Your personality is all that you see.  It is all that I see when I look at you – your sex, demeanor, height, body type, clothing – these are the markers that define you for me. 

Until we become friends.  Then there are other categories to add to this list of you – only child, sister, single, married, artist, accountant, runner, or surfer. 

This is the stuff of your personality, your ego; this is the you that we know you to be.  It is not all of you, but the part the world sees.  It represents decisions you’ve made.

If I decide to lift weights, I will look fit and muscular.  If I love automobiles, mine will always be waxed and clean.  If it is shoes that I love, well, you get the picture.  We choose who we are in this world. 

Our choices are often repetitive.  They become how we define ourselves.  “Oh, I love the gym.” “I don’t eat meat.” “I love football.”  “I am a runner.”

We do what we love.  Our actions support who we believe ourselves to be; in truth, who we have created ourselves to be.

It is the same with our emotions.  When we were children, we formed opinions about things and had feelings about them.  Certain people/events felt good or these people/events felt bad.  As we matured, we adjusted them according to our current beliefs.  Upon reaching adulthood, our personality was ingrained.  How we were in the world was pretty much set.

In our Quest for Joy, we notice that happiness exists, yet it is temporary.  The feelings of “no joy” show up again, and again.  These are repetitive, we recognize them like old friends – although they are not friends we enjoy now.  Self-defeat, loser, lonely, angry; they are emotional addictions and they can be changed.

The trick is to recognize them.  If you run into an old friend you no longer wish to hang with – you can say hello and then walk away.  You don’t need to kill him.  He still gets to exist, just not in your world.

It’s the same with emotional decisions that no longer serve us.  We just need to walk away.  Rejection and denial won’t work, acceptance and absorption will. 

These are decisions you made at one time.  Maybe you were 8 or 13 or 16 years old. Gently let these parts of who you’ve been fade away.  They are not who you are.  Like old shoes, they no longer fit.

Addictions are part of our human condition.  They are not wrong or bad or signs of weakness.  This physical life is extremely addicting. This is how we function – we learn a response and then repeat it enough times until we no longer need to decide how to do it, we just do it.

It has become such a habit we’ve come to believe that’s just the way life is.  We forgot that we are defining life, not the other way around.  Our life is a collection of decisions we’ve made.  Relationships, jobs and emotions are all choices.

It is an emotional decision to feel powerless or victimized or worthless; it is not truth.  Once we recognize the choices we’ve made we can change them.

There is no blame, all is choice.  We’ve been raised to believe our “failings” were “weaknesses”.  They are habits.  They are not who we are.

We are collectively waking up.  You are waking up. You can see the personality, the ego self you’ve created, for who he or she is.  Is she who you want to be?  Is he everything you’ve dreamed of?  If your answer is no, then recognize what is stopping you.  See the choices you’ve made that no longer serve you and choose again, without blame.  Self-hatred is not necessary.  We can love ourselves now.  It’s okay.

We are not bad, and suffering is not necessary.  Right now we can engage joy.  Today we can realize our perfection.

Accept all you have ever been and decide all you’d like to be.  Recognize that emotion (the one that prevents joy) when it shows up, and walk away.  Destruction is not necessary, just quiet determination. 

What is at stake is perpetual joy.  What is at stake is you.  Not the personality you have believed yourself to be, but you – the eternal being of love that understands your unlimited potential. 

You are the one you are waiting for.