Our relationship with our personality after awakening

What is our relationship with our personality after awakening & does it change?

Eckhart Tolle: Strictly speaking, before awakening, to a large extent, you don’t have a relationship with your personality; you are your personality. If you can have a relationship with your personality – which is the ego, with its way of reacting and thinking, and emotions – who is having a relationship with the personality? What that means is you are witnessing it. There is a witnessing consciousness there, and if there is a witnessing consciousness, then you can have a relationship with your personality. What that really means is, you can be there as a witnessing presence when your ego is doing something silly. And you can laugh at yourself, maybe in the moment, maybe afterwards. If you are totally in the grip of your personality, or your ego, then of course there is no relationship because you have become it. You’re so one with all your reactive patterns and all your conditioned thinking, that you don’t even know that there’s anything else in you. You are it. As you awaken spiritually, the awareness that is nothing to do with your personality increases, and the power of the personality, with its conditioned patterns, decreases. Gradually, the personality is no longer opaque; it is transparent to the light of awareness, or consciousness. It loses its solidity.

This is why you find that in people who are awake, or people who are awakening, there is more of a lightness to them. If there’s only personality, then there’s heaviness, a psychic heaviness in you. Everything is dreadfully serious, and [you are] defensive, always wanting something, or defending yourself against something. When you’re relating to somebody in whom there is no awareness, then you always get a slightly uncomfortable feeling, because that person is completely ill-at-ease. Ultimately, all personalities are ill-at-ease. They may pretend that they are very confident, but underneath the role of ‘confidence’, there’s always a person who feels ill-at-ease. They need to prove something, or they want something from you. That’s the personality. As you awaken, that part become a little less opaque and it becomes lighter. There’s more of an awareness that shines through the person. Ego is complete identification with your thinking and your emotions. When you are unconscious, personality and ego are one thing.

As you awaken, you become more aware of your patterns, which may to some extent still operate. I’m choosing to define personality as something that you can be aware of. It was the ego before, but you can be aware of it as patterns that still operate within you. If there is no awareness, and you are it, then it’s totally ego.

As you become aware of your ego, the ego becomes the personality, and then you can have a relationship with your personality in the sense that you can be the witness. If you have a difficult relationship with your personality, that’s a delusion. Then your personality has split itself into two, one part is having a relationship with another, and one part says “You should be better, why can’t you be more conscious?” That means there is no witnessing presence there. One part of the personality is arguing with another.

The witnessing consciousness doesn’t judge. You don’t judge yourself in any way, you just see behavior. There’s no good or bad, it just is. The need to be right, for example, is a very common thing with the ego. If it’s a deep-seated need, then you can’t be wrong in an argument. There’s a compulsion to defend yourself. Then suddenly you can see it in yourself. Ultimately, having a relationship with your personality implies that there is a witnessing presence.

There will come a time..

Is it any use reading books for those who long for release?

Ramana: All the texts say that in order to gain release one should render the mind quiescent; therefore their conclusive teaching is that the mind should be rendered quiescent; once this has been understood there is no need for endless reading.

In order to quieten the mind one has only to inquire within oneself what one's Self is; how could this search be done in books?

One should know one's Self with one's own eye of wisdom. The Self is within the five sheaths; but books are outside them.

Since the Self has to be inquired into by discarding the five sheaths, it is futile to search for it in books. There will come a time when one will have to forget all that one has learned.

Is it necessary for one who longs for release to inquire into the nature of categories?

Just as one who wants to throw away garbage has no need to analyse it and see what it is, so one who wants to know the Self has no need to count the number of categories or inquire into their characteristics; what he has to do is to reject altogether the categories that hide the Self. The world should be considered like a dream.

Is there no difference between waking and dream?

Waking is long and a dream short; other than this there is no difference. Just as waking happenings seem real while awake. so do those in a dream while dreaming. In dream the mind takes on another body. In both waking and dream states thoughts. names and forms occur simultaneously.

What is the path of inquiry for understanding the nature of the mind?

That which rises as 'I' in this body is the mind. If one inquires as to where in the body the thought 'I' rises first, one would discover that it rises in the heart. That is the place of the mind's origin. Even if one thinks constantly 'I' 'I', one will be led to that place.

Of all the thoughts that arise in the mind, the 'I' thought is the first. It is only after the rise of this that the other thoughts arise. It is after the appearance of the first personal pronoun that the second and third personal pronouns appear; without the first personal pronoun there will not be the second and third.

How will the mind become quiescent?

By the inquiry 'Who am I?'. The thought 'who am I?' will destroy all other thoughts, and like the stick used for stirring the burning pyre, it will itself in the end get destroyed. Then, there will arise Self-realization.

What is the means for constantly holding on to the thought 'Who am I?'

When other thoughts arise, one should not pursue them, but should inquire: 'To whom do they arise?' It does not matter how many thoughts arise. As each thought arises, one should inquire with diligence, "To whom has this thought arisen?". The answer that would emerge would be "To me".

Thereupon if one inquires "Who am I?", the mind will go back to its source; and the thought that arose will become quiescent.

With repeated practice in this manner, the mind will develop the skill to stay in its source. When the mind that is subtle goes out through the brain and the sense-organs, the gross names and forms appear; when it stays in the heart, the names and forms disappear.

Not letting the mind go out, but retaining it in the Heart is what is called "inwardness".

Letting the mind go out of the Heart is known as "externalisation". Thus, when the mind stays in the Heart, the 'I' which is the source of all thoughts will go, and the Self which ever exists will shine. Whatever one does, one should do without the egoity "I". If one acts in that way, all will appear as of the nature of Consciousness.

Who Am I?
Teachings of Sri Ramana Maharishi