The Power Path System to Understanding People

The definitive guide to understanding the essence of personality and the personality of essence, the essential map and manual to why humans behave the way they do and how they do it.

There are a great variety of maps to the terrain of human personality types, from truly excellent ones to poorly crafted ones designed by people who know little about themselves and others. If you are interested in exploring the landscape of who people are and why they do the things they do, then you will need a top notch, excellent map to keep you from getting lost or confused. Understanding people is always much easier when you have a good tried-and-true map that points out the major landmarks, obstacles, and clear pathways.

Maps label landmarks clearly so that you don’t get lost. Some people object to labels because they believe they are limiting and self-fulfilling and indeed this is often a problem. But a vague map without a legend or clearly labeled landmarks is worse than useless. Although labels can be abused as humans, we cannot do without them when we are attempting to differentiate between a river and a forest or a mountain and a canyon on a map. Similarly, in order to understand people better, we need to differentiate between a pragmatist and an idealist, a cautious person and a passionate one, an intellectual and an emotionally centered person and so on. For example, a cautious person will deliberate long and hard before making a purchase but a passionate person might decide in a matter of seconds to buy an item. An intellectual person needs time to think about the formula that will provide the solution to a problem but an emotionally centered person like Einstein often knows the answer before knowing the problem-solving formula.

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Join Jose Stevens for a free introductory webinar on understanding the PersonEssence Personality System, October 29th, 2024 at 10:00am Mountain Time. The Power Path is thrilled to announce the beginning of a nine-part webinar series exploring the PersonEssence system for understanding people beginning with this free introductory webinar.

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The Limitations of Most Personality Systems

Unfortunately, the world of psychology has provided us with rather primitive maps to the human personality and the result has been massive confusion. Too often, they are oriented toward identifying dysfunctions and abnormalities so that a diagnosis can be made. These maps are not useful for healthy people. Maps developed by business psychologists have improved our understanding of people with management skills and other corporate positions to some degree, but they still suffer from the problem of over-simplicity. To divide everyone between introverts and extroverts just doesn’t tell us enough about the person, nor does dividing the personality into interrogation types and listening types. These simple maps and tests do not do justice to the tremendous varieties of human behavior. People are in reality quite complex and have many layers to their personalities that require a system with more interlocking parts to work with.

Download the Free PersonEssence Introduction E-book

The Personessence™ System to Understanding People has been developed over the last fifty years and has been impacted by numerous fields and traditions. Informing the core of this system is the work of the late Sarah Chambers, a public health administrator, teacher and intuitive who for years researched the findings of George Gurdjieff and Peter Ouspensky. Many of the terms and concepts explored by Gurdjieff and Ouspensky, as delineated by Chambers in the 1970’s, influences much of the basic content of Personessence™. However, Personessence™ takes much of this work to a significantly deeper and more contemporary, applicable level.

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The Importance of a Comprehensive Personality System

Before we can understand the big picture of how we are all one, we need to understand the more local picture of how we are different. Once you understand the grand variety that is within humanity, you can learn to accept all people as having something to contribute, and this makes for a more cooperative world. To judge others for being different is to misuse this system.

The map I am about to present you with here is both simple to learn but complex enough to provide hundreds of thousands of variations. You can understand the basics in a single reading, yet the map is complex enough to keep you interested for many years if you choose to master its subtleties. The Person-Essence System presents the basic model for quick understanding and easy comprehension. To understand the greater scope of the map requires proper training and a course of study. 

Many people using the Power Path Personality System have said unequivocally that there is no other map to the human personality that is so accurate nor so comprehensive in its scope and potential.

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Various Types of Personality Systems

Numerology

This map of personality is based primarily on the number seven, a number easy enough to remember. For many years, phone numbers had seven digits because it was understood that the average person could easily remember up to seven numbers at once. When clear light shines through a prism, the light breaks into seven colors of the color spectrum. All seven are derived from the same source, however, they have different frequencies. In the same way humans are cut from the same cloth yet they have different specialties and various ways of approaching them, making for many choices.

Note that numerology is the study of the sacred meaning of numbers and is a huge area of study. There are many numerological systems, but many are very similar to each other. The ancient Toltecs described the meanings of numbers as related to the formation of the universe, as did the mystical kabbalah, the ancient Greeks and many others. For a more comprehensive explanation of numerology, I refer you to Wikipedia.

Myers Briggs

The Myers Briggs is a personality system that divides people into six main types: intuitive, thinking, feeling, and sensation types along with Extroversion and Introversion. While this system describes people according to specific categories, they do not describe how someone might approach feeling or thinking in terms of attitude, idealism, skepticism, pragmatism, and so on. Likewise, the system makes no mention of a person’s value system and how that might impact what they think about or feel about or how sophisticated their intuition actually is, so in the end it is quite limited.

Astrology Horoscope

Another very popular map is Astrology, which includes various approaches to astrology, such as Chinese astrology, Western astrology, Vedic astrology, and so on. A horoscope is drawn based on the time and place of birth and this is called a birth chart (if a person does not know the date and time of their birth, it cannot be drawn).

The birth chart tells the exact positions of the planets, the sun and the moon, and other heavenly bodies at the time of birth and shows where they are according to the twelve signs of the zodiac. A progressed chart can also be drawn for the present, giving additional current information. Astrology is a system that is complex enough to measure many personality traits and even make predictions but requires an expert in the system to give correct interpretations of the location of planets and other heavenly bodies.  A source of confusion are the different theories about how the birth or natal chart should be drawn, taking into consideration the gradual precession of equinoxes over centuries. According to the different astrological systems, the birth chart can show very different results. I personally have had very different interpretations of my chart over the years although it has been very useful overall. Many people find that having their astrological chart done and having their person-essence chart done as well dovetail very nicely and give them a more accurate understanding of both. One of the main differences is that the Person Essence chart gives the person’s set of values while astrology does not.

The Enneagram

Another increasingly popular personality system is the Enneagram based on the numbers nine and three. This is a system based on ancient esoteric knowledge and it certainly does have validity and complexity. A person may be any of the nine different types that are well defined. In addition, they may have seven traits from the wings on either side. For example, if they are seven then the wings would be six and eight. In my view, while this system is quite good, the problem with it is that it mixes different categories together and assumes that if a person has one trait, they automatically have a whole set of other traits and this is not necessarily so. So for example, while the PE system has separate categories for values and a category for attitudes, the Enneagram mixes these together and this introduces errors here.

In the course of my life, I have been labeled several totally different ways by experts, of the top Enneagram experts, and this caused me some frustration with the system.

There are numerous personality systems used in the business world to determine which people have leadership and management skills, and various other business-oriented traits. While there are too many to describe here, they are limited to professional skills and do not necessarily measure qualities outside of that realm.

Likewise, there are tests that have been designed for dating sites and these are actually rather abysmal because they are based on what some people think are attractive traits in the dating world. Often, they are designed by people who have no expertise in testing or knowledge of human nature. 

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The Value of a Comprehensive Map to Personality

A map that divides people into skin color would be simple indeed, but it would tell us very little about what the person might look like. However, if the map were to tell us in addition eye color, hair texture, length and color, height, weight, body shape and so on, it would be much more valuable and give us a much more comprehensive picture of them. With this in mind, you can now see the variety of variables revealed by the Person-essence map.

The PersonEssence System. Aka: the Michael Teachings

In this system, there are seven primary categories, each with seven choices. They are as follows:

Values: the seven primary ways of perceiving

Roles: the seven primary character types

Goals: the seven primary motivations that lead people to seek certain experiences

Modes: the seven primary methods or styles of approaching a task

Attitudes: the seven primary perspectives

Dragons or Obstacles: the seven primary obstacles or fear patterns

Centers: the seven primary ways of reacting.

In addition to these seven layers, there is one additional dimension that adds depth to our already comprehensive map of personality-the nine needs. This is the only category that has nine instead of seven aspects.

Like the perennial favorite game of clue where you are asked to combine elements in a murder mystery, any one of the seven roles can go with any of the seven attitudes, or seven modes, or seven goals, or seven dragons and so on so the possibilities are practically endless. Yet the different categories are so simple and intuitive that just by reading the different options, you can often see yourself clearly.

A second important number in this system is three. If you take a look at the chart, each “overleaf” or personality trait has a positive pole and a negative pole making three. There are also three narrow-focused overleaves in each category and three wide-focused overleaves. There is one neutral one.

First, take a look at the Person-essence chart to familiarize yourself with how it is laid out and the various traits listed.

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Origins of the System

During the late nineteen sixties and early seventies, the skeleton of the system was accessed by the late Sara Chambers, a public health administrator in Berkeley, California, and a student of the teachings of Jorges Gurdjieff. Through countless sessions over several years, she outlined the entire system in great detail. She called the system The Michael Teachings, and it is still known by that name in certain circles. The name Michael is generic and does not reference any famous person whatsoever. As a student of her work and her friend, I was able to use my knowledge of human personality from western psychological systems to help unpack the information and make it more accessible to the mainstream. I called it The Person-essence System to better reflect the core theme of the teachings, since the name Michael is essentially meaningless to most people. Study of this personality system has continued to be a major aspect of my life work.

During the last sixty-five years or so many people have studied the system, and some have made contributions of their own. Many versions proliferated with slightly different words or general concepts explaining aspects of the system and each has provided many examples of famous people to demonstrate the different types. The results have been both helpful and confusing, as there are numerous conflicts and contradictions in the examples. This state of affairs has come about for several reasons. Some have clearly not understood the system and their websites or writing demonstrate this lack of knowledge. For example, one person has written that the roles change as the person evolves over the course of their lives from one to another. They seemed to suggest that everyone becomes a king-role in the end. This is absolutely contrary to the original understanding of the system, implying that some roles are somehow more evolved than others. All roles are totally equal. Another reason some errors have cropped up is similar to the way the game of telephone can distort the message as the information transfers from person to person. To solve this age-old problem, it is best to go to the original source.

Download the Free PersonEssence Introduction E-book

The Personessence™ System to Understanding People has been developed over the last fifty years and has been impacted by numerous fields and traditions. Informing the core of this system is the work of the late Sarah Chambers, a public health administrator, teacher and intuitive who for years researched the findings of George Gurdjieff and Peter Ouspensky. Many of the terms and concepts explored by Gurdjieff and Ouspensky, as delineated by Chambers in the 1970’s, influences much of the basic content of Personessence™. However, Personessence™ takes much of this work to a significantly deeper and more contemporary, applicable level.

Download Now

Accuracy and Method of Creating a Chart

This section provides a spiritual and metaphysical overview of the entire Personessence™ System. Read this if you want to comprehend the system in its totality, the way it was originally meant to be understood. This information has the potential to positively revolutionize your life as it has mine. I believe it should be made available all over the world to young people who are just beginning the journey of their lives. If I had known what was presented here when I was a child, I would have had a completely different experience of myself than I did growing up with guilt, shame, and confusion. My journey, however, has led me to this fine set of truths and this has made a huge difference for me.

Do not read this section if you are satisfied with the psychological explanation given earlier and/or you have your own religious tradition that you do not question. This Spiritual orientation, while very valuable, is not a requirement or necessary to understand the overall pragmatic personality system. It works as it should no matter what the backstory is.

There is a much more complete manuscript on the spiritual elements of this philosophical teaching that are in development at The Power Path. Please join our email list to recieved updates on this work. Here are some samples from it and some introductory information.

Rules of the Game

Initially, we are created as entities or spiritual families with many fragments, like cells making up the body of each entity. In order to have the greatest experience as humans, we then focus down into fragments that each have an individual identity. Each individual particle or fragment has an essence that is indestructible, infinite, and sourced outside of time. The experience of being human includes the illusion of separateness from the Tao, just for the time being. In other words, we were created with the freedom to forget all about God and Spirit. We enter into the illusion of the denial of Spirit or God.

Because of this, at first, we would think that everything was happening to us as if by accident, or maybe we would think the source was some external God or the force of many gods. was directing our activities. At first, we would not realize we were little creators creating our own lives and experiences. Gradually, through experience and our own growth process, we would discover who we are. We would realize that we create our own reality through choices because, in fact, we were always part of something infinitely expansive.

1. Each fragment essence under the illusion of separateness would enter into a mammal body called a human being at the first breath upon birth and live out the existence of that body until it died within an agreed upon time frame. Upon death of the body, the essence would seem to withdraw into a non-physical plane and integrate what it had learned before entering into another physical body.
   
2. Each fragment agreed that whatever choices it made during the life of that body, it would agree to experience the consequences of said choices until all experiences were completed and accounted for in a fair and just balance. This process would be called karma. Karma would be a law until such time as human beings evolved beyond the necessity of it for their learning.
   
3. Each essence agreed that upon birth in the mammal body they would experience a kind of amnesia that would prevent them from remembering most other experiences in other incarnations until they had gained sufficient experience to handle these memories. This forgetfulness would be necessary for them to complete the karma they had accrued.
   
4. Each essence understood that in a complete lifetime they would evolve in a body from infancy through toddlerhood, then childhood, adolescence, young adulthood, adulthood, into old age and completion of the experience through death unless of course they learned to transcend death. A lifetime that ended early, as in childhood, would be considered valuable but still incomplete. In order to move to the next level, a full lifetime would have to be completed.
   
5. Each essence understood that in exactly the same sequence, but over a very long historical time frame, it would experience stages of lifetimes in which it would focus on experiences and lessons related to infancy, being a toddler, childhood, adolescence, and adulthood until mastery of consciousness was achieved. From this sequence they could not leave early but had to finish the game. In other words, once one had chosen to play the game, it would have to be played to completion.
   
6. Gradually during the long sequence of lifetimes (happening in sequence in time but happening simultaneously outside of time), each fragment would rejoin with members of its own entity or family to share all its experiences, adventures, and lessons. At the end of the sequence of lifetimes the family of consciousness would be totally reintegrated with the realization that in the deepest reality there had never been separation at all and that apparently separate forms and expressions are ultimately in fact one. Then this family would reintegrate with other families and so on until the illusion of separation was erased. All would be one as it always was and always would be.
   
   At this point this particular game would be complete so that other games could be played and mastered. Underlying this game is the Tao’s grand scheme and this is the experience unfolding on the planet as we speak. With this game structure in mind, we are now in the right position to understand exactly what has happened on this planet, what is happening now, and what the most likely possibilities are for the future. This map also lets us know how the game will ultimately end up. There is not a problem. If you are able to think on a grand enough scale then you could smile at the outcome. If you are only looking at the present time frame of a few years you could well cry instead.

Tao Series of Books by Jose Stevens

Tao to Earth: Michael’s Guide to Relationships and Growth

Earth to Tao: Michael’s Guide to Healing and Spiritual Awakening

Available at various booksellers. Otherwise currently out of print.