The circle of the Enneagram represents the unified field of creation and like white light –– when filtered through a prism separates into the colors of the rainbow –– can be divided into its essential qualities. Each segment on the continuum around the circle represents an essential quality. These qualities are essential for a soulful life and, like a light shining through a stained-glass window; they bring beauty and meaning to the undifferentiated white light shining into the lives of humans.
The interconnectedness of these essential qualities forms an ecosystem of human consciousness and informs the way we relate to our emerging experience. Neuroscientist Francisco Varela describes mental states as transitory and have a feeling tone that colors the experience. Each cognitive experience is a unified, transient and yet coherent ensemble of oscillating neurons related to sensory perception, emotions, memory, bodily movements, etcetera. “According to Varela, the primary conscious experience, common to all higher vertebrates, is not located in a specific part of the brain, nor can it be identified in terms of specific neural structures. It is the manifestation of a particular cognitive process –– a transient synchronization of diverse, rhythmically oscillating neural circuits.” [i]
The Enneagram provides us with a visual representation of the ‘diverse oscillating neural circuits’ upon which we can map our cognitive processes. Each number represents the frequency band of the specific neural circuitry our consciousness is attuning itself to at any given time. All our learning to survive and thrive is an interplay between our humanness struggling to learn from experience at the gross level (selection) and essential qualities at the subtle level (self-organization) informing how we learn to realize emergent capabilities.
The frequency bands of essential qualities blend from one to the other just as in a rainbow there is a continuum of color in which each color blends into the next. Consciousness blends into compassion, which blends into strength and so on. So as the full spectrum of colors reflected by the vast diversity of creation enables us to visually experience the world, so the full spectrum of essential qualities brings richness to how we experience day-to-day existence.
Our essential qualities are not transient, however our awareness of them is. Just as red light is always present within white light, but is only reflected by particular objects. Essential qualities are not dependent on conditions, but conditions call them forth. Forgiveness, an essential quality, is not, for example, dependent on conditions of our life going a particular way, however difficult life experiences that lead us to feeling resentful call forth the need for forgiveness. Connecting or reconnecting to essential qualities brings us back to our essential wholeness when our gross humanness has become dissociated from the white light of our spiritual nature.
Essential Qualities and Cycle of Change
Each essential quality is like a’ basin of attraction’ that we become attuned to, depending on what phase of a change cycle we are passing through. Like other attractors, our perception organizes itself according to qualities of the attractor. The developmental challenges of each phase are naturally supported by the associated essential quality.
Phase NINE — Peace
Peace is the quality that holds not only our lives in harmony and cooperation with others, but the entire universe in eternal harmony. At phase NINE our tendency to regulate internal and external harmony and stability within any given context arises out of our essential quality of peace. Essential peace is not merely the absence of conflict; it is the fabric of universal wholeness and unity.
Phase ONE — Consciousness
To be conscious, is to be awake and aware. At phase ONE because our self-regulating patterns eventually become inadequate to support our ongoing development, the spotlight of consciousness highlights the limitations inherent in stabilizing homeostatic patterns. Consciousness is synonymous with mindfulness. To be mindful is to pay attention to how things really are, rather than assuming they are how we think they are. To be mindful is to remember to be present with what is.
Consciousness is always guiding us to more fully remember what is true in reality. Consciousness allows us to be discerning of what supports us and what doesn’t. Consciousness keeps of us mindful of what our emergent potential, as opposed to getting entranced in the autopilot complacency of homeostatic feedback loops.
Phase TWO — Compassion
Compassion comes from the recognition that everything is part of the whole and has a place and a function. At phase TWO the quality of our lives depends on attending to the needs of our emergent selves. Compassion holds everything with love. When we become conscious of emerging needs for healing or growth, our compassionate nature attends to those needs. Compassion can be fierce or gentle, but it always attending our deepest needs while tapping into the capabilities needed to relate more fully to life.
Phase THREE — Strength
Essential strength gives us the backbone to keep us upright and resilient when we are being pushed to the limits of our capabilities. At phase THREE, essential strength carries us to the boundaries of our current level of development. It is our strength of character that commits to going to the limits of our capabilities do what is needed.
Strength keeps us honest when it would be easier to believe our own lies and not be true to our deeper purpose. Essential strength is always there, just like gravity holding planets in solar systems, but it also initiates novas when a star has reached its limit.
Phase FOUR — Forgiveness
Forgiveness is the ability to let go of the past and the old ways of thinking, perceiving and behaving. At phase FOUR the inadequacies of our way of life become more apparent as we are pushed beyond the limits of our normal patterns. Forgiveness frees us from the judgments of how we thought the universe was supposed to unfold. It allows us to rest in a sense of innocence free from guilt and blame and recognize that we are all doing the best we can, given what we know at any given time.
Instead of dwelling on what could (or should) have been we are open to learning from our mistakes and how we can do better next time. Forgiveness allows us to return to loving our whole selves, especially those parts that have failed or been inadequate in some way.
Phase FIVE — Space
It is our experience of essential space that puts our petty attachments and the self-imposed limitations into perspective, like the vastness of Outer Space reminds us that Earth is but a speck of dust in a universe of billions of galaxies. At phase FIVE the old boundaries of the way we have thought about, and interacted with, the world continue to dissolve or fall away. It is in space within which our mental activity of generating images, sounds, words and sensations occurs. Thoughts manifest into space and dissipate back into space. A narrow mind has a very limited perspective on life and is confined by mental frameworks that we can become attached to and identified with. A spacious mind is open to seeing how things really are. Space holds the awareness in which thoughts and perception come and go, and frees us from the thoughts and perceptions we have become identified with.
Rather than being caught up in the activity of our minds, resting in essential space we are able to experience depths of our being. From spacious awareness we are able to determine what is and what isn’t essential to our wellbeing.
Phase SIX — Acceptance
Acceptance ends our arguments with the way things are and perceive the world and ourselves more realistically. At phase SIX it is the acceptance of our true nature that allows us to surrender to the processes of evolution that are beyond our control and limited perception. With acceptance there is a shift from either or thinking to both and, from exclusive to inclusive.
This shift in perception allows paradigm shifts to occur that make sense of what previously seemed irreconcilable. Acceptance, for example, embraces and listens to those aspects of ourselves we have rejected, denied and ignored. When given a voice, these parts of us, will question the authority of limiting beliefs and help open us to new ways of perceiving.
Phase SEVEN — Joy
To be joyous, is to feel expansive and free. At phase SEVEN we dance on the boundary of order and chaos, or as Deepak Chopra refers to it as: “the field of infinite possibilities”. We follow our blissful curiosity into exploration and experimentation, and play with the possibilities available to us. The things that bring us into the most contact with joy become the areas we want to invest more fully in. What we are best at is what brings us joy and what makes for our greatest contribution to the wholeness of creation. Joy is the experience of being in the flow of the ever expanding and changing creative process of the universe. It is essential joy the enables us to fall in love with life over and over again.
Phase – EIGHT — Will
Through willful determination and constancy, practice leads to mastery. At phase EIGHT we choose which possibilities are worth committing to and willfully begin organizing them into new patterns. We know we have truly mastered something when we no longer have to think about what we are doing and effortlessly participate fully in whatever it is we are doing. Giving ourselves fully to manifesting our gifts in the world arises out of Divine Will. Divine Will guides us in playing our part in the evolution of humanity and the co-creation of the world we live in. And in the manifesting our creative impulses with become more identified with the creator.
The will to creatively manifest is not something we control with our egos, rather it is the divine role that we surrender to. Will allows divinity to act through us –– guiding our thoughts, words and deeds.
NINE — Peace
Peace mediates and minimizes conflict in order to maintain relative stability and order (homeostasis). At phase NINE we consolidate our newly mastered skills into habits –– self-perpetuating patterns of interaction –– within the larger systems (family, community, etc.) to which we belong. Peace allows for harmonious diversity, but also encourages us to sacrifice individual concerns for the greater good. Peace allows our lives internally and externally to be organized with increasing complexity and cooperation, in which all the parts of us have a sense of belonging.
Full Spectrum Living
In summary, peace seeks to cooperate more fully with life as it is emerging within and around us. This inspires greater mindfulness of our internal and external experience. This leads us to a greater sense of compassion in the way we relate to ourselves and the rest of creation. Out of compassion we find the strength to promote life’s emerging agendas and address our inadequacies and past mistakes with forgiveness. Through forgiveness we are able to experience the present moment as it is, which in turn opens up the space in our consciousness to investigate the nature of reality more fully. Spacious awareness just accepts everything as it is, whereby we can differentiate fact from fiction. Acceptance of everything opens us to appreciation of everything and the joyously blissful nature of consciousness. It is when we follow our deepest bliss that we are in alignment with divine will (dharma). In the surrendering to divine will, we manifest our part to play in peaceful harmony with the rest of creation.
[i] Capra, Fritjof (1996) The Web of Life, A New Synthesis of Mind and Matter. London: HarperCollins (p.261)
This is an Excerpt from Essential Wholeness, Integral Psychology, Spiritual Awakening and the Enneagram, by Eric Lyleson
