Centres of intelligence Archives — Exploring the ENNEAGRAM

”As I say yes to myself right now …” — restoring order to the universe

“The cosmos is always in motion but it is never in chaos. Only humans create chaos.” This sentence was staring me in the face one day when I opened the file to continue the translation of the book The Ultimate Guide to Yinyang. And what made it stick out for me was a cat-related incident right before it.

Me and my husband share our living space with to feline creatures. Having grown up with dogs and exceedingly allergic to cats, I didn’t have much experience with them other than the at-at-distance acquaintance with the outdoor cats at our country house during my childhood. I didn’t quite speak “cat”. Dogs I could read, could easily communicate with. Cats, not so much.

Due to various circumstances, we ended up with not one but two Siberian cats — fluffy, gorgeous creatures that trigger zero allergic response in me. (And no, it.s not because I hitherto imagined my allergies. It turns out these fluffballs so not, despite what one might think, produce that much of one of the three cat-relatated substances that might trigger cat-allergies. And apparently, that was the one I’m reacting to in other felines. Sometimes life’s funny like that.)

So, as it turns out, very few people do speak cat, actually. I read a study that concluded that pet vets are usually the most skilled at it. Cat owners (or servants, depending on where you stand) are usually adept at reading their own pets, but it turns out cats are individuals in this respect, too. Reading one, you don’t necessarily read them all.

Anyway. As you might be aware, one of the most significant differences between dogs and cats are that dogs are a gregarious species, whereas cats aren’t. This is not to say that cats aren’t social animals, as we might use the word referring to instinctual capacities. They do read each other, and they do form bonds. But their well-being not being directly linked to their social skills — as, roughly speaking, is the case with dogs — they tend to be much more their own person. And what’s been fascinating to me is observing how this means they don’t weigh their preferences against those of others (their owners or fellow felines) in the same way dogs, or humans for that matter, do.

As I say yes to myself right now

Because if this, cats are keenly attuned to the constant movement mentioned in the quote at the top. I forgot the specific nature of the cat-related incident, on this occasion, but it illustrated this for me, yet again. I prefer this now. And then they leave. Or eat. Or don’t. They lovingly wash their “kitty’ (in our case, she is well into adulthood now, but since she lives with her mummy I suspect the who-washes-whom balance will never truly even out), or they hiss at her for coming smelling of Something Foreign. This climb onto your lap, intensely enjoying a belly rub for 4.5 minutes — and then they abruptly get up and go off somewhere else, not looking back once. It is fascinating to watch in its simplicity.

In an experiential growth retreat once, we were encourage to move around the room, feel whatever we were called to do, and then do it saying, As I say yes to myself right now, I … As I say yes to myself right now, I’m walking over to the window. As I say yes to myself right now, I lie down on the floor on my back. As I say yes to myself right now, I scratch my shoulder.

When we got the cats, it was striking how completely they lived like this. Innocently stalking prey, sleeping on the sofa, washing themselves or each other, eating or refusing to eat, fighting off neighbouring trespassers, crouching near the bushes when strangers walked dogs past our house. No malice. No sense of conflict, or doubting what was best. Only relying on their inner, instinctual response, listening to and heeding the signals within. I like you. That guy’s scary. No, I don’t want to cuddle; the moment passed. It was just so refreshing.

Inadvertently creating chaos

“The cosmos is always in motion but it is never in chaos. Only humans create chaos.” When I read the sentence, it was just so obvious why this is. And how — at least in theory — we could not. How we could navigate back to the subtle but clear inner guidance, “saying yes to ourselves now”, and how that is the way not to create chaos.

It’s challenging, of course. Sometimes it’s not too bad — when we’re alone, when the choices we are facing are “softer” rather than hard, when it’s only a matter of actually taking the time to listen to all three centres within instead of trying to think our way through life. Sure, “only” might feel a bit hollow; sometimes, that’s challenge enough.

But at other times, the challenge is a major one. When we want to express our sympathy but are afraid it’ll be misconstrued as something else. When we waver between pride and compassion, and they seem to be mutually exclusive. When we know that tomorrow, we will want to have chosen one option, but in the moment our whole system is crying out for us to choose the other.

In those latter situations, it’s easy to believe that what creates the chaos is our inner discord. That’s what we’ve been taught, in a way, to believe. Worst case, we have been taught to go with reason, with logic, with understanding, with what we can figure out, and ignore whatever impulses or reactions or emotional responses that don’t seem to go along with that. Don’t you see — they just screw up your judgement? Behave yourself! While not in so many words, our western cultures taught us that it’s listening to the gut and the heart that leads to chaos. A few of us might have clawed our way back into one of these faculties but in that process, on the contrary, been taught that we should “get out of our head” because there’s no truth to be had there. So the culprit is still the discord between these inner channels.

But in fact, that’s not true. The chaos is not the result of the seeming discord between gut, heart, and mind. The chaos is our resistance to that seeming discord.

Taking a look at “seeming”

So is there truly a discord? If one part of me wants to punch someone in the face, or run out of the conference room, or ugly-cry in my superior’s office, while another part of me tells me how a mature adult should behave (in short: not like that) — isn’t that the definition of discord?

Well. Our instincts, our emotional responsiveness, and our thoughts — even our superego, actually — ultimately all want the same thing. They want to keep us safe from harm, and having accomplished that, they want to provide love, acceptance, and a safe space to be as we are. On the surface, in our day-to-day busy lives, how they want to do those things seems contradictory. But if we just scratch the surface a little bit, not willing it to make sense from a adult-at-the-office perspective but with open curiosity, what we find starts seeming more harmonious. Feelings under feelings, instinctual impulses in response to tender emotions, instinctual impulses in response to instinctual interpretations of mental material — of course it seems like a mess. We’ve been stacking things on top of one another for so long, now we are going to have some work set out for us trying to de-tangle the mess.

Restoring responsive, quiet order

But then we do. We go home, and we revisit the situation at work to probe deeper into our various layered responses to it. Curiously, we explore what lies beneath the surface. We might find old feelings there, things that don’t really belong to this situation but which were triggered by it. We might sort those out: sit with them, feel them, address them to the extent that they can be addressed, or just exploring for them get more accessible to us. Then it starts becoming clearer what was actually going on in the office, and to whatever extent we actually do want to address a particular concern with our colleague. It might not be the same concern we thought that we might be wanting to address, now that we’ve weeded out some of our old baggage.

So, basically, we go home to say yes to ourselves for a bit, and see where that lands us. We sit on the sofa and feel into something. And then, a minute or thirty, or two hours down the road, the moment is gone and it’s time to cook dinner, or go for a walk, or say yes in another way. Granted, sometimes the window of saying yes is narrowed by the fact that we have children to tend to, or other duties that must be handled. That’s another challenge — but still one where we can practice saying yes to ourselves.

When we do, we gradually climb our of chaos and start restoring the quiet, natural movement of our innards, our relationships, and, by extension, our world. Now, creating the most beautiful kind of order.

The perceived but non-existent sameness AND inequality of the centres — how we got it backwards

Centres of intelligence, Types and typing

When it comes to the centres and type, there are some paradoxical misconceptions floating about in the Enneagram world. Ironically, out of the two major ones, one is about a perceived but non-existent inequality, and the other, paradoxically, about a perceived but non-existent sameness.

The imaginary inequality in centre access

The first misunderstanding is that, courtesy of which Enneagram type we belong to, we operate only or mainly out of one of the centres. In conversations about the centres in the Enneagram world — where we are talking about the gut, heart, and head as they exist in all of us, not referring to the centre triads — at some point, someone usually says: “But it’s different for different people. For some, this [whatever feature we are discussing] needs to come from the gut (or the heart, or the head).” But the thing is — no, it does not. Take agency, for example; our capacity to take action. In absolutely everyone, this is a function of the instinctual centre, or the gut. It is just one of the many things the instinctual centre provides for us. Saying that for some people agency originates in the heart, is like saying that for some, it’s actually the pancreas that cleans the blood, not the liver. It just doesn’t work that way. “Gut people” do not find love in the instinctual centre, while “heart people” find it in the heart. And “head people” most certainly don’t have “instincts” coming from the intellectual centre. Discussing things such as how different centres express compassion does not make sense. (How different people of the various Enneagram centre triads express compassion, however, is another matter. But half the time, these discussions focus on centres’ capacities, not people’s. And when they do focus on the people, they often fail to make that clear. Hence, misunderstandings about the centres themselves can thrive.)

Yes, our type has a particular relationship to the centres depending on our position on the Enneagram. In some ways, our personality will indeed tend to “manage” the centres a certain way depending on our type. And yes, this might mean we prefer some modalities — of inner work, for example — to others. In the average levels of balance, it also means we each scramble and compartmentalise the centres somewhat differently, strongly contributing to the typical functioning we see in average level types in action. But in themselves, the centres are the same in all of us, regardless of type. In that, there’s absolute equality.

Which is great news, of course, since, to truly listen and receive someone else, everyone is going to be accessing their heart. And since we are all equipped with one, we can all to this, too (albeit with varying success rates, depending on other factors 😊). Likewise, to move — in the room, as well as in life — requires access to the gut. And as we know, everyone moves, everyone has physical needs and urges, and we’re all, equally, use guided by our instinctual drives on a daily basis. And finally, everyone needs to use their head centre to even consider the future or to have an idea about something that is not here, now — endeavours which we all frequently engage in, again, regardless of which centre is our “home base” on the Enneagram circle. We possess them all, and we use them, too.

The seeming but illusory sameness of the centres as such

So the three centres work the same way in all of us. However, they don’t work the same way as each other. As we have seen, they each process different things, in different ways, with different capacities. And this includes their ability to incorporate information from the other centres. It is not a bounce-back-and-forth kind of trio; there more one-way flow here than we might have realised. (I have touched upon their differences somewhat in the article Heart and gut “distinguished” (at least for relatively creative, flowing and open minds 😉.) Briefly, one can see the centres as a bottom-up process, where each new centre, much like the instinctual drives, brings a new protocol. Since the old protocol (say, that of the gut) was in place when the new one (say, the heart) came online, the new one can “read” the information from the old one, but not the other way around. This puts them all in a quite unique place in relation to the other two. If you are interested in reading more about this, I unpack it quite thoroughly in Aspects of You.)

The fact that the centres are so different — that the gut possesses certain qualities that the heart and head do not, and so on and so forth for the others — sometimes has people respond with disbelief or accuse me of favouritism. “Why are you saying only the gut has agency? What about the heart types?” This is obviously because they are still holding on to the first misconception, as the answer is that the gut is the centre providing agency — and that, contrary to what they might think, we all have a gut so we can all move. Image types or types belonging in the intellectual centre (a k a “heart types” and “head types”) have gut centres, too. The centre you are “in” does not mean you only have that, or even that you have more of it. It only means that it’s the centre that your ego will tend to overidentify with and where the majority of your most stubborn issues will be found. (Also, the ego’s relationship to our home-base centre might affect our “vibe” or style, but this is a consequence of our ego preferences and does not signify more “access” to one of the centres.)

Misconceptions spawning confusing conclusions

The idea that one type sources everything from, or even through, a specific centre spawns some intellectual misconceptions on this topic (which, obviously and interestingly, all spring from the head, regardless of the “centre of the person” 😉), where people try to create a perfect symmetry for the centre, so that it looks “fair”; so that we each (despite the fact, as the belief may go, that we “do not have equal access to” all the centres) have access to equally impressive and not-so-impressive traits and skills. But this is an example of where the idea of equality is taken too far (and unnecessary so, since we do all have all three anyway) — a bit like someone coming into zoo insisting that all animals should be fed the same food, so it’s not “unfair”. But it would be unfair to feed everyone the same, since their needs and preferences are different. As long as we are talking about the centres as such, the differences are real.

But at the same time, the perceived (and equally mistaken) inequality of the distribution of the centres in different types opens up another bag of misconceptions. One is when I hear many people say things to the effect that they do not access all three centres on a regular basis. (An example would be a Seven who “doesn’t access” the heart on account of being connected only to the gut — type One — and back to the head — type Five — by the inner lines of the Enneagram model.) This is very seldom true. The centres all provide necessary bits of our life, and of our experience (just as the instinctual drives, which mostly operate under our conscious radar and which all work fine, despite not sticking out enough for us to notice them our conscious experience). However, sometimes, we have an overly narrow understanding of what a certain centre is or does, and our ways of thinking about ourselves can, in turn, help us keep that in place. This may have us go to that centre over and over to solve issues in our life which may well be coming from somewhere else (and therefore keep returning again). This, too, is something I cover in Aspects of You.

* * *

So the centres are much, much more than a basic and obvious bit of Enneagram theory that one covers quickly in the beginning before advancing to more complicated stuff. Besides offering a beautiful world of discovery, deepening our awareness of and relationship with them can serve to dissolve stubborn tangles in our journey, clear up a whole lot of confusion, and overall give more peace, freedom and clarity. Isn’t that something? 😉

I am currently converting recordings of my online course Going DEEPER — Inner Work with the Centres into an evergreen self-study course. If you are in the newsletter (sign up for free here), you will be the first to know when it’s available!

Where It Takes Only One to Tango — and Falling from the Dance into the Heart

Centres of intelligence, Inner growth

We, or our ego mind, likes to see things dualistically. As opposites — or, by all means, as complimentary powers; the ego isn’t necessarily opposed to those, either. But it always seems to be about two ends of a stick, with us somewhere in between — usually closer to either, sticking to one or bouncing back and forth between extremes.

In the Enneagram world, we are used to thinking in threes, and the Enneagram itself rests on the Law of Three; the addition of a reconciliatory power, the awareness containing the duality, sometimes acting like the catalyst that makes two substances change and/or affect each other without itself changing in the process. This inches us somewhat nearer the truth. It’s still a bit of a simplification, but the actual state of things would be quite impossible to comprehend from an intellectual perspective.

When we are going through something challenging, or downright excruciating, sometimes a zooming out a bit here helps. (Full disclosure: Sometimes the suggestion of a wider perspective makes me respond less graciously and opt for a drink or half a bar of chocolate. That’s fine, too. But for those moments when some perspective on our human journey is exactly what we seek, here is one such perspective ❤️)

The part’s failure to grasp the whole

The tricky bit is that in terms of our inner world, the one trying to get a handle on how it works is the ego and its dualistic perspective. This means that if we are even considering an alternative to the ego perspective, the ego tends to put “soul”, “essence”, “higher self” (or something else that gets to stand for whatever is not ego; the deeper truth of our being)* in the opposite corner from itself in the proverbial boxing ring. This paints the human as a duality of ego/matter/dualism on the one hand and soul/divinity/oneness on the other. The ego looks with suspicion in the direction of what is not ego (for want of a better word, let’s call it the soul). It’s intrigued by it, and quite jealous of it in fact, for what appears to be its enviable qualities of peace, love, and truth. It is also suspicious, however, because while it covets many of those qualities, it has also heard rumours that they will in fact be its undoing. The soul must abhor the ego (thinks the ego), as they seem to be so mutually exclusive.

But here’s the thing: They are only mutually exclusive from the point of view of the ego. They are only mutually exclusive in the perspective of duality. In actual fact, the soul, or oneness, does not abhor the ego. It cannot; as oneness, it abhors nothing, and includes everything. The only power struggle, the only opposition, the only dichotomy, is the one envisioned by the ego.

Thus, the old adage that “it takes two to tango” is not altogether true in this context. The ego does a fine dance all of its own, creating opposition, and sometimes finding support, to fit in with its world view and hold up its belief system. And it’s good at it, too.

A life on earth is a life with an ego

“The ego” as I use it here is not a bad thing. It’s not “the shadow” — our selfishness (or envy or anger or any specific or generalised form of negativity) — counteracting “our light”. Rather, it is the very thought construct of “me”; the belief that “I” is confined to this body, and possibly some aspects beyond it. That it is separate from “you”. That it ends where the rest of the world begins. And in our everyday reality, this is sort of true. You can see how the belief started. If I pinch your car in the sandbox where we are playing with other four-year-olds, I now have a car, and you don’t. If you fall and skin your knee, your knee hurts and mine likely does not. It makes sense. And furthermore, we have spent our first few years — and will spend quite a few more — to understand, furnish, build, and polish this ego. We were meant to; it’s in the curriculum for a human being growing up.

Moreover, to quite some degree, we need the form that the ego provides to function as humans, as the alternative — floating about in a primordial soup — is not an efficient way to exist on planet Earth. It seems to me that we are offered the experience of this messy, wonderful, visceral, excruciating, ecstatic, confusing, tactile, ultimately challenging, and supremely rich affair that is life in a human body. And I also believe that in that, that we are given the sublime opportunity to rediscover, still from within that finite perspective, our true nature as something more than that.

The rides we choose to go on

Now, not everyone will be interested in doing that. Some of us will relish the ego experience and use our time here to taste, conquer, sample, and savour every last ounce of our human experience, with varying degrees of balance and implementing inconsistent measures of love. Others believe (quite contrary to myself) that the whole point is to transcend our humanity altogether and try and exist on Earth as only a soul, renouncing our delicious humanness and this grand adventure we are offered in the form of diversions and delights — and, of course, challenges and hardship.

And then there are some of us who will attempt to explore this field-trip as human beings rediscovering our true nature within this experience. Aware that our essential core is spiritual, we start our work with psychological subject matter. This places our playing field in the cross-hairs of where our psychospiritual energy meets our practical, flesh-and-blood world, all contained by the awareness which offers all of these labelled phenomena the space to exist.

The invitation into the heart — from the horizontal dance to the vertical fall

For this last type of life, seasonal tickets to the heart is highly recommended. In it, we can land, rest, breathe, find our feet again, and most of all, find love. The heart is such a precious faculty, and energy. It’s not only what truly allows us to be real, but it is also the seat of the soul, as well as our deepest wounding: the loss of connection to being, to our essential roots.

As humans, we are animals through and through: mammals with desires, needs, and reactions. But in our humanity, we are also completely of spirit; divine energy, angelic, or whatever one prefers to call it. We are not half-and-half — we are both, completely. This does not make mathematical sense, but then neither does the true heart, really, so it does not matter.

The deeper truth

The point is that these two realities come together in the heart. Here, our egoic life (which would be pretty unique to humans, as far as I can tell) really plays out, and meets — but never quite — our divinity. Here are our self-image issues, our masks, our disappointments, sorrows; our loneliness, our longings, our shame, our narcissism, and our insecurities in who we are. But, just a few strata deeper than that, is our true heart: an inexhaustible reservoir of patience, holding, acceptance, compassion, and fierce love. Usually, we can perceive one of these at a time (and more often than not, it’s likely to be the egoic bit). But on occasion, a moment comes where we can meet the pain and beliefs of our ego reactivity from another place that is, in itself, not reactive. Our eternal, unfailing compassion can embrace and hold our suffering.

This is love. And not only is it love; I think it is love in the purest form a human being can perceive. The moment when we can embrace our kicking and screaming ego and just be there, for all of it. Where we can put down the ball of opinions and self-protections and accusation and blame and fear and reactivity; when we can allow ourselves to be held by this love, completely and utterly, if only for a few moments.

Love begetting love

So while our everyday awareness tends to be strongly transactional and separated, the deepest truth within us is neither. On the egoic level, we might believe that we need to deserve reprieve, love, or absolution. When we fall into our own heart, we realise we do not. Also, we might believe that we can direct anger or hatred outwards, while directing love and compassion inwards. We might even believe that the anger and negativity towards people or circumstances that have hurt us helps us nurture the protective love for ourselves or others that we care for. On an egoic level, on a transactional, dualistic level, this kind of makes sense. But in the deeper heart, it does not. What is not love can not nurture love, any more than letting more darkness into a room can make it brighter.

So anger is wrong?

When the ego reads this, it might get the wrong end of the (dual) stick. Either, it might get upset as it thinks this means anger, violence or negativity is not OK. And it feels like it should be OK; after all, I’m feeling it on occasion. If this is the case, I hasten to reassure it that anger and negativity of all kinds is fine. To feel. To express. To explore. I’d prefer to not hurt anyone or myself in the process, but there is nothing to say don’t embrace it. (Btw, if you have thoughts about anger, you might want to read the article “Anger” is not one thing — how generalisations and simplifications squelch our inner experience.) Just don’t harbour it and let it accumulate. That won’t help anyone. And more likely than not, it will be destructive.

The other way the ego might misunderstand is by agreeing. Oh, I realised anger was just negative, so I gave it up. I never get angry. I’m beyond that. But again, that is missing the point. If the truth right now is anger, acknowledge that. If the truth is grief, acknowledge that. If the truth is joy, acknowledge that. The deeper love does not discriminate. Just like the soul, or oneness, that we talked about in the beginning of this article, love (which is, basically, just another word for the same aspect of reality) cannot do that. It can only, well, love. It never dismisses what is true, but always embraces it.

* * * * *

Our ego-mind, again, has a hard time wrapping itself around these aspects. That’s fine, too. We can just keep an eye out for when we start getting back into the transactional thinking, back into dualism. Again, we are not even meant to not have that; it works a charm when we want to follow a recipe or calculate our holiday budget — or even understand the intricacies of something like the Enneagram. We just need to be mindful when we, mostly in our inner work, step over the threshold into a territory where different rules apply ❤️.

*) For the purposes of this article, it does not really matter which of these we settle on. That does not mean we can’t make distinctions between the soul and being, or between essence and individual aspects of essence. It just felt unnecessary here.

Deeper Inner Work: Balancing the Centres (yes, all of them!)

Centres of intelligence, Inner growth

For our self-awareness and depth of presence to be of any real substance, it requires balance in and between our three basic centres of intelligence: the gut, the heart and the head. In this article, I wanted to present, in brief, what this means (and how it looks when the balance is off).

The Gut Centre — wants, drive, resistance, and instinctual impulses

Sometimes I hear things about the instinctual centre (a k a the gut centre/the belly centre/the body centre/the moving centre … this really goes by many different names!) that make it seem “less than”: primitive, selfish, almost inhuman; something that was rendered obsolete and irrelevant with the arrival of higher functions, and which now only serves to drag us down into “animalistic” and possibly immoral behaviour and should therefore be suppressed. Well, more or less that, anyway.

However, nothing could be further from the truth. Our gut centre is what moves us, what animates us on the physical level. It is what keeps us alive, in the most basic and further onto surprisingly sophisticated ways. It is the life force within us, regardless of which Enneagram type we have. So cherish it.

The ironic thing is, nobody really learns how to access this centre properly. Sure, some of us, often those with our “Enneagram home” in this centre, identify with it and its various aspects. And all around the circle, the ego usurps the driving forces of this centre and claims them for its own agendas. But that’s what the ego does with it — not its true, helpful, pure properties.

Balance, over-identification, and neglect

When in balance, this centre tells us what we want; what draws us in, what repels us, what direction we want to move in, what direction there is resistance. It’s easy for us to know, and express, what we want and what’s true for us. It’s a very ‘yes or no’ centre, and it grounds us in reality, giving us an identity: not who, how, or even quite what we are, but that we are, and that ‘I’ is different from ‘you’. When this centre is unbalanced and strongly identified with by the ego, we might get pushy, stubborn, inert (meaning both that we’re slow to start and not easily stopped once we got going), territorial, controlling, and/or unwilling to compromise in healthy ways. And when it is unbalanced in relation to the other two centres — meaning the ego is not that invested but because of that not giving the gut centre a lot of room to operate — we might feel unsure of our right to be here at all, feel easily trampled over, and/or lack stamina or access to what we really want. Almost certainly, we have both balanced and not-so-balanced aspects of this centre; it’s usually a mix rather than a straight-forward, all-or-nothing affair.

The Heart Centre — emotional realities and reactions, but also holding, patience, and true compassion

The heart centre has a funny place in our world: in one sense, our cultures are slowly becoming aware of this aspect; in another, it’s swept into the “irrational” corner and mostly viewed as a recreational tool — and on top of that we have some pretty warped interpretations of what it is supposed to do.

The heart centre, in its true capacity, is majorly important. Of course, they are ALL majorly important, in the sense that we can’t function without either of the centres. But the heart is important in a way we might not have seen: it is what allows us to be Real. It is what allows us to truly meet one another, to truly connect with all of our being. It is what allows us to rest, and to be held; or rather, to hold ourselves in our occasional brokenness, so that we can heal.

Balance, over-identification, and neglect

When in balance, in our true (i e, not ego-identified) heart, there is patience, inclusivity, acceptance, truth, receptivity, and absolute integrity. Since this connection requires us to be grounded in the instinctual centre first, there is also the ability to set boundaries; even seeing the love behind all of existence does not mean we cannot identify falsehood or imbalances which we might not prefer to feed. Rather the opposite: we become more clearly aware of them, without the filters that ego-identification introduces. Because when the ego claims the heart for its own purposes, love gets transactional, and the appearance of love wins out over actual love. As a consequence, prestige and quid-pro-quo enters the picture, along with all manner “love” and “lovability” that in actuality are far from it: control, over-indulgence, enabling, emotional unavailability masked as what-I-do-for-you/this family [etc], scoring of points to compensate for low self-esteem, and so on. While imbalances in the gut tend to be about over-use of instinctual energy, imbalances in the heart tend to be about faking many of the true-heart properties — which is not surprising, seeing as the heart is the centre concerned with self-image. And when the heart is unbalanced in relation to the other two centres, meaning the ego is not that invested but because of that not giving the heart centre a lot of room to operate, we might be emotionally unaware, not keen to venture into the realm of our own feelings (not others’), and we might either not feel comfortable letting people in, or we have a hard time moderating the extent to which we do that.

The Head Centre — logic, reason, and bigger picture connection; but also, stillness, clarity and direct knowing

The head centre would be the one we all — regardless of Enneagram type, and pretty much regardless of culture, too (even if it varies to some extent) — over-identify with. Again, not as types, but as humans. Our schools and education systems drill into us that we need to approach the world with thought. And even our caregivers before that, unwittingly, likely taught us this: Questions like “Why are you crying?” (as opposed to, “what are you feeling?”) and “Why don’t you want to” (rather than, “what happens within you when you think about doing it?”) — usually put to us long before we were properly equipped to respond from the sought-after head perspective — taught us that to count, our responses had better have a cognitive back-up. Feels and wants were often secondary (at best); what counted was what we could offer an intellectual explanation for.

So we grew up learning first to imitate reasoning, then (best case scenario) to reason. However, this is not enough to get us through life in a healthy way. The head, contrary to many popular opinion, cannot handle the domains of the heart and the gut. It can take them into account — but it cannot reason its way to whatever they naturally arrive at. This means that a fair bit of growth where the head is concerned is to stop doing stuff. Have you tried to meditate? Then you know what I’m talking about 😉.

Balance, over-identification, and neglect

But this doesn’t mean that the head is useless — not even a little bit. In balance, it has a twofold function: what I call the simple, constructive function of reasoning, assembling information, concluding, questioning, memorising, computing, and all those things we normally associate with “using our head”. But there is also the higher, open function where we get quiet; where the head, rather than executing maths of various kinds becomes available and listens. Here is where we can access true wisdom, not only knowledge; true clarity and sometimes direct knowing, not only our own conclusions. And this — when our gut and heart centres are in balance, too — is priceless. Those who say we need to “get our of our head” to be able to meditate have not really understood what either the head centre or actual meditation is. When the head-centre is unbalanced from ego-identification, it has us analysing, computing, reasoning, intellectualising, worrying, and/or over-calculating so many things in our life. And when it is unbalanced in relation to the other two centres — meaning the ego is not that invested but because of that not giving the head centre a lot of room to operate — our thoughts will be preoccupied with material from the other two centres that we mistakenly label “thinking” but which are in actuality a “mentalised” cocktail of largely unconscious impulses and emotional reactivity.

Experiential learning … or, as we call it, actual learning 😉

Online courses tend to be to a large degree about teaching, as the sharing of information lends itself well to the online format. But it does not have to end there. We can also have guided exploration into the centres and ourselves; experiential knowledge about that which was formerly only a theory. This element is crucial if we want to integrate deeper insights about the centres, and, not least, about ourselves. And it’s also a big part of the course Going Deeper: Inner Work with the Centres, the one for 2022 starting October 11^th and running for 7 consecutive Tuesdays, at 6 pm Central European time (if you are reading this at a later date, the link will take you to the current dates).

If you have questions about the course or about the prerequisites, please contact me directly and we’ll sort it out. Also, if the financial side poses a problem, consider applying for a scholarship ❤️

Anger in the instinctive triad — grasping the subtleties of the “triad theme” descriptions

Centres of intelligence, Enneagram groups

Recently, I saw the question raised how Ones and Nines were “anger types” — Ones, after all, preferring to not show anger, and Nines seeming do bend over backwards to avoid it, both in themselves and from others. The only “anger type” that seems to live up to the name is the Eight. So, what gives?

There are multiple ways to respond to this question. One perspective has to do with how we process and express anger, and even what we choose to put this label on (and I wrote a whole article on anger before, unrelated to the Enneagram). Another perspective has to do with what plane of experience we are discussing. Let’s look at both — but first, it is good to remind ourselves that anger (as well as shame and fear) is universal.

Universal phenomenon or triad label?

When Enneagram type descriptions tie one trait, tendency or aspect to a certain type or group, it does not mean that other types or groups lack it — it just means that this trait, tendency etc means something particular in relation to the type or group in question. So as for anger, this is obviously something that we all have, process and express in various ways.

So we need to get that the descriptions that put anger with the instinctive triad, shame with the heart triad and fear with the head triad are not about exclusivity. It’s not that instinctive types get angry more often than other types. And it’s not that they get angrier than others. (If you have ever met a seriously annoyed Six, you know what I mean.) Likewise, it’s not that the heart types walk around feeling ashamed (at least no more so than anyone else) or the head types are all scaredy-cats.

Sure, there are examples of all of this, and that is what makes it tricky. A lot of experience with Fours might certainly give you the idea that the shame thing is overt and supposed to be seen. The same with Fives, and some Sixes, and the energy of fear. And certainly so with a lot of Eights and the association with anger (as those occasionally give off the vibe of anger while feeling positively peachy inside!) So the first thing we need to get is that while these are expressions of the overall emotional tone of the triad in question, they also make us stay with the superficial, missing the real point of these descriptions.

As long as we keep this in mind, we can go on to explore the two perspectives I mentioned above: How we process and express anger as an actual response, and what existential plane we are referring to when we talk about “anger types”.

How the types in the instinctive triad process and express anger

So what is it about for the instinctual types? What does it mean that they are “anger types” or “coming from anger”? It means that their common orientation to life and the world gets fed from the instinctual plane of our existence — i e, gut energy. (More about this below in the next perspective.) This energy is rather on/off in nature, and it wants things to be the way I want them to be. How that is obviously varies individually, just as my way to go about making it so varies strongly with type.

Anger in the Eight

In the Eight, this powerful energy is generally directed outwards. And, since Eights often do not mind being angry (that is, they do not see it as a sign of weakness or lack of control), if they get riled up, they have no trouble showing it. (Also they might sometimes see what others label anger in them as “decisiveness” or “just putting it plainly”.) If Eights wants something to happen, they will generally assert themselves — complete with all their instinctual energy — in an attempt to make it happen. And the thing is, the Eight will (also generally) primarily want to affect things in the outside world and thus tend to direct his or her attention outwards, into the environment.

Anger in the One

The Ones also want to affect things in the outside world, but even more so, they want to control their own instinctual energy lest it seeps out and gets the better of them. Thus Ones expression of anger is to a large extent internalised, causing tensions and other physical manifestations. When the Ones want to affect their outside world in the direction they (or, often, their internalised ideals and their superego) believe is right, the anger will frequently come out as pursed lips, reprimands, indignation and/or a sense of contained outrage. Just like the Eight, the One might also deny being angry (although you might suspect they are), but whereas the Eight genuinely just saves the label for a stronger reaction, the One’s objection will be down to seeing anger as a loss of self-control.

Anger in the Nine

The Nine, as the primary type of the triad, can be most out of touch with their instinctual energy. That does not mean it is not there, but average level Nines tend to split it off from thoughts and feelings in a way that the moving energy of the instinctual centre is often used in a kind of “autopilot mode” (where others might sense the quality of the Nine’s energy, whereas the Nines themselves are out to lunch, awareness-wise). If the Nines actually gets upset, their impulse is to distract themselves or otherwise diffuse the anger, as there is generally a sense — whether this is conscious or not — that the instinctual energy within might otherwise risk erupting beyond their control in a destructive manner. The Nine, too, will often deny being angry when asked about it (getting even angrier and denying it even stronger if you keep bringing it up).

Anyone who has had a decent introduction to the model is likely to have heard the above distinctions. But then, there is the other perspective, which is more subtle — and therefore often harder to explain, requiring a more in-depth understanding of the model as such.

What are we referring to when we say the types in the instinctive triad are “anger types”?

Looking at the descriptions above, obviously we could just as well go on to talk about how Twos, Threes, and all of the other types typically process and express anger (but, since the instinctual energy is not as paramount to their psychological make-up, that would not be as meaningful as looking at their corresponding energy from the emotional and mental realms respectively). Because, as we already established, everyone gets angry. So what is the deal with these three types?

“Anger” as instinctual energy

Even if we look at the Eights — the type most likely to quite unapologetically direct their instinctual energy outwards and have no qualms about announcing it when they are furious — it’s not like even they are necessarily angry, as a state of mind, all of the time (or in some cases, even a lot). The One and certainly the Nine, even less so. Rather, the common theme of these three types is that they are motivated by the energy of anger, which is to say the energy of instinct; the energy of trying to make the world (or life) bend to how I think it should be and efforts to control (or resist) opposing forces, while at the same time resisting being affected by said forces themselves.

This energy generally operates at a deeper plane of existence than our everyday awareness stretches to. One reason for this is that its pure expression was often frowned upon, reprimanded, shamed or even outright punished in our childhood. When little children experience and experiment with their access to this instinctual energy (which for them constitutes a much bigger part of their overall experience than it does for the adults), adults often become uncomfortable, as they in turn were raised to contain or restrict theirs.

A deeper plane of experience

Another reason, though, is that most cultures and societies do not put the instinctual energy at the forefront of everyday life. We are busy functioning at what is generally considered a “higher” level of existence than the instinctual: the cognitive level, mostly, possibly with a little heart energy dropped into the mix when it’s safe and considered appropriate to do so.

Even in solitude, when there’s no one around to see it, the host of other features in our systems and the lack of societal awareness of the instinctual realm mean that most of us are still largely unaware of the instinctual energy. Alone, we might be aware of emotions, reactions or other parts of our experience that feel private — and sure, for the infamous Eight as well as for others, this might occasionally include feeling mightily pissed off or even raging. But it would be rare for us to just stand in that, experiencing the source of this force itself.

The instinctual energy lives at a deeper level of experience than just mood or reactivity. For most people, when they access this force experientially, it does not even feel like “anger”, but just raw, instinctual power. But closer to the surface level, the ego quickly interprets this experience as “anger” and reacts to it in varying ways — in the Eight, by embracing it and often abusing it, in the One, controlling it and trying to suppress it, and in the Nine, either pretending it’s not there or denying that it could possibly contribute positively to anything.

* * *

Next time you feel angry — for whatever reason, to whatever degree and regardless of which personality type you have, and when you have the opportunity to safely do so — you might experiment with the energy of it. Put the mental narrative about whatever situation gave rise to it aside for a minute or two, and just feel the energy of anger in your body. Let it inhabit you, feel its physical energy within. Give it a shape, or a sound, or both. Move with it. Let it spend itself. The resulting joy might surprise you ❤️

Heart and gut “distinguished” (at least for relatively creative, flowing and open minds 😉)

Centres of intelligence, Member´s

Some people report confusion when it comes to the expression of the gut centre and heart centre, respectively. And sure — not only for “head types” but for all of us, it’s easy to see “head” on the one side and “not head” on the other. In part, this is because our general western culture likes dividing things into dual relationships: black and white, right and wrong, day and night.

As opposed to our culture, nature is not built around duality, but around “the law of three”. There tends to be three forces coming together to create the whole, rather than just two opposites. And this is true for the centres, too. (That is — this is one way to look at it. Technically, the gut centre is actually three centres in itself. It’s always a matter of which level you choose to view something on, and from 😉)

Separating two into three

Anyway. Back to the lacking distinction between the gut and the heart. Because we do have three centres, but listening to our everyday language, you wouldn’t have guessed this was the case. Our culture has us talking about “thought and feeling” (sweeping both heart and gut messages in under the “feeling” umbrella) or the rational and the “irrational” (where the latter just means “not of the head”). And it doesn’t help that we use the word “feel” not only for things like sadness and joy, but also for things like hunger, resistance and wanting.

So what is the distinction? Well, there are a few, of course. If we’re willing to step out of our need for intellectual, quantifiable definitions for a while, the most palpable (yet totally non-palpable) way for me to make the distinction by energy. (I know this’ll rub a few scientists the wrong way; if you’re one of them, just substitute something like “tone”, “climate” or “air”, and you’ll be fine.) The energy climate of the gut and that of the heart are quite dissimilar.

The energy climate of the gut

The gut has an almost binary energy to it. Here, things are actually mostly black and white, on or off, here or there, alive or dead, towards or away from. It’s this or that, and the choices each time seem quite finite. For the gut, it’s totally fine to be all for or all against something. It doesn’t need, and isn’t really capable of, being politically correct or nuanced in its interpretations. If you’re a visual person, perhaps colours work, too, to describe this: In the gut centre, it’s as if the colours were quite distinct and clear, either this or that.

Exploring the instincts is a very good way to get a sense of what this centre is about. Welcome to the free webinar on Jan 25:th or even the 5-module, experiential course starting Feb 8:th!

The energy climate of the heart

In the heart, by contrast, it’s all about infinite nuances, and it has a sort of open-ended feel to it. The heart offers an abundance of details and parameters; it offers technicolour, nuance and dimensions. It’s not that the heart can’t be exact – it’s more that it’s all-inclusive, and infinitely expressive. Also, the heart is hallmarked by its receptivity. It’s sensitive, and responsive. While the gut is scans for input, interprets that input, keeps us alive, grounding us and guiding us on our way, geared towards survival and self-extension, the heart tells us why (at least sometimes 😉), reveals what we feel and lets us relate to and mirror each other and ourselves, geared towards compassionate inclusiveness and oneness.

Say what?

For some of you, that possibly said a lot, while others will have a face like a nesting-box for birds. I get that. Frankly, I don’t think the above descriptions would have told me much when I first started looking into these things. So, it’s time to fill out this distinction with some less flowery language. Since I did that at some length in Aspects of you, I’ve borrowed a couple of sections from the book to complement the above energetic descriptions.

The instinctual centre: Being and primal immediacy

I Aspects of you, in the description of the instinctual centre, we find this paragraph:

The most basic aspect of this centre is the housing of innate, biological impulses that help us survive. They are to a large extent unconscious and autonomous, and we share them (or at least, some of them) with all other animals. Apart from instinct, or perhaps rather as an extension of it, there are many areas that this centre is responsible for. It is concerned with grounding — that is, a sense of physical stability and being anchored within — wants, power, boundaries, territory, attraction/repulsion, control, resistance, presence, directness, hunches, primal feelings like fear and rage1, and other primal and instinctual matters. Quite literally, the instinctual intelligence mobilises us, either for/towards or against/away from things. In this sense, this intelligence can be said to be quite black and white in nature: it’s this way or that, yes or no, on or off. Our inner “yes” or “no” then for example makes us put up boundaries, strive for a certain amount of control and resist things that we don’t seem to be able to control in any other way.

I think that this, coupled with the more flowery descriptions in the beginning, paints a pretty solid picture of the instinctual centre. Just as when we are trying to understand personality types, the trick is getting the overall energetic climate as well as the separate pieces of the description.

The heart centre: Love and responsiveness

I Aspects of you, in the description of the heart centre, are these paragraphs:

When we mention the heart, I’m sure one thing that most people instantly think about is love. And sure, love is a big part of it — you could say love is for the heart what being is for the gut: the very nature of the centre itself. Love, as such, also speaks of something else that is closely connected to the heart centre: the topic of relating and otherness, and — the other side of the coin — oneness. I said about the gut that it’s about being; not about who or how we are, but just the fact that we are. In the heart centre, the who enters into the picture. And for me to be a who, I have to be in relation to something: the world, others, God or even myself. By the same token, the heart centre is concerned with values — what is true for me, and how does this truth need to be expressed? I gain a sense of my who through what I value and how those values are expressed in my everyday life. In connection with this, we also find our self-image and our sense of self-worth.

Often, the heart is also said to house our feelings. // They can be feelings of sorrow, disappointment, hope, grief, longing, loneliness, submission, despondency, despair, compassion, loss, joy, sadness, exhilaration, and so on, in infinite shades of emotional responses.

There is a lot to say about the heart, for sure. Just as there is a lot to say about the head and the gut. For now though, I’ll leave this exploration here. Of course, if you want to explore further, you are very welcome to buy the book ❤️.

Note: “centres” — not “Enneagram centre triads”

Please be clear that I’m not talking about personality types here. It’s not that gut types are distinct and two-dimensional, whereas heart types are a sea of nuance and multi-dimensionality. This is about the centres, of which we all possess all three, fully and equally. If you’re seeking to understand the difference between the instinctive triad and the heart triad on the Enneagram, sure, you can glean some subtle understanding of that here — but mostly, this is about the centres in all of us.