process Archives — Exploring the ENNEAGRAM

You can get lost in the light, too — mind the #1 spiritual bypass

Where inner growth is concerned, the point surely is weeding out darkness, airing out what’s been bottled up and increasingly dwell in the light — yes? Weeeell. As it turns out, hiding out in “the light” and chastising itself from there a favourite pastime for the ego.

Of course, this may not be news exactly. But yet, I encounter people who have been on the path towards inner growth, psychological balance and deepening spiritual maturity for years and years, and I still see them fall into this trap. And the trap basically reads: mental clarity and realisation in the head centre, allowing and befriending what emerges from the heart centre, and watching-from-a-distance and being-careful-not-to-trust-it-entirely when it comes to the instinctual realm. And the really slippery bit is, we do not even necessarily realise that it is instinctual material we are shunning; often, we believe it to be “old thought patterns” or “emotional pitfalls” that we opt not to go into because we “already know what it is”.

The instinctual realm, however, constitutes a BIG part of what true inner work is about. For many years, I facilitated experiential courses that were largely about navigating and finding your way into — and onwards with — the invaluable properties that are found there. Leaving each time, people had new-found strength, ability to both say yes and no, access to whether they wanted to say yes or no, a deeper sense of self-compassion, and overall a truer relationship to themselves and who they were. And that wasn’t just what we in the faculty believed — they said as much, in endorsement after endorsement. And it was as rewarding to guide them through it as it was glorious to watch the result.

The gut and the instinctual realm — always and forever the base

Obviously, we did heart and mind work, too. And as I said above, often this material is intertwined and will have to be addressed in tandem. But without a solid foundation in the gut, we are going to build our insights and realisations on feeble ground, and whatever we find will be easily washed away as soon as these forgotten aspects of ourselves suddenly cry out for attention. And trust me — at some point, they will.

I regularly come across people saying, “Oh, you’re a gut type, sure that would be your take on things. But see, I’m a heart (or head) type, so I need to do it differently.” This, however, is not strictly true. In fact, it’s multiple shades of wrong. First off, our centre triad tells us what we are over-identifying with. So sure, your over-identification with the heart might have you leaning towards paths of the heart, and over-identification might have you leaning towards theories, reasoning and cognitive understanding rather than grounding practices. And sure, as a type from the instinctual centre, I might like “physical stuff”. However, an over-identification with the instinctual centre is not necessarily advocating for grounding practices, either. As as Eight, I want to use my body for stuff, and it’s not like my ego screams for me grounding myself in Being. As a One, I often want to keep the body in check, so again, I might gravitate towards physical exercises — but they sure as heck won’t be about embracing my instinctual impulses and build a stronger awareness of them. As a Nine I like to hang out in the body, but mostly as a tool for zoning out and taking off on the next bus to Daydream Land. My point is, “belly types” aren’t necessarily doing what we need to be doing with our bodies. Often it only looks that way.

When it only looks that way

So, everyone needs grounding for any inner work to be meaningful. This is also illustrated by one of my favourite distinctions: the one between choosing on the one hand and knowing what you want on the other. As an Eight, and a sexual Eight at that, it’s usually easy for me to choose. “You always know what you want” is something I’ve heard more times than I care to remember. And for a long time I believed that was true. Then I realised that choosing from a given set of alternatives is not the same as knowing what you want — not coming from a given set of options, but from you.

With me, it looked like I knew, but that was primarily because I often wanted something to happen, and it was relatively easy to me to choose what to do next in order to accomplish that. However, none of that meant that I’d actually checked in with myself, deeply, as to what I really wanted. I chose within the confines of what I deemed doable in the circumstances. Don’t get me wrong, I had great faith (bordering on hubris) in my abilities. But I wasn’t going to really delve into my heart’s desires, lest they were actually out of reach for me — as that would mean dipping into my vulnerability … er, no thanks. So my “wants”, rather than being the true raw features of the gut that real desire is, were diluted, weighed and strategically moderated by my ego before I even knew about them.

Life grows from the ground up

But I digress. My point is that my preference for instinctual awareness, for starting from the roots, do not stem from “being a belly type”. It stems from two major understandings: That everyone has to build presence in each of the three centres (at least, let’s call them three for now), and that any real growth starts from the ground. Whatever type we are, as long as our aim is to grow our awareness while still in a physical body, we all need a stable foundation, grounded in our bodies. Of course, we can pick and choose and blend the formats of our practice, but when it’s all said and done, any progress in the heart or mind won’t really blossom if there are no roots.

Fear of the dark: it’s not just for children

Surprisingly often, though, and in many cases even while paying lip service to non-duality or the importance of a well-rounded self-awareness, people shun the dark. They have discovered the futility of various ego agendas and perhaps been plagued by the anxiety, depression, anger, self-doubt, and whatever else has come from those — and they’ve had enough. “I know it’s bulls*it, I know it’s only mind games, so I just do not buy into it when I find myself thinking [violent/self-demeaning/destructive] thoughts.” “I know this old feeling is just a symptom of [my lack of self-esteem/an ‘insignificant’ loss/my old would playing up], so I distract myself until it passes. It serves no real purpose anyway.” And that’s totally reasonable, right?

As it turns out — no, not entirely. In fact, not at all. Because as long as the thought or feeling or desire is back, and even if only one tiny speck of your system believes it, you haven’t, in fact, dealt with it. You and that belief, fear, emotion, or whatever it is, are not done yet. Now, some people will in fact be “done” enough that the old programme is immediately seen through and not bought into even a little bit — but if this is truly the case for you, neither will it make you feel any kind of bad, stressed out, depressed, or anything else on the negative side if you hang out with it for a while.

Spiritual bypass by means of light

And this is where the bypass-possibility comes in. At some point in the percentages, we convince ourselves that our remaining investment in a certain thought, fear or concept is so small that it’s more or less gone from our system. At that point, it might start feeling beneath us to even explore it. I mean, we don’t really believe it any longer. At least not when asked about it.

But the interesting question is not what we believe when asked, but what we believe judging by our dreams, by our semi-concious fears and worries, by our spontaneous reactions, or by the thoughts that come to the surface after a couple of sleepless nights, or after a nasty fight, or along with a bad hangover or in other situations where the ego’s resilience is temporarily knocked out. What then? That is where we meet some of the stuff we’ve shoved into the darkness.

The advanced course

When that happens — when we have a moment of weakness and temporarily buy into an old fear or arrogance or belief again — that is actually a precious gift. (Sure, it doesn’t feel like one at the time, but take that as confirmation.) Because, by now in our inner progress, where we currently stand in our level of awareness, this old issue hardly ever comes up. But it still lingers somewhere in our psyche, and this temporary lapse of inner gate-keeping sheds light on this fact.

So next time an issue resurfaces that you thought you dealt with for the last time, don’t take this as a sign you are not as far along as you might have thought. It might just as well be a sign that you’ve entered into the advanced course without realising it! Or, of course, you might not be as far along as you thought. 😉 … but the point is, it does not matter. In any case, the appropriate response is taking a moment to yourself, breathing and going into the issue, not running from it or flat-out denying it as you have “been there, done that”.

And by the way, the idea of “how far along” we are is an ego construct, and a rather inane one, too. To properly evaluate this, even in theory, would require that we know how where someone started, what terrain they have travelled, as well as how far they have yet to go— and since at least one of these parameters is always unknown, even for ourselves, the declaration is meaningless.

So is “the dark” just the work we’ve yet to do?

Most people will, in theory at least, agree to the above when it’s pointed out to them. But it doesn’t end there. Darkness or shadows, as opposed to light, are not signs of imperfection, or flaws, or evil, or even “work to be done”. Darkness is the other side of light. It is, in fact, absolutely necessary for “light” to even mean something. And existentially, it is our animal nature, our roots, our origins as earthly creatures. Neither foetuses nor seeds sprout in the light. They take hold, grow, and develop in the darkness of the soil, of the womb, of the origin of matter. As long as we exist in a world of duality — meaning, as long as we are alive in a physical body — dark is as essential as light. And it does not equal “the bad”; it equals fertility. It equals life. Because yes, life needs light. But it also needs darkness.

We are dual beings. Yes, Being is non-dual, but we, in our human existence, are compounds of light and darkness, subtlety and weight, energy and mass, animal nature and higher consciousness. This seems to be our distinguishing feature. And by emphasising the light and shying away from the soft, infinite, darkness of potentiality, we rob ourselves of half the heritage of what makes us human. Which by any yardstick would have to be what we are here to explore, would it not? So do not shy away.

“Nothing human is alien to me”

The Roman African playwright Publius Terentius Afer, in some countries better known as Terence, is perhaps best known for the quote Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto, or “I am human, and I think nothing human is alien to me”. I have no idea whether this man put the empire’s coins where his mouth was, but the quote always spoke volumes to me. If anything human is indeed still foreign to me, I still have work to do. And if we are talking about a human aspect that I am intimately acquainted with, then it will keep showing up within me until I familiarise myself with it.

But that is where it gets tricky. Obviously, “familiarising” ourselves does not mean indulging each and every impulse that that comes along. And as humans, if we know (or suspect or just decide) that an impulse is not going to be acted upon, we tend to prefer to ignore it as best we can. This can look like “choosing not to indulge” certain patterns of thought, certain desires, and/or certain feelings supported by the rationalisation that we “know what they are” and they “just bring misery anyway”. So we suppress them.

But, as I said, if they do make an entrance, it means, quite obviously, that they are still there. They remain in our system, waiting to be acknowledged. “Familiarising ourselves” means being interested in them. Zooming in, rather than out and away. Being curious. Realising that the only way we’ll get where we want to go is by allowing nothing human to be alien to us — or, at the very least, no aspects of humanness plainly pertaining to ourselves. How can we heal, and grow, and flourish, unless we bring all of ourselves? The concept of weeding stuff out by pushing it down only has it seep out in other (and usually more uncomfortable, expensive, and/or dangerous) ways.

Buried treasures in the darkness

So we need to also venture into the “darkness”. And when we do so — with curiosity and devoid of any judgement — we find that it contains so much more than the less-palatable parts of ourselves that we shoved in there because that was the only way we could handle them at the time. We find rest. We find healing. We find unknown potential, fertile ground, and an indefinite power to grow. And most of all, we get a three-dimensional world, with highlights, shadows, depth and perspective. And all these treasures are buried here, mixed in with our fears, anxieties, frustrations, rage, and innermost wounding. It is all part of the same package, and the only way to access them is to open it.

We do not have to dive in, expose ourselves to all of it at once, to get it over with “once and for all”. In fact, this is not even possible (at least not unless we involve mind-altering substances, which has been known to happen). That, of course, does not stop people from trying. There are courses designed to provoke your strongest defences, only to let them crash and burn to reveal your true, most vulnerable and helpless self. To some people, that sounds like a good idea. Rip off the plaster, swallow the medicine in one gulp, get the discomfort out of the way, “Bring it on, I can take it!”

The body knows —
and just like that, we’re back to instinct

But you know, that’s not such a good idea. Sure, you might break through some of the defences then and there by this war-fashion approach. You might also re-traumatise yourself quite severely, or if not that, still have your shattered defences quickly rally to build an even stronger fortress for your biggest hurts, making it harder yet to coax then into awareness, allowing them within you, befriending them and eventually releasing any constrictions they bring with them.

In my experience, awareness goes a long, long way towards releasing us from destructive patterns and things that constrict or limit us. But it’s important to know what awareness means in this context. It does not mean mental understanding. Usually such understanding follows at some point (although there are exceptions), but this awareness starts way deeper. It’s absolutely imperative that we let the body guide the way, that we respect when it’s enough for now, that we explore with self-compassion and curiosity, and that we do not judge ourselves for what we find. If we can allow whatever “dark” material to be part of us in this way, we provide the means for it to continue on its journey. Sometimes, that means evaporating into nothing. At other times, it morphs into a strength or skill. There’s no telling what will happen to it, and it is not our choice. We can just create the opportunity, allow, open the door, and stay present. When we do, untold magic can occur — all thanks to the darkness ❤️.

PS — By the way, the light is fantastic, too. But they need each other. For life in a human body, choosing only one of either of these is where the trouble starts 😉.

Don Riso’s “Levels of Development” — the dynamics of ego-identification

Levels of Development

An often marginalised although critical part of the understanding of Enneagram points is the vertical aspect of balance that Don Riso discovered, mapped out and coined the Levels of Development. The levels explain how the same type can spawn saints as well as terrorists (and how some people could go from one to the other in one life-span) — and, at the same time, highlights how each type’s main theme still threads from one end to the other on this spectrum.

Without these levels, the concept of type easily becomes the boxy categorising system that outsiders sometimes take the Enneagram to be, where people of the same type are expected to fit into the same description, sporting the same array of traits and behaviours, regardless of their psychological maturity or internal balance. With the levels, the vertical axis opens up the Enneagram to a three-dimensional model, living and changing, yet still from a consistent structure. This is where the Enneagram starts resembling the nature of the human psyche and, as a result of that, becomes truly useful.

The levels distinguishing themselves

The story I heard from Riso himself was that as he was sorting hallmark traits and behaviours for the types, he was confounded by how different people of the same type could be. He realised that each Enneagram point incorporated a broad spectrum where the strength of ego-identification — and consequently the quality of psychological maturity and balance — affected how the same main themes of a point were expressed.

On looking further into the shifting qualities, he started to sort each type’s characteristics into piles of what seemed to be different levels of perspectives, traits and behaviours — and lo and behold, he ended up with nine stacks of traits for each type. Thus, the nine “Levels of Development” were born.

Two noteworthy aspects

Or, perhaps it would be more correct to say that they were discovered. Two things about the levels are immediately striking me as rather too advanced to be forcefully contrived. One is that the levels are not only distinguishable within each type, but also independent of type. This means that we can see the characteristics of each level in itself, without talking about specific points. Then, when we do look at the types, we can see what the properties of a given level mean for that specific type, while still conforming to the general description.

The other thing is that the nine levels neatly fall into three larger categories, each containing three levels. While one could argue that we could choose the total amount of levels we wanted to divide behaviours into, depending on how we preferred to cluster traits and behaviours, it just also so happens that the three larger flights of three-levels-each do make sense. The gap between levels — as in what needs go happen for a shift and the likelihood of the shift happening — is markedly more pronounced between levels 3 and 4 and 6 and 7 respectively.

These two noteworthy things tell me that either the levels point to a true constant in the structure and operations of the human psyche, or, if they are a made-up representation, it took an incredible amount of work and a good measure of genius to put them together. Either way, I bow down to Don Riso for this achievement. Later he refined and deepened the insights into the levels together with Russ Hudson, mapping out aspects like what particular twist of each type’s basic fear was active on each level for that type. But we’ll get back to that.

Balance in the long term or wobbliness here and now?

The three ”storeys” of three-levels-each, Don called the healthy, average and unhealthy levels. While I’m not entirely sure “development” is the best word for what the levels are about, here, in my opinion, he absolutely nailed it. What the levels show us, after all, is psychological health — or, for those in inner work, how strongly we identify with the ego at any given point. And while our development is unlikely to fluctuate over a day, our level of ego-identification undoubtedly might.

Here, an important insight about the levels comes in: While we might see them as a measure of how we ascend or descend over time, they can also describe how we sometimes see-saw between them oven a much shorter time-span.

“The peg and the elastic band”

Don and Russ have described it like this: Picture the levels as a vertical board with nine holes drilled into it. Then picture yourself, or your presence and awareness, as a wooden peg with an elastic band at the end.

Your peg is then plugged into one of the holes, representing what we might call your centre of gravity; the level that you tend to gravitate back to, longer term, at this point in your life. Your default level, to put it simply. If you look at the levels for your type, and then you think a number of years back or back to a major event in your life, you might find that your peg has indeed moved over time. This would mean your “default level” or centre of gravity has changed. But, on the other hand, just thinking three days back (or even just back to this morning), it might be clear to you that you don’t steadily and unfalteringly operate from where your peg is located. Rather, you might sometimes seem to be inhabiting multiple levels over the course of a single day.

This is where the elastic band comes in. Over the course of a day or week, we might bounce both upwards and downwards from our default. Something happens which knocks us off balance, and we react from a pettier, more worked up or more rigid place than we normally would. Or we have a series of really ego-boosting things happen to us in quick succession, leaving us feeling and behaving more magnanimous, generous or forgiving than our default level would suggest.

Awareness and growth in and from the levels

So we need to be aware of both “the peg” — i e, centre of gravity or default level — and “the elastic band” — i e, our tendency to fluctuate in presence and awareness as we go about our day. The real focus of inner work is of course to shift the peg. While we can’t control everything or even most of what happens to us, investing unto having circumstances lifting us upwards is not very productive. (Neither does it work, obviously, as the point true of inner balance is being less affected either way by whatever happens on the surface.) However, shifting our default level helps us live in greater balance, less likely to be knocked sideways by life’s curved balls.

On the other hand, inner work is often most efficient when tailored to your expression in the current situation, whether that represents your default level or a shorter detour to the furthest reaches of the elastic band. I played with this thought, and it resulted in the pdf booklet Climbing the Levels of Development, where I describe my thoughts around this and offer ways to do it. By popular demand, it also morphed into the course Exploring, climbing and experiencing the Levels of Development. I’ll say a bit more about this at the end of this article.

An overview of the three health-spans: healthy, average and unhealthy

The healthy levels

When someone’s centre of gravity is in the healthy span, we can assume it is at level 2 or 3, as individuals residing permanently at level 1 would be exceedingly few and far between. What characterises our life and consciousness at these levels is our relatively transparent ego and our relaxed relationship to it. It’s there, and we can see its workings, but we don’t take it to be who we are; that is, we don’t invest all of ourselves in it’s agendas. We can notice it in a positive self-image, where we put the gifts of our Enneagram point to good use, and in us actively contributing to society by way of our type-specific capacities and aptitudes. In the healthy span, there is a deep trust in these qualities, and others, being supported from within. We make use of them, but there is no sense of us having to produce them or uphold them for them to stay with us.

The point of integration*

Also, at the healthy levels, we naturally integrate some insights that are a given at the healthy level for our point of integration (or “heart point”; the one that goes against the direction of the arrows on the lines inside the Enneagram symbol). As an Eight, while the “shutting-off-my-heart-to-protect-myself-from-sensitivity” approach might be deeply ingrained in my type, on the healthy levels, to a varying degree, I open to sensitivity, compassion and relationships like a healthy Two, thus mitigating the harshness. As a One, with my habitual tensions, self-control and suppressing instincts, in the healthy span I allow more spontaneity and value my instinctual responses, like a healthy Seven — and so on.

The type passion

At these levels, the passions — the type-specific “vices” that we are partial to — are already discernible, but as with all the ego features here, they are no big deal. The fact that we seem take be special delight in something (fact-collecting, intensity, giving, or whatever it may be) is not a problem, as long as we don’t make this our permanent centre of attention or decide that it’s me. And at the healthy levels, we won’t.

The gap between Level 3 and Level 4

Whereas a shift in balance and identification presence occurs in each shift from one individual level to the next, these shifts are more marked and significant when then also move us between different health-spans — between the healthy and average spans, or between average and unhealthy. And the reason is that something qualitatively changes in our identification and perspectives at these points.

Remember I said above that Don and Russ also identified what specific fear and consequent desire/focus was operative on each level. The particular fear that might arise on Level 3 (which, if bought into, produces the desire/focus of Level 4, i e, the first on the average levels) was coined the Wake-up Call, for the reason that if we keep our awareness at Level 3 and continue to call the ego’s activities out, it is. If we live consistently at Level 3, our type’s Wake-up Call will be extremely familiar to us.

Then again, it might also be that this fear (or way of seeing the world) is so familiar that we don’t even notice it, but just buy straight into it. This fear basically whispers: This is not enough. You need to crank up the volume of “you”. And if we buy into that, and moreover, to the idea that the ego has the solutions — well, then the ego has won the battle for now, and nudged us well and truly down on Level 4, where our identification lies primarily with the ego.

The average levels

Here, the climate is different. Having established a stronger grip (so to speak; obviously the ego does no such thing as it’s only a thought construct — but it often helps to talk about it as an entity in its own right, and with its own agenda), the ego is no longer as transparent. We have taken the step over to the other side of a border: a side where we concede that yes, it seems to know stuff that is important for our continued safety, and we’d better listen to it more closely. And so, we start believing that we have to do our personality, produce our gifts and actively show them off to the world as they don’t really count unless we can get others to mirror them back to us and see us the way we think we need to be seen.

The type fixation

At this point, too, our type fixation comes into the picture, simultaneously with the insight from our point of integration being pushed further and further away from consciousness. As an Eight, to continue our type example, I start objectifying** people (including myself), to toughen myself up so I can do what’s needed (or so my ego would claim). This obviously directly counteracts my Twoish, healthy insights about compassion and sensitivity, and the combined hardening and increased ego-identification firmly establishes my new default level as Level 4, in the average range. In the case of the One, in the same way, I start judging myself and others more harshly — especially, of course, for any improper (again, by the ego’s standards) impulses and instinctual reactions, which effectively pushes my Sevenish joi-de-vivre and spontaneity further away from the toolbox.

The stress point*

Yet another thing that might happen when we leave the healthy levels is that our point of stress (the one along the direction of the arrows on the lines inside the Enneagram symbol) makes itself known. It’s not necessarily that the Eight starts looking like a Five, or the One like a Four — but rather, that other point starts subtly tainting the whole gestalt of the original point. The lower the Eight sinks in the levels, the more s/he develops an increasing tendency to be secretive and go into preparatory mode, like a lower average Five. The lower a One sinks, the more s/he will tend to feel misunderstood and victimised, like a lower average Four. This tendency can get even stronger as the person descends into the unhealthy realm.

A sign that I am sinking into the lower average levels is that I start imposing my own greatest fears (which at this point might not be conscious) on others. The Eight, whose basic fear is being harmed, violated or controlled might start subjecting other people to the feeling of being violated or controlled. The One, whose basic fear is to be bad, corrupt and evil will judge others in a way that makes them feel that way — et cetera. And while this might be easy to spot for a bystander who happens to know about this dynamic, to myself, it will just feel like “reality”.

The gap between Level 6 and Level 7

But as ego-ridden as I might be there, at Level 6, in the same way as with the shift from healthy to average, shifting from the average realm into the unhealthy is a bigger one than between individual levels within the same health-span. It’s like something is built into the psyche to make it harder for us to traverse these larger gaps — for better or for worse, as it is true in both directions.

This means that it’s not enough with a minor inconvenience to push someone down into the unhealthy realm. It takes a more serious crisis without adequate support, or perhaps an unfortunate row of smaller incidents that just become too much to handle. And just like with the former gap, Don and Russ identified what they called the Red Flag Fear for each type: the fear that, if we respond to it with blind reactivity, could make us shift into the unhealthy realm.

The unhealthy levels

According to The Wisdom of the Enneagram, it’s not that common that people actually move their centre of gravity down into the unhealthy levels. We might suffer a blow, and the ego might ramp up its game — but since it’s uncomfortable to live there, this “red flag” (which tends to be based on reality, pointing to something that is actually happening) might shake me up enough to realise that something has gone seriously out of balance and that I need to snap out of it somehow.

If we do, however, what characterises the climate in the unhealthy levels is that the ego basically has pulled out all the stops. While in the average range we still had some investment into how we came off to others, in the unhealthy range, we increasingly don’t care. It’s like we are quickly losing any last shred of hope we had to get our basic desire (as indicated by our basic fear) fulfilled, and now we’re settling for any substitute we can find.

What has happened, although we would not see that ourselves, is that we have lost touch with our true nature. We live to an ever larger extent in our own projections, reactions and illusions, and we can no longer reliably distinguish actual reality from our fears or theories around it. At this point, even if we do realise we are in trouble and need to get out, we are quite incapable of climbing out of the hole we’ve dug for ourselves without help from the outside.

(If this is you, seek help. If you have a friend or loved one that you believe has fallen into the unhealthy level-span, the best thing you can to for them is get them professional help. Further points on this — and on working through and from the levels in general — can be found in the booklet Climbing the Levels of Development.)

Nuances and further insights

Obviously, there are further distinctions to be made between each of the individual levels within each health-span — but as blog entries go, this one is getting kind of lengthy anyway 😉. If you want brief descriptions of each level, the booklet is a good source of information. And if you really want to sink your teeth into the level dynamics and see what each level tends to mean for each individual type, I refer to Personality Types, where this is mapped out in some depth.

Working yourself up the levels …

In theory, “all” we need to do to climb up the levels is realising all the ways in which we live from our basic fear, and let go of those. However, that is easier said than done; otherwise we’d all happily hang out in the healthy levels on a permanent basis. But there is a reason the middle range is called “average” — it is where most people have their default most of the time 😉.

So if I am currently — because of my default level or courtesy of a temporary flair of reactivity — acting from, say, a Level 5 or 6 perspective on reality and myself, then I’m not likely to respond too well to the request that I look into my basic fear. I’m just not there, so any such practices, were I to be persuaded to do them at all, would be an intellectual exercise at best. It would not reach my heart or gut to be integrated there, and thus not have any meaningful effect on my life, world-view or way of handling myself. But then what can I do to shift the current energy?

… it easier if you start where you are

That was the question that prompted me to start considering tailor-made exercises and perspectives for each level, which ended up in the aforementioned booklet. The booklet contains level-related insights about how the ego-identification plays out started brewing slowly together with my own observations in working with people for inner growth and self-awareness for almost 20 years. What resulted was insights, guidance and tips for how we can, in a way, cater our inner work to the ego’s preferences so that it can be persuaded to do what will ultimately loosen its grip. (And believe me, more than anything, the ego wants to rest. It just does not know that yet ❤️)

Notes

*) In relation to the inner lines (or arrows) of the Enneagram, I often come across the view that the idea of a direction of stress and another for integration is an obsolete theory that has long since been debunked. “We can move in either direction in both stress and integration”, goes the argument, “and it doesn’t necessarily only just go one way”. While this is true (and it’s also true that we can react to various circumstances in a myriad of ways, as we are human beings and individuals and not a set category on a theoretic model), the conclusion that this invalidates the directions is faulty. The original arrows and their directions (which have a mathematical source) are significant, and this is how. It’s not about mimicking behaviour, it’s about an overall influence on the core type from the arrow point. This influence can be subtle, but nonetheless, it taints the original type in a way that has some significance for our inner work and growth.

**) The original fixation that Ichazo put with the Eight was vengeance. However, in Russ Hudson’s teachings, he developed the wording of some of the fixations to better represent what actually happens in the type in question. Eight is one such type, and the word he came up with was objectification.

What inner work and self-discovery is really about

Inner growth

Recent events brought to light for me how harshly we seem to judge ourselves for being human, and — paradoxically — for being willing to grow. Does that sound strange? It is. But it’s also very normal.

We might think we behave badly, that we appear foolish or flawed, when we’re just doing what we’re capable of in the moment — living as “me”, right now, doing what we do, with the level of presence that we have in this moment.

It’s a bit ironic, as — in Enneagram circles not least of all — it should be pretty clear that the vast majority of people (including individuals high up the levels of health and balance) have their own ways of going about things, and that we don’t always march to the same drum, that we don’t always feel, notice or bring attention to the same things. Neither are we supposed to. We each bring our part to the equation (or not, as the case may be), and then things play out — and hopefully, we learn and integrate something. How could this be bad, or foolish, or flawed? Rather, from looking around me, even in the healthiest relationships and contexts I can think of, that seems to be the way things are meant to go. But then our superego comes in and judges some of it as “bad” and some of it as “good”.

“Awareness is right, unawareness is wrong”

Osho, when asked a question about right or wrong, once summed it up as “awareness is right; unawareness is wrong”. And while my superego can occasionally have a field day with that definition, too, it’s a better summary than most others I’ve heard, especially when inner growth is the objective.

Having wants, feelings and reactions, living and interacting in the world, watching ourselves doing it and sharing whatever feels useful is a big part — if not all — of what inner work is about. Sometimes, feathers get ruffled. That’s inevitable. But the purpose is not to score points by trying to not be who we are. The purpose is being ourselves, and chipping away, bit by bit, at the traps we set for ourselves, the judgements we make about ourselves, the hopeless hoops our superego has us jump through. The chipping happens by us noticing, and by sometimes sharing what we notice. This, in my experience, is the only process that truly decreases fixations and ego strongholds, and, as a result, offers more freedom ❤️

Bringing the space — our collective need for room to digest and process

Enneagram, Enneagram groups, Inner growth

When I have had Enneagram courses, we’ve looked into the Hornevian groups. We look at the different social strategies, what they are and what they contribute. Usually, we have the different groups gather and reflect on themselves and the others. And often, the same thing happens — a thing which, as I see it, illustrates a deep need in our current society.

You know the Hornevian groups? It’s the three-by-three cut out of the types that Don Riso and Russ Hudson named after the German psychoanalyst Karen Horney. Horney, in turn, identified three interpersonal trends in people: moving against, towards or away from others. Among the Enneagram types, Riso-Hudson identified the Three, Seven and Eight as “moving against”, while the One, Two and Six were the “moving towards”, and the Four, Five and Nine were “moving away from”.

How the different groups respond to their environment

As you might already have gathered, this says something about how each type moves in response to being poked, approached or basically just energetically touched by others. This movement is on a neurological level, but often in practice, too. The first (“moving against”) group, that they called the assertives, will rise in response to others and meet the energy of the request, event or person.

The second group (“moving towards”), got the label duty types (after initially being called “compliant types”). They respond by taking a a kind of inventory. What they take inventory of differs, but it will be some form of authority other than themselves: other people present, a group they belong to, or an internalised set of rules, for example. Then, after this orientation, they can decide how to proceed.

And the last group of three, called the withdrawn types, will respond by taking a step back. This step might be physical, but whether it is or not, it’s always energetic. They need space to process the request, event or whatever happened, before deciding how to respond.

Different processes, same (or not) outcome

This might make it sound like the withdrawn types are slower, which is not necessarily be the case. Sometimes, they are just not prepared to release half-baked thoughts the way other types might be comfortable doing; they want the whole thing complete in their mind before they open their mouth. And the same might go for feelings: they need time to sort them out, or to let stuff percolate — but then the brew is finished, they might know for much surer than someone else (or not, of course 😉). The point is, we just process things differently.

Invisible space; silent emptiness

Looking into how each group contributes to the whole, sometimes people struggle with the withdrawns — not least the withdrawns themselves. Its traits and preferences seem offer a subtraction rather than an addition). So how does this group contribute?

As a contribution, things like space and emptiness are notoriously easy to miss. Space, after all, is a nothingness, a no-thing. If someone gives nothing, they haven’t contributed anything – right? Well. A universe devoid of empty space would be a useless, infinitely dense clunk of matter. And picture a gathering where everyone asserted themselves, or tried to orient themselves towards something to adjust their aim. There would be no room to think, feel, digest or process.

Life needs space

For things to develop, grow and mature, space is needed. Stillness and pauses are needed. And as far as what the withdrawn energy contributes, in my experience, this is it 🧡.

Of course, it takes some measure of grounding for withdrawn types to bring this into a room full of non-withdrawns. If you wait for an opening before you introduce your energy, you easily get drowned out. As for the rest of us, it takes at least a bit of openness to not just plough on. It’s hard to force-feed anyone space.

But still, space — pauses, stillness and room for reflection and gestation — are so desperately needed in our world today. Increasingly, we tend to sacrifice all things “invisible” in our quest for (what seems like) greater efficiency, and this is not good for anyone. Our fellow Four, Five and Nine friends have a precious gift to share with us. Please, do ❤️

process