The Enneagram and Self Discovery

We are all driven by an unsettling subconscious sense that something indefinable is missing within us. Even though we don’t know exactly what we are looking for, we come up with all sorts of ideas about what will make us happy and fulfilled, e.g. a better relationship, more money and a nicer house. But even if we are blessed enough to have these things the unsettled feeling remains, because all we really want is to feel whole and to know who we truly are.

Before we can become whole we need to discover what aspects of ourself are ‘missing’, and what mental and emotional strategies we employ to help us cope in their absence. This can only be achieved through ongoing self-inquiry, but the wisdom of the enneagram can give us a head start with this.

When we were very young, disconnection from particular aspects of our true nature (called ‘essential qualities’) caused our personality to develop into one of the nine enneatypes. So our personality type is not ‘who we truly are’ – it is who we have become as a consequence of losing touch with ‘who we truly are’.

If there was no disconnection from our true nature / essential qualities, our personality would have developed as an authentic reflection of our true nature. But the mental, emotional and energetic disconnect forced our psyche to fill in the ‘holes’ with ‘ego structures’. Ego structures are psychological constructs that substitute for our lost authentic qualities and enable us to function in life despite their absence. They are crude representations of essential qualities that were created in our early childhood by our immature, undeveloped consciousness. Ego structures are not particularly refined, capable or stable, so their functioning is sub-optimal, which is why most of us have some psychological deficiencies.

Therapy can help us to cope with our deficiencies by reinforcing and repairing our ego structures, so that we can feel “normal” again. But this approach doesn’t deal with the root cause of our issues, i.e. our deficiencies. So things may look and feel alright, for a while at least, but the underlying issue remains buried in our subconscious and could resurface at any time. So deep and lasting change requires a fundamentally different approach – one that digs deeper into the cracks rather than plastering over them. This different approach is called self-inquiry.

Self-inquiry involves every aspect of our being – body, heart, mind and soul. The process often begins by feeling deeply into the bodily sensations that are associated with the issue (ego structure). Once we have a “handle” on the issue and deeply feel into it (without resisance), the energy and emotions that are entangled within the ego structure begin to loosen a bit. This creates some space for the light of our awareness to illuminate what we have been avoiding for so long, allowing us to gain some perspective, objectivity and insight. This enables us to gradually disidentify from the ego structure, which in reveals more of our true nature. So going deeply into our issues is actually our doorway to self-discovery, freedom and wholeness.

As we gradually work through an issue, the contracted, fearful, reactive, rigid, structural aspects are metabolised (or digested) by our soul’s presence and awareness. This releases the consciousness that was previously trapped inside, allowing it to reintegrate into the wholeness of our being. So the uncomfortable (psychological) experience of fully feeling into the issue is usually followed by the pleasant (spiritual) experience of reintegration and wholeness. Then we realise that the psychological and spiritual dimensions of our ‘inner world’ are one and the same – they are merely different frequencies or densities within the continuum of our consciousness.