russ hudson Archives — Exploring the ENNEAGRAM

Spiritual and emotional work — a merger we can’t quite escape and a portal to deeper growth

The other day, I came across the question, What have you learned about the relationship between the emotional and the spiritual work? My response was that to me, any true spiritual work needs to come after, or even spring out of, emotional work — otherwise the “spirituality” stays on the surface, as fluff, while the real thing eludes us. But the concept of this relationship stayed with me, and I wanted to share some of my thoughts here ❤️

From where I stand, spiritual work and emotional work are indeed so strongly connected that they cannot quite be separated. And moreover, I’m realising anew that this often a connection that is missing when I perceive that people don’t quite get the point, or the depth, of the Enneagram. In my experience, it’s only when we see the connection between the shape of the ego personalities and the essential qualities they spring from (or rather, the perceived loss of these qualities) that things start happening at a deeper level. When we discover the truth and mechanics of the passions, rather than just listing a string of “sins” each ascribed to a particular type; when we understand the deep truth of the heart wounds (beautiful contribution, Russ!), so we can start making some sense of the origins of the whole ego machine — that’s when we can enter into the deeper “emotional work”. This work only becomes available to us once we’ve sorted through some of the psychological dynamics and the everyday emotional habits.

And behind that, or underneath, or even inside all that mud, is the proverbial lotus (or the gem in the dirt for those who respond better to settler stories than Eastern metaphors 😊).

Intrinsically connected

So to me, emotional work and spiritual work are intrinsically connected. And what’s more: we absolutely need the emotional work, as that, again, is what truly opens the door to a spirituality that is the real deal, not just an idea.

In my experience, as long as we do our personality work within the context, or with the understanding, that there is something permeating this whole experience of ego that is not, in itself, the ego — that’s enough. In fact I’d go so far as to say that any spiritual states or experiences produced any other way will more often than not be fancy a cul-de-sac — cool, fantastic, stunning experiences of clarity, insight, oneness, or whatever it is, that ultimately can’t lead anywhere, or be integrated into anything truly meaningful.

(However, the ego, of course, likes to make a big deal out of our “spirituality”. In fact, spiritual endeavours that abhor the felt sense and emotional realities are usually more “ego” than “spirit”. Oh, the irony 😎😉)

Where’s the separating membrane?

So is there a boundary that clearly distinguishes where our ego reality ends and spirituality begins? Sometimes, in the Enneagram context, it’s how it sounds. We hear that the types are just ego, and that we are meant to “transcend” them, or integrate them all in equal measure, to the point where “type” is erased. Then, presumably, we will have gone beyond the ego and realised our essential nature as spiritual beings.

Except well, no. That is not how I see it happening. It is not what I see in my fellow human beings who have genuinely realised their true, spiritual nature. Sure, it’s true that we are spiritual beings having human experiences — rather than the other way around — but the part where we are actually having these human experiences is every bit as important as the statement that the spiritual is our true home. When humanity goes, so do our bodies.

“The personal element of the divine”

In fact, the part where our spirituality meets our psychology is what I find most rewarding, and interesting to explore. In The Wisdom of the Enneagram, in the chapter on Fours, Don Riso and Russ Hudson write:

The experience of intimate contact with this flow [of the constant transformation of our true nature] opens us up to deeper contact with others and with more subtle aspects of spiritual reality. This contact always feels personal—precious and of the moment. In a sense, Fours help us recognize the unity of the personal self and other, more universal aspects of our true nature. Thus, the Fours special Essential quality is the embodiment of the personal element of the Divine.

And of course, this is not unique to Fours — what is, is the meaning for the Four of physically embodying this. But, just as they write, our personal self and the other, more universal aspect of human nature is one thing, not two.

To me, the most primal human form this takes is that of temperament. We are not born with ready-made personality types, as personality is not quite formed until a good number of years into our lives. But what is there, is temperament. Anyone who has been pregnant more than once will tell you that not even foetuses are devoid of temperament, but that babies, even before entering the world, have their own energetic constitution, which can be quite unlike their siblings. We simply arrive with something already there. We are not blank sheets coming into the world.

Temperament and the role of attachment

And of course, despite the second-to-last header, there is no membrane separating ego from essence, or spirit. There can’t really be, as the ego is not really a thing; nor, in actual fact, is essence, of course. But for this purpose, one interesting part of our human experience is attachments. Attachments are are something that we are destined to be dealing with in our lives, and it starts being a thing the moment we enter the world — successful ones, less successful ones, those we crave, and those we try to escape.

Our primary attachment style is simply one clear, early, and highly significant aspect of who we will grow up to be. And the temperament that we bring with us into this world will have a lot of influence on how we handle and perceive our attachments.

If you learn about the types from a decently knowledgeable and serious Enneagram teacher, you will learn about how attachment theory fits into their different psychological structures. There is a lot to be said about this, but what we can note is that there are three types called simply “attachment types”, three types called “frustration types” (One, Four, and Seven), and the remaining three types called “rejection types” (Two, Five, and Eight). And this terminology does not mean that only the first three relate to attachment in a way that is significant for their type pattern. All of them are attachment categories, including “Frustration” and “Rejection”. it It’s just that the primary types (on the triangle, i e Three, Six, and Nine), who carry the attachment label, represent a more clean or “naked” relationship to these particular issues, whereas the other two groups — which interestingly enough form their own “triangles” in the Enneagram symbol, only one of its lines is invisible — express two different attachment distortions.

But it’s not like the primary types all have either good attachments — or abysmal, for that matter. Nor does it mean that we only ever exhibit one pattern. Rather, everyone has all of this. Which group you are in only says something about which patterns are more central to your personality type and, more specifically, the issues you are typically having. Anyway. As I said, you can dig into this for quite a while. (If you are interested in hearing more about the attachment triads, you might want to check out Russ Hudsons online course about them, Temperament, Environment, and the Patterns that Bind Us.)

Very close to our hearts

But from a temperament perspective, and if we are sniffing about for to the demarcation between spirit and ego, here, we are getting closer. That is, the perceived loss of essential connection and its resulting passion and heart wound lie even deeper — but also, these loftier concepts can be a lot to take on emotionally at first, and it easily happens that we approach them kind of theoretically, rather than experientially. When it comes to the exploration of the attachment styles, so long as we are open and available to what they mean, it is not as easy for the ego to run and hide behind the intellectual concepts. For most of us, it’s all too easy to see — and feel — how we repeatedly get stuck in habitual frustration, rejection, or just the plain drive for attachment; how this has screwed us over more than once in our lives, and how, try as we might, they are not that easy to shift!

So if you feel you have looked into everyday, psychological patterns and typical behaviours of your Enneagram type and feel you are ready to gently and compassionately dive a little deeper, the attachment styles might be a good place to start. They are right at the door of personality — where before, we might have looked at the instinctual drives and our preferences there and how they really aren’t a part of the personality, but something more natural and animal in us, now we make the distinctive move over to personality. Attachment aspects are among the rawest and earliest components, weaving together our experience of the social instinct and the relating of the heart.

Can you feel now close we are getting? Behind our attachment patterns, there is not far to go until we meet with passions and heart wounds. And while neither of it might sound palatable to some of us, these aspects are also the key to us — to ourselves as personalities, to our “personal element of the divine”, and to our deeper, truer nature. Welcome ❤️

“Identification” in our instinctual drives — distinguishing personality from instinct

Inner growth, Instinctual drives

Did you hear about the notion that you can be either positively negatively identified with any instinctual drive — regardless of where this drive features in your preferential “stack”? Here I’ll say something about this perspective and point to some of the common misunderstandings that make this information seem like a game-changer when it comes to understanding the instincts.

My response to some questions I’ve encountered on this topic has had my thoughts go in two directions: One, what it means that an instinct is dominant or leading, and two, what is and is not part of “instinct“ in the first place — and how both of these things need some looking into. Let’s start with looking at the former.

The “doing it well” misunderstanding

The most common aha!-type realisation people share together with this material is that they didn’t think they were leading with a certain instinct as they were performing so badly at it, or at parts of it. So here’s the first thing we need to understand is that having a “dominant” instinct: it does not mean that you’re necessarily acing the arena that this particular drive is handling. As one example, I’ve seen strongly self-pres dominant people who were anorexics. Now, I think we can all agree that anorexia isn’t an efficient way to “self-preserve”, whatever spin we put on it. So leading with a certain instinct does not equal having no issues in that department.

But if it’s not excellence — then what is the tell?

But then what does it mean to be leading with self-preservation — or, for that matter, sexual, or social adaptation? It means its realm of focus is getting VIP treatment from your neurology. It means who- or whatever is running your system is happy to allocate band-width, resources, and focus (and also, most likely, cash 😉) towards ends and endeavours within that realm of existence — whereas the realm of our so-called blind-spot (that is, our least favoured or resourced drive) gets short-changed. A drive dominating means that you, or something within you, prefers devoting time and energy to it over the other two. It does not, however, promise an impressive return of investment.

Also, when I read the descriptions of positive and negative identification with the sexual drive (which is easily my strongest instinctual faculty), the description of positive identification does not resonate with how my life has been, and most certainly not if I look at my younger self. But the thing is, not only was I leading heavily with sx this whole time, but the Magnetism zone (i e the part of this drive concerning things like attraction, interests, instinctual competition and “peacock” display”, which for some reason seems to become the focus of the identification in the descriptions) is one of my two strongest zones overall. While I seem to qualify as a “negatively identified” sx dominant according to the descriptions, there is not a test, a course or any known teaching about the instincts that would have put me anywhere but as leading with the sexual instinct.

The true face of a “dominant” instinct

The point of sharing the above information is that when an instinct dominates, this will show. There is no such thing someone leading with a certain instinct, just with such a strongly negative identification that the dominance is not visible. Yet, that is the sort of conclusion I often see people drawing, quoting some version of this identification theory: “I was afraid of the opposite sex, I had zero success in relationships and basically just dreamed about my beloved — but now I can see I have been leading with sexual all along, I was just negatively identified.” And, sure, it’s possible that you were — as leading with sx doesn’t mean you always score, or think you look a million dollars.

But then again, possibly not. Anyone can long for a significant other, or yearn from afar, regardless of where the sexual drive features in their instinctual preferences. The question to ask in such cases is, in what other ways does the leading focus on attraction and expansion show up? Are you an intense person, to the extent that sometimes others find it irritating? Do you tend to “go all in” when you focus on something? Are you, or something within you, competitive by nature, even when you don’t wish to compete? Of course you don’t have to tick all the boxes for any drive to be dominant — but my point is, again, that a leading instinct will make itself known.

Sense-making zones

To me, the concept of instinctual zones, first established by Russ Hudson, sheds a lot of light on how differently our instinctual preferences can manifest, even in the same instinctual realm. I might be highly interested in self-care while also being totally bored by anything concerning finances — both of which are areas covered by the self-preservation drive. Or, I might be very adept at reading people and interested in recruiting them for various causes, yet lack all interest when it comes to maintaining my own personal relationships — all of which pertains to the realm of social adaptation. Et cetera. Also, as I mentioned, we might be “good” or “bad” at the various skills that each instinct brings — but regardless, if it’s strong, we will devote lots of resources and focus to it. The zones straighten a lot of question marks in this arena, and if you want to get into the zones material, feel free to check out the Understanding the Instincts course.

So should I not bother with the identification bit, then?

Well, here is where the second direction of response comes in: the distinguishing of instinct from what we might for now call “personality stuff”. There is nothing inherently wrong with looking at yourself from the identification-with-the-instincts perspective; if you feel it gets your inner work forward, please go ahead. However, my concern is that the single biggest obstacle that seems to stop people from really “getting the instincts” — understanding what they are, seeing their own preferences and using these insights for deepening their inner work — is that the concept of instinct is constantly meshed together with the concept of personality. The instinctual preferences, or the “instinctual stack” that might be of use for us to discover is not an aspect of personality, but something prior to that. This means that any identification happening around them is secondary.

So viewing the drives in the light of positive/negative identification already puts the spin of personality onto them. Of course, things like self-esteem or personal experiences strongly influence our identifications, but neither of these things are, in themselves, aspects of the instinctual faculties. I’m not staying we can’t be positively or negatively identified, or even that, as human beings, personality and history aren’t great influences. Of course we can, and of course they are.

Distinguishing what’s useful — and for what it’s useful

So sure, it can be useful to work therapeutically with such identifications. However, it is does not really shed any additional light on the instinctual drives and their place in our inner work, but rather risks confusing the matter further. My experience is that once we integrate this understanding, it gets much easier to see what’s instinctual and not and how we can approach our inner findings and experiences. But before this clarity has settled, it’s likely that an undifferentiated cocktail of ego personality, personal history and instinctual expressions will just add to the confusion (or worse, be “confuseful”: lend itself to inner work but still keep us in the dark about the deeper structures and thus, essentially, having us walk in circles). And if our aim is making sense of either types, instincts and/or ourselves, that is obviously not very helpful.

Again, as so often, it seems the question is not whether something is true or useful, but rather in what way it is true or useful. If it is true in a way that is relevant to me and useful for what I want to accomplish, great. If not, I might want to look elsewhere to find something that is.

Understanding the instincts

When we want to understand the topic of instinct, and when we want to bring the awareness of them into our inner work, we first need to see them clearly for what they are — prior to our ego personality muddying the waters. If you want to delve into the instinctual realms, have an experiential awareness of the drives and understand what they are and how you can work with them, please join Understanding the Instincts, an interactive, 5-module online course starting September 12:th ❤️.

PS — In my experience, a popular drive to be misidentified as the lead when looking at it through this filter is the sexual instinct. My best tips for sussing out where it ranks in your preferential “stack” is, like I mentioned briefly above, looking at the aspects of your life that do not involve relationships, love or sex. How does this drive show up in your life in general? In your level of intensity? In your take on hobbies or projects? In your work? Expressions of the sexual instinct that are only discernible in the context of love relationships are often just a sign that this instinct is alive and well (as it should be) — not that it’s necessarily on top of your overall preferences.

Our wounded hearts — the compost in which our ego personality develops

Enneagram

Sometimes people talk about “wounds” that form the basis of each personality type, and then a debate erupts whether our personality is actually wound-based, or whether this is an old, outdated notion that stems from obsolete psychology.

After a while, it generally transpires that the wounds referred to are childhood wounds, such as not getting enough attention, being punished or otherwise treated unfairly, or any other common childhood experience. And no, those are not causing our Enneagram type. But there is another sort of wound that is, a strong factor — a much deeper type of wound, and much more existential in nature. It is, in the words of Russ Hudson, our wounded heart: the wounding that comes from abandoning our true essence, losing touch with our essential nature and instead trying to emulate that, as best we can, with ego resources.

The wound of homelessness: Losing our connection to Essence

Our energetic, non-anatomical heart lives in and through essence, and when we are connected to our essential aspects, this heart is nurtured. (Read about the types’ essential qualities here.) But few if any humans spend very long totally enveloped in our essential energy, as our new life in this physical body calls for us to develop our sense of a separate self and, to that end, a functioning ego. Ego-development is part of us growing up; it’s not a mistake or an accident, but something programmed into our core as human animals.

But unfortunately, each step closer to our identification with an ego usually also means a step further away from our identification with our true, essential nature. This has two main reasons: firstly, ego and essence belong in two distinctly different planes of awareness, so while we get immersed in forging and making sense of our ego-reality, it follows almost automatically that we lose touch with our essential nature. The only thing that might, in theory, remedy that is if our caregivers were balanced, present and aware enough to support this deeper aspect of us while raising us.

This brings me to the second reason: Such a set of parents would be extremely rare. Since they were unlikely to have received any assistance from their own parents realising their essential nature — and since most people don’t consciously choose to remedy this as adults (and even those who do rarely get ’round to it before they have kids of their own) — our parents are clueless that this would even be a good thing, let alone what it would mean in practice. And none of this is any reflection on how much they loved us, how our family structure looked, or whether they were “good parents” or not. Our upbringing might have had the best and most harmonious settings and still not contributed one iota to our awareness of our essential nature.

This means that for most of us, by the time we enter adulthood, essence is deeply buried underneath aspects of the ego — misunderstandings, fears, and “solutions” to these fears — and the misunderstandings, fears and misguided attempts at achieving balance are actually, ironically, what causes our heart wounds. The wound is not even caused primarily by the loss of contact with essence, but in our unconscious efforts to make up for this loss (but without actually restoring the contact). What the heart needs and longs for is true, essential nurturing — and instead, we offer it ego-based efforts to make up for this loss, which are heavily based in our type’s passion. These “passionate” efforts, in turn, nurtures not our heart but our fixations — and suddenly we have fertile ground for the whole construct of personality. Its innocent aim is to amend the imbalances, but, unwittingly, it is just exacerbating them. These wounds then, in turn, nurture not our heart but our fixations, and there you have it — the whole personality hoopla, chomping at the bit to amend the imbalances, but, unwittingly, just exacerbating them.

Innocently lost

Again, though, we need to understand that this is not happening because we are bad, stupid or flawed in some way. It happens because we forgot, and because we innocently attempt to restore what, somewhere deep inside of us, we sense was lost.

The names for these various heart wounds originate from Russ Hudson’s type teachings. Some of them have changed slightly through the years, to better capture the energy of each predicament, so you might see other names ones in other contexts. (However, when this happens, I think the different names for the same type usually just serve to further pinpoint what happens for each type.) So don’t get hung up on the semantics, but rather — as usual — try to soak up what they are pointing to. That way, your understanding for and insight about each type can take root, deepen, and integrate more profoundly.

The heart wounds in brief

Type One’s is the Grief-Stricken heart
The primary essential awareness that Ones have forgotten is of the genuine goodness and innate perfection that lies behind existence. The goodness seems forever lost, and this causes immense grief. Logged-in users can read more here. (Not a member? Membership is free, and you can sign up here.)

Type Two’s is the Severed heart
The primary awareness that Twos have forgotten is of the unconditional love enveloping and holding all of existence (including the Two), so that love seems to be absent. Logged-in users can read more here. (Not a member? Membership is free, and you can sign up here.)

Type Three’s is the Empty heart
The primary awareness that Threes have forgotten is of the innate value, the absolute worthiness, of each living soul. The heart feels empty in and of itself — a blank, useless space. Logged-in users can read more here. (Not a member? Membership is free, and you can sign up here.)

Type Four’s is the Stabbed heart
The primary awareness that Fours have forgotten is of the innate depth and beauty of life and of themselves, and this feels like a stab-wound to the heart, and as if their heart is forever bleeding out. Logged-in users can read more here. (Not a member? Membership is free, and you can sign up here.)

The Five’s is the Desert heart
The primary essential awareness that Fives have forgotten is of the clarity and wisdom of resting in an unchanging truth. To have access, I need to be aware of my heart — but something within me feels barren; dried out. Logged-in users can read more here. (Not a member? Membership is free, and you can sign up here.)

The Six’s is the Fear-Siezed heart
The primary awareness that the Sixes have forgotten is of being grounded in inner guidance. The heart is frozen with fear, not knowing where to go, whom to trust or what the right choice is at any given time. Logged-in users can read more here. (Not a member? Membership is free, and you can sign up here.)

Type Seven’s is the Starving heart
The primary awareness that Sevens have forgotten is of the pure joy and satisfaction of existence itself. There seem to be needs that are not met, and a shortage of fulfilment unless I actively claim it for myself. Logged-in users can read more here. (Not a member? Membership is free, and you can sign up here.)

Type Eight’s is the Dying heart
The primary awareness that Eights have forgotten is of the pure life energy, the force of sheer aliveness. There is an undefined feeling of longing for this raw power, but the best that the ego can do to emulate it is doing life. Logged-in users can read more here. (Not a member? Membership is free, and you can sign up here.)

Type Nine’s is the Shattered heart
The primary awareness that Nines have forgotten is that of union and harmony; the state of interconnectedness that exists between everything in existence. There seems to be only division and fragmentation. Logged-in users can read more here. (Not a member? Membership is free, and you can sign up here.)

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 ❤️