Personality, Goals, Modes and Attitudes

This is the third part of Michael Profile Introduction. For more please go to Michael Teachings Page.

In order to evolve and grow in soul age perspective, an essence must experience physical life through a physical plane “vehicle” or “medium.” This medium is personality and its body. For each lifetime, each personality of essence is designed with a primary body type, goal, mode of operation and basic attitude through which it will view life. In the teachings, these terms are called overleaves because these personality traits “over-lay” the spiritual essence.

Personality

Whereas the role in essence remains the same throughout the soul’s incarnations through various personalities, the overleaves do not. Essence* chooses the specific overleaves it will use to create a personality before each incarnation. What overleaves it chooses depends on its intentions for the incarnation. How carefully and masterfully it chooses depends on its level of soul age maturity (its experience with creating personalities).

*Essence also uses astrological influences to help create personality. To learn more about how astrology plays into our design and lifetimes, please go to my Karma & Astrology Page.

True and False Personalities

As all is chosen, personality has its own context of choice within a lifetime. It is not guaranteed that we as personality will be in alignment with our own essence. Essence, as an extension of tao, loves each of its personalities unconditionally. Therefore, personality has ultimate control of each lifetime. Essence designs the lifetime and personality, and it attempts to guide both, but it will never impose its will or override the choices of personality.

Each lifetime, personality has the choice of whether or not to align with its essence. When personality is in alignment with essence, it experiences itself as it was designed; it experiences true personality. When true personality is embodied, love is experienced and essence can manifest on the physical plane, co-creating a fulfilling life with personality. Until this orientation in true personality is chosen, personality lives much of its life disconnected from its essence and is oriented in false personality.

False personality is the conglomeration of family and worldly conditioning and imprinting (beliefs and behaviors) that a person adopts and embodies. The foundation of this false personality is fear. Fear is meant to protect personality from actual threats, but personality most often uses fear to protect and defend itself from imaginary threats. This reliance on fear as a defense and protection distorts personality’s perceptions and influences its decisions and choices. This reliance on fear effectively cuts-off personality’s capacity to experience its own soul, which is its primary navigational guide toward happiness and fulfillment in each lifetime. When in false personality, a person makes decisions and choices motivated by fear, which usually makes life feel more painful and restricted. When in true personality, a person makes decisions and choices motivated from love, which usually makes life feel more free and expansive.

Essence Needs Personality-Needs You!

Personality is the vehicle for essence to experience the physical plane. It has no access to the wonders of the physical plane without a body and personality. It needs body/personality’s eyes to see, ears to hear, hands to touch, tongue to taste and nose to smell. Physical incarnations allow the soul to evolve and remember itself and others.

The personality is an extension of the essence. Truly, they are not separate, but technically, they are different. Personality does not give rise to the essence. It is the other way around.

This vehicle of personality consists of a body and a moving center, emotions and an emotional center and thoughts and an intellectual center. It also comes equipped with an instinctive center that is like the floppy disk on which all of its experiences are recorded from one lifetime to the next.

Each center of moving, emotional and intellectual also has a “higher” counterpart that is managed by essence: the higher moving (energy or beauty), higher emotional (love) and higher intellectual (truth).

Essence designs each personality before each lifetime. The older the soul, the more adept it becomes at designing personalities so that they will be more likely to embrace their own soul essence and invite the essence to participate and help in the creation of the life.

Another way of looking at these design elements is to see the personality as a mirror image or physical reflection of the soul, reflecting the soul’s intentions and ideas for any given lifetime.

7 Goals, 7 Modes and 7 Attitudes

There are 7 goals, 7 modes and 7 attitudes to choose from (there are also 7 body types, but I will not go into those in this brief introduction), and these also reflect the basic 7-realm structure of the Tao. Below is an introduction to the overleaves or the core personality design traits:

9. Goal

The primary aim of the lifetime that underpins all decisions, choices and actions.

The goal in these teachings represents the original intention behind the lifetime. It is connected to the action axis and therefore underlies all of our decisions and choices. Why do we do what we do? What are we seeking? What are we aiming for? What is our motivation? What are we learning about? For insights into these questions, we can look to the goal.

The goal also includes our life-task, which is a more specific aspect of the goal. One would never have a life-task that is in conflict with their goal.

There are 7 fundamental goals or aims available for any given lifetime:

Inspiration Goals

Re-evaluation (ordinal) – aims for simplicity, to focus the life contexts and understand what has come before
Growth (cardinal) – aims for evolution/comprehension, to broaden the life contexts and comprehend more

Expression Goals

Discrimination (ordinal) – aims for discernment, to refine the life choices and say “no” and mean it
Acceptance (cardinal) – aims for agape (unconditional acceptance), to include all life choices and say “yes” and mean it

Action Goals

Submission (ordinal) – aims for dedication, to focus one’s actions into contexts where they can be received
Dominance (cardinal) – aims for leadership, to broaden one’s actions into contexts of leadership for self and others

Assimilation Goal

Flow (neutral) – aims for peace/freedom, to be “goal-less,” to relax, to flow and experience peace and freedom

Validating my goal was a big one for me. Most of my life, due to imprinting, I thought I needed to be a leader in some way, to direct myself and others masterfully (dominance). It wasn’t until I began to get to know my true personality (my personality as it was designed by my essence), that I began to realize that I actually yearned for peace and freedom to simply be. The path of dominance was what others may have wanted for me, and what I may have assumed was needed of me. But it wasn’t what I was truly aiming for. Trying to be in dominance did not help me to understand my deepest motivations and the patterns of my life.

Being in flow/relaxation did. I can barely express the relief that grew in me as I came to embrace my actual goal in life. It helped me understand my deepest longings and choose with more consciousness those paths and directions that could truly bring me fulfillment.

The goal doesn’t necessarily come easy! I had to learn to relax and flow. And I am still learning. But I am far better at it now than before.

Also, everything can be described as a spectrum ranging from negative (emphasizing separation and exclusion) to positive (emphasizing oneness and inclusion).

The negative pole of flow/relaxation is stagnation or inertia, while the positive pole is free-flowing, peace and freedom.

Before I learned to relax and flow, I spent much of my younger years running, running, running, like a hamster in a wheel, trying my best to create fulfillment but getting nowhere. There was often allot of activity but no real progress. And I often felt like giving up altogether! I was spinning my wheels, and it was exhausting.

For me, “giving up” and letting myself possibly be “the failure” was actually what helped me to begin to relax and flow. As I embraced my goal of flow/relaxation, I began to experience the peace and freedom for which I had always been searching.

The goal represents the type of fulfillment we seek in life. When we validate it and embrace it, we are able to experience a deep soul fulfillment. Then, it can feel like our life comes into alignment with a deeper sense of purpose. We make our decisions and choices from this place of consciousness, and the life begins to unfold in much more pleasurable ways.

10. Mode

The mode of operation used for reaching the goal, relating and relationships.

Whereas the goal is connected to action and our moving centers, the mode is connected to inspiration and our emotions. It describes our most basic way of relating to our goal, and it describes our primary mode of operation through which we reach our goal.

Through our mode, we relate to the goal, ourselves, others and all of life.

How do we reach our goal? Again, there are 7 fundamental ways of reaching the goal:

Inspiration Modes

Reserve (ordinal) – at best, operates through restraining the emotions (-inhibition and/or +restraint)
Passion (cardinal) – at best, operates through self-actualization,
relating through freeing the emotions (-identification and/or +self-actualization)

Expression Modes

Caution (ordinal) – at best, operates through deliberation, relating through refining the thoughts (-phobia and/or +deliberation)
Power (cardinal) – at best, operates through authority, relating through freeing the thoughts (-oppression and/or +authority)

Action Modes

Perseverance (ordinal) – at best, operates through persistence, relating through refining the actions (-monotony and/or +persistence)
Aggression (cardinal) – at best, operates through dynamism, relating through freeing the actions (-belligerence and/or +dynamic)

Assimilation Mode

Observation (neutral) – at best, operates through clarity, relating through observing and using the most appropriate mode in context ( -surveillance and/or +clarity)

I happen to be in observation mode this lifetime, and validating this helped me to understand my natural approach to life. Though my observation does slide to reserve and passion (the assimilation overleaves can slide to any of the other overleafs in order to reach balance), I do so in order to come home to clarity, the positive pole of the observation mode.

The mode is the overleaf we all use in order to experience intimacy with each other. It can help us to understand what it is that we are actually attracted to in others and what others tend to be attracted to in us.

11. Attitude

The basic philosophy through which life is viewed and interpreted.

The attitude is connected to the intellectual center and our thoughts. It represents our primary philosophy through which we see, interpret and understand life. As such, it tends to be the “hub” of the personality. Its healthy operation tends to be the key to experiencing life as enjoyable and fulfilling.

When the attitude is in the negative poles (emphasizing separation and exclusion), we will tend to be closed to new information and more prone to drawing conclusions based on half-truths.

When the attitude is in the positive poles (emphasizing oneness and inclusion), we will tend to be open to more information and more prone to a stance of continuously updating our truths in an effort to experience wholeness.

The 7 basic philosophies or attitudes are:

Inspiration Attitudes

Stoic (ordinal) – at best, views life through a lens of tranquility, just as if it has seen it all before (-resignation and/or +tranquility)
Spiritualist (cardinal) – at best, views life through a lens of verification, sees life as if it is seeing it for the first time (-belief and/or verification)

Expression Attitudes

Skeptic (ordinal) – at best, views life through a lens of investigation, sees life as if it can always be disproved (-suspicion and/or +investigation)
Idealist (cardinal) – at best, views life through a lens of coalescence, sees life as if it can always be improved (-naivete and/or +coalescence)

Action Attitudes

Cynic (ordinal) – at best, views life through a lens of contradiction, sees life as the opposite of what it appears to be (-denigration and/or +contradiction)
Realist (cardinal) – at best, views life through a lens of objectivity, sees life as it appears to be (-subjective and/or +objective)

Assimilation Attitude

Pragmatist (neutral) – at best, sees life through a lens of practicality/efficiency and uses the most appropriate attitude for the context (-dogma and/or +efficient)

Why knowing all this is helpful?

There are many more aspects to this teaching, but this is a good place to begin. And why share all of this anyway? Some ask what is the benefit of having all of this knowledge.

From Michaels’ perspective, this mapping can be useful for helping us to know who/what we are, where we are and how to get to where we would like to be.

When we validate this information, it can help us to move away from many of our distractions so that we can simply enjoy who we are, where we are and where we are going.

Michael Entity offers this information as a tool to help us navigate our lives with more understanding, confidence, and compassion.Most importantly, they share this teaching with us to support the ultimate goal of reaching agape (unconditional love).

The good news is, we will all reach the goal, eventually, with or without this teaching. And for those of us who resonate with and apply this teaching, we have a powerful means to accelerate our growth and evolution.