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The moral of the story is that understanding the design of the lock that keeps us imprisoned can help us fashion the key that will unlock it. Like all Sufi teaching stories, this one is a metaphor. It describes the condition of most of humanity: imprisoned in the labyrinth of our own ego structures. For most of us, our lives are lived within the narrow confines of what we take ourselves and the world around us to be, which, from the perspective of those not so imprisoned, is a tiny part of what is truly available to us. Particular thought patterns, feelings, and most overtly, situations repeat themselves over and over in our lives, giving our inner experience a sense of sameness.
Although we don’t see bars and walls constraining us as did the tinsmith in Shah’s parable, we are truly in the prison of a holographic reality through which we filter the world around us and our very experience of ourselves.
The enneagram’s deeper function is to point the way to who we are beyond the level of the personality, a dimension of ourselves that is infinitely more profound, more interesting, more rewarding, and more real. It is in support of that pursuit that this book is written.
In a nutshell, the approach that informs this book consists simply of learning how to be fully present within our bodies, our emotions, and our thoughts, and to experientially explore and inquire into what we find.
Putting it slightly differently, when we experientially explore the world of the personality rather than taking it as reality, we see that it is a holographic universe through which we filter our inner and outer experience.
Deeper and deeper levels of reality that are not part of that drama can reveal themselves, bringing us progressively more in touch with what lies beyond and is more fundamental than the filter of the ego: reality, with a capital R, our ultimate nature and the nature of everything. From this perspective, psychological work is inseparable from spiritual development that truly transforms the soul. Pursuing spiritual work without working on our personality typically results in a lack of resolution of deep-seated issues and a lack of true integration of our spirituality, a situation that has limited and even brought down many spiritual teachers and traditions.
As Almaas says, In time, there will be no essence in the person’s conscious experience. Instead of essence or being, there will be many holes: all kinds of deep deficiencies and lacks. However, the person will not usually be consciously aware of his perforated state. Instead, he is usually aware of the filling that covers up the awareness of these deficiencies, what he takes to be his personality. That is why this personality is considered a false personality by people aware of essence. The individual, however, honestly believes that what he is aware of is himself, not knowing that it is only a filling, layers of veils over the original experiences of loss. What is usually left of the experience of essence and its loss is a vague feeling of incompleteness, a gnawing sense of lack, that increases and deepens with age.7
As Almaas says, When you objectively apprehend reality … you cannot help but feel positive toward it. In this experience, there are no positive or negative categories that your mind has divided things into. There is no polarity here; this nonconceptual positivity is beyond all polarities. The nature of reality, then, is such that the more it touches your heart, the more your heart feels happy and full, regardless of your mental judgments of good or bad.2 So the closer we are to our depths, the more in balance and in harmony we feel.
We suffer because we are living at a distance from our depths—it’s as simple as that. The more our souls are infused with Being, the better we feel and the better life seems to us, no matter what our outer circumstances happen to be.
They are chameleonlike, taking on the colorings needed to make a positive impression. It is often difficult to discern what they truly feel or even who they truly are, since they seem to become whoever they need to in
AI Summary
The Spiritual Dimension of the Enneagram by Sandra Maitri presents key insights from the Sufism tradition. The 10 passages above capture the essential teachings.
Core Themes:
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Key Passages: Highlights 1, 3, and 10 are particularly representative.
This entry was generated from Readwise highlights. Expand with additional context as appropriate.