Psychic Upgrade
/
Getting Over Our Selves
I’ve written and spoken about it with some frequency, but I really love the Enneagram. If you are unfamiliar, it’s a personality system that maps human behavior, core motivations, and emotional fears across nine interconnected archetypes. Its roots are in ancient sacred geometry and esoteric traditions some of which go back centuries. Simply put, it describes how people think, feel and behave, especially when under stress or growth.
I love it because at its most fundamental, the Enneagram acknowledges each of us as uniquely ourselves. We’re the product of some inexplicable mix of genetics and lived experience. More importantly, ideally applied, it only asks that we become the best possible version of ourselves albeit with the knowledge that some of our tendencies are pretty deeply embedded in us.
When I think of it through my own journey in recovery and spirituality, and working with many others on their own paths, I see it through a few advancing processes.
First, deal with whatever dysfunctions have been woven into our identity and personality. (Rest assured we all have some kind of mischief cooked into us.) Bring them into the open, seek to mitigate them as best we are able, and perhaps through some exploration and practice, find more functional ways of being.
Second, further our explorations into the various parts of our personalities that are disintegrated. (If you’ve studied depth psychology, you already know each of us has parts of ourselves that are unclear or even unseen.) With increasing awareness of these aspects of ourselves, work to gain greater cohesion with them, i.e. become less fragmented, and more whole.
Third, examine the trajectory of our lives, development and growth. (If you’ve done any coaching, you’ve found we may not really understand where we’ve been or where we are bound.) See if we can tease out how to find our way into being our own unique selves, which could involve greater expression of our talents and maybe even more beneficial end points we seek.
Here’s what interests me most: all the work we do to understand ourselves may eventually help us get out of our own way. In fact, my favorite workshop is called “Getting Over Your Self,” though the title alone seems to ruffle a few feathers. LOL!
We spend much of our lives learning who we are and building a strong foundation. Over time, that foundation can help us loosen our grip on old habits, beliefs, and ways of seeing ourselves. We begin to make room for something more.
That doesn’t mean throwing away who we are or what we’ve learned. Think of learning algebra: you still need arithmetic; you’re simply building on it. Philosopher Ken Wilber calls this “transcend and include.” We carry forward what we’ve learned while opening ourselves to new possibilities.
What does that mean?
My own experience has been my laboratory. For many reasons, my life has been driven by purpose, emphasized performance and provision, and has always sought to achieve and accomplish. Only in recent years have I discovered that the psychic fuel that held it all together was a deep-seated need to believe in my own importance. At worst, I suspect I’ve been guilty of some grandiosity. At the same time, I really did not know better because for nearly seven decades I simply could not see this feature embedded in my make up. Honestly, I’m often chagrined to see how easy it is to be blind to ourselves, though admittedly, it’s a very human challenge for all of us.
What does it look like to “transcend and include” this pattern?
I call it dis-importancing. Not to negate the talents and capabilities, rather to acknowledge the underlying mischief of self-importance, admit a desire to let it go, then to allow for some new motivation to emerge. Remarkably enough, new ways of being do have an opportunity to emerge when we genuinely see and seek to release the old ways.
To be as self-honest as my self-dishonesty will allow, the work of becoming more functional, integrated and individuated has borne great fruit. I’m truly blessed by it. Now, life, my psyche, and the Spirit are nudging me to allow something greater still to take hold. Not as more self-importance, but in accord with something I cannot really yet fathom.
There is great comfort in trying to see and tell the truth of me. And there is great discomfort in it as well.
Being remade is not at all simple. Yet it does seem to be essential.
Seeing True in Reality and In Practice™
A great calling is to allow change to the ways of being which have served us well.
They cannot take us where we next need to go.
*****
What ways of being have served us well—and may now be asking for change?
What is best kept, albeit with greater awareness of motivations?
What might need to be released?
*****
“What stands in the way becomes the way.” *
~ Marcus Aurelius
* A great resource is What's in the Way Is the Way: A Practical Guide for Waking Up to Life by Mary O’Malley
