Open Theism Discussion Board

First...

Type Six in Brief
The committed, security-oriented type. Sixes are reliable, hard-working, responsible, and trustworthy. Excellent "troubleshooters," they foresee problems and foster cooperation, but can also become defensive, evasive, and anxious—running on stress while complaining about it. They can be cautious and indecisive, but also reactive, defiant and rebellious. They typically have problems with self-doubt and suspicion. At their Best: internally stable and self-reliant, courageously championing themselves and others.

Basic Fear: Of being without support and guidance
Basic Desire: To have security and support
Enneagram Six with a Five-Wing: "The Defender"
Enneagram Six with a Seven-Wing: "The Buddy"
Key Motivations: Want to have security, to feel supported by others, to have certitude and reassurance, to test the attitudes of others toward them, to fight against anxiety and insecurity.

The Meaning of the Arrows (in brief)
When moving in their Direction of Disintegration (stress), dutiful Sixes suddenly become competitive and arrogant at Three. However, when moving in their Direction of Integration (growth), fearful, pessimistic Sixes become more relaxed and optimistic, like healthy Nine.

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Type Five in Brief
Fives are alert, insightful, and curious. They are able to concentrate and focus on developing complex ideas and skills. Independent, innovative, and inventive, they can also become preoccupied with their thoughts and imaginary constructs. They become detached, yet high-strung and intense. They typically have problems with eccentricity, nihilism, and isolation. At their Best: visionary pioneers, often ahead of their time, and able to see the world in an entirely new way.

Basic Fear: Being useless, helpless, or incapable
Basic Desire: To be capable and competent
Enneagram Five with a Four-Wing: "The Iconoclast"
Enneagram Five with a Six-Wing: "The Problem Solver"
Key Motivations: Want to possess knowledge, to understand the environment, to have everything figured out as a way of defending the self from threats from the environment.

The Meaning of the Arrows (in brief)
When moving in their Direction of Disintegration (stress), detached Fives suddenly become hyperactive and scattered at Seven. However, when moving in their Direction of Integration (growth), avaricious, detached Fives become more self-confident and decisive, like healthy Eights.

Now here's what's interesting. All of the types have basic fears and basic desires linked to those fears. Whenever a person moves in their direction of intergration, they are effectively "taking on" the good aspects of that direction...and in so doing meeting the desire and conquering the fear of one's basic personality type.

For me, this "mystic journey" (Jesus Prayer, Hesychasm, reading the Saints, etc) has been UNFATHOMABLY HELPFUL. Whenever the Six gets really really anxious, fearful, and angry (I don't know...say after a messy divorce and moving to a whole different state), they slide over to Three where the narcissism quotient SKYROCKETS out of the feelings of uncertainty, left unsupported, and being alone and lonely. Here's the ego-fixation of the Three, my path of disintegration...

Fixation: Vanity [Deceit]*
When we are not in contact with a more authentic experience of ourselves, we must invest our energies in cultivating our persona—making it valuable to compensate for our loss of Essential value and identity. Thus, vanity is the ego-activity of trying to make the personality feel real and valuable. Clearly, if we deceive ourselves into believing that we are the personality, then we must apply all of our efforts to doing whatever we believe will make the personality more valuable, important, attractive, brilliant, and worthwhile. We will tend to regard meditating and doing deep psychological work to reveal the falseness of the ego and its agenda as a waste of time, or even threatening.

Vanity causes us to invested our energies in building up our self image. We become concerned with doing and being whatever we believe will make us feel more worthwhile, such as having a successful career, presenting ourselves favorably, attending good schools, achieving goals, building up our (false selves), winning awards. We become lost in the roles that we play in life, and then must make the role valuable instead of recognizing the real value of our true nature.

I started having lots of doubts about God's existence and the viability of the Church because of all the craziness happening in my life (which up to that time had been two of the BEDROCK sources of security that I had had). The Five wing would explain my constant struggle with inferiority/incompetency complexes that would oscillate with Three-ish narcissitic inflations of the self. I felt I couldn't trust God anymore...but I also coudn't trust anyone else or myself. Talk about a catch-22. No wonder I started going crazy and feeling suicidal and homicidal!

At any rate, starting at about 2005, when God put me on this path...and it's shown me alot. Here's a delving a bit more into the Six...

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Type Six
Passion: Fear [Anxiety]* Fixation: Cowardice [Worrying]*
Virtue: Courage Holy Idea: Holy Faith

Passion: Fear [Anxiety]*
Fear is the feeling that arises when we feel unsupported and without guidance. When we feel unsupported, we feel unable to move into the next moment with assurance and confidence. We believe that something terrible that happened in the past might happen again in the future. In a sense, fear is always based on some kind of imagined future—we are not afraid of something that concluded yesterday because we know the outcome. And this reveals a second point: fear is also a response to not knowing what is going to happen. Whenever we are unsure of our fate, we can become fearful to the degree that we also feel unsupported.

The truth is, however, that we are never certain of what will happen next. "Not knowing" is a fundamental condition of our individual existence. We can plan and try to predict and prepare, as type Six does, but in the end, a single twist of fate can undo all of our defenses against the future.

While "not knowing" is fundamental, feeling unsupported and without guidance is not, and this is really the basis of the Six's fear. (OL's Note: Jesus had human "ignorance", but NOT doubt and unbelief!!) Lack of contact with inner guidance leaves Sixes anxious and unsure of how to make decisions, avoid danger, and move forward in life. Further, much of type Six's fears are not based on reality, but on things that might happen. This constant background of anxiety drives Sixes to organize and systematize their environment as much as possible so that it will be predictable and thus less threatening, but this activity does not ultimately reduce their fear.

Virtue: Courage
The virtue of courage might also be called fearlessness because it truly is the absence of fear. This is absolutely different than defying fear or behaving aggressively to toughen oneself up (counterphobia). True courage arises in the heart when a person is present and deeply grounded in the moment. When we are abiding in our true nature, tremendous support and inner strength naturally arise every time they are needed. Courage draws upon the Essential qualities of Strength and Will, such that we feel like we are held up by a tremendous, supportive solidity. We experience directly the enormous capacities of our Essential nature such that we can totally accept not-knowing the outcome of things. Here and now, we are more than fine—we are solid, real, vital, and imbedded in the unfolding Will of the Divine.

Fixation: Cowardice [Worrying]*
We have found the term "Cowardice" for the fixation of type Six one of the less satisfying ones, because cowardice can be seen as a simple caving in to fear. But if we examine the way that the activity of the ego mind supports fear and anxiety, then the broader meaning of this term is revealed.

Basically, cowardice is a failure of confidence in our ability to know, to receive inner guidance. In Enneagram terms, it is the loss of the Holy Idea of Faith. Thus, we might also call the fixation self-doubt. (OL's Note: EXACTLY!)

Sixes (and the Six in us) respond to this lack by trying to hedge their bets against life: they want to create stability and "social security." Unfortunately, cowardice also causes Sixes tend to undermine whatever security they create by second-guessing themselves and doubting their own decisions. "Where can I get support? Where will I find security? What is a safe bet in life? Is that person really my friend? I know they said they are, but will they be there to help me out when the chips are down? Is this job going to be there in six months? If I invest in this, will I lose all my money?"

Holy Idea: Holy Faith
Real faith has nothing to do with beliefs, or with trying to convince oneself that a certain belief is true. The faith we are talking about here is a recognition of the actual support of presence and Being that is available right now. It is the recognition that Essence, our true nature is real and cannot be lost. Essence really exists. Reality it is supporting us and we are part of it. We do not have to make support happen because it is already here. From this viewpoint, we see that it does not matter whether we believe in it or not any more than it matters whether or not we believe in the sky. Essence is a felt, experienced reality.

Thus, Holy Faith gives us an unshakable confidence in the inherent goodness of life and of the universe. Even when things seem to be going wrong to the ego's perspective, in presence, we recognize that things are we are supported and that our true nature cannot be harmed. Holy Faith gives us the inner freedom to respond spontaneously to whatever emerges in the moment because we are not bound by beliefs, doubts, and learned procedures. We are guided in each moment to optimal action.

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Long story short. I've never really felt like I could fully trust myself or other people. Ever. (And being a young African-American male in a place as racism-driven as Waco, Texas did NOT help!!) And this makes one feel VERY anxious...and the counterphobic tendencies that can arise from that can become relationally harmful. When I began to think that the God I had been following for years may not exist, I REALLY started losing it!

But...

Through this "mystical journey", not only is my "Holy Faith" being restored, but I also feel MUCH MORE of the healthy tendencies of the Nine...

From point Nine, we experience a sense of Unity or Wholeness. We know that we are not only connected with everything else, but that we are not a "separate object." We directly experience the oneness of reality, and our essential union with all creation. Further, we understand that this unity is dynamic, alive, and ever-changing. We know love as the force that breaks through all false boundaries and identities to restore this experience of wholeness. The realization of this state brings a deep satisfaction and contentment—a profound sense of well-being. We feel at peace with reality and with our place in it. We are able to function effectively in the world while knowing that what we are is "beyond" the world.

Instead of feeling like it's always "Me Against the World" (My favorite song in '95)...I now feel a PART of the World (God's World)...BECAUSE I know that everything REALLY IS connected to each and all through God the Logos, the Creator and "interiority/inwardness" of all things. There REALLY IS an "essential union with all creation" that is NOT makebelieve...or new agey. Through living in Christ-the-Logos daily, struggling for self-surrender, my needs for security, support, and guidance are being met...as I know that Spirit of Christ-the-Logos is inside of me and everything else, sustaining and guiding all things. Therefore, I can never truly be "ungrounded". My ego doesn't feel "detached" from the Spirit anymore in some antithetical way...but my very personhood is grounded on the Holy Love of God, the end goal of the Nine...

Holy Idea: Holy Love
Holy Love is the recognition that all is one and that the oneness is ultimately benevolent and supportive. From this perspective we truly experience the well-known spiritual assertion that everything actually is made from Divine Love. When we truly know this, we relax our ego activity and trust Being to support us. It is almost unfathomable to the ego mind that not only could we be loved by the Divine, but that we are actually made of that love. The knowledge lets us move through our lives with deep compassion, nobility, and unshakable inner peace.

We can also see how Holy Love relates to the virtue of Action, because love itself has a dynamic affect on our souls. What transforms our lives more powerfully than love? What transforms our sense of ourselves more profoundly? Love is not static: it is living, dynamic force that melts down all barriers and boundaries, constantly working to restore our awareness to its pristine unity with Truth. In Holy Love, our sense of separateness dissolves, and we know ourselves as arising from the brilliant light of Divine Love that creates and sustains the universe.

This is probably why I've been so big on ONENESS now. I've never before felt "at-one" with myself or anything else. Because of Christ-the-Logos, I feel "one" with God, myself, and the World.

Just some thoughts I've had today...

Conclusion

The Enneagram guides us toward nothing less than learning how to consciously surrender the ego-self of personality to the greater Self so that we can become conscious participants in the sacred mystery of life. In reality, it entails the surrender of nothing—our personality—in order to receive the gift of everything—the life of the Spirit. But the first step on that path involves being willing to observe ourselves so that we can stop playing out the unconscious dictates of our personality.

The process of growth by whatever name it is called—living in Essence, the growth of virtue, or the movement toward integration—is evolutionary, an upward spiral that has no final state of completion since to become completely possessed of all virtues would be to become God—an impossibility. (Our call, in a religious frame of reference, is to become "like God"—to attain some degree of the virtues that God alone possesses to an absolute (OL's Note: infinite) degree.) If some see this never-ending quest for increasing virtue (or personal strengths) as a frustrating chase after an unreachable goal, it is because they have not experienced the deep fulfillment that results from self-realization. If integration is thought of as merely collecting a set of impractical virtues as if they were merit badges being added to a collection, then of course the enterprise will be unsatisfying.

But the true situation is far from this. Acquiring the strengths of virtue brings about the enlargement of the person. By acting virtuously and by "living in Essence," the person becomes capable of living more deeply and consciously as master of the self. New depths are being opened in the integrating person. The creation of inner resources, the experience of oneself as enlarged, more potent, and creative is tremendously fulfilling. In this sense, the saying that "virtue is its own reward" has new meaning: the reward of virtue is the happiness that comes from the realization that we are living out of our essential self and that in doing so we are bringing more of ourselves into being.

Yet it will always remain true that realizing the value of self-transcendence can be found only in the individual's innermost heart. In the moment of self-transcendence, we discover that over and above liberation from the ego, self-transcendence gives us another, deeper reward by creating both the capacity and the desire for more of itself.

By integrating, we are constantly moving in the direction of increasing life. And nothing in life is more fulfilling than cooperating in the process of creation. Integrating persons become co-creators of that most vast yet intimate mystery, the human spirit. From only a psychological point of view, the capacity to be a co-creator bestows on human nature enormous dignity. But from a spiritual point of view, this capacity has a more profound meaning because to move in the direction of increasing life is to move toward Being itself. With each step we take toward Being, we also find that Being supports our quest. In the end, the quest for the self and its deepest Essence culminates in meeting the Divine.

God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.

"I love, therefore I am in I Am."

Post Edited (One Love) : 10/22/2008 11:40:43 AM (GMT-5)