Conversations with Christine
Conversations with Christine, Chapter 10: Understanding the Persona
Photo by Jérôme BEHUET on Unsplash
I went to bed that night thinking of the conversations that I had with Christine throughout the day.
I was trying to understand the various systems within theology, philosophy, and psychology, and how they felt siloed to me. It was almost like I was being called to crack the code on how all of these systems that she was discussing connected with one another. How were all of these great teachers saying the same thing, but with a slightly different vocabulary? My mind wanted this to be streamlined. I wanted to pull out all unnecessary complication and make things so basic that even I could understand them.
I hopped out of bed and turned on the light on my bedside dresser. I wanted to review a white paper once again, written for the Journal of Adult Development, that Dr. Daniels had co-authored with a team. I remembered a diagram in the corner of the page that introduced Loevinger’s theory of ego development.
I sat on the side of my bed looking at the chart. It showed that ten percent of the population is in the developmental stage of impulse and self-protection, eighty percent is in the conformist, self-aware, and conscientious stages, and the final ten percent is in the individualist, autonomous, construct-aware, and unitive stages.
Slowly, through my conversations with Christine, I was starting to understand the journey of the ego. I took my journal that was sitting on my dresser and opened to the page that held my pen.
I wrote the word “ego” on the page.
I then wrote the words “evolution of consciousness.”
Next I wrote the word “wounding,” followed by “false self.”
I went back to the chart of Loevinger’s theory of ego development.
I remembered having the same thoughts when I looked at this chart the first time. If we understood there was a better way to be, a better way to live our lives— to be freer, more joyful and experience less suffering—wouldn’t we all do the work to understand our wounded selves? Wouldn’t we want to move through the egocentric patterns formed in childhood, which are really just reactive defenses to our mistaken beliefs?
I grabbed the Merriam-Webster Dictionary from my bookshelf and looked up the word “personality.” I wrote the first definition of the word in my journal:
Noun 1a: the quality or state of being a person; b: personal existence.
I heard my sister brushing her teeth in the bathroom, so I stood up, opened the door to my bedroom and walked across the hall. Having grown up in a large family, neither of us had an issue with sharing the bathroom. I quietly knocked on the door. Christine opened the door with a mouth full of toothpaste.
“Tell me again what the Latin term for personality comes from?” I asked.
She turned on the faucet and spit into the sink. “It comes from persona, which translates literally into a theatrical mask.” Christine put her hand up to mask her face with one hand, and began brushing her teeth again with the other.
“So that is why C. G. Jung talked about the lowercase self and uppercase Self? The lowercase self is the ego, which gets trapped hiding behind the persona—the masks that we present to the world like we are playacting? But once we start to work through those woundings, a process Jung calls shadow work, we see the masks that we wear as ways to protect ourselves. We can then awaken to our true self and purpose!” I responded excitedly.
Christine continued to brush her teeth as she nodded her head yes. I closed the door, returned to my bedroom, and waited while she finished up. When she opened the bathroom door, she came across the hall and said, “Going back to the Adam and Eve worldview myth, it is all very awe-inspiring, really. Once you can see these patterns throughout all the creation stories, they all point to the same important work that all of us humans must do. It is a painful but necessary birth of human ego-consciousness.”
“So, is ego-consciousness the exact opposite of what the Hindus call Moksha?” I asked as I wrote more notes in my journal. “When we are in ego-consciousness, we are tied to the mistaken beliefs of our woundings and holding on to them? We are hiding behind the shadow of our persona, our masks?”
“Yes, that is right,” Christine replied.
“So then, when we work through all of the shadow parts of ourselves and untie and let go of our attachments to these false beliefs, we then become more and more our true selves and remember that we are all unified with each other and the Cosmos? We transcend the lowercase self and experience Moksha?” I asked.
“That is the blueprint, but the road is one that very few travel. Maybe 10% of the population?” Christine stated as she shrugged.
“According to Loevinger’s chart in the white paper by David Daniels and his team, it is 10%.” I held out the paper so she could see the chart.
“I think there are levels beyond this chart. Even fewer masters, saints, and Rishis obtain those levels—maybe 1%. They are what you would call, in marketing, the early adopters. They are leading the way, pushing the envelope of what is possible. The Universe is infinite and so are we.”
“Can we dive into the micro views on how consciousness evolves tomorrow? I have a feeling that this is going to get really good!” I said as I put down my journal and started to crawl under my down comforter.
Conversations with Christine Series
Becky has been exploring creativity, spirituality, and the patterns that shape us through her ongoing series, Conversations with Christine. The series imagines two sisters in deep conversation about life’s larger questions, who we are, what shapes us, and why we are here.
Chapter 1: Archetypes, Symbols and Talismans ·
Chapter 2: Defining the Ego ·
Chapter 3: Woundings ·
Chapter 4: Vices and Virtues ·
Chapter 5: The Spiritual Practice of Journaling ·
Chapter 6: Redefining God ·
Chapter 7: Trinities
Chapter 8: Reconnecting
Chapter 9: Evolution of Consciousness
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