Character, Personality and Ethics

(The Map and The Territory)

Man develops along two lines - the line of knowledge and the line of being, and both lines must develop in balance. People who have not evolved in the line of being do not have the understanding whereby such knowledge as they acquire can be contexted and put to use. Their being is either asleep, or impaired (unable to contextually expand) or immature. A person may have knowledge but no power to do, i.e. to bring his knowledge into use, or for sound results. On the other hand, if being outweighs knowledge a man has the power to do, but does not know it nor – functionally – know how to proceed (His being is aimless and unsupported by knowledge thus his efforts are useless as in the case of the uneducated shepherd who is anointed king). A weak yogi is one who knows a great deal but can do nothing, i.e. a man who does not understand what he knows, or who cannot discern between one kind of knowledge and another. Development of being without knowledge results in a stupid saint, i.e. one who could do a great deal but doesn’t know what to do, nor the cause and effect of actions, thus he will act in accordance with subjective feelings rather than informed understanding. When understanding cannot bridge knowledge and being, both lines will be impaired. The thinking apparatus may possess knowledge, but understanding only appears when man’s essence (being) also feels and senses what is connected with the knowledge.

(from Remedy’s Book Reviews – P.D. Ouspensky’s “In Search of The Miraculous” – A Russian philosopher’s findings

over seven years as understudy of the Armenian mystic and teacher, Georges Gurdjieff)

“Regardless of what you say or do or what face you show to the world, your mental-emotional state cannot be concealed. Every human being emanates an energy field that corresponds to his or her inner state, and most people can sense it, although they may feel someone else's energy emanation only subliminally. That is to say, they don't know that they sense it, yet it determines to a large extent how they feel about and react to that person. Some people are most clearly aware of it when they first meet someone, even before any words are exchanged. A little later, however, words take over the relationship and with words come the roles that most people play. Attention then moves to the realm of mind, and the ability to sense the other person's energy field becomes greatly diminished. Nevertheless, it is still felt on an unconscious level.”

(Eckhart Tolle - A NEW EARTH: Awakening To Your Life’s Purpose)

“A man’s character is his destiny.” (Heraclitus)

THE MAP:

• Character is one’s true, essential identity, the core of one’s being, as opposed to one’s possession. From one’s Still Point, character kindles into life, firstly searching from memory’s ‘cost-benefit’ lessons to select the best available option, then focussing Intention, and finally applying the energies of Will.

• Personality is who you are not. Personality development is a technique, in some ways a fake, but a necessary one, in that – through deployment of our personality roles – we can learn on life’s stages. Think of ‘personality’ as being one or more operational masks that one presents to others; we reactively tailor these masks for the playing of particular roles, and usually learn – through situational self-preservation and self-adaptation – to be increasingly better actors in our personal life dramas. One’s personality is akin to ego, in that it exists for the purpose of preserving one’s life and social identity, which is not to be confused with one’s essential identity. The agent is not the principal, and the role that the actor plays, is not the actor. An actor may ‘fail’ in the execution of some role in a play in which he has been cast, yet feel no loss of self-value within his essential ‘character’. Some roles are just bummers, and the lines and scenes of some plays should better have fallen to the cutting floor. In distinguishing character and its personalities, think of character as the causative force of one’s being, whereas personality comprises the operative processes that constitute the patterns of one’s behaviour. Some have likened personality to ‘a constellation of floating identities’ and while you can fake your personality, you cannot fake your character.

[While a person will always be learning better techniques (roles) in relationship, those who have developed character do not need to have any extra personality.  In other words, their inner character is in alignment with their outer personality masks. They enact and play who they really are, and the projector (character) becomes the projected (personality).  The art of living an authentic life is to develop and enact your character in the theatre of your life and to play your authentic self without the need for masks. The better that this is accomplished, the less chance there is of losing oneself in one’s roles.] 

· Morality is a social construct whereby humans can live together within their environment without destroying each other. Different cultures have adopted differing codes of morality at different times. Since it is a social construct, morality is more akin to personality than it is to character – it is an acquired function and one learns the mores of their tribe or culture and more or less tries to align themselves with those mores so as to avoid upsetting others’ moral sensibilities and giving rise to personal unpleasantness to oneself from others.

· Ethics is the discipline of identifying and practicing a code of universal principles that makes individual human happiness possible. Such happiness is the fulfillment of what it means to be human, of the nature and virtue of human consciousness, consisting of knowing, thinking, and love. In that the principles are universal, the standards for ethics are higher than for morality. The universal principles have appeared within all societies since pre-history, and essentially entail honesty, truthfulness and compassionate consideration for the feelings of others – especially significant others in our lives. In other words, ‘doing to others as you would have them do to yourself.’ To mindfully practice empathy and to put oneself in the shoes of others. In practice this means deeply knowing that when you harm others intentionally, you are concurrently harming your own self. To be truly ethical means to sympathetically resonate with the creative thrust for self-realization – not just for oneself, but for others as well – and thereby to live a creative life, and this creativity extends to the building of a community that is ethical and just. Ethics is an integral part of the successful evolution of a family, and the unredressed condoning of unethical conduct in the family by members precipitate its devolution.

· Politics is the discipline of identifying and practicing a code of socially sanctioned principles that makes collective human happiness possible. To some extent politics combines the mores of society with the universal ethic, but since compromise is the touchstone of politics, it is often difficult to determine which is predominant, the masks and techniques (personality) or the politician’s integrity grounded in his essence (character). The nexus dynamic is an example of grass roots, basic ‘politics’ that is experienced by many people through involvement in groups; for instance in the ‘family nexus’ dynamic – wherein loyalties within the family unit are cemented through the reciprocal interiorization of each member within the others; each member is essential to the nexus, and the nexus is essential to the person, to the point that each acts on the others to maintain equilibrium in the group dynamic, unchanged. There may be the appearance of collective happiness within the nexus, but the main goal of group harmony – individual and collective evolution – is absent, mainly due to the collective coercion geared to averting change.

· The purpose of morality or ethics is to create ever-increasing balance and harmony within and among people, from which spring forth happiness and fulfillment, the pursuit of which is the universal purpose of human life

THE TERRITORY:

[This ‘dialogue’ didn’t just happen at one sitting, but evolved over several years, through serious studies; through the careful examination of transactions with others; and through extended discussions between ourselves as – together – we tried to better understand the processes of embodied life.]

Keith: Well, having set our feet upon the path of dialogue, we might as well, as Krishnamurti said “Go Deeper”. So, having looked at the linkages between one’s alignment towards the Ideal of Truth and one’s ‘authenticity’ in that recently formalized Dialogue, let’s see how these essential elements play out in one’s life through the main interactive functions of Character, Personality and Ethics. We know from our travels that maps are only starting points to experiencing actual territories, so hopefully we’ll be able to give dimension to the intellectual distinctions above, from our applied life experiences.

Marnie: In that the crux of living the ethical life necessitates understanding the difference between one’s essential self and the roles (masks) that one employs when interacting with others, let’s look again at that Tolle quote in the preface. What that paragraph says to me is that – notwithstanding the finesse and artistry with which we dress up our relationships – all people have the natural, innate capacity to see through each others’ personalities to the real character operating from within. We have often discussed this innate sensing ourselves, long before reading Tolle, but as is often the case, when the reality becomes so common as to be read in others’ works, it is time to accept the matter as commonplace. Now since we can see others beyond their roles and manipulations – if we truly want to – then the reverse would also apply, that others can see beyond our masks to our authenticity. All the more reason to truly know one’s true self – that is to say one’s character – and adhere to one’s truest principles and ethics.

K: Agreed.

M: Now, then – as a business banker, you were fortunate to have a vocation wherein it was necessary that you identify certain traits in applicants so as to qualify them for financial assistance. For instance, you would have to have ways of evaluating whether an applicant just had a good ‘line’, or there was a quality of integrity present that could be consciously ‘felt’. In other words, how would you identify potential clients who manifested pleasing personality traits galore, but there was just a ‘feel’ about them that suggested the prudence of deeper probes and extensive independent character checking? Without developing such ‘gut-feelings’ about others, you wouldn’t have been able to do so much for so long. I remember you commenting once that your vocation was a wondrous ‘psychological laboratory’, in that skills could be developed not only though working with clients, but in identifying employees’ character profiles and encouraging and motivating them along the ethical development paths. Now, aside from the ‘map’ definition of character, how did you traverse the territory?

K: Firstly, when I referred to ‘psychological laboratory’, I was alluding to the study of ‘psyche’ in its original Greek sense, that is of ‘Soul’, another name for which is ‘character’ – the deeper integral part of one’s timeless being that exists behind its temporal masks in society. This relates to my oft-discussed personal perspective concerning reincarnation. That one’s Soul (character) develops over great expanses of time, through many, many life sequences. Further, there is a tight linkage between the reincarnating Soul (character) and its Source, which some call the Over-Soul – in the East this linkage is said to be between Atman and Brahman – and the linkage is the intuitive conduit whereby Atman evolves to eventually become Brahman. To me, the ‘character’ is like an automobile VIN#, identifying the primal entity itself as it evolves very slowly across a vast arc of time, and it carries its unique self-referencing energy imprint along with it; hence the old scriptural saying “before Abraham was, I AM”. That I AM sense of embodied consciousness is timeless. The ‘personality’ on the other hand is the ego with its acquired masks that are employed in the Soul’s individual lives. Behind the roles and masks of the personality, the ‘character’ watches to observe the effectiveness of its personality games, and slowly fines-tunes itself to perfection.

[In the ancient Hawaiian tripartite spiritual system, Huna, the very durable Higher Self would represent the ‘character’, the Middle Self would be the daily mind ‘personality’, and the Lower Self represents the autonomic life-support system].

Secondly, in banking there is the maxim of “the relativity of the moral risk” which translates to “everyone has their price, or breaking point” – which is the point at which they will succumb to the pressures of environment and abdicate their social contracts. That snapping point may be either rooted in materiality (biological temptations, survival imperatives, business reversals or financial pressures) or in socio-dynamics (loss of social prestige or personal support base, to the extent that one’s sense of self is impaired) – and then an individual may say “to Hell with it all” and walk away from his/her obligations. Now, since we are all mortals and thereby fallible, and since “everyone has their personal break-point”, the art of evaluation tends to centre on calibrating the client’s core morality and ethical integrity. If the client appears to lean more to the side of social relativity than to core integrity, chances are that he will disappear on you should things get hot. If the needle falls closer to the integrity side (he knows that he will have to live with himself much longer than with others) then – all other things being on the up-and-up – you have found a bankable situation. Notice the emphasis on ‘core integrity’, as opposed to ‘enlightened self-interest’; the latter is obviously important, since you want to see signs that your client will act positively in advancing his position, but with integrity. At root, you want to get a sense that – should the client find himself in a bind and unable to meet the terms of his deal – he won’t just disappear, but will confide his circumstances to you so that the contract terms can be adjusted. You want to feel that two-sided trust is warranted, that both client and backer sense they are committed to their common interests, and that this ideal – or ethic – will endure as long as humanly possible.

Now, this example revolves around something pretty basic: business monetary concerns. Yet the same principles are either present or absent in more invisible, subtle relationships, and there the waters are murky.

M: I follow your thinking thus far. Yet I feel that the skills that a person acquires so as to calibrate character and its related moral-ethical quotient in arms-length business transactions may not serve so well when it comes to situations the same person has an emotional connection, say within their own family transactions. Something about one’s wishful thinking about one’s loved ones – a loss of critical detachment – that gets in the way??

K: Perhaps. Let’s look at the similarities and the differences. When a professional banker is screening applicants, he does have the advantage of ‘passing’ on many potential clients who don’t measure up on the moral-ethical risk scale. On the home front one doesn’t have the same luxury – you only have so many clients (kids) and they in turn only have one banker to turn to, at least until the time comes that they can tap their spouse’s pockets. So it’s a bit of a symbiotic bind, and one’s brains are of limited value when one’s heart strings are being strummed. But what the hell, it’s only money, eh? The subtle aspects alluded to earlier involve personality limitations as well as any character ethical deficiencies of the domestic applicant, and development of the repertoire of one’s personality masks requires time. The family scene is the crucible of both personality and character development, and some family members may develop a little slower than their impatient parents desire, yet inexorably the realization comes to all that their time is not elastic, thus one’s personality games eventually recede, and character integrity emerges.

[There is a reason for having placed the Ouspensky quote at the beginning of this dialogue. It takes time for each new generation to acquire knowledge of the personal growth dynamics, and frankly the job for any of us is a life-long project.]

M: Now, from your own perspective, could you mention what you have learned in what you’ve called the ‘give-regive’ banker-client exchange, and the counter-part of this exchange in personal/domestic transactions?

K: OK. In the banker-client ‘give-regive’ exchange, once the two parties have decided that they want to have dealings with each other, the banker ‘gives’ the negotiated loan proceeds to the client, in exchange for which the client ‘regives’ his promissory note commitment to repay the loan plus also pledges collateral, to show his sincerity and commitment up front. By this stage both parties trust each other, and the collateral is but a formal binder, or symbol of that trust. Bearing in mind the ‘relativity of moral risk’ aspect mentioned above, the collateral may later also act as incentive for the client not to disappear.

Now in family transactions, the ‘give-regive’ exchange domestically is much more subtle, since loans are seldom collateralized, even via promissory note. It goes with the territory that – despite the best of initial intentions – repayment may just not be in the cards – what does not go with the deal is the beneficiaries’ treatment of their benefactors as being unworthy of empathy relative to their own concerns, and unworthy of treating with straightforward honesty – the hallmark marker of character. For instance, there may be situations in which the children could counsel each other in supporting the parents’ efforts to heal differences and sustain the family’s cohesion, and this would represent a regiving of the parents’ freely given support. Sometimes considerable intensity of effort by family members is necessary to bring about family healing. So, for one side the ‘gift’ might be needed financial assistance, for the other side the balancing ‘regift’ would be clear signals of timely, empathetic support in restoring family unity. Otherwise, all may suffer, for if there is one essential rule in relationships, it is to ‘Play fair, or you won’t be able to play at all’. Often, all it takes to realign a confused, dysfunctional group into a positive direction is for one person having the ethical bearing to speak to the others with firmness, love and integrity. Remember, constructive anger is projected love, and projects exemplar integral character and applied ethics, which of course at root is based on rational and deliberate thinking blended with a sense of ‘rightness’ followed by a courageous commitment to truth and the Golden Rule.

As President Kennedy said: "The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in a period of moral crisis maintain their neutrality."

M: Well, one certainly can’t impose one’s ethical standards on others, but still it’s sometimes necessary to show a flash of indignation, call a spade by its name and demand reciprocal support from others. No one likes being victimized, and Lord knows there are positivity cults around that coach people in how to reduce/override their normal human sensitivity to others’ suffering. Through these ‘happy’ cults, people are coached to see others who are going through a bad period as ‘victims’ or ‘losers’, and taught how to avoid connection or extend empathy to others. Such life coaches prey on the ambitious, and such coaching sanctions empathy deficits whereby the so-inclined feel free to grab whatever they can without reciprocation.

K: Francis Bacon claimed that “Knowledge is power,” but those who have walked the territory – not just read the map – know that “Integrity is power.” What others do – or don’t do – can only superficially affect one; it’s others’ integrity that is affected, not our own.

M: Concerning “group-think”, it is so much easier to ‘go along to get along’ with the crowd, indulging hidden desires and motivations and telling ourselves “we didn’t know what we were doing” but still getting a perverse satisfaction from doing it. So in group-think, one can say “Well, most of the world works this way so it must be okay – everyone else does it and we’re just part of the crowd”. With more intense effort and deeper examination of themselves, it is likely that an individual’s life, and the lives of those the individual touches would be much improved if they acted with more intuitive courage.

K: Personally, I believe that ‘group-thinkers’ are pond-scum. By the time people reach adulthood, they know what they are doing. It would be completely unethical not to know. It would be unethical for people to not think. And it is most unethical for people to not love and live impassioned lives.

M: Yet I feel that – although people may be old enough, educated enough and experienced enough to know better – perhaps they may sometimes become a tad overconfident as to their relative positions because of superficial appearances and group-think. Group-think is a slippery slope wherein people abdicate to the safety of consensual opinion, but in the process lose confidence in their own, innate ‘default settings’. By this I mean their conviction that their own personal ethical intuitions are trustworthy. These default settings are there to give us a feeling of security, a belief that if we act with courage it will make a difference. Shatter your own self-confidence, and then you get into a deep hole. Without earned self-trust, everything goes wrong. At the same time, whilst it is necessary that people find the courage to live from their intuitive base, there's always a chance they could be wrong. We often learn more from our honest mistakes than from our successes, and by learning from mistakes, people can evolve and fine-tune their intuitive beliefs, personal truths and characters.

Ironically, parents may be fortunate when their family members have turned their backs and indicated unwillingness to join in the give and take of honest interaction. The parents then have the opportunity to reach out into the world, walk new territories, and learn to rely on their own experiences together for help in surviving in a sometimes tricky world. In time such a couple discover that their Truth is within – it is who they are – and the still small voice of Truth speaks in the language of their love.

K: Yes – Truth speaks in the language of love. ‘Personality’ can mouth the words, but only ‘Character’ connects. Character, moreover, not only in its ethical and political aspects – but also in its spiritual vocation – is that dimension of human existence from which people draw inspiration to put into practice their commitment to cultivate capacities for openness, wholeness and harmony. Again, that lead quote above from the Ouspensky-Gurdjieff teachings points to the necessity of a person working on both ‘the line of being’ [read character] and ‘the line of knowledge’ [read personality] to avoid imbalance. The linkage between the two lines is ‘understanding’: understanding when to play the games of the world, and when to transcend the games, remember oneself and make a difference.

What thoughts do you wish to mention to assist others in developing their integral balance in life?

M: I feel that a person has to really know herself, trust herself, and like herself. And I mean the real self, not just a personality mask. Ekhart Tolle teaches that the ‘I’ normally spoken of is formed by our thoughts and reactive emotions, in the roles we play, our memories, our possessions, etc. but what we really are is part of the oneness of all, part of the Source. Sometimes we can catch glimpses of this true ‘I Am’ in the gaps between our ‘doings’ – when we are very still. I’d like to share a few quotes from Tolle’s writings, in addition to that in our dialogue preface:

“Many things in your life matter, but only one thing matters absolutely.

It matters whether you succeed or fail in the eyes of the world. It matters whether you are healthy or not healthy, whether you are educated or not educated. It matters whether you are rich or poor — it certainly makes a difference in your life.

Yes, all these things matter, relatively speaking, but they don't matter absolutely.”

From that I have come to appreciate that there is something that matters more than any of the ‘worldly’ things and that is finding the essence of who I AM beyond the span of this short life or my short-lived personality sense of self. As to nurturing a real self (character):

“As you go about your life, don’t give 100 percent of your attention to the external world and to your mind. Keep some attention within. Feel the inner body even when engaged in everyday activities, especially when you are relating with nature. Feel the stillness deep inside it. Keep the portal open.”

The peace and assurance thus realized will be intuited by others if they are at all open to it, and even consciously recognized. Further:

“Although you cannot know consciousness, you can become conscious of it as yourself. You can sense it directly in any situation, no matter where you are. You can sense it here and now as your very Presence, the inner space in which the words on this page are perceived and become thoughts. It is the underlying I Am. The words you are reading and thinking are the foreground, and the I Am is the substratum, the underlying background to every experience, thought and feeling.”

This gets pretty close to the ineffable mystery of which we are an integral part. And more:

“So your physical body, which is form, reveals itself as essentially formless when you go deeper into it. It becomes a doorway into inner space. Although inner space has no form, it is intensely alive. That "empty space" is life in its fullness, the unmanifested Source out of which all manifestation flows. The traditional word for that Source is God.”

K: Such an inspiring vision.

M: I find Tolle fascinating. In “A New Earth”, there is an extensive section on a deep aspect of our energy field or psychic life that he calls the “pain body”. This is a container for past psychological injuries and slights against us – essentially the pain body is our suffering warehouse. It is also a ‘driver’ within us, goading us to suppress – if not eliminate – sources of pain. This psychic function runs on auto-loops, reliving past painful situations as though we could thereby desensitize ourselves to suffering. He writes: “This is not our ‘thinking’ – this is possession – by a shadow part of our energies.” In such auto-loops, our body systems are activated as in real time, our emotions are unleashed, the memory loops become charged and a vicious cycle is created between our unexamined thoughts and the emotional drivers, resulting in great bodily stress. Tolle identifies this process as our living ‘karma.’ Being driven by pain body processes can actually become addictive – an addiction to unhappiness and chronic reactivity, feeding on negative thinking/drama in relationships. Like any addiction, it has active and dormant phases, and the addict may need a ready dose of unhappiness in their environment. Another’s pain becomes one’s pleasure, and knowing that one has the keys to others’ happiness, but chooses to withhold application of the key, becomes an art form.

K: Some pain body energy components seem to derive from beyond our own histories or through inference from others’ stories. Perhaps the components are an inheritance from our collective past (the human condition) – perhaps a personal energetic bleed-through from our earlier lives.

M: Tolle describes the pain body from his own first person experience, and eventually he came to see it as a transactional personality defect. He actually came to deeply hate himself for his actions, but he was unable to stop until such time as his self-loathing peaked and he could no longer live with himself. He was lucky, in that he could live contemplatively for many months, allowing time to heal him – after which he could see the difference between his deeper self and his personality masks. Through nurturing his deeper aspect – his essential character – by various transformative processes, he was eventually able to intuit skills of healing himself and then others.

K: When it comes to working on oneself, I feel that there is a lot we can do for ourselves by tapping into the findings of others. I recall you mentioning that Tolle learned much from the Australian spiritual teacher, Barry Long. On our own travels, we talked with many people whose lives had been transformed by teachers such as Gopi Krishna, Osho, Kirpal Singh and Gurdjieff. All those teachers are now deceased, but the ideals and inspiration of questers of the past illuminate our present and we resonate deeply within when reading others’ Truths that we can assimilate into our own path. 

In the experience of the mind, there is no time zone – the unity achieved through the trans-century meeting of minds by means of written storage transcends time, and the Truths which strengthened others long dead live on and strengthen us in our own lives now. Plato, Thoreau, Emerson, Whitman – all those who have previously traversed the territory can inform our present character and our actions, if we but allow them to. Whatever helped them, can help us – the commonality of human experience connects all humanity, through all time. The wisdom of the ages calls to us out of the silences, and whispers within in the Stillness.

M: A Devil’s Advocate might ask “In that ‘ethics’ comprises a major part of this dialogue, how ethical is it to treat certain sensitive subjects so openly. What good could come from the exercise?”

K: As Ecclesiastes wrote “Nothing is new under the sun”. I have walked the territory for 75 years in this edition, and am convinced that – for both better and worse – nothing in the realm of human interaction happens by random chance, but rather by planned individual or collective intent, by specifically focused intention. Parents naturally don’t like to see what their beloved family members are doing to themselves, especially when they see the intentionality present. We have personally benefited from reading of others’ experiences through the Internet, and thus owe others our own findings as payment of that debt. We know from web-site readers around the world that our message resonates with life in the territory – others have been greatly helped through knowing they are not alone – that “nothing is new under the sun” – the harmony of the whole human family is adversely affected unless all pull together.

M: Right on, amigo!!

“Am I therefore become your enemy, because I tell you the Truth?” Galations 4:16

Initially posted 08-11-06;

Updated and recast 29-09-12

Acknowledgement:

Our children – source of past fond memories and current inspiration: And Our Children’s Children:

Everett Lloyd Elliott (b.1960); and his wife Karen – m. 1984 Bradley Clement Elliott (b.1964); and his wife Katariina – m. 1991 Keith Ronald Elliott (b. Jan 1966 - died Mar 1966) Robert Dwight Elliott (b.1969); and his wife Kim – m. 2000 Melissa Dawn Elliott (b.1971); and her husband Jeff Whitaker – m. 2002

Meghan Elliott (b.1987); Lauren Elliott (b.1991) Ryan Elliott (b.1994); Kirsten Elliott (b.1997) - - - - - - Olivia Elliott (b.2002); Gavin Elliott (b.2004) Sawyer Whitaker (b.2003); Jackson Whitaker (b.2005)

Keith and Marnie Elliott’s “REMEDY” Site

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