Refining Ourselves [Part 4]

The Overleaves: The Mode
Your Mode is the way in which you are most likely to approach your Goal and, in fact, the rest of your life as well. It’s one of the most visible Overleaves because it determines how you meet the world most of the time—so it’s a primary face you present to the world.
You might, most commonly, meet the world passionately—diving into your experiences without hesitating to assess what might happen next. The upside is an exuberance noticeable to you and others. The downside is that you may get in over your head on a regular basis.
Or you may meet the world cautiously—stopping and looking before you leap. The upside is that you are less likely to run into unforeseen consequences. The downside? You could freeze—becoming phobic.

When we SLIDE from one Mode to its pair, it can be quite noticeable to others—so someone in Passion Mode can easily be seen, under certain circumstances [when faced with an entirely new experience, for instance, or after a disastrous consequence] to shift gears, slide to Repression and self-correct.

Again, there are seven Modes:
Inspirational Modes
Passion [10%]
Passion is the cardinal end of the Inspirational axis. Souls rarely choose Passion Mode two lifetimes in a row because of its intensity. It can be wearing. The personality tends to lose itself in the emotionality of the moment. These folks are outgoing, enthusiastic and energetic. In other words, if you know someone in this Mode, you probably KNOW it.
When faced with virtually any situation, people in Passion will express their reactions immediately. They live very close to the surface. They live their lives from very, ‘Isn’t life wonderful?’ or ‘Isn’t life horrible?’ places and spend considerably less time than the vast majority of the population in any neutral position.

Because emotions are so important to them, Mature Souls are among the most likely to choose Passion Mode.

In the positive pole, these folks have a sparkly energy about them. They experience life to the fullest, throwing themselves into projects with enthusiasm. Especially when going after their goals, they’ll bring all their focus and energy front-and-center and, likely be able to achieve them with energy to spare.

In the negative pole, people in Passion may over identify with their goals and emotions. They’re likely to decide, in advance, how things MUST work out and drop into despondency if they fail to achieve their desired ends.
Although none of the books I consulted said so out loud, one could infer that lots of folks who choose Passion might manifest Bipolar Disorder at least fairly regularly as they swing from excitement to despair.

As you might guess, there are a number of well-known people who have chosen Passion — in fact, more than one would expect given the fact that it is chosen pretty rarely. Notice how all these folks affected their worlds: Joan of Arc, Martin Luther King, Jr., Pope John Paul II, Vincent van Gogh, Albert Einstein, Ralph Nader, Dustin Hoffman, Jane Fonda and Tom Hanks. Chopin, Mozart, Liberace, Carly Simon and Beverly Sills all used Passion to serve their music well. And Lee Iaccoca has used his passion to lead a corporation and goose political figures to do better.

Repression [2%]
Repression is the ordinal Inspirational Mode.
These folks get out their buffers and use Repression in order to learn to hold their emotions in check. Repression can look like Caution Mode [see below] except that it is used to add polish and refinement to a lifetime. It’s another difficult mode because the personality needs to learn a refined way to experience and express emotions.

Repression may be chosen after a number of lifetimes of excess and gluttony in order to get civilized and sophisticated. These folks will take on an air of reserve. You won’t find them expressing their emotions out loud or wearing their feelings on their sleeves. They’ll HAVE immediate reactions to their experiences—but the people around them are unlikely to know it.

If you were around back then, I imagine you well remember Lloyd Benson’s perfect understatement when addressing Dan Quayle: “I served with Jack Kennedy. I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy.”
While many of the rest of us were aching to jump into the TV and dope-slap Quayle, Benson’s response was the perfect riposte, delivered with poise and dignity. It quietly put Quayle in his place and I doubt his career has ever quite recovered from it. Repression can come in quite handy on occasion.

In the positive pole, these people will display dignity, restraint, tact and grace.
In the negative pole, they can become listless with overly damped-down emotion. Others may experience them as too cool to downright cold emotionally. While someone in the negative pole of Passion may become Bi-polar, a person in the negative pole of Repression may descend into a heavy depression.

People displaying this refined tastefulness include: Katherine Hepburn, Grace Kelly, Prince Charles, David Niven, Nancy Reagan and Fred Astaire, Catherine Deneuve, Merril Streep and Marlene Dietrich.
People in Repression often choose occupations in fields such as gourmet cooking and interior design, fashion design and diplomacy. You’ll also find people in the spheres of classical music and dance.

Expressive Modes
Power [20%]
Other people will certainly know when they’re in the presence of someone in Power Mode. It feels like a person with the Goal of Dominance only more showy. Also more difficult for others to get along with.
While the person in Dominance tries to move toward a win/win situation, people in Power Mode are less likely to pay attention to such niceties [unless pairing Power Mode with Dominance—a fairly common combination—making for COMMANDING personalities who are likely to accomplish whatever they set out to do].

People who thwart a person in Power are likely to feel themselves to be under a dark cloud when they experience the displeasure of the person they’ve crossed. Power Mode people can become domineering and be clueless about the way they come across to others—even after having had it pointed out to them time and time again.

In the positive pole of Power, the personality will be experienced [both internally and externally] as influential, authoritative, commanding and confident.

In the negative pole, others are likely to draw away as the personality inspires fear in them. The individual may become pushy, insensitive, bullying, high-handed.

Rupert Murdoch, Robert Kennedy, Orson Welles, Chairman Mao, Madonna and Norman Mailer are all examples of folks in Power Mode.

Caution [20%]
People operating from Caution Mode approach life carefully. This mode may be used to offset previous lives during which they had cheerfully jumped from the frying pan into the fire on too many occasions with catastrophic results. So, now, it’s time to practice a bit more wariness.

This mode is popular with Infant and Baby Souls to help them approach their new environment with a degree of circumspection rather than react instantly to events.
Youngs may use it to keep them on the straight and narrow after having pulled off a recent scandal-ridden lifetime or two.
Mature Souls may use it to help them damp down a series of soap opera lives while Old Souled Servers may find it useful for learning not to agree to participate on every committee that comes along—no matter how noble the causes they embody.

This is the deliberative, look-before-you-leap crowd.
In the positive pole, these folks are risk averse—unlikely to run up huge credit card debt or let their insurance lapse. Good diplomats, they’re likely to be tactful simply because it’s easier to avoid problems in the first place than to fix problems after the fact.
They’re also less likely than other Modes to wake up the morning after to discover they’ve made irreversible commitments the night before.

On the other hand, in the negative pole, these folks can go overboard, becoming frozen, unable to leave home without a lucky rabbit’s foot, 6 locks on their doors, even practicing particular rituals. They may become so phobic they can’t leave home at all.

Even if they don’t become fixated in this way, the word “hermit” may describe them fairly well. Caution can become self-karmic introducing little life-lessons—in this case, making the point that there are more interesting things to do in life than skulk in one’s living room with drawn blinds or hide out behind the computer.

By its very nature, Caution won’t produce lots of famous people but there are a few. Note George Washington’s carefulness when leading his army. Not for him the idea of throwing his men into battle willy-nilly. He often used fog and night to cover his advances and, on more than one occasion, strategic retreat was his choice.
Paul Simon shows a deliberateness whether he is choosing the right word for a song or the right cause to get behind. Queen Elizabeth II rules with quiet reserve. And Casper Weinberger was absolutely certain we needed both a huge arsenal AND the Star Wars defense system.

Action Modes
Aggression [ 4%]
Aggression, at the Cardinal end of the Action Axis, is the more visible of these two Modes and is manifested by behavior.

Again, Michael uses a word in an unconventional way. In its definition, personalities in the positive pole of the Aggressive Mode live dynamically actively pursuing their goals. Where others might hesitate, these personalities will step forward and take command. They’ll take more risks than most people. Aggressive Mode can be an effective way of balancing recent lifetimes during which the personality was too passive and acted like a doormat.
Even the physical bodies of people with the Aggression Mode are, more often than not, vigorous and active.

In the positive pole, these personalities are vibrant, daring, forceful and won’t back down no matter what. These folks can’t be rocked back on their heels for long—they’ll just jump up and keep-a-goin.
In the negative pole, you’ll see inflexibility, antagonism, obnoxious, belligerent and confrontational behaviors and attitudes.

A number of our funny people use Aggression Mode: Lily Tomlin, Lenny Bruce, Robin Williams, and Mel Brooks all use it well.
Ronald Reagan, Fidel Castro, Moamar Khadafy all used it to run countries.
And, speaking of using the negative side: John Hinckley and George Wallace have shown us the paths this sort of go-gettum Mode can lead someone down.

Perseverance [4%]
On the ordinal pole of the Action Axis, Perseverance manifests itself through behaviors but is less visible than Aggression. Even so, it is extremely helpful when facing long-term tasks or karmas that are going to take lots and lots of determination and sticktoitiveness. Endurance, stamina and fortitude can be seen in large measure in personalities using Perseverance. It is often chosen in tandem with being Moving Centered [see post on centering].

Perseverance chooses interim goals and, one-by-one, takes care of each before moving on to the next step.

In the positive pole, these folks are determined, disciplined, unwavering and steadfast. Able to complete tasks effectively no matter the hardships and difficulties they must overcome to get there.

In the negative pole, they can appear unchallengeable, fixed, rigid and dull. Once a goal has been set, this personality can stick with it even if the objective is no longer a reasonable one.

Mother Theresa, Phil Donahue, J. Edgar Hoover, Khomeini, P. W. Botha, Manuel Noriega, Eddie Murphy and Robert Redford have all used persistence—maybe with a bit of sliding over to aggression for some extra oomph periodically.

Neutral Mode
Observation [50%]
By far the most commonly used Mode, Observation allows you to look before you leap. The personalities with Observation will, most likely, approach just about any situation with a deliberate, moderate pace.
It’s the most serene of the Modes in that it neither moves the personality forward nor holds it back.

A major advantage of Observation is that, because it is in the neutral position the personality can easily slide to ANY of the other modes.
So, half of the people in the world walk into a room whether they’re entering a board meeting or a cocktail party and pause to assess the situation before diving into the middle of it. Then, they have 7 choices: they can remain in the Observation mode or slide to any of the other six and approach their situation in the Mode that is most appropriate under the current circumstance.

Do you have a major project in the works? You can move into Aggression and/or Perseverance to get the job done.
Have you been in this sort of position before and gotten egg on your face? You may move to Caution or remain in Observation to get more information before committing yourself.
Are you in a situation that stirs emotion? You may move toward Passion or, in rare circumstances, Repression.
Most people have one or two favorite Modes they slide to from the neutral Observation position.

In the positive pole, the personality looks thoughtful, attentive, alert and aware of what is going on around it. It’s a great place to learn lots of stuff from so Scholars love it.

In the positive pole, the person exudes precision and insight. Need clarification? Observation is a great place to be.

Those who move to its negative pole may appear a bit dull. Scrutinizing, hunting for other people’s motives [in the negative sense of the words] these folks can descend into searching for the sinister.

Whoopi Goldberg, Jay Leno and Billy Crystal all use observation to great comedic effect. William F. Buckley was the Observer par excellence. David Attenborough, Barbara Walters and Margaret Thatcher all demonstrate different aspects of this versatile Mode.