1. The Body:  the physical equipment and lower astral and mental impulses that constitute that which is known as the physical form and is destroyed at physical (dense) death.
2. The Essence:  the higher etheric (physical), astral, and mental impulses that constitute the True Persona, devoid of karmic imprint; the part of the Persona that survives physical (dense) death.
3. The Role:  the "false persona" created as a function of karmic imprinting upon the Body, both in this lifetime and in past lifetimes.  The Role can be thought of as the shadow self; our personal apportionment of the "Dweller on the Threshold."  The Role is disabled at death, but returns in incarnation after incarnation until it is successfully dismantled by the Essence, with the aid of the Soul (the Higher Self).

What creates the Role?  It is the imprinting of astral desire energy upon the Body which gives rise to the fractured illusion of the Role.  As a newborn infant in a new incarnation, the Role is existant but disabled.  The Role is reactivated when new conditioning and imprinting occurs in this incarnation; which may happen within seconds after birth, or may take months or even years to activate.  Depending upon how much of the Role was consciously deactivated in prior incarnations will determine the level of resistance created between the Essence and the Body by the Role in the present incarnation.  In short, the Role can be expressed as: Role = Total Undeactivated Prior Karma + Present Imprinting

Thus, the Role is the sum total of all of our prior desire-nature conditioning that was not consciously deactivated, plus any new desire-nature conditioning (imprinting) aquired in the present incarnation.  The Role, although an illusion in form, is an accurate barometer of the current total amount of karmic conditioning that must be deactivated in order for The Essence and the Body to work correctly with each other.

If one had to work with the entire Role in a single incarnation, it would be overwhelming.  Unfortunately, there is no "stopgap" measure on how much of the Role can be reactivated.  It is true that only that portion of the Role that is triggered by present imprinting is reactivated, with the remainder of it lying dormant.  However, the insane asylums of the world are living testaments to the fact that all too often, too much of the Role is activated for the Essence to handle.  Others seem to never enact their Roles, or deal with them, and instead project them onto others for them to handle.  Such persona "vampires" are fairly common, and can actually add to our present imprinting by pulling us into their destructive patterns.  Even more unfortunate is when such persona vampires exist in our own physical dense families and reactivate far more of our Role that we had originally negotiated for when planning this present incarnation.  Not all of life's events are planned for by the Soul, as so many New Age philosophies espouse.  Life is a chaotic rather than deterministic system, and one Soul simply cannot account for all possible variables, especially when dealing with other beings in a state of unlimited Free Will.  One must plan for the greatest possible likelihood of outcomes in such a state, and hope to chance on the rest.  The more experience the Soul has in deactivating the Role, generally the better off the Essence is in consciously working with unexpected events in "Freewill-space," although a highly corruptive projected Role from another can throw even an enlightened Soul-Essence into a tailspin from which it is difficult to return to a state of alignment within the Divine Plan.

A Role-script (dormant portion of a Role) may be reactivated either physically, emotionally, or mentally.  An occurrence which reactives a massive Role-script may be referred to as a "critical event"; something which by its very desire-oriented nature influences or changes the path of evolution in which the Essence was developing.  It also doesn't matter whether the critical event was "good" or "bad", in that these are value-judgements contingent upon physical time and place, and regardless of the quality of the event, it still imprints the Role and fuels it, deterring the persona from knowing its Essence, and thus deterring alignment with its Soul.  An example of a critical event could be something as devastating as rape or molestation by another, especially as a child in the formative years, or as simple as a promise denied or broken, depending upon how much of the persona's Role is caught up in the nature of that event.

How then can one hope to ever escape from the spiralling Role-scripts that keep one trapped in physical dense manifestation and a virtual prisoner of the Role?  First, by identifying oneself with the Essence rather than the Body.  The Body, remember, is where the imprinting occurs which then gives rise to the Role.  We are so conditioned to identify with The Body, especially in our society filled with youth-preserving elixirs and potions, deodorants, hair care, body lotion, wrinkle cream, face lifts, breast implants...the amount of shelf space in grocery stores given to Health and Beauty Aids alone is a testament to this obsession with the Body.  And for all the macrobiotics and tofu and bean sprouts eaten, for all the fat grams agonized over, for all the torturous exercises (which is not to say that ALL exercise is useless; far from it), for all the mutilating surgeries to enhance an "imperfect" Body, for all the millions of dollars each year poured into products and industries geared toward preserving "Eternal Youth" and promising "Eternal Life," the Body still dies.

The Essence is the one portion of the persona which survives physical death.  It is the one portion of the persona capable of establishing and maintaining an alignment with the Soul.  The Body, although an integral part of the persona, is merely an instrument of the Essence, just as the Essence is an instrument of the Soul.  The Role, on the other hand, is not an instrument and serves no greater purpose.  For all practical purposes, it should not exist.  It does not serve any greater meaning, except to act as a stumbling block against the Essence.  It does not facilitate lesson.  It is as detrimental to learning one's lessons in incarnation as extreme astigmatism or myopeia is to being able to read.  Don't fall into the common trap of accepting the Role as the "facilitator of lesson."  The Role is the enemy of both the True Persona (Essence) and True Self (Soul), and must be sacrificed (transmuted) to be able to progress fully along the path of spiritual evolution.

By the process of transmuting prior karmic imprinting can one free oneself from the prison of the Role.  This process of transmuting can only be done from the aspect of the Essence, receptive to the impress of the Soul.  There are several mystical teachings which facilitate the process of transmutation.  Nature of the Soul is one such teaching, as are the mystic teachings of Freemasonry and Roscicrucianism, among others.  In addition, since the harmonic convergence of 1987, all of humanity has access to what is known as the "Neutral Implant"; a fourth-dimensional adjustment which can negate all prior and current karma and Role-scripting.  Because the Role serves no greater purpose in Soul evolution, there is no problem in voiding the prior imprints which support its illusory existance.  To receive this implant, all one has to do is to give the intent for it.  Please note that the karmic neutral implant does NOT interfere with the Persona-Body alignment, but neither does it prevent against future imprinting. 

To be able to avoid the pitfalls of future imprinting and the further development of a Role, one must move away from Body-identification to Essence-identification (and thus to Soul-identification).  Development of the Ajna center (in front of the physical forehead) and the Cave (the touchdown point of the Soul, in the center of the head), is the key to aligning the Essence with the Soul, and thus being able to avoid the pitfalls of the Role. 

Even when identifying with your higher self, others around you may try to pull you back down into the lower realm of relations (the Body, along with the Role) and thus re-imprint you with their negative patterns.  Since the Role survives on the nature of Fear, most of these people are coming from a fear-based nature, and their Roles fear mightily when they sense you making positive change to disassociate yourself from your own Role and to consciously deactivate it.  They will actively try to pull you back down into the negative Role-based patterns of relationship to protect the illusory existance of their own Roles.  Allowing your Ajna center to take the "hits" for you from these people, rather than allowing yourself to be dragged down into a lower center such as the Solar Plexus, will aid greatly in deterring future role imprinting.

It is our hope that all humanity will soon be able to overcome the power of the Role, and defeat its purposeless existence, once and for all.  Then, and only then, will we as a race of conscious Souls incarnate express our true natures fully within our own realm in Ascension.