Theos-Talk Archives (December 1993 Message tl00033)

It is important to maintain balance and perspective in life. But the
rules change when we become aware of the higher life. When we realize
and start working with our higher natures, we come to see our
personalities as vehicles of something grander within, and no longer
as what we'd consider to be our conscious selves.

A psychological approach to live would tell us to stay personality
centered. It would have us keep our awareness in the personality and
experience everything in life in terms of how it relates to that
shadowy image of self which we have made.

We are told to not lose this orientation. We must keep the personality
as our seat of consciousness. If we were to identify with something
bigger than it, we would be told that we are experiencing "inflation",
with perhaps destructive psychological consequences. But is this true?

The description of someone experiencing inflation is not flattering.
There is often a puny, undeveloped person, someone whom has
neglected life, someone clinging onto an external sense of grandness
to compensate for the lack of proper psychological growth and
maturity.

This use of the word *maturity* is funny, though, because the
psychologist is oblivious to what could be called *true maturity,*
the ripening, the flowering, the fullness of development of the
spiritual nature, which comes from countless lifetimes of training,
lifetimes of sacrifice, lifetimes of devoted service to the spiritual.

We *can* be infilled with the higher, and have it as our seat of
consciousness, and not be neglecting the personality. And it may or
may not appear as inflation. Any temporary inflation in the personality
would just be one of the temporary adjustments made in life during
the period of probation, something that if it came at all would be
gone long before the seven years were up.

Now it is possible for certain flaws in the personality to emerge
that might not have otherwise appeared. This is from the quickening
of karma, from the expansion of the experiences that are coming to
us in life. We are rewroking the personality to be a better
instrument, and yet have less time and energy to spend on its
self-cultivation. There may even appear *gaps* in the personality,
as well, and these are to let in something higher into our lives.

We are devoting our attention, our awareness, our consciousness to
selfless service, to universal love, and to the grandest of
philosophy, and are just *somewhere else*.

There are people whom wish to escape the petty nature of life, to
free themselves from the aweful oppressive feeling of existence in
a heavy, burdensome, grossly-material personality, a personality that
is sickened by the weight of material existence and selfishness.
They pretend, they make believe, they imagine and play at being
something else, something bigger, but do not fool themselves very well.

They carry with themselves a feeling of horror, of shame, of unreality,
of failure that brings a sense of pain to the daily events of life.
This feeling is the opposite of what we train ourselves. We bring the
opposite into play, filling the background of our lives with hope,
with accomplishment, with reality, with success, with bliss, that
brightens our lives and the lives of those around us!

We too want to escape the sense of personal self, since it is the
cause of suffering, and seek the bliss of transcending it. We also
shift our attention away from the person that we are, from our
personality. But this does not mean that we do not wish to care for
it, to imporve it, to broaden and enlighten and infill it with the
light of the spirit. We care for the personality, it is an important
element of our nature and we give it its due respect.

Transcending the personality does not happen by pretense, by
make believe. It is not done by calling oneself something. We do not
become greater by comparison to others, by putting down other people
nor by finding things to call ourselves that make us seem greater.
Nothing is gained by status, recognition, by symbols or external
trappings that merely provide ego gratification.

If we feel different, special, better than others, if we feel we are
somehow set apart, in a special group, if we feel that we have some
particular characteristic that makes us superior, then *that feeling*
is our biggest enemy. Anything that pulls us out of our communion with
our inner nature, and makes us self-aware of being particular
personalities, apart from others, is a barrier to our progress.

We become the higher nature by doing it, by living it, by making life
an expression of it. And this comes by forgetting self, not by
magnifying the sense of self, not by felling bigger, better, higher
than others.

Inflation is the psychological term for an abnormal sense of self,
where one feels hs is bigger, better, vaster than he really is. It is
a dream, a delusion, a dysfunction of personality.

Were a little girl to put on her Mom's clothes, and say she was grown
up, and were she to truly believe it, she would be fooling herself.
An egotist needs to feel that he is better than others in some way.
A member of some new age group may need to be told, and to believe,
that he is very advanced spiritually, far above the common man. A
preacher may believe that his opinion is really the word of God. There
are countless ways that we can fool ourselves, that we can associate
with something bigger and identify with it and use that indentification
as an escape from the duties and lessons of life.

Feeling special, unique, superior because of having some unique
possession, or having some rare attribute of personality, be it
physical beauty, wealth, a strong mind, abnormal psychical development,
is a failure, a failure of the spiritual nature to make its presence
felt. We are centered in the personality, grasping for things to
incorporate into it, strengthening the sense of personal self, and
attempting to take in and claim personal ownership of things that are
simply greater than ourselves. And we become inflated, swept away in
a delusion!

We can, though, be infilled with the higher, with the real, the true,
the ever-present spiritual reality about us. And this is not delusional,
it does not lead to inflation. We are not focusing on the personal,
centered in the personality, and it therefore does not puff up like
a balloon with a sense of self-importance.

As we shift our focus away from the personal, as we establish our
seat of consciousness higher within, the spiritual passes through us,
permeating us, but we attempt in no way to personally contain it.

Looking at someone on the spiritual path, we may see more personal
problems than the average person. As he cultivates the spiritual and
works out karma, his life becomes fuller, and he has much less time for
personal cultivation. He is busy helping others rather than perfecting
himself.

Having personal problems is not a sign that we have taken the wrong
path. We may end up less beautiful, less healthy, less normal
psychologically, poorer, more misuderstood--many of the outer aspects
of our personal self may decline. There is no guarantee which way
they will change when we enter probation. And it really does not matter.

Something wonderful is at work, though, something wonderful within
our natures, for we are really much more than is readily apparent.
We are much more than the personality that we use, the personality
that currently houses us as human egos on our earth, on Globe D.

There is a certain holiness, a spiritual peace, a strength of heart,
a inner wisdom that is special, unique, and transcends anything that
we could possibly have attained through personal self-cultivation.
The higher principles are beginning to be active in our lives, and
their affects are starting to show.

As we start along that path which will one day lead to our becoming
forces for good in the world, we may or may not fit in well with our
particular culture. We may sometimes be unknown, othertimes be an
outcast or misfit, and at others have fame and honor bestowed upon us.

We have reached the stage, though, where it does not matter to us;
we are unaffected by worldly acclaim. For we serve the work, the order,
the plan, the Law of Compassion, and we function from a higher seat of
concsiousness within ourselves.

Psychology may still describe the workings of our personalities, and
from a merely psychological point of view we may be worse off in how
we function. But we are operating from a higher level of consciousness
and see life from a vista, a wide panorama of which the
personality-centered people are blind. Others may look at us and see
malfunctions of the personality, with poerhaps some nice side effects,
and miss entirely what is going on.

The personality was evolved forth as a carrier, a vehicle, as a means
to hold and express our true nature, our real self, and not to function
as a thing in its own right. It is this functioning, apart from the
spritual nature, that is the true malfunctioning of the personality.
It is the lack of the inner light, as a guide, to the personal life,
that allows the personality to not function according to its intended
purpose.

We must not get caught up in psychology, although a minimal
psychological health is necessary to be functional, it is not an end
in itself. Like maintaining minimal physical health, it is useful,
but life should be no more devoted to body building, and centered
around the gym, than to psyche-building, centered around the therapist.

A doctor is seen if we are in poor physical health. And we may see
a psychologist if necessary to keep ourselves functional in our
materialistic western society. But let's find ourselves those doctors
and healers whom have open hearts, developed inner natures that allow
them to treat the whole man.

The importance of psychology is not denied, no more is the importance
of physiology. But let us not dwell on the physical self, and picture
ourselves a bodies of meat, nor dwell on the psychological self, and
picture ourselves as a bundle of needs, a living kamarupa.

Let us, instead, dwell in the highest, in the holy, the spiritual, the
grand side of life. Let us keep the highest present in our lives as we
go about the day, from waking until we drop off to sleep at night.
Let us awaken to the rich sea of beauty that all of live is bathed in,
be infilled with it, and become a thing of beauty ourselves, as we
give expression to it in our lives.

                         Eldon Tucker (eldon@netcom.com)