Self-Assessment Tools

WORLDVIEWS SHAPE HUMAN PERCEPTIONS AND BEHAVIORS

Human thinking is shaped by a few basic assumptions about the nature of reality. They comprise a coherent - or sometimes internally inconsistent - worldview through which the individual interprets specific events and creates hypotheses about their cause. One's worldview is largely implicit and does not arise to conscious awareness except through deliberate identification and exploration of beliefs that are usually never questioned by the individual. (An article for the Spanda Foundation's international audience illustrates the importance of worldviews.)

The importance of religious, ego-centric group worldviews in understanding current cultural wars, including the 21st-century version of spiritual terrorism, is illustrated by a David Brooks New York Times opinion piece and Paul Von Ward's riposte. Click here for the webpage.

The worldview can be thought of as a substrate of the mind shaped by one's culture and personal conditioning. It establishes the implicit lens through which we perceive reality and determines how each person "experiences" life. The worldview's Yang mood consists of those a priori beliefs that we learn from others and then project on the universe. One's personal pattern of these tightly-held, unquestioned assumptions comprise an individual mode that shapes the way he or she interpret what happens to and about them. Over time, changes in these a priori beliefs or assumptions can evolve in the face of contrary evidence and experience if the new information is allowed to penetrate the perceptive Yin mood of our consciousness.

The Worldview Self-Assessment questionnaire developed by Paul Von Ward helps one identify his or her own world view in relationship to different groups. It also provides insight into the person's evolving process of individuation that sets him or her apart from others. A professional article by Paul that describes these psychological concpets can be read from the Association for Humanistic Psychology's periodical: AHP Perspective.

You can use the self-assessment questionnaire by following the instructions on the PDF forms below. On the first PDF, you choose the option that best reflects your belief in response to each of the 32 questions. Print out the second PDF to score yourself and determine your composite scores. When you have your profile, read the PDF descriptions of the worldview modes and moods. Finally, look at your scores for each of the quadrants on the fourth PDF.  Engaging in this process may provoke further reflection on what your unrecognized assumptions are and whether or not you wish to reconsider some of them.

If you wish to add your profile to our research archives, please email them to aerie39@windstream.net.

CQ - CONSCIOUSNESS QUOTIENT INDEX

What is CQ?

In his book Our Solarian Legacy (pages 187, 235-236, and 281-282), Paul Von Ward developed the concept of a self-rating of one's level of conscious awareness or consciousness quotient (CQ). Based on beliefs and personal experiences, CQ differentiates among individuals on the basis of how much they use various channels of personal consciousness. CQ is conceptually independent of both IQ and EQ measures, but complements them. CQ adds an overall measure of an individual's capacity for multidimensional communication, multifaceted problem-solving, and fully-aware personal self-management.  (Our Solarian Legacy description here or special-price purchase here.)

A Questionnaire

The questionnaire below was designed to cover all aspects of conscious awareness currently apparent in human experience; it is not intended to be a definitive measure of all that consciousness might prove to be.  Since the scope of one's conscious awareness of the range of human experience is largely a matter of self-motivated intention, it seems appropriate that the CQ Index be a matter of self-rating. The score gives a snapshot in time of where one stands in relation to others and can be changed on the basis of new knowledge from other sources or personal experience. A higher CQ score indicates a more expansive concept and greater personal use of the many subtle senses that feed consciousness.

Action

Visitors to this site are invited to use the questionnaire for self-assessment. To use these forms, simply left-click on the form and download it to your computer. Once there, open it in Acrobat and begin selecting the answers by clicking on the one bullet of your best answer to each question. When you complete the questionnaire, add up the numbers attached to your responses. Open the second PDF file below and read the feedback for the range of scores in which you fall.