Values in Action


Values in Action (VIA) comes from positive psychology, and is a way to rank our individual character strengths. What is important to me? What am I good at? How can make use of it in everyday life? What ranks lower for me? How can I strengthen those?

The VIA test can be taken at the Institute for Character website, or at Authentic Happiness which has a wide range of tests.

Here is my current Values in Action score. I have guesses how it relates to NEO PI in parenthesis.

Your Top Strength

Creativity, ingenuity, and originality (may be similar to high in Openness to Experience in the NEO PI)

Your Second Strength

Love of learning (related to high in Openness and Conscientiousness)

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Reflections on personality







NEO PI (ii)


I took the brief online NEO PI test again.

My energy level fluctuates some due to the chronic fatigue, which is reflected in some of these results. When I feel better, as I do now, my level of extraversion goes up slightly, and my level of neuroticism goes down. I also suspect my conscientiousness, agreeableness,  openness to experience goes up. With more rest, as I have had the last several days, I feel a bit more energetic, am more able to get things done, feel more friendly towards others and myself, and am more interested in life in general.

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I came across the NEO PI personality test online – see below for my results from the short version.

My answers to some questions would be somewhat different at other times of my life, but, overall, the result seems pretty accurate for me now.

Here is the short version of the results: Average extraversion, high agreeableness, high conscientiousness, low neuroticism, high openness to experience.

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Politics and personality


Elections are a good opportunity to explore what it means to have a personality 🙂

This personality supports Obama wholeheartedly, and others see him as a threat and a danger to Americans.

Why is that? Of course, it is easy to say that we are at different developmental stages. Or that conservatives are more – or differently – caught up in fear than liberals are. Or that we have more of an either adventurous or cautious personality based on evolution and biology. All of that may be true in its own way.

But from a practice perspective, there are other ways of looking at it that may be more interesting.

For instance, what happens when I identify with the personality? It naturally has preferences, which it should. What happens when these are solidified into beliefs? What happens when they are recognized as preferences only, and practical tools for functioning in the world?

Also, what do I find when I explore where these preferences come from?

In my case, I find that my political preferences come from my culture. I grew up in a culture with universal health care, free education through PhD, a low difference between those with highest and lowest income compared to almost all other countries. I have seen – and lived with – all of this working very well, so I naturally think it is a good idea. I got the values of solidarity through my culture, and I got to see it working well through experience.

Seeing this, I can more easily appreciate how others, who may come from a radically different background and experiences, have quite different preferences.

My preferences come from my background and my experiences. And the preferences of others come from their background and experiences.

It is not personal. And recognizing that, I don’t have to take it personally. I will of course continue to live from my own preferences – and act and vote from them – but I don’t need to take it as an absolute truth, or as something personal.

And I can explore how to express these preferences in a healthy and mature way. That is my task.

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Likes and dislikes












Free to dislike


It is funny how clarity comes with a freedom to dislike, to take the preferences of this personality more seriously.

When there is a release from beliefs through inquiry, I relate to myself and others from more kindness and clarity. And being kind with myself includes taking the preferences of this personality seriously.

When in the grips of beliefs, there is often a sense of lack of freedom to act on likes and dislikes. It feels reactive, compulsive and unpleasant.

Free from beliefs, there is a freedom to act from personal preferences, but now from clarity and kindness to myself and others, instead of from reactivity and compulsiveness. And if I am unable to act from the likes and dislikes of this personality, or choose to not act on them (there are many reasons to not act on them), I am OK with that too.

This shift, taking the personal preferences of this personality more seriously when there is a freedom from beliefs, is one of the many (apparent) ironies of this process.

Gain and loss


In my middle- and high-school classes, there was a running joke whenever we discussed a short story, novel or poem. The teacher would ask us what the story was about, and someone would inevitably respond “gain and loss”. It was funny because it was always true. Our human drama is always about gain and loss. If those elements are not present, we typically don’t find it worth writing about or reading.

It is of course the insight of Buddhism and many other traditions… when there is a sense of a separate self, everything is filtered through gain and loss, or more presisely, attraction, aversion and neutrality. Will it be of gain to me? Will it bring a loss? Is it neutral (for now)? Will it enhance my life? Is it something I need to protect myself against? Is it something I don’t need to bother with?

As I went about my business today, and especially on the bus and while walking around downtown, I noticed how whatever came up was filtered in this way, and to be more aware of it, I labeled whatever attention went to as either gain or loss (attention naturally goes to the things the personality sees as as gain or loss). By doing this, I saw more clearly how this labeling process goes on throughout the day, often outside of attention.

For instance, walking down a street, I see how the labels of gain and loss come up with only seconds apart. Something in a store window is a possible gain (something that would enhance this separate self). Another thing or person a reminder of a loss (a loss of what was or could have been).

Digesting habitual patterns








Feeling at home










Two ways of losing a belief: friction and investigation


There are two ways to lose a belief, and they often go hand in hand.

One is through friction.

I have a belief telling me how life is or should be, and an identity telling me what I am and am not. In both cases, I split life right down the middle, allowing one region of the landscape and not the rest.

When life inevitably shows up outside of my belief or identity, there is a friction between my belief and life, which is experienced a uncomfortable… as stress, something being off, suffering, anger, fear, and so on.

This friction, if it continues, slowly wears off (and out!) the belief. Over time, constantly at odds with life, it has to go, in spite of even the most persistent resistance. It is just too obvious that life is more than my belief, and I more than the identity. My personality may not like it, especially at first, but there is not much choice there either.

The other is through investigation.

I notice the warning signs of holding onto a belief or identity (stress), I identify the belief or set of beliefs behind it, and investigate its effects, what would be without it, and the grain of truth in each of the reversals of the initial story. This too allows it to fall away, although it can be faster and less painful, even fun.

In the first case, I take the side of my habitual beliefs and identities, and it may be a drawn out and painful affair.

In the second case, I take the side of life inviting the belief to go, and it becomes more playful, have a sense of more ease, and can even be fun and enjoyable.

Although most of the time, there seems to be a mix of the two. There is the friction between life and belief, and the stress and resistance that comes with it. And there is the ease of the investigation, when that is finally engaged with.

Shadow of arrogance


As I continue to work with projections and the shadow, many aspects of it become more and more immediate and alive as it happens. One way it manifests is having the shadow of a belief or identity come up along with the belief and identity.

A belief arises, and right there is the shadow of that belief. An identity arises, and right there is also the shadow of that identity. Or at least parts of the shadow.

So when arrogance arises, along with it arises inferiority, stupidity, not knowing, and whatever is left out from an identity which gives rise to arrogance. I see both out there, in others and the world, and also in here in this human self.

Together, there is a fuller picture, a wider embrace of what is. And it is all revealed as inherently neutral. The initial identity is neutral, what is left out is neutral, and the landscape (always) including both is inherently neutral.

Of course, our personality may not see it as neutral. It sees different parts of all of this as desirable or undesirable, mature and less mature, good or bad. But that too is inherently neutral.

Spirit and soul allowing a shift from tragedy to comedy




















Dark night as burning through remaining traces of a sense of I, and the effects of a sense of I


One of the functions of the dark night, which comes some time after a clear (or near-clear) and stable awakening to selflessness, seems to be to burn through and out (most of ) the remaining traces of a sense of separate I, and the effects of a sense of separate I on the personality…

The second part of it, burning through the effects of a sense of separate I on the personality, seems crucial here.

For most of us, our personality is formed within a sense of separate I. And although it does reorganize to a certain extent following an awakening, many traces of this sense of a separate I still remains.

And the dark night is one of the ways this is burnt through, allowing the personality (and the individual) to reorganize more fully within a context of realized selflessness. Maturing into it, becoming more seasoned.