A New Awakening

I would like to take this time to write a burning, positive message from the present and from the depths of my soul.

In June of this year, I stood in a tiny Northern Greek monastery secluded in the mountains. It was probably early on a Sunday morning, the warm sun had just risen and we could see and feel it through the high windows as we listened to the soft hymns. Suddenly, I felt something that could only be described as a lightning bolt, a moment of revelation. I am a willing atheist, yet I refuse to deny this power. Perhaps it was a follow-up to the dream from the night before Athens, almost a year ago now (!) where I felt an incredible sense of liberation, literally floating in the air above the garden with a bed in the ground. Freedom, lightness, clarity and warmth are definitely accurate ways to describe this moment. I saw a real & bright future in Asia, teaching, learning more languages, going to graduate school for linguistics, falling in real romantic love with another person after learning to love myself. And yet, nowhere in this vision was there a lack of hardship, a complete erasure of uncertainty or an effortless, paved path to walk. It was simply an impression of an end result presented to me, that elusive magic that I never stop chasing. Magic within a concrete reality, not the one-dimensional world in my head with me as the eternal puppet master. A world based on my acceptance and optimal use of my strengths. A world where imperfect humans coexist and thrive alongside me, where I don't drive them away. A world that is mine for the taking if I will only accept it.

Today, my brother's 12th birthday, nearing the end of 2011, the stars are aligning to bring me back to this magic. One crucial thing came out of my recent therapy sessions: I discovered my Myers-Briggs personality type - INFP (Introverted. INtuition. Feeling. Perception.) For many years, I have heard about the importance of this "personality test" for those of us in the Western world to understand ourselves. Not just a surface examination of our personalities, but an affirmation of our natural tendencies and how to harness them in the best direction. For all my short yet substantial life, it seems I have been frantically searching for an explanation for my strangeness, for someone or something to tell me what is "wrong" with me. I inhabit the same space as my family & friends, so why the hell do I feel different? For the first time, I have stumbled upon something that helps tremendously. Apparently, INFPs in our population are seriously rare. I link again to the INFP blog because after this, it has been an astounding treasure to dig up. Here is a 40-year old, married-with-children American male who writes about his long-overdue "success" at "being an INFP" after years and years of wandering around lost. Hopefully, by starting now, I can begin to approach my magic point while I am still young.

 

Just this instant, I typed "Myers-Briggs France" into Google and stumbled upon an INTJ forum with this telling post:

A friend of mine who got her Masters in Psychology (and is a Korean native) told me that 75% of Korea is introverted. So ENTPs for instance are one of the rarest types there while INTJs were much more common (I think 6%), interestingly she also mentioned that ISTJs were by far the largest group, which had more than all the NTs combined.

She also said MBTI was taken more seriously there and they started making the tests mandatory by high school. 

                                                                                Things are coming together now in a big way. I went to the Houston Korean Education Center today and they gave me a *free* beginner's Korean language book. Hell, fuck the French. :P

The next step is again and again repainting every day, every important moment of my past in the most positive light possible to keep me moving forward. Truly, reconciling my past with this discovery is the first step. The second step is consciously living the change that is in my hands.