Even though the majority of people express themselves through their personalities with some degree of soul influence, it can be useful to contrast these two aspects of our identity.
In this way we learn to discriminate between them, know when our expression is dominated by one or the other, and are then more able to choose which influence to increase and which to decrease.
Even though you might normally be a beautiful blend of these two levels of identity, when you are most stressed, in fear or not centered you will be clearly dominated by ego or personality.
Everyone has the potential to be dominated by ego at any time.
Our state at any given time is always some degree of both personality and soul.
Self-awareness enables us to be aware of this and then to create greater integration between the two.
That is the path of evolution of consciousness.
Whenever anything happens that we do not like, are challenged, or that is unexpected, we always have two responses within ourselves.
These responses begin as two perspectives.
a.
) The one is a subconscious perspective that arises from our conditioned ego.
This is typically a perspective that says something is wrong or bad.
Fear is inevitably aroused.
What follows might be defensiveness, criticism, aggression, anger, depression or a number of other reactions that reveal a lack of acceptance and a desire to reject or deny.
b.
) The other response arises from soul within and is usually more subtle, and therefore we are often not even aware that it exists.
But it is always there.
It tells us things like: this is part of a bigger plan, this is a challenge that you can handle and learn from, this is an opportunity to change your life for the better, this is a result of past karma that you can now heal, this is a step to expand your consciousness to become more understanding, loving or empowering.
Since the subconscious response is the one that initially usually prevails, you can always stop it by focusing on the other possible responses.
The sooner you do that, the easier it will likely be.
The subconscious response typically prompts us to take some kind of action, which might be a useful thing to do.
The other response requires us to reflect and try to gain some understanding.
And it usually necessitates a letting go and allowing the higher intelligence or plan of our life to unfold.
The ideal is to blend the two so that appropriate action follows the deeper understanding of what it is all about.