Here’s a critical question for ITC research:

What prevents people from fitting comfortably into groups in harmony, with unity of mind?

Sure, we humans can sometimes work together for a while with common goals and dreams, and with rules and regulations that try to keep us from stepping on each other’s toes… but our relationships always tend to bristle and break down and need constant care and fixing…

• as we sit in cubicles at work day after day, year after year, and attend meetings… or
• as we play our roles at home in the family or at church or in our clubs and organizations… or
• as a we mingle among a big roomful of people at a social event … or even
• as we talk on the phone or exchange texts and emails….

We invariably encounter certain people who rub us the wrong way. We balk at the things they do, the things they say, their attitudes and beliefs, or maybe just the way they treat other people.

That unavoidable friction between people is what we look at in this article, and for good reason. While it can cause problems in any social group, it’s a critical problem in ITC.

ITC, or instrumental transcommunication, is the use of TVs, radios, telephones, computers, and other technical devices to be in touch with the finer realms of spirit. An ITC bridge between “Heaven” and Earth depends on a contact field forged by the thoughts and attitudes of everyone involved in the project. In order for ITC to work… in order for pure information to stream from the finer realms of spirit into our world through our equipment… that contact field has to be resonant. There needs to be harmony and unity of mind among researchers collaborating on an ITC project.

ITC is facilitated by ethereal beings who have worked with humanity quietly, behind the scenes, across the eons… trying to guide us along a path of decency and good will. These timeless beings, or angels, act as gatekeepers for ITC.

From an ethereal perspective, working with humanity on Earth is probably like tending a garden:

• Mothers’ love is like beautiful roses,
• Friendship, sincerity, trust, and empathy are like fragrant herbs,
• Fear, doubt, hatred, and envy are like repulsive worms and crawly things that dwell in the dark under rocks, and
• Difficult human personalities are like thorns.

When ethereals work with us humans on an ITC project, it’s not all roses.

What we look at today are the thorny aspects of ITC… the difficult personalities that can make it hard for us humans to work together in peace and harmony. Maybe if we can learn to overcome these personality issues, ITC will have a chance to blossom and spread in the world.

Egos and Personalities

So, while doing research for this article, I came across several psychology websites that help to explain why we humans can’t always fit together nicely in groups. There are a number of good sites that simply list difficult personality types and how to deal with them, and I’ll share a couple of those. One of those sites could be especially useful for us because of its clear descriptions of seven difficult personality types that most of us are familiar with, and the author’s well-thought-out methods of handling them.

There are also some scholarly articles out there that introduce new 10-dollar words and concepts (e.g. regulatory fit) and use scientific formulas and statistical abbreviations like M (mean) and SD (standard deviation) to explain why people can’t get along nicely in groups. I’ll provide a link to one or two of those sites as well, in case you’re interested in the scholarly approach to all of this.

It might be helpful for ITC researchers to go through some sites like these quickly, just to get an idea of what we’re up against in our quest for harmony. Think about how some of these aspects of personality might apply to us, or to people we know.

At the same time, I think it’s important to acknowledge that we’re ALL really good people at heart. At the center of our being, where our finest spiritual self resides, we’re all brilliant, loving souls, and we’re all one.

It’s out at the carnal, conscious fringes of our humanness that the thorny aspects of our personalities flare up from time to time… where hormones rage and egos swell.

It’s probably best, then, if we look at these difficult personality types as qualities of humanness… and acknowledge that we each might have just a small amount of one or two of these qualities wrapped up in ourselves.

It’s not as though any one of us is a difficult personality type, period. I think it’s more likely that we all have a few bits and pieces of some of these qualities built in to us, and the more we understand them, acknowledge them, adjust them, and behave accordingly… then the less they bristle in our relationships with others.

LIST A: Seven Difficult Personality Types

The best website that I found for our purposes with this ITC article is one that lists seven difficult personality types and explains how to deal with them, for example, during a meeting, or when team-building. (Read more from Dr Marilyn Manning on how to deal with these 7 types… )

Almost verbatim from Dr Manning’s site:

• Hardcore bullies are hostile, abusive and intimidating. They always have to be right and will charge like angry bulls if you challenge or cross them.
• Ego-centered princesses are experts and appear to know more than others should about a particular subject. Facts are power to them and since they know the facts, they feel superior. They want to be special and center stage.
• Passive-aggressives take potshots. They undercut your authority in devious ways by using sarcasm, which they often disguise as a joke. They will not be direct with their criticism.
• Babies see everything negatively. They complain, whine, and act defeated. They often believe no one thinks they are important.
• Negative Ned and Negative Nancy aren’t just negative, they distrust anyone in power. They believe that their way is the only right way and their motto is “I told you so.” They see the down side of every issue.
• People pleasers are easy to like, but they can be difficult personalities to deal with. They over-commit themselves and their staffs because they can’t say “NO.”
• Non-players are the most difficult personalities to deal with. They don’t reveal their true motives, and you end up in a guessing game trying to find out what makes them tick.

The beauty of this list is that it’s simple and straightforward, and the website has practical ways to deal with these personality types, for example, during meetings.

When I look back on the coming-apart of our INIT group around the year 2000, I believe it was difficult personalities, more than any other factor, that tore us apart.

If someone in the INIT group at that time had been familiar with the above list and the techniques described on Dr Manning’s site, INIT might still be together and operational. Our meetings might have gone more smoothly, and the conflicts that spun out of letters, FAXes, and phone calls might have been handled more tactfully and resolved more effectively.

I can think of several INIT members who exhibited some of the above qualities over the years, but there’s no sense in finger-pointing at this stage… and if I did, I’d probably be wrong about these people as often as I’d be right.

It’s much more important for ITC members to do a personal inventory of personality traits. Think about yourself (and perhaps of other people you know) as you read through the list. Do any of the qualities show up in your personality at times?

If doing a personal inventory of these difficult traits is too difficult, hey, I’m sure there are friends, family members, and co-workers who would be ALL TOO HAPPY to help you. 🙂

Me?

I’ve always had a fairly big dose of people pleaser in my disposition, and there’s a small sprinkling of passive-aggressive in me that pops up from time to time… maybe even a bit of nonplayer (especially if I don’t fully understand the issues involved)… and I’m aware now that these aspects of me have had a harmful impact on family, friendships, and other groups I’ve been involved in… including INIT.

The personality that makes me most uncomfortable, the behavior that I just can’t stand to be around, is the bully.

If INIT came together again, I’d be more cognizant of my own personality traits that can cause troubles for the group, and I’d learn how to deal with other difficult personality types, especially bullies.

LIST B: Lots More Difficult Personality Types

Anyway, here’s another website with difficult personality types, and it, too, gives some tips on how to deal with them. This is Donna Flagg’s list (LIST B), which is more in-depth than LIST A.

• Ticking time bombs (tyrants, ogres, bullies, and loose cannons),
• Centers of the universe (narcissists, power mongers, control freaks, and intimidators),
• Buzz kills (naysayers, know-it-alls, curmudgeons, and ignoramuses),
• Slippery sly ones (dissemblers, skulkers, connivers, and manipulators),
• Suck ups (blowhards, sycophants, and brown-nosers),
• Oblivious ones (dreamers, flakes, and drama queens), and
• Juveniles (blamers, whiners, excuse-makers, spoiled brats, and gossips).

Some of the traits in one category of this list seem to overlap traits in other categories of the list. Also, the names of these personality types may be a little too brash for our (ITC) purposes… so I prefer LIST A.

On the other hand, this seems to be, overall, a good, comprehensive list of difficult personality types that could be useful in team-building and management.

(On a lighter note, some people might find a visceral enjoyment reading through the barbs in LIST B… also in LIST A… and applying them to people they don’t like… that is, people of a certain personality type might enjoy doing that…. 🙂

And here are a couple of links to more scholarly articles that might help us understand why we humans have a hard time fitting into groups more harmoniously:

• (From Wikipedia… )
• (From the Netherlands… )

Personalities, the Devil’s Toys

There is no devil, really, at least no all-powerful-all-evil-polar-opposite-of-God devil. Satan (in my opinion) is just a concept devised by western religious scholars long ago to try to explain why we humans are subject to the plague of dark, other-worldly forces that seem to infest our planet.

Through my afterlife research I’ve learned that there is an other-worldly plague that disrupts our world, but it’s really just a vast community of troubled spirits who’ve gotten themselves stuck in a dark, shadowy world that covers the Earth like an invisible storm cloud. Lots of people die and are unable to find paradise because their troubled patterns of thought keep them in a dark, stormy vibration.

There are also some spirits who’ve chosen to remain in that shadow world and to savor the savagery… stirring up the fears and doubts and hatred of those around them.

The troubled spirits in the shadow world are attracted to the thorny dispositions of many people on Earth, people who are vulnerable to the difficult personality qualities listed above. Those spirits can and do stir up our inner bullies and prima donnas and narcissists and underminers in order to disrupt human affairs.

Putting Personality in Its Place

The websites mentioned earlier provide some practical tips to deal with difficult personalities that we encounter in our day-to-day lives.

It’s also important to take some time to polish up our own personalities so they become less of a magnet to troubled spirits and less of a problem for us and for our groups.

As I also mentioned earlier, we’re ALL really good people at heart… at that place at the center of our being where our higher self has never been disturbed.

The principles of decency flourish at the core of our being, and it’s important to foster a conscious connection with our higher self, for example, through meditation and prayer, in which we don’t just ask for favors from our higher power, but we actually turn our life over to the omnipotent will and timeless principles of that higher power.

That’s the crux of spiritual growth.

We begin to help reshape the groups we belong to around those higher principles, and in our interactions with other people we get in the habit of putting the principles above the personalities.

Here are some time-proven steps that have been helping millions of people to put principles above personalities for nearly a century, in a most personal way:

• Take an inventory of my difficult personality traits and the problems they’ve caused me and those around me,
• Define those conditions clearly and admit my responsibility for them,
• Be ready and willing to relinquish all of those character defects to my higher power, and
• Ask my higher power to remove them.

(Read a complete list of steps… )

The list comes from the famous 12-Step program, which was developed and fostered by people facing the deadly, life-ravaging crisis of addiction. These people didn’t choose spiritual growth for religious or social reasons, but for survival. They had to find the higher power and the higher purpose in life or else they’d die.

And in doing so, they’ve given modern humanity one of the greatest gifts ever… the 12 Steps.

That’s why so many recovering addicts and their families and friends are grateful for the addictions that have torn their lives apart: Recovering from addiction, and learning how to survive while supporting loved ones recovering from addiction, immersed these folks in a profound spiritual path and program, of which most other people today get only a glimpse or a passing fragrance or a brief taste… if they’re lucky.

Given a chance to start their lives over, would they once again choose the lifetime of addiction?

Hell no! What are you, nuts or something? 🙂

And therein lies the enigma of spiritual living in a carnal world.

Consciously connecting with our higher power is neither an easy choice nor an easy path… and sometimes that path to spiritual development is found through suffering.

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Next article is about the things we learned about management and direction of the INIT group.