Personality Vs Soul

"When we are lost in personality, it is not surprising that we often feel powerless, confused, and unsafe because we are basing our identity on an artificial construct." (Understanding the Enneagram, 364)

I wonder how many people realize that "personality" is different from "Soul". I see personality as the "operating system" in how we cope with the world and all the things life throws at us. It i

s how our brains are hard-wired to operate, to guide us through the good and bad events of our lives so that we do not suffer further emotional traumas beyond those that may have initially shaped us to be the people we are. I think that's what is meant by "basing our identity on an artificial construct". We all walk around trying to present a picture of who we think we are and who we wants others to see, and typically this picture is a far cry from the true represention of our selves, which is "Soul".

Humans are so focused on maintaining and identifying with their personality that Soul falls very much by the wayside. This may be the fundamental reason why humans can at once be so kind and generous yet malicious and spiteful. We have wars because humanity is not tending to their Souls.

Soul is the core of who we are beyond the artificial definitions we apply to ourselves and allow others to define us by. "Soul food" is not just a type of meal. It is the sustenance we must imbibe, whether it is spiritual, physical, or otherwise, to maintain a deep and true health. What good is it to tend to the temple if there is no deity to worship within?
Why is it so difficult for us to maintain a steady diet of "Soul food"? Ego.

I recently saw Ego put as such: E.G.O. = Edging God Out. That's one perspective to take and one that I appreciate. We all want so much to be accepted by our peers, to live up to some false ideal of who the world wants us to be, and typically that ideal runs entirely counterpoint to the truth of who we are inside: our innermost thoughts and feelings, rarely even acknowledged by the Self. If we cannot acknowledge even that, how can we expect the rest of the world to do so? It is a scary thing to lay your Soul bare, even to yourself, and examine our basest desires, motivations, and behaviors. Yet it must be done, for the Soul is a garden of limitless beauty, if only it is tended as stridently as we attend to our personality and the false constructs we operate under and present to the world. Actually, I believe tending to the garden of the Soul may be even more important than maintaining the rigid definitions of our personalities. Farmers will tell you the crop planted must be done so in rich, fertile soil else the harvest will be scant and the physical body will suffer. We must, as humans, ensure that our soil is rich and fertile for growth in and of the Soul is pantamount else our physical lives will suffer.

Ignoring your Soul results only in compounded misery, self-doubt, and immense insecurity. Ignoring the Soul leaves us vulnerable to misperceptions, both of ourselves and of the world around us. It is only when we truly focus on the truth - our Soul - that we find safety and security within ourselves which then extends to the external world. Personality becomes less of a definition and more of a gently wandering path that allows for ample exploration and appreciation.

what do your Soul gardens look like? Is it overgrown and full of tangled weeds, briars threatening damage to the unsuspecting visitor? Or is it lush and verdant, brilliant with every color imaginable, ready to be showcased as a place for quiet contemplation or joyful celebration? Do you even know what state your Soul is in?

Take a peek and you'll know what it is you need to do. Get ready to shine, my friends, for within you all resides a plentitude of potential, if only you would tend to it as diligently as you check your Facebook notifications. 

Forgiveness

'Forgiveness' is a topic that I have long struggled with: How to forgive my son's father for the acts he has committed against me, forgiving my long-absent father for his own faults, and forgiving my step-father who sexually molested me from the ages of 15 to 17, and forgiving each and every person who, when confronted with the ugly situation, took the route of blaming me for what he had done.

In April my family got together to celebrate our mother's birthday. Typically our family does not gather en mass for an extended period of time because after the initial "Oh, hello again! I haven't seen you in ages!" wears off the ugly shared truths of our lives, particularly the past, are all that is left to talk about. It is instinct to avoid these topics, and if they cannot be avoided they are at least made a joke of. It is not uncommon for our family to rehash the times when our step-father literally chained the cabinets and refridgerator shut because we, as growing children, ate 'too much'. Or the time he discovered someone had been snitching peanut butter bears out of his 'special cabinet' and decided to play detective and tried to fingerprint us all using scotch tape and a mirror. (I now readily admit I was the culprit. Having long fingers and narrow hands let me weasel into locked cabinets easily). Admittedly in hind-sight some of his antics are laughable but only insomuch as the laughter actually disguises the abject grief we have all spent years learning how to swallow, ignore, misplace and misuse.

I laughed along with my family up until the laughter could no longer hide the pain, and it was in April that I was confronted with the idea of potentially forgiving those whom have 'trespassed' against me. My younger brother began the conversation, citing the need to accept forgiveness from our Lord, God in order to facilitate forgiveness here on the material plane. From deep within the depths of my grief and anger for what that man did to me during my formative years came the resounding sob of "I don't need God's forgiveness. I haven't done anything wrong. And I will never forgive that man for what he did." and, par for the course, we mutually decided to abandon that conversation because I just could not hear it. My brother's words, which were the Truth, were received by my Ego and raged against until I was forced to admit that the raging did nothing to ease the pain. Rather, it intensified it. I felt as though I could not find an outlet big enough, strong enough, furious enough to exemplify the fury and rage that had taken up seemingly permanent residence in my heart.

I went to my therapist, seeking corporeal assistance in negating the pain. While my therapist did take an appropriate approach and addressed the 'error' of my thinking, which was to address the niggling, whispering voice that seemed to weave its way through every single situation in life that I dealt with that repeated back what I had been told by so many people: that I was wrong and would always be wrong no matter which path I took in life. She helped me establish that all-important 'safe place' for those fragmented ego-states and how to determine what voice is the Adult-Andi and the Child-Andi. I began to see the Truth - that I had been a child forced into an adult situation without any of the real adult benefits, and that the fragmentation was my brain's way of triaging and essentially saving me from complete madness. I learned, through perception-correction, that my step-father was simply a small man who felt even smaller within the world of his numerous insecurities. His heavy, illogical ruling hand was a result of his need to make himself feel bigger at the expense of those around him. My step-father quickly shrank, in my mind, from the monstrous imaginings of a boogey-man who would terrorize me my entire life to the size of a peanut, easily crushed underfoot if I so chose.

And here lies the crux. Now I must choose, if I wish to heal fully and take the necessary steps back to God's Atonement and rejoin the Sonship, whether or not to forgive this man or to crush him in my mind's eye and never look back.

I am still conflicted. I want to move on but am having difficulties passing along the Forgiveness of my Maker. However, I have been reading 'A Course in Miracles' as well as the Christian Science text 'Science and Health with Keys to the Scripture' by Mary Baker Eddy and it has fundamentally changed my perceptions of the world and everything/one in it. As I understand the texts, God wants us to See our fellow man as He created us - as Perfect - and to Love them as we Love Him. Negativity arises when we have expectations. Expecations arise from Ego, which is not God but a mind-made construct, which cannot accept perfection in ourselves let alone from everyone else because it cannot comprehend the utter Peace and Love that is God. So when someone else does not meet our expecations our Ego lashes out and we want to hurt the other person as much as our Ego has been wounded. But Peace and Love does not come from any of it. It comes from 'turning the other cheek' and seeing them as a child of God whom has not yet awakened to God's Will within them. This is Forgiveness. Jesus, when he was crucified, cried "Forgive them Lord, for they know not what they do!" and up until just recently (literally within the last few weeks) I never truly understood what that meant. We are ALL children of God, capable of everything God is capable of BECAUSE He made us in His image, even those who deliver slight and insult.

And Jesus was able to ask this of God because he saw his fellow man as God wanted him to See them. He knew, without a shadow of doubt, that life is not in the things we can see and touch and experience here in the corporeal world. Life is in the Mind, and the body is simply a material vessel given to the Mind in order to facilitate Christ-learning - how to achieve the same mindset and atonement we had in the garden of Eden. That is to be full of divine Love, to know only the Peace of God's Will as our own, and to accept the REAL, not the "WHAT COULD BE". It is through embracing the WHAT IS that we begin to heal and perform miracles for ourselves and others, and in healing we begin to merge our Will with God's and good things manifest for us.

This new knowledge of the Truth goes quite a long way toward breaking down the wall I have between the Forgiveness I have been granted and passing it along to someone who hurt me to the core. But what is that pain, truly? Does that stem from the aforementioned expectations that a man married to my mother ought to treat her children as his own - to feed and care for them, to love them as he loves himself as one of God's children? That he should not raise his fist in anger, or manipulate the children in his care into believing his actions are their fault, or their mother's fault for not meeting his 'natural needs'?

If I were to strip away everything that is inherent in the terminology of 'step-father' what is left but another of God's children? Tears come into my eyes as I type this, and that niggling voice in my head wants to rear her ugly head and scream "so it IS my fault! I KNEW IT!" yet even as a child we are taught certain expectations - how could I not expect the goodness of a father figure, or at least the hope of one? The thought leads to contemplation: my religious/spiritual upbringing was absent at best, negligent at worst. I knew my mother owned a Bible, and that at one point we had been Jehovah's Witnesses but beyond that I was left to question the existence of God entirely. Perhaps if I had been taught that there is only ONE father-figure and He is not on this plane I might not have had such high expectations for the male figure I did have.

However, I forgive my past and what I was not taught, for I am gaining the knowledge now, when I need it most. And I am so infinitely grateful that God has been there the entire time just waiting for me to See Him and return to His fold.

Welcome to my newest personal blog "Illuminated From Within" where I will be posting my musings and prose works as I journey down the path of Enlightenment and Atonement.

Almost four years ago I was forced by the courts to give full custody of my son to his father, whom I had met while in Korea serving in the U.S. Air Force. I had retained full custody from his birth until he was five years old, and the bond I have with my child transcends most child-parent relationships as can happen when you are a single parent determined to treat their child far differently than you were treated as a child and to respect them in ways you never experienced from your parents. Therefore, the abrupt loss of my child sent me spiraling in the depths of a depression greater than anything I had ever known previously. My world collapsed in upon itself and I realized that I could not shoulder the spectrum of my misery alone. I needed someone to lean on, to find solace in beyond the comforts and solace that any human being could provide.

I turned to God, and my journey began. Misconceptions long held dissipated in the face of such Divine Love, and such misconceptions still continue to fall away as God, in His Infinite Wisdom and Love, sees my efforts at understanding His Truth and provides the corporeal tools necessary for such learning.

The following is a posting from another of my blogs (now well out of primary usage) from July 13, 2010. It marks the beginning of my contemplation and search for greater meaning. I have come quite a distance, both in time and in personal growth, since the original writing and posting, and I hope to continue sharing these musings as they occur to me for in Healing myself I am contributing the Healing and Atonement of all my brethren.

July 13, 2010
About two weeks ago we heard a man at our church speak about the recent loss of his mother and what he deemed what God's purpose in it, especially for him. He spoke about being overwhelmed with emotions he wanted nothing but to run from, to turn away from and put aside and not feel but he realized that grief is something that never goes away. You cannot hide from it. It is like God - inescapable. The comparison struck me as poignant and utterly meaningful in our personal situation. 
I've spent a lot of time thinking about his words and how God directed him to turn into those feelings, to embrace them and through them let God fill the void his mother's passing had left. He found that once he embraced the emotions they were easier to process and actually learned a great deal about his own inner strength and what God means to him. 
I have always run from that which frightens me. I've always turned away from the emotions I have not wanted to mentally deal with. His words made me realize that in avoiding my fear I have been avoiding the lessons that God has to teach me. When you give yourself totally to God and trust in his Will, there can be no fear. There can only be a deepening of spirit and faith, of trust in Him and all that you have no control over. There is no such thing as "mortal control" as far I can determine. It is all in God's time and we are but to trust in his plans for us. Impatience, doubt, anger, fear... all mortal trappings of the soul. God gave us the ability to emote so that we can learn from our experiences, not avoid them. I now understand the verse "if ye have faith of the size of a mustard seed ye shall move mountains" (I paraphrase as I've never been good at memorizing verses). It implies a total surrender to those emotions that threaten to obliterate all sense and connection with the Divine Plan as only surrender can bring you through to the other side. Did Jesus run from the Romans? No. He went willingly to them, bidding his servant to betray him upon in the grove. If Jesus went willingly into and faced his fear and trusted implicitly in his Lord's purpose for him, how can I not do the same? 
I've battled this thought process from every logical angle I can think of but I cannot find fault. I was once inclined to believe that in trusting in the Lord that I am simply finding another way to avoid my disliked emotions but I am now in full awareness of that error in thinking. Is trust in God being a lofty idealist? No. Does it take the weight from my shoulders so that I stress less? Yes. Turning into trust of the unseen and unfelt was ever so difficult until I realized that I have nothing to fear but my own insecurities and the problems they bring about when I deliberately avoid them. One can only be made whole by the journey itself, not in avoiding taking that first step. At the risk of quoting the secular while discussing the spiritual, Alanis Morrisette put it beautifully as "The only way out is through."

In closing, "To those leaning on the sustaining infinite, to-day is big with blessings. The wakeful shepherd beholds the first faint morning beams, ere cometh the full radiance of a risen day. So shone the pale star to the prophet shepherds; yet it traversed the night, and came where, in cradled obscurity, lay the Bethlehem babe, the human herald of Christ. Truth, who wold make plain to benighted understanding the way of salvation through Christ Jesus, till across a night of error should dawn the morning beams and shine the guiding star of being. The Wise-men were led to behold and to follow this daystar of divine Science, lighting the way to eternal harmony.
"The time for thinkers has come. Truth, independent of doctrines and time-honored systems, knocks at the portal of humanity. Contentment with the past and the cold conventionality of materialism are crumbling away. Ignorance of God is no longer the stepping stone to faith. The only guarantee of obedience is a right apprehension of Him whom to know aright is Life eternal. Though empires fall, 'the Lord shall reign forever'." ~ Mary Baker Eddy, Science and Health with Keys to the Scripture