Marshall, Gene, The Enigma of Consciousness, Realistic Living Press, Bonham, TX, 2012. Chapter 15.
Escapes from the I Am Part II (excerpts from Chapter 15 please read the original material for complete context)
Type 2. The Arrogance of Manipulative Sureness
1) As a mode of escape personality type 2 is an escape from the Effortless Letting Be aspect of the I Am. Everyone can manifest this mode of escape to some extent, but certain people have a propensity toward it even an obsession with it. Personality type 2 persons are emotionally sensitive, outgoing persons who typically meddle in other peoples business. In a Jane Austin novel one meets these characters who count themselves matchmakers and fixers for other peoples lives, but are somewhat blind to their own lives, especially their own needs relative to accessing their more profound potentials. As emotionally powerful and influential persons, 2s make themselves available as helpers of whatever seems to them to need help. They often become trapped in codependent relations in which needy people lean on the 2, even enslave the 2 with a perpetual neediness that tyrannizes by refusing to care for their own selves.
2) Having a personality that overemphasizes helpfulness and personal relationships need not mean that such persons cannot access their profound life and use their interpersonal gifts with a tough-love type of compassion. Florence Nightingale and Desmond Tutu may be examples of the effectively compassionate 2. The escape is in identifying with their being an emotionally sincere and helpful person and thereby avoiding the strength and realism of Letting Be the inevitable processes of Reality.
3) Arrogance is a quality that describes this estrangement, for the type 2 personality tends to arrogate to delusion of their celebrated powers an illusory capacity to fix what it is not within their ability to fix or their business to fix. Type 4. The Envy of Ego Promotion
4) As a mode of escape personality type 4 is an escape from the Primal Merging aspect of the I Am. Everyone can manifest this mode of escape to some extent, but certain people have a gift for it even an obsession with it. Personality type 4 persons are deeply sensitive people almost to the extent of mixing up their own lives with the lives of others. They also tend to be creative people as musicians or artists or anything that requires emotional sensitivity and expressiveness. Not all 4s are talented, but those who are often make contributions to the overall culture that we count as treasures. They often lead us into deeper experiences. They tend to see themselves as special people with regard to personal gifts that most people lack. And if they do not have the personal gifts they want, they tend to be envious of those that do have them. Self, in the sense of ego strengths, is a big deal for these persons.
5) Having a personality that overemphasizes creative potentials need not mean that such persons cannot access their profound life and use their sensibilities with effective compassion for others. Judy Garland and Bob Dylan are well known examples of effective and compassionate type 4 personalities. The escape is identifying with ones strong ego strengths and thereby avoiding something very much deeper, namely the raw freedom that is beyond ego, beyond personality habits, beyond anything that pertains to promoting or defending self worth. Envy is a quality that describes this estrangement, for the type 4 personality tends to misplace the issue of becoming all that they can become. They may focus upon possessing special gifts that others seem to have in more abundance. This is a distraction from the real issue of accessing ones own deep freedom in order to alter ones own life in the directions desired or needed or called for. Type 1. The Wrath of Moral Sureness
6) As a mode of escape personality type 1 is an escape from the Inherent Purity aspect of the I Am. Everyone can manifest this mode of escape to some extent, but certain people have a propensity toward it even an obsession with it. Personality type 1 individuals are principled persons. They may be social reformers. They may stick up for the little guy. Even when they are fairly traditional, they tend to be picky persons who know what is right and do what is right as they understand it. We often count on them; they tend to be persons who get things done and get them done right. Flexibility may be one of their virtues, or maybe not. They are not likely to lie for us, cheat for us, or compromise their core values. They tend to be markedly assertive persons who can seem too sure about what they are doing. They have no fear about carrying out stern critiques of others. They may be smooth and skilled at promoting what they think is right and true. They may boring bigots.
7) Having a personality that overemphasizes moral rightness need not mean that such persons cannot access their profound life and use their tough-mindedness with compassion. Ralph Nader and Jane Fonda are examples of type 1 tough-minded compassion. The escape is identifying with the taken-for-granted rightness of their superego, their upbringing, or their ethical thoughtfulness. The escape is seeing such rightness as the real me, a rightness that is substituted for the inherent purity of that essential freedom that knows that all choices must be carried out in a world of ambiguities in which good and evil are always relative to chosen contexts.
8) Wrath is a quality that describes this estrangement, for the type 1 personalities tend to be resentful of violations of their principles and they tend to put the energy of anger into their careful or reckless campaigns of living.
Read one of the lines from this reading that caught your attention and that you would like to have the group discuss in more depth.
When was an instance you are willing to share when you were intent on fixing reality
What is the personality type 2 described in Paragraphs 1, 2, and 3 How do you experience this dynamic in your own life
What is the arrogance Paragraph 3 describes
What is the personality type 4 described in Paragraphs 4 and 5 How do you experience this dynamic in your own life
What is the envy Paragraph 5 describes
What is the personality type 1 described in Paragraphs 6, 7, and 8 How do you experience this dynamic in your own life
What is the meaning of this sentence in Paragraph 7: The escape is seeing such rightness as the real me, a rightness that is substituted for the inherent purity of that essential freedom that knows that all choices must be carried out in a world of ambiguities in which good and evil are always relative to chosen contexts.
How do you experience this dynamic in your own life
What is the wrath Paragraph 8 describes
What is estrangement (3,5,8)
How might I live my life differently because of the awareness provoked in this material
What personal practices might be indicted from the encounter with this material