Today’s Integral Life Practice

The following is my integral life practice in the morning today.

1 I woke up at 7 am.  I stretched my body for 5 minutes using balance ball.

2 I practiced zen meditation for 45 minutes.

3 I practiced yoga and physical training for 15 minutes.

4 I went running for 40 minutes (interval training 3~4 times).

5 Mindful eating (one apple, one banana, a piece of cookie, and one yoghurt)

6 Mindful writing (typing) “The Essential Ken Wilber” Chapter Levels of Consciousness

From now, I’ll work on two final papers.  Then, I’ll read books relaxing.  That’s a nice weekend.

Cannibal and Moral Conflict

I watched the TV drama “Boston Legal” today.  The title which I watched was “Fine Young Cannibal.”  I’ve never heard the word “cannibal”, so I looked up the word in my dictionary… “Oh my God!  What a horrible meaning!”  By the way, the defendant told the reason why he ate his best friend.  He said “I was starving…”

When I was watching this scene, I remembered the moral theory of Carol Gilligan.  Based on the scene and Gilligan’s theory, I thought about the question “Is cannibalizing forgivable?”  I think that a preconventional person may answer the above question like this “Yes!  That’s none of your business!!  The reason is simple.  If I were starving, I would eat human!!”  A conventional person my answer like this “No.  That is because cannibalizing is legally-prohibited.”  Last postconventional person may answer like this “Yes.  Under certain extreme circumstances, I may eat human…but off course I know cannibalizing is strictly prohibited by law.”

After thinking about the above, something about the idea bothered me…  If you were in extreme conditions that you have no water and no food for several days or weeks, and your best friend unfortunately had died earlier than you… what would you do looking at your friend’s dead body?

Difficult moral question…  That would definitely arouse a severe inner struggle.  Psychomachy???  

Reference

1 Boston Legal - Season Three

2 In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women's Development

Leadership Style of Type Eight

About the leadership style of Eight, as Palmer (1995) points out, Eight CEOs are likely to be direct, assertive, forceful, self-confident.  Also, they tend to like control subordinates and hierarchy system centering on them.  Eight CEOs are powerful and aggressive leaders.  Therefore, Eight CEOs may be highly valued when their companies launch a new business or participate in severe competitions, because these phases tend to need strong and aggressive leaderships in order to lead the subordinates powerfully.

In addition to that, Eight CEOs “prefer to centralize power rather than to delegate” (Palmer, 1995, p.217).  They are more partial to a top-down organizational system, because they can control subordinates more and concentrate power in the top of the organizations compared with a bottom-up organizational system.       

Healthy levels of Eight leaders: Martin Luther King, Jr., Nelson Mandela, or Franklin Roosevelt

Reference:

1 The Wisdom of the Enneagram: The Complete Guide to Psychological and Spiritual Growth for the Nine Personality Types

2 The Enneagram in Love and Work: Understanding Your Intimate and Business Relationships

Enneagram Assessment: Type Eight (Challenger, Boss) and my type (Seven)

As Riso and Hudson (1999) explain, the basic fear of type Eight is being harmed or controlled by others.  In fact, my score of type Eight is the second highest, so I sometimes fear being controlled by others and fear that others have strong power over me.  When I was a junior high school student, I was a captain of the basketball team in my school.  In retrospect, I was often seized with a powerful desire to control other team mates at will so that I could protect myself and feel comfortable.  Even now, I sometimes feel the same impulse to control others.  Therefore, the basic fear and desire of type Eight seem to have a strong effect on me. 

As for the type Eight with a Seven wing, the characteristics of this type are charismatic, action-oriented (healthy level), and adventurous risk-takers, talkative, outgoing with great self-confidence (average level).   I’m a type Seven with an Eight wing, so I seem to have these characteristics.   My behavioral pattern is action-oriented and I like taking a risk because challenging new things brings strong stimuli to my life taking a risk.  Nowadays, I’m not so talkative, but I was a very talkative man when I was a kid. 

Next, regarding to the wake-up call for type Eight, “Eights generally do not like working under others, performing instead the risk and adventure of running their own activities” (Riso and Hudson, 1999, p. 297).  When I worked in a business consulting company in Japan, I sometimes felt so.  Interestingly, my working behavior toward my managers (authorities) was obedient, but when I worked with my colleagues or my staffs, I didn’t like them to control me. 

As stated above, I have many elements of the type Eight.                                                                    

Reference:The Wisdom of the Enneagram: The Complete Guide to Psychological and Spiritual Growth for the Nine Personality Types

The reason of taking this summer’s classes: The Relation between Shamanism and Business World

Now, I’m taking “Enneagram Assessment”, “Developmental Psychology”, “Shamanism and Dreams”, and “Spirituality, Symbols and Dreams” this summer.  At first glance, the list has no relation, but actually it has very important meaning for me.  As I posted before, I’m working on my master thesis about “Integral Leadership.” 

These classes are key parts of my paper.  How??  I’m exploring new leadership model from AQAP perspectives (All Quadrants, All Levels, All States, All Types, All Lines).  “Enneagram Assessment” class relates to All Types, “Developmental Psychology” class relates to All Levels, and the last two classes enhance my understanding of All States.

“Shamanism?  Altered states of consciousness?  These are definitely not related to the business world?”  However, is that true?  What are the CEOs’ states of consciousness in the crisis of their company (e.g. natural hazard, unexpected events…)?  How many CEOs did they cope with the severe financial crisis maintaining their ordinary states of consciousness?

In the modern business world, management environments are very changeable…they are like human states of consciousness.  Therefore, I think the ancient wisdom about human consciousness is significant in this world.

Shamanism and Dreams

I took a special class “Shamanism and Dreams” at Berkeley campus yesterday and the day before yesterday.  I’ve been interested in the world of dreams since I was belonging to dream group at JFKU.  So, I took this class in order to cultivate my understandings of dreams.  Dream work is one of the most important shadow works for me.

 Through this class, I learned the healing power of dreams.  Personally, Shamanic technique and music using drums were interesting.

 Impressive class contents

-Dream recall

-Dream Incubation song

-Dream re-entry with the drum

-Centering.  Embodiment of the dream

A part of my master thesis (draft: Integral Leadership Model)

I'm working on my master thesis little by little.  I think the following post is difficult to understand in places, because I show my sentences neglecting the contexts...

          The purpose of understanding the types of leaders is to grasp the pattern of their thinking, emotions, behaviors, actions, interpersonal relationships, and so on.  Each person has a unique type, so he or she thinks, acts, behaves, and communicates with others in the different manner in accordance with each type.

All types are seen in all four quadrants (see table XX in the appendices), but this paper refers to only the Upper Left quadrant of personality types utilizing the wisdom of the Enneagram in order to avoid the complex analysis.  Also, the following analysis indicates not only characteristics of each type of leadership but also the conditions of healthy and unhealthy leaders in each type.

Although the wisdom of the Enneagram is so useful to categorize each leader into each type, we need to use it carefully in the following two points.  First, human beings are not simple so that we can classify people into one category.  Second, we may need to pay attention to the difference between the level of consciousness and the Enneagram types.  As, Esbjörn-Hargens (2010) points out, the former is vertical and the latter is horizontal.  Therefore, it is important to recognize that we, human beings are complex creatures mixed with various types within us and the difference between stages of consciousness and types.