I have a friend who goes to a dream group facilitated by an Enneagram teacher. She said it’s rather compelling the way type shows up in dreams.  I am a social subtype and my dreams are often occupied by a lot of people.  She is a one on one subtype and her dreams are usually just her and perhaps, an intense relationship with one symbol in the dream.

I also have noticed that symbols of our arrows show up in the dream.  For instance, she is an 8 on the Enneagram and she has dreams of tender caretaking (her movement two Type Two: The Giver).  She also describes dreams in which she is fighting an aggressive force represented by various dream images.  I have a 9 friend who often has dreams of anger and aggression and fighting a wild animal.  I am not an anger type and rarely have dreams in which anger plays a central role. Rather, my dreams will often include some version of fear which as a fear type, this is not a big surprise.

On another note, I use Ommwriter to record my dreams.  It is a free app you can download on your computer and it induces that sort of liminal, hypnotic state in which we find ourselves suspended between dream and waking states.   I find I can shift states simply by closing my eyes, tuning into the music and free writing my dream.  

It is created by a group out of Barcelona and they write:  

As mere mortals, we also face the usual challenges of daily life: a multitude of windows open on our computer desktops, messages, emails, calls, meetings, and those crazy thoughts that pass through our minds.

OmmWriter emerged as an internal tool to help transport us away from the humdrum noise; allowing us to be at one with ourselves and our ideas. All said and done, after having created something so valuable, we figured that OmmWriter was just too good to keep to ourselves.

My friend, Meredith wrote on her Facebook wall: “Ever noticed the parallels between baby birds and your kids?  They’re born, they stay, they leave their crap all over your house and then they fly away. And…mom’s miss them anyway.”

As I read her post, I thought of this song by the Indigo Girls, “Fly Away.” I used to played the song song so I could have one of Ope’s ugly cry’s when I would be thinking about how everything was changing.  (You mean everyone doesn’t try to make themselves cry when they’ve got an iceberg lump in their throats?) I don’t know that I ever heard the words past the first line because by then, I would be in a full scale melancholic meltdown.  

Everyone says they come back which is true in one way.  (Which, given the day, can be a welcome or dreaded thought).  But on the good days, when you’re feeling the love, you realize they don’t ever really come back because when they return, you see something in their eyes or the way they hold themselves.  It is the recognition that the cord has been cut, they’ve found (or are finding) their wobbly wings and your nest is too small to contain their becoming of who they’re meant to be.

Somewhere in all of that, you too find more of yourself and you just might kind of like what you see.  You’ve come home.

13_Fly_Away.mp3 Listen on Posterous

Ingrid Stabb, who certified with me through the Enneagram Professional Training Program (EPTP), has written a book with Elizabeth Wagele called “The Career Within You.”  She also has a nice site which gives brief synopses of each type at work. 

Here is a sample as she looks at Enneagram Type Four

Jerry Wagner has a good new book out on type called Nine Lenses on the World. It’s quite good in making some fine distinctions.

I appreciated his take on how each type typically misreads other people.  I took some notes to share:  

Projections of the One: Since Ones avoid their own anger and imperfections, they project their anger and faults onto others. Others are experienced as being angry towards and critical of them.  The world is experienced as being messy, flawed, careless, frivolous, wrong and imperfect and the Ones feel obliged to clean up, straighten others out, and get them back on the road to perfection.

Projections of Twos: Since Twos avoid their own needs, they project their needs onto others.  Others are experienced as withholding, cold, indifferent, heartless, selfish, mean, prickly, critical and requiring help. Thus, it is the Twos job to detect and empathize with the needs of others and minister to us, thereby making themselves indispensable. 

Projections of Threes: Since Threes avoid failure and inefficiency, these unacceptable features are projected onto others and others are experienced as being the cause of any failures, the source of inefficiency and ineptness,  aimless, wallflowers, limited, losers, in danger of entropy, and in need of consultation and assistance from the Three.  

Projections of  Fours: Since Fours avoid being ordinary, commonness is projected onto others who are experienced as being plain, rude, shallow, predictable, detached, overly cheery, even and not terribly interesting or refined.  Fours experience themselves as unique, interesting and no one really understands.  Being special, they believe they are readily misunderstood.  Therefore, Fours feel it is up to them to restore refinement, class and sensibility to the culture.

Projections of Fives: Since Fives avoid looking foolish, they project their ignorance onto others and experience themselves as sometimes surrounded by a confederacy of dunces.  Others are considered to be stupid, foolish, shallow-minded, overly effusive and chatty, unaware, emotional, myopic.  Fives have the option of avoiding others entirely and withdrawing from the field, or of researching and discovering the truth and enlightening the others about it.

Projections of Sixes: Since Sixes avoid deviancy and vulnerability, they project rebelliousness and power onto others who are experienced as reckless, flighty, negligent, isolated, overly trusting, threatening and trying to get away with something.  The world is experienced as a place that can’t be trusted and it is up to Sixes to bring certainty, order, safety and security back into the world.  Counter fearful (counterphobic) Sixes project their ambivalence onto others especially authority figures, and experience them as inconsistent and untrustworthy.  So, they feel the need to chide or condition them into being consistent and fair.

Projections of Sevens: Since Sevens avoid pain and suffering, they project these elements onto to others who are experienced as being unimaginative, restrictive, boring, pessimistic, joyless, dull, modest, negative, and overly serious.   It is up to Sevens to make others up, make everything okay, envision an optimistic future, see the good in things and give other something to laugh about.

Projections of Eights: Since Eights avoid weakness, they project any variation of weakness onto others and others are experienced as overly dependent, weak, phony, ambivalent, bleeding heart, needy, unfair, naive, sentimental. It is up to the Eights to right any injustices, give others a dose of reality, toughen others up, protect others.  

Projections of Nines: Since Nines avoid conflict, they project their discomfort and unsettledness onto others who are experienced as being conflicted, demanding, excluding, aggressive, frantic, inconsistent and pushy.  They also avoid their own agenda so they project that others ignore them, don’t consider them.  Nines feel it is up to them to calm others down, pacify, reconcile, lower expectations; they also project their agenda is unimportant  

“Behind personality stands essence and behind essence stands real ‘I’ and behind real ‘I’ stands God.”

This is how Cynthia Bourgeault began her talk at the Association of Enneagram Teachers in the Narrative Tradition conference.  She was speaking of the trinitarian nature of the personality, essence and soul.  

Because each of these things means different things to different people, she elaborated by offering that this “cryptic saying” defines the trajectory of seeking.

She went on:

Essence precedes birth—raw material of soul  We are born with essence.  

Personality is all that comes to us from outside: family, education, enculturation; it is everything received outside of self.  Then, as if to ensure we don’t cast personality as the evil archetype of this play, she insisted that the development of personality is essential and is our life task:  Each of us must stake oneself in world and do life: personality is necessary.  

We must be a good householder and show up in the self-preservation arenas of life and within our relationships with an intention to contribute to this world.  This work has no place for tramps and dreamers who don’t know how to produce. We need our personality to work in the world.  

She also offered that personality is a crucial ingredient in maturation of essence as our essence can’t grow without personality.  The personality becomes food for the maturation of essence.

We need a systematic feeding of personality into essence so it grows.  We have to grow our personality and feed to essence.  

Can you feel the organic nature of our unfolding in which every moment is sort of a composting of personality into essence into soul?   

Personality as both defense mechanism and compost for maturation 

Within this, there is a recognition that the personality grows as a defense mechanism that prevents us from taking the wounds and arrows that life slings at us.  The defense mechanism is inevitable and necessary for survival.  The work is simply recognizing the subtle ways it shows up to protect the personality and working with that awareness. 

She believes that spiritual transformation is not a matter of going back to a glorious state of unconscious innocence…the idealization of this earlier innocence is what Ken Wilber calls the pre/trans fallacy.  Many spiritual movements have a tendency to consider this earlier wave of development as more desirable when in truth, we were unconscious and responding to instinctual needs! 

So, the work isn’t about getting back to an illusory shangri-la.  It is about waking up and using the personality as compost for the maturation of essence.  The essence that needs to grow becomes raw ingredient in dynamic process that will eventually reveal soul or real “I.”

Tallow, Wick and Flame

She then offered a metaphor which seemed to light up the room as if our subtle faculties were awakened.  She said:

Picture essence as the wick of a candle and personality as tallow and soul as flame.  The tallow is the fuel that allows burning of flame..only when tallow and wick come together, do you begin to realize what is the real thing…the flame.  

Yet, when you stand back, you recognize that there is really not a “thing” you can put your finger on.  Rather, it’s a process.  It’s a dynamic equilibrium that results from interaction between tallow and wick and flame.  We are developing tallow and burning tallow.  All three are needed and all three are in relationship with the other.

It is only a candle when it burns.  So we might ask, what is being burned?  

And, what is real “I” behind essence?  ”I” am not the illusory “I”…the illusory self. Rather,  I AM this one walking behind me who I do not see.  Some call this I AM-ness, God.

There were countless times during the conference that many of us wanted to push a sort of “pause” button so we could allow these questions to simmer inside of us and let insights reveal themselves. 

We did walk away with this in our bones:

Personality is not a mistake, nor a problem to be solved.  Rather, personality is a resource bank of raw material for maturing of essence that grows into soul.  

We need grown up human beings to do the work the planet need us to do.  And, in order to do what we are called upon to do we have to grow up.