Personality Self Rejection (Idealistic, Masculine)
Personality Self Rejection is the capacity to distinguish personal vs. creative expression. The more we are caught up in our Pretenses, Defenses, and Imprinting and build patterns of interacting with others from these places, the more fearful we become. This fear is based on the belief that others will discover we are inauthentic or fraudulent. We know these are inauthentic behaviors by the amount of effort we need to maintain them. The more we are identified with these behaviors, the more we find it difficult to be with other people and, therefore, become critical and make them wrong no matter what they do. What is occurring is that our self-doubt overlaps their self-doubt, creating repulsion. We become the “bad boy” or “bad girl”, acting out our anxiety. What we really want to do is escape the prison we find ourselves in. Unfortunately, we tend to attract “good boys” or “good girls” who make our imperfections seem all the more distinct. On the other side, individuals who are highly idealized seek out “bad boys” or “bad girls” to break their own conditioning about being “good”.
Personality Self Rejection is the process of clarifying what is real or unreal in our presentation with others. Individuals working on Personality Self Rejection seek out creative ways of Being congruent with their nature. This means challenging their own assumptions about what provides a sense of creative flow and effortlessness. The problem is to find the middle ground between overdoing their “goodness” or “badness” so they can discover what is natural for them. They can also be very judgmental when others are not being real or authentic. This inversion where individuals project their doubts and irritations upon others merely demonstrates how they have not come to accept their own wholeness. They are most repulsed by hypocrites who cannot differentiate what is real from unreal. This is part of the appeal of being a “bad boy” or “bad girl” because they are toying with possible ways to clarify their Truth. What is most ironic is that Personality Self-Rejection can be so consuming and create so much drama and self-sabotage that they have little time to act out with others.
We are repulsed by Personality Self-Rejection when our parents acted out this pattern and made us the source of their problems. This frequently occurs in situations where parents cannot live up to their own self image of what they were taught as children and therefore reject their imprinting and training to do something they were taught not to do. Personality Self-Rejection is the keynote of those with an attitude of skeptic or cynic because they naturally need to examine things from a negative point of view, not based on societal beliefs. Some aspects of Personal Self-Rejection are amplified by a Distant or Distant Dynamic defense and are not willing to accept the status-quo because it may not be fair or truthful enough to fit their need to get to the bottom of an issue. Personality Self-Rejection therefore, is many times locked into confrontation patterns where there seems to be no clarity or easy solution.
In this diagram we can see there are four ways to increasingly embody Personality Self-Rejection. The value of Personality Self-Rejection is to free us from our Defenses, Pretenses, and conditioning – in short, those things we learn to be based on our upbringing. When we are unconscious about this process, we are caught up in either a “Bad Boy” or “Bad Girl” self image. We seek to throw others’ expectations in their face by constantly doing what is not encouraged or allowed. What we want most of all is to reject the status quo, which has hurt us, either through others’ indifference or repression of our Creative Nature. While we do not like to admit it, many times our rejections backfire on us. Our acting out tends to isolate and insulate us from those we love. The more we unconsciously act out Personality Self-Rejection patterns, the more abandonment we experience, which, in turn, can make us even more angry and isolated. What is more difficult is that our personality pride can keep us from admitting what is working and not working for us. Not everybody goes through the “Bad Boy” and “Bad Girl” process in the same way. While some may externalize this on a large level, others may seek to assert themselves in more hidden or subtle ways. The best indication of this is how we challenge external authorities or neutralize their impact upon us by taking charge of our own life. The individuals who cannot do this on a subtle level are the ones that help everyone to see the upside and downside of personality conditioning. What we need to become more conscious of is that our desire to distance ourselves from our personality programming is actually a huge gift.
The first step in becoming aware of the differences between our personality and our Creative Nature is to recognize when we are defining ourselves in terms of our personality limitations. The best way to check this out is whether we have reactions to how others are treating us, or engaging us. Any reaction indicates that we are not clear or balanced in our understanding of what is going on around us. Instead, we lash out, further reducing our ability to see both sides of the situation. The more authentic we are, the less we define ourselves in terms of our personality reactions. This does not mean that we do not keep in touch with our personality reactions, for this is a primary indicator that we are not aligned in or know our truth. Some of us will initially find this a difficult understanding, since we are in reactions more than we realize. Others will find it a relief because we can begin to do something about resolving our inner conflicts and ultimately, become less constrained by our personality perceptions. The real question underlying all this is, “If we are not our reactions, then, who are we as a Creative Being?”
If we are more receptive to Personality Self-Rejection, one of the main problems we experience is seeing the downside. In our skeptical or cynical way it is easy to project upon others that it is always their fault why we are not doing better. In our rush to criticize others for their limitations we tend to overlook our contribution to the problem. What is required is the balanced understanding and acceptance that with every authentic, Creative choice it both enhances our Creative Nature and can also create reactions and even fears in those around us. The irony of this process is that the people who love us the most may be the ones that are trying to protect us from ourselves, not realizing that they are only entangling us on a deeper level. What we need to learn to appreciate is that the downside of this process mirrors the upside in how it frees us from compromises that no longer serve us. Therefore, we should not turn away from the cost and value of Personality Self-Rejection. Without it, we would not have a transition framework to help us to choose to be more creatively empowered. Let us not fixate on proving how we can be more creative but allow our selves to see how our Creative choices serve as an example to others around us.
Ultimately, Personality Self-Rejection is about clarifying and enriching our authenticity. It is about eliminating our patterns of self-sabotage and upper boundary limits where we take away something we want so it will not be ripped out of our hands. Every conflict or confusion within us about who we are becomes examined through the process of Personality Self-Rejection. Eventually, our creative flow becomes the natural experience of our life. As a result, we do not have to pay attention to who we are as a Creative Being because we have accepted it within ourselves. This is how Personality Self-Rejection is the natural complement to Self-Acceptance. The more we are present to our selves and others, the less we can hide out by projecting our fears and displaced desires upon others. Our ability to see and accept our Creative Nature empowers us with an authentic, self-sustaining wholeness.
Lessons of Personality Self-Rejection
The lesson we learn with this attraction is to not let the half-truth of our Defenses, Pretenses, or Beliefs get in the way of our growth in the universe. Every decision that helped formulate us from our childhood forward is a place where we could be stuck and unwilling to deal with life as it currently is. In order to become more present with ourselves we need to release Attachments, Positions, and Projections so we can give ourselves the possibility to operate in wholeness in our moment-to-moment experience. When we are attracted to Personality Self-Rejection it is because we are unwilling to confront the current truth about what we need. Instead, we are regressing to a simpler time and place in the attempt to make things either easier or more demanding, based on our perspective about whether we deserve to be punished. It is important to realize that we seek to punish ourselves in order to deserve a new opportunity. Some individuals who cannot forgive themselves believe that there is no possibility of redemption and therefore condemn themselves to being a “bad boy” or “bad girl”. It is not our job to try to help these individuals because trying to do so plays into their need to pull us down. Therefore, the best solution is to acknowledge that what they need is not what we are willing to provide.
Personality Self-Rejection is the polar opposite of Self-Acceptance, which means that when we invest more in being self-rejecting, it has the impact of making us less accepting. The consequence of this is that we become less available and open the more we define ourselves in terms of our history. Many individuals notice that people over the age of 50 either become more static and self-rejecting or more fluid and self-accepting. The greater indicator of which path we will follow depends on our defense style and activation of our Primary Creative Expression. For example, a Distant individual not doing their Primary Creative Expression will automatically become more crystallized, structured, and less open as they reach the age 50 and beyond. On the other hand, if we have a more Disarming or Pioneering defense style, and we are operating with a greater degree of actualization in our Primary Creative Expression, our capacity for Self-Acceptance and flow is not limited and conditioned by getting older.
The Cost Of Unconscious Attractions
The core lesson of Attractions as a whole is to learn how to connect to our partners in the most effective manner. This is achieved by not getting attached to any particular groups of attractions, but instead, using all the attractions to create an effective co-creative environment. What we are doing is opening ourselves up, hopefully through a Common Neutral Ground, establishing a mutual space of creative development. This requires letting go of our Attachments, Positions, and Projections and discovering what is actually creatively possible together. While unresolved, unconscious attractions create reasons to be together, which actually dis-empowers our ability to create mutual solutions. This occurs because each attraction reinforces a past perception or limitation where we do not want to change. This is amplified by our fixation on keeping the attractions just as they are. As a result, contraction, caretaking, and control supersede our intention to make things work.
Wherever we seek out the attractions of another because we deny them in ourselves, we need to resolve the underlying difference before we can work as creative partners together. The easiest way to do this is to systematically explore where our attractions become tense internally and discover the hidden lie we accepted as children. Most of these lies have to do with our being inadequate or without power to change our circumstances. Each one of these lies denies our own safety, security, or combination thereof. As a result, on the Instinctive level, the attractions we seek become Attachments we have to individuals to feel better about who we are. On the Intellectual level, these Attachments become Positions where we need the Power of another to complement or externalize our own Power. On the Idealized level, these lies reflect how we need to compromise ourselves to fit external standards rather than honor our own Knowing.
The more we are motivated to expand these expressions in all our relationships, the less co-dependent we become in any of them. It also creates greater Self Acceptance and less Personality Self Rejection (PSR) when we see how our unconscious attractions have kept us stuck in ways of being that do not serve our higher expression. Attractions are not a static experience but an evolutionary one. Our personality assumes its appropriate place as a servant to our higher Creative Nature, when our attractions support us. We are no longer defined in terms of our attraction limitations because we realize we are so much more than our Personality Fears and Desires.
Attractions become more conscious when we understand what they are attempting to teach us. Each level of attraction frees us up to accept our Creative Nature by providing new tools to engage in our reality. On the Instinctive level, by seeking Pleasure, we come to understand pain and the life force that moves within us. On the Intellectual level, by seeking Power and Knowledge, we come to appreciate our heroic nature of Power, Truth, and Wisdom. On the Idealized level, by seeking Goodness, we come to appreciate that everyone has their own path and way of contributing. These three levels help us to transform our ignorance and ego into creative desire to contribute, in service to humanity. These higher perceptions of reality are only possible through the integration of our attractions, both horizontally (by neutralizing the differences of our feminine and masculine expressions), and vertically (by deepening into the sophistication of what makes our choices best for us). As our attractions are embodied, our values become more universal and our humanity is revealed both to our selves and others.
The denial of attractions focuses our energy into situations where we can be affirmed rather than solving the initial problem of what keeps us stuck. The more we affirm our image, our Truth, or our Ideals in terms of our selves, and not others, we open doorways to the growth of our attractions. Breaking out of our fixations means acknowledging ourselves in a more complete and balanced way. The more we take ownership for each attraction, the less they become Attachments, Positions, or Projections, where we need others to affirm us. In this way, affirmation of ourselves becomes empowered through the three primary conscious attractions of Wisdom, Aliveness, and Awareness. Aliveness expresses our Life energy; Wisdom expresses our Light energy; and Awareness expresses our Love energy. This is manifested through Aliveness in Universal Dominion, Wisdom through Mutual Accomplishment, and Awareness through Conscious Participation with others.