People talk about personality as though it were a substance — something you have a certain amount of, or a shape you were born with. Ask what it is actually made from and the answers get vague fast.
This material gives an answer with parts in it, and the parts are three things you already know you have: a body, a way of thinking, and a set of feelings. Those three are said to change each other continuously, and what they add up to is the thing you call yourself. So the question is worth asking as a question about components. What is a personality made of?
The Tree gets divided into three groups of three, one per self. The upper triad is Keter, Chochmah and Binah, and it belongs to the Neshamah. The middle is Chesed, Gevurah and Tiferet, relating to the Ru'ach. The lower is Netzach, Hod and Yesod, the focus of the Nefesh.1
That leaves one sphere over, and its position is unusual. Malchut, the concluding sphere, is on its own, balanced within itself — because it comprises the four elements of Air, Fire, Water and Earth in one.1
And what it refers to is the plainest thing on the Tree. Malchut is the Guf, the physical body.1 Your body is the only item in the whole diagram that is not part of a triad, and it is balanced because it already contains all four elements.
The three spheres of the lowest triad are then given ordinary meanings. Yesod, Foundation, represents the sexual organ, or procreation, and is traditionally associated with the ego.1
Hod, Glory, represents the mind, or thinking. And Netzach, Victory, represents emotions, or feelings.1 Three plain nouns for three spheres that usually get a paragraph of correspondences each.
So the bottom of the Tree is a person's ordinary equipment, with nothing mystical about it. What you think, what you feel, and the self that wants to continue itself. Plus the body, standing beside them and belonging to no group.
A distinction gets inserted here that is easy to walk past. Reasoning is considered to be on a higher level than thinking, and the two are not the same activity.2
The difference is described by what happens in each. In the higher mode those amazing AHA's happen — the moments of true realisation, which are somewhat like lights turning on in one's head.2
And the contrast is put in terms of frequency. Thinking does not necessarily turn on the light, but in the higher reasoning mode lights turn on all the time.2 Which places most of what anybody does at a desk in the lower triad, with the animal self, rather than in the reasoning one.
The four lower spheres are then said to stand in a potent three-dimensional interrelationship, and the traffic is spelled out in every direction.2
Each influences the other two. Malchut influences Hod and Netzach. Hod equally influences Malchut and Netzach, and Netzach in turn impacts on Malchut and Hod.2 Six arrows, and no hierarchy anywhere in them. Nothing is upstream of anything.
Then the same thing in plain words, and the insistence on it is emphatic. This is literally true. What happens to you physically influences both the way you think and the way you feel. The way you think will influence your body and your feelings. And your emotions affect the way you think and the way your body reacts.2
The scope claimed is wider than illness. This does not only define conditions like psychosomatic illness. It determines our normal, daily behaviour in this world.2 The triangle is not a pathology model. It is how an ordinary Tuesday works.
Then the part the section is built for. All three of those spheres contribute to Yesod in the centre — the ego or personality, the focus of the Nefesh.3
Which gives the definition outright. Your personality is made up of what you think and feel, and what has an impact on your body in the physical environment.3 Three inputs, and nothing else in the list.
And the summary is exact about where it happens. The combination of all these aspects, as focussed in your inner being, comprises your reality and personality.3 So it is not a thing you have. It is a place where three streams meet, continuously, and it is being remade while you read this.
The middle triad is then given the same treatment, and it is where the practical payoff sits. The Conscious Self comprises Tiferet, Beauty or perfect balance; Gevurah, Severity or strict judgment, which might be called the Principle of Taking; and Chesed, Mercy or loving-kindness, the Principle of Giving.4
The picture given for it is a set of scales, and it is the clearest image anywhere in this section. The arms may move up and down while the centre always remains still and unaffected.4 Gevurah and Chesed are the two arms. Tiferet is the beam they hang from.
Then what that gets you, with the Hebrew term glossed as it arrives. If you are Tiferet — a balanced Real Self — you are unaffected by the movements of the two arms, and you are said to be in Hishtavut, which means evenness of mind: no longer affected by insult or flattery.4
And only from there can the giving and taking be real. Only at this level can you truly give and take in life, without expecting recompense in your mercy or revenge in your severity — behaving according to the requirements of life without expecting gratitude.4 That expectation belongs to the ego, the Lower Self, and has no value when it comes to conscious service.
You want to change something about yourself, and this account tells you where to push. The answer is: not where it hurts.
Start by picking the leg that will actually move. Body, thinking and feeling all change each other, and they are not equally available. You cannot decide to stop feeling something. You can go for a walk, change what is in front of your eyes, or eat properly — and the triangle says that reaches the other two.
Then stop working on the leg producing the symptom. If the trouble shows up as feeling, working on the feeling is the hardest available route. The reciprocal model means any leg gets you there, which is a licence to approach from wherever there is purchase rather than from where the problem is.
Then use the scales when you are being moved by other people. Insult and flattery are the two arms going up and down, and the instruction is not to stop them moving. It is to be the beam — the thing they are hanging from, which does not travel when they do.
And check your giving against the recompense test, which is unusually blunt. If you are expecting gratitude, that expectation is placed squarely in the ego and is said to have no value in conscious service. Not wrong, and not sinful. Simply not the thing being described, and easy to check by noticing what you feel when the thanks does not arrive.
The triangle is the strongest content here and it needs no doctrine to stand up. Body, thought and feeling really do influence one another in every direction, and anybody can verify a leg of it this week by sleeping badly and observing what happens to their judgment.
What the Tree adds is placement rather than proof. Assigning thinking to Hod, feeling to Netzach and the body to Malchut makes none of it truer. It makes it locatable in a system with other things in it, which is what a diagram is for.
Tension left open. Reasoning is ranked above thinking, and thinking is placed in the lower triad with the animal self. If the AHA belongs to the middle triad, then most intellectual work is being classed as instinctual activity. Nothing here says where the boundary falls, or how a person would know which mode they were in.
🚩 PRACTITIONER SOURCE. 🚩 The reciprocal-influence claim is asserted with this is literally true and no evidence offered. 🚩 Yesod as the sexual organ, or procreation traditionally associated with the ego is stated without a source. 🚩 The diagrams are laid out as figures in the original, which the scan has partly lost.
Two accounts of the ego sit close together here. Yesod is the ego, and it is the result of the three streams meeting — what you think, what you feel, and what happens to your body, combined and focussed. That makes personality an outcome, and a continuously produced one.
Elsewhere in the same passage the ego is the thing that expects gratitude, holds out for recompense, and has to be got past before service means anything. That is the ego as an obstacle with preferences of its own.
Both can be true and the combination is worth stating, because it changes what the work is. If personality is continuously assembled from three inputs, then the ego is not a fixed opponent to be defeated — it is a running total. Which means the way past it is not confrontation but changing what is feeding it, and nothing in this section says that outright even though its own diagram implies it.
Body-Mind Coupling — psychology.
Somebody successfully suppresses a thought. The feared scenario, the shameful memory, the unwanted desire — the cognitive content is gone. And the body is still activated. Heart rate up, breath shallow, muscles tense, and a vague dread with no target attached to it.
That is Wegner's finding, and it is the triangle being interfered with. Pushing on Hod to get rid of something in Netzach and Malchut does not remove the state. It splits it. The person keeps the arousal and loses the thought that would explain it, so they feel afraid without knowing what of, and ashamed without being able to say about what.
Which gives the rule the reciprocal model badly needs, because a diagram of mutual influence reads like a control panel and invites exactly this. You can change a state through any leg of the triangle. You cannot delete a state through any leg of it. The body is the leg that will not be fooled. That is why this tradition puts the anxiety in the solar plexus, and why a suppressed feeling comes back as a bodily dread with the label torn off.
So the practical form is narrow and worth keeping. Approach from whichever leg will move — usually the body, since it is the one you can act on directly. Never approach by pressing down on the leg where the symptom is showing. The triangle is a route in, and it is not a way out.
Sharpest implication. Malchut is the only sphere on the Tree standing outside a triad, balanced in itself because it already contains all four elements — and Malchut is your body. So in this system the physical body is the one part of a person that is not a component of anything else, and needs nothing added to it to be complete.
Generative questions.