INFP Introverts: The 64-Color Box

I’d been living in London when my world turned upside down and I’d had to come home. By the time my plane landed back in Sydney, all I had left was a carry on bag full of clothes and a world of troubles. No one to welcome me back, no place to call home. I was a tourist in my hometown.

Standing there in the arrivals terminal, watching other passengers meeting their waiting friends and family, with open arms and smiling faces, hugging and laughing together, I wanted someone out there to be waiting for me. To be happy to see me. To smile at me. To hug me.

So I got some cardboard and a marker and made a sign. I found the busiest pedestrian intersection in the city and held that sign aloft, with the words “FREE HUGS” on both sides.

And, for 15 minutes, people just stared right through me. The first person who stopped tapped me on the shoulder and told me how her dog had just died that morning. How that morning had been the one year anniversary of her only daughter dying in a car accident. How what she needed now, when she felt most alone in the world, was a hug. I got down on one knee, we put our arms around each other and, when we parted, she was smiling.

Everyone has problems and, for sure, mine haven’t compared. But to see someone who was once frowning smile, even for a moment, is worth it every time.

—Juan Mann

“There is always something to do. There are hungry people to feed, naked people to clothe, sick people to comfort and make well. And, while I don’t expect you to save the world, I do think it’s not asking too much for you to love those with whom you sleep, share the happiness of those whom you call friend, engage those among you who are visionary, and remove from your life those who offer you depression, despair, and disrespect.” —Nikki Giovanni

This Illiterate Brazilian’s Home Speaks Volumes
By Henry Chu, Los Angeles Times

Sao Goncalo, Brazil—Carlos Leite can barely read a word, but books revolutionized his life. Two years ago, he was doing construction work for a man who was about to toss out six thick, red encyclopedias. Leite asked whether he could have them instead. Thus a dream was born.

Within days, he hit the pavement, knocking on doors, begging people for more unwanted books. No contribution was too small, too big or too arcane. Skeptical members of Leite’s cycling club were dragooned into helping him collect donations.

His collection quickly multiplied. The original six volumes turned into 100, then 1,000. Soon, his humble home was bursting with 5,000 books of all types—worn classics, chemistry textbooks, dog-eared thrillers.

To Leite, though, nearly all the books are mysteries. Born into a poor family, he dropped out of school after third grade and, at 51, is practically illiterate. But books, he knows, are the gateway to a life of greater possibility and more promise than his own. It might be too late for me, a working man, he reasoned, but not for others.

So bloomed the passion that has consumed Leite’s free time over the last two years: transforming his home into a public library, free and open to all in this poverty-stricken neighborhood outside Rio de Janeiro.

Continue reading…

“When I started out, my hair had started to turn to silver. My friends thought I was crazy. There was not one word of encouragement from them. They thought I would surely kill myself, walking all over. But that didn’t bother me. I just went ahead and did what I had to do. They didn’t know that with inner peace I felt plugged into the source of universal energy, which never runs out. There was much pressure to compromise my beliefs, but I would not be dissuaded. Lovingly, I informed my well-meaning friends of the existence of two widely divergent paths in life and of the free will within all to make their choice. There is a well-worn road which is pleasing to the senses and gratifies worldly desires, but leads to nowhere. And there is the less traveled path, which requires purifications and relinquishments, but results in untold blessings.” —Peace Pilgrim*

“But to come back to what I said earlier, I know I don’t manage to persuade people to change, but I do it anyway. A story: A just man decided he must save humanity. So he chose a city and he studied and he learned the art of moving people, changing minds, changing hearts. He came to a man and woman and said, ‘Don’t forget that murder is not good, it is wrong.’ In the beginning, people gathered around him. It was so strange, somewhat like a circus. They gathered and they listened. He went on and on and on. Days passed. Weeks passed. They stopped listening. After many years, a child stopped him and said, ‘What are you doing? Don’t you see nobody is listening? Then why do you continue shouting and shouting? Why?’ And the man answered the child, ‘I’ll tell you why. In the beginning, I was convinced that if I were to shout loud enough, they would change. Now I know they won’t change. But if I shout even louder, it’s because I don’t want them to change me.’” —Elie Wiesel*

“I am driven by things that I don’t quite understand. Much of what I’m about, I truly don’t know how I came to it. I mean, I know in the intellectual sense. I know that coincidences appeared and I made choices. But there is a voice—my mother was possessed of that voice. Paul Robeson was possessed of that voice. Dr. W. E. B. Du Bois and Eleanor Roosevelt and Dr. King and Fanny Lou Hamer and others were possessed of that voice. I am just one note in a chord that makes a harmonic sound that gives me the sense of what I must do and where I must go without much debate.” —Harry Belafonte*

“I feel like Joan of Arc at times. My whole becomes uplifted. I, too, hear the voices that say ‘Come,’ and I will follow, no matter what the cost, no matter what the trials I am placed under. Jail, poverty, slander—they matter not.” —Helen Keller*

“Yes, I can spew. Yes, I can rant. Yes, I can rave. Yes, I can go out of my way to articulate in shimmering, twinkling, glittery, diamond-clear detail the story of what’s going wrong. But I don’t want to do it the old way.”

Continue reading “Truth Rant”

“Maybe I was hoping for a little insight, maybe I was hoping to gain some lacking spirituality or sense of good will. Mostly, though, I think I was looking for some hope. The older I become—the more news I watch, the more books I read, and the more I look around—I see the world falling apart. People are angry, scared, hurt. There are wars going on, violent crimes being committed; people are feeling a sense of sadness and desperation that you can almost feel in the air.”

Continue reading “A Lesson on Happiness”

“Concern should drive us into action, not into depression.” —Pythagoras

Do not lose heart. We were made for these times. I’ve heard from so many recently who are deeply and properly bewildered, concerned about the state of affairs in our world right now. Ours is a time of almost daily astonishment and often righteous rage over the latest degradations of what matters most to civilized, visionary people. You are right in your assessments.

The lustre and hubris some have aspired to while endorsing acts so heinous against children, elders, everyday people, the poor, the unguarded, the helpless, is breathtaking. Yet I urge you, ask you, gentle you, to please not spend your spirit dry by bewailing these difficult times. Especially do not lose hope. Most particularly because, the fact is ‘we were made for these times’. Yes. For years, we’ve been learning, practicing, training and just waiting to meet on this exact plain of engagement.

I grew up on the Great Lakes and recognize a seaworthy vessel when I see one. Regarding awakened souls, there have never been more able crafts in the waters than there are right now across the world. And they are fully provisioned and able to signal one another as never before in the history of humankind. Look out over the prow; there are millions of boats of righteous souls on the waters with you. Even though your veneers may shiver from every wave in this stormy roil, I assure you that the long timbers composing your prow and rudder come from a greater forest.

For many decades, worldwide, souls just like us have been felled and left for dead in so many ways over and over brought down by naivete, by lack of love, by being ambushed and assaulted by various cultural and personal shocks in the extreme. We have a history of being gutted, and yet remember this especially, we have also, of necessity, perfected the knack of resurrection.

Over and over again we have been the living proof that that which has been exiled, lost, or foundered can be restored to life again. In any dark time, there is a tendency to veer toward fainting over how much is wrong or unmended in the world. Do not focus on that. There is a tendency too to fall into being weakened by persevering with what’s outside our reach, what cannot yet be. Do not focus there. That’s spending the wind without raising the sails. We are needed, that is all we can know.

Ours is not the task of fixing the entire world all at once, but of stretching out to mend the part of the world that is within our reach. Any small, calm thing that one soul can do to help another soul, to assist some portion of this poor suffering world, will help immensely. It is not given to us to know which acts or by whom, will cause the critical mass to tip toward an enduring good. What is needed for dramatic change is an accumulation of acts, adding, adding to, adding more, continuing. We know that it does not take ‘everyone on earth’ to bring justice and peace, but only a small, determined group who will not give up during the first, second, or hundredth gale.

One of the most calming and powerful actions you can do to intervene in a stormy world is to stand up and show your soul. Soul on deck shines like gold in dark times. The light of the soul throws sparks, can send up flares, builds signal fires, causes proper matters to catch fire. To display the lantern of soul in shadowy times like these—to be fierce and to show mercy toward others, both, are acts of immense bravery and greatest necessity. Struggling souls catch light from other souls who are fully lit and willing to show it. If you would help to calm the tumult, this is one of the strongest things you can do.

—Clarissa Pinkola-Estes

“The souls of people, on their way to earth-life, pass through a room full of lights; each takes a taper—often only a spark—to guide it in the dim country of this world. But some souls, by rare fortune, are detained longer—and have time to grab a handful of tapers, which they weave into a torch. These are the torch-bearers of humanity—its poets, seers, and saints, who lead and lift the race out of darkness, toward the light. They are the law-givers and saviors, the light-bringers, way-showers and truth-tellers and, without them, humanity would lose its way in the dark.” —Plato

“Contrary to popular belief, giftedness is not characterized by high intelligence alone…”*

“On the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, INFP is a rare personality type, found in only about 4% of the general population. Yet, of the possible 16 types, it is the one most frequently found for gifted people. This scarcity, coupled with their extreme intelligence, renders them seldom understood and, thus, rarely validated in relationships. The following material is based on qualitative research involving in-depth interviews with eight highly-gifted INFP adults.

Continue reading “INFP Personality Type in Gifted People”

Characteristics of Gifted Adults
Giftedness Self-Test

Giftedness: There appears to be three sorts of childhoods and three sorts of adult social adaptations. The first of these may be called “the committed strategy.” These individuals were born into upper middle-class families with gifted and well-educated parents and often with gifted siblings. They sometimes even had famous relatives. They attended prestigious colleges, became doctors, lawyers, professors, or joined some other prestigious occupation, and have friends with similar histories. They are the optimally-adjusted. They are also the ones most likely to disbelieve that the exceptionally-gifted can have serious adjustment problems.

The second kind of social adaptation may be called “the marginal strategy.” These individuals were typically born into a lower socio-economic class without gifted parents, gifted siblings, or gifted friends. Often, they did not go to college at all but, instead, went right to work immediately after high school, or even before. And, although they may superficially appear to have made a good adjustment to their work and friends, neither work nor friends can completely engage their attention. They hunger for more intellectual challenge and more real companionship than their social environment can supply. So they resort to leading a double life. They compartmentalize their life into a public sphere and a private sphere. In public, they go through the motions of fulfilling their social roles, whatever they are, but, in private, they pursue goals of their own. They are often omnivorous readers and sometimes unusually expert amateurs in specialized subjects. The “double life strategy” might even be called the genius ploy, as many geniuses in history have worked at menial tasks in order to free themselves for more important work. Socrates, you will remember was a stone mason, Spinoza was a lens grinder, and even Jesus was a carpenter. The exceptionally-gifted adult who works as a parking lot attendant while creating new mathematics has adopted an honored way of life and deserves respect for his courage, not criticism for failing to live up to his abilities. Those conformists who adopt the committed strategy may be pillars of their community and make the world go around but, historically, those with truly original minds have more often adopted the double life tactic. They are ones among the gifted who are most likely to make the world go forward.

And finally there are “the dropouts.” These sometimes bizarre individuals were often born into families in which one or more of the parents were not only exceptionally gifted but exceptionally maladjusted themselves. This is the worst possible social environment that a gifted child can be thrust into. His parents, often driven by egocentric ambitions of their own, may use him to gratify their own needs for accomplishment. He is, to all intents and purposes, not a living human being to them, but a performing animal, or even an experiment. That is what happened to Sidis, and may be the explanation for all those gifted who “burn out” as he did.

Source: TPS

We can live without technology and nice clothes and ear-splitting sex, but we can’t live without peace of mind and a basic understanding between ourselves and others…

The lotus flower symbolizes a heart or self that’s untainted by personal adversity or by the pollution of the outside world. The lotus starts its journey buried in water, muck, and mire and steadily grows towards the light—rising towards the water’s surface. Once it breaks the surface, the lotus blossoms with a beautiful flower that’s untouched by the muddy water surrounding it.

“What I learned from the great suffering of my childhood was that compassion and love and non-violence are necessities of happiness—absolutely mandatory for true happiness. We can live without technology and nice clothes and ear-splitting, sex but we can’t live without peace of mind and a basic understanding between ourselves and others.

“What I am is a humanitarian and I just happen to be coming from a religious perspective. Mother Teresa was involved in a mammoth effort to rescue human beings from the causes and effects of suffering because that was her divine inspiration from her faith practice. Likewise, the Dalai Lama is concerned with doing this same work according to a Buddhist perspective. It’s all the same perspective. It’s all about the compassion and love that’s necessary for us to avoid suffering and live harmonious lives and religions can be a great inspiration for human beings in bringing this about.

“If I said I was a devout Christian and wanted to create a religious-based human rights foundation, no one would bat an eye at me but, because I’m coming from a perspective that most people are unfamiliar with, people question it and need it to be validated. I’m not a miracle-worker, or a glamorous guru, or a reputed scholar sporting several degrees. I’m just a man who’s been touched in a very direct way with love and compassion. I hear the voice in my heart and have to respond by sharing that joy with others. I don’t do it through evangelism or proselytizing, because I don’t believe in those things. People should follow the voice as they hear it and, if that voice is Christian or Catholic or Hindu or whatever, you should follow it with all your might and use it to benefit others. That’s my way of legitimizing my work and the capacity in which I serve. I live by example, by manifesting kindness and compassion and wisdom.

“If people decide not to recognize my title or function, then so be it. I don’t care about that. What I care about is sending out a positive message to humanity, creating a spiritual revolution that will teach others the value of basic human kindness and compassion. I’m going to keep doing this work until I take my last breath because there are much greater things to me than human legitimization.”*

“If there is to be peace in the world, there must be peace in the nations. If there is to be peace in the nations, there must be peace in the cities. If there is to be peace in the cities, there must be peace between neighbors. If there is to be peace between neighbors, there must be peace in the home. If there is to be peace in the home, there must be peace in the heart.” —Lao-Tse