You’re not new to inner work, so you have some sense that you are not who you once mistook yourself to be.

You understand that you’ve been conditioned by many sociological and cultural factors that have helped you survive… but aren’t really YOU. ✨

Plus, you’re familiar with the Enneagram, so you’ve likely uncovered some of your ego’s favorite thought loops, shame spirals, and go-to sources of existential dread. 🙃

The more closely you look, you’ve been starting to suspect these patterns play out in more subtle ways than your mind can grasp. 👁️

You’re right.

Your Enneagram type’s patterns are wired into your nervous system.

This is why you can be psychologically “committed to growth” but keep encountering the same struggles.

Cycles of coping until you’re burnt out.

Repetitive issues in your relationships.

Beating yourself up for not being able to “figure it out” even with all the work you’ve done…

Let me explain:

Your body is designed to automatically and unconsciously adapt to the conditions of your environment.

This is not a design flaw!

When we come into this life, we face an existential paradox:

On the one hand, we are part of the oneness of all things, inseparable from the timeless and formless field of infinite possibility (sometimes called Essence, Source, The Universe, God, The Field, etc.).

On the other hand, we are humans, living in finite bodies in a world with many limitations and distinctions between “self” and “other.”

Both are true and neither can ever be untrue.

The only problem is that we forget.

Our human journey goes something like this:

Complete Connection with Essence —> Self-Forgetting —> Ego Development + Survival Conditioning

If we are lucky, we face hardship and take the next steps:

—> Questioning —> Self-Remembering

Self-Remembering is an evolution of consciousness where we learn to hold the paradox without pitting one truth against the other.

But first, we must forget the truth of our inherent

worthiness + value + validity

Though this stage is necessary, the forgetting creates a wound.

And like a physical wound, it is painful when it gets poked.

Even bringing attention toward the wound is usually too painful.

This is by design.

When we are infants (or 5… or 10… or 20 years old…) and someone says or does something that indicates our unworthiness, lack of value, or is invalidating, our Beings are smart enough to know that we did not have the skillful means to directly address these wounds.

It would have been totally overwhelming to enter into the eye of the suffering.

So instead, we intelligently and unconsciously develop the ability to…

create a sense of predictability & security by focusing most of our attention on certain aspects of reality…

create a sense of connection with others by adapting our image to be seen favorably by those who matter most…

and create a sense of autonomy & control by physically contracting our bodies against anything that reinforce the wound.

The result? We survived! And with a good enough ego to develop skills and aptitudes for navigating the 3D world!

These skills act like a bandage, keeping the wound somewhat protected and the pain contained.

It’s a wonderful thing that we can get through the day without the overwhelming charge of addressing a deep spiritual wound — which, before someone is ready, can result in them having a nervous breakdown.

Our system loves repeating what has worked.

So we do.

The secondary result? Our bodies continue to work over-time to keep us from feeling the pain of this wound.

You’ve now had decades of practice directing your energy in specific ways that have helped you carry on with your life.

These have led to certain beliefs about who we are and how the world works.

Anything that doesn’t line up gets pushed out of awareness to keep these beliefs in place and to not open up the deepest wounds.

Everything in our instincts told us not to.

In fact, our egos told us there was no wound.

So we didn’t develop the skills to heal the wound.

We may have identified all sorts of problems with the world around us, with other people, and even with ourselves, and offered many ideas about how to solve these problems with the skills we already had.

We didn’t have the tools to navigate the emotions that come when we approach the wound or the skillful means of cleaning it out and removing old irritants.

By the time we ever hear the word “Enneagram” these patterns of self-forgetting, managing the wound, and avoiding the pain had become ingrained.

When you found your core type, you probably started seeing more clearly how these patterns and aptitudes show up in your life.

In fact, they likely seemed so familiar that you confused them for who you are.

Which leads to another paradox:

Your type can point to the gift waiting for you within the wound, and YOU are so much more than your type.

With the wound hidden deep within your unconscious, you didn’t notice what you have now been conditioned to avoid.

This is what keeps you in Self-Forgetting and what keeps you from experiencing a sense of wholeness.

The Enneagram outlines the Defense System, which helps us understand how we keep ourselves from going where it feels too dangerous to explore.

Our Defense Mechanism automatically runs when we fear tending the wound would be too challenging to our sense of identity and too disruptive to the things we like about how we’ve built our lives.

When we venture deeply into these shadowlands, coming closer to the wound, we will never be the same.

On some level, we know this, which is why we stay away.

Until we’re ready.

The psyche and the spirit and the body have to be willing.

But personal growth and spiritual development are not about willpower.

If you’ve developed enough awareness to begin to see your patterns more clearly….

And you’ve had enough life experience to recognize that these patterns bring certain limitations…

And you’ve read this far…