For
a while I followed a Facebook Enneagram group and was taken aback by
someone's earnest question, "How do I determine my level in Riso & Hudson's Levels of Development? Is there a test for this?"
I thought about this anonymous person for weeks: Perhaps
a young adult, someone new to self-awareness practice, who doesn't see
the heavy weight of ego dragging the desire to judge and label and fix,
the assumption that we can force our development once we know exactly
how we show up in the world?
But
upon further reflection I remembered being introduced to The
Levels of Development in a workshop with Don Riso and Russ Hudson, when I was well
into mid-life. My "fix-it" plan was to create a chart of how to
move upward through the levels. It's
taken more than thirty years and engaging with many, many clients for me to see how my
desire to "plan" movement upward was being dragged by my own ego.
Call our personalities patterns, fixations, strategies, beliefs, or addictions,
any effort to "improve" or "fix" ourselves only brings more of the
same, because the "I" of ego lurks behind our efforts to be "better." Instead, we
only need to be curious, to clearly see what shows up without labeling
it, and -- each time -- we are a little bit more free.*
Each
time, we can be with it and we can mess with it a bit. From my diary,
for
example, I note a time several years ago when I observed how an illness
was, symbolically, grief for many
losses over the previous year. I'd felt a little nauseated and
considered a variety of escapes -- "I'll go for ice cream, then I'll
feel better."
"I'll have a martini, then I'll feel better." My observer stayed free of
the fixation, however; I
didn't go for ice cream, I didn't pour a martini, and up came deep,
racking sobs, the clogged sinuses I'd attributed to a "virus" now loose
with tears as I felt the grief.
We could analyze the above by saying "Oh, she's a 9, and that's why she experiences emotional blows physically, suppresses her own needs/emotions, has such a poker face; that's the 9's narcotization
in action." Or, we could applaud Mary: "Wow, great that you saw how
that fixation held you captive, stayed with The Observer, and discovered
a deep grief a fixation had been hiding from you."
I'm not a method actor, I can't make
myself cry. From a place outside of the fixation, I simply noticed my desire to escape the physical pain and
nausea and stayed with it, not escaping. The tears arose because for
that moment I was free of the patterned behavior. Would I never again narcotize my emotions? Of course I would. And I will, again and again,
be curious, stay present or notice when I haven't been present, and also
be aware of freedom from trying to escape. There is no escape. There is no way out, only in.
Instead of my long and ego-based quest for ways to change ourselves for the better, now I simply suggest this: read any page of any book by Pema Chodron. In the past, when stuck, I've especially benefited from When Things Fall Apart and (a decade later) The Places That Scare You. This week I'm re-reading Comfortable with Uncertainty.
The central question... not how we avoid uncertainty and fear but how we relate to discomfort... When the flag goes up, we can stay with our painful emotion instead of spinning out... gently catching ourselves.... we often think that somehow we're going to improve, which is a subtle aggression against who we really are... the ground of practice is you or me or whoever we are right now, just as we are. That's what we come to know with tremendous curiosity and interest... the point is not to try to get rid of thoughts, but rather to see their true nature...
...this moving away from comfort and security, this stepping out into what is unknown, uncharted, and shaky -- that's called liberation... We become familiar with the strategies and beliefs we use to fortify our cocoon [and] they begin to wear themselves out. Wearing out is not exactly the same as going away. Instead a wider, more generous, more enlightened perspective arises... Curiosity encourages cheering up. So does simply remembering to do something different... Anything out of the ordinary will help... you can sing in the shower, you can go jogging -- anything that's against your usual pattern.
______
* Note, from The Enneagram Institute: "... the movement toward health, up the Levels, is simultaneous with
being more present and awake in our minds, hearts, and bodies. As we
become more present, we become less fixated...."
