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Exploring the ENNEAGRAM

— exploring yourself

The blog

The most basic definition of freedom — not only “free will”, but one that we actually utilize?

Inner growth

“Freedom” is a pretty standard and high-ranking post on lists on things worth having. We want to be free, break free, be uninhibited, unrestrained, untethered, not in anyone else’s captivity or control, and generally free to be our own person, to choose what we actually want — right?

Obviously, freedom can mean many different things, both with regard to which scale we’re referring to and what activities we have in mind. For someone who is involuntarily detained, freedom might be the capability to leave a room or building and proceed to go wherever you please. For someone who is stuck in grief, anger, or other uncomfortable emotions, freedom might be laughing, or even taking a deep, unrestrained breath. These are concrete and “gross” examples of free versus un-free states.

But the freedom I have in mind in this email is what we might simply call “free will”. It’s an inner thing. Most of us, if we are not detained, stuck in trauma or in other obvious un-free states, might consider ourselves using our free will on a daily basis — when we talk to people, when we go where we want to go, when we choose what to eat … and a ton of other such everyday activities. The question is, though, are we? Or, perhaps more keenly phrased: are we utilizing the freedom that we in fact have?

When the answer is no (which on closer inspection we might realise is the case on more occasions that we’d have cared to admit), it is often because of the ingrained patterns that we live with: defences, strategies, and impulses that run under the radar our everyday consciousness, and which we might not have taken out and scrutinised, as it were, for a very long time — or even since they were originally installed.

Our patterns, habits, auto-pilot existence

This is not necessarily a bad thing, of course. If we were to have to figure out how our toothbrush works every time we went to brush our teeth, or mindfully manage every move in, say, the check-out in the grocery store, we’d have to use a lot of unnecessary brain power. So we don’t. It gets automated.

So far, so good. But then, drawn towards efficiency as our psychology tends to be, we start using these automated patterns in all kinds of situations — and this happened early. We established patterns for how to be with our family or with people in general, how we get our needs met, how we think around particular matters … and before we know it, we have established auto-pilot functions for a large part of our lives.

This then carries on unencumbered — as the purpose of the patterns is, after all, to just do their thing without bothering the active decision-making parts of our systems — for years and years. Until well into adulthood, we might start realising that a fair amount of annoyances, problems, limitations, conflicts, and other unwelcome aspects arise from these automated structures. And so we start trying to change.

If you recognize what I’m talking about, and if you tried to make such changes, you have most likely also noticed that this is not necessarily easy. Patterns tie into other patterns, which are in turn strongly tied to fundamental concepts like self-image, personality, and ”who we are”. And what’s more, as such, they are maddeningly persistent.

From effortful change to peaceful transformation

For many years, in the experiential growth workshops that I created and facilitated, I worked with people and their patterns. I worked with myself and my patterns. I talked to friends about their. And in 20+ years of doing this work, some things have pretty consistently proven to constitute the ticket to transforming the patterns. Not attempting to change them by willpower, from the outside, as it were … But rather, doing the inner growth work that allows them to shift and dissolve, quite of their own accord.  A few of years ago, I launched a crash course on this topic in Swedish, which I’ve now finally translated into English. It guides you into the world of auto-pilot patterns and habits, helps you navigate among them, and teaches you a time-tested process by which to dissolve them … that is, those of them which you actually want to dissolve!

The Crash Course on Patterns

The crash course involves a total of 100 minutes of teaching divided into three modules, PDF worksheets for you to implement what you learn, and a guided exercise to help you arrive at the inner state most helpful for the explorations you will be doing. For the first week of the Crash Course on Patterns being out there, I’ll give the first 100 people buying it more than half price off — just use the code SEEPATTERNS when you check your purchase out!

THE CRASH COURSE ON PATTERNS

THE RESULT OF 20+ YEARS OF EXPERIENTIAL WORK WITH PEOPLE AND THEIR PATTERNS, BOILED DOWN TO A 3-MODULE, CONTENT-PACKED COURSE!

Learn to recognise unwanted reactive patterns and automatic strategies that you keep returning to, but which might not always be in your best interests. Of course, we will also explore the freedom that waits behind these patterns, once we start dissolving them, making them more conscious. The speed of your progress is entirely up to you — but please don’t rush. The content will be yours forever ❤️

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

Enneagram triads, Inner 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 ❤️

Holidays, family, peace, and growth — one holy mess

Inner growth

With the Festive Season upon us, all manner of things-that-only-need-to-be-dealt-with-once-a-year appear on the horizon. Preparations. Money worries. Decisions. Actual celebrations. Handling family. Or a mere getting through it in one piece. Any of which can sometimes feel like a great accomplishment.

Out of those who relate to the concept of Christmas in the first place, I think an overwhelming majority strongly associate it with family and togetherness. Also, it’s inextricably tied to the concept of peace. Interestingly, though, family and togetherness on the one hand for many people does not translate to peace, but rather the other way around. And then there are all those who don’t have any family to speak of, or are alienated from whatever they had, who because of a suffered loss in the past year know for a fact that this year’s celebrations will be accompanied by grief … and everyone whose holiday season for other reasons almost certainly will not be pure peace, joy, and family. (As for everyone whose traditions are different in exact timing, name, or traditions and which I have not been privy to, I suspect there are some similarities here.)

Expectations colliding with reality

So while we have every chance of harbouring a holiday-ideal within our minds (possibly, and if we’re lucky, inspired from our experiences in childhood), we also have every chance of having the real thing falling short of our expectations — held our ourselves, for our own children, or for other loved ones — for a vast variety of different reasons.

I mean, even if we do get to meet lovely family members who we never otherwise see, and even if they are people we hold dear, if we suddenly are to be spending days under the same roof, this already provides plenty of food for emotional hiccups. Put that together with the traditional pre-holiday stress which results from our efforts to make sure our experience DOES match up to the ideal — and with the wide-spread tendency to regress if only ever so slightly into a pre-teen conciousness if we still do have our parents around. Stir gently, and we get a good many opportunities for growth 😎.

The ego on the obstacle-course towards growth

When we realise there is a chance to grow, at least, it might feel a wee bit better. Possibly just a tad, but at least we can hope for that. However, this growth comes with some challenges. The first thing that’s a little tricky is that these opportunities seldom come with a manual, or even a vague, inspirational traveller’s guide. When uncle Bill is being his usual, obnoxious Uncle Bill — is that an opportunity for me to finally speak up, or to take the high road (as well as at least three deep breaths) and realise that it would just not be worth it? Or when someone brings children who tear around under the tree and harass the dog in a house that is neither mine or theirs — what exactly is my lesson? Stick up for the poor owners? Mind my own business? Or smile indulgently at the little sods and invite them to play a board game while we wait for the food? There is just no way to know which course of action would generate the best outcome.

The second challenge is personality and personal history. For some of us, it would be a great marker of growth if we told Uncle Bill where to stick it. For others, not so much. And so on, and so forth. Our Enneagram types and how we have historically acted in connection with these people will say a lot about where our growth point lies. If our general behavioural tendencies at family gatherings are typical of our type, then it might be fairly easy to see (even if that does not necessarily make it easy to act accordingly). But if our family is the one place where an assertive type has tended to use more roundabout ways to get what they want? Or where a withdrawn, generally more gentle type has habitually been more outspoken, as this was one place where I felt safe? Then it gets trickier.

To add to the general confusion, it’s not like there is a right answer to any of these questions. That’s another trap waiting to be fallen into at the beginning of our deeper inner work (and for quite some time ahead, I might add): the assumption that there is A Better Choice, that all other options are bad, and that my job (obviously) is to choose correctly. This (false) belief then gets exacerbated by the belief that as our key to whether we succeeded or not, we look at how we (and/or others) feel. If everyone is happy, that meant we made the right choice. If someone gets upset, that means we made the wrong choice. And then we often go on to judge our “progress” by that standard.

The consequences of the consequences

But sometimes people need to get upset. If Uncle Bill has been “jokingly” fondling your arse for the last 10 Christmasses together, and this time you tell him off (in a loud voice that might even come out a little more strongly than you intended, since this is the first time you actually chose to speak out), some people (including Uncle Bill) might think you ruined the ambience. The whole lunch (or whatever you gathered for) might be “ruined”, first with a strained silence, and later a weird mood overall — and maybe that was just what the doctor ordered. Maybe what you did means your much younger cousin, who has also been targeted by Uncle Bill’s “jokes” quietly realised it’s completely fine to dodge his hugs altogether at these gatherings; as she’s never liked to be close to him anyway.

And sometimes, the path just veers off

And sometimes, things take a turn that we would never have expected. Maybe it transpires that Uncle Bill hasn’t been stroking your behind at all, but just has a wonky hand from a stroke many years ago, which he’s not keen to advertise since he things it makes him look week — but now, he is mortified that you would have thought he did that. (I know, it’s a rotten example — but never mind.) Or you land in the middle of any other of a hundreds of possibly scenarios. We just don’t know. We don’t know what will constitute growth, for whom, or when.

So maybe we can relax a bit.

All this said, chances are that your holidays, just like life in general but perhaps just that little bit more amplified, will be filled with growth opportunities. Please avail yourself of those, if you like. And please, if you can — rest. It’s likely that you will need it 😊❤️

PS – For many of us, the opportunity afforded to us by a lot of small stressors is to practice asking for help. For a hand. For a sympathetic ear. For a hug. For whatever might help us handle a challenge, even if (or especially if) we believe it only counts if we do it ourselves 😉❤️

THE THIRD KEY: The specific realm of awareness for each instinctual drive

Enneagram, Inner growth, Instinctual drives

My “5 keys to understanding the instincts” are based upon what has come up in my instincts courses as well as my general observations in discussions around this topic, and I think they clear up some of the confusion in this area. If “the instincts” don’t make sense, in my experience, it’s usually because one of these has not been taken into account.

Today, I wanted to say something about the 3rd key — the fact that each drive pertains to its own realm of awareness, and that it is incapable of relating to aspects outside of this realm. It’s like each drive has its own, limited-but-very-effective-for-the-job set of features; its own toolbox, as it were. But while for one drive the tools might be, say, actual tools — a hammer, a saw, a screwdriver — for another drive, the tools might be a set of torches for different size flames, whereas the tools for the third are letters and words. (It does not matter which instinct gets which toolkit in this illustration, obviously; I’m just trying to illustrate that they are intrinsically different. If we need to fix a broken appliance, words will be useless; if we are cold, no amount of carpentry devices will do us any good — et cetera. They cannot “adapt” to include something outside of their own realm of awareness.) And not only are these toolkits distinctly different — their actual, instinctual counterparts are also what gives each drive its own “flavour” and visceral or energetic fingerprint. But before I say more about that, let’s look at the three realms.

The drives, the realms, and their respective flavours

In short, instinctual self-preservation pertains to the awareness of self with an inward focus. Instinctual attraction, or the sexual drive, still pertains to an awareness of self, but with an outward focus. And social adaptation pertains to the awareness of others, including my place in relation to these others, as well as some collective aspects of life as a gregarious species.

As for grasping these different “flavours” or characteristics, from where I stand, this is essential for doing deeper inner work with the instincts. For one thing, they clearly distinguish the drives from one another. But also, and more importantly, they help us weed out or distinguish much of the psychological overlay that goes on — since we are not purely instinctual beings, but also in possession of emotional and cognitive faculties. If we realise through inner, actual experience that the sexual instinct is, indeed, about expansion of “me”, then we can notice when this happens — and we can also notice, when we want to establish a longer-term relationship or cosy up with our love interest on the sofa while learning all about them (for instance), there is something more going on than just “us doing our SX”. And so on, and so forth. The realms help us know what’s instinct in the first place, as well as what instinct it is.

(To make matters more complicated, some types’ ego personality like to twist their instinctual energy in tricky ways, such as when a Two leading with self-preservation starts cooking for everyone, or when Fours leading with sexual expansion spend dramatic ours passionately relating to their perceived other, missing half. But this only illustrates even more clearly that it’s imperial to know what’s what.)

“So I’m selfish, is that what you’re saying??”

At this point in the discussion, some people start getting squirmy or even indignant. “What do you mean, that the self-preservation drive is selfish and incapable of caring for others??”

Yes, I do mean exactly that. People that go on about how “each of the drives have their own way of” [caring for others/being intimate/enjoying food/WHATEVER] are operating out of the misunderstanding that the drives are equally positioned in relation to one another. They are not. But since we all have all three of them, this is not the discriminator that popular belief might paint it as.

So no, instinctual self-preservation is not registering “others”. And that still says absolutely nothing about the person who leads with the self-preservation instinct. If this is you, I’m not saying you are a selfish person. I’m only talking about the biological feature; the drive does not equal the person. And it’s the drive that has this limitation — not the people expressing it. So keep your shirt on.

Dominance is not “what you are” —
it’s just what we overdo

Likewise, the capacity for love and caring is not found within the sexual instinct. Not even a little bit. But since not only do we have all three centres in equal measure, but we also have all three drives present in working order, this is not a problem. Dominance — in type or drive — just says this is where our ego gets in with investments, hang-ups, and distortions. This is where the ego warps the natural, balanced flow of the feature in question. It does not say what we are capable of. If it did, “heart types” would be the only ones capable of love, and “gut types” would be the only ones with instinctual drives in the first place. This is clearly not the case. So, yes, when it comes to the drives, the first two instincts are, quite unequivocally, relating exclusively to ME. And no, this does not mean that “social firsts” are the only ones who are capable of relating to others in a meaningful way.

So us “leading with self-preservation” means we over-identify with it and likely over-prioritize it when it comes to our time, money, and other resources. We just, simply, like the feel of it! That does not make us incapable of caring for others or of being sexual creatures; we also do have an instinct for social adaptation as well as one for sexual expansion, wherever those may fall on our radar. (So, this is another thing: The stack is just the sticky-outy bits. But that’s actually key #5 and for another article.)

Whew. I’m glad we got that out of the way.

So what good is making this distinction?

If we can perceive the inner workings of self-preservation, attraction, and social adaptation, this means we can witness and relate to these drives operating within us in real-time (or likely, to begin with, as after-the-fact happenings, where we can choose to go back to the situation, feel into it and remember the experience with all centres involved). We will have a visceral, simple understanding of them, rather than a set of categories or a complicated teachings that only holds together (even if it holds together fine) by intellectual reasoning, and which we then have to make regular detours to the head to make sense of. When it’s about instinct, for inner exploration to actually work we need to connect to it within the body, and for that to work, we need to find clusters that make sense from a natural, body-based perspective rather than something that requires higher faculties to sort out.

Distinguishing instinct from type in inner work

If I’m a self-preservation Two with strong bonds to my family and I’m trying to address my self-preservation drive in inner work, experiencing and witnessing it entangled with my Twoness will make for a confusing ride. The aspects of Two will have to be addressed in the heart and head, too — I cannot reach them all through the instinctual centre. But as for the instinctual impulses, they need to be handled there, and viewing them through an emotional or mental lens will just send me on a wild-goose chase.

… and sometimes, it’s tricky 😉

At one point on an instincts retreat with Russ Hudson, I commented that the Eightish qualities — both the essential aliveness and the passion of lust — blended together for me as an Eight leading with the sexual instinct. His somewhat unhelpful response was, “Well, you just have a double whammy.” And for some subtype combinations, this is obviously the case. Or, as a client phrased it, “It feels like my leading instinct is colluding with my type.”

For this reason, some subtypes, e g the social Six, or the sexual Eight, might find overlaps where the type structure in itself lends some bias towards the expression of a certain instinct. While it might still be pretty easy for me as an Eight or Six to distinguish whether I am in fact leading with the drive in question, when this is indeed the case, the overlap will be there. This means I’ll do well to explore some issues in parallel, as it were, looking at them both through the lens of personality and the lens of instinctual expression. I might find subtle differences in my personality’s preferences and the instinctual ones.

Remember: You are working with you, not with your type

Of course, we do not have to suss all this out to the finest detail to start doing inner work on these pieces of ourselves. I do not need any of these distinctions to be able to work productively with them. At least not in theory, and going into the work, just start with that which is apparent and explore as you go. It’s when we are on this journey of exploration, as we occasionally get stuck or confused, that we might find explanations and new light shed through these distinctions.

It might sound like hair-splitting to say that it’s you, not your type, that is on the inner growth journey — but in the light of what we’ve been talking about, maybe you see how there’s a difference? As I see it, the best work happens when we start with an open mind and dig where we stand. It is a little like driving by GPS navigator: it is much easier to make sense of whatever happens when we are already in motion than if we try to figure the whole thing out before we have even started moving. We need to have some momentum before the equipment can tell us whether our next turn should be left or right 😉

Sitting in the fire together — or maybe just coming together around it

Inner growth

No. We know discussing others’ types will not help us know ourselves. Nor will nailing down our own personality profile to the smallest detail, or finding an Enneagram author who seems to capture “me” perfectly in one of their descriptions.

Typing yourself in yet another system won’t do it. Or discussing theories. And contrary to seemingly popular belief, discussing facts won’t do it, either. Any and all of these things can be fun, interesting, or educational — but none of them is truly about getting to know you. 

The invitation

The other day, Oriah Mountain Dreamer’s “The Invitation” flashed past in the feed. I love this poem. And it’s so pertinent in the Enneagram world today, especially online and particularly on social media. Here’s a few bits of it:

It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living. 
I want to know what you ache for and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing.

It doesn’t interest me what planets are squaring your moon. 
I want to know if you have touched the centre of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life’s betrayals or have become shrivelled and closed from fear of further pain.
I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it, or fade it, or fix it.
I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own; if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, be realistic, remember the limitations of being human.

It doesn’t interest me if the story you are telling me is true. 
I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself. If you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul.

It doesn’t interest me who you know or how you came to be here. 
I want to know if you will stand in the centre of the fire with me and not shrink back.

It doesn’t interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. 
I want to know what sustains you from the inside when all else falls away.
I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.

Meeting the heart’s longing —
what we want to know

Because, sure — it happens that those other things interest me, too. For a while. Occasionally. But the formats and contexts available for sharing such things are already plentiful. I want to create and partake in contexts where the “I want to know” parts are welcomed, sought out, and shared. In some of the Facebook groups I’m in, where this is the supposed purpose, what is shared is in fact just categories: MBTI combos, or Enneagram types — sometimes in the plural and complete with instinctual stacking. And while people might still genuinely believe they are being open and connecting, they are only interfacing via categories. A lot of the time, they seem to view themselves through this lens, too; meeting a set of categories rather than their innermost self.

Lately, this creates a peculiar response within me; almost like a visceral thing, but it’s hard to put a name on it. It’s somewhere around the point of intersection between “stress”, “dejection”, and “exasperation”. I realise, of course, that it’s none of my business how others choose to spend their time — but it has me considering how I’m spending mine, personally and professionally.

Creating (true) community

Professionally, I want to create online what I’ve formerly only created in physical spaces. The online format has its challenges, sure, but also the convenient advantage of reaching all over the world. At present, I have the Exploring the Enneagram website and the facebook group EnneaGrammar for EnneaGrowth, the Exploring the Enneagram Youtube channel, and come February, me and Rezzan Huseyin will take up our EnneaGrammar LIVE again. Of these, I suppose the Facebook group offers the closest approximation to a meeting space, but I want interaction to be easier, and more in the moment.

Do you want that, too? Or is it a need that is already satisfied for you, or that you do not have in the first place? If you do want it, what do you want? What types of exploratory activities, centred around the Enneagram but mostly around you, would you like to engage in? How often? In what formats? What do you find missing? Please get in touch and tell me ❤️

“No” — such a small word; such huge ripples

Inner growth

The little word “no” is an interesting one. Kids are usually around two or so when they discover the power of this word. It represents the prospect of autonomy, my right to assert myself against someone else’s instructions, suggestions, or rulings. There is power there. There are my rights, as an individual. There is so much more there than these two measly letters might suggest.

And quite soon, I also learn the multitudes of control, authority, and manipulation that the use or restriction of this word holds. Quite possibly, I learn that the circumstances in which I am allowed to use it are a select few. I learn that others might read a ton of meaning into my “no” that it does not in fact have, and that because of that, it might offend, insult, aggravate, annoy, or provoke the recipient. With time, my autonomy and right to say no gets curtailed by all these complicated, and societally almost agreed-upon, interpretations that it gets inflicted with.

Getting our “no” in a twist

Most people will recognise some of this. And as a result, we have the most conflicting relationship with “no”. Maybe we daren’t say it. Or when we need and dare to, we might feel we have to justify it with explanations, excuses, or even lies; or that we get downright resentful at the cheek of this person daring to suggest something that forces us to “be the bad person”. Or, if it’s easy for us to say no, we might believe this comes with a concession that we are, in fact, often “a bad person” for doing so. We might feel we can say no, but that we have to whip up some anger to get the necessary oomph for it to be taken seriously. Or we might find ourselves trying to say no, maybe even getting the word out, and then ending up doing what the other person wanted anyway.

Measuring outcomes with the wrong yardstick

Also, it’s very easy (and it really is overall where inner work is concerned) to rank how we are doing by other people’s reactions: if they react well, I did it well; if they react badly, I did it badly. So, we might unconsciously or even consciously expect the other person to accept or even approve of our “no”. What we might not realise is that this is not fair at all; while we have the right to express our own wishes and say no to what we do not want, they, too, have rights — including the right to be disappointed or even resentful of us for doing so.

And no, I’m not saying that these would be mature or enlightened reactions — but an unfortunate part of inner growth is that even though we are working through things and being brave and stepping out of our comfort zone, others are not obliged to do the same, or at the same pace, or on the same topics. They are still allowed to react however they please (or however they are incapable of not reacting). They do, in fact, not owe us Perfect Balance.

Normally, of course, we mostly realise this. But when we DO step out of the zone and it all starts getting to be a bit much, sometimes the idea that at least if they love us, they should be on their best behaviour is so compelling that we will need to be reminded that it’s not quite true 😊.

Being the bad guy

As for me, I didn’t find it very hard to say no. But in my early twenties, I noticed that in some cases, I really resented the person for asking me something — like, “Can I come, too?” If I did not want that, I sort of felt they made me look like an a-hole for asking, thus “forcing me” to say so. This fact, of course, meant I didn’t “own it” very successfully, on an energetic level. I said no, but it also really pissed me off that I had to.

See — there are so many interesting opportunities to get all manner of clothing into a twist over this little word, whether we manage to actually say it or not. My point is, most of us have hang-ups around the word ”no” — even those of us who gladly use and perhaps even over-use the word — and these might be more multi-layered and complicated than we have realised.

Owning my inner responses lets me own my choices

And sometimes, it is complicated. We might not exactly want to rush to somebody’s aid in a particular situation, and doing so will be a real pain in the neck — but we want even less to leave our friend on the side of the road with a flat (or whatever the case may be), so we step up and do it anyway. But if we know why we choose to do whatever we choose to do, it’s less likely we will do so moaning and complaining and feeling manipulated, coerced, or even forced into doing it. Because, in all likelihood and most of the time, this is not the case. Unless someone holds a gun to our head (in which case, it’s still our choice to accommodate them, even if I’d say it’s quite possibly an intelligent one), we are the ones choosing. So we might as well make ourselves aware of our true motivations.

Like with all instinctual responses, of course, it’s not like we have to honour them. And we can listen to emotional responses, too, necessarily having to carry them out; we can most certainly weigh options logically. But when we notice our ”yes/no” barometer in the first place, and when we allow space for our emotions to be heard, this gives us the opportunity to choose more wholeheartedly ❤️