The Identity Triangle
The Identity Triangle describes three important aspects of your makeup, which you must learn to recognize and work with skilfully.
The Child is the seat of creativity but it is vulnerable and dependent. The Dragon is the seat of force but it is cruel and reactive. The Avatar is the exemplar of your best qualities and must be in the driver's seat if you are to embark successfully upon the Way of 1%.
The child is always listening and believes everything it's told. It craves attention and approval - to know that it is loved and cared for. And it craves consistency and familiarity - to find a groove and do the same thing over and over again.The child receives its information about the world from either the Dragon or the Avatar, and this will determine its development - or lack thereof.
As well as being a receiver of information, the child is also a projector. It receives information from the Dragon or the Avatar and projects it as emotion throughout the perceptual field. When the child is secure creativity flows - widening and enlivening the perceptual field with a sense of abundance. When the child is scared the opposite happens - the perceptual field becoming narrower and restrictive, and shutting down creative thinking with a sense of scarcity.
The Dragon is the limiting, doubting, “I can't” aspect of the mind. It's the cornerstone of the master problem and it speaks to the child in harsh and harmful ways, like a series of crude, sensationalized headlines: Boss Is Evil And You Must Hate Them Forever,You Are Worthless And Have No Value At All, Everything Will Go Wrong And You’re Stupid To Even Try. The Dragon snarls and hisses orders, reacts impulsively, tends towards the negative, and repeatedly harms the child.
Ordinarily, we oscillate between the Child and the Dragon, with the one an overcompensation for the other. We mistake the Dragon’s reactivity for assertiveness and strength, and we mistake the Child’s panic for an actual catastrophe. We’re either too open or too closed, or too passive or too controlling. We allow the Child to assume control of our life and we allow the Dragon to assume control of our self-esteem. We believe the Dragon’s reductive headlines and we assent to Child’s crippling fears.
The important thing to recognize here is that we could have the best plan in the world and all the talent necessary but if the Child is in the driver’s seat and the Dragon is running wild, both our plan and our talent will come to nothing. Deep down, we won’t actually believe it’s possible - and in the moments we do, it will be quickly undone by acts of self-sabotage.
