Stage-5: Vital Mode

Neither of the other Methods-Modes seem to provide what is needed:

• Transpersonal involves selflessness, equanimity and a focus on others; which does not suggest exploring and activating inner potentials.
  
• Relational involves a quality of interaction that depends on spiritual energies.

Nothing energizes a person more than a challenge. This is not a creativity-based challenge, but rather a test devised to discover the self's potential strength. Embarking on the test requires a degree of courage. It is akin to keeping on walking after you allow removal of your safety-net.

Because this challenge is about self-actualization, it is likely to relate to whatever is a person's natural method of stabilization (PH'4)—and not, for example, to meeting financial needs or handling family pressures.
Examples: 

Vital beings will choose a physical event like running a marathon, doing a major climb or trek, even swimming the English channel. A Transpersonal being might choose a pilgrimage or a lengthy retreat. An Individual being could apply their talents to an ambitious project. A Social being might orchestrate a new business or charitable foundation or a substantial communal event. An Emotional being could choose to assist communities in danger zones or work with severely ill children. A Relational being might engage with others from a radically different culture. A Sensory being might travel to a distant land for new foods, new sights, new sounds, new contacts.

Self-approval should be well-established by this Stage, and it can serve as a springboard to a yet higher level of approval. This is experienced as pride in oneself for attempting the test. There is even more pride in completing the test. Being an object of admiration by others may also be desired, but it is secondary.

The challenge will be something that draws on your strengths, but which you have never done before. So change must be accepted and the new must be welcomed despite the sense of discomfort.

Whatever is new and different is an affront to habits, good and bad, that have become ingrained. Your new activities might be comparatively mundane to others for whom your chosen test is an everyday activity. Such people can reduce your anxiety by acting as advisors or guides.

The first step in self-actualization is to develop independent thinking and make an unequivocal break from the herd mentality. The self (or sense of self) developed for the Individual Mode-μ3 may be self-consciously self-reliant, but it leaves you still needing inter-personal support and affected by social attitudes. The Sensory Mode-μ4 also fosters conformity and allows groupthink.

Personal judgements about people and situations must now be made and acted upon. That means being ready to take up any position at all: you may display 100% conformity, hold idiosyncratic views, or become an unpopular contrarian on certain issues.

Testing takes place in a social environment. In choosing a test and often in organising and pursuing the test, you will need to get advice and assistance from others. Some may advise against: so there is a potential exposure to failure and humiliation.

At least some friends must be ready and willing to support and advise, and even step in and rescue. Confidence in depending on them flows from judgements and relationships enabled by Cycle-1 modes.

This is obviously not an immature dependency; but nor is it the mature inter-dependence as popularized in conventional psychology.

Self-belief is an essential means for self-actualization. Recall that this is the first of the three modes whose methods were under personal auspices.

Most of the values here—chosen challenge, inner exploration, mental independence—demand an authentic belief in yourself.

Self-actualization commences with this Stage and there is a danger of back-sliding into the comfort zone. The application of self-discipline is therefore necessary. Like creativity, it is a matter of will-power and dependent on determination and perseverance.

Others will not take your initiatives seriously until they see how disciplined you are in whatever you are attempting. You will lose esteem in your own eyes and theirs if you lack discipline in facing your challenges.

The self developed to this point is satisfying and sufficient for most of us. So there may be no desire for further strengthening.

The mix of inner security and external approbation from passing tests can be handled with humility and a recognition of the role of luck. But it may also activate intrinsically dangerous feelings of superiority. An egocentric life may then develop, with persistent arrogant feelings that you are better, smarter, richer &c than others. You come to think you deserve all you have: as if luck had nothing to do with it.

The antidote flows from self-reflection, recognizing your deep dependency on a social world, and accepting your smallness and insignificance in the totality of the universe. That does not in itself require any further movement around the Spiral. But you might realize that you will become stronger if these values become embedded and self-defining.