LESSONS LEARNED AS STUDENT, TEACHER, AND MENTOR
In my junior year of medical school, I had to take a course in psychiatry. It was the worst class of my entire life! To this day, I have never experienced such incompetent teaching.
Among other oddities, we spent 12 weeks trying to answer Dr. Cohen’s question “What is disease?” Finally, one of my classmates asked, “Dr. Cohen, if we ever answer ‘What is disease?’ to your satisfaction, what the hell are you going to do with it?” The whole class broke up laughing, and with that, he dismissed us in complete frustration.
Then we had a ridiculous final exam. I remember only one question: “List five qualities of a good psychiatrist.” I wrote “Crazy as hell” five times!
Afterward, I was called to a meeting with several of the faculty, where they threatened to flunk me. I replied, “Do you want me in this stinking class again next year?” Thank God they saw the light and decided to pass me to avoid my threat!
It turns out that I never really did find a good reason for psychiatry to exist in this world—I know without a shadow of a doubt that it does more harm than good. And I surely did not need to take that course in psychiatry to be able to figure out the answer to Cohen’s burning question “What is disease?”
As I mentioned earlier, when I was a young neurosurgeon, I came to the conclusion that disease and illness in the human body are caused by the interaction of the four main fields of stress: chemical, physical, electromagnetic, and emotional. Any kind of imbalance between these fields can cause disease.
Over the years, as I delved deeper into holistic and alternative healing therapies, I have revised my thinking to include the dangerous state of our health when we have an imbalance or friction between our thoughts and our souls. Whenever our thinking is not congruent with our soul’s highest purpose, this can cause a state of not being at ease (also known as dis-ease), which manifests most often in our world as depression and anxiety; and, of course, these two dominant emotional issues are the foundations for an unlimited number of physical and biochemical disorders.
The Seeds of Our Belief Systems
So if our thoughts and belief systems are so critical to our well-being, where do they come from in the first place? From our earlier chapters, remember that our perspective of the world begins at conception and birth, and has a great deal to do with how we are nurtured and loved (or not) along the way.
I would say that our worldview and daily thoughts are also influenced by our teachers—and I use this term teachers broadly to describe all the people and the systems in our lives that have an impact on the way we see the world. To illustrate this, I’d like to describe some of my own major influences and lessons, starting with the most critical for all of us—our own parents, who are our first teachers.
As I’ve mentioned within this text, I believe that we have a choice about what we come into this life to learn. This means that we have the opportunity to choose the parents who can give us the right challenges in order to develop strong character and abilities.
My mother died exactly one month after her 97th birthday, and I could write a book about either her or my father. But the bottom line is that they were both perfect for me. As parents, they were supportive, nurturing, and encouraging. They taught me moral boundaries and provided me with virtually unlimited opportunities to explore my broad interests in school and in life.
Lessons Learned from My Father
My father was a successful businessman who left school at age ten when his father died. Dad became a butcher in a grocery store, and eventually he owned two grocery stores, a freezer locker, and a 600-acre farm. He even offered me a 7,000-acre farm with a colonial home if I would go to agriculture school instead of medical school, because he thought it would be less stressful.
But when I said no, that was the end of it. As much as he was concerned for my well-being, I was free to make my own decision—except for playing football.
Not all of my father’s decisions were easy for him, nor were they all easy for me to accept. He stood his ground when his conscious mind and his common sense strongly told him to do so, even if I didn’t like it. For example, my father loved the high school football team; he rarely missed a game. But when I wanted to go out for football, he refused to give me permission. He said that he did not want me to get hurt; he wanted to protect my brain and spine.
That was hard for me as a teenager to take, since of course I felt invincible. Once I became a neurosurgeon, however, I fully understood his position and discouraged my own boys from playing the sport. Incidentally, my close friend Henry Rucker chastised me when our son Brock was in eighth grade and wanted to try out for his school team. I reluctantly gave in, but once Brock injured his knee I refused to give him further permission to play—and his knee has been a lifelong problem for him. Like my father, I should have gone with the gut feelings I had in the first place.
In the fall of 1954, my father had his first heart attack. After he recovered, he came to the hospital at Duke University for an evaluation. I pleaded with him to quit smoking, but he replied, “I’d rather die than quit smoking.”
From my point of view, this was my father’s only problem—the fact that he smoked. During the last 15 years or so of his life he was very active in the Shriners and on the divan, on the way to be grand potentate when he died. (The Shriners are part of the Masonic order and are best known for their children’s hospitals where neurological and orthopedic problems are treated. In each chapter of Shriners there is a leadership path in which one progresses up the ladder—or divan—to beome the Grand Potentate, or leader.) In his last few years of life, my father had angina decubitus. As a physician, I knew it was only a matter of time.
Dad died in 1962 from his third heart attack at the age of 53. I was only 29 years old, which was far too young to lose my father. From my point of view, he committed suicide by smoking, and I felt his loss deeply.
Then in 1994, he visited me from the other side with a message. He said, “I’m tired of your saying that I committed suicide. My life contract with you was to die at 53. I gave you an example of someone you would consider weak willed so that you could make the choice. You came into this life saying you wanted a strong will. You have a very strong-willed mother.”
His message was so clear and chilling, but I knew it was from him and these were his true words. I took the opportunity to ask him, “You’ve been dead for over 30 years. Why didn’t you tell me this earlier?”
His reply: “You weren’t ready to hear it.” I probably wasn’t. But I am glad now to know the truth, and it makes sense to me.
Lessons Learned from My Mother
You know what? My father was right when he described my mother as very strong willed. Now that I think about it, she learned her lessons in strength and self-reliance from her own parents. She had a saintly mother herself (my maternal grandmother), but also an incredibly obnoxious father (my maternal grandfather). I’m not kidding—he was a mean SOB, and Mom couldn’t get out of that house soon enough.
She left home at age 16 to marry my father, who was only 19. But my mother overcame the influences of her dad. She learned from him what kind of a parent she did not want to be, and instead chose to emulate her strong and self-sufficient mother.
My mother had many skills. She was quite bright and wise about investments; if she had been born 50 or 100 years later, quite likely she would have been a highly successful businessperson. But as with most women of her time, she was expected to stay at home. Even still, she took on every task with conscientiousness and purpose.
My mom loved children and even ran a day care for a number of years. She also adored Chihuahuas, which are virtually the only dogs that I don’t like. They remind me of barking rats. Fortunately, no Chihuahuas lived in our house during my childhood. We had real dogs! And I still do—a young German shepherd and an older blue Australian cattle dog that both love the farm.
My mother was a compulsive housekeeper and a terrific gardener. When I turned 12, she encouraged me to take over the family vegetable garden, which had generally been maintained by her most of the time. I grew not only a variety of vegetables, but also many flowers.
I know that I got my own conscientiousness from my mother, and I developed a very strong work ethic thanks to both of my parents. I still love growing vegetables and flowers, and I still grow as much of my own food as I possibly can, enjoying crops, meat, and eggs from our farm.
Another fond memory of lessons from childhood was when I joined the Boy Scouts at age 12, just before my 13th birthday. My scoutmaster, James Sheeley, lived just a block away and became essentially a surrogate father to me. He had a small photography studio in his backyard, and I learned to develop, enlarge, and crop images from old-fashioned film. I spent many hours working in his studio. Because of the slight spelling difference of our last names, we decided we were, perhaps, 42nd cousins. I will never forget him as a strong role model, one of many father figures in my life.
Lessons Learned from My Sister
My older sister was born when my mother was 18, and I was born two years and eight months after my sister. During her pregnancy with me, Mom developed hyperthyroidism. She weighed only 75 pounds when I was born! Frail but coping, on one or two occasions my mother apparently turned her attention to taking care of me without adequately satisfying my sister’s need for nurturing, and within six months my sister became depressed and overweight.
When I was four, I overheard her say to our mother that she had abandoned her when I was born. My mother strongly denied that she had done this, but it did not matter what the final truth was. My sister perceived that she was abandoned, and I believe she carried that hurt her whole life.
The impact of my sister’s belief system did not hit me until much later in my life; in fact, it was years after her death before I knew the truth about it.
During our years growing up, I knew she resented me. She had a tough life, but I had everything come easy to me—at least that’s the way she would tell it. Just as an example, I remember the June that my sister graduated from high school. On commencement day, just before the graduation exercise, class honors were given out. I was as stunned as anyone when they called me to the stage to receive five honors for best in the class in Latin, history, Spanish, and so on. My sister was mortified and furious that I upstaged her on her own graduation day. To her, it was just one more situation where she was slighted.
Although she claimed that our mother had abandoned her, my sister did not leave home until she was 30, when she got married. Regretfully, she continued to struggle with her weight, and she died from complications of obesity and diabetes at age 58 in 1988.
Incidentally, six years after her death her spirit also visited me from the other side. She told me, “I just wanted you to know it wasn’t you. I learned the path of the heart from the shadow side.”
I asked her, “And what is my path?”
She replied, “To learn the path of the heart from the light side.” It was a moment of clarity that I will never forget. I immediately knew that, despite my tremendous love and compassion for other people, I never allowed anyone to get close to me. Her message opened up the floodgates for me, and from that point on I had my heart open in both directions—being able to love fully and to be loved, and to express both pure joy and deep sadness.
From That Point of Kundalini Awakening
The experience of hearing my sister’s message in 1994 seemed to cause a sudden opening of my heart chakra, and it felt like one of the greatest, most painful heart experiences I’ve ever had. But now I can cry much more easily—expressing emotions during joyful and sad times.
Before it happened to me, I had heard about this kind of Kundalini awakening, a kind of spiritual breakthrough. The word Kundalini is the ancient Sanskrit name for the primal life force that animates all living entities. It operates unconsciously in our bodies and minds until awakened, initiating a much greater opportunity for spiritual growth, enlightenment, and the advancement of one’s own personal evolution in a dramatic way. I certainly found that I was far more open to divine inspiration after this incident.
A couple of weeks later, in 1994, I was at Findhorn in northern Scotland, which is a beautiful location and a world-renowned center for spiritual growth and organic farming. Caroline Myss and I were there to give a workshop together. With my new open heart, I felt sad about being away from my wife. As I walked along the beach covered with smooth rocks, suddenly, in the middle of this rocky sand, a heart-shaped white stone with a red streak down the center popped out at me, almost jumping into my hand. I took it as a sign of my new awakening, and I still treasure it today.
Other Lessons Learned While Traveling with Caroline Myss
I have been a willing teacher but also a student—I learn from my patients, my colleagues, my family, and from everyone with whom I connect.
My friend Caroline reminds me often that my attempt to unconditionally love will attract every obnoxious person possible in order to provide an opportunity to practice! This has been true in my life. I’ve had some truly dreadful lessons, but also many loving ones. Thus, I especially bless my most intimate family, for they make it easy for me to practice loving them as unconditionally as possible.
One of the most entertaining times Caroline and I had together was in the early 1990s when we traveled to Holland to give a conference presentation to 800 health and holistic practitioners at a meeting being held in The Hague. A very proper and officious Dutch woman was in charge of organizing the conference, and she picked us up at the airport, very happy that we had arrived on time. We could tell that she was a no-nonsense sort of woman, highly conscientious—everything was planned down to the minute.
While she was making small talk with Caroline and me during the car ride on the way to the meeting, she asked us what we would be speaking about in our presentation. I said off the cuff, “Oh, I don’t know. We’ll probably just wing it as we usually do.”
Caroline and I just laughed, but the woman in charge gasped and almost drove off the road! She was obviously shocked that these two North American experts had arrived with no preparation to present at her highly organized and prestigious conference. We quickly reassured her that we had it all under control, but we could tell she was still pretty nervous for the rest of the long drive.
As I recall, the meeting itself went amazingly well, as usual. Caroline and I had a lot of experience co-presenting, and we would always tailor our commentary to the interests of those in the room. It turned out that at this particular conference she and I would get the chance to laugh some more and be reminded of something very valuable at the same time.
The Healing Power of Laughter
Among the attendees we thoroughly enjoyed hearing was a Dutch dermatologist who gave a spirited demonstration of laughing-meditation techniques. The session reminded me of the power of laughter to heal, and this experience prompted me to conduct my own study.
We had subjects who were experiencing pain watch old Abbott and Costello movies, and we found that when they enjoyed periods of sustained laughter, their brains and bodies released neurochemicals called beta-endorphins that induce feelings of well-being. Our own study of laughter was congruent with the dermatologist’s assertion—that laughter is effective in helping the body manage pain.
This harkened me back to an experiment I had heard about in the 1970s that was done by Norman Cousins, a celebrated writer and editor for the Saturday Review. Cousins gave a personal account of his own battle with disease and recovery in his book Anatomy of an Illness, which detailed how he left the hospital and checked into a hotel to pursue an alternative treatment.
The treatment that he chose centered on intravenous delivery of vitamin C coupled with daily doses of belly laughter from watching old movies and funny videos. As Cousins so famously documented in his book, this course of treatment was successful!
I always loved traveling with Caroline Myss. She is a good example of being both a student and a teacher to me. She has very graciously stated in print, “I was more than lucky in finding Norm as my mentor; I was blessed. And this I know to be true above all else—you cannot walk into the territory of the soul unescorted. A mentor is essential.”
I am very thankful to Caroline and my own teachers and mentors in all areas of life, but especially in the medical, holistic, and spiritual fields of study. Their guidance has been absolutely essential to my development. I have had so many amazing teachers in school and in life, that I will share just a few examples to give you an idea of the dynamics involved.
Lessons Learned from Dr. Talmage Peele
One of my most important discoveries during medical school was my love of neuroanatomy. Most students dislike it, but to me it’s the most exciting anatomy of all. Dr. Talmage Peele was the neuroanatomy professor and was just writing his textbook on the subject while I was there, so I volunteered to help proofread it. By the end of that year, we had become lifelong friends. Like James Sheeley, he was like a surrogate father to me.
Since I had not yet finished my undergraduate degree, I wanted to get my bachelor of science in medicine, a degree that Duke offered to medical students who did research and a thesis. I chose to work on the anatomy and physiology of the amygdaloid nucleus (also called amygdala) of cats. After each of the first three years of medical school, I spent three months doing research in Dr. Peele’s lab, which was located in the room immediately adjacent to his office. It was a great place to hang out, and he had a delightful sense of humor about life in general.
Talmage also had a small circle of faculty friends who met frequently, and they invited me to dinner quite often. They introduced me to some rather exotic, gourmet dishes, such as chocolate-covered grasshoppers. As I had promised my father, I did not drink alcohol until my 21st birthday, which was on December 4, 1953. That was when Talmage introduced me to his favorite Usher’s Green Stripe scotch. Even after medical school, I very often sought and received mentoring from Talmage, who always called me “Junior.”
I remember well that my first published paper was on the physiology of the amygdala of the cat—which are small nuclei located deep within the temporal lobe of the brain. I had a few findings that were not previously known about this essential emotional center, and Talmage was proud of me, always supportive. Virtually all my experiences learned while doing research in his lab proved invaluable to my later work when I developed dorsal column stimulation, which I perfected first on cats.
Some Lessons Come Easy, Some Hard
After my one-year internship in internal medicine, I had to take a year in general surgery as an assistant resident. Only two places in the country would allow that—Boston City Hospital and Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis. I needed a reference from Dr. Eugene Stead, Jr., who was chair of medicine at Duke, and told him my choices. He replied, “Choose one. I will write you one recommendation.” I chose Barnes.
I learned later that Gene wrote to Dr. Carl Moyer at Barnes-Jewish Hospital, which is located near the campus of Washington University in St. Louis, “Dear Carl: Take him.” Dr. Moyer was my reason for choosing Barnes. He is one of the three greatest teachers of my life, along with Talmage Peele and Gene Stead.
Dr. Moyer held teaching rounds at 2 P.M. on Saturdays, and the room was always packed. St. Louis that year was the hottest summer of my life. In staff barracks, which was a non-air-conditioned building where I lived, it was sometimes 100°F at midnight. I chose rotations in general surgery: neurosurgery; orthopedics; and chest surgery, and each department was excellent.
The next step was to select a neurosurgery program, and the top ones in the country at the time were Duke, Barnes, and Mass General. I was accepted into all three programs, but I chose Mass General, certainly another one of the most critical decisions of my life. Dr. Henry Schwartz at Barnes was known as “Black Henry” because of his temper, but he was a superb surgeon. His temper in the operating room was legendary.
On one occasion, Schwartz hit me in the abdomen with his elbow so hard that I almost passed out. His comment was, “Damn you. Don’t breathe so hard.” When working on a patient who had a high cervical cordotomy under local anesthesia, he screamed, “Damn you! Be still or I will cut your damned head off.”
Once Schwartz even stabbed my hand with a scalpel. And he ordered the chief resident, Dr. Herbert Lourie, one of the best surgeons and personalities I ever knew, out of the operating room. I think I lost several heartbeats at the thought of being the only one left with Schwartz in the OR, and I held my breath to see what would happen next.
Fortunately, Herb replied, “Dr. Schwartz, I have not done anything to be thrown out of the operating room.” And Black Henry the bully was silent for the rest of the case.
Halfway through my rotation at Barnes, I went to Boston for an interview. Afterward, I told Dr. Schwartz that I had chosen to go to Mass General for my neurosurgery training. He snarled at me and replied, “You’ve made the wrong choice.” He never spoke to me during the last six weeks of my neurosurgery rotation, which I would say was a blessing.
Making the Right Decisions
At each turn, I relied on my own sense of conscientiousness to make the best decisions for my life, and I was very thankful for the guidance of my mentors. Given time and perspective, I also appreciated some of the nasty encounters as well, because I know that they were there to help me build a stronger character in the long run. My career path reflected steady advancement while we were living in Wisconsin, but keeping things steady at the farm became less straightforward.
My biggest issue was that our real-estate taxes increased by 600 percent between 1975 and 1980. I was convinced that we could no longer afford to live on our farm, and so my search for an alternative location became intense. We looked primarily at Virginia, North Carolina, and Missouri. Of the three, Missouri had the 49th lowest taxes per capita, so we set our sights on making the “Show-Me” state our new home.
I didn’t want to live near a large city like St. Louis or Kansas City, so Springfield looked like it was the best option. During the weekend of Easter 1981, we made our second trip there and decided that it was best for us, even though we didn’t know anyone in the area.
The Monday after Easter, I received a phone call out of the blue from Jon Ames, who was vice president of the St. John’s Regional Medical Center (recently changed to Mercy Hospital) in Springfield. He said that they wanted a pain center and were told repeatedly to contact me for advice. He had no idea about our plans to move, so he was a bit shocked when I answered him cheerfully, “How would you like to have mine?” It took only a few more visits to confirm the arrangement, and after that Chardy and I made the move with three children, the horses, and the pain clinic. I feel that the universe meant for us to make this move, since it worked out seamlessly in the end.
Coinciding with the move to Springfield, I set up a nonprofit 501(c)(3) corporation, Holos Institutes of Health, Inc., for the purpose of education, research, and clinical services in the field of holistic medicine and health. My new pain clinic at St. John’s was then converted into a division of Holos Institutes. This arrangement made it much easier to obtain grants and tax-deductible donations and certainly was an excellent strategic move all the way around.
Advancing the Study of Holistic Medicine
In the mid-1990s, a Dutch businessman who was a friend of Caroline Myss and mine, flew over to see us and spent several days pushing us to do more research in the field of medical intuition and the broader field of holistic medicine. I finally said, “Fred, we would need a $50 million endowment to do what needs to be done.”
Since this was not an option, the only way I could see us doing the kind of research he was talking about was to start a graduate program where doctoral students would do research as part of their dissertation. Since I had just served on the faculty committee that counseled students at Greenwich University, which, at the time, was a distance-learning institution in Hawaii, I wrote to the president there and asked about the possibility of having a doctoral program in energy medicine. He was delighted. They created the program, and it thrived—100 students enrolled the first two years.
Unfortunately, just a few years later, Greenwich University was sold to an Australian who moved the university to Norfolk Island in the Pacific Ocean, located between Australia and New Zealand. The administration changed, and with the school now located on the other side of the world, it became obvious that we needed to create an American school.
We approached the Missouri Department of Higher Education and learned that they would never approve a new doctoral program unless it originated in an already accredited university or if it was run by a seminary. So it was in 2000 that we decided to create Holos University Graduate Seminary (HUGS), a graduate school offering doctoral degrees in spiritual healing and energy medicine. Initially, we set it up so that the seminary was run by the International Science of Mind Church for Spiritual Healing—the church that was originally created in 1973 by Henry Rucker and me.
I had previous experience serving on the faculty of The School of Professional Psychology at Forest Institute, so I knew that the accrediting body did not like presidents over the age of 65. We were pushing it since I was already 68 when we set it up, so from the beginning I planned to serve as president only until age 75. I hoped that I would be with HUGS long enough to help it eventually become nationally accredited. Many of our initial students came over from the Greenwich program, which meant that our first graduation took place in the spring of 2001.
The timing of it all worked out quite well, because I had been looking to move out of the city of Springfield for a while, having found that the background electromagnetic “smog” was very high in the city—two and a half to three milligauss. So I sold the clinic in town and built a facility on two acres of our land located at the entrance to our farm.
The facility was finished in the spring of 2003 and became the new home of Holos Institutes of Health, Inc., a place dedicated to research, education, and clinical services, and to which we donated the land itself. As was our plan, we also housed the seminary there until my retirement in the summer of 2008, and then it moved to Unity Village just southeast of Kansas City, Missouri, where we now conduct residency classes.
My Teaching Focus at Holos University Graduate Seminary
Over the years, I have had several specialties that I have taught within HUGS, including holistic theology, medical intuition, modern mysticism, and clinical applications of energy medicine. The teaching was done by way of classroom intensives, each lasting for a total of two to five days of lectures and demonstrations, with homework assignments and papers to be written. Up until my retirement, I was also the chair overseeing many dissertation projects.
I still enjoy getting back into the classroom when I can. Last year, for example, Caroline and I taught a course on mysticism and health. My premise for this course began with the assertion that mysticism is the search for God and religion is the fight for God. Holistic theology then looks at the broader field of world religions, focusing on the conflicts as well as the few universal principles across the board. It also examines the inconsistencies in the Bible and the innumerable changes to this text through the centuries.
I have read and studied just about every philosophical, spiritual, and religious theory along my way, and today I consider myself to be a pantheistic Buddhist. Pantheism is the belief that everything is composed of an all-encompassing God, and that the universe (or nature) is identical with divinity. So I don’t believe in a personal or anthropomorphic god.
I feel most closely aligned to Buddhism because, in and of itself, it is not a religion, but a philosophy and a way of life. There were no gods in Buddhism in the strictest sense; the teachings of Buddha, in the beginning, were about how to think, act, and function in order to attain enlightenment.
Holos University Graduate Seminary continues its work based in Kansas City, fully accredited by the New Thought Accreditation Commission, which is the amalgamation of the Unity Church, the Church of Religious Science, and the Church of Divine Science. Full details are at www.holosuniversity.org.
Finding Someone to Take Over My Work
In 1980, during what were to be my last 18 months in La Crosse, Wisconsin, before we moved to Missouri, I met a family-practice resident named Roger Cady, whom I mentioned in the previous chapter. I hoped that Roger would join me at the clinic when he finished his residency, but instead he wanted the experience of a family practice first. Fortunately, by 1985 Roger was ready to join me, and he and his family agreed to move to the Springfield, Missouri, area, which was our new base.
Shortly after he arrived, I made what may have been a tactical error. I was invited to present some of my pain work at a national meeting in San Diego. Tired from all the travel, I asked Roger to give the talk for me. As a result, GlaxoSmithKline asked Roger to be part of the clinical research on sumatriptan, a new drug for migraine treatment. In the end, our clinic treated more patients with this new drug than any other clinic in the study.
Personally, I never wanted to do clinical drug research, as all drugs have inherent risks in the form of rather innocent-sounding side effects, which are really complications. I’m sure that if I had given the talk and they had asked me, I would not have agreed.
On the other hand, I was delighted that Roger had a unique new interest. I was blessed to have him with me for ten years, and hoped he would someday take over the clinic. However, toward the end of that time, it became clear that he felt he would always be in my shadow. Since he was becoming quite popular and well respected as a headache researcher and speaker, he left my clinic in 1995 and founded the Headache Care Center. He remains at the forefront in that field, and we are still the best of friends.
Although I found a few part-time physicians to help me with the clinic once Roger left, it was difficult to find the one individual who I needed to take over. I required someone with the right personality to assume the demanding task of handling difficult invalids with chronic pain and depression.
Eventually, a perfect possibility arrived: the daughter of one of my previous colleagues at the Gundersen Clinic. Unfortunately, though, she died of acute Addison’s disease in less than a year. I realized when I looked through my files that I had interviewed 100 physicians over the course of the years and not found the right one. I therefore decided to close the clinic in 2003 and restrict myself to research.
Fast-forward almost ten years later, and I still had it in my heart and mind that I wanted to advance my current research work, particularly the field of conscientious psychology, which has become my consuming passion. As I continued to look around for the best way to accomplish this during these past few years, I am very happy to say that I figured it out! The solution and my new intended directions are next, as I sum up this book and begin plans for the next one.