Category Archives: Commentary

The Three Platforms of Life

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By George A. Boyd ©2023

Q: I read an article by Dan McAdams [1] where he distinguished between episodic life and narrative life. Can you she some light on this distinction?

A: We can describe three platforms of life: episodic, narrative, and purposive. Across the Seven Rays, these modes of expression break down as follows:

Episodic – This is the experience of the ego in the present time; there is no continuity of experience.

First Ray – You seek to win at all costs, through any means, fair or foul. You will lie about or distort what you tell others about your behavior to avoid the shame of the appearance of loss or failure.

Second Ray – You want to help others; you want to make a difference in others’ lives. You try to be helpful in whatever way you can.

Third Ray – You adapt a strategy to achieve what you want; this strategy may be legal or illegal—illegal, if you do not overrule this plan with your conscience or the advisement of a mentor or counselor.

Fourth Ray – You experience creativity and spontaneity in each moment. You “go with the flow” to discover what new discovery awaits you.

Fifth Ray – You investigate mysteries and try to troubleshoot problems. You try to find out what is true and what makes things work.

Sixth Ray – You try to be good through living up to rules, policies, laws, or moral guidelines. You may be a people-pleaser to have people like and accept you. You can be a perfectionist or obsessive about following the rules you adopt.

Seventh Ray – You aim to produce a lasting impression through your actions and words; you may demonstrate this through drama, entertainment, or comedy. You may engage in impression management, so you shape what other people believe about you.

Narrative – This establishes a continuity of experience or life story where you perceive that your Self is the actor in your life. The Self learns from its mistakes and its successes to continually improve performance, knowledge, and skill. It aims to pursue and realize its dreams.

First Ray – You experience life as a series of wins or losses, or successes and failures. You attempt to learn from your experience to improve your performance to have more wins and fewer losses; more success and fewer failures. You look at loss and failure as opportunities to learn and grow. You seek to build a track record of success. You may motivate others as a leader to greater achievement and better outcomes.

Second Ray – You look for opportunities for learning ways to help other people and applying your skills you learn. This may take the form of selecting a career where you can help others, such as teaching, counseling, therapy, coaching, mentoring, or the healing arts.

Third Ray – You regularly evaluate your performance to improve it. You gather information about the outcome of the different alternatives you might select to reach your objectives and attempt to choose the best one. You create plans that enable you to reach your goals, systems to streamline work, and policies to manage other people.

Fourth Ray – You find meaning in life when you are creative and productive. You employ art and invention to express the creative inspiration within you.

Fifth Ray – You find satisfaction when you can discover what is correct through using analysis, scientific method, and mathematics. You analyze your behavior to enhance your efficiency and productivity.

Sixth Ray – You seek to overcome character weaknesses, establish healthy habits, recover from any addiction you may have, and live a virtuous life. You are scrupulous and conscientious, and pay attention to details.

Seventh Ray – Your life becomes memorable through heroism and courage— through moving beyond your comfort zone to achieve greater performance and achievement. You push yourself towards excellence and work on continued personal growth. You are results-oriented and seek to reach the ever-higher benchmarks you set for yourself.

Purposive – Life becomes a channel to express the Soul. Your personality enacts the Soul’s Purpose.

First Ray – You may combat injustice, corruption, and criminality. You empower others to be their best and aim to improve the community around you.

Second Ray – You bring love and compassion into expression in your life. You may teach or guide others to connect them with their Soul and bring their deepest nature into expression.

Third Ray – You create systems and organizations that improve the collective welfare, and help others overcome poverty and enhance their lives.

Fourth Ray – You express the creative gifts of the Soul to inspire others, an promote insight, reflection, and discovery.

Fifth Ray – You seek to make new scientific discoveries and technological innovations to improve the world.

Sixth Ray – You aim to make yourself into an instrument to minister to others. You become a channel for Grace, Divine Love and Comfort, and spiritual healing.

Seventh Ray – You discover and enact the Soul’s purpose. You prepare your personality through education, skill building, and experience to express the Soul’s love, wisdom, and abilities in human life.

Those who are polarized at the level of the ego operate on the episodic platform. Those in whom the Self is dominant can work on the narrative platform. Those who have broken through to discover their Soul can express from the purposive platform.

It appears that the author of this article believes that the former president’s main style of expression is First Ray episodic, which functions from the ego. The ex-president seems unable to transcend this limited perspective, so he does not change.

We suggest you study these expressions of the Seven Rays through each of the three platforms. You may wish to identify the major ways you express on these platforms, and learn to recognize these expressions in others.

[1] McAdams, Don P. 8/5/2020 Op Ed: “The Truth Behind Trump’s Need to Lie,” Los Angeles Times. Retrieved from https://www.latimes/opinion/story/2020-08-05/donald-trump-lies-character-psychology/

 

The Distortion of Education

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By George A. Boyd ©2023

Q: I’m concerned about the attempts to control education that conservative governors and legislators have been advocating and enacting recently. What is going on here?

A: It is important to understand the levels of education. These fall into three categories:

  • Miseducation
  • Intellectual education
  • Existential and spiritual education

Miseducation includes:

  1. Training in criminal and terrorist skills, such as how to perform acts of violence, extortion, fraud, and intimidation; learning to hate others.
  2. Education that indoctrinates in political or religious beliefs based on deliberate attempts to misinform and control those students’ beliefs, values, and behavior.

Intellectual education comprises:

  1. Education that trains students to remember key concepts and prove thy have learned them through testing (rote learning).
  2. Education that trains students to utilize the problem solving abilities of the intellect, and applies these skills in the areas of mathematics, writing, and speaking; and through the modeling and manipulation of symbolic and abstract ideas (deductive, analogical, inductive, and dialectical reasoning).

Existential and spiritual education consists of:

  1. Education that trains student to reflect upon the meaning of ideas and their implications; to perform critical thinking and introspection; and to evaluate the outcome of choices.
  2. Education that trains students to study the levels of the levels of their mind, to activate the Self, and the immortal principles of consciousness—attentional principle, spirit, and ensouling entity—to work on the issues of life, to enhance achievement of personal goals and dreams, and actualize their spiritual potentials.
  3. Education that trains students to develop their abilities in their Superconscious mind and to understand arcane and esoteric knowledge; this aims to promote spiritual wisdom and discernment through meditation upon archetypes layered on track through the Continuum of Consciousness.

Terrorist and White Supremacy groups, for example, adopt educational strategy one. They turn those who receive this type of miseducation into warriors and criminals, and emissaries of hatred and intolerance. They attempt to control others through violence and intimidation.

Dissemination of misinformation and propaganda to shape values, beliefs, and behavior is characteristic of educational strategy two. The governors and legislators you cite advance this educational strategy.

You learn strategies three and four during your academic education. You learn to remember facts and to use intellectual problem solving strategies to answer questions and solve problems. This prepares you for adult functioning and enables you to carry out the tasks of your career. It trains you in the skills of learning, so you can continue your education to acquire new knowledge and skills throughout your lifetime.

Strategy five dawns when you can reflect upon your life, and identify what are your genuine values and what you want to achieve in your life. Psychotherapy and coaching catalyze your ability to get in touch with your authentic Self, and to make congruent and life-affirming choices for your life.

We teach you strategy six in Mudrashram®. You learn to study the levels of the personal and transpersonal zones of the mind, and recognize the landmarks upon the Continuum of Consciousness. You learn to awaken and function as the three immortal principles—the attentional principle, the spirit, and your ensouling entity. This enables you to work on your personal issues. It also helps you awaken, transform, and actualize your spiritual potentials. [We teach you how to do this in our intermediate mediation classes, the in-person Mudrashram® Master Course in Meditation and the by-mail and online Accelerated Meditation Program.]

Those who study metaphysics and Mystery School teachings utilize educational strategy seven. They use different methods to uncover and understand mythic, symbolic, and archetypal ideas, and to tease out correspondences, inter-relationships, and hidden truths.

Those who have been misled and indoctrinated through exposure to strategy-two miseducation can activate their internal strategy five to carry out deep processing to evaluate the impact of misinformation on their values, beliefs, and behavior. Miseducation disseminates distorted information, which aims to make students obedient and unquestioning.

Though insight, inventory, and critical thinking, you can uproot these mental programs that condition you to follow a political or religious agenda—and to reflect upon meaning, and empower yourself to think and make decisions independently.

If those who promulgate these programs of indoctrination into half-truths—and sometimes, outright lies—could instead train students to think for themselves, we might see fewer people caught up into the fever dreams of conspiracy theories and delusion. They would also be less susceptible to the influence of demagogues, cult leaders, and authoritarian leaders, who demand implicit obedience and continually manipulate their beliefs, emotions, and behavior.

Finding Accurate Information

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By George A. Boyd ©2023

Q: In what ways can information be presented accurately in modern media? There is so much misinformation that is disseminated.

A: There are a variety of presentation formats in which information can be presented in various media. Here are some of the different types:

  1. News reporting – This gives brief information about what is going on in the world today. It identifies important events and presents significant personalities to the viewer. The Nightly News on most broadcast media is of this type.
  2. Brief interview – Here a news anchor or moderator asks questions to a guest to understand a newsworthy question more completely. This can devolve into a defensive, argumentative exchange if the host and guest are on different wavelengths—for example, if host and guest have different religious or political views—or if the interviewers’ questions are accusatory, or challenging the guest’s veracity or account of events. Short three to five minute news interviews on different media, or brief segments on shows like “60 Minutes.”
  3. In-depth exposition – In this format, there is an article or program that goes into depth on a particular topic or through an interview with someone—typically 30 minutes or more. It cites many sources, both those who corroborate the evidence and those that are critical of the evidence. Documentaries and investigative journalism take this approach.
  4. Monologue – In a monologue, a host discusses the news, often presenting it in a humorous way. It aims to elicit laughter; but it does communicate the host’s viewpoint on current events. You see this in late night comedy shows, where the hosts discuss the day’s events in a clever and funny way. This same format is used to interview celebrities or present new musical talent to entertain the audience.
  5. Deep exploration of ideas – In this presentation, an interviewer will ask questions to get a guest to elucidate and expand upon his or her ideas. This may ask a writer to talk about the ideas in a book; it may ask a producer or director to elaborate on the themes in a movie. Podcasts and in-depth interviews utilize this method.
  6. Sensationalism – This presents a point of view in an emotional way, which aims to stir sympathy, anger, fear, or outrage. At one extreme, this can be outright indoctrination into a political or religious doctrine designed to shape belief and behavior; at the other extreme, it presents information without any criticism or analysis—thereby transmitting distorted information, conspiracy theories, or propaganda to the public. This shows up in religious and partisan political programming, and tabloid journalism.
  7. Synthesis – This weaves the many strands of a story together to get “the big picture.” It presents commentary or analysis of the many strands that make up the disparate themes of the story and what their implication is. Experienced news commentators and independent journalists adopt this style.

Information gathering and dissemination types 3, 5, and 7 undertake a serious inquiry to uncover the truth and to gain an accurate grasp of the topic under investigation. Type 6 is the least likely to present the truth; it often presents a covert agenda to influence readers, viewers, or listeners to believe distorted or false information.

We suggest that you examine the format of the news and information you receive through various media—newspapers, magazine articles, radio, podcasts, television, and internet videos—to identify which of these types the hosts or anchors use to communicate to you. Notice which of these formats seem to unearth the truth, and which obfuscate it.

You cannot blindly believe whatever is presented through the media; you must use discernment and critical thinking to identify the information that is disseminated is valid, accurate, and reliable.