TODAY’S CONSIDERATIONS
To continue with the discussion of the relative effects of personality from the book LIBERATION (Attaining Freedom from Personality via Realization):
The Relative Effects of Personality: Fears, Desires and Interrupted Happiness
Why do the Advaita teachings invite persons to discard their identification with personality?
(A) The influence of personality results in specific but illusory fears and in specific but unattainable desires. How could happiness possibly happen in a relative existence littered with the anxiety of illusory fears and the frustration of unmet desires?
(B) Trapped within the sphere of personality identification, duality manifests. Why?
To believe that any of the various personas that evolve from belief in the personality types can define who you are (for example, “The Perfect One” or “The Helper” or “The Boss,” etc.) will prevent your knowing Who / What You Truly Are. Too, since the cataloguing of personality traits always lists “assets” vs. “liabilities,” then belief in duality is fostered.
(C) The lie of multiplicity is reinforced by assuming identification with personality. How?
When trapped in the sphere of personality, a person does not exhibit traits of only her / his dominant persona type. When “mentally healthy,” one unconsciously integrates the traits of another type. If stressed or pious, one disintegrates into the mode of a third type.
Further, personas adopt the traits of their two adjacent types, so a Type Three will exhibit Type Two traits as well as Type Four traits. All personality identification, therefore, will ultimately foster the chaos and disorder of living with “multiple personalities.”
The Advaita teachings can
(1) provide release from illusory fears and unmet desires via elimination of the belief in the personality
and can
(2) free persons of the misery generated by personality identification via Full Realization. The process invites protégés to answer certain key questions: WHO has a fear? WHO has a desire? WHO wants to be perfect? WHO is taking himself / herself to be a persona with a personality?
To be free of believing that a mirage is real, one must first understand what a mirage is, so the basic fear and the basic desire of Personality Type One—“The Perfectionist”—will be discussed.
Russ Hudson pointed out the following about Personality Type Ones' basic fear and basic desire:
The Type One’s BASIC FEAR is being corrupt or evil or defective
The Type One’s BASIC DESIRE is to be good
THE IMPACT OF THAT PERSONALITY TYPE ON THE RELATIVE EXISTENCE
Consider the effects of trying to live out a relative existence while being trapped in the belief of dualities that tell you that sometimes you are “good” but that more often you are “bad.” Consider the misery of being programmed and conditioned to think that you are really “corrupt” (as opposed to “honest”), “evil” (as opposed to “moral”), or “defective” (as opposed to “perfect”).
What a nightmarish existence has to result if one does not Realize and thereby free the “self” of the effects of the messages that “you are not good enough,” “you are corrupt and immoral” or “you are nothing more than a living and breathing defect, personified.”
(Also, understand that those messages might be delivered with words but that they can as easily be implanted with a particularly harsh facial expression, by other “body language,” or by other forms of abuse.)
Imagine all of the relative existence pleasures that such a mindset precludes as one spends a lifetime trying to attain the “positive” images in those sets of dualistic evaluations that result when acculturation and programming and conditioning instill the desire to be perfect in order to prove to early critics (as well as current critics) that they are wrong in applying such “negative” labels to you.
Imagine how often natural conduct is blocked and how often supernatural conduct is inspired by what becomes a life-long, unconscious effort to prove that one is good and honest and moral and perfect.
WHY HAPPINESS IS INTERRUPTED FOR PERSONALITY TYPE ONES
Note how acceptance of the influence of this personality type will automatically force persons to be stressed and apprehensive and overly-serious; note how the influence of this personality type will drive personas to always be dissatisfied with themselves; see how they will be driven to believe that they can never do anything well enough; see how the influence of their personality will drive these persons to feel burdened and unacknowledged and compulsive.
Then, you’ll understand why persons living under the influence of a Type One Personality might claim all day long that they are happy, but with the above factors at work, that belief is just another lie that they take to be truth. Sure, some fleeting moments of happiness or pleasure might manifest, but as long as the personality is allowed to have its influence, then personality will interrupt happiness and deny the enjoyment of the pleasures of natural, AS IF living.
FREEDOM FROM PERSONALITY TYPE ONE EFFECTS VIA REALIZATION
To be free of the frustration of living out a relative existence while being trapped in the dualities of “good” vs. “bad,” “corrupt” vs. “honest”, “evil” vs. “moral”, or “defective” vs. “perfect,” then attainment of the non-duality understanding is required. “Good” and “bad” are relative. Being relative, they are lies and cannot be defined with any continuity. What is “good” to one person is “bad” to another.
So-called “universal truths” or “moral standards” are just as relativistic. The same person who claims that "lying is bad" would likely have advised those hiding Jews in WWII to lie if a Nazi asked them if they knew where any Jews were hiding. If a Type One finds the answer to “Who Am I, really?” then no WHO will remain that can suffer the duality of sometimes feeling “good” and sometimes feeling “bad.”
If Realized, that person will no longer suffer from the duality of sometimes feeling “evil” while sometimes feeling “moral” or the duality of sometimes feeling “defective” while at other times feeling “perfect.” The former Type One can then be freed from being driven to try to reach the unattainable state of being “perfect” or from being driven to try to meet the unreasonable, dualistic expectations that were set forth by other delusional personas.
Please enter into the silence of contemplation.
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