Identity and Personality
Gnostic psychology has a very particular understanding of what the personality is. The personality is based in time, where we were born, our family and upbringing, education etc. The personality and everything we associate with what defines us in this lifetime, and when our physical body dies the personality is gone.
Everyone has a unique personality and everyone also has a unique and immortal essence. The essence connects us with ourselves, with other people, and with the divine. Our essence reminds us of humility, of knowing how to listen, it expands beyond time and space.
The essence is unifying and expansive; the personality is limited and can be divisive if we allow it to determine who we truly are.
The personality has a certain limited usefulness as it allow our essence, trapped in the conditioning and patterning known as the ego, to express itself in this particularly lifetime.
Through the personality we can navigate and live in this body, in this time, in this place, and hopefully learn the necessary lessons of awakening the consciousness.
But when we forget our true nature and rely largely on the identity markers of personality, the most external and temporary part of us, we lose something crucial. Identity generates division, a sense that no one outside our identity can understand us. As we feel misunderstood we also misunderstand and compassion for all beings becomes more difficult.
Psychological Identification
To be identified in a given moment is even more subtle than identity.
Psychological identification is when the inner conscious sense of self-remembering is lost and becomes identified with something external, be it a thought, an idea, an outer event, a person etc. We are not anchored in the consciousness and the attention pours outward into the situation and the egoic reaction.
Continued identification leads to fasciation (from “fasten”, “to bind”), where it becomes more difficult to separate, and then into the deep sleep of the consciousness.
And just as it is very difficult to know we are asleep at night and to act in any deliberate, intentional way, when the consciousness is asleep we may walk and talk but none of it is from a truly awake and alive state.
“Identification and fascination lead to the sleep of the consciousness. For example, you are walking quite calmly down the street, you suddenly encounter a public demonstration; the masses vociferate, they talk about the leaders of the people, the flags wave through the air, people seem to be crazy, everybody speaks, everybody yells.
That public demonstration is very interesting. Because of it, you have already forgotten everything you had to do. You become identified with the masses; the speaker’s words convince you. The public demonstration is so interesting that you already forgot yourself. You become so identified with that street demonstration that you can no longer think of anything else. You are fascinated. You now fall into the sleep of consciousness. Mixed with the shouting masses, you also shout and you even throw stones and insults. You are dreaming beautifully. You no longer know who you are. You have forgotten everything.
-Samael Aun Weor, Esoteric Treatise of Hermetic Astrology
Key of SOL
“Behold how difficult it is to remain with the consciousness awake from instant to instant, from moment to moment, from second after second. However, if one has true longings for becoming fully awakened—this is the beginning—one must not forget oneself, not even for a moment.
Yes, one must keep remembering oneself wherever one walks- in any living room, or on whichever street one goes by walking, jogging, or riding a car, whether it be night or day- wherever one might be, at work or in the shop, anywhere: one must remember oneself while at the presence of any beautiful object, or while before any window-shop where very beautiful things are being shown, etc. in other words, one must not become identified with anything that one likes or is captivated by.”
-Samael Aun Weor, Key of SOL
A great key to separate from identification, fascination, and sleep is an exercise called Subject Object Location (SOL).
Dividing the attention in three parts in any given moment:
Subject: remembering oneself, one’s inner sense of being.
Object: observe your surroundings, the people and objects in the environment and be aware of what is happening around you.
Location: Ask ourselves, why am I in this place? What dimension am I in? Am I dreaming?
This exercise is worth using intensely for a period of time. Notice the results, they can be life changing.
As we make efforts to awaken we will realize the depth of our sleep. As we awaken we will benefit from more intimate self-knowledge, it will be more difficult to be manipulated by external forces, and we will experience more serenity and genuine compassion.