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Dear Soul Arcanum:

How much of our personality carries over across lifetimes? Is it possible for a totally introverted person to decide to be very extroverted in his/her next life? Or is there a certain essence of us that is constant, something that’s like the nature of our energy? If that’s true, how can we tell which personality trait stems from our higher self, and which part is learned from this current life experience?

Sherry

Dear Sherry:

This is one of those questions that are very hard to address in the amount of space I have for this column, but I’ll do my best. It’s also such a profoundly deep question that no one can answer it with any certainty, so what I offer you here is simply my own concept of how things work, as incomplete and imperfect as it must be.

You may be familiar with the notion that we are all composed of various bodies: physical, emotional, mental and spiritual. In this scheme of things, the soul would be the spiritual body. We adopt new physical, emotional and mental bodies each time we incarnate on Earth, and shed those bodies when we leave this life. The spiritual body or soul is the <q>lowest</q> or densest body we retain between lifetimes.

There are bodies beyond the soul, but these are less individuated than the soul. Actually, all the bodies grow less individuated the “higher up” we go. Thus the physical body is the most separate/individuated, the emotional a little less so, the mental less even yet, with the spiritual body merging toward greater oneness with All That Is. Beyond the soul/spiritual body, there are finer bodies that have been given all sorts of esoteric labels. At these levels, we are far more than we conceptualize ourselves to be. As these levels of existence are beyond the scope of incarnation on the Earth plane, for now, let’s use the four-body model of physical, emotional, mental and spiritual.

When we leave this life, the personality and all it has learned and experienced is reabsorbed and integrated by the soul. (This is probably happening throughout our lives, but when we die, the personality dies with the physical body, so what remains is what the soul has absorbed.) All the “good stuff” we gain throughout a lifetime – the qualities we work on developing – are added to the soul. The soul is that part of us that is the driving force behind the incarnation process, the highest part of us that remains individuated from Source. Some people call this aspect the Higher Self, as it contains all the wisdom we’ve ever gained as well as awareness of our plans and goals for each lifetime. Each personality we become throughout our various lifetimes is thus both individual and part of the whole, much like the cells in our bodies are individuated and yet part of a greater whole.

Our personality exists for one lifetime only. Its qualities are driven by many different influences, such as the place and time of our births (which we can study via astrology), our DNA/heredity, our parents, societies, teachers and other formative influences. Of course, the experiences we encounter also shape our personalities. This is especially true of early experiences, which is why we tend to view the personality as being formed in the first few years of life.

When we first begin incarnating on Earth, we are most individuated; as we spiritually evolve, we identify less and less with the temporal personality and more and more with the soul. When we reach a stage where we are so identified with the soul that our vibration is too high for the physical plane (and we won’t learn much by being here), we stop incarnating on Earth and begin to incarnate on higher planes of existence.

This is sort of like flying to the farthest point on the globe in order to go exploring, and then slowly making our way back home. The more we travel, the closer we get to our starting point. By the time we make it back, we’ll have had all sorts of fascinating experiences and hopefully be profoundly transformed by our quest. Then we do it all over again, only this time, we choose a different destination and a very different type of adventure so that we can broaden our horizons. Choosing a personality and type of life experience is thus very much like choosing a certain type of adventure. One time we may choose to be bold explorers, scaling huge mountains; another time, we may choose to be quiet seekers, secluded in an ashram; another time we may choose to be generous servers, helping people build better lives for themselves.

When we admire someone, our souls are saying, I’d like to be like that person and experience what they are experiencing. In order to do this, we may choose a setting with certain parents and other influences that will encourage us to grow in this direction. It may be something of a struggle for us if these qualities are very new to us, but the more we accomplish our aim, the more we grow to embody those qualities. We are therefore wise to pay a lot of attention to the people and experiences we admire and feel strongly drawn to, for these feelings are signs from our souls regarding what we are in the process of developing in ourselves.

We are all in the process of embodying more of our souls/higher selves. This requires learning to question what we’ve been taught, to think for ourselves, and above all, to listen within to our “hearts.” The more we do this, the less we tend to change from one lifetime to another, for instead of becoming whatever we are taught or learn to be based on our physical experiences, we come from the soul within, which is ever evolving but relatively constant.

Determining which aspects are of the personality versus which are of the soul is fairly simple. It is the soul that asks deep questions and ponders the meaning of life and our experiences. It is the soul that is able to observe life with calm detachment. This is why meditation, which helps us develop the inner observer, brings the soul forward. It is the soul that whispers to us as the voice of our conscience and the voice of our intuition. It is the soul that recognizes soul mates and kindred spirits, and the soul that makes us feel drawn toward certain people, places and experiences.

When we just know in our hearts what the “right” thing to do would be, that is the soul speaking. This can be tricky, of course, because one of our tasks is to question what we’ve been taught we <q>should</q> do by outside influences in order to hear the wisdom of the soul. When we realize that the right thing for one person in a certain situation may be one thing, while the right thing for a different person in the same situation may be something else entirely, we begin to align with the wisdom of the soul versus the learned views of the personality.

The part of us that loves and feels compassion is of the soul. I love the term “soul-stirring,” for it illustrates how experiences that are particularly meaningful or moving will touch us “deep down” and naturally bring the soul forward. Some of the qualities that are hallmarks of the soul include peacefulness, inspiration, compassion, love, altruism, integrity and faith. The more we evolve, the more our personalities grow to reflect these qualities of the higher self/soul.

Soul Arcanum