Inner Work

For the week of February 19, 2007

Transcending Personality

At some point in our spiritual journey, we may experience the misplaced fear (or hope) of abandoning our personality. We practice with the grand but impossible idea that everything we normally take to be who we are has to go. That includes our usual drives, cares and concerns, our patterns of thinking, reacting and interacting, our desires, hopes and dreams, our pleasures and our pains. We may think that spiritual development means ridding ourselves of our entire persona. Fortunately this is not the case. It would be an insurmountable and ultimately a failed and unnecessary project.

A kernel of truth, however, does underlie this notion of banning our personality. That truth leads us toward transcending our usual self, transcending our personality, a process very different than destroying. It is a question of where our center of gravity lies, where we are, who we consider ourselves to be, and who uses or owns our personality.

Closely entwined with our personality, sits our egoism, the self-centered attitude that drives and feeds on so many of our thoughts, feelings, and actions. In the process of spiritual work, this is what diminishes. But there is nothing to fear, because our ego is just an illusion.

To loosen the grip of egoism on our personality, on us, we gradually see that the subjective “self” that ego supposedly is, the “self” that ego builds up and defends, does not in fact exist. This liberating insight in no way diminishes us. Rather, it enlarges and frees us into a greater world, where our intentions derive from a more objective reality attuned not just to our own needs, but also to the needs of our family, our society, our planet, and the Sacred.

In the spiritual path, the relocation of our center of intention goes hand in hand with an increase in the quality and quantity of our inner energies. Personality runs principally on the automatic, programmed energy and to a lesser extent on the sensitive, responsive energy. The conscious energy, the foundation of presence, opens us to a world that transcends our personality without destroying it. The personality remains in the automatic and sensitive energies, while we learn to live more in the conscious energy. We become more than just our personality.

So as our self-centered egoism weakens and is left behind, our personality stays intact, providing a ready vehicle through which our higher intentions can act and through which we can enjoy our inwardly enriched lives.

For this week, notice the automated, programmed patterns of your personality in action. See what transcending it would mean.

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