How To Distinguish Among Soul Ages, by José Luis Stevens, PhD

José Luis Stevens has made personality systems a major part of his life's work. 

This is his article, "How to Distinguish Among Soul Ages", read by the author.

The Power Path System to Understanding People

The definitive guide to understanding the essence of personality and the personality of essence, the essential map and manual to why humans behave the way they do and how they do it.

There are a great variety of maps to the terrain of human personality types, from truly excellent ones to poorly crafted ones designed by people who know little about themselves and others. If you are interested in exploring the landscape of who people are and why they do the things they do, then you will need a top notch, excellent map to keep you from getting lost or confused. Understanding people is always much easier when you have a good tried-and-true map that points out the major landmarks, obstacles, and clear pathways.

Maps label landmarks clearly so that you don’t get lost. Some people object to labels because they believe they are limiting and self-fulfilling and indeed this is often a problem. But a vague map without a legend or clearly labeled landmarks is worse than useless. Although labels can be abused as humans, we cannot do without them when we are attempting to differentiate between a river and a forest or a mountain and a canyon on a map. Similarly, in order to understand people better, we need to differentiate between a pragmatist and an idealist, a cautious person and a passionate one, an intellectual and an emotionally centered person and so on. For example, a cautious person will deliberate long and hard before making a purchase but a passionate person might decide in a matter of seconds to buy an item. An intellectual person needs time to think about the formula that will provide the solution to a problem but an emotionally centered person like Einstein often knows the answer before knowing the problem-solving formula.

José Luis Stevens, PhD is the President and Co-Founder (with wife Lena) of Power Path Seminars, an international school and consulting firm dedicated to the study and application of shamanism and indigenous wisdom to business and everyday life. José completed a ten-year apprenticeship with a Huichol (Wixarika) Maracame (Huichol shaman) in the Sierras of Central Mexico. In addition, he is studying with Shipibo shamans in the Peruvian Amazon and with Paqos (shamans) in the Andes in Peru. In 1983 he completed his doctoral dissertation at the California Institute of Integral Studies focusing on the interface between shamanism and western psychological counseling. Since then, he has studied cross-cultural shamanism around the world to distill the core elements of shamanic healing and practice. He is the author of twenty books and numerous articles including The Shaman’s Book of Extraordinary Practices, How To Pray The Shaman’s Way, Encounters With Power; Awaken The Inner Shaman; The Power Path; Secrets of Shamanism; Transforming Your Dragons; and Praying With Power.