The Ecstatic Skin of the Earth

One of my favorite stories about C.G. Jung is a reported dream where he was drowning in a vat of human waste and calling "Help me out!" to his therapist, who stood on the rim of the vat. Instead of taking his outstretched hand the therapist pushed Jung's head down into the liquid, saying, "Through, not out."

That's often what it feels like when I commit to greater self-awareness and then see what I've gotten myself into: "Get me out of this!" No matter how innovative my efforts, there's a quality of struggling in, yes, a vat of shit.

In an episode of "John Adams," he teaches one of his sons about the virtues of manure, insisting that the young man mash it around with his hands. Adams' recipe for compost would delight today's organic gardeners -- seaweed, marsh mud, dead ashes, rock weed, livestock waste, kitchen scraps.

My own dung has a similar variety -- scraps of history; ashes I thought were dead; a deep sea of muddy droppings from unconscious creature selves; weeds I'd imagined pulled forever; the waste of years spent serving an ego-image.

I keep in mind this quote from William Bryant Logan's Dirt: The Ecstatic Skin of the Earth: "Not only the grain in the mealbag, but the full-blown rose are, in one sense, the gift of turds."

I Know What Endarkenment Is

I don’t know what enlightenment is, but I know what "endarkenment" is… a way to get endarkened really well is to be narrow, to only see things one way (Charles Tart, Enneagram Monthly, March, 1999). 

So many people I talk to describe their own transformation process in terms of shifts in awareness, a sense of stepping outside a frame of reference they'd always held. And it does feel like moving from the dark into the light.

"The most profound moments in my life," said an Enneagram style Eight, "were actual events where I came out on the other side." She's strong, responsible and had tended to avoid signs of weakness or feelings of vulnerability. So you know the enormity of the shift when she said, "It scared the f------ shit out of me!"

Completely transforming one's awareness is a scary place, and it helps to know where the process is leading:

At the first level (of development) people simply realize… how much of the time they spend on automatic pilot.

The second level of insights are… psychodynamic or personality revelations. People begin to see more clearly patterns to their motivations and behavior…

There can arise a clear vision of the dissolution of self from moment to moment, and this often leads to a realm of fear and terror…

Later there arises… a spontaneous process of letting go of personal motivation, and… a vision of the true connection between all of us...

~ Jack Kornfield, "The Seven Factors of Enlightenment", pp. 56-59 in Paths Beyond Ego

Understanding your Enneagram style can be enormously helpful as a road map for your patterns of motivation and behavior. One psychological pattern I discovered in myself as an Enneagram style Nine, for example, was how I'd made myself passive-aggressive by setting myself up to feel discounted. This usually happened when I’d failed to state my needs clearly. Then, when someone failed to read my mind and act on my needs, I became passive-aggressive and the other person felt I'd set up a trap. And of course, I had. 

So I know what endarkenment is. You know, too, when you see how you set up and feed into the stories that reinforce old, narrow views. 

The Enneagram: A Compelling Vision

Susan Olesek's TED talk on behalf of the Enneagram Prison Project (EPP), Both Sides of the Bars, is the most compelling Enneagram presentation I've ever seen, for her own transparency, for her clarity and vision, for her compelling examples, for her intelligent presentation, and most of all for the power of her presence. This is the finest example of how life-changing the Enneagram can be in the hands of someone on an authentic spiritual journey. See also this Forbes article about Olesek's work.

Eating the "I"

I love the phrase, Eating the "I." We're constantly eating ego, constantly chewing on, "How does it show up?" I'm much better able to do this than I used to be. I can't always get out of the grip, but I usually ask, O.K., what's my ego doing? What defenses are up? And I'm better at loving myself regardless of what I observe.

Most people interacting with me probably find me much the same as I've always been. The difference is in what happens internally when my patterns come up. I sort for understanding differently. I experience myself differently. I'm more open to my foibles. I'm much more forgiving of myself.


This was brought home to me when talking to a friend with Enneagram style Four who said, "The same old stuff comes up again, and I hate seeing it time after time after time."

These patterns may show up forever. You have to love yourself anyway.

Your old habits won't react as automatically, you'll judge yourself less and less harshly, the struggles won't be as difficult, and you'll be less hooked most of the time. But, for as long as you live, your worldview will still have some influence over your reactions. 

All my resistances, of course, are true to my Enneagram Nine style – to "forget" myself until I was in my thirties, to see myself as my idealized image of "the good girl." In particular, I've become aware of how distractibility can keep me from my own focus. The most important and visible manifestation of my dawning awareness has been to find my own voice and follow it without distraction.