Developmental Lines

 

Developmental Line

When walking the stage to receive my masters, my Myers Briggs profile was taped to my cap, just as it was taped to my cohort’s caps. For me, the tape read: INFP, with TJ just on the cusp (literally and figuratively). On the DISC assessment, I am an SC, relatively high and towards center. Strength’s Finder has me as leading towards Learning and Analysis. Each personality profile describes me. Over the years, I have used these strengths to my advantage. At the outset, however, I wished for different strengths. The worth of my traits not necessarily valued at an institutional and social level and my deep, needed call for change and to enact change characterized by traits I did not publicly express. It has only been recently that such a premise in leadership and in social change have called these assumptions into question. Who really gets to decide such things.

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I learned long ago that I alone could find rest on my pillow. For me rest requires responsibility and authenticity. This is, of course, an aspiration. Living a responsible life that is also authentic takes a kind of bravery and persistence that I don’t think I’ll ever fully have- I’m not sure anyone has; it is true that some have come closer than others. In the meantime, I walk a life that I believe leads me to better, and better for me is in tandem with better for those and space around me.

And when I refer to the extensive list of sub-lines, I can’t help but think that the first eight deserve all my attention and if I attend to these first eight, strengths, inclinations, and future contributions through the litany and availability of  sublines will emerge. That it is less about attending to these areas with conscious intention and more about how attention to the whole might further the parts that are meant to develop. I think that this is what Wilber means when he speaks to being “integrally informed” and that comprehensive mastery is not the goal, awareness that has the potential to lead to fuller mastery is- in whatever shape the contours fold. For me, this brings in a beautiful element of humanity; the richness of diversity and need for others to contribute to one’s experience in ways one might not be able to contribute to oneself. To expose and to allow one to explore what is on the horizon, rather than that that is only underfoot- to see if there is the direction one is ready and wanting to take- to become better.


My strengths on the first five Developmental Lines are developed and, perhaps, for some- highly developed. I have worked hard to make this so. My life is as a student as much as it is a participant. I value connections- connections in perspective- in the way and sense of seeing, knowing, experiencing. My greatest strength is cognitive and, perhaps, might be  my ethical and moral compass; I have demonstrated the latter since childhood and the former since I realized it made me feel most whole. My Intrapersonal self is highly critical yet this has allowed me to recognize the limitations of judgment. My spiritual self is an ongoing cause. My agnosticism reflects sincere respect for faith and even in its institutions. I myself, however, cannot ascribe to what amounts to social conventions. Buddhism I study and admire. The polytheistic nature of the Hindu faith intrigues me.  My house a shrine to both, yet my heart and skin as I have lived are most closely akin to Christianity and Islam. Perhaps I am a pantheist, more than an agnostic. Regardless, this doesn’t matter to me. What matters to me is that I continue to grow from studying and understanding faith as a construct and that others might exercise in ways that hold value.


And when I refer to the extensive list of sublines, I can’t help but think that the first eight deserve all my attention and if I attend to these first eight, strengths, inclinations, and future contributions through the litany and availability of  sublines will emerge. That it is less about attending to these areas with conscious intention and more about how attention to the whole might further the parts that are meant to develop. I think that this is what Wilber means when he speaks to being “integrally informed” and that comprehensive mastery is not the goal, awareness that has the potential to lead to fuller mastery is- in whatever shape the contours fold. For me, this brings in a beautiful element of humanity; the richness of diversity and need for others to contribute to one’s experience in ways one might not be able to contribute to oneself. To expose and to allow one to explore what is on the horizon, rather than that that is only underfoot- to see if there is the direction one is ready and wanting to take- to become better.

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