Smart (Instinctive, Masculine)

Being attracted to someone who appears smart fulfills the need for security, especially when we do not feel as smart and able to take care of ourselves. What we are seeking is the intellectual stimulation our partner can provide. Smartness is a key factor particularly for boys seeking to distinguish themselves from others. Little girls are culturally ignored when they perform the same kind of behavior unless their parents possess some Concrete Knowing or “Scholarly” Intelligence. When this attraction is approached and used in a survival manner, it tends to be seen as being more arrogant. Arrogance is a need to push others away to keep them from figuring out that we are not as smart as we think. Being smart is an Attraction, particularly to those who consider themselves smart, because they do not want to be bored by their partners.

Repression of any one of the intelligences can lead to the intelligence being underdone or overdone. If we are fearful of others being smarter than us, we can underdo our intelligence by telling ourselves that it is not that important. We could also react by attempting to prove that we are smarter which may also lead us to seek out individuals who can enhance our sense of intelligence by association. Schooling tends to emphasize the competitive power of using “smarts” over others. Therefore, many times people use degrees or other measurements of intelligence (SAT scores, Mensa ratings, or degrees from prestigious academic institutions). In this way, many individuals get caught up in continuous banter to prove what they know until one or the other gives up. Otherwise, there is no hierarchical ranking that compares the value of one’s work over another’s.

Smartness is basically a comparison between our capacity to intellectually come to conclusions and our partner’s ability to do the same. If they are able to do things as quickly or fast, we consider them to be smart. The irony of this process is that each of the seven Intelligences has a different modality of thinking and therefore, different ways of prioritizing their process. As each individual is a combination of three Intelligences, many do not know how to identify or effectively compare the quality of intelligence between individuals. Our perception of Intelligence in others reflects the internal comfort and acceptance of our own intelligence. The more we grow and integrate our three Intelligences, the more likely there are occurrences of unexpected synergies and developmental distinctions which make it increasingly impossible to make these comparisons. Any competition with another individual can undermine our capacity to see them as smart. It is also important to note that Smartness is often seen in terms of either ‘street’ or ‘book’ smarts. However, some intelligence types are totally on a different scale, such as musical or kinesthetic aptitudes.

The attraction to Smart individuals is based upon a need for security. When we seek out partners that are more intelligent it supports us by having somebody who can figure out the best way to succeed and survive. It also usually means that they have upward mobility and possess greater resources if we want to have a family or “a good life”. The challenge is that our own denial of being smart is what makes us most attracted to smart partners and friends.  The more we need affirmation for our intelligence, the more likely we choose a smart partner who we naturally believe will come to appreciate our intelligence. The irony is that we seek a smart person so we will believe them when they tell us we are smart. The downside is that in the process of making them the arbiter, they may not wish to return this acknowledgement because it gives them power over us. What we need to do is to recognize our own, unique type of intelligence, which may not be recognizable by others, including ourselves, until we are willing to trust that we are perfectly empowered to make the contributions we have come here to make.

When we are repressed in our intelligence, we tend to be repulsed by the smartness of others. We automatically believe that when they are expressing their intelligence it is to undermine and make us feel bad about ourselves. This is usually the result of being told we are stupid, dumb, or confused about what we think. Sometimes comments like, “They are not quick on the uptake”, or that the child is dull or dimwitted can take a toll on individuals so that they begin to believe what others say about them. How we need to reframe this is that everyone has exactly the right intelligence to make a great contribution to those around them and to the planet. It is not our job to tell anyone that they do not have what it takes. The more we believe that we are limited in our intelligence, the more we automatically seek out individuals who will not challenge us. This results in our being attracted to other individuals who are repressed or hurt in this area.

In the diagram we can see that there are four ways to develop Smarts as an attraction. The first is to be repulsed by our own stupidity. Whenever things do not work out and we wish we had done something different, it is easy to fall into the trap of believing we are not smart. In this way stupidity is a negative personal judgment based on our own assessment and, more likely, the assessment of others. Whenever we did not do what others believed we should, it is easy for them to call us stupid because they inherently possess no internal beauty about learning and growth. What we need to do is to see the beauty of our growth process and see that each mistake guides us to a better choice so we do not repeat it. We are trapped in our stupidity when we are not willing to grow or to develop our natural intelligence. In Higher Alignment, there are seven natural Intelligences, each one with a different focus, way of thinking, and purpose. This causes another part of the difficulty when we listen to people who judge us lacking, and making their judgments based in the terms and ways they think.

Another position is when our confidence manifests as externalized arrogance. This is easily identified by the rigidity we possess in trying to force our past understanding into the current problem. In other words, we use our Beliefs and previous understanding which does not allow us to expand or grow to embrace new knowing. This occurs primarily when we are able to set our own course of action and define our problems in our own terms.

The more external confidence we possess, the more we come to believe others should see things our way (Arrogance). This sets up the process of Subjectification where we put others down who we think are able or willing to challenge us. Of course, this type of self-blindness causes us to make huge mistakes which come back to haunt us. On the other hand, most of the time we think we can hide these mistakes by shaming others and making them assume responsibility for what we did. Most of the time this pattern excels when we have Investigative, Orchestrating, or Intentional Creative Expressions (masculine Intelligences). This is because each one of these expressions can fall into a trap of being certain about what is happening, even when they are not clear about why it is happening. This position also competes with the internalized No Confidence position.

The opposite of arrogant confidence is the internalized No Confidence point of view. What we invest in from this position is our internal creative growth by not enforcing new knowledge to fit past knowledge structures. Our real skill is that we are adaptable and open to look at each situation in its own light. In this situation, we may know and accept our Truth but we are unwilling to share it because it would open us up to be attacked. Mostly, this is the result of having one or more of our Creative Expressions be Artisan, Server, or Priest (the feminine Intelligences). These Intelligences have a natural flow and do not possess rigid boundaries or concentrated focus. Due to this, they can be perceived as less accurate, more abstract, and less articulate. As a result, they may internally know everything that is going on and have a clear sense of what needs to be done, but are commonly not looked to as the leaders to get it done (at least in the United States). The more this position does not speak up, the more they set themselves up not to be acknowledged, which then creates more doubt that they deserve to be acknowledged. This circular pattern reinforces itself and only emerges if they begin to absorb the outer behaviors of the arrogant, confident individuals. It is only in unity that they can move into balanced knowing.

Balanced Knowing operates from an inner confidence that we can learn and grow in our knowing and yet externally be open to the fact that we may not know the particular answer for this particular problem. What we want is to be confident about our uncertainty and how this enables us to create new possibilities. By taking this stand we do not have to protect our old beliefs and perceptions. What makes this possible is that we have individualized ourselves so that our personal Truth, is just that, our personal Truth. No longer do we have to express our angst, fears, or even joy when we have connections to others. This means we begin to shift into transpersonal forms of learning, growing, and the sharing of who we are. This can only occur if we are not being competitive with what we know and are, instead, finding common experiences that allow us to build a common Truth. The key to accomplishing this is to identify those individuals with similar compatibility factors.

Lessons of Smartness

As long as we are attached to being smart, we cannot really be smart. Arrogance gets in the way and prevents us from growing in our intelligence. What we need to do is build our curiosity and openness to seeing others’ points of view so we are able to grow. The more we can trust that our intelligence is perfectly proportioned and balanced, enabling us to have both the natural desire and talent to make things happen. What an attraction to Smarts also teaches us is to not give ourselves away by letting others define our intelligence, or to rely upon book learning or training to make our natural contribution. Usually these aspects are more ways to placate our insecurities and can even throw us off track in developing our true abilities. What we learn from this process is that it is our ability to work together and build a common truth with others that actually produces wisdom. If we cannot create a way of engaging each other without minimizing our partners, then it is best not to engage them.

Many of us need to learn the difference between knowledge and wisdom. While knowledge is the assimilation of a point of view that organizes the information that we have, wisdom is the capacity to see beyond this structure as to what is possible. Wisdom, therefore, is based on hard won experience about when to engage and not to engage, and why. We do not want to be more defensive or reactive because we acquire a certain perspective. Instead, we want to learn to appreciate how things may not be as they appear. This provides space to discover the truth, rather than fall into reactive patterns where we are not willing to see the whole truth. Instead of being clever, let us endeavor to be wise. Another dimension of this is that when we attempt to hide our truth it is because we fear the judgments of others. When we can be transparent and self-revealing it permits us to be more present and playful by using our wisdom with our friends and partners.

Unconscious Attractions Reflect Unresolved Value Differences

In Unconscious Attractions, the Universe encourages interlinking attractions between partners to facilitate growth. On a Personality level, these Attractions show up as masculine and feminine distinctions that seek out each other to resolve inter-polarity differences. These attractions form the basis of common lessons that help us neutralize our inner imbalances. When lessons between individuals do not line up, there is pressure to leave the relationship. It is the mutual fears, desires, and protection systems (called Co-Dependence) that keep us together. Any repulsion or withholding that we are unwilling to deal with causes us to get stuck in patterns of denial. These unconscious patterns of relationship are called Unconscious Entanglements, Status Quo Contracts, and Partners in Process. When we complete these lessons, we operate from a Co-Creative capacity to operate in a Spiritual Partnership.

There are three steps or levels where we measure our Co-Dependence: 1) Buying into Fears, 2) Buying into Desires, and 3) Creating a Mutual Protection society where we ignore obvious conflicts and deny differences. Co-Dependence is a sign that we are losing ourselves in our partners because we define our reality in term of theirs. One obvious indication is where we adopt beliefs that reflect our partners’ beliefs in order to please them, while, in reality, they undermine our well-being. For example, a Feel-First individual could attempt to protect him or herself by adopting the Think-First perspective of their partner, (who wants the truth first) when personally, they seek harmony first. This, of course, leads to greater confusion and a loss of confidence in their own Truth. It also undermines the ability to choose what is best for them; otherwise, their partners’ reactions could overwhelm their own knowing.

Unconscious Attractions also reflect a duality between our past and future that is expressed in terms of fears and desires. When we place relationships in a time framework, fears and desires become the way we describe what we want and avoid what we do not want. Fears reflect events from the past where we were compromised that we no longer wish to repeat. Personality desires, both spoken and unspoken, reflect a desire to acquire what was previously denied to us. This allows us to articulate the second principle of attraction, when we operate in unconscious attractions, we can only generate the degree of interest that we are willing to accept within the scope or limits of our fears and personality desires. Another way of discussing this is that our personality insists we optimize the acquisition of possessions and security before engaging our own internal knowing. This creates the second major disconnect that attractions seeks to address, a fixation on what we need while discounting what we already have. Ultimately, this reflects a lack of inner and outer integration, because our personality operates primarily from repressed desires and a fear of making things worse.

Unconscious attractions are therefore the intent to acquire what we do not believe we deserve. Usually a part of us believes we do not deserve what we want. This means that our personality attachments, positions and projections are the biggest obstacles to manifesting our unconscious attractions. This sets us up to constantly impose our needs on others because our underlying belief is that they will go away. Unconscious attractions need to be constantly reaffirmed which requires us to constantly struggle with these attractions. Whenever we are unable to maintain the energy necessary to keep them in place we lose our connection to them and they disappear in our life. In this way, unconscious attractions reinforce the personality belief of scarcity. We also become desensitized and disconnected from the experience of others around us. We believe we have the right to impose our needs on others because of past circumstances where others imposed their needs on us. The game becomes about how well we can impose our needs on others without them being able to substantially impact us. The fundamental cost of attractions, therefore, is everything becomes about competition rather than cooperation.

When we are unable to be present in our experience (Sensations, Feelings, Emotions, or Thoughts) our personality seeks new ways to reinforce its pursuit of pleasure, power and comfort. Table 9: Repression Modifies Attractions illustrates how we get caught up in our modes of perception, which actually reinforce the perceptions we expect. In other words, our senses sometimes fool us when we expect things to be a certain way but they are not. We break this down into three distortions, to reflect the three levels of unconscious personality attractions. Our common relationship experiences are shaped by how we qualify relationships using smell, auditory and visual senses, quantified by using taste, and idealized by touch. In this way our personality promises us greater payoffs in relationships if we are willing to be absorbed in our sensory experiences. This is because Excitement, Intensity and Repulsion reinforce particular experiential distortions that in the short term are addictive, co-dependent and full of promise without delivery. Aliveness, Wisdom and Awareness are all self-reflective, which means that our sensory experience amplifies our consciousness. This occurs only when we are present and detached from these experiences. With Excitement, Intensity and Repulsion we become absorbed by our sensory experiences, which greatly reduce our ability to be conscious.

We began the discussion about Masculine and Feminine expressions of senses in Table 6. To briefly recap, we develop our feminine sensibility by listening internally and noticing how we respond when others honor our way of being. Feminine attractions are externalized when we acknowledge our partner’s Beauty, Truth and Goodness. This shows up when our partner is able to relax and be present with us. The more we are able to respond to this feminine request by discussing the issues that are personally important to them, the more they will be interested in meeting us where we are. This stimulates the feminine side to find a way to attract the attention of the masculine side. The feminine uses the masculine desire for visual stimulation in order to get intimate communications. The masculine will evolve from demonstrating power through possessions and knowledge into defining exactly how they want their partner to satisfy its wants and needs. The more the masculine is acknowledged for its objectives and clarity, the more the feminine will be supported by discussions around common interdependent lessons. When we shift from unconscious attractions (defined by the pursuit of appearances, qualities, and complementary lessons), to conscious attractions, the masculine and feminine polarity shifts. This also turns our sensory fixations into preferences that support making conscious choices in relationships.

Polarities are the basis for all unconscious attractions. We are forced to confront what we deny by whom we attract into our life. Until we become conscious of these polarities, we do not find the third, independent perspective, which heals our relationship to our self and others. Usually this requires becoming conscious of our Content, Intent, and Context in any circumstance. These three frameworks of perception are symbolically the three faces of God in all religions. While each one supports the other two, they inherently complement each other by manifesting some unique perspective. Content is the interior experience of the structure or form that we are engaging. While people become fixated on describing Content as the details or elements of a situation, Content is actually the unification of all issues into a single form. When we operate from a Content perspective, we experience the predominance of time as a limiting factor in our expression. Time is limiting because it forces us to experience things in a sequential manner.  Intent is the motivation that directs or informs our experience. Everything in the Universe has an inherent Intent. This is expressed as an evolutionary development process. When we operate from an Intent perspective, the movement of energy becomes the predominant way we describe change. Context is the all-inclusive framework in which we live, move, and experience ourselves. When we operate from Context, space becomes the way we experience perspective so we can see things clearly. When we are limited in our spatial perspective we are attached to ways of being where we experience no choice.

Most unconscious polarities reflect our struggles between our Intent and our Content. This is because these two factors reflect the growth and acceptance of our masculine/feminine expression. As we develop our masculine side, we progress from Content to Intent. We experience this in our drive to experience Unity, and our capacity to become intimate and open with others. As we develop our feminine side we progress from Intent to Content. We see this in our drive to experience Trust and our capacity to speak our Truth harmlessly (Autonomy). Usually what limits our consciousness is a lack of Context. When we are unable to see the polarities and engage them equally, it indicates that our awareness has not expanded enough to see how we can balance our attractions so that we experience choices in our life. Conscious Attractions occur when all three perspectives (Content, Intent, Context) contribute to and enrich an embodied way of engaging any situation.

Polarities of Attractions can help us investigate how to release ourselves from these self-perception traps. As we have discussed, every unconscious attraction operates because of internal polarity and conflicts that become externalized. The more we are unwilling to confront these polarities, the greater power unconscious attractions have over us. Attractions, therefore, are a guide to becoming more conscious. Wherever we are in denial of an attraction, our life expression is polarized and thus sabotages the life we want. While we might not realize it, the results speak for themselves. Whenever we don’t manifest something, it is because we have parts of ourselves that are afraid to be compromised by having the experience, person or item. It is helpful to have discussions within ourselves so that all the points of view can emerge and we can become more sensitive to what would work for us in the world. The more we try to grasp, control, or fix an issue, the more energy it takes to continue to manifest it the way we want. If we were to learn the lessons of attractions, it would allow us to grow without the effort constantly required by unconscious attractions.

This table covers the nine basic areas of polarity (three for each level of unconscious attraction). We can also break out these nine polarities in terms of those that reflect Intent vs. Content or Context. If we are unwilling to change our Intent, we will not be able to change the results we receive. Content attractions are those that hook us into participating in ways we may not wish to engage. The reason for this is our unconscious belief that we have to sacrifice some aspects of what we want in order to get other desires fulfilled. Finally, it is in owning the Context of our attractions that allows us to heal our unconscious attractions. This means we must shift from smaller, more limited contexts to larger ones that support us in being more conscious with others. We will explain these frameworks in detail in the next section.

The polarities of attractions can be visualized on these four levels and three frameworks. The first framework – the Intent of our Attractions, demonstrates how we become attached to suboptimal goals that undermine our life expression. The second framework— the Content of our Attractions, is the internal guideline we use to navigate the structure of our attractions. The third framework – the Context of Attractions, is why we are able to manifest certain results and not others. It is the sphere in which we have influence, beyond which we feel powerless. Each of the four levels of attraction complements the preceding level.