Can a person consciously, as an act of the will, choose to become an introvert or an extrovert? Can I change my personality type, purposely and consciously? Joseph Campbell, in a quote I’ll include in this post, wrote that it’s possible. I’m not sure I agree. I think that a powerful experience can drive a person inside, into an introversion, or outside to an extroverted behavior. But this isn’t a conscious act of the will.
If a lost love or a financial crisis drives a person from extroversion to introversion, or visa-versa, this isn’t an act of free will. It is, however, a change in personality type.
I’m really intrigued by the idea that we can change. I’d like to be more extroverted – to be able to put my attention outside of myself instead of internalizing all my feelings and observations. I can’t remember where I read it, but I seem to remember that Jung felt that our personality types can be altered by the influence of our circle of friends. For example, an introvert who is surrounded by extroverts can be influenced into becoming more extroverted. Can we really? Maybe, maybe maybe. I’d like to think so. I’m feeling ready to get out of my own head.
Here’s that quote from The Hero With a Thousand Faces, by Joseph Campbell:
“Willed introversion, in fact, is one of the classic implements of creative genius and can be employed as a deliberate device. It drives the psychic energies into depth and activates the lost continent of unconscious infantile and archetypal images. The result, of course, may be a disintegration of consciousness more or less complete (neurosis, psychosis: the plight of spellbound Daphne); but on the other hand, if the personality is able to absorb and integrate the new forces, there will be experienced an almost superhuman degree of self-consciousness and masterful control. This is a basic principle of the Indian disciples of yoga. It has been the way, also of many creative spirits of the West.”
Sunday, January 23, 2011
Monday, January 17, 2011
Thinking about the Bodhisattva.
Joseph Campbell explained, more eloquently than I could, that the Bodhisattva is in us and we are in the Bodhisattva, and the Bodhisattva is us and we are the Bodhisattva. What a crazy thing to declare, because I know I’m not perfect.
Campbell explained that the qualities that we perceive as positive and negative personality traits are all aspects of the Bodhisattva. The wide range of emotions and feelings that I’ve tried to recognize in myself are all human qualities that the Bodhisattva knows completely.
This made me laugh out loud when I thought about it during my work day. I’m a letter carrier for the postal service. I was delivering mail in the rain, and water had soaked my shoes and my socks, and two layers of jackets through to my shirt. Half-way through the day I became so frustrated, I stood in the rain with my arms full of soggy letters and catalogs, ready to cuss at the clouds. Instead I found myself laughing, and I said, “This is an example of the Bodhisattva feeling upset.”
Through the remainder of the day I laughed again every time I recognized an emotion rising up in me, and I would say, “This is the Bodhisattva feeling amused,” or “This is the Bodhisattva feeling hurried,” "This is the Bodhisattva feeling angry," or happy or… etc.
Of course, I am sooo far from being a Bodhisattva, and that’s what made me laugh: the reality that these feelings I recognize in myself are shared with one so far ahead of me on the path that he's made the return trip.
I feel somewhat insecure about sharing these thoughts. Maybe that’s why, until now, I’ve only posted quotes from books and I’ve avoided sharing what I feel about the quotes. This is the Bodhisattva feeling insecure.
Here are a couple of quotes from Hero With a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell on the topic:
“If the God is a tribal, racial, national, or sectarian archetype, we are the warriors of his cause; but if he is a lord of the universe itself, we then go forth as knowers to whom all men are brothers. And in either case, the childhood parent images and ideas of ‘good’ and ‘evil’ have been surpassed. We no longer desire and fear; we are what was desired and feared. All the gods, Bodhisattvas, and Buddhas have been subsumed in us, as in the halo of the mighty holder of the lotus of the world.”
“This is the sense of the first wonder of the Bodhisattva: the androgynous character of the presence. Therewith the two apparently opposite mythological adventures come together: the Meeting with the Goddess, and the Atonement with the Father. For in the first the initiate learns that males and female are (as phrased in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad) ‘two halves of a split pea’; whereas in the second, the Father is found to be antecedent to the division of sex: the pronoun ‘He’ was a manner of speech, the myth of Sonship a guiding line to be erased. And in both cases it is found (or rather, recollected,) that the hero himself is that which he had come to find.”
Campbell explained that the qualities that we perceive as positive and negative personality traits are all aspects of the Bodhisattva. The wide range of emotions and feelings that I’ve tried to recognize in myself are all human qualities that the Bodhisattva knows completely.
This made me laugh out loud when I thought about it during my work day. I’m a letter carrier for the postal service. I was delivering mail in the rain, and water had soaked my shoes and my socks, and two layers of jackets through to my shirt. Half-way through the day I became so frustrated, I stood in the rain with my arms full of soggy letters and catalogs, ready to cuss at the clouds. Instead I found myself laughing, and I said, “This is an example of the Bodhisattva feeling upset.”
Through the remainder of the day I laughed again every time I recognized an emotion rising up in me, and I would say, “This is the Bodhisattva feeling amused,” or “This is the Bodhisattva feeling hurried,” "This is the Bodhisattva feeling angry," or happy or… etc.
Of course, I am sooo far from being a Bodhisattva, and that’s what made me laugh: the reality that these feelings I recognize in myself are shared with one so far ahead of me on the path that he's made the return trip.
I feel somewhat insecure about sharing these thoughts. Maybe that’s why, until now, I’ve only posted quotes from books and I’ve avoided sharing what I feel about the quotes. This is the Bodhisattva feeling insecure.
Here are a couple of quotes from Hero With a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell on the topic:
“If the God is a tribal, racial, national, or sectarian archetype, we are the warriors of his cause; but if he is a lord of the universe itself, we then go forth as knowers to whom all men are brothers. And in either case, the childhood parent images and ideas of ‘good’ and ‘evil’ have been surpassed. We no longer desire and fear; we are what was desired and feared. All the gods, Bodhisattvas, and Buddhas have been subsumed in us, as in the halo of the mighty holder of the lotus of the world.”
“This is the sense of the first wonder of the Bodhisattva: the androgynous character of the presence. Therewith the two apparently opposite mythological adventures come together: the Meeting with the Goddess, and the Atonement with the Father. For in the first the initiate learns that males and female are (as phrased in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad) ‘two halves of a split pea’; whereas in the second, the Father is found to be antecedent to the division of sex: the pronoun ‘He’ was a manner of speech, the myth of Sonship a guiding line to be erased. And in both cases it is found (or rather, recollected,) that the hero himself is that which he had come to find.”
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