The Expression is the numerological sum of the Heart’s Desire (a.k.a. the Soul Urge) and the Personality Number, but it is actually much more.
There is a principle called “Synergy” which states that “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts”, meaning that a complete thing does something more and maybe different from what the assemblage of parts can do.
In other words, everyone on a sports team will have different specialty moves and skills, but when the athletes function as a team, they win the game.
So what’s it all about?
It’s about you as a Human Doing, rather than just a Human Being. I always like to say that the Expression is what you “bring to the table.” It’s about your contribution to the world around you, and the way that the world reflects your contribution back to you. You give to the world, and the world gives back.
The Expression contains all the little “tells” that let others know when you’re in a mood. It has your skills and talents (and maybe some that you haven’t explored) at hand for when they’re needed. It is like the monitor on a computer that turns the millions of internal electronic processes and their interactions into a YouTube video, a project you’re working on, or connects you to others. It’s about what you do much more than it is about who you are. Expression is an action, not a name for something.
The Expression, the Self-Image and the Ego
So the Expression is more than just the combination of the Personality and Soul Urge. The whole of an individual’s psychological makeup is involved.
Let’s explain a couple of important terms here:
From the standpoint of Jungian Psychology, the ego is what protects us from the personal and collective unconscious. It is the primary force that protects the self against most of our own thoughts that could cause us harm if we persisted in them, whether or not they are our own, or come from other people or self-damaging fantasies that exist in myths, stories, and ideas that are part of the collective mind we share with others.
When most people think of the ego as a person’s over-inflated image of themselves, they are talking about that person being possessed by a sense of grandiosity. That kind of character defect is clearly seen in the Expression, but it is a result of a problem at the level of the Personality Number, which is where psychologists and alternative healers do their work.
In other words, the ego shares the energies and forces of both the Heart’s Desire and the Personality.
The Self-Image is another aspect of the Expression. It’s a term that’s used a lot in meditation textbooks, especially Buddhist ones and books on Mindfulness.
You might say that the self-image is the part of us that reviews ourselves. It forms our personalities and analyzes the world on both an emotional and rational level. It’s where the ideas about our personal styles of behavior, including speech, appearance and so on come from. It’s is also constantly analyzing possible threats and sends that information to the deepest level of the self so that it can send out defensive forces to combat that kind of stress. It has a direct line to the ego, and also connects the Personality and Heart’s Desire numbers.
It is our inner critic but can also be our internal cheering squad. It is through the self-image that we encounter most of our problems, but it is also the part of us that attaches meaning to our experience and lets us know what makes us feel happy and fulfilled. It’s more like an acting coach than anything else.
The Expression is guided by the self-image and the needs of the ego but is partly explained by the Heart’s Desire and the Personality numbers.
Things of this nature barely can be explained in everyday words, but it boils down to the simple fact that while the Ego, the Self Image, the Heart’s Desire and the Personality Number may seem like separate things, they are not. All of these things are just different ways of describing facets of a human personality, but all these descriptions are in reality just one thing; the Expression.
A Brief Example
Let’s give a little example of what looking at the Expression is like, and what can be read from it. For this example, I’m using a man who is often called a visionary genius, Elon Musk. We know who he is; his car company, Tesla, is the most valuable car company in the world. He’s building a tunnel under Los Angeles for a superfast train run on magnetic repulsion. His rockets and space capsules are proven to lift multiple astronauts into space, as part of his project to build a human habitat on Mars.
If we look at his numbers, we see that his Soul Urge, a.k.a. the Heart’s Desire, is E=5, O=6, U=3. 5+6+3=14, 1+4=5. If you’ve ever seen him in an interview, you know he’s a really relaxed guy who likes to enjoy himself, and that he’s always one step ahead of the critics – he’s at the cutting edge of today’s technology, and waiting for the world to catch up with him – all attributes normally associated with 5.
His Personality Number is L=3, N=5, M=4, S=1, K=2. 3+5+4+1+2=15 and 1+5=6. His vision of electrical power for the world, high-speed automatic transportation and other projects are ideas he’s basically described for building harmony with the environment and comfort in the home, and he’s well known for his love of his children – this is all 6.
5+6=11, which is the Expression, and some numerology books call 11 “the Master Psychic” or “the Visionary.” It’s the mark of someone who celebrates uniqueness, is charismatic and finds it easy to influence others. In one interview, he described himself as “kind of a wizard.” And in my opinion, he’s living the “11 life.”
I picked him because his name is short, but the numerology of it is very clear and on target about what we see of him on TV and on the web.
The Big Numbers
For the Expression Number, like the LifePath, we’re obligated to use the bigger numbers. Unlike the LifePath, however, we often see the higher “Master” numbers like 33, 44 and others.
Although his 11 describes what he does and his behavior, but you can also see the 2 (1+1=2) in some of his interviews, where he appears to be an unassuming and reasonable person. At the same time, he made a statement on Twitter that Tesla stock is too expensive. This occurred on May 1st (5+1=6) at 8:11 California time. The 5 for 1 split was announced August (8) 11th. Was this strategic planning, or just the magic of the Soul Urge Number? We’ll explore that later in his profile, but let’s also remember that 11 is also called the “Master Psychic.”
The Subtotal
Sometimes the Name is much longer than Mr. Musk’s (8 letters) and comes to a very high compound number, like 46 or 73, and many of us numerologists like to look at those because they have something to say about the character of a person as well. The Subtotal often tells us about the influences or conflicts in the individual’s life that are more obvious to others than the Expression Number itself. This will also be a topic in future posts on the Expression because it has many ways of being broken down into readable “chunks” that work well.
The Inclusion Table
The Inclusion Table is another way of analyzing the numbers in your name that basically shows the levels of strength of the 9 numbers. Some people call it the “Karma Table”, but that comes from the adopted Indian philosophies of 20th century writers on the subject of Numerology.
Explaining the table is a something that we don’t have time for in this podcast, but let’s just say that having explored thousands of these tables, I won’t read someone’s chart without exploring it.
It’s simply a grid of 9 boxes that represent the 9 numbers, and we count up the amount of each of the 9 numbers in the name.
In our example chart above, Elon has no letters with the values of 7, 8 or 9. I mention it here because too many people with no 8’s are told that they have a bad chart for money by bogus numerologists – I don’t think Mr. Musk is broke. I don’t think his prosperity consciousness is lacking at all. Even though he started with very little by today’s standards, he has all the passion and drive it takes to attract the billions needed to build a private space program. That’s his mindset and attitude – he’s focused on what he does, not what he makes.
The Inclusion Table also gives us various hidden numbers in the name that have special significance in the life, but let’s move on, because the table will be discussed fully in future posts.
The Personal Alphabet
All the letters in the Expression constitute a “personal alphabet” that is read dynamically, in that the number associated with the letter marks off a number of years that each letter is active.
Each name has its own cycle, so we consider each separately as in several rows or columns to make sums of those numbers.
Your initials, or the first letter of each of your names is called the Identity, but as the letters run out their periods, they change to provide us with a “secret identity” or event number. For instance, in Elon’s chart, the first letter of his first name is E=5, which will run for 5 years. The first letter of his last name is M=4, which will run for 4 years, so the secret identity will be E-U for the 5th year of life, and L-U for the 6th.
If we count the number values of the first name, we have 19 years, which means that every 19 years the cycle of the first name will begin again. This is an important study that reveals practical and accurate predictions, especially when contrasted against one of the numbers in the LifePath, like the Pinnacles or the Personal Years. A thorough study will be done on this in the near future, because it’s one of my favorite topics.
The Point of it All…
Having described the Expression and gone into some depth about its power and meaning, you can see that explaining the many ways to explore the power and value of the name numbers. This post will give you an overview of the Expression that can help you know some of the fine points of analysis that we will be discussing on a regular basis in posts like these and in celebrity profiles.
So for now, just focus on the fact that the Expression is about choice and character, while the LifePath is about opportunity and risk. And get ready for a continuing series about the Expression, which holds all the information described briefly in this introduction and so much more!
