“By the content of their character.”

Card messages in the Illuminated position.

+ Self

(true personality, authenticity, maturity)

1. Dealing with limitation is the challenge for building a diversified, mature Self. Draw on your talents to mitigate or overcome them.
   
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 Overleaves were chosen by you to be exactly who you are. Hold the intent that everyone present is responding this way.

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 
• “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

Card messages in the Shadow position.

– Ego – False Personality

(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 subduing it.
4. Someone’s Ego is broadcasting “help me”! See if you can get past their act and acknowledge the fear that is driving it.

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~
  
• “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~
  

Relevance in the Michael Teaching

The Personality is the housing in which an Essence assembles a set of Overleaf characteristics to form a working simulacrum of itself on the Physical Plane. The journey of the Soul through many lives on its revolutions through its Cycle, 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.

Encountering a person in this state does not always mean they are likable, 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.

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 © 2012

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