21st Century Mind - Marsha Sinetar

July 14, 2008

Was rummaging through my things this weekend and I came across these notes from a book I've read in 2005 --- 21st Century Mind ( if I recall correctly ) by Marsha Sinetar ... I'm amazed at her concepts, frameworks and ideas and found them as excellent guidelines for my efforts at intellectual self-help. Just to have them handy , I posting them in this blog...First of all, and this is my opinion , that faith and belief in God is the overriding, foremost and primal intellectual or mental framework that I need to have to understand and cope with the world in the 21st century.., anything without this as the lynchpin will just end in chaos and confusion and maybe nihilistic world and life viewpoints.
So, here's to quote Marshe Sinetar -- 21st century mind is :

1. Non-Dualistic

Whole seeing

• Rests in solutions
• Whole seeing
• Concerned with 'what' as well as 'how'
• Focus on ends, not just means
• Grasps the context, or big picture of the matter
• Superior abstraction capabilities, yet is also practical
• Employs parallax

2. Resolves Paradox

• Integrates dichotomies
• Creatively synthesizes
• Non-entrenched, lifts out of own biases and ruts
• Spots ways around obstacles
• Idiosyncratic , non-linear problem solver
• Fuses or integrates polaritiesBlends mind and heart

3. Visionary

• Sees what could be
• Grasps the spirit, soul or heart of a matter, problems or goals
• Creates and destroys its own paradigms
• Looks beyond content to context
• Perception is integrated, simple, whole

4. Positive Mental Energies

• Intense engagement with areas of interest
• Can focus on its target for long stretches of time
• Intensity, interest and focus sustained over time
• Manages own boredom and stress
• Soars mentally, penetrates on consciousness for energy, ideas and inner calm
• Enjoys ordering chaos and enjoys non-chaos

5. Objective

• Unfreakable
• Synthesizes and conceptualizes
• Discerning and self-disciplined
• Self-motivating, monitoring and self-correcting

6. Intuitive

• Speaks own and others' thought and language
• Open to non-concious processes
• Aware of hunches, instincts
• Attends to synchronous cues
• Invites answers by living with incomplete gestalts
• Exists , by and large , in own silent wordlessness
• Trusts own feeling, body clues and tendencies

7. Experimental/playful

• Tries various solutions
• Spontaneous
• Use active, free-associative imagination
• Able to rest, regress
• Sees problems as puzzles or challenges, incubates ideas
• 'Messes' around with answers
• Tinkers with reality's boundaries
• Learns from mistakes (minimal perfectionism)