Krisena

I dreamt that Leo wanted me to wear a hat that would help me reach ego transcendence. It felt pretty uncomfortable, so I couldn't go through with it, but he really pushed. I asked to take a look at the hat, and it had a lot of needles that would stick into my brain and electric signals in it and stuff. That freaked me out so I said I didn't wanna do it, but he pushed so hard I started to think he had a secret agenda, like harvesting my soul or something, because he said I had really rare brain. Then later I remember taking a girl's hand and holding it in both of mine. We went on a date, and Leo invited us to his secret lair, which was a house out in nature in contemporary Norwegian style with lots of windows and it was really beautiful. He had a chef work the kitchen and spent lots of money on fine food and made sure I looked extremely good to my date, who was just in awe at it all. He walked around and made sure we got our fill and was a really nice host but also had kind of an evil grin in an ambiguous way where you can't tell if he's playing handsome host or planning world domination. I knew that I would have to give up my brain waves in return for this favor. I felt a tinge of worry, but quenched it as I looked at my date and how touched she was. The atmosphere was amazing. It was only me, the date, Leo and the chef. It was quiet and intimate. Leo stayed out of the way of the date, arranging for everything to go well. Sounds of running water in the distance. The dark of the evening enveloped us, and my date was very softened up by all this. I could tell I only needed to tell her something like how much she meant to me before she would start sobbing tears of joy.

I had this dream about half a year ago as I made some big, brave changes to my life that wouldn't necessarily work out for me. It was risky, but I kept a poker face, continued to stand up for myself to make the plans go through and just endured the resistance and inner turmoil. My hope was that I would be a freer, happier person afterwards and that has in large part come true. It was a decision made on faith and hope, but also one that required me to change into a different, tougher person. Very perceptive. I had definitely binged Actualized videos too much. I had a sort of backlash toward it where I couldn't stand anything that had to do with "self-development" for many months afterwards (still kind of have that reaction). You immerse so much in thoughts from other people that you lose contact with your own self, your own emotions and your own needs.

Haha, I interpret my dream to be progress with my shadow. I see the Leo figure as me striking a deal with the shadow to woo the anima, if you're familiar with Jungian psychology. I see it as very positive. :]

Start with some introductory material by other authors. It's impossible to piece together his writings without either guidance or a really, really long time of study. There are two books I recommend starting with: 1. Anthony Stevens' "Jung". It's a very light introduction to Jung's ideas, but you'll also have a really wonderfully written biography of his life, which I feel is surprisingly helpful to understand his ideas. What kind of person was he, what was his background, when and how did he have his breakthroughs. It will be a good foundation that you can "hang" other knowledge on. 2. Murray Stein's "Jung's Map of the Soul". This is a proper introduction to Jung's ideas that is light, but also goes right to the core of them. These are books that won't necessarily make you a Jung fanatic, because they're not sexy, but they are extremely helpful as a foundation. If you now want to make Jung more sexy and just get a general feel for how to look at him, you can binge-watch Jordan Peterson lectures (which gets Jung wrong sometimes, but I wouldn't worry about it since you're still gonna learn after this), or people on this forum or Actualized videos. After that, you can start on Jung's own writings (finally! lol). I recommend starting with Man and His Symbols. It was written for a more general audience and is super interesting and has a lot of illustrations and dream interpretation and is easy to read. Symbols of Transformation is great because it analyzes fairytales and dreams and stuff. Psychological Types is also interesting if you're interested in personality psychology and typing (MBTI was built on this). After this you can start on Archetypes and The Collective Unconscious and Aion. This in many ways is the "core Jung". You won't understand these completely on first reading, but they'll give you a thorough understanding of the archetypes! They also include grand analyses of western civilization that requires that you are more historically, religiously and philosophically aware, but don't worry about it. After this you can go down the road of the alchemical psychology writings (Psychology and Alchemy, Mysterium Conjunctionis). This is crazy shit. Don't start here. Hope this helps!

Hello, I've been studying music composition intensely for the last 5 years and I'm about to graduate. However, the last year I've suffered a major, debilitating depressive episode. My one-sided, self-absorbed, achievement-focused life style, as well as a lot of personal baggage has come back to haunt me. This all started when I found a community a couple of years ago with like-minded people. I had never really belonged anywhere. In the beginning, there was a lot of friction and competition, but I gradually found my place and I have mellowed out. Now I've found people I trust and can be myself around. This is a completely new experience for me. This set off the massive chain of personal demons that caused me to transition to Green. Where I before wanted to become the greatest composer to walk the earth, I now feel no desire to even write anything in particular. I survived the depression, but I'm not the same person anymore. It's like I've slipped into a different mode of being. There's an overwhelming sense of peace in my soul and I feel present in the world in a way I've never really experienced before. I also feel like I have people I can trust now. This comes at the expense of my life's narrative. I did not choose to let it go, rather it's no longer compatible with me, as I'm no longer able to live up to those ideals. I don't have the energy and I don't feel the compulsion to act out the necessary steps to turn them into reality. This saddens me. It feels like I've failed... though it's gotten better with time. The problem is that as a graduate, I need to start fending for myself, and I could really use some of that Orange drive. I'm starting from scratch with nothing, yet all I want to do is look at the birds and trees and hang out with my friends. (It's smiling, but on the inside there's dread of the crushing weight of living costs and student debt) Have you experienced something similar? Do you have any advice?

That's really interesting. I used to think that "sharing" was just strategic marketing speech, but now I know it's something one can mean truthfully. It's weird. I hope you're right that the creativity will come back.

Oh yeah, it was never my intention to actually push through, and that's on me for not making clear. But if you want to start describing the concept to a rational-minded person, then this might be the way to start. That was the intention of the original video I watched after all. I appreciate you guys' feedback. I'm glad I posted this so I could get correction.

I watched the videos that try to explain non-duality to rational-minded people. Forgive me for being candid, but as a rational-minded person myself, I didn't find those at all satisfying. I felt rather that I was listening to someone who knew what they were talking about, but whose language I didn't understand. Bridging the gap between systems of understanding is never easy. Now, I have never experienced non-duality, that much is certain, and it was for that reason I sought out those videos. Still, as far as a rational conceptualization goes, I don't think it would be too hard to lead someone to a logical acknowledgement of it, at the very least. With the caveat that I have no idea what I'm talking about. The boundaries we percieve between things are mostly semantic and mostly drawn for practical purposes. We draw distinctions between things to communicate effectively with each other. When we refer to a tree, for example talking about a Christmas tree, we do not stop to ponder the distinction between the stem and leaves, between the branches and the roots. What matters is the idea of a tree as a whole. In other contexts however, we do draw the distinction between leaves and the rest of the tree, for example talking about how the leaves fall to the ground when autumn comes. Similarily, when we talk about the dangers of the forest, we do not care about the individual trees and the distinction between them. We draw boundaries between things as boundaries between things become necessary for us to percieve and communicate. At the same time, we acknowledge physical laws. As far as we know, the universe behaves mechanistically and predictably. When a rock tumbles down a hill and collides with a second rock, that rock is set in motion. When someone with a particular personality style feels insecure, they may withdraw to test the loyalty of another person. That other person with another particular personality style may react fearfully when the first person withdraws, and follows after them. On a larger scale, when someone commits suicide, it causes pain in a whole range of individuals that were connected to that person. Those sorrowful individuals again cause unrest in their own social circles as they ventilate their feelings. In this way, we can see that actions cause ripples. In this way, we can see emotions as forces that propagate through individuals, almost as spirits that have a life of their own. Abstracting up concepts like this, we can see the universe as consisting of forces that push and pull at each other, like yin and yang, and the universe becomes one big pond with different waves that cause ripples in it, however, we can abstract even higher. Two boxers in a ring: one punches and the other dodges. Cause and effect, but their behavior is also connected. For everyday purposes, we draw a distinction between them, but we can just as easily remove the distinction if we want to. The two boxers are moving with each other as if they were one. If everything in the universe follows naturally from causes, then one can also imagine away these boundaries, and simply see everything as one. If I were to interpret this through the lens of Spiral Dynamics, then I'd say stage Yellow is seeing all the phenomena in the universe as existing in system with each other, like in the example with the suicide, and stage Turquoise as being able to erase all the artificial boundaries between these systems, between cause and effect, and simply realizing that everything has always been moving as one, indeed, that everything is one. I may not have experienced non-duality, but I can logically grasp that it is true, or at least logically grasp that it's a valid way of looking at the world. It's quite fascinating to look at reality with this in mind, but it requires considerable effort on my part, and I don't feel like I'm able to push through with the understanding into an actual experience of it. This is the same way I interpret Brahman in Hinduism. You can logically understand it, but to really get it, you have to reflect on the mystery until everything is integrated. This is how I see the lay of the land, as someone who is only using logic to deduce my way forward, simply anticipating the revelation. Now feel free to criticize it.

One person's idea of a functional life isn't necessarily another person's idea of a functional life. I don't know your sister, but based on your minimal description, she sounds like a normal young adult. The complaints you bring up about her seem incredibly minor. I'm sure she has her own way making it around the world, and if she doesn't, life will give her a wake-up call eventually. In any case, imposing your own standards on other people will only annoy them and they'll defy you just to annoy you in return.

I'm 26 and transitioning from Orange to Green. What set the transition in motion was my reckless belief that I could pursue greatness in my field without friends, trust, loving relationships... only my abysmal sense of self. This lead me into a spectacular crash of crippling depression and now my body is revolting toward this way of life with every fiber. I haven't really become any more of a saint, though in my good moments I'm optimistic about humanity. What really characterizes this new mode of being for me is a feeling of having "woken up". I've had tunnel vision going through the world, but now it's like I can see the world in all its three dimensional beauty. Periods of longer and longer duration where I'm happy just being able to taste the sweet honey of simply being alive and enjoy a gust of wind, or the dew in the grass. I have also worked on connecting more with people on equal terms, instead of keeping them dependent on me and calling that friendship. That has meant opening myself up and being vulnerable a lot, and that has been very scary to me. I don't have a stable income yet, so maybe the growth of Green is a bit premature, but I don't really feel any worry, as Orange at least gave me valuable skills and craft that I can use. To some degree, I see this transition to Green as my body pushing me in the direction of even higher mastery somehow as well. It's like it's saying "Now you've acquired the theory, the principles, the scaffolding, the models, the forms, the intellect - I'm not going to allow you to pursue that any longer. Now you've absorbed all that and instead you're going to forget about it and simply be alive and sense reality in the most intense way possible, as that is also a part of mastery. The yin to your yang." I do not look away from the possibility that the yin and yang will combine in the future in an eventual Yellow, where I'll be able to master both worlds seamlessly. For now however, I'm just going to savour all these warm fuzzy feelings for my newfound friends and deal with personal issues. It's thanks to Spiral Dynamics I've had the courage to embrace this change in my life that so violently forced itself upon me.

Yeah, definitely. In addition to that, I think they also are meant to describe two different aspects of personality. Jung describes his psychological types as as "cognitive processes" (the methods the psyche uses when operating), whereas Big 5 is based in taking the words that are used to describe people and boiling them down to the essential characteristics. So the two models are also fundamentally different in their conception. It's like one tries to be a map of the trees in the terrain, whereas the other is a map of the elevation. Though they are both "personality models" and use some of the same terminology differently, they are in actuality addressing completely different facets of a person.

INFJ, turbulent, 4w5 5w4 9w8, sp/sx MBTI and Big 5 aren't really compatible and don't really map onto each other, so yes, I'd say it's definitely possible to be a conscientious INTP, and in fact, I have met both conscientious and unconscientious INTPs. Some even vary in the quality of their conscientiousness in that some of them are very orderly but lazy, whereas others aren't very orderly, but very industrious. As well as both these and none.

As someone high in Big 5 perfectionism, I'd say perfectionism is pretty stifling by itself. I think it's more a curse than a blessing. I would trade it away.

Jungian archetypes specifically - every archetype exists within you per definition.

I've always talked passionately about what I read on various chatting services and on online forums after reading. It's a great way to take ownership of the knowledge you recieve. I sum up the ideas in the books as well as I can, present some of my disagreements, agreements and associations and so on. I did this from when I was a little kid since most of my friends were online, precisely because I couldn't find anyone to talk with about my interests. It's in recent years I realize the massive blessing this has been to my accumulation of knowledge and performance in school. It wasn't something I was conscious of doing, so it makes you wonder if it could easily not have been like that. Anyway, highly recommended to have study groups, given that you actually like to talk about your interests (but who doesn't? You'd have to tape my mouth to make me shut up about music )

100 (50th percentile) and 150 (99.9th+ percentile) is a massive difference. Tests that measure reliably above 200 are still in development. I teach music theory to a couple of kids. Some of them are really smart, and you can tell because they learn in a day what others need months to really get under their skin. And let's not even talk about the mental gymnastics they manage to do with that.

As for clouffy, I know how you feel man. I took an IQ test a year ago and didn't score as well as I thought I would, without revealing the actual numbers. If anything, you should realize just how much of your self-worth you base in your intelligence, and start investing your self-worth in yourself instead. As awesome as it would be to have the mental horsepower of a genius, it doesn't make you into a more valuable person. Intelligent people can be disadvantaged in that they can develop complexes where they don't believe they are worthy of love unless they perform well. By itself intelligence is a blessing, but when you place it into social reality, it can quickly become what we in Norwegian call a "bear favor" - that is, a favor that works out great in the short run, but has catastrophic long term consequences. Imagine how many people who blew their teachers away in grade school for example and so learned that they can get positive affection by displaying smarts. If general intelligence exists, there's nothing you can do but your best anyway. Don't cry over spilt milk.

Jordan Peterson explains the validity of general intelligence here, as well as walking you through why multiple intelligences don't work: Jordan Peterson is an actual psychology researcher, so his word carries some weight. In any case, it's healthy to engage with both sides of the debate.

This is an always on-going academic debate. There are arguments on both sides. You can split academia into those who believe that there's a single intelligence factor and those that believe in multiple intelligence styles. Jordan Peterson in his Big 5 lectures talk about how when you're good at one of the multiple intelligences you're also likely to be good in all the others, which points to an underlying factor "general intelligence" that lies in the shadow behind the multiple intelligences. Also the fact that IQ reliably predicts how far you're gonna go in life. And as with any scientific model, if you can actually predict something with it, then that's one of the strongest arguments you can have right there. Now I'm not in the field of psychology, only a happy amateur, so don't expect me to be able to see if there's a hole in the general intelligence, but it seems that IQ is indeed one thing.

Healthy Red: The unadultered search for dominance and willingness to compete is still useful in sports and work, given that the system you work within is designed to handle it. Standing up for yourself so that people don't walk all over you - which they always unconsciously and instinctively do unless you signal some sort of danger (Jordan Peterson: "the capacity for wreaking havoc") - is necessary. The willingness to fight ferociously for your own or your loved ones' survival is also important. Healthy Purple: Recognizing that having a healthy home base of people you trust and who you feel safe with is a precursor for doing more courageous things. Having something to fall back on when your venture fails. Rituals and sacrifices that strengthen the community - especially noteworthy now during Christmas.

People can be motivated to do their work for other reasons than pure industriousness. For example a person who is high in creativity (sub-openness) or curiosity (sub-openness) who are driven by the need to let this energy find an outlet. Just as one example. Seriously, dude, you need to read more about this. Your idea of how the nature of the Big 5 and what you can read into it is too simplistic. You seem to use it more as an excuse to judge people and act out discrimination. I shudder to think that you would automatically dismiss someone because they have a low conscientiousness score. Again, I recommend checking out the sources I mentioned. Calling people machiavellian just because they won't share sensitive information about themselves is just deluded. Yeah, sure, you don't think the information is sensitive, but have you thought about what the other person might feel? Because you can absolutely use someone's Big 5 score to manipulate them and discriminate against them, just like you're proving with your very words. To me it just comes off as a way for you to denigrate people if they don't indulge your personal curiosity about them. Like I mentioned, there are perfectly valid reasons why someone wouldn't share that information. Excuse me for using such strong words, but apparently my message isn't getting through.

It's important to understand that no score on the Big 5 is "good" or "bad" or "better" or "worse". It's not like in a role-playing game where if you score low in a stat you are "weak". All results have their ups and downs, depending on the context, and there's a place in the world for all people. Ask not whether these traits are bad or good, instead ask how you should live your life to benefit/cope with the real world and how your personality can help you live the life you want to live, on your terms, and on the terms of the personality that is you. That means that you shouldn't necessarily see your personality as something "to be improved upon" - in fact, the science shows that it's more or less impossible to change your Big 5 personality anyway. Your personality is you, and while yes, it's important to fit into the world, it's a perspective that gets too heavily weighted in today's society where it's the buyer's market when it comes to labour. We are asked to sacrifice ourselves in the name of the corporations we work for. Since your personality is you, you should instead seek to make the world into a place that will nurture you and place yourself in situations and contexts that synergize with your personality so that you can exist in the world as a healthy human being.

You can't divide it into as many categories as you want, only as many as are reasonably independent from each other. If two sub-traits always move in the same direction (but are maybe offset by a little factor) then they are for intents and purposes the same trait. What they're finding is that the big 5 traits can be broken down into new independent traits... Basically a more granular model. For example, conscientiousness, which can be broken up into two major sub-traits: order and industriousness. We can all agree that both order and industriousness is a part of conscientiousness, but we can also see that order and industriousness are not the same thing. The degree to which you put your environment in order (which includes traits like perfectionism) and the degree to which you work hard. The statistics confirm this. People can actually be high in order and low in perfectionism and vice versa, though these sub-categories will be a bit more similar than the big 5 categories are similar to other big 5 categories. It depends on the job in question because different types of jobs are optimally filled by different personality styles. And you also have to take into account that people who have experience and/or a high level of skills have found a way to work that suits their personality style, regardless of conscientiousness. I am personally a low conscientiousness person, specifically high order/low industriousness. This means that I'm pretty lazy by nature. Does that mean that I'm lazy at work? No, because a job is a job and my livelihood depends on me doing it right. I will however value my free time and make sure I get a lot of extra time for idling, which means that you won't see me working myself to death for you. People with high conscientiousness have other problems that people without high conscientiousness don't suffer from. I recommend checking out Jordan Peterson's lectures on the subject. Isn't it only natural to be wary of people who want to know your personality? What motivations do they have for wanting to know what can potentially be very intimate and sensitive information that can easily be used to manipulate you? To me it seems more rational to be suspicious of the person who wants to know your personality than to be suspicious of the person who doesn't feel comfortable handing out that information. In other words, I think this is 180 degrees the other way around - if anything, it indicates machiavellianism to want to know other people's personality profiles. However, that's also an exaggeration. The simple fact is that neither the degree to which you want to know someone's personality nor the degree to which you are willing to give other people insight into your personality is indicative of machiavellianism. There exists completely normal, down to earth, legitimate reasons for both.

The Big 5 can actually be divided further into 10 and 27 categories of more or less independent factors. The "high openness, low conscientiousness" person is a thing. They will still work on pure motivation, and perfectionism (which is a subfactor of conscientiousness together with industriousness) isn't always needed, and even then, someone with a generally low conscientiousness score might be perfectionistic enough. Whether someone would want to hire you: It all depends. Not true at all. People can have many legitimate reasons for not wanting to take personality tests. To say that people have bad characteristics because they don't want to take a personality test is just wrong. It's no guarantee. People with these traits are just as likely to have already learned to blend in with society.

MBTI is hella powerful, but most people don't delve into it or even understand where it comes from. It's based on Jung's psychological types, and there's a lot more to it than meets the eye. 16 Personalities is an example of how modern entrepeneurs bastardize and simplify the model into its surface to make it easier to sell. That's not to say MBTI is scientific or anything, but I think Jung was way more observant than he gets the credit for. However, it also has in common with a lot of Jung's ideas that they are more or less inherently unfalsifiable.