Intellectual Level

On the Intellectual level we get caught up in comparing our idea of our self with the idea others have of themselves in order to improve our leverage over them. These comparisons reflect how we either want to “seduce” or “subjectify” others so they meet us the way we want to be met. As these motives reflect a step above the victim mentality of the Instinctive level, we seek to differentiate ourselves by having others define themselves in terms of us. As long as others need us more than we need them we feel secure. On the feminine polarity, we use possessions as a way to demand respect so that others conform to our wishes (Personal Dominion), or we use the masculine polarity to assert a proven track record so others will let us implement our own ideas (Personal Achievement). We use both the masculine and feminine when we lose ourselves in personal activities where events are defined the way we want (Self-Serving Activity). We operate on the intellectual level as long as we believe that competition is the way of the world and that we must prove ourselves superior to get what we want.

When we operate in a motive of Personal Dominion, we elevate our personality needs, which minimizes our ability to see the compromise and pain of others attempting to meet us. When we operate in a motive of Personal Achievement, we typically put ideas first and are unable to consider or incorporate the ideas or suggestions of others. Operating from a mode of Self-Serving Activity, we become trapped in superficial caretaking of others because we put our needs first and are unable to see the needs of others up front. The cost of intellectual positions, in which we take care of ourselves at the cost of others, means that we lose mutual understanding. Attempts to deny that others make an impact on us actually create the reality that they make a much larger impact. The more we deny this impact the less we accomplish overall.

On the intellectual level, the motives of Personal Dominion, Self-Serving Activity and Personal Achievement demonstrate that however we envision our own power we still believe others will not accept it as it is. This means we come to every interaction believing we have to assert ourselves and make others conform to us in order for us to feel seen. Without conflict and intensity we might feel we are without a compass. We need others to challenge us, we need to assert our power, to convince others we are not “wimping out.” In intellectual motives, people therefore seek adversity to justify their “positions” to maintain a state of irritation and inflexibility that cuts them off from external support. Each intellectual motive drives us to assert what we believe is our right to act as we wish, even if others are not repressing us. In this way, the motives promote reactions from others because we are still projecting our past experiences onto them. Until we recognize that no one can thwart our way of being, intellectual motives continue to be the way we act out feelings of internal impotence.

It is easy to see how only others operating in intellectual motives would be willing and able to match us in the use of these strategies. As intellectual motives tend to wear down others who do not operate on the intellectual level, we soon discover that only individuals fighting to individuate themselves are willing to be our partners. This reinforces a complementary attraction pattern where individuals operating in Personal Dominion are attracted to those operating in Personal Achievement. While the common desire is to prove personal independence at all costs, this pattern in itself can manifest as a co-dependency program because we seek others who maximize our personal sense of security. The irony is that the primary fear on the intellectual level is being “subjectified” by others, but in fact, we seek to “subjectify” them to increase our own Safety. It is interesting to see how this paradox plays out as the desire to prove independence, when actually all we want is to be embraced and honored in our power. We can validate this by how much it concerns us when others think we are more dependent than is healthy.

Healing our intellectual conditioning means removing our need to judge our thoughts as right or wrong so we are not pressured to make the thoughts of others right or wrong. If we can see thoughts as independent energetic entities that have an infinity of appropriate connections, we can see that our simplistic, dualistic notions are not actually supported. When we operate in a right/wrong world, it makes it easier for us to appear to possess and own our thoughts as a reflection of who we are. All attachments to thoughts (when we end up defining our selves in terms of them) automatically separate us from others. The more we are attached to an idea because it amplifies of supports our personality perspective or because it explains something that is unclear to us. In this framework, everything is valued in terms of our ability to “appropriate it” or “use it” to diminish our safety and security fears or to expand and reinforce our own personality purpose. Anything that cannot be absorbed or co-opted into our position becomes our enemy. We end up taking sides to affirm, justify and support our identification with our intellectual truth. This creates Intensity.

We heal our intellectual motives when we can begin to appreciate that there is no right or wrong in any thought. Our interpretation of whether thoughts will affirm or support our intentions sets up an inner duality where we repress a part of our thinking to assert our truth in the world. This repressed portion becomes our shadow side, which naturally sabotages our expression because our complete truth is being denied. Until we release our belief that others can subvert our truth and thereby minimize our power, we will continue to operate in a self-destructive, dualistic manner. It is our attachment to being right that sets us up to be proven wrong. As long as we need to be right, we automatically attract others with opposing viewpoints that need to prove us wrong. In this way, we create our opposition, not realizing that what we are repressing within ourselves, we unconsciously seek out in others. Let us awaken to the full complexity of our deeper truth, so that we no longer need to operate with the need to prove ourselves right or have our pride damaged when others prove us wrong.

Let us learn to engage thoughts in a way that reveals deeper choices so that we can experience the possibilities that lead us to new choices. Being present to thoughts reveals our lack of particular ownership. Let us make these choices not on a personal evaluation, but rather on an experience of heartfelt expansion that arises when we are in unity with our path. This transformation process teaches us that thoughts are only bookmarks or access points to a greater unified knowing, when we are in connection with the universal mind. Let us consider how ideas either open a door or distance us from that door by creating layers of distortions that keep us from engaging our complete truth.

Let us learn how to bring light to our thoughts, to concentrate on their deeper possibilities so they become guides to our development. One way that we can more easily accomplish this is to be able to integrate our thinking with that of others, without an attachment to protecting our self or taking personal credit. Simply stated, the more we are imposing our view on the situation, the less effectively we can learn and grow from it. Our fixations close down possibilities. An alternative is to be open to all views, so that we can listen in a way that allows a Unity Thinking process to evolve. Unity Thinking is the experience of honoring our knowing without being attached to any particular thought, so that more complete solutions emerge. With Unity Thinking, our deeper truth emerges and is revealed, so that we increasingly are able to serve Universal Intent.

Imagine how we can operate with others without comparing our ideas to theirs and having to believe one is better than another. Instead of trying to be different or unique, let us find our true uniqueness in our common thoughts and human nature. As long as we do not judge others’ thoughts, our own thoughts are unassailable from the distortions of others. Instead, the light of our intellectual empowerment will support and uplift those who are aligned to the creative possibilities that we are most interested in manifesting. In this way any intellectual differences or similarities become non-issues in the larger creative process, where the ownership of our truth grows through engaging the truth of others. The degree to which we can transcend our personal positions about the truth, is the degree that our wisdom can be released in the world. Then all we have to do is let thoughts be free. In this way, we are able to become an advocate for knowing without being attached to the knowledge itself. Ultimately, we become more identified with being the knower and can see how our attachments to the known have actually have belittled our spirit.

Why It Is Powerful To Recognize Motives And The Motives Of Others

The discovery of motives awakens us to how our complaints about others typically reflect a denial of our own power. While we have each experienced wanting to change others and have learned that to do so is pointless, we now have the ability to change our responses to others by becoming more conscious about our motives. Since motives typically reflect a part of us externalizing our fears into beliefs about how others should be with us, it is possible to use this process to learn how to recover

our consciousness so we can more effectively interact with others. The first step is to identify how we try to change others, tracking this back to our motive beliefs, to learn where others are not conforming to our expectations. Lower motives keep us stuck in irritating patterns where we seem helpless and unable to change the way we interact. When we learn how we have constructed these patterns, it gives us the option to deal with the core fear that keeps us from establishing conscious relationships with others.

The diagram, “Identifying Motives By Our Fears”, illustrates how the underlying power to embrace life energy can be changed completely by recognizing underlying conditioning issues. When we are able to be present with these fears and see that they are limited reflections of who we really are, then we will no longer be defined by motive beliefs. It is important to take time to clear these fears from our body awareness by exploring them as explicitly as possible. Some people find relief in taking their fears and describing them in terms of sensation, taste, smell, color, and location in the body. The more we become conscious of our fears, the less we are driven to act from lower motives. In effect, consciousness allows us to see that our Safety and Security issues are, to a degree, made up and amplified as a way to affirm our survival needs. When we can appreciate how the personality mechanism has brought us to the point where we are more conscious, then it is possible to see that the old patterns are no longer useful or necessary.

As long as we are unconscious, motives provide the means to constantly interact with our fears. We can see this in our efforts to change others so we feel safer or more secure. Failing this, we can see how we adapted to others and fell into people-pleasing behaviors so as not to aggravate the fears of others. It is time now to consider how we can consciously author our experience by choosing to operate in motives that are more fulfilling and that honor the development of our consciousness. Each layer of motives, from the bottom up, operates with greater pain, rejection, and abandonment. For this reason, people usually work from the highest state of consciousness they can embody and embrace whatever degree of fear they can transmute at any one time. By being with your fear and exploring it, it dissipates its energy into awareness, which is what is called the Transmutation process. The more we clear different motives, the more we can see the motives of others that keep them from being present with us.

When we cannot see our own motives, it is nearly impossible to see the motives of others in our life. Acknowledging our fears brings life energy and power to our Truth. We begin to operate in ways that reflect who we are really are. This awakening lets us break through each motive level so that the boundaries and barriers that were previously preventing us from expression now empower us to connect to ourselves in more meaningful ways. At the core of any fear there is a greater life presence that some people would characterize as Eros. It is the affirmation that there is something true, good, and natural for us to engage in the world. This affirmation is opposed by the Thanatos energy that initially reflects past repressions and denial. It is more commonly seen as the contraction energy of conditioning. We heal by being present with the pain, rejection and abandonment caused by denying our natural life expression to please others.

Being met energetically and consciously, being open and available (moving out of our heads or a dominant thinking perspective) is an actual commitment to true Life Energy exchanges. While the skills of Playfulness, Paradox and Mutual Learning can enhance our understanding of the creative flow, they are not the juice and passion that make life occur. What empowers us is our zest for life, our desire to learn how to be more authentic. When we operate in our complete authentic nature, let ourselves be seen, reflected and valued for who we are, we are in the preliminary steps that awaken

our true creative passion. Some recognize what is missing through the opposite, that of sleep-walking, where we continually experience the repeating patterns of pain and struggle because we are not engaging life fully. Let us begin to explore how we are limiting our creative expression.