To Be or Not to Be

Katinka, Chris and I have been discussing in the last few posts about the value of our personality, our psychological self, and so on. I need to use the theosophical terminology in order to express more or less accurately my understanding of this topic.
I’d say that kama-manas (the personal mind, identified with this particular body and working in close relationship with our personal emotions) has to cease as a center of consciousness for buddhi-manas (the enlightened or spiritual mind, which perceives unity and truth) to work. As I see it, manas functions alternatively associated with either one or the other principle. As HPB says in The Voice of the Silence:

The Self of matter and the SELF of Spirit can never meet. One of the twain must disappear; there is no place for both.

Our real consciousness comes from Atman, the universal Self, and it acquires self-consciousness through Manas, a ray of the universal mind. But the light of Manas reflected in the lower principles gives origin to an illusory self, the psychological “me”, our personal mind. This illusory self is like the “me” in a dream. Would you say it is real? Well, it has a reality behind, but that “me” is created by the mind and will soon disappear. In the same way, the feeling “I’m Pablo” is an illusion. By “crucifying the material self” I only meant to get rid of that false identity. Then, the real Self, our spiritual individuality, would express itself through our brain-consciousness, emotions and body, without being deluded as to its real nature, without that feeling of “I’m this personality”. In fact, I think that all real virtues have nothing to do with the psychological self, but with the expression of our spiritual individuality. As HPB states in her Diagram of Meditation, the virtues:

… are really the outcome of wisdom, for benevolence, sympathy, justice, etc., arise from the intuitive identification of the individual with others, although unknown to the personality.

Katinka wrote in her previous post Self confidence or letting go of self about how self confidence may be healthy or unhealthy. I think there is a personality-centered self confidence that comes with feelings of pride, self-sufficiency, etc., and a different self-confidence that brings courage and calmness, which is the outcome of our spiritual nature expressed through the personality.
Even those feelings of ecstasy Chris was talking about in Everyday Ecstasy appear when for some reason (for example, the perception of beauty) our personal self ceases to be, at least for the time being. In that sense, the personal self is like a clown. After a good act is performed by a skillful juggler, the clown goes to the stage and undeservedly receives the applause.
I don’t mean that we should have a feeling of low self esteem or hate ourselves, etc. If there is love in our hearts, that love will embrace everything, including our personality. But we should always be aware of our process of identification with things, and strive to “Live in the Eternal”.
Would you agree with that?