SENTIENT TIMES February/March 2004

The Sacred Enneagram

A Vehicle for Self-Inquiry

By Eli Jaxon-Bear

The personal entity,
which identifies its existence with life in the physical
body and calls itself “I,” is the ego.

The physical body,
which is inherently inert, has no ego sense.
The Self, which is pure consciousness, has no ego sense.

Between these two, there mysteriously arises the ego-sense,
which is the “I” thought.

This ego, or separate personal identity,
is at the root of all suffering in life.
Therefore, it is to be destroyed by any means possible.
This is Liberation or Enlightenment or Self-realization.

– Ramana Maharshi

There is living intelligence in all people that seeks ultimately to discover its source and true identity. The teaching of the self-realized saint, Ramana Maharshi, is to plunge inside to discover who you really are.

The method of self-inquiry is to look within to find out what the I is made of. You can start by seeing what you have falsely identified as yourself. When all of your thoughts, mental stories, emotions, and body sensations are directly investigated, they are seen to not be who you are. They are all ever-changing and you are what does not disappear or change. You are the consciousness that gives rise to all perception and experience.

The realization of oneself as pure consciousness cannot be learned, studied, or believed. It must be directly experienced and intelligently investigated to discover it for yourself. In the plunge within, the I that is plunging, the same I that is reading this page, is discovered to be merely an idea.

It is a fortunate and mysterious moment when the desire for happiness leads to the consideration of whether this that has been called me is real. In the light of self-inquiry, limitations that once seemed to define oneself are discovered to be more like transparent lines drawn on water. They exist only on the surface of consciousness in one’s imagination. When these illusions of mind are clearly exposed, true limitless being reveals itself.

In service of this ultimate discovery, the Enneagram appears as a wisdom mirror for consciousness to recognize how it has become falsely identified with particular forms. In its subtle depth, the Enneagram reveals patterns of subconscious physical, mental, and emotional identification. The core identification is the thought, “I am somebody.” Once this thought arises, the ego becomes crystallized in the mind, and consciousness experiences itself as limited.

The first limitation is the sense that who one is, is inside, and who one is not is outside. I now has a narrow identity as an object in space that is called me or myself. The Enneagram clearly describes the nine variations of this basic belief that one is a limited and separate body.

My teacher, Sri Poonjaji, a devotee of Ramana Maharshi, had a wonderful story he often told about waves. The waves are continually racing toward the shore where they roll, crash, and then slide back to regroup, and roll and crash again. Each wave has its own unique moment and movement, its own size and roll, and seems different from all other waves.

One day a little wave became curious as it saw a big, old wave coming from far away. The little wave approached the big wave and said, “You seem like a big, old, wise wave. You have traveled so far and seen so much. Maybe you can tell me, is there such a thing as an ocean?”

The old wave smiled and said, “Well, I have heard of the ocean, but I haven’t actually seen it.”

With the Enneagram you can discover how you have believed yourself to be a wave, separate from the ocean of consciousness. Once you have clearly recognized the structure of mind, you then have a choice. You can either continue to believe yourself to be a limited “me,” or you can begin to fully examine the possibly false belief that who you are is bound by time and form. In order to choose the latter, a desire must arise within the ego for the transcendence of ego. There must arise a burning desire for freedom, truth, or God.

With conscious surrender of limited identification comes a great relaxation. There is an unwillingness to continue playing a self-destructive mental game. When the game of suffering stops, there is vast realization. What is discovered to be underneath all identification is the ocean of supreme bliss and peace. This is the beginning.

The Structure of Ego Personality

Every organism has a personality. We see it in dogs, cats, and horses. It has even been discovered and reported in studies of ants. Personality is the most peripheral and superficial ring of the structure of ego. It is made up of patterns of conditioned, genetic predispositions, which encounter environmental or social circumstances.

Personality involves the activities of the three bodies of manifestation—the mental body, the emotional body, and the physical body. “My thoughts,” “my feelings,” and “my behaviors” are the three realms of manifestation in which people identify themselves.

The goal of most traditional therapy is to give you a more functional ego. Egoic identification requires the continual maintenance of a personal story. The story of me is made by stringing together distinguishing moments of arising phenomena and giving them a thread of continuity by taking it all personally. Therapy is often about changing the quality of the story that you tell yourself. The therapist is often a sympathetic coach who teaches you how to do the story differently.

You can change your personal story. If you have a negative internal dialogue, it is definitely better to have a positive internal dialogue. Changing your story can be valuable at a certain stage. It can be important to know that you are not stuck in a particular story. If therapy stops on the level of personality, you will keep coming back to the same old issues, picking them up again and again, in similar circumstances, with a new cast of people playing the same old characters.

Often people come to therapy or workshops because they want to have more courage, get rid of fear, learn to be more self-accepting, or forgive their parents. All of that is working within the realm of personality change. The great trap in working on your personality and your circumstances is that the question of who has a personality, who is doing the work, never gets addressed.

Personalized story-telling is a form of self-hypnosis. It is a “trance induction” that consciousness puts itself into as it describes the world, reacts to the world, and develops opinions and beliefs about the way the world should be.

If you are spiritually ripe, you are not satisfied with just a better personality or a better life. You are hungry for something. There is a longing to return home, a longing for true peace, for true freedom and love. Fundamentally and ultimately, the personality is neither the problem nor the solution.

Character Fixation

The Enneagram, with its nine enneatypes, is not a system of personality, as it is so often presented, but rather a definition of character fixation. The same character fixation can manifest across a full range of personalities. Jack Nicholson and Slobadan Milosevic have the same character fixation but different personalities.

Character fixation is a level deeper than personality. This is where the knot of ego resides. All thoughts, feelings, and behaviors of the personality arise from this core identification. Character fixation can also be seen as the central strategy for survival of the body. It is at this level that the false sense of “me,”’ which is the root of all unhappiness, can be recognized and transcended.

Character fixation is the egoic masking of true character. True character resides at the level of soul. It is the expression of the developed qualities of the soul’s essence. True character is developed when one is willing to sacrifice personal pleasure or safety for something more important, to stand for what is known to be true in the face of the fears and rationalizations of the character fixation.

Working directly on true character never develops it. This would be a form of selfishness. True character is exposed and strengthened in acts of selflessness.

The great challenge is to recognize and expose the character fixation’s imitation of both true character and the essential qualities of soul, described in the next section. This imitation becomes intrinsic to the ego’s strategy for obtaining a sense of safety, control, and love.

Character fixation also helps to keep the sense of me safely examined by providing a positive image to identify with whether overtly or secretly. Each fixation has an “idealization,” an internalized story that makes it seem good and right and covers what really going on.

When you first encounter the Two or “giving” fixation, it seems so loving and friendly. “How can I help you, and what can I do for you?” is the implicit message the Two transmits. However, when you get to know this fixation a little deeper, it seems more like an extraction machine. “I’ll take care of you, if you give me back love. I’ll do everything for you, if you give me my self-worth.” This hidden selfishness is covered by the imitation of true kindness. True, essential kindness needs no recognition, whereas the egoic imitation of kindness needs to feel recognized.

Because it imitates the essence of the soul itself, the character fixation can feel like a very real experience of who you are. For this reason, the sacred Enneagram is a ruthless aid in its capacity to penetrate through this trick of egoic mind.

Soul and Essence

Soul is consciousness crystallized into a more subtle form. It is the arising of I consciousness as an ephemeral body. It is the soul that reincarnates lifetime after lifetime searching, for fulfillment, happiness, and God.

When the soul is not enlightened and is burdened with an egoic identity, it is called jiva in the ancient Indian language of Sanskrit. In this case the soul, or jiva, is the storehouse of latent tendencies and unfulfilled desires that take birth in a new body. The soul’s identification with the body creates the egoic knot of character fixation.

The qualities of the soul’s essence are described in the Sufi tern of subtle latifas. Each quality of essence is masked by a corresponding quality of fixation. For example, the red latifa of shakti, or power, is veiled by the Eight fixation’s use of personal power. The green latifa of kindness is veiled by the Two fixation’s imitation of kindness with pride. The white latifa of purity is veiled by the One fixation’s anger at impurity. The gold latifa of joy is veiled by the melancholy Four’s search for joy. The black latifa of peace is veiled by the Five’s attempt to create peace by withdrawing from contact with the outer world. The blue latifa of absorption is veiled by the Seven’s search for bliss through outside activities.

The latifas of essence do not describe the truth of soul, which is completely empty of all form, even the subtlest. The living empty intelligence that is the truth of being has no color, form, and no quality, yet it is the source of all form and gives flavor, texture, and color to everything.

As the momentum of character fixation is confronted by an unwillingness to act out the old patterns of veiling, fixation burns and one’s true essence shines forth.

True Self

If souls are like sparks flying out into the infinite night, then true Self is not only the sparks, but also the night, the universe, and the field that the universe arises in. The cosmic joke is that the soul is made of that which the soul is searching for, immortal consciousness. Enlightenment is to realize that who you are is this same immortal consciousness. God, soul, and universe are realized to be One.

It is possible to awaken from the trance of ego and the identification with form. This is to realize the true emptiness of all things. There is a clear seeing that nothing really exists! Nothing is all that exists! And this “nothing” is beyond description or words. When you realize yourself as the totality of empty, intelligent fullness, this is called enlightenment or awakening from the trance of suffering.

The experience of awakening varies from person to person in depth, duration, and scope. Some experiences are short and shallow, and other experiences are vast and deep. The greater the individual mind is willing to open to what is beyond the mind, the deeper the realization. The truth of what is experienced does not change. However, what does change is the mind’s capacity to approach and apprehend what is beyond its power to comprehend.

Once the knot of egoic identity is cut, you are free. In Sanskrit, the jiva has become a Jiva Mukta, a liberated soul. Just as the Buddhists list the qualities of the various Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, beings whose lives are dedicated to the enlightenment of all, the soul matures in its deepening realization of its true nature. After the experience of awakening, a natural deepening occurs. This deepening occurs through tests and temptations that either draw consciousness back into identification or release it to a deeper level of established realization.

The final release is union with God. Discovering its true nature, which is beyond all form, the soul realizes itself to be the formless one. In Sanskrit, the Self as liberated soul is called Atman. Once the soul dissolves into union with the Beloved, the One Totality, it is called Brahman.

Brahman, or God, is the absolute unchanging field that gives rise to all form, including God, soul, and all that we call the universe. When identification shifts from a particular body, however subtle, to the totality of being that gives rise to all objects, the soul realizes itself as pure, limitless consciousness. This shift in identification is called Self-realization. In this realization, not only do you find that love is all that there is, but you also discover this love to be who you are.

Excerpted from the revised edition of The Enneagram of Liberation, by Eli Jaxon-Bear. Born in 1947 in Brooklyn, New York as Eli Jay Zeldow, Eli Jaxon-Bear spent eighteen years in a spiritual search that took him around the world and into many traditions and practices. As a spiritual psychologist working with the Enneagram of Character Fixation, he developed a new map of the psyche that integrated the Tibetan Buddhist model with Western psychology and the Sufi work with Essence. In 1990 he was pulled to India where he met his final teacher, Sri H. W. L. Poonja {Papaji). Confirming his realization, Papaji sent Eli back into the world to share his psychological insights into the nature of egoic suffering. Eli infuses the Enneagram with a living transmission of Silence, presenting this unique map of egoic identification as a vehicle for ruthless self-inquiry and deepening realization of true freedom.

The Leela Foundation (www.leela.org) is a nonprofit spiritual organization dedicated to world peace and freedom through universal self-realization. On March 12, 13, & 14 the newly formed Leela Center of Ashland will be hosting a weekend intensive, The Enneagram of Liberation: Uncovering Self-Betrayal. Teaching the intensive will be an advanced student of Eli Jaxon-Bear, Sheila Firnstein, who will be assisted by members of the Ashland Leela Center. Anyone interested in attending is welcome to view a free video of Eli’s presentation of the Enneagram on Sunday, February 29 & Sunday, March 7 at 7pm. For more information, call (541) 488-3180.

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The word Enneagram comes from the Greek and means “nine-sided.” The Enneagram symbol is rooted in antiquity and can be traced as far back as Pythagoras. George Gurdjieff made the Enneagram a foundation of his mystery school teachings and was instrumental in introducing it to the modern world. But the father of the modern Enneagram as a system of personality types is Oscar Ichazo, whose synthesis includes components from mystical Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Taoism, and ancient Greek philosophy.

The Enneagram Points at a Glimpse

9) The Saint. In the name of love, Nines will justify not staying true in the moment, if staying true might produce anger.

8) The Warrior. Eights use the idea of truth as a club to beat everyone into submission, thereby maintaining dominance and control and hiding vulnerability.

7) The Magical Child. Sevens skate on the surface of life using magical thinking to distract themselves from deep emotional contact to avoid pain and fear.

6) The Hero. Sixes have a fear of fear, living in the mind, they lose connection with their own deep instinctive sense which in turn creates doubt.

5) The Mystic Philosopher. Fives have a greed for information that they believe will protect them against the outside world and the inner black hole of nothingness.

4) The Artist. Fours suffer from a deep lack of self-worth. They become love addicts to fill themselves up and display a tragic sense of suffering and uniqueness.

3) The Magician. Threes gain self-worth through production in an attempt to earn lovability.

2) Mother Goddess. In the search for love Twos sellout by caring for others instead of acknowledging their own needs.

1) The Ruler. Ones distort perfection into a superegoic ideal that judges and cuts.

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