Soon the childs clear eye is
clouded over by ideas and opinions, preconceptions and abstractions. Simple free being
becomes encrusted with the burdensome armor of the ego. Not until years later does an
instinct come that a vital sense of mystery has been withdrawn. The sun glints through the
pines, and the heart is pierced in a moment of beauty and strange pain, like a memory of
paradise. After that day . . . we become seekers.
--Peter Matthiessen
The Enneagram tradition defines personality as the lifetime accumulation of mental and
emotional patterns which constitute the persona, the person an individual believes himself
or herself to be and presents to the world. These patterns include, but are not limited
to, habitual ways of thinking, believing, perceiving, and feeling.
The words "personality", "ego" and "false self" are
considered synonymous and often are used interchangeably in Enneagram teaching.
The personality is said to be an imitation, a facsimile, of the "True Self".
Personality is fixated. Personality reacts to the ever changing outer environment with
identifiable, predictable and conditioned reactions. Thus, personality is said to be the
"conditioned being" as opposed to the "real being".
Essence is considered to be the "real being", the True Self, and may be
considered a process rather than a fixed identity. Essence flows, is changeable and
responds freshly and appropriately to ever changing conditions in the outer world. |