Many people fail to distinguish between their true nature and their personality traits, particularly their less desirable traits. The fact is you are not the worst characteristics of your personality. It is the nature of the untrained mind to want what it perceives as advantageous and to fear or hate what seems painful. Discovering how your heart and mind can work together to use these feelings allows you to move beyond them. You may feel overwhelmed by the circumstances of your present life or bound by past traumatic events. Again, this is a failure in perception. They are just mind-states which can be known. They can be seen as impermanent and not belonging to you and, therefore, they do not ultimately define your true nature.
Philip Moffitt
Mindfulbalance 
What does define our true nature Karl? How do we distinguish between that and personality traits? This one has me a bit confused.
Hi Chris,
Nice to hear from you and I hope you are well (and surviving the heat) I try to post practical posts in the morning for practice and more reflective ones in the afternoon, on underlying theory sometimes. I may not always agree with every element in them myself, but just post to get us thinking. In some of the perspectives that underlie meditation you will find this notion of our true nature, or perfect nature. It is a viewpoint that believes that we have a natural goodness, or natural calm, that underlies all the habits and self-judgments we have built up over the years of our life. In some ways when we meditate we drop into that underlying calm. So when he refers to personality traits here he is more than likely referring to habits and anxieties we have built up over the years in response to how we have been treated or what experiences we have had. He is encouraging that we see all of these as they pass through the mind as thoughts or strong emotions, from a perspective of kind awareness, and not believing that we are only them.
Thanks very much Karl. I am well thank you, for today at least, and that’s all that matters; I am learning!
Thank you for your reply which has clarified things somewhat for me on this one. I think it is something I could ask lots of questions on . But it is reassuring, and also introduces hard work! If I choose to see things like this regarding myself, as in being able to see these traits with kind awareness, then I need ro see it the same way inr others too. I need to let go of blame and forgive and try to feel compassion for those who have behaved in ways that harmed me. this is a difficult one; its very reassuring to look at oneself in a kindly compassionate way, but I cant just apply it to myself., its not a one way thing is it!
Karl, do you see,personality traits as part of the ego, the ego that never feels equal, always above or lesser than another person. As you explained our true nature is not the ego we weave together from past memories, or any other impermanent mind stage.
In your practice have you seen how much we are influenced by subtle, almost subconscious stimulus or influences.
How much of what we perceive is delusion. I mean we hold so many judgments that how do we know when true reality is viewed or what we feel is colored by our cognitive side.