Personality and Pure Awareness
When the shadow is embraced, it can be healed. When it is healed, it turns into love. When you can live with all your opposite qualities, you will be living your total self.When you look closely inside yourself, you will find there are many personalities competing for the use of your body. For example, the conflict between good and evil gives rise to two personalities called saint and sinner. Then there are the roles you identify withchild, parent, brother, sister, male, femalenot to mention the work you do: Doctor, lawyer, priest, child care provider, and so forth. Each of these has staked a claim inside you, shouting over the rest in order to put a narrow viewpoint forward. Then, theres your sense of nationality and religious identitythese alone cause endless trouble.These personalities are usually in conflict.What we call happiness is a state in which much of this conflict has died down. Until you find your way to freedom, you will be held hostage by the conflict among your inner personalities.It is so bewildering to meet a mortal that I often believe I am talking to a whole village inside one package of flesh and bones, said Merlin. Then why is it that I feel so lonely? said the boy. It does seem a wonder with all those people fighting to occupy your body that you could ever be lonely, replied Merlin. But I have concluded that loneliness exists as long as other people exist. As long as there is I and you, there will be a feeling of separation, and where there is separation there must be isolation.What is loneliness but another name for isolation? But there will always be other people in the world, protested Arthur. Are you so certain of that? replied Merlin. There will always be peoplethat is undeniablebut will there always be other people?All sub-personalities want the same thing: To express themselves through you.No single personality ever finds complete fulfillment; therefore all must clamor to get their moment in the sunor in the shadows. The resulting conflict is what makes h! uman lif e so ambiguous, so full of light and shadow together. The way to move from the mortal state to the wizards state is completely natural. All that is required is balance, which the flow of life is perfectly capable of preserving.Adapted from The Way of the Wizard, by Deepak Chopra (Harmony Books, 1995)
