I had several careers as an academic. The first was as a physicist, the second as a Professor of Energy Studies and the third as a Professor of Systems. A central part of understanding systems and how they operate is the understanding of feedback. Basically any system without some form of feedback will cease to function as intended; feedback, and a way for it to influence the system, are critical. This is also true of human beings.
In the 1990s Charles Berner came to stay with Eva and I for a period of about 12 weeks. He had been ousted from the community where he was the spiritual teacher and had been accused by many people of misbehaving sexually. When we quizzed him about what had been happening he denied all the accusations. He also made it clear that he thought he was the most enlightened being on the planet and as such could dismiss all feedback, accusations and comments as misguided or irrelevant. I remember being shocked – I could not imagine a more certain road to delusion. I still learned a lot from him, but a major lesson was the danger of dismissing other people’s feedback.
There are a number of different ways to appreciate the necessity for feedback. For me one of the most compelling reasons was the recognition of how my unconscious can invent such convincing, but spurious, justifications for what I do and say. My own justifications are always compelling to me – even when they are complete bollocks. It usually requires an input from outside, feedback from another person, to enable me to see the truth.
Another compelling reason is when I discover the fallibility of my memory. I have kept a journal for all the 45 years of my growth process. I don’t write in it every day, just whenever something significant happens to me or I gain new insights. When I review these journals I am frequently struck by how my current memory of what happened is so different from what I wrote years earlier- or even more recently. Since many of my stories about myself and other people are based on these fallible memories, it was clear to me that again I needed external input – or an accurate historical record – to correct my current story.
The final reasons are associated with what I learned each time Eva and I fully resolved an argument. During the argument we would both be certain that we were right and would find some way to block out or ignore or negate what the other was saying. But when we finally found a way to a genuine understanding of what had happened and why, it always involved finding out something I did not know or had misunderstood or failed to communicate. Again it was only the feedback , in this case from Eva, that enabled me to discover what was missing in my understanding.
Feedback is not only useful for correcting my misunderstandings or debunking my spurious justifications; it can also help me gain a more balanced view of my abilities. As in the case of the criticalness exercise, most people, myself included, do not form accurate assessments of their positive qualities and abilities (as explained at the end of the Criticalness Exercise exposition). So gaining feedback on these aspects of your self can also be very instructive.
When I was a young man I promised myself that I was going to work really hard and then retire when I was 55. I achieved this and in 1999 retired from running a business, being a University Professor and running 6 EIs a year. It was a dramatic and sudden change in my life and lifestyle. I wasn’t sure how I was going to spend my time and decided to ask people for feedback. I chose 20 people from amongst my work and academic colleagues, from the EI community and from a number of friends. To each I sent an open letter asking for feedback. I also said that if they were stuck about where to start I would welcome three positive traits and three negative traits as a starting point. They all responded and I found the results really helpful. (for a good example see the end of Chapter 17 of Who I am.
Sometimes it was clear that the same characteristic was being judged differently by people. For example a number of people said that they always trusted me to tell the truth, no matter how difficult. Other people said that they thought I was unnecessarily blunt. Some feedback genuinely surprised me; for example until then I had not regarded myself as someone who was generous, but for many people this was a strong characteristic of mine. Someone else nailed something when they said I often came across as “an unmanaged guru” – I would offer uninvited advice that was frequently annoyingly accurate.
I trust the value of feedback in assisting your personal growth is now clear. I encourage you to make use of it as frequently as the opportunity arises.
A Master's Path 
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