Opening the Door of Spontaneity through One's Awareness and Breath

An Edited Excerpt from Teachings Given by Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche in Italy, Spring 2024

In order to have spontaneous creativity manifest, the basic understanding is to first bring more awareness into your life. Spontaneous creativity, spontaneous joy, spontaneous manifestation or spontaneous awareness do not happen unless you recognize your multiple personalities and go beyond them to reconnect to yourself. However, please understand that I'm not using this term multiple personality in the clinical way that western psychology uses it. I'm using the term to point to the assortment of pain identities that manifest in one's daily actions of body, speech and mind. It is important to become aware of these different personalities.

However, here at the outset, let's narrow our focus to two major core personalities that I believe are important to understand: the self-constructive personality and the self-destructive personality. These qualities can manifest in relation to one's physical body or one's behaviors, resulting in either healthy behaviors, or unhealthy, addictive behaviors. We all have these two different core personalities, and it's important for you to become aware of your own particular ones to see them clearly.

Again, in order to experience spontaneous creativity, spontaneous manifestation, spontaneous remission, spontaneous life, spontaneous joy, spontaneous laughter, spontaneous humor and all of the effortless spontaneous qualities that can appear in your life - it's important to first recognize your different personalities. You must take a close look at your own life and recognize your own destructive and constructive personalities. You can begin by looking at all of the things that you wish you were doing, and then look at all of the things that you actually do, paying particular attention to those behaviors that run counter to what would truly be beneficial and constructive in your life. Whatever they are, it's okay, just simply be aware of them. This knowing itself is crucial, because the knowing - the awareness - has the power to change things.

You can think of it this way: there is someone in you who knows how to be: I should do this and not do that; I should say this and not say that; I should think this and not think that; I should feel this and not feel that. The one in you that understands that is more intellectual, and when you are calm and in a good mood, then you have a lot of clarity about those things. However, when you are in the midst of living your life, you may do the complete opposite:I'm doing what I'm not supposed to do; I'm saying what I'm not supposed to say, and I'm thinking or feeling what I'm not supposed to think or feel. And that's because you have specific pain identities that each manifest their own distinct actions of body, speech, and mind. And as a result, you end up being ruled by those pain identities, rather than being guided by the more balanced view. And the resulting actions can be very destructive.

So let's look at these two core personalities, and then also look at a third core personality, which is the one that observes both of them. There are also many other sub-personalities, which you can bring into focus later, like the lazy personality. When you become aware of all of these different parts, then what arises is a more dynamic communication between them with more exchanges of energy.

My main point is to really understand these different personalities, and the more that you are aware, then the more flexibility you have. By seeing directly that you have many personalities, you can come to realize that none of them is exclusively you.

Let's say that up until now you've identified often with a personality that's prone to angry outbursts. But with a growing recognition of your having more identities than just this angry one, then you will come to have less and less identity with the anger. And becoming aware of more of your personalities will reduce your identifying with any one of them in particular. And it's very nice when you recognize that. Then, when you again encounter the situations that would have caused you to get angry in the past, you will say, Oh this text message from that person would have driven me crazy, but now I feel quite okay. Oh wow! And you recognize, I feel a lot of space here. Even in situations where I would have anticipated getting angry, I am actually feeling quite cool and calm. I don't have to act now - I don't have to text back right away. I can give a space to all three doors: body, speech and mind.

So the expansion is there more. And that's a very important part. For example, when you identify with anger, then it's very difficult to love; or when you identify with weakness, then it's very difficult to be strong; or when you identify with conflict, then it's very difficult to find solutions. However, when you recognize that you have many personalities, then it immediately opens the door. But you need to somehow come to know that none of this is me.

I often speak about identity. Most of you have a drivers license, it's your identity for driving. You may also have a federal identity, a government ID, and maybe a military ID. You can also have an insurance identity, or a student identity. You have so many identities, and most of them are roll-based. But are you really any of those?

There is also a sense of identity related to your age, and also one related to your feelings. For instance, you can say, I'm a happy person, or I'm a sad person. You are identifying with how you are feeling. You can also identify yourself with how you think, and many of you identify yourself with what you do. And worse, you may identify with what you have. You can find excuses to identify with a thousand different things. But none of them is you! In dharma, the only journey is to understand that. None of this is me. That understanding leads to the biggest achievement - liberation.

So in this process of your recognizing these different personalities, you will also see that, internally, someone is knowing that you are many different personalities. That knower is your refuge, your protection. In the dzogchen teachings, we talk of self realization. Self realization means knowing the source from where all of these different personalities are manifesting, a source that is not any of these personalities. Does that make sense?

So, we arrive at the place of reflecting in our life, and trying to see these core kinds of personalities in us: the self-destructive ones versus the more constructive ideas, and the third that is seeing both. Just be aware of those three.

There is a form of deep breathing, a technique called the 4 and 8 breath, where you breathe in through the nose for 4 seconds, and then breathe out for 8 seconds. Scientific research has shown that daily deep breathing exercises like this are a promising intervention that can lower resting blood pressure and reduce stress and anxiety in adults.

What I will add to this practice of deep breathing is to imagine and try to see your destructive personality. See it and really know about it, how exactly this destructive personality shows up day or night to try and pull you into familiar negative habits of body speech and mind. See it clearly. It's like a spirit. So now when you are doing this breathing practice you say, May this personality leave my system. And you breathe it out like this [Rinpoche breathes in deeply through the nose for about a count of four, and then exhales fully through the nose for about a count of eight.] So in this way you are not only breathing out bodily toxins and carbon dioxide, but you are also breathing out the destructive personality, your destructive pain identity. Is that clear?

Lately, I have been referring to the work of a contemporary tech guy in the U.S. named Brian Johnson. Some of you might have seen him and some of you may like him and some of you may not. Either way is fine by me. He is not a dharma practitioner, for sure. However, in his personal quest for optimal health and longevity, he has reached his goals by paying close attention to his destructive identities. For example, he says that he fired his 7 p.m. personality, the closet junk-food-addict personality, that always shows up in the evenings to tempt him to secretly cheat on his healthful diet. If you don't like his use of the word fire for what he does to his destructive personalities, don't worry about it. You can say transcend them, or liberate them, or purify them - it's referring to the same thing, the words are not important. THe word that you use for this can be gentle, soft and sweet, or it can be harsh and scary. In the end, though, as long as you're beyond that personality, then it doesn't matter.

In any case, let's experiment now and see directly how, by our being beyond our destructive identities, a natural expansiveness and creativity can arise in us. You can then turn that creativityinto anything. If you're an artist, then you manifest that art from your joy, from that connectedness, from that spontaneity, from that effortlessness, from that liveliness. Or, if you're a parent, then you do the parenting from that place. Or if you're in a relationship, then your relationship comes from that place.

And it all starts with bringing awareness to, and gaining a clear recognition of, your own destructive personalities, and then with the 4 and 8 breath, breathing them out with each 8 second, slow, deep outbreath. That's what we'll do as a larger part of our practice today; simply being aware of those destructive personalities, seeing those, and breathing them out and liberating them. We'll do that now. Then we'll talk more, okay?