Hello,
This is William Cooper.
Welcome to Awakening Together.
I trust you're well.
Today let's talk about personality.
Almost every system,
Spiritual or otherwise,
Starts off with the idea that we've been separated from ourselves somehow.
Christianity,
It's through sin.
Hinduism and Buddhism,
It's ignorance.
Secular systems,
We're just cut off from ourselves.
A lot of workshops on how to get back in touch with yourself,
Find your heart,
Listen to your heart.
The fact is everybody feels that somehow we're separated from ourselves.
There are many theories as to why.
Sin,
Ignorance,
Being distracted and lost in the pleasures of life,
Karma,
Etc,
Etc,
Etc.
It really doesn't matter.
All that matters is the fact that we are separate.
What are we separate from?
We're separate from our being.
And what is our being?
Well,
The qualities as we've discussed before are love,
Peace,
Well-being,
Happiness,
Things like this.
So this is what we're separated from.
When we're separated from ourselves,
We feel great fear.
We're separate.
We have existential anxiety or separation anxiety.
We're afraid.
So separation generates fear.
It also generates a feeling of abandonment.
I'm abandoned.
I don't feel loved because I myself am love and once I'm separated from the source of my love,
Which is myself,
My being,
I don't feel that fullness of love anymore.
When I'm separated from myself,
I also feel discontent.
I don't feel happy.
How can you be happy living a life that's not yours?
Because you are separated from yourself.
So when somebody at an early age feels afraid,
Unloved,
Or abandoned,
And discontent,
What are they to do?
They try to solve the problem by getting love,
By getting safety or peace,
By getting contentment and happiness.
Well,
How do we get things?
Well,
Our primary tool of creation,
As we saw in the last podcast,
Is to create a thought and project energy through it in order to create things,
Create emotions that go with those thoughts,
And the actions that flow from both the thoughts and emotions.
Thoughts and emotions,
As we saw before,
Don't think and they don't feel.
They're simply lenses.
It's just like sunglasses don't see.
You look through them,
But the sunglasses themselves don't see.
Thoughts don't see.
We look through them.
Emotions don't feel.
We feel through them.
So we create thoughts and emotions and the actions that flow from them to get what we feel we no longer have.
Love,
Peace,
Well-being,
Contentment.
When we create a lot of thoughts and emotions to get what we're missing,
We call that a personality.
A personality is simply a lot of thoughts and emotions collected together to focus on getting what we ourselves individually feel that we need in our lives.
Some people focus more on getting love.
Others focus more on getting safety.
And others focus more on getting contentment.
Personalities are big getting machines.
We are not our personality any more than we are any of the individual thoughts or emotions that make up this group of thoughts and emotions called personality.
So personalities themselves are like wearing sunglasses.
They're basically three kinds of personality sunglasses colors.
There's red,
Green,
And yellow.
In this metaphor,
The red would stand for say anger.
I'm angry and discontent that my life is not my own.
I'm separated from myself so I'm angry.
The second color might be green and green could be missing love.
I feel abandoned so I have sunglasses that are green and as I look through those everything looks like I do not have love and I must find it.
And the third would be yellow which is fear.
I want to get safety.
Now when I look through these sunglasses everything looks green,
Yellow,
Or red.
But they're not really green,
Yellow,
Or red.
It's just that I'm looking through those sunglasses.
Same as when I look through my personality.
Things look a certain way but they're not really that way.
It's just that I'm looking through my personality,
Right?
Now really our being is always there.
You're here right now and by definition you're the same as your being.
You are being.
That's you.
So the love is there.
It's vibrant and explosive.
The safety and well-being is there and the contentment is there.
It's only that when we look through these sunglasses because we started off feeling separate they continue our feeling of being separate because the sunglasses themselves or our personalities themselves imply that we're separate because they were formed only under the premise that we are separate.
So every time we look through them included within them is the feeling of separation.
So it's an odd paradox.
We're wearing our personalities in order to get stuff and the stuff we're trying to get is love,
Happiness,
Well-being,
And safety.
But our sunglasses or our personalities themselves have embedded in them a feeling forever that we are separate and will never have our love,
Well-being,
Or safety.
That's why psychotherapy all by itself can polish the sunglasses and make them more livable,
Polish our personalities,
But they can never totally solve the problem because embedded in the mind or in the personality is the problem itself.
Hence that's why we meditate because you step out of the system and you watch the thoughts,
You watch the personality,
You notice that you are not your personality yet you're using your personality.
Thoughts are very powerful tools and they're helpful.
Our personalities are very powerful and they're also helpful.
They're not bad things.
It's just that we should know what they do and what they don't do.
It's helpful to remember that thoughts actually block the light of our being to some extent.
So personalities really block the light of our being.
The more that we're into our personalities the less we can feel our beingness.
So it's a another odd paradox.
The harder we use this getting machine called personality,
I want to get,
Get,
Get,
Get love,
Get safety,
Get well-being,
The more that we use this personality the more blocked and distant we are from the love that we're seeking.
Because from a personality level when we approach life being cut off from ourselves and we try to get happiness or get love or get well-being and peace,
It's never really complete because manufactured happiness isn't the same as real relaxed happiness.
Happiness through willpower is not going to be the same as relaxed happiness.
So just as it's good to observe your thoughts and meditation it's also nice to know and observe that you have a personality.
I like the system of observing the personality called the Enneagram.
It divides personalities into three major factors.
There are only three major ways that people can form personalities.
Three centered around fear,
Being cut off from themselves and being afraid.
Three centered around the lack of love cut off from our own qualities of love and our being.
And three centered around feeling discontent or angry.
In all nine personalities but three main categories.
Three personalities within within each category.
That's called the Enneagram.
The thing to know about the Enneagram is it's pointing to what you are not.
You're not your personality and that's the point.
So often people get lost in these personality tests thinking this is me and I have to understand it more and more and and I'll understand myself.
But remember we aren't our thoughts and we are not our emotions and we are not our personalities.
They're simply a system that we've chosen to use to get through life.
They can be changed,
They can be modified,
But it's best not to camp out in them and spend too much time believing that we are this thing called a personality that we are not.
However if you want to look at how you put your personality together you might go on the internet and google Enneagram free test Enneagram.
I'll put the spelling in the show notes but there's plenty of free tests and descriptions.
The way that you do this is if you take a test hold it loosely and try out the description of what that particular test result is and see if it fits and if it doesn't take another free test and see if that fits you better or just read all nine descriptions and see which one fits you better.
Each person will have a little of every personality type within them it's just that they'll favor one of the nine personality types more than the others.
Really don't spend a lot of time on this it's only valuable to notice your personality type as what you are not.
It will explain some of your tendencies as you form different thoughts and emotions to try to get what you think that you lost but don't hold your personality tightly.
In the end an awakened person holds their personality very loosely they use their personality to go through life you have to have one to interact with other people but they don't hold it tightly and that way their light of being can shine through and it's not blocked extensively by this group of thoughts and emotions that we call personality.
Okay we will continue this flow later.
