“By the content of their character.”

Martin Luther King on Equality 

Symbols and Color

• Background Image: The swirls of golden light is the energy that powers the Personality from Essence. The frail, cloud like spiking streaks of while, like arrows or spears, is the Ego crossing over the Essence; poised to protect, and yet in its own way enhance, the survivability of the individual.
• Cupid and Psyche: Essence and Personality – Spirit and Matter – Immortal and Mortal
• Alpha and Omega: Both creations of the TAO, they bear the entirety of the in that amazing bio-record called DNA.
• Triality: Though born as male or female – the ultimate goal is not to transcend either gender, but to incorporate and expand to see that one is both and more.
• Hourglass: Time – Ego always perceives time. It lives within its confines. It is always worried about what has passed and how much it has left. It has difficulty living in the now since it is  unpredictable. After death, this Ego is no more.
• Border Color: Brown – Augment Set – The Good Red Road

Implications of the Upright Position or Positive Pole

A painting of a man showing characteristics of his animal self. He looks forward and the focus of his thoughts are toward the world. What stands within him he employs to live life. Every Personality is made up of a myriad of forces. When they are working together, the major concern becomes, not
how did I look, but how well did I contribute. The Spirit Portrait, done by Artist Diane Elizabeth Stanley, portrays Elemental component of my Self as represented by animal archetypes. I used this for the Personality Card as a reminder of the other half of the Hermetic Maxim which I champion: “As below, so above,” because we influence Essence, not just the other way around. What we create of the future, biologically, before any influence of Essence is conscious within us, we share and exemplify characteristics more consistent with our creature cousins. Any low humans can stupe as equally as a human can reach for any height. In either case, the vastness of possibility is as vast as the TAO (Card 0). Consciousness, (a term I am about to define and admit to woefully over-generalizing, as many do) is the biological functioning of the reticular activating system . It moderates the wake-sleep cycle of alertness and dormancy as a part of our autonomic nervous system and it’s mechanism is not under our control. However, Self awareness is a CHOICE! Choosing this image in the positive pole reminds us of the Personality’s natural cycles, programmed into us by Nature (Dominance Model) to act as the stage and costumes we weave during a single incarnation – the visage of the person I call Me.

Card messages in the Illuminated position.

+ Self

(true personality, authenticity, maturity, congruence)

1. Dealing with limitation is the challenge for building a diversified, mature Self. Draw on your talents to engage challenges, mitigate limitations, or triumph over adversity.
2. True Personality or Self is the desired and intended expression of the Essence. Your Overleaves recipe is the authentic expression of who you are meant to be when you are motivated by love, compassion and inner truth. Find those things now and express your Self!
3. Your Personality (Overleaves Set) was chosen by you to be exactly who you were meant to be. If you allow them to emerge, perhaps it will set the example for others to respond in kind?
4. Hold the intention that everyone expresses their authentic needs. The interaction will be much clearer and a solution arrived at that will actually satisfy most for everyone.
5. Intimacy is a gift, shared. You have no obligation to reveal anything about who you are. Yet, you have every reason to explore it within yourself.
6. Temet Nosce is Latin for “know thyself.” Such awareness is not mandatory to be alive, nor even genuinely expressing who Essence designed you to be, BUT, if you want the potential for more insight and the power to direct yourself, then, it is essential.
7. Being unique may not mean being special. Being ordinary is a gift that can relieve you of the need to pretend.
8. Personhood is a complicated business. Just know that those who love you experience the same thing themselves. While Self-knowledge is very helpful, even those who are unaware but follow love, and seek to act with love, are still very much on the right path.
9. Unique does not equal special. You are not entitled to any privilege. Only the rights of being human. Ordinary is a blessing. What you do with yourself might be amazing! Don’t hold back.
10. Character is revealed. Caricatures from Ego aren’t needed when one accepts their own uniqueness.
11. The players involved are expressing themselves authentically, not from Ego. Gruff is often genuine where niceness may not be. Be clear on this difference and you will all get along!
12. Dr. Martin Luther King said that we should judge a person by the “content of their character”. One is revealed in what one does. Do your actions reflect who your really are, and what your truthfully believe, accurately?
13. If we are all mirrors for one another, then knowing more about Self means you can connect with another at greater depth.
14. Existentialist Albert Camus noted “We continue to shape our personality all our life. If we knew ourselves perfectly, we should die.” Keep going, you’ll never know who you will be tomorrow.

Quotation Illustrating this concept…

• “Ordinary riches can be stolen, real riches cannot. In your soul are infinitely precious things that cannot be taken from you.” ~ Oscar Wilde 
• “The hardest challenge is to be yourself in a world where everyone is trying
  to make you be somebody else.” ~ E. E. Cummings
• “We continue to shape our personality all our life. If we knew ourselves perfectly, we should die.” ~ Albert Camus
• “An individual’s self-concept is the core of his personality. It affects every aspect of human behavior: the ability to learn, the capacity to grow and change. A strong, positive self-image is the best possible preparation for success in life.” ~ Dr. Joyce Brothers
• “The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.” ~ Joseph Campbell

Implications of the Reversed Position or Negative Pole

The Ego is always watching Personality. It is your guard dog. But to guard is to keep watch, and to watch is to have one part of your consciousness trained back upon itself. Thus Ego divides oneself from the experience of fluid unity. The first feelings of separateness (that ignominious state which New Age types decry or bemoan) happens when the Ego perceives itself at risk from others or for its own survival. Ego perceives itself AS the Personality. Freud thought of the Ego in this way, and spoke of it as the completed or fully formed aspect of an adult Psyche. The image of this negative pole shows Ego as to be torn from the head and is the face of the personality. “Saving face” is the high priority for the Ego since its limited perspective confuses any loss, as equivocal to actual death. That is why the Ego can be so theatrical or hysterical in its assessment: because anything outside itself might cause it pain! The Ego has the programmed mission from the reptilian brain: it strives to be secure against pain at least, and when possible; move to the mammalian brain and seek pleasure. From this animal level, we would call that an urge for creature comfort. Therefore, Ego is not evil, nor intentionally sabotaging. Its mandates are simple and legitimate, “This unit must survive”. But its strategies, methods, and beliefs may be wholly inadequate, dysfunctional, and even self defeating. But when fear is at its highest, that good old dog races to the forefront to do its best to protect you, even if you are the first one it bites.

Card messages in the Shadow position.

– Ego – False Personality

(persona, guard dog, animal, mimic, phony, contrived, pretentious, disguised, masked, deflective, dissociative)

1. Ego, or false personality, puts us on immediate alert to fearful circumstance. Yet these threats might be old, projected, or imaginary. On alert, the defenses are set to coping instead of living. A mask is being shown. Who is being phony?
2. If you go about thinking that your Ego is just plain rotten, then you’ve made an enemy of part of yourself. Does hating part of you really help?
3. Your False Personality is your Ego’s defense against fear. Make your Ego your Amigo and you will have a better chance of bringing it to heel.
4. Someone’s Ego is broadcasting “help me”! See if you can get past their act and acknowledge the fear that is driving it.
5. Everyone, no matter how they appear, is here on a journey. You do not have to ride along. Yet, what does it say about your ethics if you fail to help someone in time of need?
6. Beware of those preaching simple answers and packaging standardized solutions. Neither exist when it comes to human psychology. But there are emotions they are trying to play on and possible prey upon for their benefit, not yours. Proceed cautiously.
7. A charmer, beguiler, or manipulator are all false hiding someone trying to run a racket. Someone is trying to get what they want through deceptive means. 
8. Make your Ego your Amigo and you will have a better chance of experiencing your wholeness.
9. A charmer, beguiler, or manipulator are all false fronts hiding someone running a racket, trying to get what they want through deceptive means. Confront that person, even if it is the on in the mirror.
10. “The unexplored life is not worth living.” Character of Socrates – from the Apologia by Plato
11. Former Secretary of Dean Acheson brilliantly noted how public figures are distracted and fail, “The great corrupter of public man is the ego…. Looking at the mirror distracts one’s attention from the problem.” Carly Simon said something similar in the song, You’re So Vain. Get your eyes off yourself and focus on the task at hand.

Quotation Illustrating this concept…

• “The egoism which enters into our theories does not affect their sincerity; rather, the more our egoism is satisfied, the more robust is our belief.” ~George Eliot~
• “The great corrupter of public man is the ego…. Looking at the mirror distracts one’s attention from the problem.” ~Dean Acheson~
  
• “We don’t see things as they are, we see things as we are.” Anais Nin
• “All charming people have something to conceal, usually their total dependence on the appreciation of others.” ~Cyril Connolly~
  
• “With the disappearance of God the Ego moves forward to become the sole divinity.” ~Dorothee Sölle~
  
• “Egotism is the anesthetic that dulls the pain of stupidity.” ~Frank Leahy~
  
• “The ego is not master in its own house.” ~Sigmund Freud~
  
• “It is better to conquer yourself than to win a thousand battles. Then the victory is yours. It cannot be taken from you, not by angels or by demons, heaven or hell.” ~ Gautama Buddha

Relevance in the Michael Teaching

There is much to say about Personhood. It is a combination of animal consciousness (DNA), spiritual lineage, familial imprinting and of course social acculturation. This complex arrangements of parts, according the Michael Teachings, Personality is the housing in which an Essence/Soul (Card 58) assembles a set of Overleaf characteristics to form a working simulacrum of itself on the Physical Plane of life as a human being. The journey of the Soul through many lives on its revolutions through its Cycle of Soul Ages, requires the materialization of body with traits and temperament designed for both specific lessons and encounters but also to act as filters for new unplanned for information.

As a vehicle for life’s journey, the Michael Teaching suggests that every aspect of the Overleaves will be encountered even for narrow situations or brief moments.  In the Positive Poles of the Overleaves, True Personality i.e. the expression of the unique set of traits which structure a persons drives, perceptions, and mechanisms for processing information, will be views in optimal and without distortion. It is said that in this state, a person’s “reception” of impulses from Essence is at its most available and clear. Essence Contact supplants Ego’s animal instinctive reactions although the two need states might be very much in concert.

Encountering a person “true Self” does not always mean they are likable or desirable to you, but you can trust that what you see is what you get! Trust is a far cry more reasonable to assume of a person in the Positive Pole because they will not need the approval of others or have to devote energy to concealment of weaknesses they perceive in themselves or their position.

Occasionally, you find a person whose dedication to the loving confidence they experience from an expanded presence. Personality, infused from Essence, is the revealing of what we call character. And as some philosophers have said; “character is not built, it is revealed.” What causes us to perceive these persons  whose nature is so ultimately remarkable? It is  not because it is extraordinary, but because it is so authentically ordinary. Showmanship and charisma tend to be features of the Ego. Passion, radiance, and inspiration are aspects of the Self when empowered by spirit.

False Personality, or Ego as I am calling it, occurs when fearful emotions like shame, hatred, anxiety, despair or hopelessness, shadow an individual in ways that cause doubt and a loss of the comforting confidence of Essence contact. Alone and daunted, false personality darns masks or engages in strategies to take cover behind. A sense of deficit overtakes the Personality and the Ego resorts to compensation behaviors which are the Chief Features. Once Ego has engaged the Chief Features, the true character of the individual is lost behind a myriad of misdirection’s, schemes, deflections, and masquerades hiding the little self, another term for Ego, in abeyance. But like all plans hatched in desperation to safety hide from frontal attack, tends to stuff those vulnerable aspects of the Self so deeply, as to forget about them leaving them to putrefy in the unconscious. That rotten core emits an odoriferous sub-strait which taints everything the Ego does and secretly exposes the very vulnerabilities the Ego has worked so hard to conceal. No matter what, Essence wants Personality to thrive, not just survive.

Ego, however, should never be viewed as the enemy or having the “whole truth.” It has the mentality of your guard dog trying its best to protect you. Everyone has an Ego. It might not be obnoxious, but it does have idiosyncrasies and needs. Ego strokes, are treats to give oneself when it is trying to assist you and it performs well. A Self can know an Ego, but an Ego believes itself to be the Personality, and thus has a very skewed view of reality. Thus, sometimes the requisite directives from intuitions one might think from Soul/Spirit/Essence are suspect by an attentive guardian trying to keep its animal self protected and its sense of advantages or identity intact. There is no “moral” wrongness about these strategies! But there is the veil of Maya (Card 69) which pervades Ego perceptions with preservation motives of survival reactivity. Even a person with a strong intellect and subordinate emotions is likely to have this arrangement as a primary means of protection

Cultural Meaning

The is a lot of talk about Personality and Egotism in the modern dialogue. On the one hand, an authentic character is supposedly admired and desirable if it is presented in a pleasing way. But a true individual is quite often a person who acts in ways that are unpredictable and nonconforming.

Ego is generally thought of as some form of arrogance, but indeed it is any cultivated persona designed to prevent threats from getting by and injuring a vulnerable inner core. Not evil by design, Ego is however, usually a deceiver to some degree either overestimating one’s worth, or undervaluing one’s talents, or sometimes misdirecting attention all together to avoid confrontation and keep an opponent off-guard.

Indeed, Ego does experience almost everything as a threat to be defeated, controlled or mitigated.  Terms like “game playing” describe ventures Ego embarks upon to rob the other of power or gain some for themselves. But authenticity is not the method the Ego uses to achieve this end. Or as French artist Jean Giraudoux once quipped “The secret of success is sincerity. Fake that, and you’ve got it made.”

We see this stance as the preferred media persona for political candidates. Anything real about themselves that should happen to surface is denied. Ego itself does not like the truth;  instead it prefers a good story.  Preferably one that makes itself look good. Remember, Ego is our Animal Self trying to gain advantage in a world where it see’s itself in constant competition for scarce resources. Extending this aspect of fear into our future, and we wont have one for very long.

by Stephen Cocconi © 2011, Updated, 2024

For a Tarot Session or Channeled Consultation call: 209.768-4956 or email Stephen at channeling@themichaelteaching.com