Every one of us has a fundamental flaw, an immaturity of character, a dark side or negative tendency. This character flaw, also known as a ‘Chief Feature’, tends to take control whenever we feel stressed, anxious or uncertain. To the extent that you can identify and handle yours, you are doing well in your personal growth.
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What is a Chief Feature?
Generally speaking, all personality traits (or overleaves) are neutral. They can be applied positively or negatively, but in themselves they are neither positive nor negative. Personality traits are merely different ways of being.
A chief feature [1] is different. A chief feature is negative by nature.
A chief feature is a dominant negative attitude — a defensive and potentially destructive pattern of thinking, feeling and acting. We could also call it a constraining factor or personal stumbling block.
We all have at least one. It comes and goes in childhood, solidifies during adolescence, and then surrounds us like a protective shell in adulthood. It seems like a good thing to have at first but, as I will explain, it is based on a false premise and so serves no real purpose. Throughout adulthood it just interferes with our lives by blocking aspects of our true nature and stifling our true character, usually without us even knowing.
Your chief feature is your primary ego defence and your main stumbling block in life.
This article describes how the chief feature comes to have such a stranglehold on our personality. First, though, a general description of the seven possible chief features.
The seven chief features
In the Michael teachings there are seven types of chief feature (character flaw / constraint / personal defect / stumbling block, whatever you prefer).
Here they are listed from the most introverted to the most extroverted:
- Self-Deprecation (belittling/diminishing/undervaluing oneself)
- Self-Destruction (sabotaging/punishing/harming oneself)
- Martyrdom (denying responsibility for oneself)
- Stubbornness (resisting change in one’s life)
- Greed (selfish overindulgence, over-consumption)
- Arrogance (inflating/exalting/overvaluing oneself)
- Impatience (intolerance of frustration/obstruction/delay)
Note how they can be arranged in pairs (plus one in the middle):
Impatience and martyrdom are both about our actions. It is as if there is a battle of wills going on between ourselves and others, or life, or even ourselves.
- With impatience, we hate it whenever anything interferes with our will or slows us down. “Why do people always stop me from doing what I need to do? Everybody should just get out of my way.” Frustration is intolerable.
- With martyrdom, we feel a constant need to blame others for our own actions, as though we have no will of our own, or no other choice. “Don’t blame me for what I do. It’s all your fault.” Responsibility always lies elsewhere.
Greed and self-destruction are both about our personal existence and relationship to life. In both cases, there is a mindset that prevents us from ever feeling OK in life.
- With greed, we feel a need to grasp and hoard, as though there were an intolerable lack of some vital substance: “Life will never be OK until I have it all.” But the sense of lack is a bottomless pit.
- With self-destruction, our very existence is increasingly intolerable: “Life will never be OK until I end it all.” There is a constant inner turmoil that makes us want to get away from ourselves.
Arrogance and self-deprecation are both about controlling how we are perceived, or at least how we imagine we are perceived. The thought behind them is something like, “Who I really am will never be satisfactory in the eyes of others. So no-one must ever see the real me.”
- With arrogance, we feel a need to be seen as better than others because being ordinary is intolerable. “I must never come across as merely average; I must always seem better than the next guy.” It’s a superiority complex.
- With self-deprecation, we feel a need to be seen as little as possible because we believe ourselves to be miserably inadequate. “If anyone takes a close look at me, they will see how pathetic I really am.” This is an inferiority complex.
Stubbornness is simply about change in any form.
- With stubbornness, we feel a need to keep all things just as they are and resist any outside influence, even positive ones: “No, no, no! You can’t make me. I won’t have it. Leave well alone!”
We all have, within us, elements of all seven of these negative patterns. It goes with the human condition. And we can be influenced by any of them from time to time. But whichever one of these patterns is always subconsciously pulling your strings, that is your chief feature, your primary obstacle, your Achille’s heel.
In terms of our psychological well-being, personal growth and spiritual development in later life, our chief feature presents a challenge. To overcome it, we have to become more conscious. But if we utterly succumb to it, the result can be a grotesque character flaw.
Anatomy of a Character Flaw
Understanding the personality is like playing with Russian dolls — removing one layer reveals another layer underneath. If we were to open up a character flaw, what would we find? Here is my psychological understanding of the anatomy of the chief feature.
Persona
First of all, the outermost layer is what psychologists call the persona.
This layer is a mask, a pose, an act. It’s how we as adults want others to see us … a false image designed to hide the “truth” about us.
(This layer is particularly dense for those with arrogance or self-deprecation.)
For example, someone might be in the habit of acting like they are perfect and superior in every way. Their mask of superiority is what their chief feature wants the world to see instead of the terrible truth within — an ordinary, flawed human being. This would be part of the chief feature of arrogance.
The persona layer of the chief features is a cover story, a decoy, a fabrication. And it is specifically crafted to hide what lies underneath …
Shadow
There is within each of us a hidden layer of negativity and denial, known in psychology as the shadow.
The shadow includes all the childish ways we would act out our negative feelings, were we to allow it. Such negativity may be directed either against the world outside or specific others or against the self — but it is single-minded and desperate, being driven by our worst fears, our inner demons.
The “demons” within us represent our personality at its most selfish, destructive and immature. These childish aspects of ourselves are obsessed with getting their own way, and terrified of getting it wrong.
We wear the persona as a mask to hide these ugly tendencies from public view. The outer image of ourselves portrayed by the persona is usually the exact opposite of the inner image we hold of our own shadow. If my suppressed urge (shadow) is to be nasty, for example, my public image (persona) may come across as unusually nice.
Fear
Finally, if we lift away this negative reactive layer (the shadow), we find the emotional core of the chief feature. This is a core of fear — personified as the helpless young child within us who fears to repeat some sort of painful experience.
At the core of personality we have our emotional memory banks from early childhood, even from birth. There will also be emotional resonances with traumas from past lives. Here is where all experiences of loss, deprivation, abandonment, neglect, abuse and mistreatment have left their mark.
The tremendous fear of repeating such experiences is the emotional engine of our negative and destructive tendencies, and the driving force of the entire chief feature.
How we create our own stumbling-block
Every child is born with a list of needs and desires.
- Infants need nurturing, caring, attention, affection—in a word, love—in order to feel safe and secure.
- Toddlers need to assert themselves and discover their capabilities and limitations as independent physical beings.
- Schoolchildren need to form relationships and be accepted by their peers.
But life is never perfect. In some cases, there is deliberate abuse. Parents can be emotionally immature or insensitive, or too wrapped up in their own problems to care for the needs of a child. Even the best parents are imperfect in their love. Some are physically unable to give the child the optimum type or amount of love required. Sometimes, parents just die or disappear from life.
It isn’t all about the parents, of course. Siblings can also have a devastating effect on the child, as can friends, neighbours and schoolteachers. Some research shows that parental influence on a child’s development is prominent only up to age five, after which peer groups become the greater influence.
Inevitably, a child carries his or her own version of suffering. There is always some degree, however small, of loss, deprivation, frustration, trauma, abandonment, neglect, abuse or mistreatment.
Fear
All chief features are based in fear, and fear is the driving force behind all the negative poles of the overleaves, and the cosmos for that matter.
MICHAEL
Having undergone negative experiences, the child now has a constant fear of the negative experiences recurring. “If life is out to get me, it could get me at any moment. I never know how it might get me next.”
The fear may be a terror of some specific bad experience happening again, or it could be more of a dread of some awful thing which is always threatening to get worse. Either way, it becomes the adult personality’s deeply held sense of insecurity.
The chief feature is a character structure designed to avoid or handle a particular kind of fear.
Chief features are all built around a basic fear, which is another way of saying a block. However, it is not the fear that is the cause of the chief feature. The chief feature operates because of the protection believed necessary from that fear. It is, in essence, the fear of fear; the belief that you cannot survive if you surrender and experience the fear and what is underlying the fear. The structure is built upon that foundation.
MICHAEL
There are, of course, seven fundamental fears: [2]
Misconceptions
The soul still “remembers” what perfect love and freedom and security feel like, so the harsh realities of incarnation can come as a shock.
Because of the negative experiences of childhood, especially if such experiences are repeated or if they are particularly traumatic, a child begins to construct a somewhat distorted worldview. In other words, the child puts together false beliefs or negative ideas about the self, about others or about life in general.
The nature of the child’s misconceptions depend upon the type and strength of the specific painful experiences. For example, if the child is regularly punished for no apparent reason, the child might conclude that “life is out to get me.”
Children tend to over-generalise, so this misconception becomes all-encompassing. It becomes a personal myth.
Negative behaviour
Driven by a deeply-held fear, and steered by a distorted worldview, the emerging chief feature springs into action. The child thinks for instance, “I will stop life from hurting by taking control of my pain. I will hurt myself more than anybody else can.”
The child’s chosen survival strategy involves some sort of conflict, a war against self, against others or against life.
It is a defensive behaviour pattern which looks irrational from the outside but from the child’s perspective is perfectly rational. It is this way of acting which make up the negativity of the emerging chief feature in childhood.
Chief feature is a survival device, and one of its strongest hooks into the personality is the instilled conviction that you cannot survive without it. The lure of the chief feature is that when there is much stress and the circumstances are difficult, it will in fact get you through.
MICHAEL
Distortion of the life goal
Your life’s goal is one of the overleaves chosen by your soul before incarnating. There are seven possible goals (Dominance, Growth, Acceptance, Surrender, Submission, Rejection and Retardation).
For the soul, the goal it chooses is a way to evolve through physical life. While we are incarnate, pursuing our goal offers a path to joy and fulfillment.
But for the chief feature, however, the urging of the goal is a threat to the personality’s survival strategy.
The life goal tends to seek greater love, truth and freedom, while the chief feature is like a parasite that feeds on fear, falsehood and self-limitation. Happiness itself is “part of the problem”— something to be feared and avoided as far as possible.
And so the chief feature, in its mindless, terrified way, convinces us that negativity is the only safe option. Higher principles such as truth, joy, freedom and love are incomprehensible to the chief feature and therefore not to be trusted.
The chief feature distorts the functioning of the goal as we make life choices. It mixes up our pure desire with our primitive fears. It interprets positive options as threats to our survival. It blinds us to the possibilities and makes our chances of fulfilment virtually impossible.
In attaching expectations and conditions to the goal, the chief feature “colors” it so that it cannot be recognized or it becomes acceptable only under certain very limited circumstances, often circumstances that are impractical at best, such as a young woman with genuine back problems who feels that the only way she can be worth anything in life is if she becomes a ballet dancer.
MICHAEL
In this way, the chief feature turns us away from the positive pole of our goal and towards its negative pole. For example:
- If your goal is dominance, your soul may be desiring to show great leadership (the positive pole of dominance) but your chief feature manifests as dictatorship.
- If your goal is acceptance, your soul’s desire is to learn how to accept others unconditionally but the effect of your chief feature will be ingratiation—begging to be accepted by others.
- If your goal is growth, your soul’s desire is to have the sort of contrasting experiences that lead to great insight and comprehension, but the influence of your chief feature will merely lead you into confusion.
Image management
Coming of age—the transition from adolescent to adult—is a major turning point in anyone’s life. The prospect of leaving the family home and operating as a free agent in adult society is, in some ways, like starting life all over again.
Emerging adults need to feel safe and secure, just like infants. They need to assert themselves and discover their limits, just like toddlers. They need to be accepted by their peers, just like schoolchildren.
All of this can trigger a terrible fear, buried deep in their psyche, of repeating the same sort of painful experiences that happened in the first few years of life. The defensive strategy is designed to prevent this from happening.
However, the emerging adult faces a dilemma: I want to be an adult, and be seen as an adult. But my normal survival strategy is socially unacceptable — it makes me look like a child. I have to protect myself, but I also have to manage how others see me.
The solution is to develop a “spilt personality” — the childish fears, attitudes and negativity become locked away inside (to become the shadow), while a carefully managed public image is presented to the world (the persona).
One final final step, which happens more often than not, is when the young adult actually identifies with their own image or persona. In other words, they believe their own lie. Now the chief feature is a closed system, an almost inescapable cycle.
A Vicious Circle
Like the symbolic serpent eating its own tail, the chief feature is a vicious circle that feeds on fear, illusion and falsehood.
I find it fascinating the way the chief feature works. Not only does it interfere with natural self-expression and self-fulfilment, it also attracts the very thing which the personality fears—and then uses this to justify its own existence!
For example, consider a young woman with a chief feature of arrogance.
Her innermost fear says to her, “My secret imperfections leave me vulnerable to unbearable criticism.” She fears exposing this vulnerability. Any such exposure is a no-no. So her behaviour becomes a message to the world: “I’m magnificent, folks. I am already complete. My life is as perfect as it can get. Don’t even bother looking for imperfections.”
Needless to say, however, going around acting all high and superior like this inevitably attracts criticism, the very thing she is seeking to avoid.
But when this happens, her chief feature simply notes the criticism, decides that her mask of perfect invulnerability needs to be reinforced, and ups its game! Instead of acting overtly superior and self-important, she may now do it more subtly by highlighting weaknesses in others, becoming very critical of others’ failings. This draws attention away from her own vulnerabilities and, by implication, gives the impression of her not having those same weaknesses. She might also learn subtle ways to invite praise from others, thereby keeping them focused on her better aspects and oblivious to her failings.
The chief feature is is like a black hole in the personality. Not only does it suck the joy out of life but it is also invisible, a psychological blind spot. People generally do not know what their greatest flaw is because they cannot see it.
It’s also a self-fulfilling prophecy: “The thing I fear the most just keeps happening to me.” The chief feature is oblivious to its own causal role in the process.
Getting rid of a chief feature therefore is a very difficult task precisely because it has such a seductive grip on the entire personality. Even if we become aware of it, we are not sure of we can survive without it. We can, however, become more conscious of it. We can feel it when it is trying to take over. And once we are aware of its ways of working, we have more choice. We can choose to ignore the fear that normally bosses us around, or at least accommodate it in a non-destructive way.
Positive and negative poles
Like all overleaves, each type of chief feature has its positive pole and its negative pole.
- The negative pole of a chief feature represents the state in which false beliefs and maladaptive behaviours are in total control of the personality. You are acting unconsciously, reacting to situations out of fear.
- The postive pole of a chief feature represents the state in which the grip of fear has loosened—the chief feature is no longer in control, though it is still making its presence felt. You are able to act more consciously from a position of power and choice. There is still some unnecessary influence, however.
The positive and negative poles of the chief features are shown below. For a more detailed explanation, see the individual pages on each type of chief feature.
Primary and Secondary
I have been talking about the chief feature, or the character flaw, but in fact people usually have two of them distorting their personality—a primary and a secondary.
The primary is the one that distorts one’s life goal. The secondary, however, distorts one’s life attitude (how the personality perceives life). So while the effect of the primary flaw is outward, affecting overt behaviour, the effect of the secondary is inward, affecting how we think and feel.
In my case, for example, my primary obstacle is impatience — a tendency to rush and push, driven by a fear of missing out. This interferes with my life goal, which happens to be growth (the desire for intense and varied experiences). So having impatience as my chief feature means that I am frequently anxious about missing out on opportunities to experience life. I tend to rush from one activity to the next like a bull in a china shop, afraid that if I slow down I will miss out on some important experience.
My secondary obstacle is self-deprecation — a tendency to diminish oneself out of a fear of having one’s basic inadequacy exposed to the world. This distorts my life attitude, which happens to be idealism (focusing on positive possibilities, how life can be). So having self-deprecation interfering with my attitude means that I tend to think about how much better my life would be ideally, if it wasn’t for me and my inadequacies.
Does “chief feature” mean the same as “ego”?
Spiritual teachers often say that our main problem in life, the thing that leads to unhappiness and hampers our spiritual growth, is our own ego. So is “chief feature” just another name for ego, and vice versa?
Well, we have to be very careful with the word “ego”, as it has completely different meanings in different contexts.
To the general public, the word ego refers to that part of us which loves praise, fame, success, victory. It is the selfish part of us that wants to win the game of life, the big-headed part of us that likes to believe “I am the best”, the infantile part that wants us to have it all, now.
However, many psychiatrists since Freud have used the word “ego” to refer to what they regard as the most advanced function of the mind — namely, the ability to be rational, to make decisions, to resolve problems. They also regard this rational “ego” as synonymous with the “self”. (In other words, there is no spirit or soul; there is only the ego, which is a function of the human mind.)
So to the lay person, the ego represents all that is bad in human nature, while to the psychiatrist the ego is important and valuable — the basis of rational choice.
Spiritual teachings tend to combine both views. They regard the ego as both rational and self-serving. Being rational, it cannot grasp the ultimate unity of reality. Being self-serving, it blocks our spiritual nature and so prevents us from experiencing love, joy and fulfilment. And so spiritual teachers urge us to transcend the ego in order to become whole, to connect with all of life, and to discover our real meaning, value and purpose.
At the same time, most spiritual teachings also make a definite distinction between the ego and the real self. In the spiritual framework, the ego is a false or lower self, while the Self is our inner being, our true nature. The ego is simply a structure in the mind which claims to be one’s self but isn’t.
It is in this sense that the chief feature may be identified with the ego. More exactly, the chief feature is the ego’s primary means for self-preservation.
Most people would readily identify the traits of arrogance, impatience and greed as obvious ego traits. Less obvious, though, are the more introverted chief features: self-deprecation, self-destruction, martyrdom, stubbornness. This is because of the general view of the ego as being outwardly selfish, big-headed and infantile. But if we regard the ego simply as a false self then we soon find all these traits at work.
Read on
Ok, that’s the background on the seven chief features. Now click on the links below to learn about each one in detail and see if you can spot your own. But be warned: your chief feature is a blind spot! Many people cannot see their own biggest flaw.
Self-Deprecation | Self-Destruction | Martyrdom
| Stubbornness |
Greed | Arrogance | Impatience
Books
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For an excellent book about the various negative patterns and how to handle them, see Transforming Your Dragons by José Stevens. |
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Another great and insightful book about the seven character flaws, including three common variants of each type: The Seven Archetypes of Fear |
, by Varda Hasselmann and Frank Schmolke.Notes
[1] The name “chief feature” was originally coined by the spiritual teachers Gurdjieff and Ouspensky. They wanted to indicate how most people are psychologically dominated by something negative in their own personality structure. It is possible that their source of inspiration was the entity known here as Michael. Many of those involved in the original Michael channelling group also had a background in this teaching, so the term carried over.
[2] I have noticed that some online writers have the fears slightly differently: they have worthlessness as the underlying fear of self-destruction and loss of control as the underlying fear of martyrdom, rather than vice-versa. The list shown here is consistent with all of the channelled material I have seen in the various Michael books and elsewhere.
Thats very good to know… thanks
Glad you like it.
I must be a deeply flawed individual because I recognize four of these things in myself, two of which are described in the text as almost polar opposites. I guess I’ll just go eat some Drano.
But you should recognize all of them in you to some extent. We can lapse into any of them from time to time. But the one that’s subconsciously dominant, constantly twisting your ability to make good life choices, is your chief feature. It’s like a suit of armor you don’t even know you’re wearing!
B.
LOL omg I thought the same thing. #Drano
Unpredictable swinging from self-deprecation to a-hole arrogance. There’s my problem right there. OK, so now what? Drano?
Thank you for this article. I have been looking into the seven chief flaws recently, but had not realized that there are common polarities and life goals as well. you list both of those in the above article, but you also mention the life attitudes, as well, noting that your own tends to be idealism. are there seven life attitudes as well? could you share the others?
thanks again.
Hi John
Yes, there are seven core attitudes in life and coincidentally I started writing about them today. (not finished yet)
In a nutshell:
1. Realism – objective viewpoint, focus on the facts of life, actualities and probabilities
2. Spiritualism – focus on higher meaning and purpose; being inspired by life
3. Idealism – focus on consensus viewpoint, shared meanings, ideas we can all agree on
3. Pragmatism – focus on each situation as is, not applying any overarching perspective
5. Cynicism – challenging others’ perceptions, being contrary
6. Skepticism – questioning and testing ideas before agreeing
7. Stoicism – being unaffected by life (especially hardship)
– barry
Barry,
Wow, that was fast! Thanks for the reply. It’s an interesting bit of synchronicity that just as I’m beginning to delve into some of this, you’ve begun to write more about the topic.
I’m glad to have discovered your site.
– J.
Hi Barry
I would like to know more about this subject and my own persona. I think i know some of my Character flaws but im not sure if im missing one (my blind spot). Would a proffessional be able to help with this.
Thanks
Chris
Hi Chris
Good question.
I think a professional would find it an unusual request, as they are generally trained to help with specific issues rather than “Do I have an issue I’m not aware of.”
(Therapists don’t provide answers, of course; rather, they guide clients to their own discovery of answers. I had a therapist who could see my blind spots on various things but wouldn’t tell me directly – she would just ask me “leading” questions … which my flawed personality would resist answering!)
Another point to consider is: how would you know when you’ve found it? Do you stop when you find one thing which you hadn’t been aware of, or do you keep going on indefinitely, assuming that there could be another blind spot in there somewhere? (That’s the thing with blind spots – you can’t see them!) It might depend on how much money you’re willing to spend.
I’m not saying don’t seek help if you feel drawn to it; just bear these things in mind. You might also be able to avoid the expense via other routes.
Another place to start, for example, is to look at what situations make you tense and anxious to the extent that you stop being your normal self and flip into some negative state – your worst self.
In my case, it’s time-related: I’m anxious to have my time and resent having it eaten up – a clue to impatience. I also project an artificial image that fits impatience – acting like I have many important things to do, thereby justifying my compulsive hyperactivity, and also giving the impression that I can’t take on any more jobs for others.
See how it all fits together like a puzzle – the image (persona), the underlying intentions of that (controlling others’ perceptions), the compulsive behaviour (trying to control situations to prevent some imagined disaster), and the fear itself, which is very close to the bone. (Hmm … I think some time in the near future I’ll draw up a checklist and post it here to see if that helps people find their chief features.)
Another place to go would might be asking a trusted friend (or, if you dare, a parent?) to be honest and tell you, from their observation and personal knowledge of you, what it is you repeatedly do that seems to hold you back, or that lacks maturity, or that “leaks” anxiety.
It could be subtle. Those with arrogance don’t all brag about themselves – a more subtle approach is to criticise others. But you can sense that they do it out of some dubious need, rather than out of wisdom.
I hope this helps in some way.
barry
Incredibly insightful and informative. Thanks for putting up this site. Definitely looking forward to future posts.
Many thanks, Ascanio
Very interesting, loved it, well first it scared me saw too much of myself in things said, then loved it as it gives me insight and knowledge, need to put it in practice for sure, thanks again
Thanks Maysie!
who wrote this? D:
Over here – Guilty as charged!
Thanks you for clearifying life for me XD
I’m really impressed and i admit a little jelous of how you were able to make as this understandable. I’m definitly going to use this ~ Thank you
ohh okay 😀 I was wondering if maybe I could quote this? Because I am writing an essay and I was wondering if I could quote your first sentence?
Feel free, muffin – and good luck with the essay.
Barry
This is such an amazing article, thank you. I feel I can understand my self destructive behavior more. I thought I was just crazy or a mess.
Thanks, Katie. I hope you now have a bit more clarity.
Barry
thank youuu!
p.s. GREAT article
interesting, very informative, more likely awakening article,,, more power! 🙂
I need to offer a prayer for having spotted your page. I’ve just finished a film script and realized something is missing. Was breaking my head for almost a month.I needed to find the flaw in my central character, when I stumbled on your page. I became feverish. took out my note book, with loud music on, I cried to myself, to have finding the right flaw, called my wife, to locate the flaws of many of our family members, and it gave us a insight, how imperfect we are in finding fault of others and doing I had become self exalted. Thank you very much. It looks like we are starting our life all over again.
I am really delighted you have found so much of value here Ajit.
barry
Is it possible to not have a chief feature? I can’t find it in me, I have a little bit of each. Could someone be just well balanced or its not possible to be that way?
First question is, how old are you? If you are a teenager or even younger, then you are likely still trying out various ways of being and haven’t yet taken the plunge. The move into adulthood, independence and separation from home is the main trigger.
There are other possibilities:
• Life is an unusually smooth ride for you, so your defensiveness isn’t being triggered as much as it might. (See goal of contentment/flow).
• If you are young (say 20s), perhaps your CF has not shown up often enough for you to spot it in action. (This may be more likely the case if you have stubbornness I imagine, if there hasn’t been a lot of change for you to resist.)
• it’s still a blind spot for you. My impatience was a blind spot for me until it was pointed out – then it was just embarrassingly obvious.
Another question to consider:-
In your darkest moments, what do you utterly fear about life? For me, it was always a dreadful fear of dying before I had done and experienced EVERYTHING (which is the underlying fear behind impatience).
Hello Barry,
I just had a question pertaining to the fear you mention in life. My biggest fear in life is to end up unsuccessful, financially, socially, whatever the case may be. And yet i find myself having terrible self discipline and doing what i notice as virtually nothing to make sure i become successful. I am 20 years old and can see my own arrogance masking my self-consciousness, but only act how i perceive to be confident because ive always wanted to be that charismatic guy that everyone likes. Much to my chagrin I’ve failed miserably and seem to always be perceived as different or weird. I do everything i can to be seen as physically attractive and I get compliments often but then when people get to know me nobody truly is attracted to me or it seems even like me.
Please if you can offer any enlightenment it would be much appreciated i need to know what step to take to improve my personality and work ethic.
Hi Brandon,
Thanks for getting in touch.
I’m not sure if your ultimate fear is one of missing out (impatience), lack (greed), or vulnerability (arrogance), or something else entirely. But anyway I think you’re at an age where societal pressures about how to approach life are at their strongest (you *must* become popular, successful, rich, famous, hot, cool, etc). Such goals or values might have nothing to do with your actual character and what you most deeply want out of life. Or … it might be that you do truly want to be rich or whatever, but you’re not coming at it from the real you.
Either way, there’s a difference between desire and intent – the difference being inner commitment. We can desire something all day long without going anywhere, but intent is what converts desire to action. So maybe a question to ask yourself is,
Do I actually want to be successful (or whatever)?
And if so, is it time I committed myself to that goal?
Or, if not, then is it time I dropped that assumption and found out what I DO truly desire?
My sense of what’s going on between you and others is this: in your current drive to be socially liked and accepted, you are presenting to the world an attractive, charismatic “front” – a mask or persona – which is how you want people to see you. So that’s a strategy that gets you to step 1 – people notice you and find you attractive. But where can you go from there in terms of relating? If someone really wants to know you, they have to see what’s behind the mask… Either you allow that or you don’t. If you don’t, then you’re not really being open to relationship. But if you do, then they will inevitably see that you are not being sincere.
When people perceive something as weird, this usually comes from an underlying reaction that goes something like: “I don’t know how to categorise this. I don’t know if it’s one thing or another.” For example, a duckbilled platypus is weird because it *seems* to be part mammal, part bird. Neither one thing nor the other. So if people find you weird, it may be that they’re not sure if you’re ‘charismatic’ or ‘nerdy’ for example. You surely can’t be both at the same time… So you may be giving off mixed signals or mixed messages.
One thing you can do is to focus less on manufacturing an image and more on expressing the real you. And if the real you isn’t very expressive or extravert or charismatic, then so be it. At least you’ll be coming across as genuine rather than weird. I remember in my own life, for example, how easier things got when I (1) admitted to myself that I am rather shy, and (2) stopped trying to pretend to others that I wasn’t.
Now I’m not saying you should stop trying to look attractive. Rather, it’s the intention behind it. Are you trying to enhance the real you? Or are you trying to lure people in with a great image but without allowing them to see the real you?
Barry
Does any of the chief feaures lead to overeating or emotional eating especially if you have a goal of losing weight?
What is the best approach if a person brings on your negative side aka causes your chief feature to come out?
Hi Will
Ok, two rather big questions there. 🙂 I’m not very well at the moment so excuse the delayed answers. (Same goes for others out there – I have a backlog of unanswered queries.)
1. Chief features and over-eating.
I don’t know for certain, but I would think it a safe bet that all of the CFs can lead to over-eating and being overweight. In my case with impatience, for example, I have used pleasure-eating as a way to get “instant results” when life seems to be denying my will.
All of the Chief Features evoke anxiety of some kind, and comfort eating can of course be a way to suppress or soothe anxiety. Freudian psychologists suggest that this is related to the “oral” stage of development, i.e. feeding in early infancy. The “oral personality” is one who is somewhat anxious and also dependent on others or on oral stimulation (eating, chewing, smoking) to provide relief from that anxiety.
I can also see some specific CF mechanisms associated with eating. Greed is pretty obvious: if one has a terrible fear of lack associated with food it will likely lead directly to compulsive eating.
But the self-destruction CF relates more to the conflict you are referring to (i.e. gaining weight despite having a goal of losing weight). Often, self-destruction manifests through under-eating as a way to be less physically present. But self-destruction also manifests in all kinds of self-sabotage and “inevitable” failure as a way to keep oneself in check. If you have self-destruction as a CF, you might well believe consciously that people would accept and like you more if you were lighter in weight, but unconsciously you could be saying to yourself “I don’t deserve to be accepted and liked, therefore I will become heavier.” Thwarting your own attempts at success or merely fitting in may not be rational, but it is perfectly “right” from the perspective of fear.
2. Handling your CF being triggered by others.
Well, there is a spectrum of possibilities.
At one extreme, you are completely unconscious of your CF and simply act out. For example, if impatience is your CF, then it has you convinced that it is VITAL that you do not miss out on ANY opportunity in life, and so you feel perfectly entitled to snap and snarl at the person in order to get your own way.
At the other extreme, you are very aware of your own CF and how it operates, and you handle it skilfully. You find it being triggered by certain people and you just consciously notice it – “Ah, bless. Here is my silly old ego’s deepest fear trying to muscle in and get me to follow a negative, defensive path”. You laugh it off and follow the highest goal of your choice
Most people are pretty much caught up in the first extreme – unaware and acting out. Those of us who are into personal and spiritual growth, however, are walking the line from the first extreme to the other.
However… handling the chief feature is one of the most difficult growth tasks any of us can face (whatever out level of evolution), so I think it’s important to not expect ourselves to be able to jump from one extreme to the other. I repeat: this is phenomenally difficult. It involves recognising and saying no to our own deepest fears. Emotionally, it feels like cutting off our own heads.
That’s a psychological perspective – what it feels like from the inside. But it might also help to try and see this from a spiritual perspective… If person X always triggers your chief feature (whatever it may be), then consider the likelihood that that is precisely the role they have volunteered to play for you at this time in your life.
Perhaps you agreed before birth that they would show up and press your buttons in this way – to help you become more conscious. On a physical level, it won’t seem like that at all. It just seems that someone “knows” exactly how to get you worked up. But that could well be the great service they have agreed to do for you.
In a sense, learning how to handle our fear of existence as separate beings is a lot to do with why we are here in the first place. Ultimately, we are here to learn how to be ourselves, fearlessly. And we help each other get there by drawing out one another’s fears.
So, that’s a long-winded way of saying there is no instant fix – but think of it as a long-term project. Set out to be more conscious, more alert to your triggers, less susceptible to your unconscious fears. Baby steps.
Thank you Barry.
I believe ultimately this world/universe is my own creating, thus if I have hardship it is of my own design.
Its such a marvel that we have people who will help us by pressing these “buttons.”
Good Journey!!
Will
Hi Barry,
Thank you so much for this insightful article – I don’t know if you are stil around, but wanted to share this with you and also ask you something/s. I just recently got a grip on some of my fears and I realised I have a whole bunch of them. I have this innate fear of failure. Failure of looking like a fool, failure in meeting people’s expectations. So instead of looking like a failure, what I do instead is sabotage expectations before people can build them or not get into a particular activity because of the fear that I might fail. Now that realisation has come, where does the courage come from to reverse this script? I mean I know it comes from somewhere deep inside of you – but something that has been a part of your life as long as you remember – if you change it- you cease to be you – so is the new you? What identity does that self have? What identity is that self supposed to create? I mean it seriously is like starting to live all over again and choosing a new identity and deciding which or what should it be. It sure looks difficult – but I am absolutely going to fight it- I also need to know any help on the ammunition I can use? 🙂 And also I figured my chief feature is self deprecation and the feeling of inadequacy. I crave acceptance, but the minute I get it, I think there must be something wrong with the person to have accepted me….vicious cycle for sure. Any help, clues, additional fighting material will be helpful 🙂
Hi there
Sounds like you’re dealing with a goal of Acceptance compromised by a chief feature of Self-Deprecation. In your heart you want others to accept you and embrace you for who you are, while in the back of your mind you fear them finding out that who you are is a phoney, a failure, not worthy of their acceptance. The sabotaging of others’ expectations is a classic pre-emptive strike – no one will be disappointed if they expect nothing of you in the first place, and no one can see you fail if you never actually try.
People with Self-Deprecation as their pattern usually develop a coping strategy of saying to the world something like “No need to worry about me, I’m just one of the guys, a regular person like you,” while secretly believing they are profoundly inadequate compared to everyone else. As a result, they feel like an impostor who could be found out at any moment, and live in constant terror of this “lie” being exposed.
You have done well to recognise that you have this particular pattern at work. The next step is to see if you can stop believing it so much, to dis-identify from the false self-image.
Your self-deprecating pattern would have you believe that your “true” self is the inadequate person you’ve been identified with so far. The more you believe that, the more power it has to keep those vicious circles going. A task you could give yourself might be to write and/or draw or otherwise describe your personal negative self-image – the most inadequate sense of you that is in there – and so make it totally explicit, put it out there, objectify it, see it for what it is, criticise it, laugh at it. This is one way to dis-identify from false ideas.
And as you’ve already discovered, recognising your underlying negative sense of self is not the same thing as letting it go or getting beyond it. It is still deeply embedded in your beliefs about who you are, to the extent that you feel that if you were to lose or change this sense of self then *you* would cease to be. But that is not true. You will not cease to be if you drop this false sense of self. You can have an image of yourself and then lose it, but YOU don’t go anywhere. No being has ever ceased to be by letting go of a false sense of self.
Most of us grow up without knowing who we really are. Most people are identified with some sense or image of themselves that may be true, or false, or a mixture of both, but in any case it simply isn’t the real self. Having a self-image is how we first become aware of ourselves – through what others say, then through self-observation and reflection. But an image of oneself is not one’s self. There is no need to fear losing or changing the image. It’s like seeing yourself for the first time in the mirror, and then fearing that if the mirror breaks you will cease to exist.
I don’t want to make this sound trivial – I know from my own experience that losing one’s existing self-image, or feeling the threat of its loss, can bring about a personal crisis. I used to have an image of myself as “needing to establish myself as normal by getting a normal job, a normal house, a normal wife.” When I eventually got all those outer-life things together (by my late twenties), it threw me into an existential crisis. “Who am I if I am no longer searching for these outer things? What is my life actually about?” This is what prompted me to get into personal growth, meditation and so on. I then did an Enlightenment Intensive and discovered the real me – this being who is utterly meant to be here, an integral part of the whole, the very me-ness of me.
And the real you is the pure you-ness of you in each moment – the you who consciously feels your feelings, thinks your thoughts, decides your actions. You are not this feeling or that thought, but the conscious being that has thoughts and feelings constantly coming and going. You are the being who yesterday thought you were so-and-so and today realises you are not so-and-so, and maybe doesn’t know who you are at all. But you are still you, always being you.
Me just telling you this probably isn’t going to put you in direct contact with your true self. (Or if it has, let me know!) This is one of the great challenges of life, finding out who we are rather than just manufacturing an identity that will get us accepted into society. It actually means becoming more and more authentic, more open and self-responsible.
In contrast to what your self-deprecation would have you believe, your path to acceptance lies in being truthful about yourself and in your willingness to be seen just as you are. This is particularly so with regard to the matter of choice. Life is a process of choosing. When you deny that you have choices, or avoid making choices, or deny responsibility for the choices you have made, then you are alienating from both yourself and others. But when you are aware that your life is your choice, and make choices more consciously, and openly acknowledge responsibility for the choices you have made, even the ones leading to “failure”, you are being authentic – true to yourself – and others will intuitively recognise it and, frankly, love you for it.
Hi Barry,
I read your reply yesterday, but could not reply because of the tears that just kept flowing unchecked 🙂 I think this was the first time ever, or let’s make it the present tense, this is the first time ever, I have really opened up and spoken about my inadequacies – my phoney persona to the world tells the story of an emotionally strong woman who is unconventional and unemotional. Opening up and telling my story makes me vulnerable – which I have chosen to portray as weakness. So by being the phoney strong persona, I am a strong person who never shows her vulnerable side.The unconventional bit also is now a huge part of who I am – but it was chosen by me as an identity that sat comfortably with my inadequacy. It became my suit of armor, you can’t expect anything of me – because I am a rebel, an unconventional person…just discovering so much about myself and what to let go of and what to keep 🙂 I mean it seriously is like I am looking at my fingers and toes for the first time and discovering that I can actually use them. Thanks so much Barry for your detailed reply – especially the analogy of the mirror- and your own experience of you seeking what was normal – helps to know I am not alone. It sure is going to be a huge challenge being authentic and not craving acceptance – but I have started on this in a minor but significant manner. I also feel you understood so much more than what I put in my comment….all that you have written here helps and will keep heloing me immensely….thanks Barry, I mean it from the bottom of my heart 🙂
We are all in this together 🙂
All I can say is I am glad 🙂 Thank you Barry, my prayers and wishes are with you 🙂
I am on a personal journey to make sense of where I am in my own life, the active role I have in my life and those closest to me. I have lost 3 family members in just a few months time. May I please share this article with my family and friends? Looking at my own reflection I’d like to be able to see something other than the reverse reflection in my mirror. Thank you for such an insightful piece, maybe one day my own blind spot will be a strength. Peace & Strength
Sounds like this has been quite an intense year for you Connie. I wish you strength on your continuing your journey.
PS. Yes, do share.
Thank you Barry! Over the years I have been very blessed to have had many wonderful and rather unusual life teachers and I was an unintentional student. My position along my own path at this time I find a greater need to be a deliberate student of many things, *grin/wince* including myself. I look forward to reading many more of your articles in the future and sharing them with others.
Wow! Great article and response’s to enquiries. Researching narcissistic personality disorder and this provided me with further understanding of the problems when individuals are diagnosed as NPD. The human thought system is madness. It is a confusion of upside down, inside out fear based ideas that of themselves are harmless, yet by projecting our belief in them we crucify ourselves. Chasing our individual ideas of reality is ordered such that reality, based on ever changing perceptions, is never found. Discovering that you are reality and forget the rest…
FINALLY….. years of torment begin to make sense…. THANKYOU.
Knowledge is freedom.
Thank you for providing so many insights. I am very glad to have found this site. I have one question – Can old souls who have completed the seventh stage, and thus ready to be “integrated” get started on another reincarnation cycle? I mean, can one of 1050 souls in the Michael entity, chose to start off as a young soul with a different role?
Very interesting question, thanks. To the best of my knowledge, the answer would be no, as the whole process of commencing reincarnation is normally a major event involving an integrated mass of spiritual consciousness/energy fragmenting into an organised population of individualised spirit beings (the seven soul types), each setting out afresh. A lone soul who has already completed the journey would, I believe, have no way of regressing in their own consciousness to the level of an Infant soul. I imagine that would be the equivalent of a degree graduate having a frontal lobotomy in order to return to kindergarten! The completed old soul could, however, return to human form for some reason but as far as I know it would be as a transcendent soul on a mission, ie extremely wise and compassionate and seeking to change the world in some way (Example: Ghandi).
Very good read. Being an Irish Catholic having suppressed emotions is practically a stereotype. The graph is actually very accurate. I use the phrase regarding those as ” swings in roundabouts” to my mood, and “sure it makes no difference” regarding my actions. Funny and very informative to see it portrayed on a graph. Kind of like a pleasure pain reaction! Thanks, Kayano
Amazing, fascinating and enriching!
Thank you!
Would it be possible that I am have both arrogance and self deprecation? That I am different in our school, like I am kind, patient and studios and when it come to our home, I am arrogant, lazy and hot headed? I don’t really understand what am I…. 🙁
Hi Karren (again!)
You could ask yourself which of these various ways of being feels real, and which are manufactured? For example, does it come naturally to you to be kind, or is it something you fake in order to be accepted? I’m not saying it’s one or the other – I don’t know! – only you can know your own heart.
It could be that when you get home you give yourself permission to blow off in a way that you wouldn’t get away with at school. You can laze about in front of your family and they are used to it. The family situation is far more intimate and familiar than most of our interactions at school.
Alternatively, it could be that at school you are exploring ways of being that you haven’t felt able to explore at home. Adolescence is a very exploratory and experimental time, and we like to do so with our peers (schoolmates), rather than the people who have known us since we were born.
So, various possibilities there – I hope at least something here helps.
Cheers
Barry
Very new to this Michael information but finding it an intriguing study, Indeed sometimes exciting, sometimes scary, sometimes frustrating sometimes enlightening. Overall it seems like a very good thing and great work you are doing, and I can see it helping a lot of people. Having problems differentiating whether there is an increase in the directness of how immediate spiritual consciousness raising is manifesting in this time period, or whether it is just happening in my imagination, which makes it difficult to feel comfortable making absolute statements.
A similar process seems to leave me unable to make decisions in my life. Just mentioning that. Not sure why. It is hard to decide if this is a flaw or wisdom. I haven’t begun to grasp the whole system of what you present on this site: Overleaves, Chief Features, Monads, and all the seeming stratifications within each style or type.
A similar sense of equivocation emerged earlier today when I took the test Discover Your Soul Type you made on Quibblo . I had already been caught up in an intense Q’n’A with Stephen Cocconi’s Michael Tarot Cards, and Artisan repeatedly appeared during that. Being an artist has been a strong identification point throughout my life. Not a successful one particularly, but it has been a sort of ever present aspect of my life. So I was expecting to see Artisan turn up as the result of the Quiz. Being aware this might happen, I thought I could detect which answers in the Quiz would lead to Artisan being the outcome, and also saw other options in the Quiz I could have chosen as answers that would still be true. One of the answers I gave was not a seemingly obvious Artisan answer, but it didn’t seem to weigh against it being the outcome anyway.
I came to the conclusion that the other answers I could have given were probably Overleaves or some other aspect in the Michael system of description that were a part of my make-up. Warrior has also been a strong message for me many times, yet I myself am quite retiring. More than once, messages about previous incarnations have referred to Warrior type things. So funnily enough the first thing I saw when returning from the Quiz site to the page I had left from, the next thing I read was a female commenter who said she was an artist, and the quiz had told her she was an Artisan, then proceeded to discuss using her wooden sword in warrior practice. My daughter also has a wooden sword and trained as a Samurai (and met a Master in Japan I might add – serious stuff) and we both have had reason to suppose we may have been Samurai in an earlier incarnation. You said to the commenter that she was probably an Artisan with a Warrior overleaf. I mention this in passing, it is in fact the kind of stuff I am constantly presented with in my day to day life – a plethora of coincidences. I sometimes imagine that there comes a point where the coincidences become so all encompassing that there is no difference between the present and all of the uncanny connections that are occurring, and that this is total attunement to the Tao.
Anyway. I digress. I was studying this section and following the links and reading each of the more detailed descriptions of each Chief Feature. Like others in this reply thread, I can see a bit of all of them in me, but am not sure which is the main one. I didn’t know whether to take this as a sign, but the link to the page where Greed is discussed in more detail wouldn’t work, so I wasn’t able to read your more detailed information on that.
Thanks for the amazing work you are doing here.
Ahem. I found the link to the Greed page starting from the ‘Reincarnation: the 35 steps of soul evolution’ page, so it was some anomaly that the link wouldn’t work from the set of links on this page under the heading’ Read On’. So I have read that now too. Am still left feeling I have all of the Chief Features active to some degree or other. Perhaps mine is Stubbornness and I access all of the others depending on which pressures and stresses I am undergoing. This would seem to align with the diagram that places Stubbornness at the centre. Perhaps Greed is particularly acute for me right now as my basic financial and material security are under threat at the moment and it is the situation that is dominating the other stressful scenarios that are hovering around my life situation (there are quite a few).
Maybe try asking yourself what is the thing you dread or angst about the most in the darkest depths of your existence? Or, more accurately, what is it that you most dreaded when you were, say, between 10 and 20 years old.
In my case, I had an absolute dread of dying before experiencing and understanding absolutely everything in life. The thought of it sickened me. The solution – Try to do everything and do it as quickly as possible. In other words, impatience.
My wife has a long-standing dread of exposing vulnerability, and so of course her chief feature is arrogance. She wears it very lightly though!
The “solidity” of the chief feature varies with soul age. For example, Young souls with arrogance can be very explicitly boastful, or extremely vain, while Old souls with arrogance will be more subtle about it, less driven by the underlying dread.
Thanks Barry. That is a really helpful pointer. The first thing that came up was my current most dominating fear of being homeless and having little or no money, which seems to coincide with the negative pole of Greed. As I said I can see how I have acted out all of the negative aspects of the Chief Features throughout my life to one degree or another. And as comes up in our discussion below, am next perhaps going to try to identify the actual Chief Feature if I can. Perhaps, as you said, looking at my deeper anxieties at an earlier age might help, but that will take a bit of genuine soul searching.
Thanks Luke. I will check the link.
A small point of clarification which might help you piece together this big jigsaw puzzle!…
In this framework we are each a composite of two things – ESSENCE, which is who we always are, i.e. soul energy evolving in consciousness, and PERSONALITY, which is how we think and act and identify ourselves as a human being within a specific lifetime. Essence is constant (but evolving), while personality is transient and is likely to change from one life to the next. Personality is a kind of costume worn by essence to play the human game a certain way, pretty much in the same way one can select and re-select character attributes within a video game.
The personality is actually made up of two things – (1) the “OVERLEAVES”, which are the Goal, the Mode, the Attitude and so on which have been chosen by the soul before birth, plus (2) any traits we accidentally pick up during life from our parents, society, culture, friends, and so on. The overleaves constitute our “true” personality while the rest make up “false” personality. The mid-life crisis or 4th Monad is the point at which we tend to drop false personality, fully engage the true personality, and get in touch with our essence and its current life task.
At the level of essence, we can be divided into seven basic types, or archetypes (Warrior, King and so on), but thanks to “casting” (https://personalityspirituality.net/articles/the-michael-teachings/casting-your-place-in-the-cosmos/) we are also characterised by what might be called subtypes. For example, you could be an Artisan with Warrior casting. That would mean you are, in essence, primarily creative and original but with a secondary energy that has a feisty, combative edge.
(I am a Scholar with Sage casting – I like to gather information, turn it into knowledge, and then share it in a way that is both entertaining and enlightening.)
And then there are sub-subtypes, and so on ad infinitum. Each of us is unique in the specific mix of essence energies.
So – bottom line – there are essence combinations as well as overleaves. With my quiz I have tried to get at the primary essence type, though admittedly it can be hard at first to tell if someone is, say, a King soul with a goal of Acceptance or a Sage soul with a goal of Dominance. With time, however, the subtle differences become apparent.
Thanks Barry
I think it would take me quite a period of study to assimilate the information presented. Working out how my make-up applies to the framework as laid out here could take some concentration I think. Applying make-up to a framework… that sounds pretty Artisanish. From reading your site I can definitely confirm that you come across exactly as the Scholar with Sage casting combination you described, as indeed you have imparted very interesting information and it has an entertaining and light touch, a humorous quality.
It seems perhaps it might be difficult to get a complete picture (of oneself in terms of the Michael Teachings framework) working alone. Did you figure out your Scholar/Sage combination through your own investigation or did you come to it through a mixture of that and feedback from others or through information being channelled for instance, if it isn’t inappropriate to ask? I was wondering if it is possible to work out all of the relevant points of the framework that apply to myself, by myself, or would you think that is probably not possible, or unlikely to be complete?
Hi Luke
My ambition is to enable people to figure themselves out. That said, it is difficult because the essence, soul age and true overleaves can be obscured by dense layers of social conditioning, old habits and delusions.
Most personality tests rely on self-awareness and self-knowledge, but It takes years, in fact decades, of self-observation to see oneself in a true light. Also, some people assume that the “best” thing to be is an Old King, and then try to squeeze themselves into that pattern. I hope to find ways around these tendencies if possible. For now I am hoping that the different descriptions here will elicit a sense of resonance – “Oh yes, that’s me all right…” But ideally I would like to put together a very clever questionnaire that will help people pinpoint themselves – I’m working on it!
Of course the easy way is to ask Michael, or rather ask a Michael channel to ask Michael (or whoever/whatever has the answers) for you. Just be aware that there is no such thing as a perfect channel – some are better than others, and they can all have off-days. The first one I asked said that I was an Old Priest, and I could not resonate with that at all. I then tracked down the original channel Sarah Chambers, a few months before she died, and so far I cannot find any fault in the profile she gave me. The same is true of my wife.
I had a similar experience more recently. Our son is clearly a Scholar with Artisan tendencies, though we also thought it possible he could be an Artisan with Scholar tendencies. We can also see that he is sensitive, totally averse to conflict and confrontation, and not very adept at being in his physical body. I asked a channel for his profile and it came back as a Warrior with a goal of Rejection. Absolutely not even close. So I went to a second channel (one of those listed on the site) and this time the profile was unmistakable: Scholar with Artisan casting, goal of Acceptance and emotional Centering. Everything ticked a box.
Hi Barry
It’s very kind of you to give such a detailed and open answer. I admire the courage in the work you have done to go through the process you have to learn these things (this I say party from reading your article about Enlightenment Intensives also). I am quite afraid of things like group processes or consulting readers or channellers. I suppose that is why I asked what you think of whether this work can be done alone. The more I look at it it seems some kind of interaction is probably important to the process. A very clever questionnaire would be amazing though!
Thanks again.
I have the goal of Growth which means that if something looks like it could move me forward in my awareness and understanding, I tend to jump in with both feet no matter how shy or afraid I feel about it! And with mode of Perseverance, I tend to keep at it once I’ve started.
An admirable quality!
From where I’m sitting it sucks and I want a nice restful life next time around 🙂
At least you know enough to know what sucks because you’ve had the perseverance to find out – plus you’re helping people. I don’t even know what it is I’m doing that sucks, I just know it does 🙂
Would you believe, simultaneously to your last message, and before my reply I drew the Jupiter card reversed in Stephen Cocconi’s Michael Tarot, as if it were humorously berating me for lacking authenticity and using a kind of drama to get attention? It told me: ‘ Are you just posing in that lamp shade you have covered your eyes with? Or, have you decided that any prop will help you get noticed?’ and had the quote: “An ostentatious man will rather relate a blunder or an absurdity he has committed, than be debarred from talking of his own dear person.” ~ Joseph Addison. Once again though, thanks for your pointers and advice, it’s very much appreciated.
Good Job you should make this a book i gurantee it would sell…i could relate to image management and a matured soul like anyone here you could find yourself in those words unless your not human.
I’m interested in what you are describing here. I find I have used all the traits at one time or another and I understand the concept of them representing both a “higher” and “lower” manifestation. I have been working privately my entire life towards transforming these tendencies into their more highly evolved form. But I don’t identify with one form more than another, though I do think you’ve covered the spectrum and pointed out some mightily insightful correlations.
I’m not young at 55. My life has been complex (as is everyone’s), but I’ll give some specifics. I was sexually abused by my parents at a young age, put a stop to it myself at the age of six, suffered their fear of me and continued psychological abuse for many years coupled with more subtle forms of physical abuse, became a drug addict at twelve (but am not now or for many years) , married a man much older than me at eighteen. My husband was in a terrible car wreck and suffered a long and lingering death in a coma that lasted for nine months. He was a veteran and was placed in a VA hospital where he was treated worse than an animal. I saw unbelievable cruelty on many levels from the time I was born.
I went on to make my living in the arts. I was an actress, a painter, a film maker, a writer and other varied forms. I married several more times, none “stuck”. I have lived in many places and countries. I didn’t have children (by choice) and am psychic, but in a very intuitive “feeling” kind of way. For instance, I knew my first husband was going to “go away” before he was in the accident and I was living in NYC prior to 911 and knew it was coming. I’ve never seen the sense in owning property as nothing, in my view can ever truly be “owned” and all seems to me to be experience, running the gamut from excruciating to exquisite. I have no favorite color, they are all so beautiful, each in their own way, though I have leaned towards one color over another at various times. As of now, it’s shades of blue and green.
In examining myself and what I fear the most, I think the answer would be that none of this means anything, as in my heart I so believe it does mean something. It all means something, though I don’t pretend to know what that meaning is, but I do fear that I’m deluding myself in order to make this existence seem worthwhile.
So, I can’t see where I fit in the design you’ve outlaid. Perhaps you can?
Also, I understand the communications came from a spirit named Michael, but where is God in all this?
Hi there
First of all, I would recommend that you check out the goal of Growth (https://personalityspirituality.net/articles/the-michael-teachings/goal/growth/).
There are seven basic life goals, and in each life we choose one as our primary driver or motivator. It depends on what our specific life task or purpose is. (The work on the life task starts from around age 35; before that we are “in training” for it, having experiences that will point us in the right direction.) In my case, for example, my life task, as I now understand it, is to seek, validate and share what I deem to be worthwhile wisdom. I also have the goal of Growth, which clearly fits the life task. The goal of Growth itself amounts to seeking wisdom, i.e. spiritual or philosophical understanding that can be applied to real life, but this search is usually spurred on by intense and/or hard-to-understand life experiences. So now in my 50s, I can look back and see that my life has been a search for wisdom. My early experiences weren’t abusive like yours, but unbearably mundane and bland, and sometimes unbearably stressful. I was plagued with a sense of meaninglessness, and therefore driven to seek meaning.
In addition to my fear of ultimate meaninglessness, i also feared that whatever sense of meaning I bought into by reading books or listening to teachers may be completely invalid. I could be barking up the wrong tree with all this psycho-spiritual babble. So, it’s possible that your fear that “none of this means anything” might have a similar basis – either it’s the fear of ultimate meaninglessness that has spurred you on to look for meaning, or it’s the fear whatever meaning you have found and are pinning your hopes on isn’t really “it”.
What eventually rid me of such fear was the direct experience of ultimate Truth, something I have been blessed with on a number of occasions thanks to a certain technique (see https://personalityspirituality.net/articles/enlightenment-intensives/). Once you know, you know. I heartily recommend you try out this process, or anything that similarly involves an inner search for ultimate Truth.
Cheers
Barry
P.S. The term God, as far as I’m concerned, is just too anthropomorphic to be of much use to those seeking pure answers. That’s not to say there is no God, but the word itself is too heavily associated with antiquated notions of a celestial authority figure or angry father who doles out rewards and punishments. It is more useful to speak of Spirit, Essence, the Source, the Tao, Being, the Absolute, Life, that eternal stream of love which we are all an expression of, and from which we can never become separated except in our own minds.
Hi 🙂 This is a wonderful article. You may have already addressed this above…but could you list the fears associated with each chief feature? I think seeing that will help me discover mine. Thank you.
Fear of exposing vulnerability –> Arrogance
Fear of exposing inadequacy –> Self-Deprecation
Fear of experiencing lack or need –> Greed
Fear of experiencing losing control –> Self-Destruction
Fear of missing out / not getting value –> Impatience
Fear of worthlessness / not having value –> Martyrdom
Fear of any change –> Stubbornness
I very recently read the Michael texts, Barry, but your writing never fails to provide further insights. I was interested to read that you have two of the same overleaves as myself: a goal of growth and impatience as your chief feature. Whislt difficult to live with, in some ways I think this chief feature has helped me to begin to realise my life tasks. One way in which this chief feature used to evidently manifest itself was that I simply could not tolerate stretching after a gym workout!
Hehe. Yeah, apparently growth and impatience often go together – life’s just too short when you’re trying to experience as much as possible! My personal bugbear is sleep – a complete waste of time.
That must be a tough one. Have you found any techniques to be particularly effective at overcoming impatience when it takes hold? I try to remind myself that time is ad infinuitum; sometimes that does the trick!
I recognise that if I’ve been triggered and I’m “in a state” then it’s definitely something in my response patterns rather than something inherently wrong with the world. So that defuses the energy of it and then I can pause and see which of my unsatisfied attachments has got me so frustrated.
For example, I can get impatient standing in a queue waiting to buy something, and get annoyed with the sales assistant and with every person in front of me, and start projecting onto them all sorts of stupidity and inconsiderate behaviour. But then I remember that everyone is there for the same valid reason as me, and the assistant can only deal with so many at a time. So my attachment to “immediate service” so that I can move immediately onto the next thing is coming from a very immature way of looking at the world.
Hi Barry,
Regarding worldly success and failure; it seems we are such a selfish and materialistic society. You know, the ME Generation! I’d have to say my chief feature is self-deprecation. I can recall times past and present when I would be too hard on myself about making mistakes.,etc
To Sue Harris and all others,
I wish you the best in overcoming your adversities
As well as you Barry in overcoming your impatience.
Thanks Angel
These days I only get impatient with inanimate objects, which I guess is progress.
Fo example, when I’m putting cups and saucers on a shelf, I (unconsciously) expect them to understand where they are supposed to go, and just obey my will. Instead, they prefer to obey the law of gravity and go crashing to the floor.
This is a very amazing article. As one self deprecating person, I learnt to understand a bit more about it. Thank you for putting this up! 🙂
Cheers Andru!
Hi there.
I am in recovery and working a 6th step of “character defects.” I came across this article and have learned so much. I really appreciate you leaving it here as it has helped me with my step work.
Thank you again.
So, what you are saying is that there are layers of denial in a person’s soul. But even as psychologists have surmised is that “chief features” of conditioning are permanent behavioral patterns; so, all you can you do is provide or propose to yourself better outcomes and goals based on your current dynamic. When the dynamic changes….then you are back to school on yourself and your dynamic because of your deniability between the two is permanent.
Well, that would be the case if we are merely products of our conditioning, whose learned behavioural patterns are immutable. But if you are capable of self-awareness, self-insight and intentional growth, then you can gradually bring your conscious self to bear on the unconscious patterns. You can choose to be more conscious, less automatic, you can see the underlying fears for what they are, you can suppress habitual reactions and set deliberate goals to act ‘better’ according to your own standards. It’s a perfect growth challenge for any adult seeking self-understanding and self-improvement.
Awesome
For me it was easy for sure is self depreciation .. I’ve seen it all atutudes .. And now that things are going well for me, I find myself trying to lower the expectations of the people about me .. For me it was very obvious .. was not a blind spot ..
I think that it helps to use this information to better understand ourselves, but it begs the sequel of “how to I overcome all of these problematic chief features that have taken ‘me’ over?”
Honestly, my only luck so far has been my relationship with God because it helps to give my soul rest to seeking perfection that will never be reached. But some practical tips in regards to this article could be helpful, especially for those who don’t experience the relief found through meditation with God.
Hi Carson
Well, I have briefly addressed ways of dealing with these traits at the end of each individual page – some more fully than others. But I take your point, I could add a section here on “What to do”.
The challenge of confronting and taming one’s character flaw(s) is often characterised in mythology (and Hollywood) as the hero’s journey. I suspect you are familiar with the Jungian archetypal analysis – the protagonist is sent from home on a sacred quest, but he is tricked and trapped at every turn by some kind of evil monster. Eventually he realises what’s going on, and he plucks up the courage to directly confront the monster – in fact, to go inside its own lair, and slay it there – which, lo and behold, leads to some great treasure being discovered. The “leaving home” is the transition from adolescence to maturity; the “sacred quest” is to become whole, something greater than one can yet imagine; the monster is one’s own character flaw, resisting wholeness; its dark, secret lair is one’s own shadow side, the denied or repressed aspects of self; the “treasure” is the whole and authentic self.
So, how to go about slaying dragons? Each pattern will have its own trips and traps set up as a vicious circle, but as a rule there will be certain processes or habits that one can observe in oneself and seek to overcome, or at least intervene.
1. PERCEPTIONS: When we perceive situations through our “dark lens”, we are on the look-out for what our negativity expects to see. For example, my self-deprecation constantly anticipates the threat of exposure, humiliation and shaming coming from any direction. This leads to many false alarms, where I might back away from a situation that wasn’t actually posing any threat at all. But because I’ve backed away from it, I never get to find out that I had misjudged it. My false perception is never tested. So one way to confront to the monster is to notice our perceptions and examine our underlying assumptions. Mindfulness of our suspicions and prejudgements about the situations we dislike the most.
2. REACTIONS: If we are really caught in our negativity and it’s still a blind spot, then we won’t notice anything wrong with our perceptions at all – we just see a “bad” situation and in the same instant react “appropriately”. For example, someone with impatience sees a traffic jam as a threat to their “need” to keep moving through life as quickly as possible, so they shout at other drivers, honk the horn, rev the engine, and maybe even blow a gasket! If we can’t be mindful of our perceptions, then we can at least be mindful of our outer reactions – our negative behaviours. Simply asking “Is this the best way for me to act?” or “Is this really how I want others people to see me?” might be all it takes to stop and regain control. Our negative patterns run on autopilot — an autopilot that has set itself on a destructive course. But we, as conscious beings, always have the power to take back control and set ourselves flying straight and level in the desired direction. It takes a lot of practice, but every little helps. No bad habit is set in stone.
3. THE FEAR: If we are to go directly into the monster’s lair – the shadow – then we must literally confront our worst fear. Most people don’t even explicitly know what their worst fear is, in terms of being able to articulate it. It’s more subtle, implicit. A quick side-note: There is a relatively new concept in psychology called Terror Management Theory, which says that what drives people (unlike other animals) is our awareness of our mortality. At some point in life we conceptualise our own demise, and we experience absolute terror. We handle that terror by – for example – building monuments, or leaving a legacy in the form of our children or our life’s work. Most people are aware of their fear of death and how they deal with it, however. What most people are NOT so aware of is their fear of LIFE. All of the seven character flaws represent a fear of life in some way – e.g., “my life is always missing something” or “my existence has no value”. So the most direct sway to confront the negative pattern is to seek your underlying worst fear, name it, describe it, get to know it – and thus become less and less identified with it.
I hope this helps (I may copy it up to the main text), but as I said the specifics will be different for each particular pattern. There are many more insights and sensible self-help tips to be had in the book by José Stevens, Transforming Your Dragons.
cheers
Barry
Hi, this is a very interesting article, thankyou for it .I have been meaning to find something like this but the thing is, some recent events of my life have sort of ‘shattered’ the foundations of my personality. I dont know what my cheif feature or shadow is anymore. Its extremely extremely frustrating and is affecting my daily life
I was wondering if you could suggest a test or quiz to determine or sort out this dilemma?
Well, I would probably start by asking you what is your deepest, worst, most private fear?
– that you will die too soon, before doing everything you should do?
– that others will perceive you as ordinary rather than as special?
– that you will never have enough of something that feels vital (like power or money)
– that changes will occur in your life which you have no option but to go along with?
– that you might lose control of yourself?
– that your sense of inadequacy as a human being is true and will exposed?
– that you can never do enough to please others or suffer enough to feel worthy?
Any of these hit home? (There may be more than one.)
Well the last three probably nailed it all also i have always thought i have been quasi deceptive in my social relations like not two faced but being on good terms with everyone, even people i dont quite like and that has been a struggle trust me. I have been overweight all my life and that has been my inadequency and i have tried compensating for it by getting good grades and having the whole “good person” act and that required a lot of indifference on my part to a lot of things but lately since the last few months i m super sensitive over everything, what people think of me? why do they think that way? What have i let out that made them think so? Maybe i m that person that i have been painted up to be because obviously if everyone thinks that there has to e some truth to it right? So basically i dont know who i am now, the person i thought i was or what everyone may think i am and as a person who has always been somewhat reserved and guarded it frustrates me to no end not knowing and i know how incredibly stupid all this ounds but its taking its toll on everything because i know i have never done, wished anything bad on everyone knowingly.
I read through the article again and found my cheif features to be as of this moment greed, self deprecation, self destruction and martydom
Thankyou for taking the time out to answer, cant believe the first time i say it all is on a public forum though but seriously thanks alot!
I found this to be very thought provoking and useful. We are in a strange time. I talk to a lot of people who struggle so much with their “demons” only wanting to find a way to live a happy life. I shared the link for those who might be inclined to look at life from this perspective. I believe that once you look and then see you must acknowledge and then be compelled to change.
I love the approach involving spirituality because I didn’t expect to find that when I started my search. The word Ego is thrown around a lot and I simply had to reacquaint myself with what the word actually means again.
Thank you for doing this work.
Great, and thank you so much Barbara.
Barry
Personality leaves sound a little like modern Enneagram personality traits. Anyway, great site, thank you Barry for what you are doing. I am seeking my truths, my evolution, and my growth here on this plane of existence and have delved into various schools of thought, some more worthy of my time and effort, than others of course, and find your input intriguing and worthy. I am sooo interested on doing an enlightenment retreat and let the inner me out for awhile…I’ve had a few moments of personal clarity, soul shine, one–ness, etc, and have always longed for that as permanent state of being. Maybe some day! I will continue to peruse your site (bookmarked!) and will keep taking in info for my ongoing growth and enlightened awareness of….me! Life belongs to me / I belong to Life!
Be well, i send you my best wishes in all your efforts this Lifecycle.
J_
Many thanks John. Have a great journey!
B
Hi Barry,
I am twenty years old and live in India. I’ ve had problems with dealing with my inner self and I always come about questioning myself as in whether m I right or wrong in taking a particular decision. This leads to me thinking so much that I come within the circle of self doubt as of whether m I suffering from a mental illness like bipolar disorder or something and then by my further reasoning I come to conclusion that it is my being calling out for some spiritual answers. As a person, I am shy and not open and so I find it very difficult to find answers of my questions. As a result I have also thought of taking on meditation very soon hopefully.
I sometimes also end up fearing a personality disorder as I have big ambitions in life but do not have enough drive in myself to achieve them and also my ultimate goal in life is to be peaceful and joyous regardless of the difficulties. I am indecisive in whether what to go for and there’s also a sense of meaninglessness which I feel sometimes. Doctors I have consulted tell me that I have a problem of over thinking which also sometimes brings about a feeling that is what is happening is unreal. Also I have problem accepting change and there is stubbornness.
I will be very glad if you could help me with this. Also to let you know my behavior is normal except that there are mood swings happening internally. Thanks.
Hi
So, just to be sure I’m understanding you correctly: You struggle to make decisions, not knowing if you are ever making the right choice. But from that uncertainty you then spiral into self-doubt, self-judgement and self-questioning. And from there you imagine the possibility that you could even stumble into some kind of mental illness.
Based on what you have said, my (tentative) impression of your personality structure is:
— Goal of contentment (you want to peacefully go with the flow of life)
— Mode of caution (you like to be sure you are doing the right thing before you commit to anything)
— Chief feature of self-deprecation (you lack confidence and judge yourself harshly for that)
— with a secondary feature of stubbornness (you “justify” the constant self-doubting and self-judging by perceiving change as something to be resisted).
I suspect that through your adolescent years you have — like most of us — adopted the cultural myth that to be an adult you must be ambitious and successful, or else you are “a loser”. This is a pervasive but nonsensical notion in today’s world. I suspect that you can “feel” how it contradicts your inner sense of going with the flow, but lack conscious awareness of it, hence the tension between the lure of ambition and your inner “lack of drive”. See if you can focus on the positive quality of contentment or flow and ditch the idea that you are required to show ambition.
With a mode of caution, the danger is of over-thinking — “paralysis by analysis” — not making any decision or not making any commitment to a course of action because of the fear that the decision could be the wrong one and therefore needs more (and more and more) endless thought.
Try to focus on the positive and uplifting energy of caution, which is acting with confidence because you have clearly and consciously assessed of your options and have planned the best course of action.
You can make good judgements and choices based on whatever information you have that — to you — is enough to get going with. In other words, instead of being fearfully reluctant to make any choice, be deliberately cautious with a focus on making the best choice you can given the limited information available. And see if you can accept the idea that no choice is right or wrong. You are not here to make right or wrong choices according to any external standard. You are here to develop your unique way of choosing.
Really well-put. I resonate with that.
i have all the negative poles oh god lol.
i used to have all the positive poles. realised i had my own mind and i instantly stopped being a brainwashed crazy person. i was free,
got locked up and fed antipsychotics quick smart. people are robots and thats what they do to the children these days. cant judge them for what they were taught.
i have a broken heart now though as a result of the meds, thats the feeling. and all the negative poles, i dont like them. my original personality is diametrically opposite to whats inside me. i could just act confident and tell myself hey youve got got good intentions fuck what they think but im not up against people im up against heartbreak, im up againt myself.. i feel beaten but i dont want to be beat, i dont want to lay down and die im on the forefront of coming back from antipsychotics i want to be the one who says yes it can be done we dont have to wish for death. i wont be beaten im gonna win this.
do you, could you suggest anything?
Hi there
I’m not a psychiatrist, and I don’t know your history, so I cannot formally “advise” you. But my guess is that anything that helps you to filter or clarify your perception of reality should be helpful. I really don’t know if that means you should keep taking the meds, or try a change of meds, or try coming off the meds. But there is an intensity to your experiences that must be difficult to live with.
Barry
Can I use the graphic of the traits that looks like an atom. Like to post to Facebook?
No problem!
B
But what if you identify with all seven cheif features? How does one get to the root and identify the main cheif feature that all these seven seemingly stem from?
Like I suggested to someone else, see if you can get in touch with your deepest, worst fear about life and death.
Dying too soon –> Impatience
Being responsible –> Martyrdom
Living without enough –> Greed
Living with suffering –> Self-Destruction
Being judged nothing special –> Arrogance
Being exposed as inferior –> Self-deprecation
Being affected by others’ decisions –> Stubbornness
Alternatively, ask a friend. It’s often more obvious to other people than to ourselves.
Hello, I do like your post very much. You are right on target about how we develop personality flaws based on our experiences in childhood.
However I am very doubtful in regards to a soul and predetermined life path. As comforting as it is to believe in these things, a quick look at reality tells us that everything is physical. Thoughts are physical, they are certain neurons firing in the brain. Physical things are governed by the laws of physics hence these stories of soul and life path are just certain wiring patterns in the brain.
In physics, there is oneness.
“a quick look at reality tells us that everything is physical”
What if we take a slow, deep look?
To assume there is only a phenomenological Universe is Spiritual Ignorance of the highest water. A position that is actually afraid to look at the origins of cause and effect.
It is also an assumption to think that the narrative by which a thing appears to the ‘brain’ to be ‘physical’ can be relied upon as a model through which understanding may unfold. It belies attachment to an illusion.
To paraphrase Einstein, a convincing illusion, but an illusion all the same.
The peculiar event in perception coined as ‘Déjà vu’ is a glimpse of the Eternal Mind momentarily making contact with Ordinary Mind. Physical and psychological ‘experience’ defining static personality positions (be it trauma, understanding, or managed reality, is only half the picture, as physics has been proven to be time and again as each development in science has broken previous models, as each development in a behaviourist psychology model has proven to be more limited than each development of a broader ‘model’.
The idea of ‘pre-destiny’, in the Michael readings and in fact in more ancient schools of Spiritual Teaching, are not aimed at creating a safe haven for those scared of reality. On the contrary, they are representative of a stage of awareness that is not defined by ordinary conditioning.
Perhaps you are disillusioned with materialism? From the laws of physics, materialism is a contradiction because it neglects the material of the brain. We are told that buying things will make us happy. A neurologist will tell you that any certain emotion in the brain cannot be held indefinitely (it is a pathology to have a single emotional state constantly). This is due to the physical wiring of the brain.
Hence we are being lied to, to say that things will gratify us. Certainly we have needs, beyond that we get diminishing returns of satisfaction. We can probably do with a lot less here in the US and still be quite content. If we can open our hearts and soften, we will be able to deal with emotional swings better.
Pre-destiny is unfounded. The brain is the reason we have awareness, and when we are not alive we have no awareness. The eternal mind? I’ll just call that the laws of physics, which are quite eternal and in control.
Thanks for the reply, it’s a good discussion.
Perhaps what I said wasn’t clear regarding ‘pre-destiny’. I am not worried about whether it is founded or not, but base my statement on having been given, as a gift, from something warm and inexplicable, consciousness of the nature of so-called ‘self”, and also the nature of Supreme Consciousness. I am not attached to the results. The one who begins the enquiry does not reach the end of the enquiry, but is finished by the enquiry itself.
“Disillusioned with materialism”? I think that is inherent in the Einstein quote…. except it is not as phenomenological as the way you phrased it, which implies its political and polemical dimension – rich, poor, suffering, leisure. I was addressing the very nature of perceived reality, not a position within said reality.
Nor am I attached to argumentative outcomes around the clichés of spirituality versus materialism, the polemic of hard science versus romantic ideaologies. Believe it or not, and I have no wish to convince, I speak from experience, not from theory.
I feel sad that those trapped in a reductionist hell must suffer, wondering what untold Universes may flower beyond their prison walls. There is no wiring, there is no brain, it’s all imagined.
I, personally, am not being lied to. Yes, perhaps some indeed are being lied to, insofar as they ‘buy into’ what I think you mean by ‘materialism’. Every party has its host and its partygoers. That is a choice.
Recognizing that pre-destiny is a ‘programme’ is the first step into REAL consciousness, and yes, REASON is a helpful ally in the midst of blind irrationality.
And YES… if we open our hearts and soften, perhaps a more beautiful world can be shared.
Thank you. I have known my chief feature for some time now, but just had it painfully pointed out this evening. I googled, “I’m arrogant and I don’t want to be”, and it led me here. I am very thankful for you insight and detail, and will be reading your writings for a long time to come.
Thanks – great to hear from you Billy
B
Maybe my primary and secondary obstacles are just Stubborness. I know it’s there but it just seems to stop everything consciously and unconciously. My family wants to move. My mom would have me contact people about rentals and sales. I don’t get a response or the response I get is a “No”. Its always my fault nothing is coming through. Mom and sister want to move. But it’s always me that keeps them stuck to where we currently are. My sister gets frustrated, she even asked mom why she doesn’t contact the owners herself? I don’t want to keep being the one that holds everyone back. I don’t want to keep getting blamed for things not coming through. My concern is about the cat and guinea pigs. People ate plenty fine with dogs, sometimes cats, but when I explain that I have 4 guinea pigs, they close the door.
Well, maybe it is not only Stubborness. I have a long history of self-sabotage. I grew up being unworthy. I was the difficult child. Everyone grew up and I stayed the same. It was lonely.
It just would probably make me happier to not be the blame for my family and I to be stuck at the sketchy apartment. All the work they do to try to move gets undone too easily by my hand.
Wondering if I’m alone in this….can’t figure out for the life of me my role….sage? artisan? why was it so easy for me to spot my overleaves though, my weaknesses? Is this typical?
Don’t be so concerned. Be very patient, pay attention to yourself and your surroundings, and don’t try so hard to see what sort of personality you fit into. Many of us do not fit entirely within one label. Accepting your weaknesses is necessary if you want to find yourself. The answers will come to you, often in unexpected ways.
No one is really alone.
Funnily enough, our ability to know our soul and personality depends upon our soul and personality. Warriors seem to recognise themselves immediately, while Artisans for some reason seem to struggle to recognise their role, even though it may be obvious to others. As for the chief features, the more extroverted ones (arrogance, impatience and greed) are easy for others to spot but may not be so obvious to ourselves, while the introverted chief features (self-deprecation, self-destruction and martyrdom) seem to be easier to recognise from the inside, as it were. I’ve noticed a lot of people saying “mine is obviously self-deprecation” and another lot of people saying “I know someone who obviously has greed”.
This explains my inner war waging between the good and the bad.Not knowing what your inner demons are isnt the hard part.Googling this sight was..If your reading this I think you just might be ok;)
Thanks!
Thank you. Immensely helpful, insightful and concise. All of which are fundamentally required to keep my impatient self engaged. 😀✌🏻🖖🏻
ditto.
Are you psychologist?
Me? Yes, well semi-retired now. Degree in psychology, master’s in applied psychology, worked nearly 30 years as an applied psychologist. Not working at the moment, apart from writing – working on a book or two.
Barry, I am really glad to hear that you’re working on a book. I want to hear all about it — but I’ll settle for hearing about when it’s out and available! Good on you.
you’re on!