(Essential qualities as self-knowing presences of Being)
It becomes easier to look like an “expert” on the subject than to continue into the territories of real self-knowledge and the feelings such knowledge can bring up. But some of us cannot resist the deepening mystery, and we start to consider more of what is available through this work.
First, all essential qualities are states of Being with characteristics that emanate from the authentic presence of Being. We know them by immediately experiencing them in our bodies, in our consciousness, as a fullness or presence that is not physical. I am not referring to the ordinary meaning of being, as in being present with a focus of attention or awareness. Instead, we experience ourselves as a kind of medium or substance, a continuum that is not a physical sensation but actually consciousness feeling itself directly as a pooling that senses its own presence throughout the entire medium uniformly. It knows itself as that medium without being informed from the outside or by any remembered knowledge. This is unusual in ordinary experience, for our consciousness is usually not aware of itself but of something else, such as emotions, sensations, thoughts, external objects, or phenomena—all manifestations of consciousness.
Nowadays, when teachers talk of consciousness that is conscious of itself, they usually mean pure consciousness absent of qualities. From that perspective, it is infinite and boundless, pervading everything. This is the nondual way consciousness wakes up to itself, the presence of pure consciousness or awareness. While this is real and true, if we believe consciousness can only be this way, we deprive ourselves of the variety and richness of the mystery of consciousness. We can experience it in so many other ways that are authentic and useful for ordinary living at the same time. In the ordinary world of duality, consciousness can be conscious of itself in a local way, as in our body—belly or chest. In this sense, it can feel localized and not infinite, as a medium that fills the belly or the whole body without pervading everything. It might take form as a flow, a pool, a ball, or a shape of any kind. The salient point about spiritual experience in the ordinary world (in contradistinction to the nondual world) is that it is localized and particular, with a form and often a color, a taste, and a texture as well.
When we experience true strength, we feel strong because we are feeling the presence of strength itself—we are full of an energy and presence that is the essence of the life force. The most common experience is to…
sensitivity, but with a beautiful and magnificent…
In addition to a fire or flame, red strength may appear as flowing lava, a dense liquid coursing through the pelvis, legs, or the…
bloodlike fluid pulsing through the body and consciousness. Luminous and conscious of itself, it is a fluid of sensitivity that innately has the feeling of…
When first becoming aware of the essence of strength, many do not recognize that it is the presence of strength sensing and knowing itself. We tend to believe that we, as the ego personality, are feeling and knowing it. It takes curiosity and discernment to realize that we do not usually experience and know strength this way. The knowing of strength comes from the presence itself; it does not come from learned knowledge. Strength has its own sensing; we as…
(Point Eight: essential strength, true aggression, and expansion)
Most humans know the common quality of physical or emotional strength, but few are aware that it has a spiritual origin, a heavenly counterpart. Now we see how this idealized aspect connects with the ego ideal. The latter is the common strength and assertive aggression that most people know without recognizing that their experience is a reflection and, hence, a distortion of something much more real and authentic, an actual presence.
Another associated characteristic we may experience with essential strength is the sense of expansion. We feel big in comparison to how we usually feel, bigger than our body, bigger than other people, even bigger than the room. There is no limit to how expanded we can feel, and this brings spaciousness and freedom, the absence of constrictions in mind and heart. Since point Eight is not in touch with this authentic expansion of being, the big feeling is often unconsciously understood as some sense of self-importance. They act expansively by taking up space with their physical energy and loudness, with uninhibited and capacious expression. Their belief that they have no limitations, however, is usually not true unless they are somebody in a position of power like Stalin or Hussein, whose expansion took sinister turns at the expense of many other human beings. This was not the expansion or expression of true strength because that strength disappears when the action of ego tries to direct it for unwholesome ends.
We are bold in being ourselves and expressing our authenticity, not cowering or passive, not held back or small in word and deed. The degree of boldness and courage we manifest will depend on how much we have integrated real strength into our sense of who we are. Eights frequently exhibit a fearlessness that lacks this deeper source and thus has a tendency to be expressed in socially inappropriate or destructive ways.
When we integrate essential strength—the ruby fire, lava, or presence—we experience a sense of capacity, a feeling of “I can.” The sense of capacity that accompanies expansion and courage becomes the ability to assert oneself in fullness and honesty, to affirm one’s truth without hesitation or limitation. We can assert ourselves in all our relationships, whether with loved ones or authority figures, friends or family—anywhere that we need to stand up for ourselves—and our assertion will make those relationships healthier. It needn’t be loud or rough, but bold and solid. It can even be gentle and kind but assertive nevertheless in that it is not a retreat or a holding back, it is not contracting into oneself. Such assertion, expansion, courage, and fire of spirit constitute the true aggression.
One result was “neutralized aggression,” but this is inadequate to describe the true aggression of Being. We might call it aggressiveness, or simply courageous assertiveness. But it is also expansive and can become explosive in the service of truth, destroying falsehood and lies. It can enlist anger if it is in the service of good ends, not just for oneself but for all others. That is why some realized people express anger, usually referred to as wrath.
But wrath is a far cry from the anger and aggression that characterizes the Eight’s fixation in its extreme or raw expressions, where anger is more often fury and rage in the service of revenge, energy that can turn into cruelty and brutality. Most of the time, however, the fixation’s aggression is just bothersome—not to the point, not useful, just hurtful. It is reactive anger, automatic and conditioned, not sensitive or attuned.
This is the anger of Ego- Venge, very different from the anger of the sage, which expresses itself as a might of Being that challenges unconsciousness and limited views. Even when fiery and destructive, it is in the service of truth.
(Tantric practice: staying with anger until it reveals its fire)
One of the simplest methods is the tantric approach, which refers to the use and transformation of energy for the sake of evolving spiritual being. Energy can be erotic, even sexual, or it can be emotional, mental, or simply energy itself. Whether we are a type Eight or not, when we feel angry or vengeful the tantric practice is not to act it out or express it by yelling, blaming, or cursing anybody. Instead, we sense the feeling of anger or rage and stay with it in its purity. We don’t try to change or suppress it. We do not side with our justifications for it or listen to our stories about it. We just feel our anger in our body, as completely as possible, while containing it so the energy does not seep out or dissipate. If we feel the anger this way, it reveals itself to be a strong energy that is aggressive and bristling. Over time, by not expressing it, we can recognize the source of this energy and instead of the affect feeling prickly, we experience it as a fiery
quality. If we stay with it longer and repeatedly—making it a practice, in other words—we end up experiencing it as the presence of strength with its courage and expansiveness. We might not recognize it as presence at the beginning, but we can recognize the sense of heat, energy, and expansiveness that feels natural and organic, even primordial. To know the sense of presence takes more discrimination of what this strength is exactly.
The practice that is more specific to this teaching is exploring certain sectors of the personality that are related to the disconnection from true strength. The central one is feeling the state of weakness that we assume must be there if we are not able to access true strength. Weakness is the trait of type Eight mentioned in the Enneagram of avoidances, and it implies the disconnection from the presence of strength, which means there are obstacles in its way. Type Eight individuals abhor feeling weak. But that is exactly where they need to go in order to regain the connection with their essential endowment. Actually, the bristling…
These are what allow us to be willing to open to our vulnerability, which is necessary to confront the underlying state of weakness. First, however, we need to see all the ways we avoid feeling weak. The avoidance covers up the weakness and points our attention away such that we are not even aware of feeling weak. There can be many ways we do this, and they depend on the individual rather than the type. We learn these avoidance strategies in early childhood as we interact with the important people in our environment. Two ways these might still manifest in…
To be able to engage in this exploration into our fear of weakness and vulnerability, we must first develop our capacity to sense our body and what happens in it. Perceiving the sensations in our body is not an easy matter at the beginning. Most people sense their body only superficially, with many areas completely out of awareness. Only by focusing attention on the individual parts of our…
By the time we have accessed all the idealized aspects, our bodies will have become transparent to presence and our hearts open and receptive to experiencing the affects that reflect the various qualities of presence. We will have developed our capacity to sense and to be consciously embodied, since this is necessary for that transparency to occur. And our hearts will be willing and able to feel any emotion that arises, regardless of type or intensity.
Any essential presence can be experienced in various degrees of subtlety and refinement, each reflecting a particular level of realization or depth of experience.
(In the Sufi system, there are usually five lataif with their own centers: white at the solar plexus,yellow above the left nipple, red above the right nipple, black at the center of the forehead, and green at the center of the chest, or heart center.
Actually, the feeling of security comes when the personal will aspect fills the first chakra, the Muladhara, which is the center of self-preservation and survival located in the pelvic region (mula means “root” and adhara means “support”). When obstacles block the arising of will in this center, we feel insecure and tend to be fearful, even paranoid. Our survival does not feel certain because the center of security is lacking the essential quality of will that makes us feel secure in ourselves. When personal will is present in this first chakra, our perception of the environment in terms of threat or danger is objective and not derived from our projections, fantasies, or previous experiences.
We can eventually even welcome it. As we can feel fear completely, without identification, acting out, or avoidance, we start understanding it simply as energy, a kind of excitation. As we stay with this type of energy, we discover it is actually nothing but awareness, the clarity of awareness. Fear makes us alert.
However, as we learn to make friends with fear, it reveals its source as clear, sharp awareness. It is not the aspect of personal will, which is the idealized quality, but it is the ground for it.
Or we can explore the state of no will: our fearfulness and lack of confidence, our indecisiveness and hesitation, our doubt and insecurity. Exploring means to feel them as they are and not try to change them. It means to feel them and be open to understanding whatever meaning they might hold or might hide. To be curious about what it means to have an iron will, i.e., to be so incredibly stubborn regardless of how it annoys our friends and loved ones.
This process can uncover many wounds. It is important to feel them and fully understand them experientially. This means we experience all the emotions that these memories and associations bring up, embracing them and being curious about them instead of locking them in the dungeon of our unconscious.
staying present with a curious mind and having the courage to be with the direct experience of the deficient emptiness will tend to dissolve the sense of deficiency and reveal the emptiness as a clear spaciousness. From within that spacious emptiness—which is transparent and clean, without any ideas or beliefs or expectations of what might happen next—the presence of personal will can emerge and fill us from inside.
4 Point Two MERGING LOVE
(Point Two: merging love as the true nourishment Twos seek)
Twos nourish others because they themselves need nourishment, which is again an expression of the codependent position they often take. Yet the true nourishment they seek exists in the actual state of merging gold and its sense of rich, sweet presence. They go to great lengths to get the effects of this state in the form of nourishment, connection, safety, and support, using manipulation as their principal tool. That manipulation then spreads to other areas of their lives, becoming a basic strategy to get anything they want or need.
The reward for tolerating this lonely and impoverished emptiness is then the upwelling of the beautiful transparent flowing golden love. It is like a bubbling in the lower part of the chest or a fountain in the heart. Our heart seems to exude this nourishing sweetness. We feel uplifted by this exquisite quality and its amazing sweetness, which not only satisfies and fulfills but also melts our hearts and edges and relaxes us into a sense of primordial safety. We feel that all we need is here.
Similar to but lighter than the consistency of mercury, while still being dense and substantial, brilliancy can manifest in a powerful, immense way. I remember the first time intelligence explicitly manifested in my individual consciousness. My body was shaking and quaking. I did not know what was happening, but I was feeling something strong going on in the middle of my chest at the sternum. Something was erupting with intensity and power. As it pushed through whatever was obstructing it, the feeling was of immensity—an immense presence, powerful and dense. As the presence with its immense potency came through me, it felt intense, huge and forceful, and it impacted everybody else in the room. Eventually the shaking subsided enough for me to perceive its smoothness, the exquisiteness of its fluidity.
One thing I learned from this experience is that the center of brilliancy is not in the head but located right at the center of the body, at the middle of the lower end of the sternum. You may recall that the merging essence emerges from the left side of this center that we call the mobius. It is not one of the lataif or one of the chakras but a secret center related to a subtle network of centers that I have not heard of or read about anywhere. This is a deeper network than the chakra and lataif systems. The network is not all about intelligence, but the mobius is, as the essence of intelligence emerges from the middle of the mobius. The exploding emergence of the quality was the beginning. After that, brilliancy mostly appeared as a smooth, dense, amazingly brilliant-looking fluid whose smoothness made it incredibly responsive, with no viscosity or stickiness and a completely frictionless flow. The sleek texture by itself is delightful and pleasurable in the way that one naturally enjoys exquisite refinement. But this aspect is not just about affect. It can flow anywhere in the body or head, appearing frequently in the brain as the intellect becomes active on the essential level. It gives the mind the capacity to synthesize—to see the underlying thread that unifies many separate things—because it is the prototype of synthesis. And synthesis is one of the qualities of true intelligence, reflecting the fact that it is a synthesis of all essential qualities. When it is operating in the brain or head, the effect is close to what people refer to as being brilliant, for it can allow our mind to function brilliantly.
(Point Three: the pearl beyond price and what the fixation mistakes it for)
6 Point Three PERSONAL ESSENCE Point Three—Ego-Go according to Ichazo’s original parlance, the Achiever in others—is very concerned about image.
They value success as seen through the prism of their community over a deeper, truer sense of value. The image of success or fame—being the star who is valued by society—is their overriding concern, which results in total avoidance of the helplessness that characterizes their inner core. Their specific reaction of striving appears as the ego ideal of efficiency. Threes are usually efficient but not at embodying their fundamental nature.
The more fixated the type, the more deceptive, image-oriented, and ruthless they are about achieving their perceived status of excellence. Their idealization of efficiency, competence, and success tends to override the harmful consequences of their actions as they climb the ladder of success, frequently at the expense of others as well as their own integrity and truth. They seek worth and value, which tend to be external and seen through the eyes of what the culture idealizes instead of what is uniquely true about themselves. Hence, they are the most extroverted and dynamic of all the Enneatypes, and the most committed to putting in whatever effort is required to achieve their externally driven image of success. They appear to be personal and caring, but this personalness is often superficial and connected to some goal they want to achieve.
The more liberated they are from the confines of the fixation the more truly personal they become, and their effectiveness is in the service of true functioning, not for image or for the eyes of others.
But in many cases, nothing could be further from the truth.
The hero of the spiritual quest ventures into the conventional world—the world of lies—to find the hidden pearl. In these traditions, the pearl is usually guarded by a fearsome dragon that symbolizes the overriding ego of the type. The hero must overcome or get past the dragon in order to retrieve the precious jewel and return with it to their spiritual home, which is now endowed with a quality that was not formerly available. In other words, this quality—a personal beingness—is attained by wrestling with life’s circumstances as the soul grows and matures until it becomes possible for it to individuate on the essential or spiritual level while living a human life. This realization contrasts with being a transcendent absolute or impersonal vastness and withdrawing from the world. The personal essence is an attainment, but unlike the outer accomplishment of the fixated Three, the attainment results from growing and developing, learning to be a human being who embodies our essential nature in our maturity. We are then both the transcendent and a real person, a person who expresses the transcendent by being a human being in the truest sense of the word.
An even more important question is why do all human beings appear as individuals and live as such until they become aware of the vastness of the nondual, infinite, transcendent reality? Where did the soul learn to structure herself as an individual?
human life meaningful instead of understanding it as an illusory stage on the way to the transcendent vastness.
They are focused on not wasting time, being down to earth and practical, and creating excellence to the best of their ability. But maintaining their image of efficiency and competence is important only for achieving what they believe will make them the human paragon of success in their society. Then they will have become what a human being “ought” to be, bringing with it acclaim, love, and admiration. Threes believe this will restore the lost love and attuned holding that will finally make it possible to simply relax and be, without a care in the world.
Threes believe this will restore the lost love and attuned holding that will finally make it possible to simply relax and be, without a care in the world.
(The pearl matures through soul individuation, not outer success)
The personal essence, or pearl, arises as a form of presence, presence with form. It has a few stages of development because, unlike most other qualities of presence, it is intimately connected with a maturation of our soul, our individual consciousness, so that it embodies all the properties of cosmic consciousness.
There was a lot of merging gold present in the area of the heart and some whiteness in the crib. But the crib, made of gold, seemed to have an embryo in it, alive and quiet.
It was in the first few years after I had begun teaching students, and I was aware of being the presence that teaches, with openness and love and caring for everybody.
Out of this hole there popped an unexpected presence: a big pearl that became me. I felt myself as a round full pearl that felt fleshy in its fullness, resilient and flexible.
The room felt as if it were bathed in an amber rain, which felt like the essence of value.
The vastness or infinite expanse of impersonal emptiness or consciousness cannot be a person; only an individual being can be a person.
Beyond being an individual, in Western civilizations particularly, people want to be their own person, unique and distinct. It is a sign of respect when one is treated as a person instead of as an entity or an object.
The Sufis think of the center of the pearl as the center of the heart, what they call the latifa ana’iya, meaning it has to do with oneself, with self or identity.
They refer to this center as the “most hidden” in order to point to the secret that lies there, a secret that is rarely known. We are our own person, autonomous and not dependent on anybody else. But the autonomy goes beyond a psychological stance, for we are a person independent of what the mind says, including our own mind. The process of making such a state accessible and established as a station is a long story,
We are our own person, autonomous and not dependent on anybody else. But the autonomy goes beyond a psychological stance, for we are a person independent of what the mind says, including our own mind.
The true story of human success is finding the pearl, or maturing to the point of being able to embody it, rather than being successful in an external way or in the external world. Then we are truly human, a human who represents the divine, a vice-regent of the sacred, so to speak. We are also the window through which the divine looks into the world of manifestation while still remaining aware of its divinity.
A true person can make contact simply by being oneself; they do not have to utter a word or do a thing. By one’s presence alone contact takes place, and yet it does not exclude the other external ways of contacting others.
We can function in the ordinary and divine worlds efficiently. Without the pearl we have no functionality in the invisible world of spirit beyond just being.
The senses we explored with the other lataif—“I can” and “I will”—both belong to the pearl, to the truly matured and individuated soul, the “I am.” The liberated Three embodies what is true in our spiritual nature, not just what is best in their culture or group. The liberated Three is the true model, not for a particular society but for all of humanity. Whoever embodies the pearl is the exemplar of humanity and the true model of what a human being can be. They are efficient, but about the right matters and in a way that recognizes other human beings as persons in their own right. They even recognize groups for what they are and relate to them with attunement to their uniqueness. The liberated Three can then contribute to society and to humanity as a whole. The prophet Mohammad was not a Three, but he was considered a complete man, the model of humanity. He was definitely a person; he acted as one and lived as one. He was connected directly to the divine, but he lived a human life. He was a reformer, a leader, a statesman, a husband, and a father. He came to his community to contribute to its deliverance from ignorance and barbarity into a true humane society. That is his legacy. But how many of his followers know that or attempt to see him as the exemplar? The Sufis and some of his other followers do. But for the rest, his message became a religion of laws and rules. For the real person there are no rules. Only inner reality dictates what is right and useful. Some of the Hebrew prophets had this status, for it is the ideal of Hebrew spirituality. King Solomon is considered such.
whole. The prophet Mohammad was not a Three, but he was considered a complete man, the model of humanity. He was definitely a person; he acted as one and lived as one. He was connected directly to the divine, but he lived a human life. He was a reformer, a leader, a statesman, a husband, and a father. He came to his community to contribute to its deliverance from ignorance and barbarity into a true humane society. That is his legacy. But how many of his followers know that or attempt to see him as the exemplar? The Sufis and some of his other followers do. But for the rest, his message became a religion of laws and rules. For the real person there are no rules. Only inner reality dictates what is right and useful.
But for the rest, his message became a religion of laws and rules. For the real person there are no rules. Only inner reality dictates what is right and useful.
Instead of being a true person, implying a successful or completed spiritual path, the Three’s attempts to emulate what it means to be a true human being turn the energy, dynamism, and efficiency of the inner practice to outward skills for outer goals. They certainly succeed in society. But the more fixated they are, the more they accomplish this success through deception of themselves and others. They become worshippers of the golden calf. And the capacity for being personal, relational, and contactual becomes simply a façade, a display, empty of the real fullness of the pearl. They might become famous—a movie or sports star—but they do not shine in their inner world. Their shine is worldly and fake.
Do we function efficiently as a machine or as a human being with a heart? Do we attain with truth and integrity or with lies and half-truths? Do we consider others as persons in their own right or are they only a means for our success or mirrors for our excellence?
A real person is a human being, free from the mind, the exigencies of time, and the influence of culture and family.
This is reminiscent of the specific difficulty that is part of the core of this fixation. Valuing this emptiness and welcoming it as the truth helps us free ourselves from the way we pretend. We become open to the arising of the true person that we are. We are perhaps ready and mature enough to become the pearl beyond price.
To experience the personal essence is one thing; to have permanent access to it is another. This access requires maturation, which means discerning and integrating the truth from all aspects of our life, the metabolism of the meaning in our experiences.
This access requires maturation, which means discerning and integrating the truth from all aspects of our life, the metabolism of the meaning in our experiences. It requires us to examine our life so that it is completely transparent and its truth clear and definite. This truth is what feeds the soul as it grows and matures. This maturation becomes an essential individuation, culminating in the station of the pearl beyond price, the royalty of the inner realm.
It requires us to examine our life so that it is completely transparent and its truth clear and definite. This truth is what feeds the soul as it grows and matures. This maturation becomes an essential individuation, culminating in the station of the pearl beyond price, the royalty of the inner realm.
This is true for all types. They idealize their particular essential endowment without actually knowing what it is. Instead they feel some vague reflection of it and from this they build an ideal that patterns the shell of their fixation. Sandra Maitri writes of this type, Fours want to be seen as unique, original, aesthetic, and creative; and being one of the image types—present themselves in this way. They value their refined taste and sensitivity, which they usually feel is deeper and more profound than that of others.
“Yet, more basically, the pursuit of being through the emulation of the self-ideal stands on a basis of self-rejection and of blindness to the value of one’s true self.”5
(Point Four: the point of light and the longing for authentic uniqueness)
There are exceptions in some Sufi teachings that characterize the true self as a star, or in some of the raja yogas that recognize the atman as a shining star. The nondual sense of “infinite self” as one’s identity does not particularly help in understanding the Four type because this is true for all types. Nisargadatta Maharaj, a teacher of nondualistic Vedanta, does discuss the point of light, but he says nothing about its relation to identity or self.
The realization is amazing. We feel we are a center of light and wisdom, a singularity of presence that radiates all qualities and aspects as part of its radiance. Yet each person or soul has a different radiance, not only in the intensity of it or how big or concentrated the point is but in what rays of light it emanates. Some have a slight blue tinge to them, others a hint of pink or golden love. Some emit a green radiance, making them more compassionate and kind. There are an infinite number of combinations, making each person’s point unique, although every point is primarily white brilliance. The point turns out to give us the sense of uniqueness that the type Four idealizes and believes makes them special.
It can fill our soul with radiant, joyful light, while also centering it and giving it the feeling of stability and integrity.
The longing is actually for the inner beloved, which is our true being in its universal and cosmic infinity. The point of light can be seen as the expression of this transcendent truth in the individual soul.
The yearning for authenticity is actually a direct longing and movement toward the point of being. As the point we feel we are not just authentically ourselves but authenticity itself.
But most often this feeling is because they made it themselves and not because the creation has value in itself. The creativity is partly an imitation of the point’s radiance of many qualities and colors, expressing the universal creativity of the transcendent and universal spirit, which is constantly unfolding the universe.
The point has the sense of simplicity and ordinariness that is the essence of being authentically who we are. When we are authentically who we are, we have no need to be seen or to express who we are in dramatic ways that draw attention. We are content in simply being, with no fanfare or drama, no need or desire for dramatic colors or expressions. We would rather be seen as an ordinary person who does not stand out.
The awakened Four is a light for others, a true expression of how Being gives focus and meaning to a human life. Their feelings come from their essential heart and their actions from the center of their true being.
When the center first opens, we can see a yellow transparent sun in the middle. It is not intense like our usual sun, but delicate, subtle, and beautiful—a radiant sun with a gentle yellow luminosity.
The Markabah actually comprises all of the essential qualities arranged in a particular configuration, each expressing a particular flavor of pleasure or bliss.
The yellow joy tastes like sugar, the black peace like licorice, the fulfillment quality like apricot, the green kindness like mint, and so on.
We feel held or bathed by a softness all around us that infuses the whole atmosphere. We feel soothed, comforted, and trusting, making it easy to relax and let go. When this quality is present in our consciousness, the sense of ease and relaxation feels completely natural. Some people experience boundless love as arising within them, as loving light, as a softness that is a delicate presence. It feels like a golden white presence, soft and sweet, but not as intensely sweet as merging love. When it arises within, it is relaxing and brings an inner ease and a settling of mind and consciousness. While we experience it as love, we see it as light, a field of yellowish-white light, a delicate presence with a soft, delicate substantiality. In that quality of light, we recognize it is conscious of itself—pure consciousness that is awake and conscious of its nature.
(Point Nine: divine love dissolves distraction and enables real action)
Since we are inwardly at peace, the need to look for distractions in the external and unessential dissolves. The peace is not outward, though this inner peace can radiate out to give us external peace as well. We don’t look for distractions because this quality expresses divine love, which is the richness, wonder, and beauty of reality. Why would we look outside for little things and collect more items than we need when inwardly we feel in touch with a deep richness and behold everything as glimmering with beauty? Not to mention the affect of pure bliss that is soft and flowing, sweet and giving. Nines can then become naturally generous, for they are overflowing with selfless love and goodness. They do not need to idealize generosity, for generosity is the natural characteristic of this quality. Its presence in the soul causes Nines to become generous with their being, not just with things and actions. Real action replaces the busy kind of activity in which Nines engage. We see that this busy activity is a distortion of real essential action. Liberated Nines can now take real action to bring peace and harmony, for they come from the harmony of divine love and its boundless goodness. They can use their essential strength, will, intelligence and effectiveness to attend to the difficulties and issues—their personal ones and collective ones—in order to bring a true resolution and connectedness. The inner unity can express itself as the movement and drive toward outer tolerance,cooperation, appreciation, and inclusivity. Nines are no longer involved in the distractions of the peripheral and superficial and now focus more on the essential and necessary. This is the action of the liberated Nine. A good exemplar of the liberated Nine might be Oscar Ichazo. It’s quite likely that he is a Nine, as he demonstrates many of these qualities. He worked diligently for many decades to establish the Arica School and
develop a new multifaceted teaching based on the Enneagram. And he used “Humanity Is Only One Spirit” as the motto for his school. We see how closely the Nine traits and patterns resemble the characteristics of their essential endowment, but also how far they are from the real. When Nines see that these patterns are due to a kind of idealized picture of how they want to be, that there is an ego ideal they hold, the rigidity of these traits will begin to soften. Recognizing the ego ideal,
(Point Five: gnosis over intellect, direct knowing over accumulated data)
Fives tend to idealize knowledge and ways of accessing knowledge. But they do not know that the true intellect functions by synthesizing data from the past with direct mystical knowing in the present.
Fives become knowers, but because their knowledge is only intellectual, mental, and cerebral, it disconnects them further from true intellect, which is a presence of Being.
Like all of us, Fives want enlightenment. But before they become aware of the spiritual origins of this drive, they think of it as the illumination of natural phenomena, of the mind, or of human psychology. They pursue many areas of knowledge—scientific, literary, or artistic—and can excel in all areas of this kind of understanding, as exemplified by Sigmund Freud and Hermann Hesse. But if Fives are able to explore the spiritual dimensions of knowing, they can arrive at true illumination, which is spiritual awakening. This was the case for the Buddha, who is considered to have been a Five type. Part of the functioning of essential intelligence is direct and precise perception of what is going on. Perception is the function of consciousness, and spiritual perception is the function of pure consciousness.
When the diamond guidance operates in the center of the forehead, the blue and green essential qualities tend to be dominant, along with the solid gold. Solid gold represents truth, the truth of the moment that eventually extends all the way to ultimate truth. Blue signifies an essential quality we have not discussed yet. It is the quality that has to do with spiritual knowing, which is direct knowing—gnosis or jnana. Gnosis means the knowing is immediate, where the known, the knower, and the knowledge are one thing—a total nonduality of knowledge. This capacity for knowing, whose center is located in the pineal gland at the center of the brain, becomes possible when the blue aspect is integrated. It unifies the right and left hemispheres of the brain, and its presence calms the mind, leaving it carefree and open to new and unexpected knowing. It is the knowing of Being manifesting specifically as a particular quality of presence. It is delicate and subtle, and blissful in its quietness. It silences the thinking mind, allowing for the emergence of spiritual experience, and then the understanding of that experience with the totality of the essential intellect.
By observing and recognizing the idealization of knowledge and understanding, objectivity and observation, the Five can penetrate to essential intellect.
As with the other Enneatypes, there is a more direct way of accessing essential intellect. This is by first allowing ourselves to not know and to see that not knowing is not only true but peaceful and quiet. By recognizing that we do not know how to understand our experience directly—especially by recognizing that we can have spiritual experience but still find it difficult to have insight into it—we become primed for the emergence of this true emissary of truth.
Understanding utilizes analysis and synthesis, but our ordinary intellect does this with ordinary data, not with experience, and especially not with immediate experience.
We need to be open to the possibility of higher intellect and realize that when spiritual teachings tell us to drop the mind, they are referring to the thinking intellectual mind, not to all knowing and understanding.
For example, in childhood theTwo type appears with the qualities and characteristics of the Four. They are more sad and melancholic, wanting to be special but feeling abandoned.
yet completely structured as ego, and the fixation
(The soul child: the developmental key to unlocking each type)
The child is a mix at that time of soul dynamic aliveness and ego structures and patterns. This is what we call the soul child, different from what many traditions recognize as the inner child. Because the inner child includes all phases of childhood, it also includes the soul child. But the soul child represents a particular developmental phase of the inner child.
Being manifests reality as the mind of God, where everything is pure mystical knowledge, including not only one’s soul but the trees and the mountains and our thoughts. Everything is knowledge and simply knowledge.
The purpose of this book is to learn how to unravel the outer shell of each type by accessing its idealized essential quality. Learning about the essential quality of the soul child can be a valuable tool in this inquiry. Then with all the other tools we have, which are essential qualities, we can penetrate the core of our type and access our holy idea. At that point we are well on our way toward liberation from our fixation—and liberation in general.