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Ethics Box - Exploring Personality and Character for sake of self-improvement

 
Tapsearch Com Editor and Artist Ray Tapajna with EthicsBox.com - studies Personality and Character for the sake of self-improvement. His mission is to probe ways for a new "Solidarity" for self, others and society under the guiding thought that each of us want to feel all together in one place at one time. It is also obvious that workers have no voice in the process of Globalization and Free Trade and hopefully the EthicsBox will prompt a change. See a posts about the "unnetted" at Bizarre Politics com and The Rationale com. Later we will get into the power of the spoken word and how all of us can improve ourselves in this discipline too. It is obvious workers have no voice in the process of Globalization and Free Trade.

Ethics Box - August 2008

Simple Depression not that simple (LINK)

August 22nd 2008 23:27
This continues our study of Personality and Character for the sake of Self-improvement. This Tapsearch Com article is by Ray Tapajna based on Father McQuade course in Personality and Character

Simple Depression is not that simple

And the Angels Sing
Simple Depression can be challenged



Feeling blue? You can cooperate with angels - click here

In the study of our emotions we can be stopped by a road block quickly. We could find our emotional control and the training of our emotions blocked by emotional conduct with no thought of consequences. This could be caused by depression. Yielding to the urges of depression and settling for being blue can become a habit.

However, depression has many masks, and one needs to determine which one it is wearing as we go through our day. There are depressions which are neither very serious nor of very long duration. Sometimes, we just want to stop everything around us as the old saying goes - stop the world , I want to get off. The only thing most humans want is a feeling of being all together in one place sensing everything is temporary. Other times, we just want to put everything on hold until we feel we are ready to deal with the issues that confront us. Depression can come as the companion of idleness. We seek leisure where there is none to be had. When that drink is consumed we are left only with an empty glass.


For a healthy consistency, we need to somehow fill this void. We can recall our past successes or activate good actions by returning to something that refreshes us. Some find this in collecting stamps or coins. Others like exercise or running to take their minds off the thing that is haunting us. Some just watch birds or the sunset with the sun being finished with the day, rest follows. We can also dream a bit about the future as we realize nothing is stationery and as in the past change comes. We can recall that some of these changes turned out worth waiting for.

Of all the failures in emotional life, the worst is that known to psychology as emotional death. The sense of hopelessness in all forms of activity , abiding discontent, cynicism, hatred, disdainful contempt, are all pathological symtoms. When these states become rivited to our lives, there has to be immediate treatment by someone with the skill to help you. There usually is no sudden dramatic thing that does it. Sometimes in religion , a conversion experience can do it but usually, a person needs help one on one with a skilled counselor for a long time.

Sufferers are "anxious" to get it over with. Thoughts and impluses of hatred, aversion, grief, despair, fear, rage, all mingle in one general state of emotional feelings. In any counseling, there has to be a check off on physical ties. All the self-analysis and self treatment in the world can not help if there is a physical cause involved. Glandular deficiencies, lack of vitamin-calories, matters of diet, chronic indigestion, anemia, low blood pressure, ulcers, and many other physical maladjustments may be the root cause fo emotional depression. I always wondered when someone says - it's all in your head. Of course it is, but what comes first. Is the emotional breakdown due to a physical one or is it vice vesa. If the symptons prevail , why should we spend that much time trying to find out which when we can treat both as one. The term psychosomatic should not be allowed to hide any reality in our emotional or physical well being.

In the pursuit of a good emotional life, all good and bad points need to be exhausted but dwelling on something - based on it being all in your head seems to be a deadend conclusion. All harmful trains of thought should be considered but in the process we should also be very careful for fallacies and downright error. We may be putting ourselves into an emotional depression by a train of thought that is not only harmful but without basis in reality. Self-re-examination must follow a strict conformation of it to reality. In the process of avoiding harmful process of thinking, we may find that the emotional depression was hiding in the harmful process of thinking. In the process, the emotional depression may fade away.

In religion, we can seek things according to a first principle and perfect love. We could find sufficient motivation for emotional control relating to what is possible happiness in this life.
We could seek a supply of life principles that are correct and permenent. There are unchangeable truths and we were made to seek them. That is who we are as human beings. In this way we can establish a foundation of substantial joy in life. We know by the definition of perfect love, we will never attain it in this life but at the same time we know the search for it can be a beautiful thing.

If you are feeling depressed or like going to the dark side into the blues, think over all of the above. Do not ignore professional help or some type of third party counseling. This life is worth living and there is always something exciting about it if you do not block it out. In doing this, it becomes contagious to all those around you in your life. We all know or heard of someone that is joyous despite suffering a traumatic event in their lives. You could be that person too relating to they events in your life no matter what. There will always be someone with a worst story than yours.

( You can also cooperate with angels - see above.)



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Taking inventory of false principles (LINK)

August 19th 2008 19:17
By Ray Tapajna continuing our study of personality and character for the sake of self improvement

Is it time to clean the Windows of our Minds ?

In our last post, we explored the regions of our minds that are based on self-love rather than on the principle of Do unto others as you would have them do to you.

The first order of business now is to clean out the closets of our minds in the shaping of our emotional life. We need to clean out the false principles. At our philosophy site The Rationale , we discuss "protest" as the priority of liberal thought and much of it can be part of our problem in pursuing the ideal life.

We can discover these false principles by examining all the actions, all the emotional responses of our lives. We see a certain emotional reaction we do not approve or which disfigures our personality . We then ask ourselves if I saw someone act like this, what would I think his or her principles were? We start out by understanding we are all under the primary principle of prejudice in favor of ourselves and are inclined to say that while someting may be true for another person in the way they act, it does not apply to our situation.

Following this , we can begin to shape what we truly want to be as a person. The "protest" part of us will try to make us live a lie. So we must build up principles of life that are solid and true related to love and the common good. ( If we deny that the common good is possible, we need to find out why we say this.) This process will challenge us to search out the premise of life and community with one another - first with our families and then with others we love and respect. Patience is the key tool. We must be patient with ourselves and those we come in contact with. Reading the lives of others with high principles is a good way to start or follow the example of others who we see are reacting to life in good ways.

I like a story about St Francis DeSales. He is considered a doctor of spirituality in the Catholic Church. A Bishop came to visit him and was so astounded by the worldly example of St Francis DeSales that we drilled a peep hole in the wall to observe if St Francis acted the same way in private as he did in public. Perhaps you can imagine similar circumstances. Could others peer through a peep hole at you and find the goodness in you attractive when you are alone. Could people at work who think you are wonderful peer through the peep hole when you are with your family.

Another tool is to observe your emotional conduct when there is no possibility of consequences. This is a launching pad for the rest of your reactions in life. Another very common failure is the habit of living in a dream world. Dreaming can be a good thing to build up yourself but it can also crowd out what is close by in the real world. Does a dream world lock you out of the real one or seeing what could be if you went at the core of something directly. We do not have to take all the detours in our life ideal. We should not let our emotions rule the game of life . For example, how do you get ready for a job interview that can change your life. Will you spend all your prepartion time on being anxious or tell yourself it is hopeless to even try. Perhaps in preparation for an important event like this would be a good time to take an inventory of all your impulses of aversion, grief, despair, fear and losing it in stressful situations. However, most anytime is a good time to clean the windows of your mind.

We will continue our discussion in our next post bringing in depression that blocks out the ideal life
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Ideals and emotions matchup (LINK)

August 18th 2008 18:01
By Ray Tapajna continuing the study of Personality and Character for the sake of Self-Improvement - from our notes based on Father McQuade SJ JCU course in Personality and Character


Matching up our Emotions with our Life Ideal

A teacher affects their students in different ways. The same teacher will foster a strong response from some of his students and a weak one from others. Reason for an emotional response was triggered or not triggered. It shows are emotional reactions are dependent upon our reasoning process and intellectual insight. We have the power within us to look at the things that govern the quality of our emotions and the tones of meanings attached to our emotions.

We all have principles we live by and some are deep down in our mentality. They are good things in themselves and can be great tools in forming an inviting personality. It is good to react against injustice with holy anger. It is good to respond to beauty in others with the emotion of love. Basic to these two acts is the principle that injustice is something that should not happen and that goodness is to be sustained. We can build up our emotions to react spontaneously to goodness and curtail them with the attraction to bad things based on our prejudice of self love. ( Even when we are told we must love our selves first hides this prejudice of self love.)

We can train our emotions to be ready in our immediate consciousness to do good and avoid evil in any matter at hand. We could even train ourselves to pause before we act for our good emotions to go into action the proper way. We could built this into habitual responses. The young child in his early years in the classroom learns quickly how to control their emotions in a community of peers. They find that sharing is a good thing and they learn to practice kindness and generosity as an acquired habit.

"Do unto others as you would have them do for you" can become a natural habit .

And little boys soon find out their evil tendencies when the want to be first always with coming home with a blackend eye. When he comes home, he finds a mother who is an example of many acts of self-denial with many of the acts being unconsciously, habitually and automatically there as she tends to the black eye. The little boy without going through any special reasoning process, knows from the example of his mother why he got the blacken eye.

It is difficult fo any man or woman to discover by themselves the roots that grow an sound emotional life ideal. Self-love hides many things from us. Every person is primarily prejudice in favor of themselves. The father ( or mother these days) who come home from a stressful day at work, are on an automatic emotional level where their tranquility of life must not be disturbed at any cost. The act of self-denial becomes more difficult and the children responses to the situation become more difficult too. Theys sense the competition for emotional quality time.

In all these interactions, we must beware of the dictates of our primary principle of prejudice in favor of ourselves. We must also search out our motives behind the choices we make . The core of this search is our great store of self-examination. The spiritual person asks for God's help in the process. And even if the person is not religious there is a deep principle of goodness inside them that know the Perfect Love of God can be a vibrant influence knowingly or even unknowingly on the way we react to things. We know somehow that goodness does reign over bad things. We obviously see in others where it is more pronounced.

We could use this simple technique - if I saw someone else act like I am acting, what would I think of his principles of life? Or, better still ask yourself - would I like that person and would it be someone I like having around me.

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By Ray Tapajna, editor and artist at Tapart News and Art that Talks based on notes from Father McQuade SJ JCU Personality and Character course

Sooner or later we find emotional outbursts and a hot temper does not really match up with our life ideal. In any review of our emotions, we find that the word -control- should be our goal in controlling our tempers and emotional outbursts. It is impossible to eliminate emotions but it is possible to control them. Those who have had a contemplative experience will tell us control is possible. They simply realize it is best to pursue most anything guided by reason and most of the time have to go forward depending on faith alone


[ Click here to read more ]
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