The Caretaker Personality

Everything that you thought yourself to be, what you assumed you were - your memories, emotions, thoughts, feelings and concerns - is only a thin, thin shell, the outer perimeter of your being. But inside your being is infinite awareness, endless, fathomless perfection. Just as a snake sheds its skin, so as you meditate and you experience that which you really are, you shed your personality. The person you grew up with and have come to know over the years begins to change. You outgrow the limited personality structure and you seek to live without a personality, that is to say, just to be in that essence all the time.

Still, in this world, it's necessary to get through the day, unless you plan to go off to a high mountaintop and you have all the supplies you need and you never have to deal with anyone and can sit perpetually absorbed in that state of meditation. If, like most of us, you live and work in the world, it's necessary to find a way to deal with traffic jams, tax forms, people who love you, people who make demands upon your time and energy, a high-tech society where computers are the language of the day, where children no longer study Greek or Latin but instead now study Pascal, BASIC, COBOL, Fortran. It's necessary to learn to deal with your turbulent emotions. You can sit absorbed in meditation and be nothing but that perfect ecstasy and light beyond any description, but then, after meditation, an emotional maelstrom may sweep around you and through you, pulling you into it. Fears come through you as do doubts, ideas, great inspirations, passions, loves, hates, sorrows, wonderful feelings of love and self-giving. They sweep through you.

A moment ago you were absorbed in meditation. There was no question. There was no answer. There was only a still perfection so complete that you actually forgot about this life and this world. It went away for you. You reached the purpose of fulfillment of human life. You merged with the Self, that which you really are and we all are. You became one with God. You've gone up to the top of the mountain and not simply talked with God, but merged. But now, here you are again, in the world, after this incredible transcendental experience where you were absolute knowledge and absolute light and absolute perfection, and your phone is ringing and someone wants to talk to you and the bills are waiting to be paid and the world is running away in its own ways. The newspaper is telling you of fresh disasters. Your body is growing old. You're tired.

The energy fields from all the other human beings who are so caught up in a storm of turbulent emotions sweep through the world every day. They touch you and affect you even if you're not physically with others - their energies, those energies that make this world a world of constant transition. You're sensitive to them. How do you deal with it all? Ideally you would maintain that perfect tranquility and joy, that radiance which can assume any form or any emotion, in and through all of your activities. But some days that's tough to do.

The caretaker personality is a way that has been evolved whereby you can deal with the world, your families, friends, your own emotions, while you exist in the world. When it's not necessary for you to use the personality form, you can put it on the shelf and let it rest and you can just be absorbed in the all-blissful light. You can be in complete awareness, in other words, using every part of your mind, every part of your being, absorbed in its ultimate purpose.

But when you have to step into the world, you need to wear something. At home you may lie in bed with nothing on or at best go around the house in a little robe, but when you go out into the world you have to put on a uniform. If you're in the business world you may be wearing one uniform. If you're playing sports it may be another uniform. If you're going out with your friends it may be a casual uniform. If you're a nurse it's a white uniform. In other words, we wear different types of clothing. We try and wear clothing that's suitable to an occasion. If you're going mountain climbing, you're not going to wear a three-piece designer suit. If you've been invited to have lunch with the president, you're not going to go in your jogging shorts, unless, of course, you're Woody Allen.

The caretaker personality is a way of choosing what you wear, not simply in terms of clothing but in terms of personality. As you meditate and go more deeply within yourself, you come to see that you don't have one personality, you have many, many personalities. "Know thyself" is a splendid idea because it is that absolute self that we come to know, that timeless reality. But at the same time it's also apropos to know thy selves, because you have many, many selves. There are many, many personality forms that operate through you, and as you peel back the layers of your outer being you come to see that many selves are what you are, and that these selves all speak, they all have different voices; they talk through you. Of course, beyond these many selves is that one immutable, perfect light.

All of your selves float, suspended, as a fleet of great ships floats in the ocean. For a while our attention is focused on one ship. We're onboard one ship, experiencing what's there, then we find ourselves in another ship, then another. So the different selves that float in a suspension of consciousness, this aggregate of different realities, which is what you are really made up of, speak from time to time. These are inner selves. We have inner selves, but we also have outer personality forms.

What I would like to do is present a few caretaker personalities that you can adopt to work in the world and to have fun and to be joyous with. These are uniforms that you wear, clothing that you put on and that you also take off. Wear that caretaker personality which is apropos, which is appropriate, for what you are doing. Don't be afraid to be creative and change these caretaker personalities. Modify them as you will and you'll find that they tend to modify themselves in time.

I'm suggesting that you be an architect of your own being, that just as you can choose your clothes, so in advanced yoga and meditation, you learn to choose your personalities. This occurs when you have the realization that the personality is not really your real self, but just like your clothing, a transitory experience.

If you had become convinced one day when you were walking around that your clothing was your skin, you might always wear the same clothing; you didn't realize that there was anything underneath. Similarly, most individuals don't realize that there's something beyond their personalities, that actually the personality is something that is not the complete self but it's something transitory that comes and goes, whereas the real self is that which is eternal, unchanging and perfect.

In the early stages of meditation, let's say the first seven to ten years that you're intently practicing meditation every day, those years in which you're sweeping your island and cleaning it up, bringing discipline into your life, eliminating and controlling unhappy thoughts, unhappy emotions, learning to go deeper and deeper into that still and perfect reality of being, Brahman, the one without a second - there are two basic caretaker personalities that are very, very helpful for dealing with the world and with yourself.

The first caretaker personality is the child, the second is the warrior. Each has its own conditions, each its own strengths. One is appropriate in one situation, the other in another situation. You can alternate them by day or by minute as is necessary, and you'll find it easier and easier to alternate them as the flow of consciousness becomes freer in your being from your meditation. If the water is frozen into ice then the ships can't move. Our fleet, if the ocean is frozen, is locked tight. When the sun comes, when the light comes and the ice thaws, it's very easy to move the ships around, there's nothing to it at all. They just glide back and forth or we don't even have to direct them. The wind will blow them where they're supposed to be, you might say.

So the first caretaker personality is the child. The caretaker personality of the child is innocence. Just think of the idyllic, if you will, qualities of the child - excitement, love, trust, humility, purity, joy. I'm speaking of a very young child, a very good child, about age four - the child who looks with wonder and awe at all of the world, who sees magic in everything, who is not preoccupied with her or himself, who becomes absorbed totally in the moment. If a child wants a cookie, that's all that matters in the whole world, but as soon as the child has a cookie the child is off on another adventure. The child doesn't give up or get frustrated because things don't work out the way she or he had planned, because a child doesn't plan.

The child lives in the moment. If the child meets with a frustration and cries and is upset, within a moment the child can be running off to play someplace else, having forgotten, not being hung up. The child doesn't sit around and live in the world of memory but lives in the moment; all that matters is the moment. This is the child who grows, who learns the language in a year, who adopts concepts. As most people get older they tend to lose the elasticity of their consciousness, they don't shine as brightly. Their subtle being becomes worn and tired. The child has a perfect subtle physical being. The child is luminous, radiant. The child doesn't know that it can't do certain things; it isn't filled with fears. These are just some images of the caretaker personality of the child.

You can use this caretaker personality - in other words you can enter into this mode of consciousness, you can choose to do so - when you're with friends whom you can trust; who love you and whom you love; when you're with yourself; when there's no one else around; in other words, when it's safe. The child should not be around people who would abuse it because a child has no natural defenses. Its own innocence will not necessarily protect it.

Some people make a great mistake. We saw a lot of this in the 1960s when a lot of people tried to become like children again. They were using various chemicals - LSD, psilocybin, mescaline and things like that. These chemicals did to a degree loosen up the ice of consciousness. However, they did so in a very volatile way. It was like taking a sledgehammer and going out and smashing the ice, and it only broke through in certain places and then it would freeze again as soon as the effect of the drug wore off, and even during the experience it was not clear. In other words, psychedelic drugs gave, and give, people a certain glimpse of that which lies beyond, but it's like going to the fun house and looking in one of those mirrors that change your shape. You don't see an accurate reflection. You may be very tall or very small or very fat as you look in one of those fun house mirrors. So the view that drugs give, while it is a reflection to some extent of the nature of reality, is bent out of shape and it doesn't last. Also, those drugs do have a detrimental effect on the subtle physical being.

The problem with the people from the 60's was that most of them adopted the caretaker personality of the child. They found while they used these various drugs and opened their being up, they were able to make some tremendous changes in the structure of their being. This is originally why people like Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert were very fascinated by the potential of these drugs. They found when they used them that a person who in a sense might be fixated, who couldn't change - an alcoholic who for 30 years had been an alcoholic and there seemed no real possibility of change, who'd tried everything - might take one of these drugs and the effect was so strong that that person would actually change, they would become a different person, perhaps a person who didn't drink. So they were initially very excited as serious psychologists about the possibilities that these new chemicals offered, and as they used these chemicals they found they had glimpses of eternity with them. These glimpses of eternity caused them to seek further, to learn about meditation, other forms of self-discovery.

However, the problem with these chemicals is that the reflection is not clear, it's bent; and that the effect, the change, does not always last. In some cases it did, but it was a rougher change - the transition wasn't smooth. Also, these chemicals very often would have a negative effect. People who used them too much would become very spaced-out. It undid the glue of their awareness, but the glue didn't necessarily rebond properly. The personality structure would partially dissolve or two might meld together, or in some cases the glue just wouldn't rejoin properly and the person would be in a very confused state of mind, perhaps for the rest of their life. These chemicals do offer certain opportunities for total and intensive change, but they have to be used very precisely in a very specific way. Even then, all they can do is give someone an initial boost and get them out of where they are. If the person is stuck, they can provide a quick change, but then the person would have to leave the chemicals behind and adopt a means that worked better, such as meditation.

Of course, what I recommend to most people who have not used those chemicals is to not bother to use them, to use meditation directly to disassociate yourself from the fixated personality and to learn to adopt the caretaker personalities. While meditation may take a little bit longer, it works. The psychedelic drugs that people use to do this only last a short time. You come down, in other words, whereas when you meditate, as time goes on, you gently acclimate yourself to living in a more fluid state of being and the power becomes greater and greater as the years go by. You become more and more fluid, whereas with the psychedelic drugs you reach a plateau and stop. With meditation you'll never stop, and you don't have to worry about the interfering possibilities, the negative side effects, in other words.

Persons who have used these chemicals should feel that that's what life gave them at the time. If you used LSD or mescaline or psilocybin to change the personality structure, then don't feel that you did anything wrong. Life gave you those chemicals to use, to see something. Now, you may not have used them properly. You may have gotten caught up in just tripping out and having sense experiences and not using them properly - properly meaning not in any specific way. This seemed to be the great controversy between Leary and Kesey at the time, with Leary saying that, well, there's a certain way to use these chemicals, a ritual way, for self-discovery, and Kesey taking a more Taoist point of view - don't think about it too much, just do it, there is no right and there is no wrong. Both are interesting points of view, but ultimately both irrelevant. Lost in time. Washed away by eternity.

So if you've used these drugs to alter the personality structure, just feel that that was right at the time, but that it is no longer right. Even marijuana and hashish alter the personality structure, but in my estimation it doesn't do it very well. I think it's better not to use any drugs whatsoever and to deal with meditation, which is millions and millions of times more powerful and does it absolutely perfectly.

So these folks in the 60's used these various chemicals and some do today, and of course they have been used for thousands of years. People who use these chemicals usually adopt the personality of the child afterwards. They were the "flower children." The flower children, without knowing perhaps what they were doing consciously by using these chemicals, were bringing out the first caretaker personality. However the flower children modality doesn't really work in this world. The flower child has trouble dealing with the rapid transit system, with the complexities of a high-tech society.

You can use the caretaker personality of the child at home, with friends, on a walk by yourself. Be a child. Look at life through the eyes of a child. Christ advised that unless you enter the kingdom of heaven as a child, you don't get in. That was his point. You have to have that way of looking at things. It's a very safe, very pure way. If you live in a monastery you can perhaps - unless you're running it - stay in that pure caretaker personality all the time. We've seen an image of it, of course, in The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoyevsky, in Alyosha. This is the caretaker personality of the child. When we think of many saints - innocent, pure, St. Francis - that's the caretaker personality of the child. A very good one to use. I recommend it highly, some times.

But when you deal with the world more directly, I suggest the caretaker personality of the warrior. The warrior is calm and efficient. The warrior uses discipline. The warrior is happy. The weapon of the warrior is laughter. The warrior learns to be impeccable, to use her or his life as a way of attaining liberation. The warrior also is always at the beck and call of others. The warrior can be of service - think of King Arthur and his knights with their code of chivalry, certain standards. While the commoners in the land may have fallen down to the lower depths, you rise above that, and even while others may not be interested in nobility of the soul, courage, valor, self-giving, sacrifice, dedication, kindness to others and protecting those who are weak, the warrior does these things.

In a trashed-out world, the warrior shines in armor - the samurai in the true sense of the term. The warrior never feels sorry for him or herself. If the warrior has to be upset, the warrior does so alone, and when the warrior goes out with others the warrior smiles. The warrior doesn't have time for self-indulgence, for self-pity. The warrior will feel a certain amount of remorse for a comrade who has been lost but then goes forward again. The warrior doesn't look back, although the warrior carries the sword of discrimination and certainly learns from experience.

The warrior is never at rest. While the warrior takes breaks - a little R&R - the warrior is always practicing and training. Even though there may not be a battle for another year, the warrior always stays in training. The warrior loves the art of being a warrior and experiences deep kinship and comradeship on a very mature level with other warriors. They embrace, they live freely. The warrior has true humility, if the warrior is a spiritual warrior, and the courage and cunning to succeed in even the most difficult of situations. If you adopt this caretaker personality when you're in the world, then you'll find it very easy to effectively deal with the world.

I often recommend two of the books of Carlos Castaneda, Journey to Ixtlan and Tales of Power, because don Juan and don Genaro, who are Carlos's spiritual teachers, teach Carlos the way of the warrior. As you read those two books you'll get a deeper sense, not so much by Carlos's experiences but by what they say as reflected in the writings of Carlos, what this warrior [way] is all about.

You can think of an image of the warrior and you can adopt this mode. Just put yourself into that place, into that consciousness, when you go out and deal with the world. And you can think of the child who just reaches to God in innocence, who is absorbed in joy at seeing a flower, at being with someone, who grows ever so quickly when you are in safe surroundings. Remember that the warrior, the real warrior, is always humble, as is the child. That's their true condition: humility.

These two basic caretaker personalities can be used when you deal with your being. You can use them with your internal emotions. If doubt or fear or anger enters into you, be like the child. Be too innocent and pure to even notice, or be like the warrior, fight against them or simply shove them away. The child focuses on beauty, or you could say the child sees beauty in all things. The warrior knows what's what. The warrior knows that there's both good and bad, but the child may not know that there's good and bad because perhaps there isn't for the child.

The warrior applauds good and fights against bad, against evil. The child walks through this world the innocent, seeing light and joy in everything. The warrior is always looking over his shoulder to see if there's someone behind him. He's always considering who may be around the next block. The warrior doesn't think negatively; the warrior thinks of light. The warrior is always looking for someone to be of service to, someone to help. The warrior has courage. The child has flexibility.

Use these two caretaker personalities in the first years of your meditative practice. Adopt them. Use them as images for what you should be. Modify them as you will. You'll find that they'll help you terrifically in your spiritual growth and development. Throw away the personality form that you have now. Stop trying to think of yourself as being a certain kind of person. You change constantly. The only reason you fixate is because your mind tells you that you're a certain kind of person. The reason the child grows more quickly than you do is that the child isn't fixated. She doesn't think, "I am this, I am not this, I like chocolate, I don't like vanilla." The child is too busy trying everything.

As you advance further in your self-discovery you will find that there are other caretaker personalities you can adopt. These are perhaps a little more subtle and I don't really recommend that you emulate them until many, many, many, many years of meditation have passed, when you're truly grounded in the spirit of existence, when you live in a meditative consciousness all the time, when you've eliminated all hate and aggression and all fear and all selfishness from yourself. When these things have all gone away, when you live only for the welfare of others - not just as an idea, but you're of service to others 24 hours a day - when you've swept the island of your being completely, then there are some other forms you can use.

One is the witness. Feel that you are a witness to eternity. You can't do anything, you can't act, all you can do is observe and witness. You're like a piece of paper on which someone writes down the history of the world. Feel, in other words, in this caretaker personality, that you are not active, that you are very, very passive. As you watch your life go by you, as you watch people, places and things, don't feel that you can act. Oh, you'll observe yourself acting, but realize that the infinite is acting through you, that you're only an instrument of eternity. Simply witness all that you see. Don't try to form or shape anything. Just let the river of life flow through you. Be a witness to eternality and immortality. Don't have a sense of self as actor, as doer; feel rather that God is the doer, that God does everything in you and through you. At best all you can do is witness and observe the play of reality, the play of life as it moves through your being.

Another advanced caretaker personality that you can use is the seer, the visionary. Feel that you are a visionary, that your main purpose in life is just to see. Constantly look more deeply into all things. Never let your vision rest. Constantly look through eternity, always trying to see that which is at the end of eternity. Be concerned with conditions, the nature of change, why change occurs. Look at the causative conditions of all things. Feel that you are a seer, in other words. You are vision and that's your sole purpose in life and in existence.

Another caretaker personality is the dream. Feel that you are a dream, that you don't really exist at all. As you walk through life, everyone and everything you see is part of that dream. Enjoy the dream and remember that what you really are is not simply the dream, but the dreamer. Somewhere you are asleep dreaming yourself into this dream. Remember that you are at once that which is in the dream, and at the same time you are the dreamer. If you can wake up within your dream, which you should try to do with this caretaker personality, then you can make the dream into whatever you like. If suddenly you realize, in other words, during a dream, while you're in the dream, while you're one of the beings that's in the dream, that it is a dream, then you should be able to manipulate that dream. You should be able to say, "Well, here I am in this dream. And since all things are possible in the dream, I can create whatever I like."

Another caretaker personality is the sage. You should only employ this personality after you've been going into samadhi for some time. Feel that you are an embodiment of wisdom and humility. There is nothing that you want for yourself. The sage seeks only to serve others. If there is no one to serve, then be absorbed in meditation or in preparing your being to be of more service to others. Feel that you are wisdom and light.

Another caretaker personality that you can utilize is the image of sacrifice. Feel that you are a living sacrifice, that is to say, you are only in this world to give to others beyond exhaustion, that your very purpose is to ferment life, to give life, and that your own personal health, safety and welfare is of little or no importance. You'll maintain yourself just enough to keep yourself going so you can be supportive. In other words, your life is the life of constant self-sacrifice.

There are many, many more advanced caretaker personalities. When the time comes they'll come to you. Try to be conscious, though, of your being. Realize that you have the power, you might say, to be whatever you'd like to be, but that you need to fashion yourself in a certain image of perfection. There are many images of perfection and you need to catch on to one. They're elusive at first, like the fish swimming through the water - you can reach to grab it and it's gone. Realize that you are not the body or the mind, that your real essence is that immutable light which is beyond change, yet you have a surface being that's in a constant state of revolution.

Don't feel that you have to be stuck with the personality you've got now because as you meditate you'll watch it dissolve and go away. But you do need a personal form to deal with the world. I suggest that you adopt, on an alternating basis, the caretaker personality of the child and the warrior and then, after many, many years of meditation, that you try some of the other more advanced caretaker personality forms.

Whenever you have the opportunity, however, push all the forms away and be the formless. When you have the chance, let all those different selves wash away, whether it's the caretaker personality of the teacher or the student, the warrior, the child, the sage, self-sacrifice, the witness, whatever it may be. There are many, many of them. Let them all fall away and just be that eternal essence that you are. Sit in meditation and be absorbed. Be absorbed beyond time, place or condition. Let the radiant light of existence be you. Be absorbed in eternity, beyond time, place, suffering. Be absorbed in life. And then use the caretaker personalities as an artist uses colors to paint beautiful pictures.

Paint the beautiful picture of your life. In the beginning, your paintings may not look too good - they don't when you're learning, you know. But as time goes on you'll become a master artist, a Rembrandt, a van Gogh, a Matisse, and you'll make perfect paintings. Each one different, each one unique, each one a reflection of God, which is all that we really are anyway. We're just a passing image, a reflection, not even a substance.