I’ve taken some time to think about this from different perspectives. It’s true, in a way. A persona is a kind of appearance. And it emerges out of our collective interaction and negotiation. It is a practical social tool. But it’s also more than that.

The persona is what emerges out of us in response to the extended social being of other humans. It floats atop whatever it is that we are, but because part of what we are is essentially hyper-social, it has its own kind of reality. It’s an honest expression of our collective being and collective interaction, even if it’s false to our individual being, and even if our collective being is pathological. It’s a metaphenomena.

You have influence over your persona. It’s something you need to become consciously acquainted with, because it’s a kind of another you. Not a false you, but a you that emerges out of a collective interaction and negotiation. And you need to know it and see it and actively manage that process. You need to cultivate that relationship in a way that benefits both aspects of the complete, multidimensional you.

I think trinitarian metaphors are actually helpful for understanding these levels of being. Christians posit the strange idea of a God that exists at multiple levels of extension. As a sort of abstract, unfathomable entity, as an embodied particular entity in history, and as the presence of that entity as a motivating spirit within us. God out there, God here, God in us. This conception isn’t entirely unlike the idea of the self, persona, etc.

If I had to pick any analogue, and I’m not sure yet if there is one, the persona is like the Spirit. It’s something shared, but expressed individually. It’s a collective spirit, the action of the unifying transcendent in us that brings us together into some larger spiritual or social body. Not unlike the persona. We are moved by the spirit. It’s isn’t exactly us; it inhabits us, or perhaps we inhabit it. It isn’t us in a purely individual, monistic sense. It’s us in communion with the spirit of the transpersonal reality.

The tricky thing about the persona is that it’s hard to tell what is us and what is the spirit. And we can fool and confuse ourselves and betray one or the other, or both. And unfortunately, the transpersonal spirit to whom we are joined may not quite reflect the perfect image of God. In which case the spirit we’re inhabited by may be a false one. It might even be a devil, in which case we have been possessed. In general, being inhabited by any spirit other than the spirit of the highest totality of goodness, truth, and beauty has chance of becoming a kind of possession. Because anything less than that will make something less of us than what we are or could be, reducing us to a mere puppet.

That, I think, is why it is so important to know the persona, and also to know the self, or God. That way you can make sure you’re appropriately connecting the two in the most effective way possible. You cannot be inhabited by the holy spirit if you do not seek to understand God, and you can’t express God if you won’t be inhabited by the holy spirit.

We stand in the position of the son, who is like the elder brother, the example, the template, as a personal, tangible, embodied being of a particular time. He is the perfect example because his persona is one with the self; there is no distance between him and the spirit and God. All the planes are aligned.

In a way, until we can achieve the same alignment, and until the spirit to which we connect is the proper spirit, the spirit of the body of the divine, our persona will always be a false appearance. We will always be inhabited and inhabiting and expressing imperfectly, falsely, and we will always be inhabited and inhabiting and expressing something imperfect and false. But that doesn’t mean that it is corrupt so much as corruptible, or corrupted. And our life’s labor is to make it less corrupt.