I have been re-reading the Bhagavad Gita Revealed by Sat Shree. The dialogue is set around convincing Arjuna to engage in a war with his cousins, an allegory for our internal struggle. The premise is that we are looking to achieve a dis-attached state where we see everything as one – as unity under the one body: dehin. This way all actions can only be ‘right’ actions.
In my re-reading one of the things that jumped out at me was that our outer personality is not an untruth, it is merely a partial truth, a part of the expression of the one truth. As our personality (or identity) becomes our behaviours, our personality becomes our ‘who’ and our behaviours become the ‘how’ we express ‘what’ we truly are. We are not therefore working to leave our personalities or identities behind, but to become dis-identified with them, so they can become aligned to our truth, so we ‘move into a living relationship with it’.
This has practical implications in a coaching context.
If we consider this through the lens of DISC, a personality behavioural model, derived from the work of Dr. William Marston, we can gain a glimpse of how this impacts our life and our connection to spiritual coaching and our spiritual journey.
Those who identify as ‘D’ types, Dominant and goal orientated, can be outgoing and task orientated. They tend to be direct, challenging, and can at times be seen as highly demanding. These are often seen as great traits in a business context, but can become a hinderance in a spiritual context where often the need is for devotion and surrender. Even in a coaching context there can be difficulties where this type can achieve all their goals at the expense of understanding the underlying purpose, which can often entail releasing our goals.
Those who identify as ‘I’ types, Influencers and fun lovers, can be outgoing and people orientated. They tend to be open, motivators and have good social skills. Great for interpersonal relationships, and bringing together the tantra belief in pleasure, aligned to devotion and submission. But ‘I’ types can also lack focus becoming engaged to too many things all at once, leading to distractions on the spiritual path. And indeed, in a coaching context pinning ‘I’s’ down, becoming better listeners (to their inner self) can be a challenge.
Those who identify as ‘S’ types, Steadiness, can be a bit more reserved, but still very people orientated, although less socially dominant. They tend to be great supporters, who seek harmony and acceptance. They like things to be leisurely paced and comfortable. This aligns well with tantra’s teachings in striving for comfort in our own bodies and being - if we can break through our fears and the constraints of society. This can cause issues on a spiritual journey as often there are challenges that take us out of our comfort zone. This is often reflected in a coaching context where challenges can at times be resisted and ‘S’ types can at times appear over-sensitive.
Those who identify as ‘C’ types, Conscientious, can be introspective, a bit more analytical, and task orientated. They tend to be into accuracy, logic, and a systematic approach, tending not to like displays of emotions and can come across to others as cold at times. This can cause issues on a spiritual journey where the ‘esoteric’ and the logical don’t often align. And yet for those with a more analytical streak seeing tantra as an ancient science of various practices allows for a systematic approach that can expand mindfulness. In a coaching context we can see this played out in the minutia of detail while loosing touch with the universal, bigger picture.
Irrespective of personality type, it is through connecting with our truth that we manifest dharma (doing what we should be doing, living the life we should be living). A key question often posed in coaching is, how do I know what I should be doing, how I should be living? Sat Shree tells us that there will be a sense of purpose, more clarity and focus, more happiness, and more presence in our life. There will be less fear, fatigue, depression, and confusion. These align well to the needs of our four DISC personality types. This way we know there is more truth.
But what is this truth?
In the Yoga of Intellect, we are told. It is the soul. The purpose, or the goal of our life, is to move into relationship with the soul. The change in wording from ‘our’ to ‘the’ seems important here. We are starting to dis-identify from ‘our’ and more and more align with the one, with a greater truth. This is something I can relate to. So much of my life seemed to have lacked clarity, where the only purpose was to stay safe, driven by an underlying historically induced fear. Or alternatively to gain as much surface level pleasure as possible, grabbing it while I could. Again driven by the fear that it will soon enough disappear.
This is not an uncommon approach in the gay world where much of our lives has been driven by a lack. A lack of an inherent feeling of safety, or worth, or desire that is free from judgement and guilt. These are feelings that can be traumatising, debilitating, leading to various forms of compulsion
But this shift to aligning to a greater truth is something the ego will fight, for the ego (certainly mine) feels in control of what it knows. The ego, Sat Shree says, might try and re-appropriate our spiritual journey for its own ends, rationalising and justifying paths that divert us into partial truths. This can result in us becoming ‘unwittingly attached to the temporary shallow experiences, fleeting bliss, and confidence that comes from a little attainment’. This is a frightening phrase, as it seems to be speaking directly to me.
Bringing it all together
It is easy to think our personalities are who we are, or to sink into the immediate pleasure that can be gained through many of our tantra experiences. But these invariably come with expectations, preferences, outcomes, releases. And when things don’t turn out as planned, there are stories. These are just our delusions, dramas, and distractions, and generally become the starting point for coaching (whether that be life coaching, intimacy coaching or spiritual coaching).
When we recognise these stories we can start to open up the possibility for the cultivation of a more impersonal self, an ascesis, that is, the spiritual exercise of self-fashioning, where we lose our belief in our identity, our ego, our self-deceptions; to work through our distorted constituted subject (self).
Every journey starts with the first step.
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Email me direct if you are interested in mindful, trauma-informed, intimacy or spiritual coaching, or if you would like to join my new Pink Tantra Towards Awakening group for chat rooms, video channels and in-person workshops around tantra and intimacy practices robert.pinktantra@gmail.com
See my personal development / personality profiling book DISCover the Power of You published through John Hunt Publishing Ltd, 2017. ISBN: 978-1-78535-591-2
And for a bit of light reading, see my first historical fictional novel Fermented Spirits published through Austin Macauley Publishers, 2022. ISBN-13: 978-1398437159