When we think of the word, personality, we often think of someone who is extraverted and a “character”. Someone who has personality has their own individual style of relating that is socially fluid and attractive.
There is a deeper understanding of the word, that goes beyond the ordinary usage. Of course, we understand that all people have a Personality. This is the accumulation of their traits.
What is a trait? It is the extension of character. In the general way, it refers to the way the individual encounters or navigates social process. Since we are always contacting some social process at all waking hours, we are therefore, always generating some trait.
When we consider that our overall personality is the accumulation of all traits, it is easy to see how important our personality becomes. It is not just a practical tool to get what we want and need: it is our tool for living. We live through our traits.
Even if we are neutral, quiet and non-responsive, these are still traits. We cannot escape a trait, for they can always be measured and they are always there, even if we do not notice them. Another person has a more objective perception of our traits, because they can observe them, through direct contact.
When we have problems, our friends, lovers and family can often see where we make a mistake because they have a more clear perception of our traits and how they cause certain problems in our life. In fact, all dilemmas can be traced back to our personality and our expressed traits.
What are these traits and how can they be transformed? There have been many styles and types of breakdowns of personality traits; some very simple and others, very sophisticated. The two forms of Introversion and Extraversion, identified by Carl Jung are very famous. Still others run into the hundreds, and there is even a branch of psychology, called personality psychology, where they discuss many great psychologists and their creative breakdown of personality into their own unique categories.
The Psychic Art of Astrology is a mythical system that outlines all personality traits as originating from universal sectors of the cosmos, thus rendering all personality formations as extensions of mythic archetypes. Although we do not have scientific proof of these linkages, it points to the sense that our personality has the effect on our “destiny”.
We understand this concept without any allegiances to Astrology, for we can link our behavior, fueled by our personality, to the various outcomes and circumstances to our life. We understand that a quick temper can get us in trouble and that an extroverted personality is functional with sales and courtship. Furthermore, we can often associate discipline, stoicism, patience and caution are sometimes associated with certain types of success and even, wisdom.
The key to transforming our personality involves the manner in which we use our basic structures of living. What are these? They are our sense of Identity, our motivation, our speech, our action or volition, our attention, instinct, attention and others, depending upon how we organize them.
We recognize that when we are not observant of our speech, for example, then this manifests as a trait, and this could cause some repercussions to our life. Therefore, if we amend our speech, this will affect our trait. When we change the trait, we change our “life”. From structure to trait to life; that is the overall process.
When we do a particular type of inner work, mentioned above as transforming our basic structures of living, we will see that everything is about the personality; what traits are manifesting from inner Qualities. There are many of these Qualities: Joy, Patience, Generosity, Confidence, Clarity, Compassion, Order and Serenity are to name a few. When we learn how to contact these innate Patterns, we learn how to really live. We will discover that life is about the qualities, and thus the traits, not the particular outcomes.
The Good Life is all about Personality. Not the persona mask, that is cultivated through getting what we want or need, but the deeper traits that are manifested through the inner pressure of a training that transforms the normal, ordinary structures of our living.
In the beginning, it will be difficult to look at our self, because we have conditioned so many unwanted patterns and habits. We will perceive our selves and ”not good” or a ”worth-less” and so on. This is part of the process. When these Qualities are not realized, and extended as traits, they will manifest as “excesses and deficiencies”.
It is actually good that one sees these excesses and deficiencies, because this is how you grow. You have to go through the negative, as it were. When one can concurrently put the functional and the dysfunctional together, or look at both, then this is the start of something great. When one can only see the negative, then the patterns will continue. That is why one needs to experiment with various trainings, in order to see the outcome of experience as potentially meaningful.
Personality is the collection of traits that extend through deeper Qualities expanding from a conscious inner work. This will provide a meaningful life in a chaotice, secular, postmodern world and society.
William Edwards
Author, Trainer
The Skill of Wisdom
This entry was posted on Thursday, May 29th, 2008 at 8:29 am and is filed under Articles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.