Hi Joshua,
I'm beginning to understand the persona and releasing it. I think what Astrid posted captured it.
"You are limitless, which means beyond definition. Every aspect of yourself that you consider good or bad is simply a defining trait. You cannot be defined, because you are limitless."
My authentic self is my physical self. I'm thinking my inner-self does not have a persona? And my Authentic Self is more aligned with my inner self? I'm trying to understand how this all relates, if this makes any sense, what I'm trying to ask. LOL
With love and hugs and kisses,
Isabelle
Dear Isabelle,
We are writing an entire book about the Authentic Self. You can imagine there is quite a lot to it, but we will try to simplify it here. Who you really are is a limitless being of pure positive love and acceptance. That's who you are in the nonphysical. It is without persona. There is no need for a persona or an ego in the nonphysical because we are without fear. We are without fear because we cannot be harmed. In physical reality, you have fear and you can be harmed. This is why you were given the survival instinct. The persona is a component of the survival instinct.
Imagine you lived 10,000 years ago in a small tribe of hunter-gatherers. You relied of your survival instinct which would instill fear when danger was present. As soon as the danger subsided, you felt relief and went back to feeling good. Since your survival relied heavily on the existence and support of your tribe, it was very important to fit in. If you were outcast from your tribe, you would face certain death. In order to ensure your membership within your tight-knit community, you adopted a persona.
Your persona is your representation of a version of you that fits in within the tribe. Your persona could be anything. You could be a mother, gatherer, healer, leader, soldier, guard, hunter, etc. You could be seen as a desirable mate, and this would ensure that you would produce children which would be valuable to maintaining the tribe in the future. You would play different roles, never stepping out of the bounds of what was expected from you based on the persona you were offering. You might not personally be who you represented yourself to be, but because you needed to play your part perfectly in order to stay alive, you did whatever was necessary and you embraced your role fully. If anyone doubted any aspect of who you were, you would fight them to the death, because if you were exposed as not being who you pretended to be, it would mean your death. Therefore, the fear of what others thought of you was a very real and rational fear.
You live in a different time now. 10,000 years ago, you would feel fear when in danger and as soon as the danger was gone you would feel relief. Your instinct warned you of danger so that you could survive. You did not let the fear linger. When the danger was gone, you returned to the perspective your inner self had on your life. The inner self's perspective was that there is no danger now, so you may feel good again. Today, you feel fear even though the fear is no longer rational. The problem with modern fear is that you never realize that the danger has subsided. You maintain your guard because you are constantly in a state of fear. You are constantly perceiving that you are under attack. It is not an attack to your physical being, it is an attack against your persona.
In this modern time, your persona is not necessary. It can be dismantled. It can be flexible. It can be malleable. It is false, as it always was, yet now it does nothing to protect you. In fact, all it does is cause you grief. If you can release your attachment to some phony idea of who you are, you will live in bliss.
If you can understand why you feel negative emotion, you can see that it is caused by fear. You perceive danger, where there is no danger. This perception of danger causes you to choose a perspective that is out of alignment with your inner self. It was useful and necessary in the past, but is not longer useful today. Irrational fear always revolves around a perceived attack against the persona. Rational fear revolves around danger to the physical body. With a malleable persona, you are no longer as vulnerable to attack and the ego feels less need to defend it. If you were living as your authentic self, your ego would have no need to defend your persona because it would be so open and flexible that nothing could harm it.
Living as your authentic self is of great benefit. It causes you to perceive less danger. Therefore, fear is less of a factor in your life. With less fear, you feel less negative emotion and the intensity of the emotion is diminished. This means you can remain in alignment for more of the time. When you are in alignment, you have access to the power of the universe and you will receive inspiration to act. When you act on inspiration, you unleash the power of the universe to create that which you desire. The authentic life is a very important part of living the limitless life of your dreams. The attachment to your persona will cause you to feel fear more often and this will limit your experience of life.
With our love,
We are Joshua
