Four Aspects of Self: The Quadrinity
To help understand the great complexity of the self, its development, and the problems resulting from the adoption of the Negative Love Syndrome, I use the Quadrinity as a framework. It is a simple yet powerful model for understanding ourselves and our behavior, that includes all four aspects of self: body, emotions, intellect, and spiritual self. The Quadrinity is our whole, integrated, balanced self, embodying all four aspects.
These four aspects are, of course, interrelated and form a complex interactive system. I use three distinct combinations of aspects of the self: the Duality, the Trinity, and the Quadrinity. The Duality consists of the emotional self and the intellectual self. They can be combined as one entity or be visualized separately.
I refer to the three aspects of our minds as the Trinity: the emotional self, the intellectual self, and the spiritual self. Again, they can be visualized as one entity or separately.
Physical Self
The body, which includes the brain, is the physical dwelling place for the mental aspects of the self. Through the body we act out and manifest the thoughts of the Intellect, the feelings of the Emotional Self, and the essence of the Spiritual Self. The following are qualities of the Physical Self:
• Experiences the world through our senses
• Communicates with others through voice and gestures
• Connected with the mind via neurological and biochemical feedback
• Carrier of genetic information
• Repository for the memories of all experiences
• Manifests physical symptoms of unresolved mental con licts
(e.g. pains of stress)
• Acts out emotional and intellectual behaviors both positive and negative, and can express the Spiritual Self
Emotional Self
The Emotional Self contains feelings expressed through the physical body. It is where negative patterns irst show up developmentally and, along with the Intellect, where these patterns reside. The negative emotional self is de ined as childish. It has no sense of time or space. It regresses readily.
Positive characteristics Negative patterns
• Curious • Rebellious
• Playful • Ashamed
• Joyful • Anxious
• Creative • Defensive
• Spontaneous • Rigid
• Adventurous • Fearful
• Feels grief • Depressed
Intellectual Self
The Intellectual Self, our logical and problem solving thought- processor, includes what and how we think, our world views, values, and beliefs. Along with the Emotional Self, the Intellect is where patterns reside. Shoulds, shouldn’ts, dos, don’ts, can’ts are in the Intellect and can be either positive or negative. They are negative when they are compulsive.
Positive characteristics Negative patterns
• Rational • Critical
• Understanding • Over-rational
• Knowledgeable • Judgmental
• Creative • Defensive
• Logical • Argumentative
• Analytical • Making excuses
• Discerning • Controlling
Spiritual Self
The Spiritual Self is the pure, non-programmed, non-mediated aspect of self that is a positive, pure, open presence, yearning to embody our larger, true nature in this world. It is our essence, our strong, clear sense of self that is untouched under all our negative experiences, memories, and actions.
• Intuitive, responsive, unconditioned, and connected
• Wise, growing, moving toward wholeness
• Intentional, courageous
• All-loving, compassionate, and forgiving
• Peaceful, grounded, and centered
• Aspires to goodness, truth, and justice
• Mediator, integrator
• Moral and completely ethical
For thousands of years, human beings have attempted to understand and come to terms with the mystery of life and of creation itself. One enduring notion maintains that the source of everything is a non- physical, intelligent, loving spirit or being, and that we are connected to that spirit. Aldous Huxley called this the Perennial Philosophy. Though the exact manner in which people have experienced this higher intelligence varies from age to age and culture to culture, the belief in its existence persists.
Ken Wilber described the Perennial Philosophy in the following way:
“Reality, according to the perennial philosophy, is not one-dimensional; it is not a latland of uniform substance stretching monotonously before the eye. Rather, reality… consists of different grades or levels… . At one end of this continuum of being, or spectrum of consciousness, is what we in the West would call ‘matter’… and at the other end is ‘spirit’ … or the ‘superconscious’.” (i)
Human beings have always searched for ways to connect and to have communion with this presence. They have used many names to describe this experience. Some call it God; some call it the In inite. Many describe –?? experience as ecstasy, joy, clarity, bliss, inner peace, wholeness, and love. Even a moment of such an experience can be life transforming. Ralph Waldo Emerson said: “Our faith comes in moments; our vice is habitual. Yet there is a depth in those moments which constrains us to ascribe more reality to them than to all other experiences... I am constrained every moment to acknowledge a higher origin than the will I call mine.” (ii)