solid, vital and peculiar

One of the very, very useful  understandings that came out of the early years when Adi Da was working intimately and directly with devotees was his description of the basic types of social and emotional adaptations that human beings develop as a way of "coping" with life.

You've no doubt come across others who have developed personality schemes and so have I. While it's true that these are generalizations and that people don't often fit entirely in a neat category, I have found that there is a basic life strategy that I and all others have decided on. For example, my basic strategy is the "peculiar" strategy.

Over the many years in the community, as a devotee, this has had a very powerful positive affect on me. You get to see how other types find pleasure, the way they are, and not expect them to be different.

When I recognize a "vital" character, for example, I am not nearly as easily offended by their behavior and don't now feel "superior" in my sort of "interior" orientation.

Of course, Love and Sadana (Hard Work) allow for transcending some of our patterns and over time, the development of true equanimity (mentally, bodily, and emotionally) makes for a different kind of life, where love and kindness predominate in relationships with others and with self.

see more on the three primary characteristics of the Solid, Vital and Peculiar personalities

Above these frontal-line emotions is the heart, or love. And there are greater energies beyond that, and of course there is a greater participation beyond the frontal line.

This sequence of dramatizations is a very natural, even ultimately mechanical, sequence that you can observe and point out in others. This does not mean, of course, that you just go on to love from anger. You could drop back into sorrow, and drop back into fear. However, when emotion becomes anger, you feel that everything has come to an end.

The root of this dramatization of reactive emotion is the feeling of love itself. All these' emotions are a play upon a basic feeling of affection, a love feeling. Having put love on the line, you are afraid, you get sorrowful, and then you are angry. You tend to drop down from anger into sorrow and wanting to hold on again.

"Mutual love conducts the Radiant Power of Life, and it purifies each of us of our accumulations of independent, subjective, and mortal experience"
Intimacy Is the Healing Principle

If you are ever going to establish a firm intimacy with anyone, you must deal with all these emotions and become emotionally clarified. In your egoity, you rarely get in touch with the core of true feeling, or love. Your capability for detachment and lovelessness is exactly what you must deal with. The realization of actual love changes all these egoic complexes.