Modern spirituality is aligned with psychology in many ways; one of them being that whichever direction we travel in on our quest to ‘find the real’, we need to start with the personality.

The personality is where we live. We think of it as us. Because it’s ‘me’, there is no questioning how it views things. True, we can be aware that we tend to judge this and that wrongly – very occasionally; we can find ourselves in lifelong friendships with people we initially hated; we can find colour and warmth and even excitement if we step out of its increasingly dull shadow … but generally, we don’t.

We don’t because that sense of ‘me-ness’ is embedded in everything we do: the yardstick for whether to do this or that. It’s the severe internal critic when we know we’re being rash or foolish, or just plain foolhardy despite that inner voice. But that critic may not be the truth, either.

The core of the personality is formed in the early years of our lives and cemented into a rock of personal identity sometime around the age of seven. Until then, we would have viewed life through a focussed lens that more or less answered our needs for security, love and the company of people we liked. But we allowed for an opening or two into another place, from which that spring breeze of fresh air still blew.

Perhaps we had a wise mother or father, who could still make us think and question how we came to conclusions. Perhaps we had a theatrical uncle or aunt who commanded great excitement with their presence, as we sat, entranced, for hours, while they told tales of wisdom beyond mystery!

After seven years of age, or thereabouts, we stopped questioning that this thinking-me was my-self. It was self-evident; there was no-one in here arguing with it.

Now, as adults with many miles on our personal journeys, we may not even be aware that we can examine the part of us that considers itself to be the whole of ‘me’. In all of this, we should never lose sight of the fact that the sense of ‘me’, our identity, is precious.

The body can still be a mystery, of course – especially when it goes wrong… or occasionally, when it’s in a relaxed state where there is an easy and peaceful glow, and everything is suddenly more intense – and yet quieter at the same time…

We have no memory of ‘building’ that, not even as a one-off, let alone a psychological process to repeat it, reliably.

And yet this personality we all possess – and which is truly a treasure. Is entirely made of the past…

The personality is the accumulated knowledge of our reactions to the world, stored as our egoic self. It is rightly our self and no-one has the right to change its position in our world … except us.

And the only reason we might want to diminish its preeminence is that our life has run out of that breezy freshness we used to find all the time.

In our age of depth psychology, science, technology and genetics, we have some great ‘ideation’ tools for building new ways of thinking. These are seldom used to consider the me. But when we do, we can come up with some wonderful ways of considering our-selves.

One that has emerged over the past few decades is the conclusion that our formative years lead to the creation a holographic movie of our early lives. This movie constantly plays on the screen of our consciousness, but not in a ‘flat’ way; rather it can be seen from any angle we like, allowing us to react to not just the old, but the new, making original connections between the old bits.

But … and it’s a big one, we only get to react within the original plot of the film, no matter what we are trying to do – even something totally new.

This is the reason why it’s so very difficult to change ourselves; because those changes are only emerging within the existing movie story, albeit dressed in new clothes. Over a short period of time we conclude that the new and exciting teacher of this and that is really just another storyteller; and we’ve tried what he said and it doesn’t work … for me.

And there’s something grindingly familiar about this process of disappointment.

The problem is the movie – the fabulous holographic movie, whose existence the personality doesn’t want us to know about … because that’s the edge of itself.

Everything in that movie gives us a fixed set of attitudes with which to respond to whatever comes our way. Over these, we layer depths of like and dislike, grown sophisticated as we developed our personal power and rightness.

The core of that rightness and the way it paints everything we encounter can be investigated and found to have developed from a small number of keys. Hiding within all of us is a nine-fold pattern of response that conditions our psychological lives – but does not touch what lies beyond in the realm of the inner Self.

By working with these keys, we can break open the egg of our lives, no matter what age we are, and fly into a bright, deeper and more exciting reality that lovingly embraces the existing personality – lighting up its potential and making obvious its weaker aspects.

In part two, we will consider the nature of these nine keys and the means by which we might begin this journey to a much deeper identity than anything we have ever known.

©Stephen Tanham 2023

Stephen Tanham is a Director of the Silent Eye, a journey through the forest of personality to the dawn of Being.

http://www.thesilenteye.co.uk and http://www.suningemini.blog