(Introductions and transmission of Being through the Enneagram)
The transformative role of the Enneagram in my life Eleonora Gilbert
I am going to conclude with a quote by Byron Katie: Personalities don’t love. They want something.
Our journey with the Enneagram Iain and Renate McNay
Sandra Maitri Introduction to the Enneagram Interview by Iain McNay
Claudio did what he calls Trespasso, which is basically a transmission, looking into each person’s eyes and transmitting Being, consciousness. He was just deeply in a state of presence, energetically communicating. That just knocked my socks off. It was unbelievable. I was sold and that was it. I signed up to the group and it was quite an adventure, quite a crazy adventure in many ways.
Sandra: It was a huge part of that journey. [In Claudio’s group] we basically lived and breathed the Enneagram. None of us seemed to be working in those days, and we just spent all of our time processing and talking about our own experience, and really bringing the map to life within our own direct experience.
I was dealing with a hard space within myself and it was actually the space I had been stuck in from the period when I had been meditating. The meditation brought me deeper and deeper into myself and into a great deal of deficiency at the core of my personality structure. Karen said, “Could I work with you for a minute?” And I said, “Okay,” and she just started asking me questions and before I knew it, within five minutes, I had completely gone through the stuck place I had been in for two years and I said, “Oh my god, I have to learn how to do this.”
(Ego structure as a response to loss of contact with Being)
Sandra: Sure. I would look at it more the other way round. The way that I learned the Enneagram is that our ego structure, or personality structure, develops as a result of loss of contact with spiritual reality, Ground of Being, True Nature, whatever one wants to call it, the Divine. That loss happens in early childhood, usually in the first four years. Each of the nine types develops a core belief about the nature of reality and therefore the nature of oneself as a result of that loss. So each of the types is based on a fundamental distortion, or delusion, about reality, and this creates all sorts of suffering for each of the types, and very particular kinds of suffering.
Briefly, moving around the Enneagram beginning with point Nine which is considered the archetype, this central Ennea-type is like… if it were a white light and the others were refracted through a prism, they would be variations on the same theme. So the personality Type Nine is basically the principle of going to sleep on one’s ultimate nature. So the whole style that develops is based on going to sleep on oneself. Turning away from oneself, getting preoccupied, getting busy with what is going on outside and not paying attention to oneself.
Sandra: A sense of worthlessness. Iain: So personally, they feel worthless. Sandra: That other people are much more interesting, much more special, that other people have characteristics that are important, but that they [themselves] don’t. They tend to be people…
and so they are very good mediators. The reality they don’t encompass easily is their own. Part of it is that they like things to stay peaceful. Iain: Yes, that’s a quality… being able to mediate, isn’t it? Sandra: Yes, you can see where other people are coming from and you can kind of connect the dots between people. So they tend to be…
(Tour of the nine types and their core convictions)
The next type – moving around the wheel of the Enneagram: point One are the perfectionists of the Enneagram and they have lost contact with their inherent perfection, the inherent rightness or suchness, as they say in Zen Buddhism, of oneself and of how things are. Because of that, the…
Sandra: Well, looking at it slightly differently, they assume that things are not perfect, so they need to fix them either in themselves, or in other people. They can be quite critical, quite judgemental, preachy and picky. Iain: They have high standards for themselves and others? Sandra: Very high standards…
Twos are the dependents of the Enneagram. Their basic conviction is that they are not fundamentally loveable and that what they need to do is to become a very special indispensable person to someone very important, or a group of important people. So it is through the connection that they get a sense of value, and it is through…
Iain: Right, they are also the helpers aren’t they? They are going out and helping people a lot and through that they often lose their centre. Sandra: Exactly. They are so busy anticipating other people’s needs that they don’t really tune into their own and basically the game is ‘giving to get’. It’s like the Christian maxim of do unto others as you would have…
Sandra: Doesn’t always work that way and then they get very annoyed. That’s one of the ways that one can…
Sandra: Type Threes are the achievers and the quintessential image types of the Enneagram. Their core belief is that only the surface matters – only the presentation, the product, the result. How I get there, what it takes to get there, what kind of corners I have to cut, or however devious I need to be, it doesn’t matter because it’s the end achievement that matters. Their sense of self-worth comes from achieving a lot, being successful, and being recognised as such. Iain: I think they are also quite hung up on image as well, aren’t they? Their personal image is quite important to them. Sandra: Yes, they tend to present the image of their culture, or their subculture.…
Type Fours are the melancholics of the Enneagram, and their basic conviction is that they have lost contact with ‘true nature’, which if you are abiding in true nature,…
This whole personality style is based on longing. Longing for some lost ‘other’ who is the beloved, the perfect beloved, and the personality style is one…
Right, and that translates internally to a sense that whatever I have, or whatever is going on with me, isn’t as good as what is happening with that other person. That is their suffering. It’s a very painful Ennea-type.
Fives are convinced of their ultimate separation from other people, and so they tend to be hoarders. They hold onto what they have, because there is the sense that ‘I am an island and who knows if another ship is going to show up or not, so I should preserve what I have here’. They tend to hide; they are self-contained.
Sandra: Yes, and often what they hold on to and look to – as what will help them – is knowledge. If they can understand things well enough, then maybe they will feel safe.
Next: Sixes, as a result of being identified with the body, which we all become as we develop a personality structure, and because bodies are temporary, bodies get sick, bodies get hurt…
Sandra: Right, they don’t always work very well [laughing], so there is a sense of fear that dominates this type, and the character structure is built around looking out for danger, what could possibly go wrong, and trying to ward it off, in some way…
Sandra: So they are very vigilant, convinced that there is danger. On the other hand, if we really know that who and what we are is something that can’t be destroyed, which is the truth of our nature – not so true for our body, but definitely true for our nature – then we have a potential for liberation from fear.
Point Seven is another fear type, in the fear corner of the Enneagram, which is a longer story… but Sevens have the reputation of being dilettantes, of being people who don’t go deeply into things, but explore lots and lots of things on the surface and gain lots of information and collect it, but never dive too deeply into things. A lot of that is because they are afraid of pain. They value being up, being happy, being okay, and they are phobic around pain. They tend to be gluttonous, it’s like… I don’t know if you have ice cream shops [in the UK] where they have many, many different flavours.
Sandra: Yes, they want to have a little bite of everything life has to offer and they want to make connections between things. They want to pull all of these disparate experiences together and have a sense of how things work – what the map is, what the plan is, and what the big picture is.
Basically Sevens have lost contact with their connection with the big picture, so they try to figure it out.
Eights are the bullies of the Enneagram, the tough guys and girls, and they value very much being strong and not showing any of the vulnerable or soft human emotions. Being strong, being on top, and nothing happening to them that could be devastating, and so on is what they really value. They tend to be rather pragmatic, and whatever they can experience through the five senses is what’s real and the rest is basically bullshit, as they would say.
Iain: Yes, they are kind of typical big company bosses a lot of the time, aren’t they? Quite ruthless, very determined, very focused, but not very humanitarian. Sandra: Right.
Sandra: Right, [Eights would say] this is a lot of airy fairy expletive [laughing], but the interesting thing is – as you know, I lead a couple of groups here in the UK – I have quite a few Eights in those groups.
Sandra: Let me just say, first of all, that much of my understanding of that comes from Claudio Naranjo, so it’s not something that I originated. I like to really reference my sources. America is to me a very uneasy blend of One and Three.
And then there is the rugged individualism of America which is very Three-ish, doing whatever it takes to achieve. Achievements, making money, recognition, fame, all those things that America unfortunately is exporting to the rest of the planet as a cultural ideal, are very Three-ish.
has helped me to understand myself better and be less hard on myself at times because I know it’s a basic trait of my conditioning. The Enneagram shows me my potential. Also, I found it immensely useful in business.
simply another style, it’s a whole other take on reality and on how to live, how to be, how to behave and…. People’s patterns obey nine different styles. It’s rather obvious once one knows the map.
(Type Three: the achiever, image, and the drivenness of doing)
Enneagram Type Three – The Achiever Discussion with Maureen, Eleonora and Pat Moderated by Iain McNay
Maureen: It is a big question, but in short in my experience, what I have found it to be is a map. It’s a map of nine perspectives or worldviews that we have, and what that does is lead to a whole set of motivations, values, and then behaviours.
Pat: I believe so, yes. Because the ego or the personality can have a tendency to drive one, and I have been in many boardrooms to see two-year-old behaviour to know that to be true. It’s getting the ego in perspective and that’s what the Enneagram helps you to do.
Eleonora: It’s more than impressing, it’s really getting the validation that I, as an individual, cannot do for myself; so I have to get you guys to validate who I am, based upon what it is I can do for you. For me that was very key: the sense of lack of self-value. Not lack of self-worth, but value. So I do not know if you [Pat] want to add anything to that. Pat: It’s being driven really… I think Threes are externally high-acuity: they can read people very quickly, and there is a need to see the value reflected in somebody else’s persona or eyes. And it would be quite nice if you told me I was pretty good as well; that would help. So there is a seeking to be externally validated, which for me was one of the things that made me realise I was a Three. It took me a while to actually accept that was an important aspect to motivate me to get and do things.
‘Ah yes, I get that one’, but it’s when it really hits you to the core, that’s when you know that’s your type. Pat: It can often be the type that you least like to be.
(The Three worldview: responsibility, burnout, and self-value)
Maureen: If we go back to worldview, the way I would sum up a Three perspective – for me anyway, it may be different for my colleagues here – is the phrase ‘It’s up to me’. That has two things: there is one side that Pat talked about, the positive and the negative. The one side that is the American dream, you know, ‘It’s up to me; the pauper can be the President’. If I do it, if I put my mind on something and decide to do it and work hard enough and conscientiously enough, I can do it! So there is a lot of achievement, success, working hard, efficiency, those kind of words are within that.
other side of the model is, if it’s up to me… the image that springs to my mind is Atlas, holding the world on the shoulders… it’s up to me. Iain: So, responsibility. Maureen: Yes, responsibility, burden. If I let go who’s going to catch it? Nobody. Therefore you get on a treadmill of ‘I have to keep going’. I think that’s more of the downside of Type Three, a drivenness, and you almost have to hide your heart from yourself. I think that’s key for Threes, because if I really got in touch with my feelings, sometimes I might not want to do these things, it might be a burden, but I can’t allow myself really to feel that, so I have to keep driving myself and driving myself.
Maureen: Yes I realised that a Three, if you can get in touch with that emptiness inside you, can feel like a polo mint, you know. It’s all on the outside. On the inside there is nothing. There is no one home because you are doing everything for others…
Pat: I found, after doing a lot of this work, that people… in fact it was my stepbrother who said it to me, “You’re not the same person as you were before.” And I said, “I have always been here, I just haven’t been able to show you that I’m here.” The work has helped me to be able to show who I am without the persona.
I’ve actually got something else to offer rather than just this efficiency that’s driving this competitiveness, this success… and that actually there is more to it. Often you don’t get to see that side of the Three. Threes will often be sales directors, people who are at the top of their game.
Eleonora: The image seems to be everything, and that’s what I was talking about in terms of the lack of value. What you are appreciating about me is what it is I can do for you and the way I can look. Pat: Chameleon. Eleonora: The fact that I can be absolutely adaptable to any kind of situation and circumstances and I know what it is that you want as well! But inside, what do I want? Why am I doing this, what are my motivations? So that is what is missing in a sense. Pat: The self-value that you [Eleonora] talked about… Eleonora: Yes, the self-value, and really follow your heart’s desire rather than trying to fulfil somebody else’s dreams, or somebody else’s expectations, or your parents’ expectations and dreams.
with you yesterday we don’t assume as Threes that they will be happy with us today unless we prove ourselves again. It’s a kind of Ground Hog Day.
Iain: That’s a lot of pressure on you guys. Eleonora: It is a lot of pressure, even if it comes from the inside and not necessarily on top of perhaps the expectations of others. But it’s also a way of being excellent in your own eyes and god forbid you make a mistake! Pat: It’s funny that actually you pick up on the person that you think doesn’t like you, and put all your energy into trying to make them like you, and then when they like you, you can move onto the next one. Iain: Really, is that how you feel, you can really tick them off? Pat: It can be. I’ve got that one, that’s good, I can move on, particularly if you are in a competitive situation. I think the competitiveness of the Three… there is focus too, like the train coming down the track. This is where I am going, I am going there and nothing takes you off it, so that’s a bit of a difficult one, because you can run over people when you are so focused.
Also, it’s a way for me of feeling very much alive, and that energy keeps feeding on itself, and to some extent it gives life meaning. So yes, we are the doing of the Enneagram and the thing that we try to avoid is actually being. Pat: But that’s the ‘workaholism’ and then comes the big burnout. You work yourself into an early grave at that rate.
Pat: I used to go on holiday and would be ill the minute I would stop work. The minute I would stop a project, or a project was over, I’d fall ill, because I would not allow myself to be ill or anything while there was a project going on. Eleonora: I have heard that before. In fact, it is really typical.
I read somewhere once that even someone in a Buddhist monastery who was a Three would still be the best Buddhist they could ever be. There would always be this kind of jump to always be at the top of the game, top of the list.
That’s why sometimes people say that we are the marketeers, but it’s because we are very good at having acuity as you [Pat] said, and then looking to see what they want and trying to give it to them. It comes back to there is nothing inside you, because if we give what we think the other needs, then we will be successful. That’s success to us. Eleonora: We will be successful, and we will be loved, and we will be acknowledged, because the thing that is missing intrinsically is that sense of not valuing yourself. So until you get that, you will always look outside of yourself for that kind of validation. And if you don’t get it, you are going to go on over and over again, until you do get it. Even then, it’s never going to be quite the way you want it. The key to this is valuing oneself first.
For example, yesterday I was doing the garden at the front and it was getting dark and I wanted to do everything before it got dark, because success is doing everything. And if I had done three quarters of it and not the other quarter, that would not have been success because I couldn’t tick it off my list. So I would have driven myself before, like ‘It’s got to be finished!’ Then I said to myself ‘Hey, I have a choice here, I can finish it if I want, but I don’t have to’. Then I weighed up the pros and cons, and actually it made more sense to finish it off before it got dark. Before, I never would have had even that conversation with myself, I would have just driven myself.
Maureen: That’s right, and then fun comes in. I know my triggers, I know when I’m too driven because I lose my sense of fun, everything becomes very serious: ‘I must do!’ I am very harsh, so when I’m not smiling and laughing I know ‘Hey, relax, slow down, have a drink’.
Pat: And we talked earlier about the burdens that we Type Threes have. I don’t think there’s that much of a burden [if] we don’t feel we have to do everything for everybody else, and we start to do stuff for ourselves and don’t feel bad about it, because within that there is shame – shame that I am actually expected to be validated externally. I think there is a huge shame that suddenly goes as well. That’s my experience…
So rather than rejecting them, as I used to in the past – ‘Oh this is wrong if I do it this way’, or ‘I shouldn’t be driving myself’, you know, a lot of internal criticism going on – now I recognise ‘Hey, my goodness I’m rushing through things again… what’s that about?’ So it’s through observation and also through lightheartedness. We can’t change effectively, but what we can do is observe how we are, how we behave, and that we have choices. You can still go in that particular direction, rush through things and tick them off the list, or you can actually relax and laugh about it. The other thing is, looking at my motivations: ‘Why am I doing this? Who am I trying to please? Who am I doing it for?’
When I say, “This is who I am,” it’s in terms of the personality: this is the kind of personality I have – it’s not who I am, but it’s the personality that I have.
that’s a very Type Three phenomenon. That’s also what we are valued for, being Threes in our society. In a way it’s a very addictive type to be because we are applauded for it and we get a lot of success for it. Pat: It’s also shallow.
We hide more and more, all of us, and as a society [we hide] what we really are and what’s really going on, and we do what we think is going to bring us success. Then we think that’s going to bring us happiness, but it doesn’t work out that way [group agreement].
Pat: Painful, because you spend all of these years building this image and then when it fails it’s like a piece of tissue paper, you realise it actually stands for nothing. The only thing that stands for anything is what you think of yourself and how you are in yourself, which is a hard lesson for a Three to come to terms with. Eleonora: Yes indeed, it’s almost as if everything you have done is worthless, actually.
The shadow, if you like, of the Three is self-deception. It has to be, because in order to have a personality you have to self-deceive. Our shadow is self-deception, we lie to ourselves that this is okay, and sometimes stretch the truth a bit, like… the fish was this big [demonstrating large size], not this big [smaller]. When we become authentic, become truly connected to who we are, to our True Nature, then that is real hope. That is authenticity, which is I think what we all, at the end of the day, would call happiness.
Maureen: But yes, if that’s required, that would be more available and easier to do, whereas maybe when I am caught in Three-ness – ’What would they think?’ and ‘Is it the right thing?’ and ‘What would their reaction be?’ and ‘Should I do it?’ – there’s this whole inner talk of whether I could even do it and whether it’s the right thing, rather than just being present to ‘This is what’s required right now, let me do it’. There is no angst, no inner talk, it just flows. There is just much more flow, much more freedom; there’s much more choice, there’s much more relying on, rather than ‘It’s up to me’. If I go back to my worldview of ‘It’s up to me’, maybe it isn’t up to me, maybe there are other things around and I just can tap into them, if I am open to the possibility. If I am open to life rather than being contained, then things can flow much more easily.
Enneagram Type Four – The Romantic Discussion with Janette, Rosemarie and Phil Moderated by Iain McNay
(The Essential Enneagram: fixation as a guardian of an essential quality)
Faisal Muqaddam The Essential Enneagram as a spiritual path to awakening Interview by Eleonora Gilbert
Faisal: Hello everybody. Thanks for the opportunity. There is a dimension of spirituality we call the ‘essential domain’, relating that title to different aspects of differentiated Being. We have the Being, undifferentiated, a differentiated self, and myriads of qualities. Some are major archetypes like love, beauty, clarity, power, will. Each one of them is an essential domain, an essential quality.
Yes. Enneagram type, or Enneagram fixation, yes, and the idea by the name is that part of our mind got fixated, unable to move, and unable to be resilient and maintain one job, one quest, [that] is to recreate this archetype. We didn’t look so much into why is that. We understand a little bit that it was the manoeuvre the child adopted to resolve some of the difficulties in life, in childhood. And there are so many theories: that we are born in it… you name it, there is so much complexity.
(Each fixation as an attempt to revive a specific aspect of Essence)
So then the picture started to shine: it is not just a psychological, repetitive pattern, it is really an attempt to revive and to connect [to] a certain aspect of our Being, a certain aspect of Essence. Then little by little, [over] thirteen years, the map unfolded and the dimension [that] each fixation is trying to reach or preserve became more vivid.
Faisal: Okay. The one that fascinates me the most, and the one that I will come to, was for me the ‘guidance’, the aspect of Essence that has to do with ‘the Guide’. My love for the Guide was so great because it orchestrated this unfoldment, the psychological domain, the essential domain, and wove it in such an unbelievable intricacy, richness, and wisdom, that no ego can do. I loved this aspect. The guidance is to me the crown jewel of the essential teachings. We call this the Guide, or we call it the objective perception or the ‘diamond guidance’ or objectivity. This quality is related to an aspect of Essence that has to do with knowing – the ability to know, the ability to have differentiated wisdom, guidance, all of that, and it helps so much in our unfoldment.
This jewel, sometimes called ‘the angel of revelation’, reveals to you what is in the unconscious, it reveals to you the hidden kingdom, and functions in multidimensionality. It is not just in the head and knowledge. It comes in the heart and orchestrates beauty, art, poetry, intuition. It comes in the belly and orchestrates impeccability, groundedness, the gentle warrior part, but often it gets confused with knowledge. Also they idealise this quality, take it to the head, and use it as a never-ending information of knowledge, which is beautiful but overwhelming you know. So the enquiry is about what is the Five trying to do? Realise that they are really trying to reach this quality and when they reach this knowing, this diamond dimension in our Essence, then a great deal of resolution happens in their fixation. So, the Five is the attempt to be the knower. And when they reach it, they are not obsessed with knowledge any more, because knowledge has no end.
(Body centers, family holes, and the childhood wound behind each type)
Faisal: Yes, I can go over the whole map. It was really fascinating, this discovery, that Type One in the Enneagram is obsessed or embodying and conflicted about this quality of appreciative love, unconditional appreciative love.
Faisal: Of the pattern, their fixation – it explains what it does, how it is doing it in terms of their mental pattern, emotional pattern, physical pattern. Then little by little, [they can] go to the essential domain. And by doing so, we also explore their childhood, what happened, what was needed in the family. Little by little, we deepen the enquiry. At the same time, by recognising the pattern around a certain quality, their consciousness begins to differentiate and [becomes aware] when the quality is there and begins to see when it is gone and the anxiety that comes when it is gone. So they begin to know their specific anxiety and their specific resistance and specific superego. It becomes more and more in focus, more and more orchestrated. And we
also focus not only on the feeling of this quality, but also on the organ of the body that is ruled by it.
Eleonora: So in the case of the Five, for instance, the family hole would have been lack of understanding? Faisal: Yes, it will be the ‘diamond body’, which brings understanding [that] was impaired. They don’t want to understand. Eleonora: And the child develops that desire to…? Faisal: …to solve it – but I will come to that – by saying [in] the belly ‘What is lost?’ And what was lost is basic sanity, basic groundedness, basic ease – and the family is anxious, insecure, ungrounded. So the belly centre has to do with groundedness, with relaxation, with ease, and that is impaired, is not functioning fully, which means that one quality or another of the belly is blocked, or of the heart, or of the head is blocked. So a soul comes to incarnate or reincarnate and it gravitates to a certain hole depending on its karma, let’s say. So this soul, this baby lands in the womb. And because of the merged quality [merging with primary caretaker –FM] – let’s say mum is blocking the quality of her heart and dad is blocking his heart – the baby – his heart is developing prenatally in the womb as a structure, due to merging with the environment – gets affected by the absence of this quality.
Their heart is not open, but the baby is a mighty soul at that time, it is in connection with the Source. It struggles, it generates gold and merges and loses it, and then generates it again. This process makes the golden Essence the most dominant quality because its survival is happening around it. So the system generates it more and more and that child becomes so much gold, but through the attempt at releasing it, and losing it, it creates subtle membranes of resistance to that quality, so they generate it more, but feel it less. When they are born and their ego begins to develop, first year, second year, there is a preoccupation with this quality, without knowing what it is. They feel it as some kind of love, and when this love comes, mum is happy, dad is happy, their hearts soften. They begin to feel this is really the most important quality in existence. They begin to develop some aspect of ego… let’s say half of the ego mechanism is based on ‘to gold or not to gold’.
(The fixation as guardian and the Three heart-organ connection)
Each fixation is like a jewelled aspect of Being that got overly developed, and the ego is afraid to go and experience other domains. It is focused as a guardian. The fixation, you can think of it as a guardian, the representation of an essential domain.
Eleonora: If we move on to the Threes now, since we talked about Twos, what is that? Faisal: Threes sense that the family is missing contact and connection with each other. So they feel they really want to connect with everyone and feel their needs, find what is needed and generate it. Very close to the Twos. Type Two feels what is needed through merging. They melt with the other person and feel it – that’s their affinity, and the chandelier manifests it. And the Threes, they have a quality of Essence that can connect with the other person, really tune in and be one with them and feel, and then they ‘generate’ it, whether for a person, or for the family, or the community. What is needed now is this… you feel it and then you set the Ferrari and you go. They are generators like that. So the quality of contact… and bonding and healthy attachment is a quality of Essence that has a feeling of resiliency. It’s a conscious substance that senses. And the generator is another quality, so the combination of them [the quality of contact and bonding, and the generator -FM] is a magnificent quality of Essence that optimises the grand vehicle of the human structure in the essential domain. There is a vehicle that is the ultimate vehicle that embodies the personal Essence.
Eleonora: And what is that vehicle, can you name it? Faisal: We name it in our work ‘the stupa’ – at least, I name it the stupa, the ‘pearly stupa’. This quality is made of many jewels, and each jewel differentiates Being into an energetic field and it is a dynamo. Those who don’t have it don’t function in life. They can be couch potatoes, couch mangoes – sweet, but not dynamos, not generators. That is why it is called the ‘heart of enlightenment’ – the heart that generates from the field of enlightenment: love, action, contactfulness. The fixation in the Enneagram of
the Three is trying to do it, which is glorious except it is doing it from the personality, which is exhausting. Their adrenals get wiped out.
Faisal: How to be the self, or not. So the Five in the Enneagram says ‘If I solve the riddle of existence, I could rest and they could put me on my throne again’. The Three says ‘If I can do all the jobs affectionately, then they will see me’, and the One says ‘If I can make them appreciate each other… and I appreciate the other’… All the fixations are an attempt to solve the family hole, then they can be seen and loved and provided for. Since that trip has no end, we alienate farther and farther. The Four says ‘What is really needed is the self.
Faisal: Yes, relax and just be yourself, share it. But each fixation, fascinatingly, is all about the centre of a mandala. There is another Enneagram superimposed on the Enneagram, three corners to it that reach a pinnacle of twelve, and the top of that pyramid is self, individuated self. The Enneagram is an attempt to undo the mind and the structures, resolve it in Being, in the Buddha nature, in the enlightened nature, then finding our uniqueness. So the journey starts.
Faisal: And the ‘basic trust’ comes: Being will provide, the journey continues, and the universe is here for us. While in the depth of their fixation, in Sixes there is the feeling ‘I am all alone and because I am all alone, I will be there for all my people, all my friends’, which is beautiful, but the moment they apply it for themselves – and this applies to all fixations – their personality begins to disintegrate. The personality structure is based on the struggle around trying to generate it. Once there is no need for it, it crumbles. Once it crumbles, it can lead to the Absolute – mind free from any fixedness, but it also leads to a terror of losing one’s identity. What does Descartes say? “I doubt, therefore I am.”
When the Christ gave the bread and the wine, he said, “This is my blood, this is my flesh.” What is he referring to? Christ, in my dictionary, in my culture, is a roaring lion, full of love of life, golden pomegranate lion that came to show us the glory of life and how we kill it every day by being nailed on the cross. Our cross is our personality.
You want to dance all night, you want to drink wine to infinity; it is like nothing is in your way.
Type Three controls the heart itself and the pericardium, the sac around the heart. That sac when it is relaxed is filled with amberic gold, sweetness, appreciation, value
for life, for each other. And because nobody values who they are enough and what they are doing, Threes feel so much pain and they shrink the heart, they shrink their pericardium. But then they struggle, they release it and their heart is gorgeous, so beautiful. And again, the same thing, nobody sees, nobody appreciates, so they control this organ. It is good for them to really be aware of this.
(Resolution of fixation as the path to discovering the self)
Faisal: I think the Essential Enneagram helps define our psychological dilemma and what we are doing. By having this riddle eased and resolved, something happens, very beautifully. When I realised that my family hole was about a specific thing… and when I felt it, I could ask myself ‘What am I trying to do with my ego?’… And if that is ultimately what my ego is trying to do, I check: ‘Do I really want that? That has nothing to do with me!’ Eleonora: Yes, and you let go of that. Faisal: I let go and it spontaneously started to go and that gave me a deeper connection to ‘Who am I? If I am not this, then what am I?’ And that led to a discovery of the self.
[Freedom from the attachment or obsession to any specific dimension of Essence or quality allows the person to be in the greater space of openness and freedom, which is the Absolute. - FM] In that field, you can interact with the souls of your parents even if they are not here. You send them blessings. We all got caught in the absence of gold.