Ego and personality
The difference between ego and personality
We must consistently distinguish between our ego, often referred to as the ‘false self’, and our personality. I would like to point out that we should move away from the idea that the ego and personality are one and the same. We can let go of our ego, but not of our personality.
Our ego is ‘false’, or rather: it is an inner attitude and self-image that arise from illusions and result from a cluster of identifications that arise in unconsciousness and can maintain themselves in unconsciousness. The ego thus arises from the attachment to all those things that would give us an identity, which determine our identity. Due to these many acquired attachments to ideas about ‘myself’, it covers our true essence. Our self-image consists of attachments, beliefs, habits, and ideas about ourselves as ‘persons’. This self-image determines our attitude towards the world around us. This inner attitude is mentally very restrictive, maintains unconsciousness more stubbornly over the years, and can also become harmful to ourselves and the world around us.
Our personality is fully acquired from birth and characterizes our individual condition in our lives. Both our innate essence and our acquired personality make us differ from every other individual. We don’t find a second of ourselves as an individual on earth. Thus, we recognize each other as ‘different’ from one another. Our personality is acquired by everything we have learned, within the possibilities that our individual essence allowed. These possibilities are determined by our talents on the one hand and our limitations or boundaries on the other. Our innate individualized essence largely determines the shape and content of our personality. Our talents and limitations/boundaries are defined in our individualized essence, so, for example, also our potential to learn and become a ‘personality’, and as ‘nature’ also our strongest character traits.
We could call the ego ‘false’ because it is an untrue representation of ‘myself’, maintained by us in unconsciousness. It is our self-image which we think is our identity, which makes us not perceive the reality about ourselves and our environment correctly.
Our personality is our individually learned condition (we are not it) to express ourselves in this life. Would there still be a comedian, a poet, a politician, a baker, a writer, a healer, an artist, or even a guru without personality? Impossible!
What then belongs to the personality we acquired in this life?
all our cultural characteristics (for example: our being Dutch) our language and use of language our humor and manner of acting and expressing, our non-verbal radiance our learned (professional) skills and knowledge our role in family, work, and other social situations all the acquisitions in this life, to be ‘myself as an individual’.
What does not belong to our personality but to our essence? all our innate mental characteristics and tendencies, as they belong to our individual (individualized) essence (our individual ‘blueprint’ at conception/birth) our innate talents our innate mental limitations and boundaries
All the attributes of our individualized essence, therefore, do not belong to our personality. Our individual essence determines the ‘playroom’ with which we came into the world in this body, in this human life. Our personality, us as a person, is determined by our palette of possibilities by which we are known in the world and can express ourselves in the world. All our self-expression takes place thanks to our personality. Thus, as an individual, the human being is largely determined in this life.
Identification creates ego
The ego is an accumulation of identifications with characteristics, ideas, feelings, conditioning, tendencies, possessions, etc. They are forms of identification with our body, our function, our mind, and our theories, our emotional world, and everything we say ‘this is me’ against. And that’s a lot altogether. If we unconsciously and ignorantly say “this is me” against everything and more, we speak of identification (identifying = making our identity).
As soon as we unconsciously link our ‘I Am’ to something that we essentially are not, we create a piece of ego.
Examples:
If I truly believe that I am a musician, I identify with it and have created a musician ego.
If I really think I’m a teacher, I’ve created a teacher ego and might start distinguishing myself from others (who wouldn’t be) and might start valuing myself higher than others.
If I really think I have an ugly body or face, I have created an ugliness ego and will be ashamed of my physical appearance or undergo surgeries. The same goes for a beauty ego, although I would show it off.
If I identify with a great torso, I would want to spend all day in the gym to obtain/maintain it.
If I identify with my beautiful car, every scratch hurts me!
If I identify as a man with my gender or my virility, I pursue it and might behave as a womanizer or worse. If I identify as a woman with my ‘curves’ or an appearance trend, I have a similar ego ‘problem’.
If I identify with a certain spiritual doctrine, I might feel ‘enlightened’ and have created a spiritual ego.
If I identify with my mental abilities, I might judge myself as smart or dumb.
The identification clusters in our minds, and these can be different clusters of attachments next to each other, thus create our ego. Because we say: ‘I am this, and that, and that, and this, and that…’. But we can’t possibly be that because we essentially can’t be what we can perceive. We are That which perceives.
Only due to unconsciousness and ignorance about this large story consisting of identifications about and in ourselves does it persist, namely as an ego, as an imaginary ‘I’. We believe in it because we were never told in our upbringing how illusory and incorrect this identification is; how big this lie is that we keep up ourselves. A false collection of ‘I’s’ that we could leave behind. They all arise from unnatural attachment.
As soon as we remember ourselves and stop identifying in unconsciousness, meaning that we: a) notice it every time, b) re-evaluate it and thus no longer believe in it, and c) fully leave it behind in true conscious awareness, the result is: no more ego! Egolessness!
Isn’t that wonderful?!
Of course, we retain our personality. Everyone will recognize us as… (fill in your name), in everything you say, do, and allow. We acquired our personality in our lives, and as mentioned, it consists of many learned facts such as language, culture, customs, skills, manner of doing, values, and standards, etc. Without it, we can’t interact in the surrounding social world that is also largely determined. We use our personality to (uniquely) express ourselves as ‘myself in the world’ and to play all the roles that are asked of us in our lives. If our personality is pure, it will not be identified and will not form an ego. Then we live in the world, but are no longer of the world.
All this applies (most likely and to what is known) only to humans as a species, a microscopic small ‘phenomenon’ in the universe! Realizing this will prevent our human-centrism, or anthropocentrism as coloring (as a narrow perception) of reality.
Fictional example about essence, personality, and ego:
At birth, you have an identical twin brother (or sister; for this example, I’ll stick with the male form) who is transferred to the Andes Mountains.
When you meet each other for the first time at the age of 30, you only recognize each other by facial similarity. Everything else in your personalities is different. This is because personality arises from our acquisitions (language, culture, development, norms, and values) throughout our lives.
Your individualized essence (everything that is innate, such as talents and limitations) may largely coincide (which I assume in this example, although it can vary greatly in identical twins). These two individually inherited essences are not easily changed, even if they are in two completely different cultures.
Both of your egos will also be completely different, as different identification clusters arise in different cultures and through different upbringings. You might identify with your acquired skills (for example, knowledge of spirituality and coaching in that field) and your distant brother with his acquired skills (for example, knowledge of horse whispering and horse driving and training).
So, you wouldn’t ‘know’ each other because of the differently formed personalities, but you would soon be able to recognize each other in the similarities of your individualized essence. The similarities in your essence (although it can differ considerably even within identical twins) can lead to you both, despite growing up in entirely different cultures, being attracted to the same kind of work, the same kind of approach to life values and how to fill them: you can have the same kind of affinities and talents: an attraction to higher knowledge and to training/teaching.
Your egos, which consist of clusters of identifications, however, will differ greatly from each other, because you don’t identify yourself as a good horse trainer, and he doesn’t identify with being an advanced guru.
Yet also see the essence similarities between these completely fictional but plausible examples of affinity and work of the two separated twin brothers: animal trainer and human trainer. Two individualized human essences searched, found, and eventually worked in the same ‘corner’.
