Curiouser and Curiouser

Posted on 12/05/2012 | 5 comments
Naima, the Curious Cat

Naima, the Curious Cat

In his book, Waking Up, Charles Tart points out that most people, especially in the West, aren’t taught self-observation skills at an early age. What if we had spent as much time learning how to observe ourselves as we spent learning how to read?

I’m a fanatical reader, so I don’t say this lightly, but maybe self-observation skills are even more valuable than reading skills. In many ways, reading helps open up the outer world to us, but self-observation opens up our own inner world—which is no less vast, really.

These are a few things Tart has to say about self-observation.

It’s all grist for the mill

In its most general form, the practice of self-observation is simply a matter of paying attention to everything, noticing whatever happens, being open-mindedly curious about all that is going on. This everything will almost always be a mixture of perceptions of external events and your internal reactions to them. You should drop all a priori beliefs about what you should be interested in, what is important and not important. Whatever is is an appropriate focus for observation.

THREE WAYS TO PAY ATTENTION

This open-minded attention must be more than just intellectual attention. Remember that we are three-brained beings. Thus the attention we should strive to pay to our world and our selves is an emotional attention and a body attention as well as an intellectual attention.

Above all, be curious

The practice of self-observation…is the practice of being curious, along with a commitment to do your best to observe and learn whatever is there, regardless of your preferences or fears.

I have to keep reminding myself to stay curious about what is going on around me and within me. And also to stay curious about my own actions and reactions. It’s so much harder for me to get sucked into the drama, the compulsions, and the autopilot behavior when I’m able to maintain an attitude of curiosity about everything that’s happening.

My usual modus operandi is probably the same as everyone else’s. I operate on the assumption that there’s a way things should be and when things are going the way they should be going, all’s well. But more often than not, things do not go the way I think they should. And people do not behave the way I think they should. Even I don’t behave the way I think I should. And don’t get me started on the weather!

As an 8, when things are not going as I expect them to go, my resistance kicks in. That’s a perfect opportunity to wake up and pay attention. When I’m able to do that, I feel much lighter and more expansive. When I don’t or can’t do it, I dig myself deeper into my resistance. No good ever comes of that.

What kicks in for you when things aren’t going your way?

If I want to use the moments when my expectations rub up against the edge of reality to wake up, I have to have the intention to do so.

The practice of self-observation begins with a desire and resolution on your part: “I want to know what really is, regardless of how I prefer things to be.”

As I’ve remarked elsewhere, self-observation is not for wimps. It isn’t easy to let go of our preconceived ideas about how the world should work. It’s hard to give up having a temper tantrum when we don’t get our way. Growing up can be painful at times.

If you diligently practice self-observation, you will see much that his painful and much that is joyful, but seeing more of reality will turn out to be highly preferable to living in fantasy. You will begin creating “something” in yourself, a quality, a function, a skill, akin to learning how the controls of your automated airliner work. And you will be pleasantly surprised at how much more there is to life.

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Meditation: Move, Sit, Chant

Posted on 12/03/2012 | 1 comment
Breathe

Breathe (Photo credit: PhotoLab XL)

Unless we have the capacity to be still and listen, we can’t tune in to our own inner guidance, in which case we’re more or less doomed to remain stuck in the vicious cycle of our thoughts, feelings, and actions. Acting out the same compulsions. Repeating the same stories about ourselves over and over again.

Meditating is a great way to learn to be still and to develop self-observation skills.

Meditation expands the space between each thing you notice and each action you take.

– Ram Dass

There are many different ways to meditate. The best way to begin is by finding a method that isn’t overly difficult. Expecting to be able to sit or kneel in meditation and immediately clear your mind is unrealistic—and it isn’t even the point of meditation. You can’t stop the stream of thoughts, feelings, and physical sensations that come and go. But you can learn to observe how they arise and fall away. You can stop getting hooked by them. Or, as Jon Kabat-Zinn puts it, “You can’t stop the waves, but you can learn to surf.”

Meditation Sticker

Meditation Sticker (Photo credit: Sanne Schijn)

One approach to finding a way to meditate that works for you is to look to the Center of Intelligence that is your Home center: Doing, Thinking, or Feeling.

Doing center types may find one of these active practices more appealing:

  • Aikido
  • T’ai chi
  • Walking
  • Kung Fu
  • Hatha Yoga

Thinking center types may prefer some type of insight meditation:

  • Vipassana
  • Mindfulness
  • Visualization
  • Contemplation
  • One-pointedness of mind

Feeling center types may appreciate a practice that includes an emotional aspect:

  • Sufi dancing
  • Singing
  • Chanting
  • Prayer

This is just meant to suggest a starting point. In addition to helping develop self-observation skills, meditation has many health benefits, so no matter how you go about it, meditating is a good habit to cultivate.

Something for Everyone

Here are two meditation practices anyone can do:

  • Choose a mantra (a word or phrase that has meaning for you) and repeat it over and over while you are working driving, talking, etc. Say it out loud if you like—and are alone—or repeat it silently.
  • Focus on following your breath in and out, in and out. If you lose track, just refocus on your breathing.

You can do either of these practices no matter where you are. They can help you stay grounded, centered, and present instead of carried away by whatever is going on in the moment.

Meditation…A Thoughtless Act

And here is a tongue-in-cheek piece from the October 1999 issue of Enneagram Monthly on tips to improve each type’s meditation. The author is anonymous.

  1. Close your eyes. Go inside. Take a breath. Take a better breath than that.
  2. Close your eyes. Go inside. Take a breath. Help your neighbor take a breath.
  3. Close your eyes. Straighten your hair. Adjust your collar. Smooth the creases in your dress.
  4. Close your eyes. Go inside. Take a sigh.
  5. Close your eyes. Go inside. Stay inside.
  6. Close your eyes. It’s OK; close your eyes. Close both eyes.
  7. Close your eyes. Go inside. Imagine you are at the beach. Now in the mountains. Now in the desert. Now at a party.
  8. Close your eyes. Go inside. Take a goddamn breath!
  9. Close your eyes. Go inside. Take a breath. Take your neighbor’s breath.

It’s best to approach meditation lightly, rather than with dogged determination.

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Type 8: Embrace Your Inner Weak Sister

Posted on 11/30/2012 | 9 comments
Powerful, I take responsibility for who I am, ...

(Photo credit: Tomas Sobek)

8s are pretty darn capable people. They will do whatever it takes to get the job done. Sometimes they will even do more than it takes. They are proud of being able to accomplish what they set out to do and of their ability to deal with adversity, challenges, and obstacles. 8s tend to feel as if they can weather whatever storm nature throws at them. If you are being treated unfairly—caught in a metaphorical or an actual storm—8s will also direct their considerable energy on your behalf.

But their tough exterior covers the same kind of fear every other type has, which is that deep down—or when push comes to shove—they are not all that. 8s whose identities are completely wrapped up in being a powerful force of nature expend quite a lot of energy proving it over and over again to themselves and to everyone else. Once is definitely not enough.

However, no man is an island—and no woman is, either. We are interdependent. We need each other. As far as 8s are concerned, it’s perfectly OK for someone else to be needy. But it’s definitely not OK for 8s to feel needy, actually be needy, or—horrors!—be seen as needy. It’s kind of the opposite situation to the boy who cried wolf. 8s do such a good job convincing everyone else of their hardiness and durability that others assume they don’t need help. Ever.

Notice that 8 over there who just fell through the ice? No worries. He’s got everything under control. See, he’s signaling that he’s just fine. Yes, he’ll be waving everyone off until the moment he slips under the ice and is gone, victim to his compulsion to always be the rescuer and never the one who is rescued.

It’s great to be able to tough things out, but it’s not so great to risk life and limb out of the compulsion to tough them out.

People…people Who Need People…*

One of the things 8s fail to recognize, in addition to the utter folly of their total commitment to their position, is that other people like to be needed. They appreciate being able to help each other. Another thing is that always being the one to lend a hand and never being willing to accept a hand creates an imbalance in all of one’s personal relationships. This ought to make an impact on 8s, who are greatly concerned with fairness and balance. Give and take—or give and accept—would make a good mantra for 8s.

When 8s embrace their inner Weak Sister (whether male or female), they can let down their guard and admit they don’t have every single thing under control. They may not be able to deal with a thing or two life throws at them. So once in a while, they could possibly use a little help from their friends. It’s OK to ask. When they do, they may be surprised to find out that expressing vulnerability does not knock them down a notch in everyone else’s eyes. It might even raise them up a notch or two.

*not an endorsement of the song

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Type 3 Frog

Posted on 11/28/2012 | 1 comment

Eighth in the series of type comics. The others can be found here: Type 1, Type 2, Type 4, Type 5, Type 7, Type 8, and Type 9.

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The Image in the Mirror

Posted on 11/26/2012 | 2 comments
Raistlin Majere. Image by Vera Gentinetta. Tic...

Image by Vera Gentinetta. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A self-image is a lot like a work of fiction in that it is heavily edited before being presented to an audience. It is seen first by an audience of one—oneself—and then the public audience of friends, family, co-workers, and even strangers.

One of the ways we maintain a consistent self-image is by repeatedly telling ourselves stories that reinforce it. Another way we do it is by repeatedly telling other people stories about ourselves that reinforce it. We are, as Jonathan Gottschall puts it, storytelling animals. It’s our nature to pull together our experiences and perceptions into a coherent linear narrative. That’s how we make sense of the world. And that’s how we create the fictional characters we claim to be.

It isn’t as if we’re intending to lie about who we are. It’s that we are invested in being—and being seen—in a particular light. So we edit out the parts of our lives, past and present, that don’t fit the role we’re playing.

While it’s true that image is the primary issue of the three Feeling Center types, they aren’t the only people who construct and nurture their own self-image and the image they present to the world. We all do it.

What’s Your Self-Schema?

A lot of our efforts to maintain a consistent self-image are habitual and automatic, so we aren’t even aware of them. In the process of developing generalizations about ourselves, we form cognitive structures called self-schemas. These self-schemas then organize and guide the processing of information that is self-related. That means they determine what we pay attention to and how events and experiences are encoded in our memories. Self-schemas are biased on their own behalf. If something fits our self-schema, for example, we are likely to pay more attention to it and to remember it more easily. We tend to dismiss what doesn’t fit our self-schemas.

We don’t have just one self-schema; we have several, depending on the different roles we play in life. But there are some aspects of our self-schema that are consistent across all of them. If you know your Enneagram type, you know what many of those are for you.

Self-schemas are self-perpetuating and very difficult to change. You have to be open and willing to explore the possibility that you are not your self-image. Your self-image is a fictional character you have been developing—usually with some help from the people closest to you—for most of your life.

Wei Ji, the Chinese symbol for crisis

When something happens that significantly messes with our self-image, the result can be denial or a crisis of identity. But while such an experience can present a danger to our self-schema, it is also an opportunity to step out of character and address the audience directly (authentically).

Is that Really True?

There are a couple of simple steps you can take to become more aware of how you are perpetuating your self-image.

  • When you catch yourself telling stories, whether to yourself or someone else, you can stop and ask yourself if they are really true–or if they represent the “whole” story.
  • You can make a list of things you believe about yourself, and then for each one, ask yourself if it is really true. Be ruthless.

Trying to uncover the truth of who we are can be like chasing a moving target, difficult to hone in on. But it’s a liberating experience that’s well worth the effort. The reward is that we get to break free of the confines of the structure that has defined us and dictated what is possible for us.

Each one of us has many more dimensions than the scripted characters we have been playing.

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Type 7: Embrace your Inner Sad Sack

Posted on 11/23/2012 | 1 comment
Saturday Night Dance Party

Saturday Night Dance Party (Photo credit: dpstyles™)

To the consternation of many 7s, life isn’t always a party. The great thing about parties is that there’s always so much stimulation–music to listen and dance to, people to talk with, food and maybe alcohol to consume, sometimes games to play—that 7s can give themselves over to sensation and lose themselves, which is exactly what they want to do.

7s run as fast as they can from experience to experience in the external world—and always with a grin or a smile in place—in order to avoid being dragged down by their interior world. They are working extremely hard to convince themselves and everyone else that what you see is what you get, that their hail fellow well met persona is who they truly are. But, of course, they know better. What they’re afraid to acknowledge and are so busy trying to fill up is a sense of emptiness. Not emptiness in the Zen sense of peace and spaciousness. Emptiness in the sense of a lack of meaning or substance.

This isn’t to say that 7s are empty inside or that their lives lack meaning. But a meaningful life includes acknowledging painful truths, unpleasant experiences, and uncomfortable emotions, all of which is anathema to 7s. The problem is that by running from these experiences, 7s create a vicious cycle in which they actually exacerbate the problem. It isn’t possible to try enough new things, to consume enough food, alcohol, or drugs, or to accumulate enough material possessions to avoid the void forever. And attempting to outrun it is a very dangerous game.

Party of One, please

7s need to get off the carousel, find a quiet spot, and embrace their inner Sad Sack. They need to stop trying to distract themselves and acknowledge their own sadness, anger, grief, anxiety, and fear. When they do, they may be surprised to discover that, although these feelings are not pleasant, they are not lethal. Everyone experiences them to some degree or another. Shared emotions—whether happy or sad—are something all humans have in common.

When 7s recognize this and own up to the feelings they have been running from, they won’t deflate like a burst balloon. They will expand their options and their ability to empathize with and relate to other people. They will be able to slow down and choose what to focus their attention and their nimble minds on and have a better chance of actually completing what they start.

There’s freedom and strength in facing what we’re most afraid of. And for 7s there’s also the bonus of discovering that what they’ve been frantically searching for all this time is something they already have inside themselves.

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Analyzing the Past

Posted on 11/21/2012 | Leave a comment

Too many people have been analyzing their pasts, their childhoods, their memories, their parents, and realizing that it doesn’t do anything–or that it doesn’t do enough. 

James Hillman, American psychologist, 1926-2011

More on James Hillman:

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What if You Could Immunize Yourself Against Stress?

Posted on 11/19/2012 | 1 comment
Reading a book

Reading a book (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It turns out that maybe you can, even though there’s no vaccine yet. The first trick is to differentiate between the stress you can control and the stress you can’t control—otherwise known as escapable and inescapable stress. A recent study involving rats and stress was reported in Scientific American’s Scicurious blog (It’s not the stress that counts, it’s whether you can control it).

A stress that you can control is a very different one from a stress that you can’t….[A] controllable stress is actually a good event. Not only does it blunt the impact of the stressor itself, it can be protective against the detriments of future uncontrolled stresses. Scientists call this “behavioral immunization” against future stress.

When you escape from the escapable stress, the neurons in your prelimbic cortex become more responsive (or excitable), and that seems to help us adapt to future stress. It’s sort of like building up good stress karma—a future reward for doing something we don’t necessarily want to do right now. Put the time in on the treadmill now and you’ll feel better and have more energy later. Mary Pritchard, a psychology professor at Boise State University who blogs for the Huffington Post, says this is called problem-focused coping.

If the stressor is something that is under your control (e.g., article to write, deadline to meet), when you encounter said stressor, you should do everything in your power to fix it (e.g., write the article, meet the deadline).

READING, WRITING, BUT NO ARITHMETIC

Everyone agrees that the least effective method of coping with stress is avoiding dealing with it by finding a diversion or by denying it even exists. An interim coping mechanism Pritchard recommends—which she refers to as an example of “emotion-focused coping”—is writing. This is something I’ve been doing for years with good success. Set a timer (5-10 minutes), get out a sheet of paper, and flow-write until the timer goes off. Keep your pen on the paper and let it all out. This can relieve some of the stress, and it might even result in some insight into the situation.

Pritchard also advocates reading as a coping mechanism.

For me, reading serves as proactive coping—upfront efforts to ward off stress. Reading time is me time, and depending on what I’m reading, it may relax me, make me laugh, or exercise my brain. The point is that it offers a little mental break—a mini siesta, if you will—and after I finish the chapter, I return to work, to life, more refreshed and able to cope with all of the little things that seem to pile up day after day.

Reading, especially reading fiction, lets us travel briefly to another world, a different time and place. I love the idea of using it as a means of coping with stress proactively. I’m going to start keeping a novel at the side of my desk and dip into it periodically during the day, rather than wait until I “have” time to read. Perhaps reading, like meditation, increases our resistance to stress over time.

So these seem to be the keys:

  • Build proactive coping mechanisms into your day.
  • Write when you’re too stressed out to think straight.
  • And if you’re stressing over something you can do something about, then by all means deal with it.

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Type 6: Embrace Your Inner Slacker

Posted on 11/16/2012 | 3 comments
Busy Desk

Busy Desk (Photo credit: Russell Heistuman)

6s are some of the most industrious people I’ve ever encountered. If you need to get something done, get a 6 on your team. Something I noticed early on when I was learning about the Enneagram is that one difference between 8s and 6s is that 8s are able to stop doing. 6s seem to have a very hard time stopping—especially Doing type 6s, who are the Energizer Bunnies of the Enneagram.

Two things drive them. The first is anxiety. The second is being anxious about being, being seen as, and being acknowledged for being responsible. They over-perform to alleviate their deep-down fear that they really aren’t sufficiently responsible. Because 6s are other-oriented, they are quick to pick up on the responses they get from people. If they perceive that someone thinks they are—or accuses them of being—irresponsible, they often react by blaming either the other person or themselves.

This relentless pursuit of meeting others’ expectations takes a toll on 6s. It’s also one of the reasons they have to know what the rules are, what the plan is, and exactly what is expected of them. Being so focused on what’s out there, they have a difficult time tuning in to what’s important to them. So don’t ask them what they want to do or where they want to have dinner or what they want to get out of life. They don’t know. This isn’t to be confused with having opinions, though; just like 8s, 6s have plenty of those.

Chill Out, Already

6s need to give up the idea that if they prove how uber-responsible they are, they will win the approval and support they seek. They need to learn to be responsible to themselves and less at the effect of the whims and demands of others. When 6s embrace their inner slacker, they can take a deep breath and relax for a minute or two. After doing that a few more (dozen) times, they might be able to look inward long enough to get in touch with what matters to them. They have plenty of energy and drive. It wouldn’t hurt if they directed at least some of it toward meeting their own goals and satisfying their own needs. Paradoxically, that could make them even more valuable to others.

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Type 8 Child

Posted on 11/14/2012 | 4 comments

Most recent in the type comic series. See also: Type 1, Type 2, Type 4, Type 5, Type 7, and Type 9. (Types 3 and 6 coming soon .)

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Posted in Humor, Type 8

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