worried you won’t pass muster?” Isabelle winked at him. “I did some research,” Sidney said. “Pulled it together after reading several articles online.” “Lists, tests, research, online dating, speed dating—I can’t keep up with all these things you kids are doing,” Adam said, from the head of the table. “Whatever happened to the days when you’d see a girl at a restaurant or a coffee shop and just walk over and say hello?” Vaughn turned to Sidney, his smile devilish. “Yes, whatever happened to those days, Sidney?” She threw him a look. Don’t be cute. “You know what they say—it’s a jungle out there. Nowadays a woman has to make quick decisions about whether a man is up to par.” She shook her head mock reluctantly. “Sadly, some guys just won’t make the cut.” “But all it takes is one,” Isabelle said, with a loving smile at her fiancé. Simon slid his hand across the table, covering hers affectionately. “The right one.” Until he nails his personal trainer. Sidney took another sip of her coffee, holding back the cynical comment. She didn’t want to spoil Isabelle and Simon’s idyllic all-you-need-is-love glow. Vaughn cocked his head, looking at the happy couple. “Aw, aren’t you two just so . . . cheesy.” Kathleen shushed him. “Don’t tease your brother.” “What? Any moment, I’m expecting birds and little woodland animals to come in here and start singing songs about true love, they’re so adorable.” Sidney laughed out loud. Quickly, she bit her lip to cover.

When studies using mental ability test scores from children are considered, the heritability of mental ability is typically found to be about .40, and the effect of the common or shared environment is found to be almost as strong, about .35. In contrast, when studies using mental ability test scores from adults (or older adolescents) are considered, estimates of the heritability of mental ability are much higher, typically about .65, whereas estimates of common or shared environment effects are much lower, probably under .20 (see review by Haworth et al., 2010). These findings indicate that differences among children in their levels of mental ability are attributable almost as much to their common environment—that is, to features of their family or household circumstances—as to their genetic inheritances. However, the findings also suggest that as children grow up, the differences among them in mental ability become less strongly related to the features of their common environments, and more strongly related to their genetic inheritances. In other words, the effect on one's mental ability of the family or household in which one is reared tends to become less important as one grows up, so that by adulthood one's level of mental ability is heavily dependent on one's genetic characteristics. It is as if one's level of mental ability—relative to that of other persons of the same age—can be raised (or lowered) during childhood by a particularly good (or poor) home environment, but then gradually returns to the level that one's genes tend to produce.

Guénon and Evola, consistently with most other modern spiritual figures, identified the age we are living in now as the final age, or Kali Yuga, as it is called in both Hinduism and Buddhism. In the ancient Scandinavian religion, the equivalent age was the Wolf Age. Lest this seems like just some metaphysical mumbo-jumbo, let me quote a few examples from the Hindu scriptures that describe the characteristics of Kali Yuga: In Kali Yuga, wealth alone will be considered the sign of a man’s good birth, proper behavior, and fine qualities. And law and justice will be applied only on the basis of one’s power. Men and women will live together merely because of superficial attraction, and success in business will depend on deceit. Womanliness and manliness will be judged according to one’s expertise in sex. A person’s propriety will be seriously questioned if he does not earn a good living. And one who is very clever at juggling words will be considered a learned scholar. He who can maintain a family will be regarded as an expert man, and the principles of religion will be observed only for the sake of reputation. Cities will be dominated by thieves, the Vedas will be contaminated by speculative interpretations of atheists, political leaders will virtually consume the citizens, and the so-called priests and intellectuals will be devotees of their bellies and genitals. When irreligion becomes prominent in the family, the women of the family become corrupt, and from the degradation of womanhood comes unwanted population. These are just a few of many such examples. Whatever one thinks of Hinduism as a religion, this description certainly seems uncannily accurate in our present world.

To speak of a communication failure implies a breakdown of some sort. Yet this does not accurately portray what occurs. In truth, communication difficulties arise not from breakdown but from the characteristics of the system itself. Despite promising beginnings in our intimate relationships, we tend over time to evolve a system of communication that suppresses rather than reveals information. Life is complicated, and confirming or disconfirming the well-being of a relationship takes effort. Once we are comfortably coupled, the intense, energy-consuming monitoring of courtship days is replaced by a simpler, more efficient method. Unable to witness our partners’ every activity or verify every nuance of meaning, we evolve a communication system based on trust. We gradually cease our attentive probing, relying instead on familiar cues and signals to stand as testament to the strength of the bond: the words “I love you,” holidays with the family, good sex, special times with shared friends, the routine exchange, “How was your day?” We take these signals as representative of the relationship and turn our monitoring energies elsewhere. ... Not only do the initiator’s negative signals tend to become incorporated into the existing routine, but, paradoxically, the initiator actively contributes to the impression that life goes on as usual. Even as they express their unhappiness, initiators work at emphasizing and maintaining the routine aspects of life with the other person, simultaneously giving signals that all is well. Unwilling to leave the relationship yet, they need to privately explore and evaluate the situation. The initiator thus contrives an appearance of participation,7 creating a protective cover that allows them to “return” if their alternative resources do not work out. Our ability to do this—to perform a role we are no longer enthusiastically committed to—is one of our acquired talents. In all our encounters, we present ourselves to others in much the same way as actors do, tailoring our performance to the role we are assigned in a particular setting.8 Thus, communication is always distorted. We only give up fragments of what really occurs within us during that specific moment of communication.9 Such fragments are always selected and arranged so that there is seldom a faithful presentation of our inner reality. It is transformed, reduced, redirected, recomposed.10 Once we get the role perfected, we are able to play it whether we are in the mood to go on stage or not, simply by reproducing the signals. What is true of all our encounters is, of course, true of intimate relationships. The nature of the intimate bond is especially hard to confirm or disconfirm.11 The signals produced by each partner, while acting out the partner role, tend to be interpreted by the other as the relationship.12 Because the costs of constantly checking out what the other person is feeling and doing are high, each partner is in a position to be duped and misled by the other.13 Thus, the initiator is able to keep up appearances that all is well by falsifying, tailoring, and manipulating signals to that effect. The normal routine can be used to attest to the presence of something that is not there. For example, initiators can continue the habit of saying, “I love you,” though the passion is gone. They can say, “I love you” and cover the fact that they feel disappointment or anger, or that they feel nothing at all. Or, they can say, “I love you” and mean, “I like you,” or, “We have been through a lot together,” or even “Today was a good day.

Korie: Phil and Willie are so much alike. We went to a marriage seminar at our church one time, and Phil and Kay and Jase and Missy were there as well. Each of the couples took a personality test to see if their personalities were compatible. We all laughed because Phil and Willie scored high in the characteristics for having a dominant personality. They were almost identical in a lot of areas, but somewhat different in that Willie was high in the social category as well. I think Willie got that part of his personality from his mother. It’s funny because people look at the Robertsons and think Jase and Phil are just alike, and they are certainly similar in their love for ducks. But when we took the personality test, we saw that Jase’s personality is much more like his mother’s. So I guess it makes sense that Phil and Jase get along so well in the duck blind. They made a good team, just like Phil and Kay do at home. Kay has always said that Willie is a lot like Phil and even calls him “Phil Jr.” at times. While I wouldn’t go that far, I definitely saw the similarities. They both have strong, charismatic personalities. They are both big-picture guys with big ideas and deep beliefs. Whatever either of them is going in life, he does it all the way, and they are both very opinionated, which can sometimes be a challenge. Phil and Willie haven’t always been as close as they are now. As they grew, they recognized the attributes they have in common and learned to value one another’s differences and strengths. Willie says it couldn’t have happened until after he was thirty, though. He needed to grow up and mature, and Phil has gotten more relaxed as he’s gotten older. Willie loves to hunt with his dad and brothers, but there have been times when he’s had a hard time sitting in Phil’s blind. You can only have one leader in the duck blind, only one man who lines up the men and yells, “Cut ‘em!” when it’s time to shoot. Willie and Phil have both always been leaders, whether it’s in the blind or in business.

There is no such thing as a good influence, Mr Gray. All influence is immoral — immoral from the scientific point of view.' 'Why?' 'Because to influence a person is to give him one's own soul. He does not think his natural thoughts, or burn with his natural passions. His virtues are not real to him. His sins, if there are such things as sins, are borrowed. He becomes an echo of some one else's music, an actor of a part that has not been written for him. The aim of life is self-development. To realize one's nature perfectly — that is what each of us is here for. People are afraid of themselves, nowadays. They have forgotten the highest of all duties, the duty that one owes to one's self. Of course they are charitable. They feed the hungry, and clothe the beggar. But their own souls starve, and are naked. Courage has gone out of our race. Perhaps we never really had it. The terror of society, which is the basis of morals, the terror of God, which is the secret of religion — these are the two things that govern us. And yet —' 'Just turn your head a little more to the right, Dorian, like a good boy,' said the painter, deep in his work, and conscious only that a look had come into the lad's face that he had never seen there before. 'And yet,' continued Lord Henry, in his low, musical voice, and with that graceful wave of the hand that always was so characteristic of him, and that he had even in his Eton days, 'I believe that if one man were to live out his life fully and completely, were to give form to every feeling, expression to every thought, reality to every dream — I believe that the world would gain such a fresh impulse of joy that we would forget all the maladies of mediævalism, and return to the Hellenic ideal — to something finer, richer, than the Hellenic ideal, it may be. But the bravest man amongst us is afraid of himself. The mutilation of the savage has its tragic survival in the self-denial that mars our lives. We are punished for our refusals. Every impulse that we strive to strangle broods in the mind, and poisons us. The body sins once, and has done with its sin, for action is a mode of purification. Nothing remains then but the recollection of a pleasure, or the luxury of a regret. The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself, with desire for what its monstrous laws have made monstrous and unlawful. It has been said that the great events of the world take place in the brain. It is in the brain, and the brain only, that the great sins of the world take place also. You, Mr Gray, you yourself, with your rose-red youth and your rose-white boyhood, you have had passions that have made you afraid, thoughts that have filled you with terror, day-dreams and sleeping dreams whose mere memory might stain your cheek with shame—

Although I am still far from this kind of interior understanding of myself, with profound respect for its significance I have sought to preserve my individuality―worshipped the unknown God. With a premature anxiety I have tried to avoid coming in close contact with those things whose force of attraction might be too powerful for me. I have sought to appropriate much from them, studied their distinctive characteristics and meaning in human life, but at the same time guarded against coming, like the moth, too close to the flame. I have had little to win or to lose in association with the ordinary run of men, partly because what they do―so-called practical life―does not interest me much, partly because their coldness and indifference to the spiritual and deeper currents in man alienate me even more from them. With few exceptions my companions have had no special influence upon me. A life that has not arrived at clarity about itself must necessarily exhibit an uneven side-surface; confronted by certain facts [*Facta*] and their apparent disharmony, they simply halted there, for, as I see it, they did not have sufficient interest to seek a resolution in a higher harmony or to recognize the necessity of it. Their opinion of me was always one-sided, and I have vacillated between putting too much or too little weight on what they said. I have now withdrawn from their influence and the potential variations of my life's compass resulting from it. Thus I am again standing at the point where I must begin again in another way. I shall now calmly attempt to look at myself and begin to initiate inner action; for only thus will I be able, like a child calling itself "I" in its first consciously undertaken act, be able to call myself "I" in a profounder sense. But that takes stamina, and it is not possible to harvest immediately what one has sown. I will remember that philosopher's method of having his disciples keep silent for three years; then I dare say it will come. Just as one does not begin a feast at sunrise but at sundown, just so in the spiritual world one must first work forward for some time before the sun really shines for us and rises in all its glory; for although it is true as it says that God lets his sun shine upon the good and the evil and lets the rain fall on the just and the unjust, it is not so in the spiritual world. So let the die be cast―I am crossing the Rubicon! No doubt this road takes me into battle, but I will not renounce it. I will not lament the past―why lament? I will work energetically and not waste time in regrets, like the person stuck in a bog and first calculating how far he has sunk without recognizing that during the time he spends on that he is sinking still deeper. I will hurry along the path I have found and shout to everyone I meet: Do not look back as Lot's wife did, but remember that we are struggling up a hill." ―from_Journals_, (The Search for Personal Meaning)

On the contrary the depth and profound feeling of the spirit presupposes that the soul has worked its way through its feelings and powers and the whole of its inner life, i.e. that it has overcome much, suffered grief, endured anguish and pain of soul, and yet in this disunion has preserved its integrity and withdrawn out of it into itself. In the myth of Hercules the Greeks have presented us with a hero who after many labours was placed amongst the gods and enjoyed blissful peace there. But what Hercules achieved was only something outside him, the bliss given him as a reward was only peaceful repose. The ancient prophecy that he would put an end to the reign of Zeus, he did not fulfill, supreme hero of the Greeks though he was. The end of that rule only began when man conquered not dragons outside him or Lernaean hydras, but the dragons and hydras of his own heart, the inner obstinacy and inflexibility of his own self. Only in this way does natural serenity become that higher serenity of the spirit which completely traverses the negative moment of disunion and by this labour has won infinite satisfaction. The, feeling of cheerfulness and happiness must be transfigured and purified into bliss. For good fortune and happiness still involve an accidental and natural correspondence between the individual and his external circumstances; but in bliss the good fortune still attendant on a man’s existence as he is in nature falls away and the whole thing is transferred into the inner life of the spirit. Bliss is an acquired satisfaction and justified only on that account; it is a serenity in victory, the soul’s feeling when it has expunged from itself everything sensuous and finite and therefore has cast aside the care that always lies in wait for us. The soul is blissful when, after experiencing conflict and agony, it has triumphed over its sufferings. (α) If we now ask what can be strictly ideal in this subject-matter, the answer is: the reconciliation of the individual heart with God who in his appearance as man has traversed this way of sorrows. The substance of spiritual depth of feeling is religion alone, the peace of the individual who has a sense of himself but who finds true satisfaction only when, self-collected, his mundane heart is broken so that he is raised above his mere natural existence and its finitude, and in this elevation has won a universal depth of feeling, a spiritual depth and oneness in and with God. The soul wills itself, but it wills itself in something other than what it is in its individuality and therefore it gives itself up in face of God in order to find and enjoy itself in him. This is characteristic of love, spiritual depth in its truth, that religious love without desire which gives to the human spirit reconciliation, peace, and bliss. It is not the pleasure and joy of actual love as we know it in ordinary life, but a love without passion, indeed without physical inclination but with only an inclination of soul. Looked at physically, this is a love which is death, a death to the world, so that there hovers there as something past the actual relationship of one person to another; as a real mundane bond and connection this relationship has not come essentially to its perfection; for, on the contrary, it bears in itself the deficiency of time and the finite, and therefore it leads on to that elevation into a beyond which remains a consciousness and enjoyment of love devoid of longing and desire.

Daniel’s early life demonstrates that there is more to being young than making mistakes. No characteristic wins the hearts of adults more quickly than wisdom in the words and actions of a young person. Daniel and his friends had been taken from their homes in Judah and exiled. Their futures were in doubt, but they all had personal traits that qualified them for jobs as servants in the king’s palace. They took advantage of the opportunity without letting the opportunity take advantage of them. • Our first hint of Daniel’s greatness comes in his quiet refusal to give up his convictions. He had applied God’s will to his own life, and he resisted changing the good habits he had formed. Both his physical and spiritual diets were an important part of his relationship with God. He ate carefully and lived prayerfully. One of the benefits of being in training for royal service was eating food from the king’s table. Daniel tactfully chose a simpler menu that wouldn’t compromise his observance of God’s law. • While Daniel carefully limited his food options, he generously indulged in prayer. He was able to communicate with God because he made it a habit. He put into practice his convictions, even when that meant being thrown into a den of hungry lions. His life proved he made the right choice. • Do you hold so strongly to your faith in God that no matter what happens you will do what God says? Such conviction keeps you a step ahead of temptation; such conviction gives you wisdom and stability in changing circumstances. Prayerfully live out your convictions in everyday life and trust God for the results.

became a useful thing for him to do. Helping others is certainly admirable, but you can also take on too many problems, internalize them, and become depressed yourself. In relationships, the conflict avoider is at a high risk of becoming involved with a needy person. He thinks that because he is needed he is important to the other person. He is also at a high risk of being used. He fears rejection and will do anything to keep conflict out of his relationships. He pretends there are no problems and believes it is his responsibility to take care of them when they do occur. The greatest problem for this silent son is his own internal conflict. He is not about to acknowledge it and consistently tells himself he is not angry. Nothing is resolved. He tries to pretend his conflict does not exist by preoccupying himself with everyone else’s problems, but it doesn’t work. In the end, the conflict avoider is avoiding himself. His own problems are his greatest fear. The positive and negative personality characteristics of the silent son conflict avoider are: Positive He is willing to help others. He is good in a crisis. He is a good negotiator. He is a problem solver. He is persistent. He is sensitive to others. He thinks of alternatives. He is a good communicator. Negative He has an unrealistic view of arguments. He is constantly placating others. He feels powerless. He suffers from depression. He is in denial. He takes on too many problems. He is seldom happy. He is easily intimidated. He lacks the ability to receive support from others. He is used in relationships. Transitions Needed Recognize and focus on your own problems. Quit taking on the problems of others. Learn to accept positive attention. Learn the difference between helping someone and feeling responsible for their problems and solutions. Be willing to receive help from others.

The addition of new neurons to handle new operations is only a part of the process of encephalization. The other parts are the gradual modification of ancient reflex patterns, the diversion of neural flow from the older channels, and the creation of new chains of command in the ordering of specific sequences of motor activity. The net result has been that the higher cognitive centers have become increasingly influential, while the older time-worn patterns have become less authoritative, more variable. Conscious mental states have begun to condition the system just as much as the system conditions these higher states of consciousness. But new powers and new subtleties do not appear without new complications, new conflicts. In bodywork we continually feel the muscular results of the intrusion of newer mental faculties into older, more stable response patterns. A good deal of the work is simply reminding minds that they are supported by bodies, bodies that suffer continual contortions under the pressure of compelling ideas and emotions as much as from weight and physical stresses, bodies that can and will in turn choke off consciousness if consciousness does not regard them with sufficient attention and respect. It is possible—in fact it is common—for the mass of new possibilities to wreak havoc with older processes that are both simpler and more vital to our physical health. Thus with our newer powers we are free to nurture ulcers as well as new skills, free to inspire paranoia and schizophrenia as well as rapture, free to become lost in our own labyrinths as well as explore new pathways. We have unleashed the human imagination, to discover that there is no internal force as potent to do us either good or ill. With the addition of these new cortical faculties, the quality of our muscular responses—from digestion, to posture, to locomotion, to expressive gesture, to chronic constriction—is dependent not only upon stimulations from the environment, and not only upon patterns characteristic of the species, but also upon individual experiences, memories, unique associations, personal emotions, expectations, apprehensions, the entire legion of personal psychological states.

He just isn’t “in” the relationship. It is ironic that like many silent sons he feels something is missing in his relationships, which is usually what his partner is saying too. It is not uncommon for the achiever to be looking for more and more in a relationship, which often means he looks outside his current one. These are the positive and negative characteristics of the achiever: Positive He is competent. He is good in a crisis. He is reliable. He meets goals. He takes charge well. He is successful. He is a survivor. He motivates self and others. Negative He is overly competitive. He is a perfectionist. He has difficulty relaxing. He fails to take care of himself. He can’t express feelings. He needs external validation. He is a workaholic. He is never wrong. He marries a dependent person. He exhibits compulsive behavior. He disproportionately fears failure. He is unable to play. Transitions Needed Develop an internal sense of validation in yourself. Learn to say no to others and yourself. Find time for yourself. Learn to relax, slow down. Learn to appreciate yourself.

Two principles inspire much of the personal and social dealings of many a citizen in our land: “What can I get out of it?” and “Can I get away with it?” Evil is confused with good, and good is confused with evil. Revolting books against virtue are termed “courageous”; those against morality are advertised as “daring and forward-looking”; and those against God are called “progressive and epoch-making.” It has always been the characteristic of a generation in decay to paint the gates of Hell with the gold of Paradise. In a word, much of the so-called wisdom of our day is made up of that which once nailed our blessed Lord to the Cross.

In this talk, I tell the story of how, when I was first a manager at New York Tech, I didn’t feel like a manager at all. And while I liked the idea of being in charge, I went to work every day feeling like something of a fraud. Even in the early years of Pixar, when I was the president, that feeling didn’t go away. I knew many presidents of other companies and had a good idea of their personality characteristics. They were aggressive and extremely confident. Knowing that I didn’t share many of those traits, again I felt like a fraud. In truth, I was afraid of failure. Not until about eight or nine years ago, I tell them, did the imposter feeling finally go away. I have several things to thank for that evolution: my experience of both weathering our failures and watching our films succeed; my decisions, post–Toy Story, to recommit myself to Pixar and its culture; and my enjoyment of my maturing relationship with Steve and John. Then, after fessing up, I ask the group, “How many of you feel like a fraud?” And without fail, every hand in the room shoots up. As managers, we all start off with a certain amount of trepidation. When we are new to the position, we imagine what the job is in order to get our arms around it, then we compare ourselves against our made-up model. But the job is never what we think it is. The trick is to forget our models about what we “should” be. A better measure of our success is to look at the people on our team and see how they are working together. Can they rally to solve key problems? If the answer is yes, you are managing well.

Keith came from behind his desk and put his arm around my shoulder. "Calm down, Marco,” he said, leading me to the more comfortable love seat. “There's an un-blending process happening here. The various defender parts have a positive intention in defending against the pain from the abuse. It just happens to be in an incorrect manner.” Keith returned to his seat and leaned back in his chair. He took a deep breath. “When you're concentrating on one particular personality trait, the other parts work in conjunction, in different combinations with each other. They try to prevent you from getting to the core of the respective trait and having to relive the pain and shame from the abuse.” He leaned forward, punctuating his words. “The key ... to un-blending ... the defender parts ... successfully ... is to understand each attribute ... as it steps in to do its job. They protect you from the harmful emotions that are associated from the abuse.” Gazing at me over his wire-rimmed glasses, he said matter-of-factly, “Getting the defender parts to step aside so you can concentrate on the characteristic you want to address is the un-blending process. Once you are able to get through all the various defensive parts that get in the way of dealing with the core part, the true self is now able to answer the part in question in a divine loving place." I sat, pulled on my ear while thinking that over for a moment. "So, the true self is present to bear witness to all the feelings, beliefs, memories, and experiences of the inadequate part." Keith smiled. He leaned forward, resting his elbows on the desktop, his chin perched atop his clasped hands. "In essence, the past is being stirred up so all the associated burdens, pressures, and pain can be released and relieved. Following this unburdening process, the respective part can be cleansed. It can then be recomposed in a more constructive manner—similar to wiping a virus-infected computer hard drive clean ... then reprogramming it with anti-virus protected software." I stood up. With a few deep diaphragmatic breaths, I cleared my mind. While attempting to decipher what part came in and threw me off course, I sucked in my lips, vigorously shaking my head. Skepticism came in as a defensive part. I got back in Keith’s face. “This psychological un-blending is full of shit. The defense against the abuse is another trick to get me to believe that this crap actually works.” I flung my hands in the air. “How is this going to unburden the weight I carry on my shoulders every moment of the day? All my deficient personality traits are a result of me being a dirtball loser.” I shook my head. “I’m not worthy of the slightest bit of solace or happiness that this punishment called life has to offer.” Keith took a deep breath in and a longer breath out. "Marco, you're a miracle. A remarkable good-hearted human being. You're the most determined individual that I've come across in my thirty years of practice.

I was now able to logically decipher my behavior and analyze my actions. I understood all the conditioning that the exploitation and disgrace had in creating the different personality parts and behavioral traits that dwelt in my depths. I started to understand how criticism and insults painfully intensified my ignominious impression of myself, causing me to take everything personally. The numb, confused, and skeptic defender parts now made sense to me. I could see how they contributed to the various problems I incurred throughout my life. I comprehended why I mistrusted and did pernicious things to loved ones—for fear they would do them to me first. The need to self-medicate made sense. I began to recognize the urge for porn. The need to commit acts of perversion was a result of my adolescent mind being manipulated and programmed to believe it was acceptable. I perceived that the reason why I wanted to be humiliated sexually was because the shameful part from the humiliation of the maltreatment wanted to be reinforced. The logic of it all—how all the parts fit together, their roles and reasons for being—became apparent to me. I opened my eyes for a brief moment. Keith was leaning forward with his right elbow resting on his leg, his hand supporting his chin, staring at me as if he was trying to analyze my thoughts. I gazed off in a distance, remembering my numerous misbehaviors. I could trace the main contributing factor for why I acted the way I did to the resulting ignominy from the desecration. But the most significant understanding I had was, that even though it wasn’t my fault, I was still responsible for my behavior. My lengthy musings came to a halt when Keith said, “Marco? Where are you now ... tell me what you’re seeing, thinking.” I proceeded to explain to him my current revelation. “Excellent work, Marco,” Keith said, cracking a smile. “Now think about your next step.” My next step was to cleanse and reprogram the inadequate part. I closed my eyes again and began to concentrate. The only way to accomplish this was to create a tangible picture in my mind of the inadequate part being exorcised of all its imperfect characteristics. Once I was able to concentrate on this step, I looked up into his gaze. “I see myself overlooking a canyon during a sunset. As the sun descends, I envision its rays reflecting off the sparse layers of cloud cover, creating a beautiful multi-layer spectrum of blazing colors. I imagine a cool breeze flowing across my body, as a warm illuminating light from above shines on me and creates a white-out effect that is the cleanest, brightest white I can imagine. I picture the whiteness as a soothing cleansing treatment for the blackness within. I’m feeling as pure and clean as the brilliant color itself.” "And now how do you want to orchestrate the inadequate part?" I stood up and puffed out my chest. "I want it to be the exact opposite—confident, strong, and stable. It should be at peace with itself and not paranoid about what other people think.” Sitting back down, I folded my hands over my crossed knees. “I don't want to feel as if I have to worry about working to exhaustion in my personal life. On the job, or in the gym, I shouldn’t feel I have to be perfect in order to be accepted in society. I want to move past that. I want to feel good and proud of myself. But most of all, I want to feel morally acceptable." I now had a better understanding of the inadequate part, its defender parts, and what they wanted. I was able to see the un-blending taking place within me. The unburdening and bearing witness process got me to the point of reprogramming the misconception that the inadequate part thought about itself. I could go straight to the visualization technique of cleansing and reprogramming the part whenever I felt its symptoms coming on. CHAPTER

PERSONAL PROFILE FOR EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION Consider the following list of twelve characteristics that are central to communicating both in an interview and on the job. If you feel you are lacking in a particular category, you can use the explanations and suggestions given to enhance your interactive ability in the workplace. 1. Activation of PMA. Use positive thinking techniques such as internal coaching. 2. Physical appearance. Make sure to dress appropriately for the event. In most interviews, business attire (a suit or sport coat and tie for men; a suit, dress, or tailored pants for women) is recommended. What you wear to the interview communicates not only how important the event is to you but your ability to assess a situation and how you should behave in it. Appropriate grooming is essential, both in an interview and on the job. 3. Posture. Carry yourself with confidence. Let your posture communicate that you are a winner. Keep your face on a vertical plane, spine straight, shoulders comfortably back. By simply straightening up and using the diaphragmatic breathing you learned in Chapter 6 (which proper posture encourages), you will feel much better about yourself. Others will perceive you in a more positive light as well. 4. Rate of speech. Your rate of speech ought to be appropriate for the specific situation and person or persons it is intended for. Too fast is annoying, and too slow is boring. A good way to pace your speech is to speak at close to the rate of the person who is talking to you. 5. Eye contact. Absolutely essential for successful communication. Occasionally, you should avert your gaze briefly in order to avoid staring. But try not to look down at your lap or let your eyes wander all around the room as you speak. This suggests a lack of confidence and an inability to stay on track. 6. Facial expressions. You gain more credibility when you are open and expressive. The warmer personality will seem stronger and more confident. And perhaps most important, remember to smile in conversation. If you seem interested and enthusiastic, it will enhance the chemistry between you and the interviewer or your supervisor. You can develop the ability to use facial expressions to your advantage through a kind of biofeedback that makes use of the mirror and continuously experimenting in real life. Look at your reflection for several minutes. Practice being relaxed and create the expressions that are appropriate. Do you look interested? Alert? Motivated? Practice responding to an interviewer. Impress the “muscle memory” of these expressions into your mind.

A good character may not make us happy, but it does make us worthy of happiness (XXV 1174). He also maintains that people of character have an inner worth, while people of talent have a market value (XXV 1174), and emphasizes that this worth is created by the person himself. Most importantly, however, he claims that character ‘consists in the basic characteristic [GrundAnlage] of the will’ (XXV 1174).

Haya', in Arabic, conveys the meaning of shame, though the root word of haya ’ is closely associated with life and living. The Prophet stated, “Every religion has a quality that is characteristic of that religion. And the characteristic of my religion is haya, an internal sense of shame, which includes bashfulness and modesty. Most adults alive today have heard it said when they were children, “Shame on you!” Unfortunately, shame has come to be viewed as a negative word, as if it were a pejorative. Parents are now advised never to “shame a child,” never correct a child’s behavior by causing an emotional response. Instead, the current wisdom suggests that people always make the child feel good regardless of his or her behavior. Eventually, what this does is disable naturally occurring deterrents to misbehavior. Some anthropologists divide cultures into shame and guilt cultures. They say that guilt is an inward mechanism and shame an outward one. With regard to this discussion, guilt alludes to a human mechanism that produces strong feelings of remorse when someone has done something wrong, to the point that he or she needs to rectify the matter. Most primitive cultures are not guilt-based, but shame-based, which is rooted in the fear of bringing shame upon oneself and the larger family. What Islam does is honor the concept of shame and take it to another level altogether—to a rank in which one feels a sense of shame before God. When a person acknowledges and realizes that God is fully aware of all that one does, says, or thinks, shame is elevated to a higher plane, to the unseen world from which there is no cover. In fact, one feels a sense of shame even before the angels. So while Muslims comprise a shame-based culture, this notion transcends shame before one’s family—whether one’s elders or parents— and admits a mechanism that is not subject to the changing norms of human cultures. It is associated with the knowledge and active awareness that God is all-seeing of what one does—a reality that is permanent. The nurturing of this realization deters one from engaging in acts that are displeasing and vulgar. This is the essence of the noble prophetic teachings.

When studies using mental ability test scores from children are considered, the heritability of mental ability is typically found to be about .40, and the effect of the common or shared environment is found to be almost as strong, about .35. In contrast, when studies using mental ability test scores from adults (or older adolescents) are considered, estimates of the heritability of mental ability are much higher, typically about .65, whereas estimates of common or shared environment effects are much lower, probably under .20 (see review by Haworth et al., 2010). These findings indicate that differences among children in their levels of mental ability are attributable almost as much to their common environment—that is, to features of their family or household circumstances—as to their genetic inheritances. However, the findings also suggest that as children grow up, the differences among them in mental ability become less strongly related to the features of their common environments, and more strongly related to their genetic inheritances. In other words, the effect on one's mental ability of the family or household in which one is reared tends to become less important as one grows up, so that by adulthood one's level of mental ability is heavily dependent on one's genetic characteristics. It is as if one's level of mental ability—relative to that of other persons of the same age—can be raised (or lowered) during childhood by a particularly good (or poor) home environment, but then gradually returns to the level that one's genes tend to produce. The aforementioned findings are based mainly on samples of participants who belong to the broad middle class of modern Western countries. There is some evidence, though, that the heritability of IQ tends to be somewhat lower (at least until young adulthood, and perhaps beyond) when studies are conducted using participants of less enriched environments, such as those in economically underdeveloped countries or in the lowest socioeconomic classes of some Western countries (see review by Nisbett et al., 2012). One recent study (Tucker-Drob & Bates, 2016) found that in the United States, additive genetic influences had a weaker influence on IQ among persons of low socioeconomic status than among persons of high socioeconomic status. (Interestingly, Tucker-Drob and Bates did not find this effect in western European countries or in Australia, where socioeconomic status differences tend to be smaller.) The above findings suggest that whenever the heritability of IQ is discussed, it is important to consider the ages of the persons being examined as well as their socioeconomic status and their country.

Having lot of money can make your life better, but It doesn't make you a better person.

Now the realm of feelings may appear on first approach to be an area of total chaos. But this is not so. There is also an order among feelings, and it is a much simpler one than most people think. When we properly cultivate, with divine assistance, those few feelings that should be prominent in our lives, the remainder will fall into place. What then are the feelings that will dominate in a life that has been inwardly transformed to be like Christ? They are the feelings associated with love, joy, and peace... [which] are not mere feelings, but conditions of the whole person which are accompanied by characteristic positive feelings. Love, joy, and peace are--we recall--the three fundamental pieces of the fruit (note the singular) of the spirit. They mutually interpenetrate and inform one another, and naturally express themselves in the remainder of that *one* fruit: patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.

One family described their core value of hospitality, lived out as they cleaned the house together each Friday for the express purpose of welcoming people over the weekend. They wanted to be able to spontaneously invite others over, knowing their space was ready to receive them. All this was explained to their kids by connecting the dots between the practice of keeping house and the immense welcome of God. They talked about their apartment as a gift and a refuge, and how important it was for it to feel inviting. Hosting people was not about living some Magnolia life; it was how they loved their neighbors. Thus, Friday night cleanup was a faith practice. One family used the tradition of a summer road trip to visit relatives as a means to support being who God uniquely made each of them to be. Each family member got to design the itinerary for one day of the trip. On that day, everyone else went along with that person’s choices for restaurants and an activity. They talked about the wonder of God’s image in each person and how this was a fun way to see each member of the family just as God made them to be. Thus, a family trip was a faith ritual. What about your family? What unique characteristics need to be accounted for as you craft a vision for faith? • Who makes up your family? List the members. You may share a living space with them or not, live in the same town or not, be relationally close or not. • Next to each person on the list, jot down a few distinguishing key traits of that person. What are they like? What are they interested in? • What are some of your family’s strengths and loves as a group? Do you love a good party? Cheer for a certain team? Love a particular place or meal? • What are some of your family’s unique challenges right now? Do you have a child who doesn’t “fit the mold,” for whatever reason? Are finances tight? Have any of the relationships been strained or broken? • List anything else that feels important to you about who your family is and what they are like. What other traits make you, you?

The Love of God God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him. 1 JOHN 4:16 The God who wills nothing but good is a God of love. He does not seek His own. He does not live for Himself, but pours out His love on all living creatures. The characteristic of love is that it does not seek its own. Love finds its happiness in giving to others; it sacrifices itself entirely for others. Even so, God offered Himself to people in the Person of His Son, and the Son offered Himself on the cross to bring that love to men and to win their hearts. The everlasting love with which the Father loved the Son is the same love with which the Son loves us. Christ has poured this love of God into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, so that our whole life may be permeated with its vital power. Lord, I thank You for the love that You poured into my heart. Inspire me to radiate this love to the world around me. The love of God to His Son, the love of the Son to us, the love with which we love the Son, the love with which we in obedience love others, the love with which we try to love all men and win them for Christ—all is the same eternal, incomprehensible, almighty love of God. Love is the power of God in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This love is the possession of all who are members of the body of Christ, and it streams forth from them to the entire world.

The actor must not only 'do his job' in a conscientious manner, which is what anyone must do; he must also trap his unconscious (a neat trick) and he must trap it on cue (a neater trick). [...] Should the actor work out the details of his part in personal terms, should he succeed in engaging his own secret anxieties and enjoyments - his private beliefs, his dream-life characteristics, should he then insinuate these secrets into the ebbing and flowing of the play, he will be inevitably swept into the main lines of the action - he will be forced unconsciously from point to point in his performance. The more certainly and firmly these guide ropes have been rigged, the more the actor can afford to forget them and begin to shade his playing. Most observes say to actors, 'How do you remember all those lines?' What a lovely irony, since the actor's most elusive achievement is to forget them! Or, to put it more clearly, to know them so well and to understand their implications so well that he can afford to forget them. Marlon Brando once said, 'I am good when I forget. When I can sit on stage and think of catching a fish. I have just sunk the hook, there's a tug on the line, and at that preoccupied moment, I hear my cue. My God, what is my line? And then I say my line, because the motor memory will save you if you really believe. So I say my line, the line I thought I'd forgotten, and it's good, man. It's really good.' Sounds mysterious, but it isn't. It is merely a neat trick. Catching Pegasus by the heel is a neat trick. It proceeds not from hard labor but from a knowledge of the self. Such knowledge is hard-bought, but it is not like digging ditches. It is a giving-over of the ego. [...]

The actor must not only 'do his job' in a conscientious manner, which is what anyone must do; he must also trap his unconscious (a neat trick) and he must trap it on cue (a neater trick). [...] Should the actor work out the details of his part in personal terms, should he succeed in engaging his own secret anxieties and enjoyments - his private beliefs, his dream-life characteristics, should he then insinuate these secrets into the ebbing and flowing of the play, he will be inevitably swept into the main lines of the action - he will be forced unconsciously from point to point in his performance. The more certainly and firmly these guide ropes have been rigged, the more the actor can afford to forget them and begin to shade his playing. Most observes say to actors, 'How do you remember all those lines?' What a lovely irony, since the actor's most elusive achievement is to forget them! Or, to put it more clearly, to know them so well and to understand their implications so well that he can afford to forget them. Marlon Brando once said, 'I am good when I forget. When I can sit on stage and think of catching a fish. I have just sunk the hook, there's a tug on the line, and at that preoccupied moment, I hear my cue. My God, what is my line? And then I say my line, because the motor memory will save you if you really believe. So I say my line, the line I thought I'd forgotten, and it's good, man. It's really good.' Sounds mysterious, but it isn't. It is merely a neat trick. Catching Pegasus by the heel is a neat trick. It proceeds not from hard labor but from a knowledge of the self. Such knowledge is hard-bought, but it is not like digging ditches. It is a giving-over of the ego.

This is the only story of mine whose moral I know. I don't think it's a marvelous moral, I simply happen to know what it is: We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be. My personal experience with Nazi monkey business was limited. There were some vile and lively native American Fascists in my home town of Indianapolis during the thirties, and somebody slipped me a copy of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, I remember, which was supposed to be the Jews' secret plan for taking over the world. And I remember some laughs about my aunt, too, who married a German German, and who had to write to Indianapolis for proofs that she had no Jewish blood. The Indianapolis mayor knew her from high school and dancing school, so he had fun putting ribbons and official seals all over the documents the Germans required, which made them look like eighteenth-century peace treaties. After a while the war came, and I was in it, and I was captured, so I got to see a little of Germany from the inside while the war was still going on. I was a private, a battalion scout, and, under the terms of the Geneva Convention, I had to work for my keep, which was good, not bad. I didn't have to stay in prison all the time, somewhere out in the countryside. I got to go to a city, which was Dresden, and to see the people and the things they did. There were about a hundred of us in our particular work group, and we were put out as contract labor to a factory that was making a vitamin-enriched malt syrup for pregnant women. It tasted like thin honey laced with hickory smoke. It was good. I wish I had some right now. And the city was lovely, highly ornamented, like Paris, and untouched by war. It was supposedly an 'open' city, not to be attacked since there were no troop concentrations or war industries there. But high explosives were dropped on Dresden by American and British planes on the night of February 13, 1945, just about twenty-one years ago, as I now write. There were no particular targets for the bombs. The hope was that they would create a lot of kindling and drive firemen underground. And then hundreds of thousands of tiny incendiaries were scattered over the kindling, like seeds on freshly turned loam. More bombs were dropped to keep firemen in their holes, and all the little fires grew, joined one another, and became one apocalyptic flame. Hey presto: fire storm. It was the largest massacre in European history, by the way. And so what? We didn't get to see the fire storm. We were in a cool meat-locker under a slaughterhouse with our six guards and ranks and ranks of dressed cadavers of cattle, pigs, horses, and sheep. We heard the bombs walking around up there. Now and then there would be a gentle shower of calcimine. If we had gone above to take a look, we would have been turned into artefacts characteristic of fire storms: seeming pieces of charred firewood two or three feet long - ridiculously small human beings, or jumbo fried grasshoppers, if you will. The malt syrup factory was gone. Everything was gone but the cellars where 135,000 Hansels and Gretels had been baked like gingerbread men. So we were put to work as corpse miners, breaking into shelters, bringing bodies out. And I got to see many German types of all ages as death had found them, usually with valuables in their laps. Sometimes relatives would come to watch us dig. They were interesting, too. So much for Nazis and me. If I'd been born in Germany, I suppose I would have been a Nazi, bopping Jews and gypsies and Poles around, leaving boots sticking out of snowbanks, warming myself with my secretly virtuous insides. So it goes. There's another clear moral to this tale, now that I think about it: When you're dead you're dead. And yet another moral occurs to me now: Make love when you can. It's good for you.

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Intelligent and ambitious people want to be challenged, and someone having high expectations of you is a turn-on. High demand is a motivator, success is a drug, and before you know it, you're rationalizing anything in order to meet the demand and get your high. The demand has become your god. There <\i>is one indisputable way to identify a cult, one characteristic they all share. It is not a belief in alien spacecraft or a plentiful supply of Flavor Aid. It is the notion that anyone who does not agree with the group's beliefs or choices, who expresses concerns, who simply dares to ask questions, is deemed "unsafe." Every good thing about that person must be subsumed by the fact that they disagree with me, so I can boil down their character into something vilifiable. For mind control to work, there has to be heroes and villains. It has to be us versus them. In a cult, it isn't good enough for you to say "I love you, but I disagree with you." You must affirm my choices and beliefs. Only then can you be considered "safe." In a cult, safety means agreement. The irony, of course, is that while you are not allowed to have your own opinion about my beliefs, I am allowed to have an opinion about yours.

The focus had been entirely on characteristics of the person. Life situations had been ignored. I recalled the first principle of social psychology, laid out by the field’s founder, Kurt Lewin, in a simple formula: B = f(P, E): Behavior is a function of a Person in his or her Environment. Characteristics of a person—things like genes and personality—stay the same.5 Environments change. Both must be considered together for a full explanation.

Vasana is determinism that feels like free will. I’m reminded of my friend Jean, whom I’ve known for almost twenty years. Jean considers himself very spiritual and went so far in the early nineties as to walk way from his job with a newspaper in Denver to live in an ashram in western Massachusetts. But he found the atmosphere choking. “They’re all crypto Hindus,” he complained. “They don’t do anything but pray and chant and meditate.” So Jean decided to move on with his life. He’s fallen in love with a couple of women but has never married. He doesn’t like the notion of settling down and tends to move to a new state every four years or so. (He once told me that he counted up and discovered that he’s lived in forty different houses since he was born.) One day Jean called me with a story. He was on a date with a woman who had taken a sudden interest in Sufism, and while they were driving home, she told Jean that according to her Sufi teacher, everyone has a prevailing characteristic. “You mean the thing that is most prominent about them, like being extroverted or introverted?” he asked. “No, not prominent,” she said. “Your prevailing characteristic is hidden. You act on it without seeing that you’re acting on it.” The minute he heard this, Jean became excited. “I looked out the car window, and it hit me,” he said. “I sit on the fence. I am only comfortable if I can have both sides of a situation without committing to either.” All at once a great many pieces fell into place. Jean could see why he went into an ashram but didn’t feel like he was one of the group. He saw why he fell in love with women but always saw their faults. Much more came to light. Jean complains about his family yet never misses a Christmas with them. He considers himself an expert on every subject he’s studied—there have been many—but he doesn’t earn his living pursuing any of them. He is indeed an inveterate fence-sitter. And as his date suggested, Jean had no idea that his Vasana, for that’s what we’re talking about, made him enter into one situation after another without ever falling off the fence. “Just think,” he said with obvious surprise, “the thing that’s the most me is the thing I never saw.” If unconscious tendencies kept working in the dark, they wouldn’t be a problem. The genetic software in a penguin or wildebeest guides it to act without any knowledge that it is behaving much like every other penguin or wildebeest. But human beings, unique among all living creatures, want to break down Vasana. It’s not good enough to be a pawn who thinks he’s a king. We crave the assurance of absolute freedom and its result—a totally open future. Is this reasonable? Is it even possible? In his classic text, the Yoga Sutras, the sage Patanjali informs us that there are three types of Vasana. The kind that drives pleasant behavior he calls white Vasana; the kind that drives unpleasant behavior he calls dark Vasana; the kind that mixes the two he calls mixed Vasana. I would say Jean had mixed Vasana—he liked fence-sitting but he missed the reward of lasting love for another person, a driving aspiration, or a shared vision that would bond him with a community. He displayed the positives and negatives of someone who must keep every option open. The goal of the spiritual aspirant is to wear down Vasana so that clarity can be achieved. In clarity you know that you are not a puppet—you have released yourself from the unconscious drives that once fooled you into thinking that you were acting spontaneously.

Mark Patkowski (1980) studied the relationship between age and the acquisition of features of a second language other than pronunciation. He hypothesized that, even if accent were ignored, only those who had begun learning their second language before the age of 15 could achieve full, native-like mastery of that language. Patkowski studied 67 highly educated immigrants to the United States. They had started to learn English at various ages, but all had lived in the United States for more than five years. He compared them to 15 native-born Americans with a similarly high level of education, whose variety of English could be considered the second language speakers’ target language. The main question in Patkowski’s research was: ‘Will there be a difference between learners who began to learn English before puberty and those who began learning English later?’ However, he also compared learners on the basis of other characteristics and experiences that some people have suggested might be as good as age in predicting or explaining a person’s success in mastering a second language. For example, he looked at the total amount of time a speaker had been in the United States as well as the amount of formal ESL instruction each speaker had had. A lengthy interview with each person was tape-recorded. Because Patkowski wanted to remove the possibility that the results would be affected by accent, he transcribed five-minute samples from the interviews and asked trained native-speaker judges to place each transcript on a scale from 0 (no knowledge of English) to 5 (a level of English expected from an educated native speaker). The findings were quite dramatic. The transcripts of all native speakers and 32 out of 33 second language speakers who had begun learning English before the age of 15 were rated 4+ or 5. The homogeneity of the pre-puberty learners suggests that, for this group, success in learning a second language was almost inevitable. In contrast, 27 of the 32 post-puberty learners were rated between 3 and 4, but a few learners were rated higher (4+ or 5) and one was rated at 2+. The performance of this group looked like the sort of range one would expect if one were measuring success in learning almost any kind of skill or knowledge: some people did extremely well; some did poorly; most were in the middle.

What is workplace optimism? If you think it’s viewing the proverbial glass half full through rose-colored glasses and thinking positive thoughts, you’re mistaken. It is more than a positive attitude. Workplace optimism shapes attitudes. It shapes a person’s and even a team’s spirit. It is the spark that fuels esprit de corps. It evokes positive emotions in team members toward their work and others. Workplace optimism is a characteristic of climate. The climate feels optimistic. People are inspired by their work and the possibilities inherent in it. Workplace optimism is the belief that good things will come from hard work. Research shows that you can transform the work experience by focusing on the best positive potential realities.9 Rather than spend time focusing on what’s wrong or missing in the workplace, you can choose to focus on what’s right and possible in the workplace. Rather than ignoring the climate, you can observe how it’s influencing work quality and relationships. You can transform the work experience by simply recognizing and leveraging human nature.

Leaders build the future with clays of the past. Every good moment gives them ideas; every bad moment gives them lessons.

Tell me about a time when: You saw someone You yourself practiced Or you were influenced by good leadership? What happened? What are some of the key things you remember about this experience? How did this person's leadership affect the community/team/company in a positive way? How did it affect you? In order to affect the future in a positive way, what trait, ability, skill, characteristic do you want a leader to have?

A regulator cannot easily challenge the fundamental strategy of a badly run financial services business, such as Lehman or Royal Bank of Scotland. No one within the businesses themselves was willing to challenge Dick Fuld or Fred Goodwin—including the genuinely distinguished figures who sat on the RBS board (that of Lehman was decorated by friends of Fuld). Even the head of an agency may enjoy less access to the powerful than the senior executives of large corporations—if for no other reason than that the latter have considerably more largesse to dispense. Recall Gordon Brown’s fulsome tribute to Fuld and Lehman (see Chapter 1), and note that Goodwin and his (then) wife enjoyed weekend hospitality at Chequers, Prime Minister Brown’s official residence, even as the bank was sliding towards bankruptcy. It is not an accident that both Lehman and RBS were run by unpleasant, domineering individuals with good political connections: these characteristics are common pointers to the combination of personal success and corporate failure. Now

Many TMS patients are the antithesis of hostile; they often have a strong need to be good, nice, pleasant, accommodating, and helpful. Though they may be ambitious and often very accomplished, they do not necessarily pursue their goals with the intensity that seems to be characteristic of the Type A person.

If I had had a daughter, I always knew what I would tell her. First of all, I would try to counter all outdated stereotypical claptrap that girls are commonly told about their sex--that women are valued far more for their sexual characteristics than their character and brains--and encourage her to be a truly independent person. Only knowing who she is herself will she be able to find find her own life's work and make good decisions in choosing a partner and having children.

Claude Monet's Water Lilies (The Clouds) consists of nothing more than dabs of different colored paint on a canvas.14 But because of the particular arrangement of those dabs of paint, Monet has produced not simply a piece of canvas with dabs of paint on it. Monet has produced for us a painting, a unique picture, a cognitively recognizable and culturally meaningful representation of a reality, a new entity with its own characteristics and capacities to cause effects in the world. One of the emergent causal capacities of those particularly arranged dabs of paint is the ability to evoke certain emotions in people who view the painting, such as warmth or serenity. Neither the recognizable and meaningful picture nor the capacity to evoke emotions is present in the dabs of paint totaled up. It is through Monet's particular relational arrangement of those paint dabs that a unique picture emerges possessing particular characteristics and capacities that can cause experiences in observers. To say that Monet's Water Lilies (The Clouds) is reducible to many dabs of colored paint on a canvas would be to say that all of the characteristics and capacities we observe in the painting are present in the sum total of all the dabs of paint and the piece of canvas. To say that about this painting would be to make oneself a reductionist in relation to it. And to do this would be misguided.

Even though we have all had experiences of feeling distant from God, the Dark Night of the Senses is a particular experience with identifiable symptoms, described by John of the Cross. Although not every person necessarily experiences all these symptoms, we can get a good feel for this painful time by looking at the characteristics he describes:4 • The Dark Night of the Senses usually comes after a season of consistent and satisfying meditative prayer, and we have been experiencing some detachment from old dependencies on worldly things. • In the darkness, we no longer derive real satisfaction or consolation from spiritual practices or from other people. • The darkness does not have any apparent causes; it is not the result of depression or newly committed sins or imperfections.5 • We feel as though we are not serving God well, but backsliding in our faith, and we become concerned about failing God. • We experience a powerlessness to meditate on God’s Word and to make use of our imagination to relate to the truths of Scripture. God doesn’t seem to speak to us through our analysis and synthesis of the ideas in the text. Prayer may well feel like a waste of time. • In the midst of our spiritual dryness and the absence of God’s consolations, a “dark light” shines that brings us even greater pain. As this dark light shines on us, we gain a greater awareness of our own sinful nature and the extent to which every thought and action is tainted with self. • We find ourselves deeply grieved over our sinful nature and the sins of others. • In the light of our greater self-knowledge, we find ourselves humbler and more patient with the struggles of others. • The Dark Night season often feels even emptier by the absence of qualified spiritual direction to help interpret what is happening, or worse, by bad advice from others. • Whether the Dark Night time is relatively short or extends for years, it is terribly painful, like that endured by a lover separated from her beloved.

Economists call this “statistical discrimination.” The basic idea is that since employers can’t directly observe the productivity of individual workers, they can make observations about demographic characteristics that are correlated with worker productivity. They make decisions based on the averages: if women are more likely to quit than men for personal reasons, employers assume that any given woman is more likely to quit than a man. Economists observe that the theory of statistical discrimination can create a vicious cycle. If women are (or used to be) more likely to quit, they will be paid less. If they are paid less, they are more likely to quit. This vicious cycle provides a very good justification for government intervention.

modern figure most associated with the study of malignant narcissism is my former teacher Otto Kernberg (1970), who defined the syndrome as having four components: (1) narcissistic personality disorder, (2) antisocial behavior, (3) paranoid traits, and (4) sadism. Kernberg told the New York Times that malignantly narcissistic leaders such as Hitler and Stalin are “able to take control because their inordinate narcissism is expressed in grandiosity, a confidence in themselves, and the assurance that they know what the world needs” (Goode 2003). At the same time, “they express their aggression in cruel and sadistic behavior against their enemies: whoever does not submit to them or love them.” As Pollock (1978) wrote, “the malignant narcissist is pathologically grandiose, lacking in conscience and behavioral regulation[,] with characteristic demonstrations of joyful cruelty and sadism.

A CURE FOR THE SELF “The person who has practiced philosophy as a cure for the self becomes great of soul, filled with confidence, invincible—and greater as you draw near.” SENECA, MORAL LETTERS, 111.2 What is “a cure for the self”? Perhaps Seneca means that, through nature and nurture, we develop a unique set of characteristics—some positive and some negative. When those negative characteristics begin to have consequences in our lives, some of us turn to therapy, psychoanalysis, or the help of a support group. The point? To cure certain selfish, destructive parts of ourselves. But of all the avenues for curing our negative characteristics, philosophy has existed the longest and helped the most people. It is concerned not just with mitigating the effects of a mental illness or a neurosis, but it is designed to encourage human flourishing. It’s designed to help you live the Good Life. Don’t you deserve to flourish? Wouldn’t you like to be great of soul, filled with confidence, and invincible to external events? Wouldn’t you like to be like the proverbial onion, packed with layers of greatness? Then practice your philosophy.

…another kind, by no means uncommon, in which one person sucks the vitality of the other, one receives what the other gives, but gives almost nothing in return. Some very vital people belong to this bloodsucking type. They extract the vitality from one victim after another, but while they prosper and grow interesting, those upon whom they live grow pale and dim and dull. Such people use others as means to their own ends and never consider them as ends in themselves. Fundamentally they are not interested in those whom for the moment they think they love, they are interested only in the stimulus to their own activities, perhaps of a quite impersonal sort. Evidently this springs from some defect in their nature, but it is one not altogether easy either to diagnose or to cure. It is a characteristic frequently associated with great ambition and is rooted, I should say, in an unduly one-sided view of what makes human happiness. Affection in the sense of a genuine reciprocal interest of two persons in each other, not solely as means to each other's good but rather as a combination having a common good, is one of the most important elements of real happiness, and the man whose ego is so enclosed within steel walls that this enlargement of it is impossible misses the best that life has to offer, however successful he may be in his career. Ambition which excludes affection from its purview is generally the result of some kind of anger or hatred against the human race, produced of it is impossible misses the best that life has to offer, however successful he may be in his career. Ambition which excludes affection from its purview is generally the result of some kind of anger or hatred against the human race, produced by unhappiness in youth, by injustices in later life, or by any of the causes which lead to persecution mania. A too powerful ego is a prison from which a man must escape if he is to enjoy the world to the full. A capacity for genuine affection is one of the marks of the man who has escaped his prison of self.

I’ve never spent one whole day away from my sister. She’s been my closest friend, the only person I truly cared about. Anna is better than me in every way. She’s smarter, kinder, happier. I often felt that when we formed in the womb, our characteristics were split in two parts. She got the better part of us, but as long as she was close by, we could share her goodness. Now she’s gone, and all that light has gone with her. All that’s left are the qualities that lived in me: focus. Determination. And rage.

Which of that person’s traits is causing you to react? What quality or need is the person reflecting back to you? Why are you responding negatively to it? As you mull over this trait, think about its positive qualities—the innate beauty, gift, or ability that lies underneath the negative appearance. Most likely, this person is merely misusing this attribute, but it also may be that you haven’t claimed the true goodness of this trait within yourself. If you are willing to do so, allow the image in the mirror to transform into your own. See the new you, who now has the formerly missing or unclaimed characteristic. Now picture and sense yourself using it. Finally, thank the person who revealed it to you and promise that you will employ the quality in an ethical and healthy way, no matter how the other person chooses to embrace and express this trait. Then you can release this person to his or her higher path.

In relation to these learning styles, psychologists have also identified other associated psychological, neurological, and personality characteristics. The students with preferences for the auditory-sequential learning style are more inclined to have extrovert personalities, while the students who prefer the visual-spatial learning style are inclined to possess introvert personalities. Extrovert personalities are more outgoing, engage in discussions, and respond easily, even with relatively unknown people, and they enjoy social activities with a large number of participants. On the contrary, introverts prefer attending to things on their own with less interaction with others, especially with relatively unknown people, and dislike social activities with large attendance. Auditory-sequential learners are good in analysis and pay more attention to specific detail; they approach solving a complex problem by dividing it into smaller parts. On the other hand, visual-spatial learners are good synthesisers, who can relate different perspectives to form an answer and are better at seeing the big picture or are holistic. As we would expect, auditory-sequential learners deal better with the concept of time and are better organised, while visual-spatial learners are relatively less competent with the concept of time. Auditory-sequential learners think in words and are better in rote memorisation; visual-spatial learners think in pictures and need to relate contextual meanings with pictures and, as a result, struggle with rote memorisation. That is, auditory-sequential learners have better auditory short-term memory, while visual-spatial learners have better visual long-term memory. Further, since they think in pictures, visual-spatial learners take a relatively longer time to process and relate information to contexts; once they do that, this contextual information is retained longer in memory.

While certain aspects of personality are genetic, experience and the choices that we make also shape who we are. As mentioned earlier, Allah (سبحانه وتعالى) created humans with the potential for both good and evil. The test for every human being is to choose which of these characteristics we will support and develop, and which we will attempt to control or eliminate.

As suggested in Chapter 1, intensive kin-based institutions demand that individuals behave in a range of different ways depending on their relationships to other people. Some relationships explicitly call for joking, while others demand quiet submission. By contrast, the world of impersonal markets and relational mobility favors consistency across contexts and relationships as well as the cultivation of unique personal characteristics specialized for diverse niches. For at least a millennium, these cultural evolutionary pressures have fostered a rising degree of dispositionalism. Individuals increasingly sought consistency—to be “themselves”—across contexts and judged others negatively when they failed to show this consistency. Understanding this helps explain why WEIRD people are so much more likely than others to impute the causes of someone’s behavior to their personal dispositions over their contexts and relationships (the Fundamental Attribution Error), and why they are so uncomfortable with their own personal inconsistencies (Cognitive Dissonance). Reacting to this culturally constructed worldview, WEIRD people are forever seeking their “true selves” (good luck!). Thus, while they certainly exist across societies and back into history, dispositions in general, and personalities specifically, are just more important in WEIRD societies.46

Moreover, there was a striking lack of relationship between [fascism's] material and numerical strength and its political effectiveness. The very term "movement" was misleading since it implied some kind of enrolment or personal participation of large numbers. If anything was characteristic of fascism, it was its independence of such popular manifestations. Though usually aiming at a mass following, its potential strength was reckoned not by the numbers of its adherents but by the influence of the persons in high position whose good will the fascist leaders possessed, and whose influence in the community could be counted upon to shelter them from the consequences of an abortive revolt, thus taking the risks out of revolution.

Good music is being released less and less. People need it less often. I’m not talking about the melody, the beat, but the lyrics. From my perspective, every song is a story performed by the artist. When was the last time you listened attentively to modern songs’ lyrics? People used to say that music is spiritual nourishment, it is like food for the soul, but if you look at our reality, you’ll see that people started focusing only on physical needs. Modern songs prioritize body over soul. It is because eighty percent of successful and influential labels release tracks that put parties, drugs, and sex as the main priorities of modern life. Seems like all the songs about love have already been sung and the greatest compliments that can be addressed to people are related to their physical characteristics. It feels like singers and songwriters are referring to some piece of meat, instead of a living person. The problem is that good, soulful songs are not to the taste of today's audience. Therefore, many genuinely talented artists are underrated and ignored because they are not following the rules that are dictated by commercial corporations, labels. I don’t know, maybe I’m too conservative.

Not a single nation,” he went on, as though reading it line by line, still gazing menacingly at Stavrogin, “not a single nation has ever been founded on principles of science or reason. There has never been an example of it, except for a brief moment, through folly. Socialism is from its very nature bound to be atheism, seeing that it has from the very first proclaimed that it is an atheistic organisation of society, and that it intends to establish itself exclusively on the elements of science and reason. Science and reason have, from the beginning of time, played a secondary and subordinate part in the life of nations; so it will be till the end of time. Nations are built up and moved by another force which sways and dominates them, the origin of which is unknown and inexplicable: that force is the force of an insatiable desire to go on to the end, though at the same time it denies that end. It is the force of the persistent assertion of one’s own existence, and a denial of death. It’s the spirit of life, as the Scriptures call it, ‘the river of living water,’ the drying up of which is threatened in the Apocalypse. It’s the æsthetic principle, as the philosophers call it, the ethical principle with which they identify it, ‘the seeking for God,’ as I call it more simply. The object of every national movement, in every people and at every period of its existence is only the seeking for its god, who must be its own god, and the faith in Him as the only true one. God is the synthetic personality of the whole people, taken from its beginning to its end. It has never happened that all, or even many, peoples have had one common god, but each has always had its own. It’s a sign of the decay of nations when they begin to have gods in common. When gods begin to be common to several nations the gods are dying and the faith in them, together with the nations themselves. The stronger a people the more individual their God. There never has been a nation without a religion, that is, without an idea of good and evil. Every people has its own conception of good and evil, and its own good and evil. When the same conceptions of good and evil become prevalent in several nations, then these nations are dying, and then the very distinction between good and evil is beginning to disappear. Reason has never had the power to define good and evil, or even to distinguish between good and evil, even approximately; on the contrary, it has always mixed them up in a disgraceful and pitiful way; science has even given the solution by the fist. This is particularly characteristic of the half-truths of science, the most terrible scourge of humanity, unknown till this century, and worse than plague, famine, or war. A half-truth is a despot … such as has never been in the world before. A despot that has its priests and its slaves, a despot to whom all do homage with love and superstition hitherto inconceivable, before which science itself trembles and cringes in a shameful way..." Stavrogin observed cautiously... "The very fact that you reduce God to a simple attribute of nationality …” “I reduce God to the attribute of nationality?” cried Shatov. “On the contrary, I raise the people to God. And has it ever been otherwise? The people is the body of God. Every people is only a people so long as it has its own god and excludes all other gods on earth irreconcilably; so long as it believes that by its god it will conquer and drive out of the world all other gods. Such, from the beginning of time, has been the belief of all great nations, all, anyway, who have been specially remarkable, all who have been leaders of humanity. There is no going against facts. The Jews lived only to await the coming of the true God and left the world the true God. The Greeks deified nature and bequeathed the world their religion, that is, philosophy and art. Rome deified the people in the State, and bequeathed the idea of the State to the nations.

grandiosity, entitlement, and absence of empathy characteristic of narcissistic personality disorder was translated into the profile of a good leader.

Assertiveness is the second characteristic of good communication. You express your feelings openly and directly, using “I Feel” Statements, such as “I’m feeling a bit uncomfortable right now” or “I’m feeling sad.” In addition, you share your feelings tactfully so the other person won’t feel belittled, attacked, or put down.

You cannot grow spiritually by repressing the "dark" side. To grow as a person, it is imperative that you respect both poles of the psyche. The unity of the self encomásses light and dark poles. Since the Shadow is an inherent and necessary part of the human being, the Western religious standard causes individual to be split from themselves. It is essential for those on the spiritual way to integrate the shadow. Because Western religion has created this image of the "God of Good in Whom there is no Darkness," a grand enantiodrama is occurring around the globe. The "Light" has been over-emphasized in spiritual paths, and they have sentenced its opposite characteristic to the dungeon of society's collective unconscious. Sometimes the repressed characteristic bursts forth wildly into daylight with a lethal force.

Spiritual life can be regarded as a course of gradual recovery from the addiction to the peculiar type of awareness that splits everything into subject and object. This primary addiction is the seedbed from which arise all secondary addictions. These latter are possible only because the ego is confronted by objects, which it tries to control or by which it is, or feels, controlled. To be more specific, the secondary addictions are all substitutes for the bliss that is the essence of the experience of transparency, which is at the heart of the integral consciousness, as defined by Gebser. This experience of transparency reveals the archaic interconnectedness and simultaneity of all beings and things without disowning, displacing, or distorting the cognitive realizations characteristic of the magical, mythical, and mental structures of consciousness. The secondary addictions are desperate, if mistaken, attempts to remove the primary addiction, which is our addiction to self-conscious experience, revolving around the division between subject (mind) and object (world). They are mistaken because instead of removing the primary addiction, they fortify it and thus also aggravate the sense of isolation and powerlessness experienced by the faltering rational personality. The British novelist Aldous Huxley saw this very clearly. He said: The urge to transcend self-conscious selfhood is, as I have said, a principal appetite of the soul. When, for whatever reason, men and women fail to transcend themselves by means of worship, good works, and spiritual exercises, they are apt to resort to religion’s chemical surrogates alcohol and “goof-pills” in the modern West, alcohol and opium in the East, hashish in the Mohammedan world, alcohol and marijuana in Central America, alcohol and coca in the Andes, alcohol and the barbiturates in the more up-to-date regions of South America.7 Huxley did not even mention workaholism and sex as two widely used substitutes for the realization of originary bliss. He spoke, however, of some people’s fascination with, and fatal attraction to, precious stones. This passion for gems, Huxley observed, is anchored in the fact that they “bear a faint resemblance to the glowing marvels seen with the inner eye of the visionary.”8 But deeper still than such splendid visions is, to use Gebser’s terms, the transcendental “light” of the undivided Origin itself.9 Realizing that “light” through voluntary self-transcendence is the ultimate form of healing both the person and the planet. That is the purpose of authentic spirituality. Spiritual life can usefully be pictured as a progressive recovery from the addiction of ordinary life, which is inherently schizoid and hence lacking in fullness and bliss. The well-known twelve-step program of recovery used in the literature on addiction also can serve as a convenient model for the spiritual process. Spiritual recovery is an uncovering of the spiritual dimension, whether we call it transcendental Self, God, Goddess, or the Ultimate—the dimension that is ordinarily covered up by the self-divided ego-personality, especially when it comes under the influence of the rational consciousness.