Esoterica > The Work
Can personality tests and interactives aid in work upon oneself?
anart:
--- Quote from: thorbiorn ---Anart, without going into all the details let me generalize and say that I accept a lot of your criticism and that I am happy that you have brought it up for others to read.
Then there is a proverb that truth withstands the test of time and lies are soon exposed. So one way I can think of putting the tests to the test of time, is to continue to take a few more regularly over a period of some months or even a year, write down what I learn and report back here.
Do you consider this a responable response?
thorbiorn
--- End quote ---
Hi thorbiorn,
I don't think there is generally a problem at all with taking these sorts of tests, I was simply positing that it might be wise to closely examine your thinking about, and personal reaction to, such tests. Ultimately, it's your life and you can and should do exactly what you decide to do in all things, these tests included.
With that said, this response of yours sounds rather like an addict trying to bargain a way to continue to 'use' in order to prove something, either to him/herself or to someone else. Your response strikes me as just a bit odd in that it does indeed seem that you are quite invested in these tests, to the point that the thought of 'never' taking another one makes you a bit uncomfortable.
They are just internet tests - in and of themselves, they do nothing - it is your interaction with them (or dependency on them?) that is really the key point of interest here. Also, what exactly is this 'test of time' to which you'll be putting these tests - what criteria will you be using to see if they 'pass' this test? Is the criteria your own internal understanding of yourself versus what these tests indicate - in other words, an internal, subjective feedback loop? Or, do you mean posting them here for others to take as well? (if so, I'm sure you've noticed we post them in the 'tickle me' section)
So, my point is that it's really much less a question of the tests themselves than it is a question of how you interact with them, if that makes any sense at all, and if I'm mistaken about your lack of comfort with the idea of never taking another one (not that I'm suggesting you should never take another one), then I do apologize.
thorbiorn:
Hi Anart,
Your response made me reflect on the reasons why I began the thread:
--- Quote from: thorbiorn ---Can personality tests and interactives aid in work upon oneself?
The question arose after Aeneas in http://www.signs-of-the-times.org/signs … hp?id=7227 suggested to try out the 'Sheep Dash' game: http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/sleep/sheep/ Having played a bit curiousity led to consider the page this game was place on.
--- End quote ---
and your response was if I have understood you:
--- Quote from: Anart ---They are just internet tests - in and of themselves, they do nothing - it is your interaction with them (or dependency on them?) that is really the key point of interest here.
--- End quote ---
Psychological tests are the results of work done in various fields of psychology. Some links one can look at to find out more details are:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychology
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_psychology
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuropsychology
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mental_illness
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_brain
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.
The feed-back you have given me has helped me to formulate the question more clearly. But I do not think we have an answer yet, just as what I wrote in the previous post may not be the correct way to solve it.
thorbiorn
anart:
Thank you, however, I'm very well aware of what 'psychological tests' are, and what purpose they serve in a clinical environment (which an internet site is not), thus my comments in this thread. My input thus far has been centered on your own focus and dependency on them.
There are no shortcuts - and dreaming takes many forms.
We have found psychology to be an integral part of the Work, and my original inquiry remains: to what extent, if any, are internet personality/psychology tests reflective of objective psychology, objective truth, or objective insight into one's own machine? To what extent can a test that applies to everyone; that uses broad definitions and criteria; that comes to formulaic conclusions based on generalities reflective of reality?
To what extent does focusing on and taking a myriad of such tests distract from Work on oneself; from looking within instead of without; from redefining instead of relying on mass-produced and mass-applied definitions? These are the questions, thorbiorn, and I don't think Wikipedia has the answers.
As far as 'bridging the gap' - the psychological books on the recommended reading list go a long way toward doing exactly that, and this is why we work so closely with such material. It is through psychology that we can access many of the keys to take us to a deeper understanding. However, not all psychology can be applied this way, because, as in every field of study, not all 'psychology' is relevant, true or helpful. And, thus, we come back to the question about 'internet tests'.
Galahad:
Another way to put this, thorbiorn, is: are you just a consumer of these tests?
The various books that we recommend can be read and consumed as well. The question is, how do you read them? The books, if read slowly, thinking about the points they raise, can bring up memories related to important issues we are each dealing with. A phrase or a sentence can pack a punch that hits you in the gut. It is an emotional jolt that tells you there is something there to be looked at more deeply. It isn't simply an intellectual excercise, an attempt to master the theory.
So I would ask, when you do these tests, do you ever receive an emotional jolt, the feeling you have been suckered punched in the stomach that leaves you gasping for breath?
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.
thorbiorn
--- Quote from: edit 20071022 03:00 ---Before I posted the above short response, I had been working on a more full description of the experience/experiment, but I decided not to include it. It was then already after midnight. Before I got to lie down, I got a call from the people helping to guard the place that somebody was outside, so I had to call the security company. Nothing too serious so far, still visiting the country with the second highest murder rate one has to be careful. At least I was happy, that I was not sleeping. Would I have been less ready, if I had not been working on this issue? I do not know, in any case I shall submit some of the notes, as they say, FWIW:
Let me begin with the beginning, which was the sheep game: http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/sleep/sheep/ found in
http://www.cassiopaea.org/forum/index.php?topic=7227
What I learned was:
1.the difficulty of the game is not uniform because, if sheep come from the lower right corner the view of which is cluttered by other sheep then it took me longer to catch them.
2.that if ones attention is steady and the sheep come in the upper ¾ area then they stopped after almost the same distance. However there were times when they did not and I found that it would be when my attention was wandering, even involuntarily. This discovery was of course not pleasant, (shock), because it happens at other times also. It is not that I did not know it, it is just I got to know it in a new way.
3.although I am right handed I could also within a short time train the left hand system to respond almost as fast still it was more comfortable with the right hand.
4.that the game is, if not considering just one game, a way of measuring reaction time. I have read else where that people that do a fair amount of games demanding reaction time, actually do become faster. This of course spills over in other areas of life, like driving skills, reading speed etc.
Next follww some from the list in the first post:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/body/interactives/senseschallenge/
This test is about senses, the first ones are optical illusions. They show to some people that inferences based on perceptions can be mistaken under certain circumstances. There are 20 questions and one in particular I found very surprising if not humiliating. If taken just as a competition or for fun one looses sight of the point the test makes that sensual reading errors DO occur.
There is another which relates to the coordination of sight and hearing.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/body/interactives/senseschallenge/
One suggestion is given through the eyes and a different one through the ears. The task is to select the one that corresponds to reality. The lesson from this is that sometimes our perceptions of what is, are overruled by our expectation or the suggestion that we are given. For some people this is elementary, for me to actually experience this was disturbing.
When I read the Wave and found the transcript where it is explained how stroboscopic light may function as a hypnotic opener and that a suggestion can be put in at the time, over a radio for example, to not see ‘the craft’, I thought this was possible but not easy to understand. In this exercise the suggestion is there without the hypnotic opener and when I tried first time, it still worked on me. If anyone after reading this explanation, will try, they may experience a different outcome, than if they had not known, it will thus show that he who is forewarned is forearmed.
A remarkable experiment which is not so easy to fake is:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/mind/surveys/synaesthesia/see/ It is designed to discover if people associate a perception with more than one sense. Although it is said that this ability is often either there or not and often runs in families, I am still wondering, because if one remembers the other test, that showed that a suggestion may overrule a perception, with this one, that some perceive an object with two senses, like when seeing a sound or hearing a colour, one arrives at the hypothesis that some people may have this talent, but that it is overruled by suggestions fed in childhood. The implication in a broader context is that reading instruments naturally vary more from one person to another than we are brought up to consider, but that consensus reality reduces the variance.
One stomach churner test is: http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/mind/surveys/disgust/index.shtml The test makers make at the end the suggestion that some of our feelings of disgust are biologically rooted and have as target the goal of self preservation. Whether this is indeed so I am still wondering but I remember seeing a sick animal staying away from its herd and dogs chasing off a skinny stray with one eye, parasites, and almost no hair.
The subject of the one picture I liked the least or which disgusted me the most I thought I had better investigate further and get to understand. I did and found out some more.
_http://www.sp01.com/micro/worms/index.htm
The same pictures with others can be found on
_http://cas.bellarmine.edu/tietjen/Fun%20Stuff/fun_with_parasites.htm One can double click on the individual pictures to make them bigger,.and I think one should, if one wishes to really see the size of the problem, because 1.5 billion people has something like this.
A real player file that shows the removal of a worm:
_http://dave1.mgh.harvard.edu/ViewFilms.cfm?film_id=143
_http://www.metafilter.com/49752/Ascaris-lumbricoides has a forum with some comments and embedded links some of the pictures already mentioned.
The next page investigates the impact of round worms on human society:
_http://www.personal.psu.edu/users/n/c/ncj111/Human%20Impact.htm has one of the above photos. It is the black boy sleeping or under anaesthesia..
Another type of parasite is described on the Who site:
http://www.who.int/schistosomiasis/en/ No graphics easily available. However it does alert one to the reality that many, many people suffer.
To see more about the issue of parasites and cure _http://www.parasitecleanse.com/gallery.htm
_http://www.parasitecleanse.com/parasites.htm
_http://www.worldwithoutparasites.com/
_http://www.healthysigns.com/index.htm
Being satisfied with what I had found out about parasites I moved onto another.
In the lonelyhearts exercise, the idea is to imagine one is single and wishes to put out an ad for a partner. http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/mind/surveys/lonelyhearts/index.shtml
The difficulty was that there are many terms so one task is to put priorities and find the top two or three. If one intends to be true, rather than make an advertisement that is tilted or exaggerated then one needs to think carefully what characterises oneself, and what qualities one appreciates in others.
Who likes to be cheated, not me, but it happened also this time. The following has a few video clips and the task is to find out who is smiling and who is only pretending to smile: http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/mind/surveys/smiles/index.shtml
Some of the memory surveys used an interesting technique. They flicked two pictures right after each other. The pictures were identical with the exception of one item. The task was on the basis of the short exposure to detect what was missing. In one instance though the second picture came only after some minutes. What I learned there was the need for ATTENTION, more attention, not so easy to get, but it is good to be aware of the need. It is not that I did not know but more that I realized what I might be able to notice if I had more of it..
Then there were the profile tests. They claimed to be designed to indicate what style of thinker one is, what type of personality one has primarily, and what types of job one would do successfully. In these it is the process of choosing between alternatives just that which describes most closely how one usually operates that is the difficult part.
At the same time one gets a view into what other options are available. What I could not determine was if the occasional difficulty of choosing was because I do not know myself, or because other alternatives would correspond better, if I had fewer programmes.
One of the sites has a picture of Leonardo da Vinci or a drawing of him. The page explains how this great man embodied in his life the qualities of many different personality traits. Leonardo da Vinci was one of my teenage heroes, I admired his versatile genius, and I think the inspiration the web page wishes to leave with the one who takes the quiz is that no matter what quality turns out to be predominant one should not think that the others are not there to some or even a great extend. Also even if they are not expressed perhaps one could enliven them more.
There was a questionnaire that was designed to show something about moral reasoning. Every question is a short description of a situation followed by several options. Again the hard part was the process of choosing the option that corresponded most closely. I am wondering if the pull between different options is a reflection of many I’s within, each raising a hand for its preference, or it is because in a normal situation in life the many choices are not even considered, because we do what we always do as impelled by habit and circumstance.
One last questionnaire to mention is the one about perfectionism: _http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/mind/surveys/perfectionism/index.shtml The challenge lay in deciding on the influence of my parents in my childhood. I remember it, but to evaluate it is quite different.
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