Personal Essence

The Personal Essence, in contrast, is a sense of being a person independent of ego structures. It is the awareness of Presence qualified by personhood. This sense of personhood is independent of one's personal history; it is a direct recognition of a pure form of Being. This form of Being feels personal, and gives the self the capacity for immediate personal contact. (The Point of Existence, pg 363)

The Personal Essence has four primary characteristics: autonomy, beingness, personalness and contact. Investigating these characteristics will allow us to contrast the Personal Essence with the personality of the ego and also with the impersonal Essence or Being. (The Pearl Beyond Price, pg 36)

Who we truly are, our personal beingness is born in a bed of tenderness, kindness, and value. When the true Personal Essence is born, it is born in a golden cradle covered with a sheet of green. (Diamond Heart Book 2, pg 209)

Personal Essence and autonomy

The Personal Essence is the personal experience of Being, and is therefore the true individual autonomy, undetermined by anything except one's true and essential nature. (The Pearl Beyond Price, pg 58)

Personal Essence and Being

When one is the Personal Essence then one is a person supported by, and is an expression and extension of, Pure Being. When one is Pure Being then only nondifferentiated Pure Being is. In the world of differentiation Being exists as the essential person. There is no human life, nor any life at all, when there is no differentiation. As Being, one is beyond life and death, form and formlessness. (The Pearl Beyond Price, pg 450)

Personal Essence and contact

The personal element is most palpably discerned in human contact. The ability to make contact with another person is the hallmark of the Personal Essence. Only the Personal Essence has the capacity to make such contact; in fact it is the capacity for personal contact. Neither the ego with its intrapsychic structures, nor the nonconceptual state of Being with its impersonality, has this capacity, a distinguishing characteristic of being human. (The Pearl Beyond Price, pg 81)

Personal Essence and Essential Self

The development of the Personal Essence can be considered an outgrowth, a development, from the Essential Self. It is as if the Essential Self becomes filled out through the metabolism of personal experience. The understanding of the relationship between the Personal Essence and Essential Self is a certain realization in the process of inner realization, which occurs in its deepest stages. The relationship is seen as that of love and value, as the true and essential object relation. The Personal Essence is the true person, and the Essential Self is his true source. One experiences oneself as an alive and sensuous fullness, as the expression of the love, joy, pleasure, appreciation and light of the Self. One is Being but fully grounded in the world. (The Pearl Beyond Price, pg 285)

So the Personal Essence is connected with your unique function, your unique work in this life. To actualize your particular unique work in this life means to be your Personal Essence. It is the Essence of all that you have developed and integrated in your soul as you live a real life. Everyone is born with the true self, with the point. Although we feel that the point is unique in each of us, the quality of the point is universal. Then how do people become so different in their personal lives? This is due to the particular development of their Personal Essence. Your unique contribution, your unique personal actualization of yourself, your unique understanding, your unique work, and your unique style of life all have to do with the Personal Essence. The Personal Essence is the person, actualized in his or her life, while the essential self -- the point -- is beyond this life and, in a sense does not need a body. It is always the same; it never changes. (Diamond Heart Book 3, pg 66)

Brilliancy and the personal essence

By contrast, the Personal Essence is the prototype for integration. It provides the soul with the capacity to integrate into a unified whole various elements of its reality. It brings the capacity for integration to whatever sphere of functioning we are considering—physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, and so on. This is because the Personal Essence is the integration of all essential aspects. Similarly, Brilliancy gives the capacity for synthesis because it is the synthesis of all essential aspects. It is the underlying unity. Brilliancy is in some sense the source of all aspects and qualities. It is the presence of the aspects before differentiation. Its synthesis is primal and not created, spontaneously existing as the complete synthesis and unity of all aspects and qualities of Being. It is similar to white light, in the sense that all the aspects are like the differentiated colors that we see when we pass white light through a prism. (Essence of Intelligence, pg 43)