In Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious’ Carl Jung explains that what he calls the ‘persona’ is the result of behaviours that are ‘acquired’ by a person from an early age in order for them to be accepted and to meet with others’ expectations.
Every profession has its own special persona, as have people from every walk of life and social position.
With the help of ego, we build ‘acceptable’ characteristics into our ‘personality’, while repressing and keeping hidden those that we feel undesirable.
The problem is that these ‘undesirable’ aspects become our ‘shadow’, our dark side, which, however, can surface unexpectedly at any moment in sudden emotional outbursts, often causing us and others great pain.
Our persona and our ego are nothing but a mask, a pure fiction, a fabrication, a fantasy and an illusion… which we so often regrettably associate with, falsely believing it to be the truth of who we are.
The big problem is that our unexamined persona and our repressed shadow prevent us from discovering who we truly are. And until we re-connect to the ‘I’ in ‘I Am’, we can never find true peace or real happiness and are condemned to live a lie.
If we want to discover our true Self, who we are deep down and become ‘whole’, we have to learn to explore and face our persona and its component parts with courage and strength.
Only then can we live a truly stress-free and ‘blissful’ existence, which is our nature birthright.
This is what The Way: Finding Peace in Turbulent Times explains and The Way Course teaches.