Separation and Identity
The anxieties, frustrations, insecurities, resentments or even the simple discontent that drives most people’s lives, is caused by the separation from our essential nature that occurs by the holding onto a solid, permanent sense of self.
This sense of an isolated me is created and maintained by beliefs that create perceptions that leave me feeling incomplete and the world, not as it should be. There seems to be a separation from one’s essential wholeness and the rest of reality. To cope with this sense of incompleteness, we identify with a particular set of internal and external conditions. For example, if I am a confident successful businessman and happily married husband, then as long as business is good and the marriage appears good enough, then everything seems okay. However, seeing myself as confident and successful can have the tendency to blind me to my weaknesses and failings. The same occurs in my marriage, so in order to maintain a fixed notion of myself as a happily married husband, I need to ignore any signs of unhappiness in my marriage. Having to hold onto and try to validate a positive self-concept is only necessary if we have a negative self-concept. When resting in the ground of being, there is an unconditional acceptance of the way things are. There is no need to define oneself in a static way, rather we are free to respond to life in whatever way is most useful. With no self-concept we are free. Negative concepts of one’s self appear to be part of living in a world that believes that love and happiness are things that are earned rather than what we are.
Developing a self-concept is a normal part of human development. As children we are taught that we should know who we are. Given that most people are acting like they know who they are, we seek to define ourselves in specific ways. However, when we look within to find ourselves, there is nothing permanent there. In the backdrop of ever-changing thoughts and images is the silent emptiness of being. To a mind looking for some permanent sense of self, this emptiness is frightening and becomes the basis of thinking “I’m nothing and nobody”. Within the frame of mind that I have to earn love and happiness, the sense of nothingness is interpreted as not being deserving of love and happiness. This drives me to try and create a self-image that I think is deserving of love and happiness.
As Dan Siegel says, “People do have neural propensities––called temperament––that may be somewhat but not fully changeable.”[i] He goes onto to say, “No system of adult personality description that exists (except the Enneagram popular version) has an internally focused organization––that is, a view of how the internal architecture of mental functioning, not just behavior, is organized across developmental periods.”[ii] Let’s look at some ways this architecture is organized in the Enneagram of personality types.
It describes nine basic ways (temperaments) people try to create and hold onto a sense of self that is deserving of love and happiness; this starts early in childhood.
Type ONEs try to prove what perfect and responsible people they are.
Type TWOs try to prove what indispensible and caring people they are.
Type THREEs try to prove what capable and charming people they are.
Type FOURs try to prove what unique and deep feeling people they are.
Type FIVEs try to prove what intelligent and self-sufficient people they are.
Type SIXes try to prove what loyal and nonthreatening people they are.
Type SEVENs try to prove what happy and positive people they are.
Type EIGHTs try to prove what powerful and masterful people they are.
Type NINEs try to prove what peaceful and selfless people they are.
[i] Siegel, Daniel J., (2010) The Mindful Therapist, A Clinician’s Guide to Mindsight and Neural Integration, W. W. Norton & Co, New York kindle (p. 2586)
[ii] Siegel, Daniel J., (2010) The Mindful Therapist, A Clinician’s Guide to Mindsight and Neural Integration, New York: W. W. Norton & Co kindle (pp. 2671 -72)
Except from Essential Wholeness, Integral Psychotherapy, Spiritual Awakening and the Enneagram
