Your Inner Border Collie Is Not Your Higher Self
How to train your personality to heel while essence takes the leash
Every one of us has an inner Border Collie. It wakes up early, scans the emotional field, and starts herding: responsibilities, opinions, people, crumbs of validation—whatever’s loose and running. It means well, but it’s exhausting to live with.
This is what Cynthia Bourgeault, in Practicing Living Presence: Discovering the Mind of Christ Within, calls the personality self: the outer layer that manages, fixes, reacts, explains, and performs. In Sufi language, it’s the nafs—the self in its domesticated but still slightly feral state.
The mistake most of us make on the spiritual path is trying to shoot the dog. We think spiritual growth means eliminating our reactive, neurotic, people-pleasing tendencies. But Bourgeault (and her teacher Kabir Helminski, author of Living Presence) point out that personality isn’t the problem. It’s a tool—just not the one meant to drive the cart.
The Roles We Play (And Why They’re Not Evil)
Caretaker. Rebel. Fixer. Expert. Each of us keeps a closet full of roles, and we change outfits faster than a drag performer on espresso. These roles aren’t false; they’re adaptive costumes that help essence meet the world.
The trouble starts when we forget we’re wearing them. We identify with the costume and start thinking the character is the actor. “I’m the one who always helps,” “I’m the voice of reason,” “I’m the misunderstood visionary.” Once we believe those lines, the script writes us instead of the other way around.
The Goal Isn’t Ego Death—it’s Ego Obedience
Trying to “kill the ego” is like throwing your car keys into the lake because you don’t trust your driving. The ego isn’t evil; it’s untrained. It needs to learn to sit and stay while something deeper—what Bourgeault calls the Real I—takes the leash.
That deeper center isn’t interested in applause or control. It leads quietly, through attunement rather than argument. Presence doesn’t bark orders; it hums. But to hear that hum, the collie has to stop chasing every passing sheep of distraction.
Balancing the Outer and Inner
Bourgeault’s teaching on “Balancing the Outer and Inner” hits this point home: the personality is essential for manifestation—it’s how spirit gets traction in the world—but it’s a terrible master.
When the personality runs the show, life becomes a field of constant reactivity: approval and disapproval, like and dislike, praise and blame. But when the leash flips—when personality serves essence—the same situations become training grounds for consciousness.
Your buttons don’t disappear; they just stop detonating the moment someone presses them. As Bourgeault says, “The higher self has no buttons.”
Practical Training for Your Inner Collie
Notice your barking. Every time you find yourself mentally herding people or problems, pause. That’s personality in overdrive.
Smell your way back to essence. You can’t think your way into presence. You feel for it. You smell for it. When you sense groundedness returning, that’s the Real I taking the leash.
Reward calm, not chaos. Don’t scold the personality for acting out; that only excites it further. Just notice and redirect. Spiritual dog training is 80% tone.
Let the world be messy. The collie wants every sheep in line. Essence knows the meadow is big enough for wandering.
The Point Isn’t Perfection—it’s Partnership
You don’t dissolve the personality; you civilize it. Essence and personality, working together, give birth to what Gurdjieff called Real I—the presence of God expressing through a human life without distortion.
So yes, keep your inner Border Collie. Just don’t let it drive the car, run the church, or post on Facebook after midnight.
Presence doesn’t need to chase. It already contains the flock.
If this reflection made you smile or breathe a little deeper, you might love the source material:
Cynthia Bourgeault’s Practicing Living Presence: Discovering the Mind of Christ Within, based on Kabir Helminski’s classic Living Presence: A Sufi Way to Mindfulness and the Essential Self.
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Comparing the spiritual path with training a dog is funny but I can relate, since I’ve survived dog training with several maniac puppies in my life!🐾