The personality is made up of the interaction of identity with boundaries. The sense of identity, who you think you are, has the feeling of you as separate from everyone else, the feeling of you as a separate entity: “This is me. I end here.” – Diamond Heart Book Two, ch. 10
When a baby is born, it is pretty much all Essence or pure Being. Its essence is not, of course, the same as the essence of a developed or realized adult. It is a baby’s essence—nondifferentiated, all in a big bundle. As the infant grows, the personality starts developing through interactions with the environment, especially the parents. Since most parents are identified with their personalities and not with their essence, they do not recognize or encourage the essence of the child. After a few years, Essence is forgotten, and instead of Essence, there is now personality. Essence is replaced with various identifications. The child identifies with one or the other parent, with this or that experience, and with all kinds of notions about itself. These identifications, experiences, and notions become consolidated and structured as the personality. The child and, later, the adult believes this structure is its true self. – Diamond Heart Book One: Elements of the Real in Man, ch.1
The personality is like dirty water that has been used many times to clean things but it has not been cleaned or purified itself. The personality needs to be filtered. The past needs to be discharged, eliminated. The substantial state of the personality—what I call false pearl—creates a certain contraction in the spleen and pancreas area. I believe the connection to the spleen and the pancreas is that the physiological job of the spleen is to eliminate dead white corpuscles. The white blood cells exist for defense and protection, which is what the personality is trying to do. Once these cells have done their job, they are cleared from the blood. – Diamond Heart Book Four: Indestructible Innocence, ch. 1
The personality is operating, working on itself, becoming realized, achieving this and that, and all this activity is what creates your suffering. The mere fact that you do, that you hope, that you desire, is the problem. So you turn towards the issue of identity, and see that your very identity is an inner activity. The past exists in us as activity, and the content of personality is an activity, a movement. Ego activity is the substance of suffering; it is contraction itself. You can see this more specifically if you look at the activity in each center of the body. If you look at the activity in the head, you’ll see concern and worry. In the heart, it’s a sense of guilt and frustration. Looking at activity in the belly, you’ll see it as attachment and desire. But it is all the same thing: ego activity. And ego activity is always connected with issues from your past. It is what is called personal karma, or the wheel of life and death. It is the movement of your mind, your personality, your choices, preferences, judgments, resistances—anything you do actively. The moment you choose to do something or to reject something, you are acting, and that inner activity is the content of personality that makes the personality unclear. It muddies the water and separates the personality from the clear stillness of Essence. – Diamond Heart Book Four: Indestructible Innocence, Ch. 1
All sectors of the personality, all qualities of the personality, all characteristics of the personality are substitutes for the essential ones. The personality, in fact, is an exact replica of the essence, but it is false. It is made up, a reaction, an outcome, and does not have the reality of essence. It is a plastic substitute that lacks the aliveness, freshness, realness, and luminous clarity of the real thing.
This is a painful and difficult situation, but in this situation resides the key to its resolution. Because all sectors of the personality are substitutes for and imitations of the aspects of essence, they are really faithful pointers to these aspects. By understanding these sectors we can regain the aspects of essence. Instead of condemning the personality, as most work systems do, we can use it as a guide and a faithful guide at that. The personality contains the keys to its own riddles. Some of the ancient schools realized this fact, and employed it in their work. – Essence with the Elixir of Enlightenment: The Diamond Approach to Inner Realization, Ch. 5