The word “person” gives a hint into what we can learn from the evolution of the English language. “Person” is derived from the Latin word “persona” and means a mask or a false face. By social convention, we are forced to build a character for ourselves starting early in life. This character is often cobbled together without intention or direction.
As life goes on we often forget that we’re not the character we’re playing. As we forget, certain false beliefs about who we are become buried deep within our subconscious. For the most part, we start out on the wrong foot, unintentionally building a character for ourselves with less than ideal traits. It is important to our growth to be able to adjust our character traits to be more aligned with our better qualities.
To make matters worse, we also stack characters. For example, when we have a job interview. We imagine the scenario based on our expectations. We read about the company and find out what the culture might be like. We envision ourselves being an interviewee and we choose what behavior we will have. Before we walk into the interview we have adjusted our character.
Short term character changes like this aren’t dangerous like long term ones can be. For instance, let’s say we get the job. However, the organization doesn’t share the same core values as us. As we work for the organization we develop new character traits to fit in. At first we know it’s just an act, but after a while we forget we aren’t the character we’re playing. Over time these character traits get out of control and contradict many of our core values, causing a lot of mental conflict.
Do You Like The Story You’re Living?
We’re all actors, some of us just know we are. Knowing that you are just an actor is strategically advantageous and beneficial to mental health. Meditation allows us to observe our character from a neutral perspective and let go of any unhelpful traits. We also begin intuitively understanding the characters of those around us. Over time we will begin taking our persona less seriously, which will give us greater control of our lives.
As a visual representation:
The circle represents our character and the white space represents our awareness. Here I’m using the term “awareness” to refer to the part of our experience that is “now” or this moment. The image on the left shows how we usually experience our character, while the image on the right shows how we experience it during meditation. Being able to have regular contrast within ourselves is extremely useful to our mental health. Just by observing ourselves in this way we can resolve internal conflicts that have been using up our mental energy.
Through consistent meditation practice, we can grow to know a lot about our character. Over time, we will gain insight into which parts of our character are beneficial and which parts are just holding us back. This takes self honesty because sometimes it’s difficult for us to let go of character traits that we’ve become overly identified with. The only way to break away from our unhealthy character traits is to do the internal work necessary to know our real self again.
Each time we are able to let go of any traits that aren’t serving us, we are also enabling our good traits to come through. So the positive traits become available to assist us in further growth. This compounding effect enables people who are sincere about recreating themselves to move very quickly along the path of self discovery.
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