Tami Simon: You’re listening to Insights at the Edge.
Today I speak with Jonathan Ellerby. Jonathan is an emerging teacher in the areas of spiritual exploration, healing, and consciousness. He is the author of the book Return to the Sacred, as well as the Sounds True audio learning program Your Spiritual Personality: Finding the Path That’s Right for You.
In this episode of Insights at the Edge, Jonathan and I spoke about this idea of spiritual personality what he calls the six aspects of spiritual personalities, along with how we can grow and better understand others through these personalities. We also spoke about the clarity that arises from living in accord with our true self.
Here’s my engaging conversation with Jonathan Ellerby.
Tami Simon: This idea of a spiritual personality: come on, first of all, I mean my personality, that’s kind of like my persona. I don’t really care about my personality exactly, do I? And then this concept of a spiritual personality? Can you explain this to me, Jonathan?
Jonathan Ellerby: Well, I like the fact that you attach the concept of personality to persona, because spiritual personality is perhaps another way to say “your soul’s nature.”
TS: OK.
JE: So what we’re talking about is acknowledging that when we come into this world, we have certain aptitudes and we have certain preferences, certain orientations. And, as many people have experienced, no matter what the world may want them to be like or do, there are certain things in who we are that just can’t be changed. And even if we fake it, we find that we pay the price in time. So in many ways coming to know your spiritual personality is like coming to know your essential nature. And this is an interesting thing to talk about in the world of spirituality, because so many traditions are interested in transcending our individuality or transcending our preferences or our biases.
TS: I mean, when it all comes down to it, it doesn’t matter what my spiritual personality is because we’re all going to the same non-dualness?
JE: Right, we’re all one and it’s all pure consciousness. And yet anyone who says that they have realized pure consciousness probably walked a path that reflected their spiritual personality in order to figure it out. So sure, we can hear, whether it’s Yogananda or Meister Eckhart telling us, we can hear “It’s all one” and “Our differences don’t matter” and “This is truly all an illusion,” but the path they took to realize that reflected something unique about who they are. They didn’t do the same things; they didn’t do the same practices.
And so what I find in my work is that a lot of modern seekers are almost caught in some of these messages because they hear that it doesn’t matter, and yet they find that the tools that they’re picking up aren’t always working for them. So they’re saying, “Why is it that this author who’s so popular doesn’t make sense to me?” Or “Why is it that this practice that everyone says is supposed to enlighten me makes me angry? What am I supposed to do with that?” And so this is an opportunity to really affirm for people that it’s OK to be spiritually different; it’s OK to have different spiritual orientations, and that’s what spiritual personality is about.
TS: I mean, is it kind of like saying different people like different types of foods—is it like that?
JE: It’s a little bit like that in the sense that we have preferences, although if we were to work with that analogy— So let’s work with that analogy: it’s more complex than saying, “I like chocolate; you like vanilla.” There are a lot of things that go into why we like different foods. So we could talk about Ayurvedic doshas. We could talk about Chinese medicine and imbalances. We could talk about what your mother fed you when you needed nurturing, as well as talk about allergies. So there’s a lot of things that go into the foods that I like; if you look deeper, it’s not as simple as “I just happen to like this.” And in a similar way, even though it’s a bit of a bizarre metaphor, spiritual personality is no different.
So I actually identify six different aspects that help construct the spiritual personality, and these six different aspects are influenced by a variety of factors, like what we came with when we were born, as well as what our experiences have been, as well as our social influences.
TS: When you say “what we came with when we were born,” do you mean the past-life material we’re carrying, or what do you mean by that?
JE: However you understand the nature of the soul, what we showed up with—I mean that.
TS: The fact that we weren’t an empty slate, that we weren’t a tabula rasa when we were a baby, that we came with certain characteristics?
JE: Correct. Absolutely, absolutely.
TS: And then these six aspects, what are these?
JE: So these six aspects, they create almost like a code in a way.
TS: OK, let’s hear the code!
JE: And the code changes over time, though, as we change ourselves, as we mature and evolve. So the first two elements that we look at, or the first two aspects, are sacred concept and self-concept. So when we look at sacred concept, basically what we’re talking about is: What is your assumption about ultimate reality—is it personal or impersonal? Does it have form or is it formless? See, if someone’s innate sense of the sacred is personal, then talking to them about the unified field and energy consciousness and meditation may go completely over their head. Conversely, if someone is maybe driven by more of a consciousness orientation or an interest in energy, if that’s their language and you encourage them to try the path of devotion, where they’re supposed to not only have a personal image of God but pictures of God at home and sit adoringly at God’s feet, this is not going to work. So sacred concept is the first.
TS: OK. Now before we go any further—I want to hear all six, believe me—already I identify with both.
JE: Which is fine.
TS: I feel both devotional and I feel sort of a formless, consciousness orientation.
JE: Correct. So what we find then is typically as we mature, if I could use that term, we become more inclusive. We become—
TS: So you’re saying I’m mature, Jonathan?
JE: I’m saying you’re getting there [Laughs.] I’m sure you’re very mature.
So what we find then, yes, is that we become more inclusive. And we realize that, yes, we can encounter the divine in a personal way, and yet we do not define or contain the divine merely through personal concepts. We understand that God, for lack of a better word, could be in both form and formlessness. And this is what a lot of our mystic teachers have said for generations.
I think one of the values of making this explicit for listeners and for seekers is that they don’t always recognize this. They often feel—or the people that I speak to often feel—almost trapped or confused by their assumptions when they don’t line up with the practices that they want to use to cultivate the deeper experience. And my emphasis is on spirituality as an experience. It’s not about having the right belief system or the right idea of God; it’s about having a vehicle and a path that will help you to unfold that process of maturation in which you transcend the tools, the path, the vehicle.
But it’s kind of, as some might say, a pre/trans fallacy, right? We can’t fool ourselves into thinking we can live the mystic vision until we’ve really experienced it. And that means we need to start where we are. So if a person is listening to the program and they’re coming from a Christian tradition, and let’s say they have a very personal concept of God, well, then that aspect of their spiritual personality will define which of the pathways will be more or less appealing to them. And that’s kind of the value, you know?
TS: OK, so let’s lay out these six different components of my spiritual personality.
JE: The rest of them? OK.
TS: So one is sacred concept, meaning consciousness orientation, or more of a devotional form or non-form?
JE: I’d be careful about using the word “devotional” yet, because that is one of the terms I use for one of the 12 master pathways, one of the 12 practices that people can adopt.
TS: OK, man, now we’ve got six, we’ve got twelve. OK!
JE: So the first thing you need to do is to discern your own spiritual personality—that’s step one. Then you look at the options, the paths, the vehicles, and using your spiritual pathway or using your spiritual personality, you’re going to select your path. So it’s actually fairly simple, but yes, if you put it all on the table at the same time and you don’t sort it out—
TS: Well, let’s stick with the spiritual personality.
JE: Let’s start there. So, first thing we want to be clear about is natural orientations. Sacred concept is the first: How do I relate to the sacred? How do I identify it?
The second is self-concept. Now, self-concept has to do with literally what we believe the essential self to be. Now for a more advanced seeker, this may seem like a kind of a no-brainer, but the three layers here are—as you and I have talked about at times—the persona, the soul, and what I’m calling the spirit. And this would be the socially driven, externally formed self; the innate, natural self; and the aspect of self which is divine, which is not individual at all. And depending on where a seeker orients themselves, the paths will be more or less suitable.
For example, I find that there are many people who frankly are really interested in spirituality as a tool to manage stress and find a greater sense of calm or health in life. This is more of a persona-oriented interest. Kind of like, “What’s in it for me?” or “I’m not sure if I really believe in the big picture, but I just want tools to help me to be happier.” But then we move to people who are more soul-oriented, and this is more about “How do I find my gifts?” and “How do I find my passion?” We start hearing people talk more about manifestation and intention and “Who was I born to be? What makes me unique?” And pathways can help those people, too. But then there are people whose orientation is purely around consciousness or spirit; they want to awaken to the truth of who they are at their deepest level or the true nature of ultimate reality. Well, because of this orientation this person will also engage their practices differently.
You see, the confusion in the world is that we have all these practices that look the same from the outside, but when we move into the interior journey, we see people are traveling them very differently. So in one pew in a church, we may have six people and they may be doing the same prayers and they may be sitting in the same building, but because of their spiritual personality, they are connecting to very different things. They are coming to very different conclusions and assumptions. And if one of those six has a spiritual personality that matches the setting, well, then their heart is on fire and they’re awakening through this powerful, beautiful place. But if another one in that same pew’s spiritual personality doesn’t match—you know, they’re checking their watch and they’re thinking about where they’re going to go eat afterward and they can’t wait till this thing’s over. But they’re missing a great opportunity to cultivate that maturation of the spirit. So there’s an important value to understanding where our orientation is. Is this making sense?
TS: It is. You know, but when you talk about the self-concept, when you talk about people functioning more at a—did you call it a persona level? Or even more at the manifestation intention: “What am I going to get out of this?” You know, my own bias has been that those two perspectives are taking the riches of spirituality and turning it into the Me Game, and to me it’s not as easy as to say, “Well, that’s OK. I mean, fine, good, great, that’s their spiritual personality.” I personally have been critical of that.
JE: Well, to me I guess I haven’t felt the need to be critical of it, in the sense that this is what we see on the planet. So I just observe it as a phenomenon: some people are ego driven, some people are soul driven.
What I certainly do agree with, though, is that there’s a cost. There’s absolutely a cost to that kind of orientation to the spiritual path, because it does diminish not only the power and potential of these practices, but even the rule of the transcendent in our lives. It feels sometimes like kind of missing the mark. And yet on the other hand, I mean, why am I the one to judge whether they are doing what they should be or not? All I can do is present options for people and help them understand the limits of certain choices, and the potential within others. And then ultimately it’s their own experience that will help to unfold that awakening.
And that’s why it’s kind of an interesting topic, this idea of, can you be spiritually on track or offtrack, and is there spiritual right and wrong, or misuse or abuse of a path? You’d have to have an assumption about what the right use is in order to have a sense that someone would be wrong. And I think what’s slippery about that slope is it’s very easy to cycle back into the ego with that kind of feeling. And you know, from my experience, I know many great teachers who have awakened to the divine, who have experienced the undifferentiated unity of all things, but then they become so passionate about it that the personality kicks in and suddenly they’re indignant about those who don’t see it. Or critical about those who aren’t so liberal, you know. And this is kind of the story of life, is that we’re constantly refining our attachments and projections.
TS: To summarize my criticism, it’s that when spirituality is used in service of “me” versus in service of “others” that there’s a missing of the mark that’s actually a distortion of the great virtues that spirituality is supposed to ask to flower in our being. Because it all just becomes the Me Game, and it slightly looks good, maybe smells a little better than other people’s Me Game, but it’s still the same thing.
JE: Yes, yes. It’s a gilded cage; I absolutely agree. However, I would add that for me I place the emphasis on experience, and if a person’s motivations—so the self-concept, you might also call it the motivational style—is it about seeming? Is it about becoming something? Or is it about the essence of being? And all I can say is, if my personal passion is to help people to awaken, I want to meet them where they’re at. And I will tell you that I have met people who’ve come to me just to manage stress, just to be happier themselves—very much about a Me Game. But in very seriously tasting, trying, committing to a practice, they have awoken to those deeper levels. And so all of a sudden someone who comes at it “all about me” falls through that trapdoor.
And this kind of brings me to—at the risk of being confusing—the 12 master paths. The reason why I’ve identified these pathways is to say that for thousands of years, millions of people have been coming into relationship with what I’m calling the sacred, or you could call consciousness, through a relatively small number of avenues, despite the many shades and costumes. And there is an innate power, an innate capacity in those vehicles that we can trust. So if someone is simply willing to commit to the vehicle, I’m willing to let the vehicle do its work, I’m willing to let the divine take responsibility—it will play its role in awaking that person, and I’m just trying to match them up. I’m like a used-car salesman: I just want to get them in a car today [Laughs.]
TS: Well, fair enough. The idea of also people being honest about what their genuine call is—OK.
So we have the self-concept, and we begin with the sacred concept—the God concept. The self-concept. And now the four other . . .
JE: So, the next thing we have is belief style. Belief style is really about whether we see that the path that we are on to date or our worldview is the only way. Whether it’s the only way for us, but it’s OK for others to have their way. Well, all ways are fine, because ultimately it’s about coming into contact with something greater. And you can feel there’s a parallel between those three and what I call persona, soul, and spirit.
So what it looks like in the religious world, for example, are the fundamentalists. But let’s not jump to conclusions and think Islamic fundamentalists and Christian fundamentalists—you know, I’ve met a lot of Buddhist fundamentalists, a lot of yogi fundamentalists. My favorite irony is the people who are peace fundamentalists: “I am so adamant about peace in this world that I’m willing to slash your damn tires, you Hummer-driving you know what!”
TS: Gotcha.
JE: OK. But then the next is to say, “Well, I can own what’s for me,” and I can also say, “You can have your own. I don’t want to know about it; I don’t necessarily need to see it. But I got my way, you got yours.” So in that second sort of layer of belief style we have, respect shows up—tolerance. Even relationships, being willing to learn from others, to sit at their table.
But again we move to that third position—which would be a position very familiar to you, and even this model probably—this is the position where we recognize that any path, any practice, is merely a vehicle. As they say in the old tradition, “Just fingers pointing at the moon.” And let’s not mistake the messenger for the message.
TS: But I also hear as you’re identifying this that it’s important for people to tell the truth about where they are on these three without necessarily saying— Like for example, you said, you know, I’m probably actually more of the number-two type. I have a path for me that I think is the path that works for me. And secretly, I kind of think it’s better than others’ paths—I do, actually. I’ve done my darnedest to open up to all the other paths and see their equal value, but if you really look inside my heart, I’m actually more of a number-two type. So I have to tell the truth about that; I have to come clean. If I’m going to actually use this model accurately, I have to tell the truth about it.
JE: Yeah, that’s beautiful. I love that application. See, the thing that’s nice is, it’s not hierarchical; it’s simply an awareness tool. To me it just really doesn’t matter how you answer any of these questions because it’s going to shift and evolve throughout our life. Which is why the spiritual-personality model is not about archetypes, right: “Am I the dancer? Am I the wizard? Am I the whatever?” Those are nice, but too often the way I see people use them is they’ll fill out the score sheet, and then they’ll go about their lives labeling people: “Oh, of course, she’s like that because she’s the harlot.” And “Oh, I’m like this ’cause I’m the hierophant.” That’s not the point of those models; it’s to awaken to potential, and even to transcend the archetype itself.
So this is meant to be kind of a living, dynamic system. And yes, it’s true that when it comes to belief style, even some of the most mature, evolved, and awakened souls will fall into that second level. And certainly I would say that for teachers, it’s actually kind of important. Because if you don’t have a measure of passion about your style, how do you get up every day and say, “We’re going to do yoga . . . again”? You know, “We’re going to do meditation . . . again.” I mean, if our priests and rabbis didn’t believe in what they did, the Dalai Lama would show up in jeans and a T-shirt. But he honors his tradition and his path. And yet we can’t deny that there are those teachers and seekers who do end up in that sort of third category, which is the “whatever works” category.
When I talk to people about this particular aspect of spiritual personality, very often the natural impulse is, “Well, don’t we all want to be in that transcendent level?” And I like to point out that when we look historically at the great mystics who live in that level, life’s tough. They don’t hold down a job. These are the Ramakrishnas who are in the middle of a sentence and they fall down in bliss, and people need to wash them and feed them. And if you have kids and a job, I wouldn’t necessarily aspire to be there all the time.
TS: And to me the important thing, whenever you’re figuring out anything about yourself, is to tell the truth. I mean, so here we’re bringing awareness to our spiritual personality. It’s not what you want to be; it’s what you actually are. I mean, just tell the truth about it.
JE: Yes. And what I find is that energetically, when we’re in the truth, we are just a step from that pure consciousness anyway. In a sense we are a living expression of it, a conduit even, when we’re in our truth. And as people always say, “Oh, the truth is so freeing. You know, I was afraid to tell my friend that I didn’t like their party or what they were wearing, and the minute I just owned it, something changed.” And I do believe that our thoughts are directly connected to our energy body. And when we’re in our truth, there is a kind of clarifying, a kind of harmonizing, and even an elevating of the energy body when we simply speak our truth.
And I think that’s why—just to pick up on this whole theme of truth, because I think it’s a good one—that’s why many of us have met people who are anything but “spiritual.” But they are so honest about who they are, even if they’re kind of a—I hate to create a stereotype, but kind of a beer-guzzling, wrestling-watching, truck-driving stereotype that doesn’t fit the spiritual mold. But when they are so honest about who they are, there’s a quality of connection and transmission that transcends the trappings. And so that’s a beautiful thing that I think you’re pointing out.
TS: OK, the fourth quality of my spiritual personality.
JE: The fourth quality is experiential style. Now this can be a whole program, and actually this is something that I’ve even started writing about. And it’s acknowledging that we as human beings seem to have different natural styles of encountering the sacred. So for example, when we look at the, you might even say the inventory of spiritual experiences available to us —seeing lights, hearing voices, connecting with divine beings—very often what I’ll find is that either seekers or even advanced teachers will say, “How come I don’t get to hear spirits? I see energy, I see auras, but I want to talk to God. That guy gets to talk to Jesus.” Well, what I try to remind people is that we just have different ways of getting it, and it’s OK. That’s part of that spiritual personality; it’s “I hear voices. You get a gut feeling. Someone else sees energy and auras.” And I truly do not believe that one is better than the other; it’s about how you use it, how clear it is, where it takes you. And again, a good example would be that we see people who talk to angels, and yet they’re still kind of egocentric, miserable people. And we see people who talk to angels, and they themselves are angelic, beautiful, patient. So it’s not really about how you get it; it’s what you do with it.
TS: So experiential style is a little bit like your intuitive style, or how you connect to what’s beyond you?
JE: Yes, I think you could say that; I think you could say that. I would say it’s how— I mean, depending on where you put the orientation, you could say it’s how the divine reveals itself to you. Or the manner in which you perceive it.
TS: The fifth aspect of my spiritual personality.
JE: OK, so the last two aspects then have to do very explicitly with practice. So I call one the foundational element, or foundational style. And the second is the freedom element, or the freedom style. What does this mean? This means, what is the style of practice that naturally appeals to me most? Quite simply, am I a body person—am I kinesthetic? Am I a mind person—do I like to think things through? Am I an emotional person—do I like to feel something while I’m going through it? Or am I a soul person, meaning my fixation is always on that spirit level? You know: “I want to strip away the other stuff.”
And we do find these kinds of personalities. You know, for example in the Hindu tradition, there is a long history of talking about the yana yogis, the mind yogis; the bhakti yogis, the devotional yogis; the hatha yogis; and so on and so forth. So there are certainly some connections between these kinds of models. But essentially it’s just saying, “What are you naturally attracted to when it comes to a practice?” That’s all.
The reason why I call it the foundational element is because that’s usually where we start, and if someone hasn’t started their practice, that’s where I suggest they start. So if they love analyzing, thinking, problem solving, they love the numbers: “Ooh, it’s the six elements, and then the 12 paths, and I want to know about the seven . . .” then great! I would encourage them to explore something like sacred study. Immerse yourself through the paths of the mind. If someone else says, “Ugh, that’s a lot of mental jargon. I want to feel it; I want to be in my body. If I can’t move while I’m doing it, I don’t want to hear about it.” To that person I’d say, “Don’t worry about the numbers. Go do a practice that takes you into your body: tai chi, qi gong, walking meditation.” So ultimately we’re trying to find what our foundational vehicle is going to be.
TS: Now, what if I look at myself and I take a number like 100 percent—not to introduce more numbers into our conversation!—and I say, “Well, 20 percent of me is like this, and 40 percent of me is like that.” Because as I relate to those four different types that you’re describing—
JE: Correct. So this brings up a couple of things. First of all, what we’ve included in the program is a questionnaire. And what you can do in the questionnaire is find your natural tendency around these four orientations, like do you tend toward the body, the mind, the heart, or the soul? And yes, people will find that they’re not all one. They may be a slight margin more focused on the mind than the heart or these kinds of things, and that’s normal, that’s fine. The other thing that it also raises is that as—what I believe is that as we progress, we also become more integral in our interests and integral in our practices.
So what we include with the program is a spiritual-practice plan: three levels of progression—“I’m new to this stuff,” “I’ve done some of this stuff before,” and “I’ve done a lot of this stuff and I want to go to another level.” To the people who are new to all this spiritual seeking and growth, I focus on the foundational element. Pick the area that appeals to you most, and invest some time and energy there. I’m simplifying this, but that’s in essence what I’m saying.
But then as we move to the next level, we’re adding. Now bring in something from another dimension that you didn’t focus on. Maybe you were all in your body here; you’re all focused on a physical practice. Now as we move to our second stage, let’s add another level. Let’s add something more emotional or intellectual. When we move to the third stage, we have to talk about the freedom element. So that’s the sixth aspect of spiritual personality. And what that is, that’s the style or practice that appeals to you the least. That’s the stuff you want to avoid, you know? “Oh, you know, those people; you know, those people, those people are participating in our freedom element.” So what we resist, what we judge, what we naturally feel uncomfortable with, I’d like to suggest holds the greatest power for us.
TS: So you’re saying of these four categories, if there’s one that I resist the most, that’s the one that becomes the sixth aspect of my personality, the rejected?
JE: Correct. You got it.
TS: OK, cool.
JE: So this is really in some way to draw some parallels to other systems, like the Shadow Work.® This is basically saying if— I’ll give you a great example: a yoga teacher came to me recently and he said, “I’ve been a yoga teacher for 12 or 13 years.” And he’s very successful, people love him, he’s got his own little following. But in his own life he feels a kind of stagnation because he’s done the yoga thing, and he keeps going back to more, other yoga teachers, and he’s trying to find higher yoga masters to challenge him.
And I said, “Well, have you considered just doing something different?” Now, by that I didn’t mean giving up being a yoga teacher—it’s his life, it’s his love. But I said, “Have you tried some of the other pathways?”
And he said, “Well, you know, I’ve always been interested in shamanism, but it kind of scares me because I’ve spent so much time aspiring to rise above the world, it feels very nitty-gritty. And all this stuff about spirits, and I don’t know, like I’m kind of afraid of what I might contact. And I’m afraid I might like it. And I’m afraid that it’s going to require a lot of discomfort, and I’ve been through discomfort learning to be a master of what I am, and this is now easy for me. I don’t want to go back to that stuff.”
So I said, “Perfect. That’s a perfect path for you to start to explore. And when stuff comes up, when you feel awkward or uncomfortable, this is your greatest opportunity for freedom. It’s like the gilded cage suddenly being blown apart.”
So I do believe that in time, yes, if we’re serious about whatever that is—the end of the spiritual journey, if there is such a thing as an end—we are going to have to face that freedom element. And the reason why I call it the freedom element instead of the rejected element or the shadow element is because I want the language about it to be about empowerment, and not anything that we might assume to be negative, or something that would even promote more of the fear. And for my own self, I have to say that realization of the freedom element is where I found my greatest growth in life.
TS: What was your freedom element?
JE: Well, I’ll tell you, there was a time where I basically just started looking for any place where I found myself making decisions out of fear or found myself avoiding things, and I just went for them. I just—anything. So I could give you a long list of things that fell into my freedom element.
One of my primary teachers has been a Native American fellow in the Lakota Sioux tradition, and when I got involved with him—this was as a traditional healer—I was around sweat lodges, sacred pipe ceremonies, and so on. And this was all beautiful. And the sweat lodges can be a little bit rigorous, but I think most people can move through them.
And then there came this invitation to participate in something they call hanblechia in their tradition, and in English we call this a vision quest. So now it’s spending days in a place of isolation, confined to a small space, without food or water or shelter. Now, I’m a Jewish-Canadian, right? I grew up in a pretty sheltered home, and this did not sound like something I wanted to sign up for. You know, when we fasted for Yom Kippur, this was 24 hours that we would negotiate down to 12, and we would drink water and brush our teeth. I wasn’t sure hanblechia sounded like something I could even do. But it was precisely that feeling, that fear—“I don’t think I can do this”—that made me say, “Try it. Take the step and see what it is you’re afraid of.” And of course the only thing that I was afraid of was myself and the ego and the persona.
In the end—in fact, one of the great realizations that I— I didn’t really talk about in the program, but I do talk about it in my book Return to the Sacred—is that probably the greatest moment that came, one of the greater moments that came to me on my path was through fasting and was through hitting an experience that was physically so rigorous and you might even say awful—heat and thirst and exhaustion—that it could do nothing less than obliterate the ego. Because the more I clung to “I should be able to do this. Why is this so hard? I don’t like this,” it just got worse and worse and worse, until all of a sudden I said to myself, “I can’t do this.” But what registered within was that the “I” doesn’t do anything.
TS: Yes, yes. It’s a type of surrender.
JE: Yes. So this idea of surrender is really what the freedom element is all about. Now the piece that we do talk about in the program is that— I don’t necessarily recommend this for people who are beginning the journey or even have safety or health concerns around their freedom element. I feel that it’s important that you either have a very good mentor, who’s either experienced this same process or path, or you have quite a bit of self-awareness and knowledge, and that means not only in terms of your mental health but also physical health. Because the freedom elements can trigger a lot of things, just even on a psychological level, whether it’s old wounds or abuses.
TS: Sure, there’s a reason why we’re avoiding those things.
JE: Correct. So let’s be careful.
TS: OK, so now I think I get my spiritual personality, the process I’m going to go through to discover this. What do I do with this information?
JE: Right. So this is interesting, because what I think a lot of people are thinking, are expecting, is that once they’ve found out their spiritual personality, the work is done. But it’s quite the opposite. Once you take a reading of where you’re at right now, this is when the work begins.
So this is what the remainder of the program is really about, which is now that you have a sense of where you’re at, how do you pick a practice that is suited for you at this time in your life, at this stage in your life, that’s going to draw upon your natural tendencies and aptitudes, and yet challenge you to awaken to a deeper level of being?
TS: And so I’m given a whole array of potential practices that potentially match up with my spiritual personality?
JE: More or less. At the heart of this program is an examination of what I call 12 master paths. Because as I’ve traveled and as I’ve studied and done all these degrees trying to understand spirituality better, or at least trying to articulate it better, one thing has occurred to me again and again over time, which is that while there is an endless number of ways to talk about spirituality, and an endless number of practices and exercises we can do, they’re really just different iterations or versions of a core set. You know, I do believe that there are more or less 12 practices that we just dress up differently, in different places and times.
So a good example would be meditation. We find meditation in all the world’s traditions, from Christianity to Shamanic traditions—it’s not just a Buddhist thing. But of course the traditions may emphasize meditation differently, or they may call it something different. Similarly, devotional practices or the use of ceremony and ritual as a practice, this shows up in all of our traditions. And even in the traditions where they try to withdraw it, even where they say, “No, it’s not allowed,” it still shows up. A great example would be the Western stereotype about Buddhism: “Buddhism’s all about meditation. It’s all about pure consciousness.” If you travel the world and actually spend time with real, living Buddhists, you will find Buddhists that are all about ritual, you will find Buddhists that are devotional—they see the Buddha as like a messenger of consciousness, that you essentially entrust the Buddha as your vehicle. You will find Buddhists that practice as shamans do.
So the idea is simplifying the choices and recognizing that you may prefer different teachers or religious expressions of these 12 paths. But essentially there are 12 that I recommend that people pick from. And yes, the 12 do fall into four categories of mind-oriented, body-oriented, heart-oriented, and soul-oriented. So you have your spiritual personality, and you make your selection from the 12 practices.
The idea in the program is to give people a simple but clear understanding about what each of the 12 practices are. Sort of give them a feel for why they would want to do it, and then I give them some actual experiential exercises. And not just things to do for five minutes and then decide, but I’m recommending exercises in some cases that people do for as much as 40 days. I’m trying to encourage people to understand that spirituality is an experience. It’s not just about filling out the questionnaire and suddenly having a new idea about who they are; it’s about giving them a process to have a personal, lived awakening to something deeper within them.
TS: Jonathan, thank you. You know, what I love about what you’re doing is you’re welcoming everyone. You’re welcoming everyone and helping them find the next step for them, so it’s really fabulous.
JE: Great! Thank you, it’s been nice.
TS: Thank you.
