Seeing through the Persona

I Stood Upon a High Place I stood upon a high place, And saw, below, many devils Running, leaping, and carousing in sin. One looked up, grinning, And said, “Comrade! Brother!” – Stephen Crane (1871-1900) The brighter the light, the darker the shadow. Everything has a shadow side. If you don’t see the shadow of a person, you don’t see the person and are blinded by idealization. If you don’t see your own shadow, you are in denial, and will project your shadow onto others. When I took this detail shot of the person in the photo I had not seen much of their shadow. Since they are a Gemini I knew that there was probably a hidden twin that I hadn’t met. When the darker twin came forward it was painfully apparent. A good rule of thumb is that if you don’t see a person’s shadow, you have not seen the whole person and should not relate to them as if you had. Many people begin romantic relationships from a place of idealization and are sometimes even foolish enough to make long term commitments based on that woefully incomplete comprehension of the other person. Similarly, if you are not [...]

Be wary of those who approach with hollow intentions. Choose your companions with infinite care. Know the difference between an acquaintance and a friend or spiritual ally. Are you hanging out with people with whom you would trust your life? Life is too short to spend in hollow company when it could be lived with true friends, soulmates, spiritual allies, or creative solitude. Some people approach us with hollow intentions; they seek us for pleasure, manipulation, money, power or just out of impulsive, neurotic chaos. We must be discriminating and set strong boundaries between those who approach with unworthy intentions and ourselves. T.S. Elliot wrote a haunting poem entitled “The Hollow Men.” Here are a couple of excerpts: We are the hollow men We are the stuffed men Leaning together Headpiece filled with straw. Alas! Our dried voices, when We whisper together Are quiet and meaningless… The eyes are not here There are no eyes here In this valley of dying stars In this hollow valley You are not the first to notice that there are amazing numbers of hollow people. Lacking a strong individual core, hollow folk are inevitably determined by outside conditioning. Hollow folk in the Fifties lived [...]

“There will be time, there will be time To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;” — T.S. Eliot You are not your persona or social self. We all put on social masks and in some circumstances they are quite necessary. But they are not who you are. If some old masks no longer serve, let them melt away. Sometimes we put on masks to meet the outer world — we act differently at work or school than with intimate friends, adopt specialized demeanors when interacting with police or on a job interview. But some people — some police, for example, or people forever trying to be cool — come to identify with the persona. They believe they are the persona, the uniform or cool clothes wear them, and authenticity and their essence become ever more submerged. I once saw a magazine ad that showed a generic square-jawed male model looking very self-satisfied. The caption of the ad was something like this: “Underneath his Yves St. Laurent shirt, his Pierre Cardin jacket, his Porsche designer sun glasses, John Lance wears Brut.” In other words, under his exoskeleton of brand names is just one more brand name. An [...]

Be wary of those who approach with hollow intentions. Choose your companions with infinite care. Know the difference between an acquaintance and a friend or spiritual ally. Are you hanging out with people with whom you would trust your life? Life is too short to spend in hollow company when it could be lived with true friends, soulmates, spiritual allies, or creative solitude. Some people approach us with hollow intentions; they seek us for pleasure, manipulation, money, power or just out of impulsive, neurotic chaos. We must be discriminating and set strong boundaries between those who approach with unworthy intentions and ourselves. T.S. Elliot wrote a haunting poem entitled “The Hollow Men.” Here are a couple of excerpts: We are the hollow men We are the stuffed men Leaning together Headpiece filled with straw. Alas! Our dried voices, when We whisper together Are quiet and meaningless… The eyes are not here There are no eyes here In this valley of dying stars In this hollow valley You are not the first to notice that there are amazing numbers of hollow people. Lacking a strong individual core, hollow folk are inevitably determined by outside conditioning. Hollow folk in the Fifties lived [...]

“There will be time, there will be time To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;” — T.S. Eliot What is going on beneath the social masks presented to the interpersonal world? Let worthy others see your inner light. Sometimes we put on masks to meet the outer world — we act differently at work or school than with intimate friends, adopt specialized demeanors when interacting with police or on a job interview. But some people — some police, for example, or people forever trying to be cool — come to identify with the persona. They believe they are the persona, the uniform or cool clothes wear them, and authenticity and their essence become ever more submerged. I once saw a magazine ad that showed a generic square-jawed male model looking very self-satisfied. The caption of the ad was something like this: “Underneath his Yves St. Laurent shirt, his Pierre Cardin jacket, his Porsche designer sun glasses, John Lance wears Brut.” In other words, under his exoskeleton of brand names is just one more brand name. An ad for Seiko watches still currently in print says (approximately), “It’s not your clothes that say the most about who [...]

People are not always what they seem. Respect the otherness of the other and don’t be sure you know who they are. It is hard enough to know who you are. And remember that other people are the ultimate drug — as social mammals we are incredibly influenced by the people we are around and that influence is on multiple levels that often escape our awareness. The I Ching puts great emphasis on choosing your companions with care. Solitude is usually preferable to unworthy companionship. Avoid associating yourself with people with whom you wouldn’t trust your life. Solitude is usually preferable to unworthy companionship.

Recognize the conditioned, chaotic patterns of the adolescent, socialized side of your personality. The positive aspect is that this is a propitious time to work on that. Who are you when away from the maddening world of the he said/ she said soap opera? In my experience, few people ever recover from high school. What is People magazine, for example, but high-school gossip on a national scale? This culture would like to keep you a fragmented adolescent all your life, forever buying stuff to be cool, endlessly working the impossible task of perfecting your appearance, ever on the prowl for the Hottie. It’s up to you whether you want to keep spinning the treadmill of that endless program or metamorphose into an adult form, rediscover your original essence and accomplish your unique mission in the world.

As a narcissistic personality type, I know how easy it is to become addicted to specialness. Basking in specialness can be quite the sugar rush, but sugar rushes also inevitably lead to sickening sugar-binge hangovers. Sometimes indulging specialness can be like free-basing narcissism, the blood-sugar rush of gazing at your reflection as you pirouette in a borrowed coat of many colors while birthday fireworks explode into fiery scintillations of molten color all around you. Like any rush, specialness is highly addictive, and produces a high that is impossible to maintain. As the ad slogan for Coke puts it, you “Catch the Wave.” There’s that surge of blood-sugar-spiking specialness, and for some moments you ride the wave like a golden surfer boy. But the wave always crashes, and you discover that specialness takes a lot of energy, that it quickly becomes a massive, massive energy drain sucking all the life marrow out of the moment. As a recovering specialness addict, I know that withdrawal is a long and complex process. Thinking that you can get rid of specialness once and for all is itself an indulgence in specialness. At this phase of the process, I often become aware when I am [...]

Focusing on the small side of relationship. It is all too easy for our attention to become obsessed with some overblown soap opera. Handle your relationships in a way you will remember well on your deathbed. If you are emotionally entangled, then ask yourself the question: “When have I felt this before?” If you are honest with yourself you will almost certainly recall having the same sort of feelings in previous circumstances. Instead of attributing the feelings to the particular, current situation recognize that outside events are merely triggers for classic internal patterns of emotional reactivity, which ar inevitably stirred up by something. How much will the present difficulty matter in 100 years?

Corrupted by adolescent narcissism and the celebrity culture. Depending on the position, this card may refer to you and/or someone you are close to. The positive aspect is that this may be a propitious time to work on transforming these qualities. We live in an adolescent, narcissistic culture. People magazine, for example, is intended for adults, but looks like high school gossip on a national scale. Few people in our society fully recover from high school. Many so-called adults are ungracefully aging adolescents. We have all been subjected to conditioning to make us narcissistic, perpetually adolescent and addicted. This is a propitious time to investigate our conditioning and work on reclaiming our essence from the culture of Prince Harming.