Your Impact Part 3
April 17, 2025
Thomas Jefferson’s bedroom at Monticello, near Charlottesville, Va
Your Impact Part 3
Will any of us be remembered in the long run? We may be, by our friends and family. And if we do something spectacular, our name will be remembered longer. But for most of us, our impact on the world may not be remembered after a couple of generations unless we impact the world in some large way. We could also be remembered by transmitting our qualities to the people we touched while we were here. Therefore, our values and deeds may be carried on, but no one would know us as a living breathing person.
Right now, we carry the impact our that parents and others made on us, and many of those impacts have shaped the reason we are today. Our parents’ parents were impacted by their parents, and the pattern has continued for thousands of years and trickled down to us. So, we are a living product of all our ancestors who put their love, blood, laughter, tears, celebrations, sweat, and toil into their family. Our lives are an accumulation of hundreds of generations of dear souls who whose lives impacted the next generation.
Our ancestry can be documented for only so many generations. But whether there are names or not in our family chart, in the long run, nobody’s personal essence will be known except by their contemporaries who experienced it. For example, we do not know our great, great, great grandparents, without whom we would not be here. We may have a chair of theirs, a portrait, a necklace, or even a lock of their hair, but we do not know who they were as people. We did not experience their essence. But they had beautiful personal attributes and expressions that made them very special to those in their lives. But now they are not directly experienced by anyone. Just think of it — we owe our very existence, and many of our attributes to people we do not know the foggiest about!
Even if a building is named for us or a portrait of ourselves hangs in a home, the city hall or state house, the real person for whom the building is called, or the picture was painted will not be known personally after the “eyewitnesses” pass on. For example, I may think I know the man, Thomas Jefferson. I have read many of his writings and biographical accounts of him. I’ve been in his house numerous times and admired his furniture, art, and even his bedroom and kitchen. But I do not know the man in a personal sense. I never experienced his soul or how it shined through his personality to the world around him.
Many historical biographies and autobiographies give us great insight into the heart and soul of the person. Nevertheless, no written account, physical objects, photos, or videos can provide us with the experience of that person’s presence. Authentic presence is beyond our physical presence. In Consciousness and Enneagram language, presence is the emanation of our soul qualities, essential aspects, and Holy Ideas. Presence is a fundamental soul quality that enables us to know each other on the deepest and most personal levels. Presence is not just an energy that someone emanates — it is an energy our presence interacts with. Our soul and the soul of the other merge in a type of love when we are present with each other.
Our personalities are also involved in this merging process. A.H. Almaas, who wrote Keys to the Enneagram, calls this merging process The Essential Aspect of Merging Gold, which refers to the alchemical union between two people. In this case, there is a union of soul and personal ego. Presence, which is non-dual, has the paradoxical attribute of acknowledging the two personal essences within the union.
Spiritual practice: What is it like to know that your personality will not be experienced or known on earth after you transition away from this earth? How do you experience the subject of your mortality?
Self-inquiry: For what things would you like to be remembered?
Dear God,
I pray for soul presence, for that is eternal. I am grateful that presence is the window into the lives of those with whom I am present. Amen
