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The funny thing is, I used to joke that I would have to get hit on the head to“ wake up.” Then, I had an accident which resulted in a head injury, and my awakening process began with a monumental jolt.
I think that I knew, deep inside, that there was more to me than who I was being and expressing. I strove, I struggled, I achieved. I worked, and worked, and worked ― and it was never ever enough. Consciously, I wasn’ t aware of how far I was from my true self, but there was a subconscious or unconscious knowing that came through in jokes like that one. Some part of me was asking for change ― and the Universe took me literally!
I wonder, sometimes, whether I would have needed that whack on the head if I had been even a little more aware of and open to the fact that there was more to me than my personality. Hopefully, by reading this story, you won’ t need to be“ woken up” in such a dramatic fashion!
Our essential nature can and does give us a depth of experience that the personality never can. As I practiced bringing myself into a place where I could access an essential aspect of my nature instead of the contrived personality aspect, I was struck by the quality of my experience. The sense of peace, well-being, and freedom was incredible. For example, the difference between relaxing into the essential aspect of strength and having to“ be strong” was palpable on every level ― physical, emotional, and spiritual. One was peaceful, flexible, and comforting; the other felt hard, sharp-edged, and exhausting.
So, why do we spend so much more of our time and effort on the false self? Because to be in essence we must be willing to see the whole truth of who we are ― light and shadow, positive and negative.
As a person who values truth and authenticity, it was tremendously painful to me to see how much of my life had been lived from a place of inauthenticity. How had I spent so many years pursuing the exact opposite of my heart’ s desire? And how much time had I spent trying to be“ strong,” when all along I could simply relax into my essential aspect of strength? Each Enneagram personality type has a unique way in which they“ fall asleep” and let their personality take over; I was completely oblivious to the ways in which I was abandoning my heart in favor of achievements and recognition.
Seeing this imbalance between being in personality and being in essence brought me to one of my first [ spiritual ] dilemmas. If it was so easy and natural to embody our essential states, I wondered, why didn’ t we just live there all the time?
The answer came, in part, from our group sessions [ in the Diamond Heart ]. When we began to explore our self-images and object relations ― i. e., transposing our past experiences or relationships onto our current ones ― I felt a whole new layer of unfolding happen within me. I began to see how many self-images I had, and how many the other people in my group were facing. We challenged each other to look at our self-images by providing feedback on what we saw in one another, and pointing out
WISDOM & SELF-GROWTH
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