Stage-2: Meaning — Your Values
Rationale
The is the only Quest-mode that asks you to look into yourself and see what is really important for you. In this way, the Quest reduces external dependence and is personally soothing.
Meaning flows from your values and related goals. These can be guaranteed to generate the psychic energy which creates the feeling of on life and is so essential for everyday . Whatever helps you to feel and know that what you are doing is important in the wider scheme of things will aid you in dealing with immediate life stresses.
Refusal to see Values is a Failure in Coping
A person who avoids focussing on their own values or behaves in a way that shows they have no fixed values is choosing to remain as an «Instrumental Being» i.e. they are likely governed by the .
Those who primarily use power to get benefit in social interactions commonly cope in ways that are socially dysfunctional. However, some are psychologically acute and uphold certain values that are also recognized by their associates, if not by the wider community.
Values & Assumptions
Promoting Survival:
Essence: Apply your values
Values are purposes. Indeed the upper 5 are values (as well as being purposes). The lower 5 define projects. Projects demand work, and the importance of work has already been established in Stage-1. However, work that is driven by the highest levels of value is meaningful work.
Benefit: Become energized
Coping is often seen in terms of energy (or apathy) and values energize a person. ) are what gives , and their power. Any becomes part of a person’s identity and generates tribal loyalty in others who share it. articulate a person’s needs and help with integration in the surrounding community.
Means: Follow your interests
Values cannot just be taken like a tablet or installed like an app on a device. They must flow from an awareness of who you are and where your interests lie. Interests can be developed from values and so they should naturally become important for you. Coping will then be supported either by pursuing interest-based work or by interest-based activities outside the workplace.
Handling the Socio-physical Environment:
Participation: Find your path
Meaningful work must be sought. Because it takes time and experience to discover what your values are, this search commonly takes the form of a journey. By adhering to your interests, you will not lose your way. Slowly, you will discover what is trivial and superficial and what is relevant, substantial, and worthwhile. As you become focused, you will be able to look back and see the path you have taken and need to develop in the future.
Interaction: Link with kindred souls
Reflection on values benefits from dialogue. Initially, you may have to talk to yourself. But values are intrinsically group-based. So you must associate with kindred souls and talk with them about what is important to both of you and why. You will not only get social support, but also find your own values sharpening and becoming reinforced.
Individualization: Develop specific talents
Just as you have always sought your own niche (in Stage-1), now you must value and hone your specific . This is a component of . Development of talents is constituted by 4 (i.e. values), , , and (i.e. work). We noted in that Satellite that “Talents are the route by which you (i.e. your «self») can be unique and make a contribution of the highest quality possible for you.”
Channeling Your Functioning:
Source of Endurance: based on Learning
is found at . As you search for the way forward, find kindred spirits, and work on talents, there will be many mis-steps and failures. These are opportunities to learn. Any unpleasant event can feel like a traumatic disaster seemingly best forgotten. But perceiving such an event as a learning opportunity injects it with meaning. If you do that, you can thrive on failure because, whatever the event, you end up emerging stronger and more capable.
Limitations
Meaningful work goes beyond providing an economic base because it provides an inner gratification and generates mental energy. If you feel that your efforts are being directed in a way that matches your values, this may seem to be sufficient to cope with everyday stresses.
However, this self-centred, even egotistical, quality of personal values does not do full justice to our social nature. We live with others, and function in a mesh of inter-dependence. In many life situations that we face, we require outside advice or even practical help.
Given that interdependence is the human condition, attention must be turned outwards and guidance sought from the .
Ruling out Alternative Moves
Moving to and seeing reality for what it is does not enable coping with social needs or dealing with interpersonal dependency. As in the previous transition, simply reducing stress via the or modes does not help. , too, may help us get close to the divine within or without, but divine intervention cannot be counted upon to deal with social, interpersonal and work stresses.
Moving on…..
- Continue to Stage 3: Salvation Mode.
Originally posted: 9-Dec-2022. Last updated: 28-Mar-2023.
Originally posted: 9-Dec-2022. Last updated 28-Mar-2023.