You Are Not Your Personality [Advanced]
The word personality is from the Greek "personae", which refers to a mask through which sound passes.
One of the more advanced yogic teachings has us seeing beyond the veil of our own personality in order to experience higher states of consciousness. While there may be awareness that we wear masks to fulfill certain roles in the workplace, in family life, on social media, dating apps and elsewhere, the extent to which these masks shape our cognition and undermine our perception falls well outside what we generally view as our ego, as ego is often reduced to only the boundary erecting tendencies of one’s mind. When one describes another as having “a huge ego,” we’re made to think of someone who is highly reactive and dense with self-deception, blind to the delusion of their own separateness and dim to what they cannot yet see.
Personality by contrast is viewed as the clearest reflection of our innermost being, a core expression of our deepest values, an index of our true character, the genuine article of selfhood containing our distinct tastes, preferences and humanity. Our personality is held in high regard as it is what makes us unique and its fashioning is what paves the way for opportunity in the job market and mating. It is assumed the state of our personality gives rise to the overall quality of our life experience.
This dichotomy between personality and ego may express itself in an inner monologue such as this: At work I have to play roles and wear different hats (ego) but when I clock out I am able to be who I truly am (personality). In this example the ego is viewed as a necessary but lesser form of self beholden to the obligations and demands of survival, but the personality is seen as a higher state of being that allows us the space to be our True Self without the pressures of having to be fake. This take on personality is akin to the commonly offered advice to “just be yourself,” as if to suggest that being yourself only requires a simple heightening of one’s self-awareness in order to see beyond the surface level misapprehensions we have about ourselves, and by doing so will provide us the clarity and resolve necessary to overcome conflicts or fulfill certain desires, or to win out in any situation where our character is put to the test.
But questioning the substance of our own personality may seem an unwelcome or useless undertaking, even socially taboo. While a “good” personality does prove helpful in getting laid or finding employment, its limitations and falsehoods stand as serious obstacles to spiritual growth and self-transformation. The domain of personality is just another substructure of ego that has been deeply conditioned over lifetimes to best serve our survival interests while living out in a human incarnation. It is a social construct born of the unconscious, as the mask is worn only in our interactions with others and reveals how we wish to be seen as opposed to who or what we really are. The limitations set upon us through socialization and enculturation implicitly tell us we can’t be who or what we really are because who or what we really are is inherently lacking and at odds with the fear illusions held firm by the status quo, so we must cultivate the persona of “mask wearer” to convince other mask wearers at the party that our fears are collective and real. This is a large part of the social contract and much like identity, it keeps us from seeing. The stronger the personality, the more dense the mask. The more dense the mask, the more one is hiding, the more compulsive the survival instinct, the deeper the unconscious.
Personality is a trap when we get stuck in it. Think of a politician or a celebrity and the personas they must present to the world in order to maintain the illusion. This illusion can appear even more real when presented within a popular conceptual model such as the Myers-Briggs personality type indicator, which attaches behavioral tendencies and egoic traits to specific labels which then concretize the limited identity in the process. While many of these classifications may prove accurate in describing the shape of one’s ego, it should be recognized that this identity label can become a crutch that cycles back unconsciously through its own prescriptions to get what it wants and to secure what it thinks it needs. It reinforces the idea of “I am”, as in I am an INTP, or an INTJ, ISFJ or whatever. But the truth is you are not these things. You’ve just been made to think you are by a culture that celebrates compulsive behavior and the tedious crafting of egoic experience, normally in service of some enterprise that wishes to exploit this aspect of your unconscious in the marketplace. Identification with personality reinforces a fixed mindset that contracts our perception and drowns out the light of consciousness. As one becomes more conscious, the basis of all life experience begins to be seen within our own. This is a more advanced realization but it is the height of yoga.
Most people may have no need to contend with any of these ideas as the personality does serve many specific functions and proves effective in maintaining a coherent view of reality. That is useful. I slapped an [advanced] tag on this post because dissolving egoic boundaries without the proper preparation can put people in a strange head space and be emotionally destabilizing at worst, especially if your nervous system is weak. This is why you would practice asanas— To strengthen your nervous system in order to face the potential torrent of awareness with a greater sense of equanimity and poise. But because self transformation and the insights therein appeal to very few, the juice may not prove worth the squeeze.
There is no sense of morality or goal orientation attached to this work, it’s just a matter of how clear you want to polish your own lens and for what purpose. What do you want to get out of your experience of life? If you want to maintain a false sense of comfort behind the mask, wear the mask. If you want to see what lies underneath, take it off. Will seeing beyond the compulsions of personality take us closer to truth? Yes. Will it make us the life of the party and bring us unending happiness? Probably not. But just because something is useful doesn’t make it true.
Take from this what you find true and useful and discard the rest.
Namaskaram to you all.