rivercrow

It’s been a while since I chose to trust my inner resources. This is a sad and sobering realization. For too many years, I’ve believed the SJ mentality of the majority–the craving for security above all things, at the expense of my soul.

The last few months have been a process of digging in and reviewing myself, my beliefs, my strengths, my weaknesses. I realized when I was in the MBTI class that I was trying to coach myself into evolving–that realization was a shock and a relief. Knowing that this was what I was doing somehow clarified things for me. I suppose I could say that my data collection had finally peaked and a decision was possible.

It was an INTP experience. “Waiting for fullness is,” indeed. Once the data is in, the choice is made, and the rest is like dominoes tipping over.

I tried really hard to keep my insight internal. I do believe that we can maintain our personal integrity although the external world has lost its integrity. It’s not easy…a constant awareness that things are not synced…cognitive dissonance. In the end, my awareness overcame my ability to contain it and I had to act for self-preservation.

I suspect that INTPs have a hard time dealing with the mismatch of internal/external integrity, probably because of our inherent valuing of truth and competency; I think the pain of the disjoint heightens when it is clarified and visible. It becomes a physical itch.

So, I am going to trust myself. I’ve been divorced from my Ne and Ti for so long–absorbed into the Not-Me of Te and S. I’ve been practicing my strengths again. They never left, though I had abandoned them. Abandoned me. The growing knowledge of what I had done to myself startled me. Jung talks about the damage to the psyche that’s possible if one is forced away from one’s Type development; I understand this, all too clearly.

In the process, I also realized that I needed the power of introverted feeling to locate the source of my pain. Accepting the necessity of honoring my values was difficult enough without the added challenge of articulating it. To be honest, letting myself view my values as facts was the key. I had not really understood the difference between Feeling and Thinking until that class. Understanding the difference let me have a better handle on the internal conflicts I was experiencing.

So what’s the point of referring to faith? Faith in our inner strengths, the strengths of type and temperament, and the need we have to work from those strengths. Trust and belief in the core. For me, this is also a matter of re-centering myself and pulling away from my reliance on foreign preferences. A move back to embracing simplicity and clarity and living congruently with my values.

It’s a relief.

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