The self that chose the personality shell was not a self that hoped for a popularly lived or easily enjoyed incarnation. Rather, it was designed to make the incarnative self uncomfortable in this or that situation so that the self was caught on the hook of this or that characteristic of personality. You did not hope for an harmonious and pleasant existence. Rather, you hoped for the self to be able to confront, examine and process those learnings about love and loving and being loved that you felt still needed more work. And in this regard and to this end you artistically and creatively crafted the combination of strong points and weak points that would bring you again and again into face-to-face meetings with the self that hopes to choose ever more purely and deeply the love of the one infinite Creator.
Further, each chose the endowments, talents and gifts that you thought would be most appropriate for sharing as blessings with others. If there is within the personality shell a marked gift for the art, for the scholarship, for the science, for working with people, and nurturing families, or for any marked talent whatsoever, this was given to you on purpose. However, not all talents are intended for the using in the way in which one automatically thinks of the use. For example: with this instrument there is the talent for the dancing, the scholarship, and other gifts that have not been used to any great extent in a direct fashion. And yet these endowments create for this entity a cluster of gifts that can be used in the movement of energy between those entities which are about the instrument and which may turn to this entity for counsel or advice. When one looks at the personality of the self, then, there is almost never a direct one-to-one relationship between one’s gifts and the most obvious use of these gifts.
We find within this instrument’s mind, and indeed within the culture in which you live in general, that feeling that the self is the personality shell. And yet within each seeker there is that call to live beyond the personality and beyond the personal. There is that call to live the impersonally lived life. And so the personality shell is often undervalued and underappreciated by the spiritual seeker who sees the personality simply as part of an illusion that needs to be seen beyond. We feel that this is not an opinion which gives the appropriate amount of respect to the personality shell. It is indeed full of error in that the characteristics of personality inevitably color and bias and prejudice the instreaming sense data and cause the seeker to think and to express the self in biased and imperfect ways. Especially aggravating to the seeker are those blockages brought into the incarnation that catch the seeker and take the seeker from the catbird seat of full awareness of who he is and where he is going.
But we would commend to your attention the virtue of confusion, the virtue and helpfulness of being caught, of being puzzled, of being taken out of oneself so that self is revealing self to self in a spontaneous manner. These characteristics of self provide the structure for learning within third density. They present to the seeker carefully orchestrated choices that are subjectively oriented to offer the best opportunity for polarization of consciousness. Without personality but simply with self-awareness and the choice before one the seeker will move without error into full awareness. Yet this awareness teaches nothing. It does not connect with that biological entity in a way which furthers spiritual evolution. It is the foolish personality, the ego, the self that thinks a million thoughts and does a million deeds in its heart, and that foolish entity alone that interacts with free will and finds ever deeper and truer choices that create and recreate and recreate the self ever anew.
It is these perceived imperfections, then, that make that nebulous and necessary connection between consciousness and manifestation. Therefore, we encourage you to glory in and enjoy your personality. We encourage each to appreciate the real value of confusion. As each finds herself becoming too intense, or too this, or too that, take the time to speak to self tenderly and to say, “I know that you are feeling foolish, but this is the folly that teaches.” Therefore, abide in peace and allow the confusion to do its work, for from these concatenations of circumstances hitting that personality shell shall come the catalyst that gives to you the seeker all that you desire: the opportunity to intensify and accelerate the processes of spiritual evolution within the spark of the Creator that is your eternal and infinite self.
Mirror, thank you…
I was thinking of you when I chose to post this. Frogs need to know that they have a place in the big scheme of things.
How kind you are M with foolish frogs..
It’s a really interesting session too
This highlights the dynamic tension for me between the pull of the deeper seeking and my affection and gratitude for the personality’s role in that seeking. We artists can love our tools (even as they give us calluses and with all the limitations that they force us to confront) while learning not to mistake the tool for the end creation.
“Tool” even feels like too small of a word. It feels too transactional.
The whole of the selection you posted here is very helpful.
Yes, there are many levels of tools and users, aren’t there? Sometimes we’re one and sometimes we’re the other. As you hint at, our experience varies as we approach it with more love or with less. With a fully opened heart, it matters little which is which because all are singing the same song in harmony. For example, in this post, does it matter that I am a tool or a tool’s user? No, the beauty of the whole is the main thing, and I contribute what I can…mainly, my heart.
I have been reading, somewhat haphazardly, different Q’uo sessions as I was looking for curiosity in life in general. I happen to be still alive which really surprises me a lot as I thought I would die around 60 which at the time seemed a reasonable and ancient age to leave. But because I am still around I am incredibly and growing more curious about everything. And since I am not a teenager anymore its been quite many years that I stopped being fearful despite possible chaos
So I was reading this Q’uo session now because the subject was ‘change of plan’ and ‘catalyst from it’ . and I am a sucker for plans that need to be changed, I find that extremely inspiring.
So here is the quote, from the 1994, November 13 session, and I am posting this here since I remembered that there was talk of personality…
That selfhood is wrapped within your personality, or your ego, if you will. It is not supposed to show, for indeed that true self is to you a goal towards which you strive in consciousness, for when your consciousness is awakened fully, then you shall see that you have held the truth safely within your deep mind all of your existence. Moreover, this silent wisdom, that spark of love within, moves into and transforms pain, suffering, misunderstanding and each and every negative emotion. It is as though the seeker dug within the earth of selfhood, making the garden of self broken [up] into smaller and smaller clumps of self, until the self has become broken up completely and lies ready and fallow for the seeds of new transformation.
The earth within you, your sticks and stones of expectation, must be broken up so that good seed may be planted in the soil of your lives. This plowing of the self in order to plant new awareness is painful. It feels as though the self were being torn down like an old house, and that old self is being torn down. Yet we have a promise, and that is that that which is being torn down shall seem to you in the future not a self. When service to others is attempted, you serve not only that personality but primarily you serve the Creator self within that is the truth of that entity. Therefore, pour yourselves out in service to others, worrying not whether you have succeeded, but only working toward more purity of desire to serve.
Above all let not your heart be troubled. This is under your conscious control, if you choose to claim the mastery over the self. Work when you can towards that point of balance, within which you are able to see clearly, not removing yourselves from the thick of things, but rather bringing into the thick of things that sacred aspect, that relationship with the Creator within. An attitude is only one word, yet this attitude is the key to the spiritual devotional life, for all things are sacred to the one who has the eyes to see, the ears to hear, and the heart to understand.
So I find the last paragraph terribly moving and quite inspiring, and perhaps Melissa and Mirror you will too
And perhaps it has a link to your conversation, or … not 
That’s a nice passage. Thanks for posting it.
Thank you Flo 
. Tilling the earth of selfhood is a rewarding image to ponder. The work of transformation does require us to get our hands dirty:).
I had another image come to mind when pondering this whole personality/selfhood adventure. Perhaps inspired by some very fragrant gardenias in my yard:). I was thinking of a mystical flower whose center is always in bloom. As the center opens, the outer petals carry the beauty for a moment and fall away in their time. At one point they functioned as the center but as the flower blooms, a deeper and deeper beauty unfolds.
Melissa 
:!!How just exquisite to speak of the original soul, self, this way !!!
Great post. You and I should team up on a blog that just takes channeling excerpts and comments on them. Seems like we’re both doing it and having a good time — just that I do mine in Reddit and you do yours here. It’s great ballast for the community where there’s a constant influx of people who are new to the philosophy and expect it to accommodate their preexisting ideas or want it to function as a theology or horoscope.
This is a lovely, gentle picture of continual growth, decay and regeneration. It has a feminine kindness to it , a sense of all of us belonging somewhere in that continual cycle. It’s an organic version of God being “a circle whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere.”
That’s an interesting point. It kinda reminds me of how you sweet talked me into not leaving this joint in back in 2015.
I’m contributing here now, basically, to support the larger working I’m doing of putting a website together to help people EXPERIENCE the convergence of their inner and outer selves, not just talk about it. it’s very slow going, but I may have something to show in a few month’s time. We’ll see.
Case in point, the OP quote is about the importance of the biologically based self in spiritual growth. Whereas most of us could use more access to our spirit complex, this element (the learning process of the outward looking personality) is equally important in it’s own way. It just helps me to post about that, that is, it helps me digest the concept.
Yes indeed. I suppose I was attempting to put an image to that in a way.
I also have needed, in this musing on personality and self, an image to contain the idea that nothing is wasted. And the lack of force illuminated in the idea of “falling away” fits the image as well. The shallower things only reveal their shallowness as we go deeper. It helps me immensely not to judge the outer layers.
And for whatever its worth from this seeker, I appreciate the stabilzing force that you and Jeremy and Flofrog and others provide.
Thank for your kindness. We might also toss a bouquet of gratitude to @Patrick for maintaining this little garden plot where we are all stretching up to reach the central sun.
Absolutely. None of us would be here without him:)
THIS paragraph jumps out at me. It’s about moving beyond the surface personality into a far deeper experience of unity.
Yet even the dimmest of inklings of this underlying unity act like the explosion or the fireworks, tossing the entity experiencing this unity into a kind of excitement that only the experience of love itself can engender. And once this underlying unity is sensed personally the days of the personality that you now think yourself to be are numbered. The soul which has awakened to the truths that lie beyond the archetypes now has the energy to work through those rich sources within of wisdom and of truth, now has the sufficient reason to attempt to penetrate each and every archetype, becoming one who can assume characteristics which are archetypical in a cleanly pure way, finding within these time-worn structures not only the elegance of internal logic within these systems but also the doors which shall open when one comes at last to a realization that is at the end of each and every archetype or leitmotif.
This selection is more florid than most, again giving some perspective to personality.
Feel that wind of spirit that has allowed you the creation of your unique personality. Personality can be seen to be shallow, that creature of one incarnation. However, the more basic personality is the child of many, many incarnations. And so as with all that is manifest, you as an unique personality first found life a thing of reality by virtue of being slowly more and more aware of, not yourself, but your surroundings. And the process of individuation began.
Imagine that you, spirit just born, sprung from the Creator’s fertile love, sailed through many, many universes and saw many, many beautiful stars, constellations, vibrations of beingness and through many, many densities, many, many experiences you moved that infant soul until there was a choice, a preference, a bias. This star, this constellation, this planet. And one day you were water, or earth, or rock, or rain, or wind, or sand. And your incarnations had begun. Was this unity then forgotten? Not in the deep mind. This essential unity remains that truth which for all, moving through the densities, cannot be denied, for it is felt within as a heart’s truth. It is not that you are like others—rather, you are all that there is. This is your foundation. This is that plinth upon which you build that creation which turns stone to statue and form to life. This is the rock upon which you may stand. You are one.
“…you build that creation which turns stone to statue and form to life.” Very juicy concept. Such a gorgeous description of creativity!
I’m currently reading a book called The Spell of the Sensuous by David Abram. He speaks of our deep subconscious connection to 1st densitiy and 2nd density creation (not the terms he uses of course) but it reminds me of this passage. That the connection we feel to the natural world is a remembering of that essential unity.
There was another passage from the Jan 22, 1995 channeling you shared that struck me:
For instance, in many, many experiences of grief it is an experience and then an experience, and so forth. The experiences add up. They are as they are; but in a course of a million incarnations, at some point the pure and undiluted tone which is grief within you sounds, and suddenly you have experienced for the first time a true grief, a grief which lights up grief incandescently. This tone sounds through all of the infinite creation and is a thing of utmost beauty, and this rich experience retires within that soul the need to experiment with grief, for it has been purely experienced and is no longer that which must be studied.
This is a really beautiful framing of the falling away process. It seems to be pointing to the “impersonal” in a way that describes its fullness. Something clicked with this one:).
Thanks for this, I just ordered a used copy.
I find this of awareness very compelling. At the LLR meditation retreat a couple of months ago, I led a couple of hypnosis sessions (guided meditation) and used plant level consciousness as part of it.
Our level of nervous system is very impressive, but plants do most of what we do with no brain and no nerves. It’s a refreshingly simple modality to settle down into, so much less inhibited.
Afterwards, one of the participants brought up the sections of the Ra Material that mentioned those tree people from Sirius. One of the passages is this. (I already mentioned this someplace recently, but this adds some perspective.)
> 38.10 Questioner: I am assuming, then, that their investigations of bellicosity were primarily the type that they extracted from Hickson’s memory rather than warfare among themselves? Is this correct?
Ra: I am Ra. This is correct. Entities of this heritage would find it nearly impossible to fight. Indeed, their studies of movements of all kinds is their form of meditation due to the fact that their activity is upon the level of what you would call meditation and thus must be balanced, just as your entities need constant moments of meditation to balance your activities.
38.11 Questioner: I believe this is an important point for us in understanding the balancing aspect of meditation since we have here its antithesis in another type of evolution.
Isn’t it interesting to compare their having to meditate on self motivated activity to our having to meditate in silence?
This swings back to praising the ego, that is, balancing the inner and the outer.
Yes, there’s a completeness and sense of “time to move on to what’s next.”
Well, that’s a happy feeling!
part of yours and Melissa’s discussion reminds me of an experience I had during a meditation around 2006/2007(?)
I was sitting, observing and sensing, no definable intention, a flow of perception with expressions on the side.
Suddenly it was like I was looking from the centre of earth out of my eyes, and I could relate to the idea of all living things on earth being the subjective experience of Gaia, exploring her self through all here is.
No idea what level of accuracy there is in that, while it supports a perspective where a lion hunting an antelope, fundamentally is a form of self exploration, rather than self violation, and it made the ugliness in this world feel a fair bit more peaceful.