Tag Archives: Decode

The School of Service

The School of Service

Do you know someone who absolutely delights in doing things for others? This is the person who plans the family parties, who babysits with a smile, who is the first in line to donate blood or chauffeur the soccer team to their next tournament game. They honestly want to help others achieve their goals and dreams, often providing free advice and resources to help make it happen. When they are asked to do something, their automatic response is ‘yes.’

I have several relatives like this, and they are wonderful people. That said, I worry sometimes about whether they are getting totally stressed out by taking such good care of everyone else. Are their own needs getting sidestepped in favor of everyone else’s?

On the flip side of the coin, do you know someone who demands that everyone else cater to them? There are folks who exude an air of entitlement, who take and take without appreciating (or even seeming to realize) the efforts others are making on their behalf. The dinner menu, the television remote, and division of the household chores are all under this person’s control.

WHORL These two kinds of behaviors embody the extremes of the School of Service. If you have four whorls in your ten fingerprints, this is your school.

The goal of students in the School of Service is to be conscious of the ways in which they want to serve. It is an ability and a willingness to discern and choose genuine, joyful service, without falling into servitude (which breeds resentment and burnout).

In navigating this school, people can fall into the two extremes described above, and suffer their negative effects. In the first instance, if you are constantly giving to everyone else, you may exhaust yourself, begin to feel resentful, and go from joyful, willing service to obligatory, victimizing service. You may also be making unconscious bargains with those you serve—“I’ll do this for you, but you need to come through for me in return.” (This isn’t service, by the way. It’s commerce.)

Any of these scenarios can result in a pendulum swing to the ‘other side’—swearing off being of service because you are tired of others taking advantage of you. You adopt the entitlement posture.

How about you? Do you fall into either of these camps? Whether or not you are in the School of Service, it’s helpful to notice your own service-related behaviors and attitudes!

The School of Love

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The School of Love

Over the past several weeks, we’ve been focusing on the Life School aspect of your Soul Psychology. We’ve looked at the School of Peace and the School of Wisdom. This week, the School of Love is on the docket.

LOOP The fingerprint pattern associated with the School of Love is the loop. If you have at least eight loops in your set of ten fingerprints, this is your school.

If you’re in the School of Love, you’re here to learn to become fully present to all of your feelings, regardless of what those feelings are, so you can work with them. When you can accept yourself and your feelings, and develop the ability to communicate them authentically and appropriately, you find the closeness, love and connection that you deeply desire.

What are some of the challenges in the School of Love?

You may have a hard time recognizing and identifying your true feelings. You may judge your feelings as ‘good’ or ‘bad,’ and/or judge others’ feelings using the same good/bad yardstick. Feelings actually aren’t ‘good’ or ‘bad,’ they just are. If you judge them, you are likely to try to bury them—which means burying a part of yourself. In order to work with your feelings, it’s vital to honestly experience them.

You may withhold your feelings from others, stoically (and unreasonably) waiting for them to guess what’s going on with you. (“If you really loved me, you’d know how I feel…”) Conversely, you may indiscriminately share exactly what you feel at all times in all places, without regard for how appropriate that sharing might be.

I had a classic experience with that ‘appropriate’ piece a few years back. A couple of my friends took a lot of pride in their open, honest relationship, and their ability to ‘tell it like it is.’ But they missed the fact that the communal dinner table wasn’t the place for a frank discussion of an issue that really belonged in their own private space. The airing of their feelings, at full volume, had the rest of us cringing in our seats. So there’s a need to be sensitive to what you’re saying, where you’re saying it, and to whom you’re saying it!

How about you? Are you willing to take the emotional risk of authentically and appropriately expressing your feelings? Do you tend to ‘stuff’ your feelings, or are you more inclined to ‘let it all hang out’? How has that impacted your relationships?

The School of Wisdom

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The School of Wisdom

In a recent overview post on Life School, I described the four basic fingerprint patterns—arch, tented arch, loop and whorl. Each of these patterns is associated with a particular Life School.

This week, we’ll look at the School of Wisdom. If you have at least two tented arches in your set of ten fingerprints, this is your school.

What is the curriculum?

If you are in the School of Wisdom, you are here to learn to move from thought and evaluation to action, so you can gain real, hands-on experience. This means being a participant in life, rather than just an observer. You need to be willing to make commitments, so you can ‘get off the fence’ and gain understanding through experience. Wisdom comes from experience, not from using your intelligence to insulate yourself from life.

If you are in the School of Wisdom, you can be challenged by two extremes.

On the one hand, you can be filled with doubt, always hesitating, procrastinating, and needing to ‘know more’ before taking action. You want to keep as many options open as you possibly can. Analysis paralysis is a hallmark of this end of the School of Wisdom spectrum.

At the other end is The Expert, the know-it-all who operates from a position of dogma—a ‘my way or the highway’ perspective. Do you have to be right? Always know best? Are you a perfectionist? Do you shudder at the prospect of making a mistake? These are some of the pitfalls of the ‘too much’ end of the School of Wisdom.

The School of Wisdom is designed to give you practice in seeing the big picture, taking calculated risks, committing, and gaining expertise through doing—then sharing your experience-gained wisdom with others.

How difficult is it for you to say ‘yes’ to something, knowing that means saying ‘no’ to other things? If making decisions is challenging for you, what steps can you take to help yourself move from observation to action?

The School of Peace

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The School of Peace

For the past several weeks, we’ve been taking a look at the Life School aspect of Soul Psychology. Your Soul Psychology is found in your fingerprint patterns.

In last week’s post, I described the four basic fingerprint patterns—arch, tented arch, loop and whorl. Each of these patterns is associated with a particular Life School.

ARCH The arch is associated with the School of Peace. If you have at least two arches in your set of ten fingerprints, you are in the School of Peace.

What is the School of Peace curriculum?

If you are in the School of Peace, you are here to learn to feel safe and secure, in your body and on this planet. This implies being at peace within yourself, and balancing work and play. It means dealing with a basic, internal anxiety that is intrinsic in this School, so you can be present, experience your life, and enjoy it.

If you are struggling to feel safe and peaceful within yourself, how do you work with that challenge? If you are in the School of Peace, you may tend to operate from one of two extremes.

At one end of the spectrum, you may keep yourself so busy, overcommitted and occupied with activities that you don’t have time to think or feel much of anything. You may create an endless chain of ‘emergencies’ by making mountains out of molehills, which provides plenty of distraction from what’s really going on inside.

At the other end of the spectrum, you may try to anesthetize the anxiety through various forms of numbing self-medication (tv, food, alcohol, drugs, web-surfing). You may adopt a false attitude of ‘Mr./Ms. Mellow’ (an artificial overlay of serenity, rather than the real thing), or make molehills out of mountains in order to avoid dealing with the fear involved in dealing with significant life events.

The School of Peace is designed to give you experience in navigating these extremes, so you can find your own place of balance.

What steps can you take to stay grounded, and feel the peace that comes from being genuinely present for your own miraculous life?

Fingerprint Type and Life School

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Fingerprint Type and Life School

If you look at the tips of your fingers, you’ll see some patterns there. If you can look at the tips of your fingers with a magnifying glass under a good light source, you’ll see those patterns more clearly.

The patterns in your fingerprints come in four basic shapes or configurations. Here’s a picture of the four basic fingerprint types:

Print Samples Labeled

Arch: An arch is made up of ridges that run almost parallel to each other across the tips of your fingers. There may be a rise or bump in the middle, but there is no looping or poking or twirling around.

Tented Arch: A tented arch looks like an arch that has a tent pole sticking up in the middle (hence the term ‘tented arch’!). The parallel ridges of the arch have to travel up that pole, over the top of it, and down the other side.

Loop: A loop looks like a group of parallel ridges that enter from one side of the finger, rise up to some degree, then double back and flow out on the same side of the finger from which they entered.

Whorl: A whorl looks like a bullseye—a nice roundish target in the middle of your finger.

Each of these fingerprint types is associated with one of the Life Schools:

Arch: School of Peace – Feeling safe and balanced in your body
Tented Arch: School of Wisdom – Developing your awareness and intellect
Loop: School of Love – Recognizing the messages of your heart
Whorl: School of Service – Being of service to others

You can have any combination of fingerprint types on your ten fingers, from ten of a single type to a mixture of all four. Also, more than one type can even combine on a single finger. How many of each type you have determines your Life School(s). (More on that next time.)

So take a look—what patterns do you have on your fingertips?

Is There an Objective Way to Know My Life Purpose?

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Is There an Objective Way to Know My Life Purpose?

How long, and in what way, have you been searching for your Life Purpose?

I spent literally decades reading self-help books and taking courses and programs designed to help me discern mine. I specifically remember starting this quest back in 1985, when I was on jury duty and using the ‘down time’ to read two wonderful books: Do What You Love and the Money Will Follow by Marsha Sinetar and Wishcraft by Barbara Sher.

Fifteen years earlier, I had gotten my first full-time job and had begun to support myself. At that point, the idea of doing what I loved for a living seemed terribly impractical. Those days in my early twenties were spent going to work, taking a night class or two to keep edging towards a college degree, and looking for Mr. Right. My job was pleasant, and the idea of pursuing a passion or finding my purpose just wasn’t on my radar.

After reading those books, though, I realized I hadn’t thought enough about what I loved to really know what it was. I also equated doing what I loved with living my Life Purpose. This was frightening, because I worried that doing what I loved–once I figured it out–wouldn’t pay the bills. At the same time, I reasoned that if I weren’t doing what I loved, I wouldn’t be living my Life Purpose. I felt a lot of pressure around this whole question, and started reading more, journaling more, and spending hundreds of dollars on courses to help me figure it out.

Everything described and contained in these courses and books was subjective. It all involved me doing more thinking, more reflecting, more talking. All of this gave me ideas and suspicions, and even a small degree of conviction, but it never completely answered the question in a way that gave me certainty (and peace).

Then, while editing an ezine, I found an article written by Master Hand Analyst Ronelle Coburn. We developed a relationship over the course of editing her article, and I learned that hand analysis could provide the answer to my 20-year-old question: Who am I here to be?

Ronelle explained that my Life Purpose is revealed in the patterns on my own fingertips. Our fingerprints are formed in utero; at the end of our fifth month of existence, they are already uniquely our own. And they hold the key to that basic life question.

For me, the answer lies in being the person who can establish loving relationships, make connections, maintain emotional authenticity, communicate, and help others to heal.

Who are you here to be?