Esoterica > The Work
Can personality tests and interactives aid in work upon oneself?
Pob:
--- Quote from: thorbiorn ---Yesterday I picked up the three books of Mouravieff at the post office. It appears that reading these and others is the way to go, maybe some things that are not clear now will become.
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I would certainly agree with you thorbiorn, there are so many distractions in this world and I have found reading the texts recommended on SOTT to be invaluable in working out how best to use the relatively little time we have left on this fragile planet.
Bluelamp:
--- Quote from: thorbiorn ---Now if one considers the Work, that is the theory of the various centers, their functions, their possible fusion and range of developement, then there appears, for what I know, to be a gap in understanding between the two styles of psycholgy, if one accepts that the Work is a type of psychology.
So one question is if it is possible to bridge this gap. What parts of the brain and nervous system reflect what centers. Can some of the psychological tests available help to identify the state of development of a center as described in the 4th way as well as indicate areas that may need to be balanced to function better.
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Gurdjieff was into a geometry called the Enneagram which is related to the law of 3 and the centers. That geometry is a modern personality test. The math got me to a guy named Tony Smith and Tony got me to Ark thus I think of the Enneagram as an Oz that got me to Kansas. You are already in Kansas so you don't really need to hang out in Oz work-wise. As part of an appropriately sized entertainment budget, it's OK as Anart mentioned. I'm part of an Enneagram forum which occasionally gives me the chance to mention 4th Way stuff and link to SOTT without being thought of as totally crazy so I suppose that's a little work related.
To me the brain ends up a quantum information state at some point and the biology below that, like any biology, is not my strong suit. The part of a personality test related to the centers could kind of have two parts, the part you are born with and the part that gets developed/matured. Most personality tests I think are for the part you are born with. I know about theories for maturing/developing and I know one guy who made an experimental test for the purpose of measuring the development level but I don't know how successful the experiment was. He was a protestor for the Vietnam War and the Iraq War and some other things kind of took him away from his psychology work.
thorbiorn:
Thanks John, I looked at your Website and got lost in the geometry, it is beautiful and intriguing. although I sense it would take me some time to understand it thoroughly. From what I read in ISOTM, Gurdjieff encouraged his students, to strive to understand the, what you call, Enneagram deeply.
Clicking around on the site of I found some excerpts that may help to understand what some of the resarch they do into Enneagram and MBTI (Myers-Briggs Type Indicator) involves.
The relationship between Enneagram and MBTI systems
--- Quote ---The Enneagram as MANDALA
This series of papers, written in 1999, explores the Enneagram AS SYMBOL. The Enneagram is presented as a classic mandala figure which also displays features that are characteristic of both the 'double mandala' and 'triple mandala'.
It was our intention in presenting this series to offer a new perspective on the relationship between two kinds of personality system. One system, represented by the Enneagram, emerged from spiritual traditions that seek to affect profound transformations of personality in the individual. The other, represented by the MBTI, arose from the psychologist's quest to understand the fundamental ways in which people differ.
We hope to have demonstrated how these two approaches to personality actually supplement each other. Given the right explanatory framework valuable information in one system can be translated into terms that are understandable in the other. Each can thus be used to advance the other's goals in ways that are not likely to otherwise occur.
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The Wikipedia has two entries for Enneagram one is given above along with a link for MBTI, and the other is: Enneagram of Personality
Next something about the person who worked with developing the theory of the Enneagram of Consciousness
--- Quote ---Walter J. Geldart
Walter Joseph Geldart is an enneagram scholar and writer. His Enneagram of Consciousness was developed with the purpose of integrating the modern enneagram personality type system with the original enneagram process model used by Sufis, Gurdjieff, Ouspensky, and Bennett.
Walter received the Bachelor and Master of Electrical Engineering degrees from McGill (1958) and McMaster (1962), and he retired from Bell Telephone Labs (AT&T) in 1992. He received the Master of Divinity degree (Summa Cum Laude) from New Brunswick Theological Seminary in 1993.
Walter is a member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE). He is a certified MBTI© teacher and a Riso-Hudson Certified Enneagram Teacher (with Honors). He has published several enneagram articles in Enneagram Monthly, Full Circle (Enneagram Institute), the Enneagram and the MBTI, and the IEEE Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics. Walter is a member of the IEA's 'Realizing the Potential' team lead by Donald Fowke.
For some more personal observations on Walter and the qualities that contribute to his indomitable spirit and seemingly limitless capacity for exploring the outer fringes of creative theory-making, please see the article on Walter's 'fifth function' in this issue. And for more information about how he developed the 'Enneagram of Consciousness', see his essay on that subject.
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Research application of theory
--- Quote ---A Call for Art
Individuals with different personality types approach art in vastly different ways, and it is this phenomenon that we are looking to explore in the 'art and personality' column. If you show one of your pieces at our site, you may include a short bio and a link to a website of your choice, where people can see more of your work. Although we receive a modest number of visitors (approximately 200 folks a day), there is a steady stream of people coming to the site, and it is a select group that tends to have an interest in the arts.
In presenting work at our site, you may use your name or a pseudonym. Your participation will cost you nothing, and there's no 'catch'. We are simply interested in art, how people approach this work, and what, if anything, this has to do with personality type.
In order to participate, you would have to provide us with:
1. a computer file that displays your artwork (a '.jpg' file for visual art - approximately 320x415 pixels in size, and less than 50k - or a 'midi' or similar file for music). You do not lose your rights to the material, and the file will not be used in any other way than the one that is described here.
2. a short description of how you approach your art. We can provide you with assistance in doing this, if you want.
3. your MBTI and Enneagram types. These are the two personality systems that we are using. If you don't know what type you are, you can find out by answering an on-line questionnaire that will be provided to you, free of charge (in exchange for your participation). These two types of personality indicators are not 'tests', and do not presume to evaluate you in any way - they simply measure your preferences, and establish your personality type on the basis of these preferences.
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If one, like myself is not an artist or has something to hand in there are still possibilities to evaluate ones type. Google gave for 'Enneagram type test' 220.000 hits; and for 'MBTI type test' 1040000 hits. Which among all these are of quality, that may be less simple to answer, but I am sure that among such a high number there will be some. However it is possible that they for the Enneagram of Conssiousness designed a particular test. Would you, John, know about this?
thorbiorn
anart:
--- Quote from: thorbiorn ---Yesterday I picked up the three books of Mouravieff at the post office. It appears that reading these and others is the way to go, maybe some things that are not clear now will become.
--- End quote ---
--- Quote from: thorbiorn ---If one, like myself is not an artist or has something to hand in there are still possibilities to evaluate ones type. Google gave for 'Enneagram type test' 220.000 hits; and for 'MBTI type test' 1040000 hits.
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Thorbiorn - why are you so desperately searching outside yourself for answers?
Your obsession with online tests has a certain vehemence that indicates a misuse of internal energy. You cannot look outside yourself for answers, thorbiorn - they are all inside.
Bluelamp:
--- Quote from: thorbiorn ---If one, like myself is not an artist or has something to hand in there are still possibilities to evaluate ones type. Google gave for 'Enneagram type test' 220.000 hits; and for 'MBTI type test' 1040000 hits. Which among all these are of quality, that may be less simple to answer, but I am sure that among such a high number there will be some. However it is possible that they for the Enneagram of Conssiousness designed a particular test. Would you, John, know about this?
thorbiorn
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One thing to keep in mind is that neither Gurdjieff or Jung had tests for their models. Gurdjieff didn't even have a personality theory and even Jung didn't do anything more with personality theory for the last 40 or so years of his life. The MBTI was created for Jung's model by a mother-daughter duo while Jung was still quite alive but no longer working on personality models.
Testing is an incredibly imprecise science. Most everybody recommends reading the descriptions after you take a test to make sure there isn't a better description for you than the one the test came up with. Three of the four test links from that journal page you posted a graphic for, have a free test and they are as good as any to take before reading descriptions. Knowing your type and the other types can give you an appreciation for the motivations of others being different than yours but really it's much more for things like career counseling not The Work.
Geldart has papers in that journal and I have three papers in that journal and the journal's editor (John Fudjack) has lots of his own papers in the journal. We all have our own theories. Fudjack and Geldart are certainly more well known than me but they aren't the most well known. Claudio Naranjo, Riso & Hudson, and Helen Palmer would be three more well known theorists. Riso and Hudson own the Enneagram forum I post in and there's an interview with them in Fudjack's journal. Unlike with the MBTI, there's lots of different Enneagram theories around so I don't advise getting into the theory jungle either. Even the MBTI has subtypes now and I know almost nothing about them, the one thing I heard I totally dislike. I know a little more about Enneagram subtypes only cause of the forum I'm in but I mostly ignore them too cause I can't see any math in them. Stay Away, it's turning into a big ball of yarn just like superstring physics. Fudjack is my favorite theorist but it's more for things beyond personality theory, patterns that show up in physics/metaphysics aka things that do have math (Fudjack even interviewed Brian Greene, a well known physicist with a popular book and television specials).
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