You’re an Event For Which You Are Responsible
One of the requirements for becoming ordained was a psychiatric evaluation chock full of personality tests.
The most intimidating was the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory. This behemoth will be familiar to any mental health professional as it’s often used to identify psycopathy.
It was humbling to not only take the test but then be questioned about my answers afterwards. I felt like I was under a very unkind microscope and I just hope that this requirement actually prevented psychopaths somewhere from being ordained, though I’ve met more than a few questionable folks over the years.
As I took the tests I wondered what my answers meant.
I would ask myself, if I say yes to this question does it mean I’m a psychopath, or just that I might become one? I wondered with another question, am I a true deviant or just maladjusted to sick social rules?
Yes I hear voices, and yes I do what they say, but isn’t that just a sign of being in touch with the Holy Spirit? The interviewer gave me a pass on that one. Apparently it’s rather common for spiritual folks to hear voices. Recommended, actually.
There were plenty of other personality tests packed in there too.
I took the Myers-Briggs (ENFP, the Campaigner), the Enneagram (8w7, the Non-Comformist), the DiCS (resuls lost to history), and more. I was about 30 years old at the time and suddenly I had words for who I was. I had a diagnosable personality, a few of the more helpful psychopathic traits, and new categories for what I felt inside.
As I continued towards ordination I dug into these identities. My fellow pre-ministers had their own labels and we delighted in saying to each other, “Oh yeah, and Ennagram 7 would totally preach a sermon like that” or “I’m surprised an INFJ like you actually enjoyed that party!”
I spent years during seminary and beyond trying to become my personality labels so I could really KNOW WHO I AM once and for all (I know, the elders are chuckling right now).
Since that time I’ve been allowed to become a minister, despite my minor derangements and deviances.
But I’ve also discovered that my rock solid idenity from my 30s is not quite what it seems. Since then, I’ve followed more than a few spiritual paths deep into the Buddhist and Hindu territories, in particular the Yogananda lineage. Yes! Yogananda again ;)
I’ve also learned from various spiritual and shamanic teachers about the fleeting nature of humans, in particular their earthly personalities. This life is singular, the soul is eternal and ‘wears’ the personality until its needs are met.
Asha Nayaswami says we take off the body at the end of our lives just like you take off your clothes at the end of the day.
They were useful while you were wearing them but once the day is done, you drop them in the hamper without another thought. Goodbye Enneagram 8w7! Goodbye ENFP!
Her teacher Swami Kriyananda takes it a step further and reminds us that even the personality and ego are not permanent things. They are repeating energetic patterns, no more and no less.
Kriyananda reminds us that our primary identity is an eternal soul, AND our earthly lives are an event for which we are nevertheless responsible. Take that, spiritual bypassers!
In other words, we are a persistant but impermanent nexus of energy comprised of karmic patterns, earthly habits, and convincing energetic densities that say “I’m here and I’m like this!”
Art by Richie Pope
I see this same thing in my clairvoyant sessions.
When I look at your energy, there’s no there there. It’s just patterns of light and color with more or less density. The fun part is when folks come with a persistent pattern that feels like an identity and we get to look and see if that’s really true.
So for example, someone comes with the belief that they’re bad at making money and will never get to work in their dream job. That belief has borne out so many times that it’s sitting in the body as an identity; this is who I am!
But when I really look, it shows up as the dark green energy of a grandmother who couldn’t fulfill her dreams because she had to mind the children and the farm.
We move that energy back into the matrilineal realm and suddenly my client has enough confidence to apply for the out-of-reach job. They don’t hear back but they are empowered enough to keep applying, get a few interviews, and eventually get a foot in the door.
That is how we change our ‘identity.’ We become responsible for the energetic patterns and habits within us, we remember they are not our true nature, but we take the reigns and respond to them anyway.
And this is why I love psychic work. Because I get to see people courageously face the thing they think defines them and suddenly discover it’s not them at all. You have no idea how fun it is when that happens in a session.
Now all of this gets wildly more complex when we start exploring the event of our personalities in community.
And we always have to discern which identitites are temporary patterns we’re meant to overcome, and which are multi-lifetime patterns we’re meant to live with and learn from.
But a lot can be accomplished when we simply take responsibilty - the ability to respond to ourselves. We get out of the rut of personality and the don’t-change-anything safety mechanisms of the ego.
We expand our capacity for personal and collective power. And we discover that we actually are limitless beings.
Need a little help with that sticky pattern? You know what to do.
Starts tomorrow! (Also recorded for self-paced study)
MODULE SEVEN: LOVE REIGNS SUPREME
Jesus weeps at Lazarus' tomb and those Greek words, edakrusen ho Iēsous, are some of the most important in the scriptures. Then he washes feet and gives a farewell discourse that is more of a divine command than a speech. Finally he gives us a prayer that Christians have been reading at ordinations and deathbeds ever since.
This is the heart of of Christ’s love, a divine being who knows what is coming and chooses full presence anyway. We’ll end this session by calling on the Advocate, the Paraklētos, the spiritual companion Jesus promises to every person who has ever felt abandoned by God or by religion.
Read about the other Modules on the website.
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