Your personality isn’t your soul. It’s the clay that cracks so the light can get through. This is what Mary Magdalene and Cynthia Bourgeault both knew—presence begins where performance ends.
“Spiritual work, then, becomes ego management instead of transformation.” How well I remember the day I ‘caught’ myself using my spirituality to berate a fellow human; ‘Oh I’m so much holier than you and that’s why you struggle.’ I am at times embarrassed to admit just how petty I can be but that’s just more pettiness! 🤣
Thank you for another wonderful lesson in just being. I love remembering the words of Amit Goswami; ‘It’s not do, do, do or be, be, be. It’s do be do be do.’ 🙏
That moment when the "I'm more evolved" voice slips out and you realize it's just the ego in a nicer outfit. Catching it with humor instead of shame is where real transformation starts.
I think the Goswami’s quote fits perfectly. I think he is pointing to the balance between doing and being as the rhythm of consciousness itself. Thank you for sharing that!
That’s quite an image, Christopher. The serpent in the brain has been a symbol for awakening since the earliest temples. The problem starts when people stop treating it as metaphor and start trying to give it medical advice.
That one’s beyond my pay grade, Christopher. I think you might be trying to wrestle angels while tripping over your own serpents. Maybe take a breath and let the symbolism cool before it starts hissing back.
🙏 thought provoking my friend. I’m glad you feel safe to just let your thoughts flow. I hear them as a poem of sorts.
For some reason I’m moved to say “You’re ok and I’m ok.” We’re all okay as we struggle in this sometimes seeming awful world that can be so hard to make sense of.
So much yes. Having been a therapist for 30 years, I realized I was helping women tidy up the cage, get cozier in the walls instead of seeing the cage and walking through the open door. Nothing wrong with getting more comfy, but it’s a prelude to feeling safe enough to see the conditioning and letting the mask of the good girl receiving tokens go. “Whoever makes all cares into one care, the care for simply being present, will be relieved of all care by that presence.” Freedom. Joy.
That image of helping women tidy up the cage instead of seeing the open door really lands. The shift from comfort to freedom is where everything changes. Presence doesn’t just open the door, it makes the whole cage disappear.
🌅Thank you for sharing your wisdom — you’re like a lighthouse shining through the fog: “Make all cares into one care,” & “You are not here to think about God, but to sit in the presence of God.”🎃
I do love this segmentation in that it truly helps me grasp the different ways of being. At time “personality “ sounds a lot like what I think of as ego. It seems there’s a beautiful alchemy at work that longs for integration. I’d be interested in your thoughts on how this plays out in the daily. How do we become more integrated with each element in its holy roll? I get glimpses- but things slip back.
Beautiful reflection, Kim. Integration happens through consent, not control. The slipping back is part of the lesson. In prayer and awareness, we learn to consent to the deeper presence within us, letting the false self loosen its grip so the true self can shine through. This reminds me of a Buddhist Lojong slogan: abandon all hope of result. When we stop striving for transformation, grace finally has room to move.
🙏 ♥️ I just have a thought? Question? What do you define as “therapy”?
I have had a lot of therapy through the years. It has helped me to stay on earth, in this dimension or wherever we are exactly.
I recently graduated from seeing a wonderful counselor who taught, encouraged, and practiced with me much of what is shared here. Our meetings were ones of mutuality - we contemplated together, we questioned together, we talked much of what practicing Presence and shared very private experiences of the growing freedom in our endeavors to just let ourselves be.
One of her goals was to ensure that I did not become dependent on her. We just held hands for a moment in time and helped each other up and over a difficult part of our individual trails - we walked away friends, sisters in mutuality.
Yes, I paid for my sessions and received far more than I ever imagined - I’d say I got my money’s worth, times a thousand.
Virgin Monk Boy, I have many ways I encourage myself to keep going, to walk in awareness of Love and embrace just being. I read, I write, I listen to music, I spend time in nature - all personal ways of “being” just me. Mornings are often the most difficult - it often feels that I am at ground zero. Again. I face a darkness that feels like mine alone - in “therapy” I’ve learned that’s a lie.
I have few friends, few who understand me. So in the morning before even getting out of bed I seek the things and people out there who encourage, affirm, bless, teach, speak the hard things - all that my soul needs to be resurrected from the darkness one more day.
At this moment in time your column, your sharing and teaching along with the others who comment and share about their journeys here, from their hearts, is what I would call “therapy” too.
I am going to become a paid subscriber. Or at least I plan to. But . . . there seems to be a running thread in some of the things you share that seem to suggest we do not need “therapy” and that “paying” for retreats and the like might also be a waste of time and money. Am I wrong?
I have purchased some of the wonderful books you have recommended and/or shared from. I would suggest that these things that I read, your column, the input of others is all “therapy” that I confess I need to continue just “being” and living in Presence.
Discovering and getting to know Magdalene has enriched my life in ways I never knew I needed. I learned of her here in your writings. But the more I learn it is okay to “just” be me, the more I seek and seem to hunger for like minded travelers out there somewhere. I admit I grow more human everyday and that I still need “therapy”.
And yes, I still have a personality. It’s also part of just being me. It has ceased more and more being just an image I hide behind. I am being released to just relax, to be authentic, to not hide my sense of humor or joy in little or silly things, that I am often moved to tears by injustice and also by demonstrations of wonderful justice, that I am deeply empathic and “woke” which are not real popular things to be in this current political climate and don’t have to be afraid to admit it, that I love cats, and the sound of little children and enjoy delicious cold brewed coffee I make myself and which I am just about ready to go pour for myself. 😁 Aren’t these things part of my “personality”? ‘Cause I kinda don’t think living in Presence means I must squelch it.
Perhaps I still just don’t “get it”🤷♀️ But the little bird singing outside my window at this moment suggests perhaps I do . . .
I just posted…possibly on another link…and your story has a lot of similarity to mine. I have ALWAYS valued (good) therapy, sounds like you found someone helpful! Somewhere in learning about systems theory, we are each our own systems of behaviors, beliefs, actions. Large organizations are no different…each part impacts every other part. People who live in that system are unable to step outside of it and observe what’s going on because whoever it is is part of the system. They need a 3rd party (consultant) to observe and give feedback about what they’re seeing. It’s the same for me. I believe it’s so helpful to find a neutral competent 3rd party to mirror back to me what I’m missing or not seeing. Particularly my Blind spots. Horses are fabulous therapists because they mirror ourselves back to us. (When we’re authentic with them). I will say as I’ve grown older I have at times been able to step into my observer self. Most dramatically when I started entering the Akashic Records, with Linda Howe. I’m still fascinated the impact I experienced meditating and journaling about me in the 3rd person. I like the VMB and our community here because I feel safe (we are each supporting one another’s life/spiritual journeys, we’re each unique, we must do our own work), I get to be me, warts and all.
Thank you Sandra😊 I agree. My most recent counselor taught me to use curiosity more and to step back and observe, my self and others. I like your description of systems - I’m really good with systems except my own🤣 Working on it😁 I think my counselors through the years definitely helped me by listening, mirroring back what they understood me to say and then giving observations they made, to consider. Learning to do more observing on my own has been so helpful. I too love this place on VMB and feel safe Thank you so much for your thoughts and input. 😊
Beautiful, I love Cynthias work, which in itself transmits a unified field which something essential in me resonates with. I appreciate your translations, too, and want to express how a closeness with Mary Magdalene's essence brings stability and deep presence during the times we are in for me.
They meet in the same silence, but approach from opposite sides. Essence says, “something real shines through you.” Emptiness says, “nothing limits what can.” Both dissolve the mask, just with different accents.
“You are not here to think about God, but to sit in the presence of God.” Wonderful reminder. Sounds like Centering Prayer which I only recently started practicing. ❤️🙏
Here you go again! You are a wonderful teacher. You take what some of us experience as complex, and make it simple! I guess I’m also cheering because I’m blessed with mentors whom I “discovered” since my early 20’s. (I do now know there are no accidents in life. I love this elder (78) time of my life because I look back at all the blessings and miracles that were placed in my path…and I eagerly took up learning that which was beyond roles and should’s and others’ expectations of me.) I have spent probably hundreds of hours in workshops and therapy…jumping into the top rung (Self-Actualization) of Mazlow’s Hierarchy of Needs during the Human Potential Movement. Probably the seed of my life’s mission: “…it is not the easy nor convenient life for which I search, but life lived to the edge of all my possibilities.” Will Shultz: The Human Element, developed an instrument for the Navy Seals to help them remove their masks (figuratively!😁) and uncover their authentic selves in service of teamwork. Jack Gibb, Trust Theory, again where his 10th level was where we could experience and begin to see all the unknown around us. He didn’t lecture he created experiences: weekend retreats for 150 people all strangers on Friday night, and all in love with one another by Sunday afternoon. We broke into small groups and he asked us to introduce ourselves: he never asked for name, georgraphy, job,education, the usual litany of get-to-know someone: the first question we responded to: “What are you passionate about?” To say we-were-off-and-running to having deep conversations about what really mattered…facades and masks dropped…and a new environment was created, safe, confidential…we talked about who we were…authentically.
I grew quickly understanding spirituality as a whole other dimension. My training with horses I learned they would only interact with me if I was authentic in what I was feeling. If I tried to fake anything, they literally turn and walk away. Cry my heart out, rage with anger, sink into depression…they were right there. Touching and speaking to my heart. And then I married an Episcopal Priest like none other: we were sitting in a day long session with Ram Dass (1978). At one point he leaned over and said: “that’s my theology!” I replied: “That’s my philosophy.” Bill introduced me to the real Jesus. What you presented here today is so profound to my being. And the gratitude that at my age (who knew what 78 could be like?) I get to continue to the edges of possibilities to which I have always been drawn. Who knew of the expanse of our universes, or Eternity. To get to discover the existence of Mary Magdalene overwhelms me…most of what I know from you and Cynthia Bourgeault. You don’t just teach, VMB, but in my world each time you offer up a scroll you are creating a sacred space of possibilities for me. I won’t speak for others, except i know them a little in their comments.
Thank you for being so authentically who are, and for sharing Cynthia and Magdalene. “I don’t know what is yet waiting for me. I can’t know. I don’t need to know.” I just wake-up with a grateful heart and wonder about the mystery which is me, seems to unfold a little more each day. THANK YOU!
I appreciated this. But I would have had an easier time if you used “persona” instead of “personality”. The first is the adaptive, defensive strategy, while personality largely consists of traits that are heavily inherited, such as fearfulness and conscientiousness.
That’s a thoughtful distinction. “Persona” fits the idea of the mask we build to stay safe, while “personality” feels more innate. Regardless, neither the persona nor the personality are the soul. Both are layers that have to be unmasked before the deeper light within can be seen.
I really like the contemplative practice you offer at the end of the article. Have you ever considered recording those? Trying to read it and do it at the same time doesn’t flow well for me.
“Spiritual work, then, becomes ego management instead of transformation.” How well I remember the day I ‘caught’ myself using my spirituality to berate a fellow human; ‘Oh I’m so much holier than you and that’s why you struggle.’ I am at times embarrassed to admit just how petty I can be but that’s just more pettiness! 🤣
Thank you for another wonderful lesson in just being. I love remembering the words of Amit Goswami; ‘It’s not do, do, do or be, be, be. It’s do be do be do.’ 🙏
That moment when the "I'm more evolved" voice slips out and you realize it's just the ego in a nicer outfit. Catching it with humor instead of shame is where real transformation starts.
I think the Goswami’s quote fits perfectly. I think he is pointing to the balance between doing and being as the rhythm of consciousness itself. Thank you for sharing that!
That’s quite an image, Christopher. The serpent in the brain has been a symbol for awakening since the earliest temples. The problem starts when people stop treating it as metaphor and start trying to give it medical advice.
That one’s beyond my pay grade, Christopher. I think you might be trying to wrestle angels while tripping over your own serpents. Maybe take a breath and let the symbolism cool before it starts hissing back.
🙏 thought provoking my friend. I’m glad you feel safe to just let your thoughts flow. I hear them as a poem of sorts.
For some reason I’m moved to say “You’re ok and I’m ok.” We’re all okay as we struggle in this sometimes seeming awful world that can be so hard to make sense of.
🤣 Isn’t that a quote from Scooby-Do? Do bedobedo. 🙏♥️
Ummm this (scooby do . . .) was a reply for Jim. I don’t understand how responses flow here sometimes🤷♀️
That quote from Amit Goswami is new to me (sheltered adult lol) & omg cracked me up & also ponder the wisdom. 🤣🧐.
Love this!
So much yes. Having been a therapist for 30 years, I realized I was helping women tidy up the cage, get cozier in the walls instead of seeing the cage and walking through the open door. Nothing wrong with getting more comfy, but it’s a prelude to feeling safe enough to see the conditioning and letting the mask of the good girl receiving tokens go. “Whoever makes all cares into one care, the care for simply being present, will be relieved of all care by that presence.” Freedom. Joy.
That image of helping women tidy up the cage instead of seeing the open door really lands. The shift from comfort to freedom is where everything changes. Presence doesn’t just open the door, it makes the whole cage disappear.
🌅Thank you for sharing your wisdom — you’re like a lighthouse shining through the fog: “Make all cares into one care,” & “You are not here to think about God, but to sit in the presence of God.”🎃
I do love this segmentation in that it truly helps me grasp the different ways of being. At time “personality “ sounds a lot like what I think of as ego. It seems there’s a beautiful alchemy at work that longs for integration. I’d be interested in your thoughts on how this plays out in the daily. How do we become more integrated with each element in its holy roll? I get glimpses- but things slip back.
Beautiful reflection, Kim. Integration happens through consent, not control. The slipping back is part of the lesson. In prayer and awareness, we learn to consent to the deeper presence within us, letting the false self loosen its grip so the true self can shine through. This reminds me of a Buddhist Lojong slogan: abandon all hope of result. When we stop striving for transformation, grace finally has room to move.
That makes beautiful sense. In my 12 step work, I know this as the ongoing process of “Awareness, Surrender and Growth.”
🙏 ♥️ I just have a thought? Question? What do you define as “therapy”?
I have had a lot of therapy through the years. It has helped me to stay on earth, in this dimension or wherever we are exactly.
I recently graduated from seeing a wonderful counselor who taught, encouraged, and practiced with me much of what is shared here. Our meetings were ones of mutuality - we contemplated together, we questioned together, we talked much of what practicing Presence and shared very private experiences of the growing freedom in our endeavors to just let ourselves be.
One of her goals was to ensure that I did not become dependent on her. We just held hands for a moment in time and helped each other up and over a difficult part of our individual trails - we walked away friends, sisters in mutuality.
Yes, I paid for my sessions and received far more than I ever imagined - I’d say I got my money’s worth, times a thousand.
Virgin Monk Boy, I have many ways I encourage myself to keep going, to walk in awareness of Love and embrace just being. I read, I write, I listen to music, I spend time in nature - all personal ways of “being” just me. Mornings are often the most difficult - it often feels that I am at ground zero. Again. I face a darkness that feels like mine alone - in “therapy” I’ve learned that’s a lie.
I have few friends, few who understand me. So in the morning before even getting out of bed I seek the things and people out there who encourage, affirm, bless, teach, speak the hard things - all that my soul needs to be resurrected from the darkness one more day.
At this moment in time your column, your sharing and teaching along with the others who comment and share about their journeys here, from their hearts, is what I would call “therapy” too.
I am going to become a paid subscriber. Or at least I plan to. But . . . there seems to be a running thread in some of the things you share that seem to suggest we do not need “therapy” and that “paying” for retreats and the like might also be a waste of time and money. Am I wrong?
I have purchased some of the wonderful books you have recommended and/or shared from. I would suggest that these things that I read, your column, the input of others is all “therapy” that I confess I need to continue just “being” and living in Presence.
Discovering and getting to know Magdalene has enriched my life in ways I never knew I needed. I learned of her here in your writings. But the more I learn it is okay to “just” be me, the more I seek and seem to hunger for like minded travelers out there somewhere. I admit I grow more human everyday and that I still need “therapy”.
And yes, I still have a personality. It’s also part of just being me. It has ceased more and more being just an image I hide behind. I am being released to just relax, to be authentic, to not hide my sense of humor or joy in little or silly things, that I am often moved to tears by injustice and also by demonstrations of wonderful justice, that I am deeply empathic and “woke” which are not real popular things to be in this current political climate and don’t have to be afraid to admit it, that I love cats, and the sound of little children and enjoy delicious cold brewed coffee I make myself and which I am just about ready to go pour for myself. 😁 Aren’t these things part of my “personality”? ‘Cause I kinda don’t think living in Presence means I must squelch it.
Perhaps I still just don’t “get it”🤷♀️ But the little bird singing outside my window at this moment suggests perhaps I do . . .
Anyway, I was just thinking 🤔 and wondering. 😌🙏
I just posted…possibly on another link…and your story has a lot of similarity to mine. I have ALWAYS valued (good) therapy, sounds like you found someone helpful! Somewhere in learning about systems theory, we are each our own systems of behaviors, beliefs, actions. Large organizations are no different…each part impacts every other part. People who live in that system are unable to step outside of it and observe what’s going on because whoever it is is part of the system. They need a 3rd party (consultant) to observe and give feedback about what they’re seeing. It’s the same for me. I believe it’s so helpful to find a neutral competent 3rd party to mirror back to me what I’m missing or not seeing. Particularly my Blind spots. Horses are fabulous therapists because they mirror ourselves back to us. (When we’re authentic with them). I will say as I’ve grown older I have at times been able to step into my observer self. Most dramatically when I started entering the Akashic Records, with Linda Howe. I’m still fascinated the impact I experienced meditating and journaling about me in the 3rd person. I like the VMB and our community here because I feel safe (we are each supporting one another’s life/spiritual journeys, we’re each unique, we must do our own work), I get to be me, warts and all.
Anyway, thanks for your sharing.❤️🙏
Thank you Sandra😊 I agree. My most recent counselor taught me to use curiosity more and to step back and observe, my self and others. I like your description of systems - I’m really good with systems except my own🤣 Working on it😁 I think my counselors through the years definitely helped me by listening, mirroring back what they understood me to say and then giving observations they made, to consider. Learning to do more observing on my own has been so helpful. I too love this place on VMB and feel safe Thank you so much for your thoughts and input. 😊
"Let what is true survive the fire." <3 <3 <3
Beautiful, I love Cynthias work, which in itself transmits a unified field which something essential in me resonates with. I appreciate your translations, too, and want to express how a closeness with Mary Magdalene's essence brings stability and deep presence during the times we are in for me.
Beautifully put! Do you think essence and Buddhist emptiness are related, maybe the same? Or do they contradict and only one can be true?
They meet in the same silence, but approach from opposite sides. Essence says, “something real shines through you.” Emptiness says, “nothing limits what can.” Both dissolve the mask, just with different accents.
Helpful.❤️
🙏♥️🍂🍁
“You are not here to think about God, but to sit in the presence of God.” Wonderful reminder. Sounds like Centering Prayer which I only recently started practicing. ❤️🙏
Here you go again! You are a wonderful teacher. You take what some of us experience as complex, and make it simple! I guess I’m also cheering because I’m blessed with mentors whom I “discovered” since my early 20’s. (I do now know there are no accidents in life. I love this elder (78) time of my life because I look back at all the blessings and miracles that were placed in my path…and I eagerly took up learning that which was beyond roles and should’s and others’ expectations of me.) I have spent probably hundreds of hours in workshops and therapy…jumping into the top rung (Self-Actualization) of Mazlow’s Hierarchy of Needs during the Human Potential Movement. Probably the seed of my life’s mission: “…it is not the easy nor convenient life for which I search, but life lived to the edge of all my possibilities.” Will Shultz: The Human Element, developed an instrument for the Navy Seals to help them remove their masks (figuratively!😁) and uncover their authentic selves in service of teamwork. Jack Gibb, Trust Theory, again where his 10th level was where we could experience and begin to see all the unknown around us. He didn’t lecture he created experiences: weekend retreats for 150 people all strangers on Friday night, and all in love with one another by Sunday afternoon. We broke into small groups and he asked us to introduce ourselves: he never asked for name, georgraphy, job,education, the usual litany of get-to-know someone: the first question we responded to: “What are you passionate about?” To say we-were-off-and-running to having deep conversations about what really mattered…facades and masks dropped…and a new environment was created, safe, confidential…we talked about who we were…authentically.
I grew quickly understanding spirituality as a whole other dimension. My training with horses I learned they would only interact with me if I was authentic in what I was feeling. If I tried to fake anything, they literally turn and walk away. Cry my heart out, rage with anger, sink into depression…they were right there. Touching and speaking to my heart. And then I married an Episcopal Priest like none other: we were sitting in a day long session with Ram Dass (1978). At one point he leaned over and said: “that’s my theology!” I replied: “That’s my philosophy.” Bill introduced me to the real Jesus. What you presented here today is so profound to my being. And the gratitude that at my age (who knew what 78 could be like?) I get to continue to the edges of possibilities to which I have always been drawn. Who knew of the expanse of our universes, or Eternity. To get to discover the existence of Mary Magdalene overwhelms me…most of what I know from you and Cynthia Bourgeault. You don’t just teach, VMB, but in my world each time you offer up a scroll you are creating a sacred space of possibilities for me. I won’t speak for others, except i know them a little in their comments.
Thank you for being so authentically who are, and for sharing Cynthia and Magdalene. “I don’t know what is yet waiting for me. I can’t know. I don’t need to know.” I just wake-up with a grateful heart and wonder about the mystery which is me, seems to unfold a little more each day. THANK YOU!
Please, keep scrolling! ❤️🙏❤️😎🐶
I appreciated this. But I would have had an easier time if you used “persona” instead of “personality”. The first is the adaptive, defensive strategy, while personality largely consists of traits that are heavily inherited, such as fearfulness and conscientiousness.
That’s a thoughtful distinction. “Persona” fits the idea of the mask we build to stay safe, while “personality” feels more innate. Regardless, neither the persona nor the personality are the soul. Both are layers that have to be unmasked before the deeper light within can be seen.
That’s a good point. I like the observations about unmasking to find the light of the soul.
I really like the contemplative practice you offer at the end of the article. Have you ever considered recording those? Trying to read it and do it at the same time doesn’t flow well for me.