Yellow Level – Intellectual Intelligence

Special Note: This is part of a series including all the color levels of perception and intelligence.

Yellow is organized, logical, linear and intellectual. Yellow asks a lot of questions to find out who, what, where, when and why. Yellow is self-expressive, eloquent, and can rationalize anything. When yellow is positive, yellow loves the excitement of change, and the mental stimulation of problem solving. Yellow is negative when it is overly critical, separative, verbally aggressive, and bogged down in nit-picky details. This is when the “head” reigns at the expense of the heart. The yellow level brings clarity and order to its communications. Yellow level people tend to be upbeat and optimistic when they are not being overly judgmental and critical. They have a keen capacity for understanding inconsistencies in life and in other people.

For decades psychology has tried to simplify things down to the right brain – left brain model or rational vs emotional minds. In Color Psychology we are working on a more dynamic model that includes seven levels of perception, seven brains. Four of these seven levels are concerned with those aspects of self we “normally” relate to as mental: the intellect, conceptual, intuitive and imaginative minds. But as we can see each level has its mental components and structures of personality formation. In color psychology we are breaking each level down to its most basic functioning yet in reality each level exists within the other. Concentric circles or shells within shells, they each interpenetrate the other though we can see clearly how each level operates independently.

On this third level of awareness or third brain function of the intellect and rational mind we meet up with that self that just loves to make contrasts and do analysis. The development of this level of awareness gave organisms the ability to adapt to change. Great changes took place in the environment from the times when great lizards roamed the earth and climbed out of the water. To adapt we must have an organ of comparison. An organism must be able to weigh choices and make decisions. We know when a thing is heavy or light by balancing weights in each hand and feeling the resistance in the muscles of our arms. Something in our consciousness is able to gauge the differences and to discriminate similarities. This faculty enables us to adapt to different environments and also to form some comparative knowledge of our social life over millions of years of evolution. As the need for this faculty became greater, the new brain developed which could make discriminating choices between either/or, hot and cold, long and short and be able to arrange for ordered sequences of behavior, rather than merely responding to stimuli or a certain level and thereby expect a chain of events. The faculty which allows man to adapt to change is his ability to progress events forward in time, based on what has already happened or what is happening now.

The Cerebellum is the first of all the brains to think in terms of opposites, light and dark, soft and hard, hot and cold, heavy and light. This mental faculty can be used in service of the brains and our consciousness’s higher faculties or it can remain cut off from them and remain rather dull. Without the imagination for instance the intellect is very dry but with it the intellect becomes very sharp instrument because it is linked with “higher” reasoning.

Yellow Level of Awareness Negative Personality Patterns

· feels deprived of recognition

· aloof

· expects critical rejections

· dogmatic

· opinionated

· isolates self from activities of others

· fears group power cowardly

· gets bogged down in details

· confines life to narrow view of intellect

· always planning, never manifesting

· need change and novelty

· needs mental excitement

· needs closeness and affection

· feels self to be unerring

· unable to feel

· separative

· judgmental

· critical

· nit-picky

· verbose

· paranoid

· conflict between drive for fulfillment through change and vague sense of emptiness

· mental bully

Most of the above are manifestations of states of separation.

Yellow Level Fear – Fear of Rejection and Dissatisfaction

This is the level of the ego with all its expectations, so whatever deflates or wounds the Ego or disappoints its expectations is to be feared. Sometimes the expectations are laid on another person who is “expected” to perform in a certain way; when he or she does not do this then the Yellow level person feels let down and even betrayed. Behind the feeling of betrayal is the deep fear of total rejection.

Yellow Level Aggression

Here the aggression is channeled into an intellectual undermining of another person by various techniques. A person who does this tries to denigrate the knowledge of someone else so that they can appear correct. This is done in a variety of ways. For example, if a person wishes to confuse or destroy the arguments of another, he uses subtle logical word play or semantic traps. He can ask another person to define what they mean by every word that they say and then the person gets so busy doing that, that everything he or she says needs a new definition. This gets to be a sport among intellectuals and is the basis of sophistry, logical expertise, high polish and skill at word play. It’s where the word “sophisticated” comes from. Such people try to expose inconsistencies but are unable to resolve paradoxes themselves. Thus, they can be utterly destroyed intellectually by someone who can.

Luscher Color Test

Yellow is the brightest color in the test and its effect is light and cheerful. Because red appears denser and heavier than yellow it is simulative; because yellow is lighter and less dense than red it is more suggestive than simulative. For instance, while yellow increases blood pressure, pulse and respiration rates in a manner similar to red, it is noticeably less stable in the way in which it does so. Yellow’s principle characteristics are its brightness, its reflectivity, its radiant quality and its non-substantial cheerfulness. Yellow expresses uninhibited expansiveness, a loosening or relaxation.