Transforming Personality
(This is an excerpt from a University Of Metaphysical Sciences course at www.umsonline.org, please feel free to visit the school website )
Written by Christine Breese, D.D., Ph.D.
Transforming
the personality can be quite a challenge indeed. The personality is a
rather wily entity unto itself, and it resists being controlled. It is
a dualistic creation consisting of both dark aspects and light aspects.
Parts of the personality are quite likable, and other parts are very unlikable.
Even those who seem to have a perfect personality have those darker aspects
inside that express themselves in more passive ways. Personality types
are discussed in detail in other UMS courses, like Basic Psychology, and
the Enneagram course, but this course will focus most closely on the subpersonality
and transforming the personality in general.
Personalities can be found in animals and humans alike. It has even been
suspected that plant life might have personalities as well. This of course,
is still uncharted territory. One might think it absurd that a flower
might have a different personality than another flower just like it only
a foot away. However, intuitive gardeners might beg to differ! Plants
are most certainly sentient, which has been proven in the Findhorn experiments.
You have noticed, most likely, that there are different parts of your
personality which come forward, depending on the situation that you are
in. When you are in a situation where someone is acting gentle, soft and
nurturing toward you, one of the parts of your personality that you like
a lot is most likely to be the one at the forefront. However, when someone
is acting badly toward you, you might find yourself acting quite unlikable
as well and a different part of your personality is in the forefront.
It is definitely not the same one that is there when you are in a nurturing
moment.
These different personality aspects were developed as coping devices for
handling the various events in life. They were developed when you were
very young, and were created as a reaction to something that was happening
to you as a child. The negative aspects of the personality, called the
shadow subpersonalities, were coping mechanisms for events that you most
likely did not understand, especially if these were actions from adults
that seemed inappropriate. Dealing with these personalities within the
self is much of what integrative psychology is all about.
According to an unnamed author on http://www.meaningoflife.i12.com, “Subpersonalities
are psychological satellites, coexisting as a multitude of lives within
the overall medium of our personality… Each of us is a crowd. Often
they are far from being at peace with one another.” Adrian Longstaffe
considers subpersonalities to be “a complex of thoughts, feelings
and even body sensations which are capable of acting as a complete person
for shorter or longer periods of time.” (http://www.interactive-consultancies.co.uk)
Jason Bennett, an acting trainer in New York City, has made an entire
career of teaching actors how to access their subpersonalities in order
to play different characters more convincingly. He describes a subpersonality
as, “A subpersonality, or self, is a basic unit of the human personality
structure. Each of us have hundreds of subpersonalities that comprise
our personality structure. Subpersonalities within the same person often
possess extremely divergent thoughts, values, abilities, emotions, voices,
images, energetic tones and physicalizations.” (http://www.jbactors.com)
Subpersonalities are much like the archetypes described by Carl Jung.
Archtypes are discussed in detail in the UMS course Archetypes.
Dr. John Gielow says on http://www.innerwell.com, “People generally
don't understand that they have subpersonalities although they experience
the effect of subpersonalities… A subpersonality contains emotional
experiences which are too intense for the emotional system to handle.
The feelings involved can be either positive or negative, can occur in
a single moment or gradually built up over time. The subpersonality becomes
essentially a specialist in a particular emotion or perceptual state.
In negative emotional experiences, subpersonalities tend to become stuck
at the age of the trauma, containing the original perceptions of the intense
experience. Their presence is not generally felt except when conditions
occur which are similar to the original trauma or passionate moment. When
this happens the subpersonality careens forth and takes over our experience,
perception and view of self and others in the world. When this happens
we are "not ourselves," but rather our subpersonalities, who
then largely dictate our experience of, and sometimes even our behavior
in, the world.”
Everyone is schizophrenic to some extent or another, or could be said
to have multiple personalities. A person who is diagnosed as schizophrenic,
or having a multiple personality disorder, is one who has not learned
how to control these personalities as to when they come out to the forefront
or when they are put on the back burner. People with serious cases of
multiple personality disorders are usually people who have experienced
severe abuse at a young age. Their personality shattered and did not come
back together.
These multiple selves within the self are quite natural to the human psychology,
and everyone's personality structure is shattered to some extent or another.
The spiritual seeker is one who is trying to bring the shattered pieces
together. These shattered parts of the self have been manageable enough
not to be diagnosed as a disorder, but can make relationships and friendships
difficult, nonetheless. The “normal” person is one who to
some extent can control when these personalities come out and when they
stay hidden, or inactive, and obey social rules. However, this is still
quite an unconscious process, even in the “normal” person.
The person who is on a spiritual path is trying to bring this process
to the conscious level, rather than remaining unconscious of these processes,
and wants to understand why the personality does what it does. The spiritual
seeker is usually unhappy with how the personality reacts in such unconscious,
automatic ways, and wants to remedy the situation. The first thing to
do is to understand where these inner aspects of the self reside, what
triggers them to come out and what makes them act in ugly ways. Usually,
angry outbursts are due to an unresolved subpersonality that has not been
reassigned to a better way of carrying out its purpose.
Subpersonalities in themselves are not “bad.“ They actually
serve a useful purpose in your life. For instance, a subpersonality that
is behind an angry outburst might be trying to enforce your personal boundaries,
insist on something you need, or protect you in some way. A subpersonality
that is behind depression or sadness might be a misdirected function of
compassion in a world that is suffering, or a signal to you that some
sort of need has not been met. The task for the spiritual seeker is to
teach the subpersonalities new ways of carrying out their purpose and
their tasks without making so much trouble in your social relations with
others. The subpersonalities will not disappear or go away, for they are
part of the human psychology. Everyone has them. In fact everyone has
the same ones. They may have different nuances, but the subpersonalities
in each human being all serve the same purposes.
Each subpersonality has a unique way of looking at the world. Some subpersonalities
have been validated by your experiences in life, and others have become
disowned, relagated to the unconscious. The ones that have been validated
become your “primary” selves.
Many people in our lives reflect our subpersonalities. People who we have
judgment on, or dislike, tend to reflect subpersonalities within ourselves
that we don't like, haven't matured, or we deny. This works the same way
with the people we adore and love, feeling inadequate around them. These
are also disowned personalities, the ones that haven't matured, yet are
the incarnations of our more noble characteristics that we don’t
access very often. Rejecting a subpersonality is dangerous indeed, for
it never goes away. Adrian Longstaffe says, “You reject them at
your peril. Rejecting a subpersonality doesn't kill it—it will simply
go underground and then get you from there.” (http://www.interactive-consultancies.co.uk)
Subpersonalities are the reason why most people are in an inner battle
with themselves. It is because the various parts of the self are clamoring
to be acknowledged, and most of them are quite opposite from each other.
This is why it is so important to work with subpersonalities. The inner
battle is what is troubling most humans, more than the external circumstances
around them. If we can learn what the driving forces are behind our actions,
that most negative actions come from a disgruntled subpersonality or a
misdirected subpersonality that is trying to take care of itself somehow,
then we can begin to get to the bottom of the mystery around the battle
within. A common teaching about subpersonalities is that each subpersonality
has an opposite, whether or not you are aware of it. You can look at any
subpersonality you have and find another that is a dualistic opposite.
This is the cause of the battle within, and, of course, the battle within
is the battle inside God.
Dr. John Gielow says on http://www.innerwell.com, “After beginning
to identify and recognize wounded subpersonalities, the next step is to
acknowledge them. This process involves the adult parts of ourselves hearing
about the wounded subpersonality's creation, their story and to begin
providing healing experiences… A dialogue develops with the adult
personality listening to the subpersonality with a mind set of unconditional
acceptance… Their experience and behavior may not make sense logically
from the adult's point of view. However, given all that they have experienced,
their age and age congruent abilities, one eventually comes to understand
more and more of their experience and resulting behaviors. It is through
this dialoguing process (and through the subpersonality being heard and
unconditionally accepted) that healing occurs.” Unfortunately, many
mental health professionals do not appreciate or know how to work with
subpersonalities. Perhaps the idea that we all can be significantly influenced
by subpersonalities, including the doctors themselves, is threatening
for many people in the mental health field.
Each subpersonality is an individual case, so there is no formula for
working with a subpersonality. However, you will find in this course a
meditation tool for working with these unruly aspects of the self. This
meditation can be used over and over again, and each time you use it you
will have a different experience if you choose different subpersonalities
to work with. This is a technique that has been developed in several methods
of psychology. Some call this inner child work as well, some call it shadow
work, and others call this integrative psychology.
Dr. Satoshi Abe, Ph.D. says in his book Creating The Rainbows Of Happiness
(date unknown), “Even if a person has achieved enlightenment, it
does not necessarily mean he or she is under control all the time, for
tempers could be lost. It is only merely a matter of seeing to it they
are well taken care of so they do not get out of hand.” This brings
us to the observer in us all. The observer, who is none of the personalities,
but contains all of them, this is the one who has the ability to see the
illusion that each subpersonality lives in. This is the one who can bring
peace between all the opposing sides within the self.
It is useful to work on the personality, but not required. Enlightenment
does not mean that you will have 24/7 bliss and peace with a perfected
personality. Enlightenment means “to know” or “to be
aware of.” It does not necessarily mean to be the master of anything
either, not even life. Simply knowing who and what you really are is all
that is necessary to be enlightened. A perfected personality is impossible,
and therefore is not a prerequisite to enlightenment. The human condition
itself can never be enlightened. Only the true self, which does not have
a human personality, is enlightened. This is the one who knows that subpersonalities
are creations of the human condition, with its traumas and successes in
human life.
Up to this point in your studies at UMS you have discovered that you are
not your personality. You are also not the body, the mind or the emotions—none
of these. You are eternal consciousness that lives long after the personality,
the mind, and the body have come and gone. Eternal consciousness is your
true identity, not your personality. Up to this point you might have thought
that you are your personality, your name, your collection of experiences,
but you are not. In fact you are not the one who is evolving. The human
is what is evolving, which includes the body, the mind, the emotions,
and the personality.
The first of the meditation journeys is a subpersonality journey for the
inner work that all healers and teachers work with, even after they are
in teaching positions as spiritual teachers in their communities. The
next meditation is an exercise in using light as a tool for working with
the personality. The third is a journey in transcendence of personality
itself, and experiencing that the personality is not who you are.
This course is mostly experiential with the meditation journeys, and does
not require extensive reading. Use the mediations as many times as you
like, especially the subpersonality journey. The metaphysician must be
familiar with and begin working with the subpersonalities in order to
live an exemplary life, and help others learn about their own subpersonalities
as well. So let the healer begin with himself or herself! Enjoy!