You Are Not Your Bank Account – Nor Your Personality

You probably have a bank account, but you are not completely identified with it—even though you likely prefer it when it's more full. You know you aren't your money. The same goes for your hair: you have hair, but you know you aren't your hair. And you didn't choose its natural color, nor did you make it grow (or fall out). The same applies to your personality. You have a personality, but you are not it. And you didn't choose it!

It can be beneficial to know your personality. What does it like, get motivated by, get upset by and so on. It is also good to know its hang-ups. Its pitfalls. My body/mind-system for example has a tendency at times to become super-sensitive about its bodily states. It gets hyper-vigilant and treats every signal from the body as danger, as if something is really wrong. Fortunately it doesn't happen so often, but I know that some situations still can trigger that mechanism. For example if I over-exhaust myself and become very tired. That is “yummy” for that particular defence mechanism to start its show. Helpful for me to know.

So to know and be aware of your personality is a good thing. To know which situations, people, and places make me feel good—I can move towards that. To know in which circumstances I perform better or am more effective. In my case, my body-mind organism works better in the mornings, and in the evening it's no use for me to do anything mentally or physically demanding. Useful information to have and plan by.

Personality vs Person

Before we move on, let's make a distinction between the personality and 'the person'. The personality is simply the character—the unique bundle of preferences, traits, and conditioning that has formed over time. The person, on the other hand, is the imaginary owner inside who claims to be in charge of it all. Awakening doesn't magically make the personality disappear—that would be very impractical. It simply exposes 'the person' as a ghost that was never actually driving the car.

The personality's combination of innate traits and experiences makes your body-mind organism prefer certain things and dislike others. Being overly sensitive to bodily signals (high interoceptive sensitivity) is, for example, a trait I was born with and did not choose for myself. Nor did you choose your parents, your upbringing, or your genetics. Not to mention epigenetics—the activity or inactivity of millions of your genes was programmed before you were even born. So you see, the person's characteristics are the result of events completely outside of your control or making.

Being too identified with our personality has its downsides. We feel good about ourselves when the personality "acts" in a way we consider good (usually whatever is rewarded by our culture or group). And when a conditioned pattern plays out—like automatically saying YES again when you wanted to say NO—the mind steps in to tell you that you're an idiot again. So, on top of having to do something you'd rather not do, you blame yourself for never learning from your mistakes.

In classical psychology, Freud called this internal judge the Superego—that continuous inner commentator that judges every move the personality makes. But when you step back into awareness (or as Consciousness), you realize it's just another voice. Just another mechanism. And of course there is no Superego different from your other ego. Just the ego judging itself. Ha—fun to look at, isn't it!? ;)

A Non-dual Take on Personality?

If we want to go even more non-dual about it, I like to see the personality as a piece of wood. Depending on your DNA and history, this piece of shit—sorry, piece of wood—will have different holes in it, of different shapes and sizes. When light (consciousness) shines through it, a unique pattern is projected. That is why the world projected through the Magnus-organism looks very different from the world projected through someone else. Or through a rat.

What we humans have in common is that we are self-aware. We have the ability to watch ourselves—to see our personality playing out and notice the world appearing through us. So non-duality is ultimately about discovering that which is aware. Which might lead you to the realization that what you truly are is consciousness itself.

Taking the Good with the Bad

Knowing that you are not the personality, you can be much more relaxed about everything. OK, the person Magnus did something nice that I liked. Ahh—I enjoyed that. And the next moment it fell into an old trap again doing something that was less pleasant or more stupid. And you just notice that.

Being aware of your personality's "doings" and "non-doings" without getting overly entangled in them not only gives you immense freedom, but also gives those patterns room to adjust. If you see yourself hitting your head on the same doorpost for the tenth time—without beating yourself up for it—the system naturally adapts (if you are not into pain). But if you resent yourself for making a "mistake," you only strengthen that habit. If you hate yourself for stumbling over your words in front of an audience, nothing is likely to change. If you simply see it as your personality's pattern at this moment in time, you give it room to shift (perhaps with a little practice).

The nice things also become much more pleasant when you drop your involvement. You can enjoy the nice sides without having to cling to them. Enjoy it while it lasts—without having to feel proud or better, or shout to the world (usually on social media) what a great person you are. Because the next moment you might not be so great. But what's the problem? It's not who you are anyway.

You Can Always Blame Consciousness

You didn't do anything. You are not the personality. My teacher Hans Laurentius used to joke that you can always blame consciousness. Well, in a way, that's not completely untrue ;)

You are not your traits or your upbringing. It happened to you. You are THAT which is aware of the personality and its funny and not-so-funny ways. So don't take it too seriously. If you need to, look into your personality, do some work with it, some therapy perhaps (or read my previous article: Tired of self-improvement? Time for Self-realization?). But if you believe that you are that personality and its endless tricks, the main problem will always remain: you will keep on trying to fix something that you are not.

So wake up! See that you are not the person you think you are. And you can start to enjoy life—with its ups and its downs…