Human beings typically live in a state of arrested development in which the psychological domain rules our consciousness. Reaching the fullness of our potential entails resuming our development, which leads beyond the psychological to the realm of Being or spirit. Our experience in traveling this path is that psychological understanding and spiritual experience are so interwoven and interconnected that they can best be viewed as forming a continuum of realms of human experience.
In this book, we will address the transitional stage between personal and boundless realization of Being. The personal level involves the actualization of Being as the essence of the individual soul; the latter involves recognizing Being as the true nature of the cosmos as a whole. This transition, then, is the shifting of the identity from the personal to the universal.
“Every person develops a style of compensating for the lack, the ontological emptiness which is at the center of the ego. We say there are nine basic styles or points of ego fixation.” (Bleibtreu, 1982, p. 13) Although this is also Ichazo’s view, Naranjo’s study is the first published account of how each character type is related to the loss of contact with Being.
And since it is a true model of reality, one cannot exhaust its knowledge. Knowledge of reality is both unlimited and inexhaustible: Each teaching has a specific way of describing reality and none of these ways exhausts all possible experience. The Enneagram is a structure which facilitates the revelation of truth about Being and about human beings as part of this Being. We view the present book as a new contribution to the knowledge of the Enneagram.
The notion that each fixation is the result of the loss of a particular unconditioned perception of Being implies that ultimate freedom from this fixation is possible only through the experiential realization of the corresponding Holy Idea.
Ichazo views the work on the Enneagram of Holy Ideas as necessary for freedom from the fixations. He calls the Holy Ideas the “psycho-catalyzers” needed for the work of “psycho-alchemy.” He believes that the ego develops because of the loss of contact with Being: “When we turn away from our primal perfection, our completeness, our unity with the world and God, we create the illusion that we need something exterior to ourselves for our completion. This dependency on what is exterior is what makes man’s ego.”
For example, from the perspective of one Holy Idea, reality is experienced as a nondual unity of Being, and the loss or absence of this Holy Idea leads to the delusion of duality, which manifests in the conviction that there are ultimately discrete objects in reality. There are nine specific delusions reflecting the loss or absence of the nine Holy Ideas. These delusions function as the primary principles of egoic existence. Each delusion forms the center of a psychological complex, which we view as the core of that particular fixation.
Each Holy Idea is a view of reality which reflects an understanding of the wholeness and unity of the world or universe, of human beings, and of the functioning of reality. The understanding of unity—the nonduality of the various elements and dimensions of existence and manifestation—is an element of every traditional spiritual understanding. Both Eastern and Western teachings that include a method of inner work toward realization of reality inevitably lead to the perception of the nonseparateness of human and world, physical world and consciousness, divine and mundane.
Many seekers who approach or read about the understanding of unity or nonseparateness associate the idea of unity with a kind of homogeneity. For example, on one level of perception the seeker sees directly that all of manifestation is made of one medium. In this perception, the emphasis is on the awareness that everything is made of one something, one substance, and discrimination of different aspects of manifestation is not part of the experience. This is what we call unity.
Another level that involves a perception of nonduality is the nonconceptual, that is, direct awareness of reality more fundamental than or prior to conceptual thinking. Here, too, there is a sense that there is “one thing” which constitutes all of reality, and from this perspective it is clear that there are no separate objects. Reality on this level can appear as one solid “block” which cannot be separated even conceptually.
Another level of perception which includes awareness of nonduality is what we call oneness. In this perception, the awareness of nonseparateness is clear, but within that whole, unified reality, discrimination is present. One sees the different colors, forms, and movements within manifestation, without those differences appearing as separating boundaries. It is clear that the whole of the universe is one living, harmonious manifestation. Discriminated form and movement are seen as occurring within a whole, not as the movement of separate parts.
The Holy Ideas address the objective understanding of the relationship of the individual to the greater whole. We use the knowledge of the Diamond Approach to develop a particular view of how the Holy Ideas relate to the fixations, exploring for each ennea-type the specific effects of losing touch with awareness of unity. Losing touch with unity is losing the sense that one is part of Being, part of the manifestation and flow of the whole of manifestation. In other words, the delusion of separateness from the whole takes nine forms, representing the loss of the nine Holy Ideas.
It is not easy to appreciate the depth to which both our everyday functioning and our efforts to work toward realization of the truth are governed by the delusion of the separate existence of the self. This delusion renders completely impossible the true transformation of one’s view of self and world, since the root of ego suffering is that sense of separation. Working with the perspective of the Holy Ideas and with the specific issues and difficulties that arise out of the loss of unity is a powerful tool for opening the possibility of true transformation, beyond anything imaginable by psychological or growth work.
Inadequacy in the holding environment leads not only to the loss of contact with Being in general, but specifically to the loss of one’s particular Holy Idea.
The relative presence or absence of this condition in our individual consciousness, or soul, has a significant effect on our orientation toward or away from Being. When this state is present, the development of the soul moves toward Being; when it is relatively absent, the soul develops more toward ego.
What makes the difference is the presence of a certain kind of trust that we call basic trust. It is an unspoken, implicit trust that what is optimal will happen, the sense that whatever happens will ultimately be fine. It is the confidence that reality is ultimately good; that nature, the universe, and all that exists are of their very nature good and trustworthy; that what happens is the best that can happen.
Basic trust is a nonconceptual confidence in the goodness of the universe, an unquestioned implicit trust that there is something about the universe and human nature and life that is inherently and fundamentally good, loving, and wishing us the best. This innate and unformulated trust in life and reality manifests as a willingness to take that plunge into the abyss.
When this trust is deep, it manifests in how you live your life, not necessarily in what you feel or what you think. Basic trust is experienced as an unquestioned sense of safety and security that is intrinsic to the way you act and live. When deeply present, this trust is so much a part of the fabric of your soul that it is not something you think about—it is preconceptual, preverbal, pre-differentiation. Furthermore, it is so basic that events and circumstances in your life cannot disrupt it.
Basic trust, on the other hand, is not a trust in some thing, some person, or some situation, and so is not readily diminished by life circumstances. Instead, it gives you an implicit orientation toward all circumstances that allows you to relax and be with them. You feel in your bones that you are and will be okay, even if the events at the moment are disappointing or painful, or even completely disastrous. Consequently, you live your life in such a way that you naturally jump into the abyss without even conceptualizing that you will be okay, since you have the implicit sense that the universe will take care of you. Your life itself becomes a spiritual journey, in which you know that if you stop trying, stop efforting, stop grasping, stop holding on to people, objects, and beliefs, things will be okay, that they will turn out for the best.
Most people do not have a lot of basic trust; they feel that it’s okay to trust in some situations and not in others. Certain conditions have to be met in order for them to trust. This is not an inherent trust in life. This is conditional trust. When basic trust is prominent, it affects one’s life globally.
Basic trust gives us the capacity to surrender, the capacity to let go, the capacity to jump into the unknown. With it, you don’t need assurances that things are going to be okay because you implicitly know things are going to be okay. It isn’t a trust in something in particular since it is preconceptual—it is prior to your differentiated ideas about what you trust. So basic trust is even beyond trusting in God, because feeling that you trust in God means that you already have a concept of God.
The disturbance of basic trust is a significant factor in ego development because the perspective of ego is diametrically opposed to the sense of basic trust. The ego’s perspective arises out of a lack of this trust. It is based on distrust, on paranoia, on fear, on the conviction that you’re not going to be adequately taken care of and that the universe is not there to hold and take care of you in the ways that you need. This conviction causes you to believe that you have to engage in all kinds of manipulations and games to get your needs met and to make things work out.
Basic trust gives you the capacity and the willingness to let go of the images, identifications, structures, beliefs, ideas, and concepts—the remnants of the past that make up the ego.
Implicit in this initial step is the second one: If you are able to surrender, then you are willing to be. You are willing to not try to change things, to not manipulate them, to not push and pull at them. You are willing to just be present, which is a sort of realization itself. First, then, is the death of the old; second is the realization of Being. If you don’t have basic trust, you will react to what arises in accordance with your conditioning and will want your process to go one way or another. You won’t let yourself just be present; you’ll be tense and contracted. So basic trust is needed for you to be able to allow the ego to die, and also for you to be willing to just be, without reacting.
The third step is to allow things to develop spontaneously and naturally the way they want to develop, without trying to channel them in ways that you think they should go. This means not trying to determine the course of your development or push it one way or another. So if you have basic trust in your process, you not only are willing to jump into the abyss, you not only are able to be with whatever arises, but you also trust that wherever things take you will be okay. This allows the natural unfoldment of your soul, opening to your inner nature.
Without basic trust, the attitude of ego will predominate; the soul will lack implicit confidence in her life and process. The ego will try to take things into its own hands and manipulate, pushing things one way or the other, resulting in the further isolation and entrenchment of ego.
Basic trust is an inherent condition of the soul. Your soul has basic trust like your bones have calcium. It is that fundamental, that basic to the nature of the soul. It is beyond nonconceptual; it is not even an experience. Rather, it gives our experience a sense of ease, of safety and security, with a carefree state in the mind. A lack of basic trust is evident in all the insecurities of ego. Like all qualities which involve a sense of support, the presence of the quality which underlies basic trust tends to remain unconscious or implicit until its absence is felt.
And since ego structures and activity are connected with the sense of the lack of trust, the focus of the personality will be on this lack, on fear, on worrying and planning and compensating for the perceived lack of support. This is why we can say that this quality is inherent in the soul while at the same time the sense of a lack of support predominates in one’s conscious experience.
The more that basic trust is present, the more the process of realization and transformation can proceed smoothly. If we lack basic trust, it becomes important for us to develop it. Development here does not mean building up some new experience of self. It means experiencing the factors which brought about the original profound disconnection from reality and, in particular, experiencing repeatedly the fundamental truth of nonseparateness to the point where the soul can again rest in the knowledge of that truth. Each new experience of essential truth deepens the soul’s contact with her own basic trust.
It gives us the sense that our lives are evolving naturally, moving and progressing in ways and directions that we may not yet know or understand but that we feel confident will be okay. If basic trust is present, our lives have a sense of freedom. Then the desire to know where things are going arises, not out of wanting to control the unfoldment, but out of simple curiosity.
We can see to what extent it is present or not in observing the way we live our lives. Basic trust manifests through our actions rather than through our thoughts or feelings, since it is knowledge in the belly and belly knowledge shows through action. So it is a type of knowledge that we don’t usually think of as knowledge.
To understand basic trust in action, we need to distinguish it from the ego’s tendency toward inertia and inactivity. To have basic trust does not imply that you don’t act. It does not mean that if someone is pointing a gun at you, you don’t do anything to defend yourself. It means that you trust your impulse to run—you trust your inherent intelligent functioning.
The universe unfolds in an optimal way, and part of that unfoldment happens through you and your actions.
When you have a lot of basic trust, you are courageous and authentic. You take risks. You don’t sit on your capacities. You engage in life wholeheartedly, doing what feels appropriate to you with the confidence that it will work out. Without much basic trust, you are paralyzed with fear of failure and fear of rejection. If you’re looking for a mate, basic trust means taking the risk of talking with someone you’re attracted to. You may be a little frightened, but the fear is not a big deal and you act anyway.
But without basic trust, rejection can feel like the end of the world. You feel hopeless. So basic trust implies real hope, which we will discuss when we get to the Holy Idea of Holy Hope.
When your basic trust deepens, you have an inner sense of relaxation that allows your soul to unfold spontaneously and naturally. The trust affects your mind in such a way that you begin to see that whatever happens is right even if it’s painful, and things that you had thought were bad turn out not to be bad. You have a different outlook, seeing a more fundamentally true view of the universe. You see that everything that exists in the world is just right and that whatever happens is just right, that what is can’t be added to or subtracted from.
If you don’t have this trust, you are constantly scared, constantly tense, constantly fighting reality—inner and outer. So we need to reclaim our basic trust. All work on oneself is necessary because one’s basic trust is not complete. If it were, you would feel completely relaxed and you would spontaneously grow to become what you are supposed to be.
We all want to be at peace with ourselves, with our lives, with whatever situation we find ourselves in. We don’t know how to do that, so we are always struggling and fighting with our reality, trying to bring about some harmony and relaxation, some lessening of worry and fear. But all we need to do is to quit struggling with ourselves and with reality. When it is said that suffering ceases when one is realized or enlightened, what is meant is that the struggling ceases. Enlightenment is not a matter of not feeling pain, but of not fighting it.
with being realized, with being settled, with not struggling. When we say not struggling, we mean not struggling with yourself. This doesn’t mean that you don’t need to make efforts. If you need to chop wood, you chop wood, but you don’t hesitate and wonder if it is the right thing to do or judge yourself for how you do it. You simply chop the wood. Most of us can’t simply do that because we are fighting with ourselves
When we investigate, we find that we fight ourselves because we don’t trust. We don’t trust that if we relax, we will have the capacities, we will have the intelligence, we will have the strength, we will have the compassion that we need to deal with our lives. We don’t trust that reality as it is is fundamentally fine and will work for us and support us without any interference on our part. Basic trust is learning that life is manageable, is workable; that we can relax into it and just let it be. It is the trust that the universe itself supports us and that we have the inner resources to deal with whatever life presents us
basic trust means trusting enough to let your mind stop, to be silent within, knowing that if there is something you need to know, the knowing will come. It means trusting that if you need to do something, you will be able to do it. It means accepting and trusting the silence, the stillness, the Beingness. If we don’t trust, we can’t let our minds be silent and we can’t let ourselves be still. We think we always have to be on the go, always making one thing or another happen or not happen, so we don’t let our minds or our bodies rest. We believe that if our minds are quiet, when we need certain information, it is not going to be there. We believe that if our bodies are still, when we need to act, we won’t be able to.
Without that trust, we don’t experience ourselves as the children of the universe that we really are. We experience ourselves as the children of the universe that we really are. We experience ourselves as abandoned, outcast, left on our own—and not only on our own, but lacking and deficient in capacities. We experience ourselves as alone, isolated, separated, not being provided for by the universe, and at the same time, small, unable, and without what it takes to provide for ourselves. So we live in a constant state of fear. This is the basic position of ego.
our minds have become so complex in our attempt to deal with our ignorance and distrust. Our minds are split into so many fragments that are constantly fighting with reality and with each other. Because our minds are so complicated and disharmonious, it takes a lot of work, intelligence, and energy to penetrate the thick complexity and darkness, to discover what the actual truth of reality is. Reality itself is very simple and straightforward, but we can’t see that simplicity, we can’t see the normality of our natural state.
This is our suffering; this is our pain. We don’t leave ourselves alone to just be. Even when we meditate, it’s rare that we just sit there and let ourselves be. “Am I doing it right? Nothing is happening. I’m wasting my time.” Seldom do we just sit and allow whatever happens to happen. This is what we mean by the discord that arises because we have no trust.
If basic trust informs your experience, your psyche is relaxed. Your soul is at peace with itself and with your situation, resting in the unquestioned confidence that the universe provides, that you have, and will receive, what you really need, and that things are workable. If we really have this trust, this deep inner relaxation, it becomes possible to live our lives out of love, out of an appreciation of life, out of enjoyment in what the universe provides for us, and out of compassion and kindness for others and ourselves.
Without it, we live our lives defensively, in conflict with others and with ourselves, becoming self-centered and egoistic. To find our basic trust is to reconnect with our natural state that we have become separated from. When we are innately infused by reality, our soul or consciousness is completely transparent to the truth that we and the universe are one, that we are supported by reality and that that reality is by its very nature good, and that what happens is inevitably right since it emerges out of that inherent perfection. When you understand this, it becomes obvious why it is so difficult to relax and let go, and why it is so important to regain our basic trust.
Basic trust is the effect on the soul of a particular aspect or quality of Being that we call Living Daylight. We call it this because if one’s perception is subtle enough to visually see and kinesthetically feel the substance of one’s consciousness, it actually looks like daylight, and is felt as an alive consciousness. It is experienced as something boundless, in the sense that it is not bounded by one’s body but rather is experienced as something that everything is made of
It is a universal sense of presence in that it pervades everything and is everywhere. The first level of experiencing it is to perceive that it is everywhere; the second level is to see that everything comes out of it; and the deepest level is to know that everything is made of it. At this deepest level, everything in the universe is seen to be originating in, bathed in, and constituted by, Living Daylight.
In the Hindu tradition, it is called satchitananda, which expresses the experiential qualities of this aspect of Being. Sat means presence or truth, chit means consciousness or awareness, and ananda means bliss, pleasure, or love. These three qualities are the experiences of Living Daylight in each of the three centers.
When it is experienced through the mind, it is experienced as light and consciousness. When it is experienced through the heart, it is experienced as universal boundless love. When it is experienced through the belly, it is experienced as a pervading conscious presence. When you feel it in the belly, you feel that you are held, contained, enfolded by a loving presence, and that this presence is what really exists in the world.
For human beings, good means loving. If someone wishes you well or feels positively about you, we say that that person likes and loves you, and so we call this quality love. The universe is experienced here as fundamentally loving, functioning universally in such a way that life unfolds in a positive way, functioning personally in such a way that you become more of what you can be—fulfilling your destiny.
. If this loving presence is seen as the true nature of everything that exists, the universe is seen as benevolent since it is made up of benevolence, and is therefore something you can trust. The soul feels held by the universe, taken care of in a loving, appropriate way, provided for, supported, and loved.
If the universe as a whole and everything in it is pervaded by, is composed of, and is an expression of, this fundamental loving presence, it is natural that you would feel relaxed and trusting, with the sense that you will be taken care of and that things are going to turn out okay.
Basic trust is the implicit confidence in reality that results from experiencing this quality, this dimension of Being. It is the trust that even if you fall, you will be held. If you let go, things will be okay. If you let yourself not know, you will be guided. If you do not manipulate, you will be taken care of in a way that is appropriate for you. And as we have said, it manifests in the way we live, the way we conduct ourselves, the way we relate to our lives and to the universe in general. It colors our relationship to everything.
you are really feeling trusting, you are relaxed and all your energies are flowing; you can become very creative, you can become courageous, you can initiate all kinds of things, and you can live fully. There is surrender, relaxation, a carefree attitude about being and about life, a sense that the way things are is fine and the way they will progress will be okay
When you become aware of the quality of Living Daylight that gives rise to the sense of basic trust, the feeling is that everything is okay in a deep, intrinsic way—not that there aren’t difficulties or pain, but that things are workable. You have the sense of being taken care of and of being held, as we have said, and if this experience deepens, you will feel that you are enveloped and comforted by a soft, loving, gentle presence. It feels as though the environment around you is soft, supportive, protective, and understanding. You might experience it literally as the sense of being held by a wonderful light love. You might also have the sense that all parts of you are held together so that they can grow and develop to become all that they can.
The holding environment includes the psychological, the physical, the emotional, the spiritual—the totality of the world the child lives in. To the extent that the environment holds the various manifestations of the soul, the soul feels supported by the environment and therefore, intrinsically connected to the universe. The soul can then experience its Beingness in a continuous way, without disruptions from the environment, and that sense of Beingness can develop and mature. The child feels himself to be an inherent part of the universe as a unique expression of it
The holding environment, then, is fundamentally important for the infant’s continuity of Being, for his sense of isness. This continuity allows the child to develop into a mature human being; this is what we call the process of individuation. When the environment is not holding enough, not providing enough of what is needed by the child, there is a disruption in the child continuing to be himself. This disruption appears as an actual disintegration of the sense of Beingness, and that then manifests as a reaction to the disruption in the environment.
The reactivity in response to the impingements or disruptions in the environment is the child’s attempt to bring about what she needs so that she can survive and develop. If the holding isn’t there or isn’t dependable, the child will try to manipulate herself, her parents, and/or the environment to bring it about. The child might develop all kinds of ways to please the parents by doing things for them, entertaining them, or hiding her needs. On the other hand, she might try to distract them from their problems, throw tantrums to get attention, or become manipulative or even deceitful to try to get the holding to return.
Implicit in the ego, then, is a fundamental distrust of reality. The failure of the holding environment leads to the absence of basic trust, which then becomes disconnection from Being, which leads to reactivity, which is ego activity. The Enneagram maps the various ways the ego develops to deal with the absence, disruptions, ruptures, and discontinuities of holding.
To the extent that the environment provides adequate holding, the child can develop in the context of a continuity of being which allows and supports the individuation of the soul—one’s unique embodiment of Being. Because there are degrees of holding and of impingement, and because no holding environment is without failures, we typically develop a real (essential) and a false (egoic) self in varying proportions. Basic trust is usually not totally missing, but it is seldom complete. To have absolute basic trust is to be completely realized.
In order to develop basic trust, and consequently more contact and identification with Being, we need to experience the lack of holding imprinted on our souls. As with any other aspect or dimension of Being, we must first work through the resistance to experiencing the absence or “hole” of it, and then when we fully experience this hole, the missing quality will arise.
The effect of the hole of Living Daylight in early childhood is experienced in adulthood in many ways. Emotionally, it will be felt as the need for holding and the sense that no one and nothing is holding you. The feeling of the need itself might be defended against by a lack of trust that anyone will be there for you. This need for holding might be experienced as the desire to be taken care of, the need to be actually physically held, the need for someone to see you and support you. This can lead to the physical sense that there is a kind of emptiness in the belly which makes you feel as if you are suspended in a cold and inhospitable space.
In the process of spiritual work, each time you move beyond your usual sense of reality and of who you are—each time you jump into the abyss with its sense of disintegration or fragmentation and accompanying fear—and you experience Being coming through, giving you a sense of support, a sense of relief, of satisfaction, of meaning, your basic trust is strengthened.
The more experiences you have that involve dealing with painful states and memories, and resolving them, allowing you to connect with various aspects of your fundamental nature, the more that sense of trust is created. The more your soul is held and the more basic trust is developed, the more you will unfold. Providing this holding for who you really are is one of the functions of a spiritual teaching and a teacher. So the whole of the Work ultimately builds basic trust.
As we have said, the ego structure is based on experiences in early childhood that leave an imprint on the soul of a lack of holding, leading to a loss of contact with the loving and supportive dimension of Being. Repeated experiences of physical and/or emotional pain, as well as impingements from or neglect by the environment, lead the soul to react in an attempt to bring the holding about. The soul experiences itself as cut off, alone, separate, isolated, and it feels that it has to fend for itself and help itself in order to survive. This is how the fixations develop.
God is seen as separate from the world. This is one of the things that disturbs our basic trust and in some sense destroys it: How can you have basic trust when you don’t see the true reality of the world, when what you see is a physical world of random or meaningless events, when you don’t see its spiritual nature, when you don’t see what gives it goodness, what gives it perfection, what gives it meaning? We see an empty world, a world devoid of God, a world devoid of Being, a world devoid of love, a world devoid of consciousness, and we think that that is how the world really is. So how can we trust? We naturally believe the world is not going to give us what we need, and that if we want to survive, it is all up to us.
The distorted view of the ego twists the state of consciousness of the soul in a way that gives it a certain posture, a certain outlook that affects the totality of the consciousness, giving the identity of the ego its particular support and flavor.
In studying each Holy Idea and its accompanying fixation, we will expose the central twist, the primary distorted view of reality that makes one’s soul continue to be structured by the ego rather than abiding in its natural condition. The ego has affected the soul such that it has strayed so far from its natural condition that it has created a whole outlook, a whole life, a whole universe which is illusory.
To truly understand the Holy Ideas is to look at reality with unobstructed eyes, to experience and live and act without distortion. To experience in this undistorted way means understanding what it is to be a human being, and what life and the universe are about. It means finding out what the natural condition of a human being living a life in this world is. It means discovering how we can live in a natural condition without even thinking about what our state is or whether we are enlightened or not. It is to see reality as it objectively is—a reality independent of your experience of it.
Objective reality is the totality of the elephant, not various experiences of it. Our unobscured experiences of reality corroborate the view of objective reality, with the view being the integrating factor, the ground for all of these experiences.
We will begin with the Holy Idea for Point Eight, Holy Truth. When basic trust is dominant, the head center opens and we perceive the fact of reality. We see that the universe in its totality—all levels, including the physical—exists in a fundamental way and that that existence is the true reality. We see that all of existence is the manifestation of God, the Divine Being, True Nature—whatever name you wish to give it.
The next Idea is that of Point Nine, Holy Love. This is the perception and the understanding that this true reality is the existence of love, it is love, and its action is loving. Another way of putting it is that the universe functions according to benevolent laws. Seen from the perspective of Holy Love, the whole universe is pervaded by, held by, created by, and constituted of, a consciousness that is loving. So at Point Nine, the nature of the Living Daylight dimension of Being is perceived.
When basic trust is prominent in the soul, you not only perceive the fundamental existence of the universe as a presence whose nature is inherently loving, but you also see that it is perfect. This is the perspective of Holy Perfection, the Holy Idea of Point One. Not only is existence seen to be perfect, not only is everything in it seen to be just right, but whatever happens is also seen as right. Being is seen to have a rightness about it, and the way it functions is also seen as right. So the presence of basic trust makes possible not only the acceptance of what is, but also a sense of the perfection of what is.
Holy Will, the Idea of Point Two, is the perception that whatever happens is the functioning of this true consciousness. Out of this perception follows an acceptance of what transpires, an acceptance of the will of the universe, which leads to Holy Freedom, another name for this point’s Holy Idea. If you are in touch with the presence of Being, pervaded by the Living Daylight, you see all that happens as its functioning, and so it makes sense to surrender to whatever happens. You know that whatever happens is fine and, in not resisting it, you realize a sense of freedom, a sense of flow.
The Holy Idea for Point Three is Holy Hope, Holy Law, or Holy Harmony. Holy Hope is the perception that because all that happens is the functioning of a benevolent reality, things naturally move in the right direction. There is trust that the natural unfoldment of the universe functions according to inherently optimizing laws, and so things evolve correctly; therefore, you don’t need to take matters into your own hands to make them happen. There is an implicit hope, rather than a hoping that the right things will happen.
Holy Origin is the Holy Idea for Point Four. This is the perception that we as individual souls, as well as all that exists, come from and are part of the loving presence of Being. Being is our origin, our substance, our nature. From this perspective, we see that implicit in basic trust is the sense of connection with our Source.
Omniscient means all-knowing, so the perspective here is that in the presence of basic trust, the soul knows reality—but it knows it specifically as a oneness. This is the perception, the realization, the understanding that everything that exists is interconnected and makes up one thing. The boundaries experienced by ego are not ultimately real, so separation and isolation are illusions. The view of Holy Omniscience is the perception that you cannot truly separate yourself since we are all one thing, and any sense of boundaries between ourselves and anything that exists in the universe is not ultimate.
The next Idea, that of Point Six, is Holy Faith or Holy Strength. It tells us that implicit in basic trust is the faith or confidence that reality or God will come through, will support us, is fundamentally there for us. Holy Faith is the closest Idea to basic trust itself; it is a differentiated perception of basic trust. As we said, basic trust is not differentiated enough to be a feeling or an idea; when it becomes explicit, we call it Holy Faith.
When there is basic trust in reality, we not only perceive that things are fine the way they are and that what happens is optimal, but we also get a sense of how things are unfolding. We have a sense of what the evolution of a human being toward completeness is about, what the natural, spontaneous evolution of the human soul looks like. The Holy Plan, then, is God’s plan—the perception of the direction of the soul’s unfoldment when it is in contact with Being—the blueprint of what a human being is meant to become.
Holy Work is the actual evolution, the process of that unfoldment itself. Holy Work is God’s work, which is the unfoldment of the consciousness of the soul into the perception of the whole universe and whatever efforts we make in that direction. So the Work is part of Holy Work, and in it we are working to bring our souls into alignment with the Holy Plan through being present. Action in the present in reality is Holy Work, and such action evolves and develops the soul according to the natural laws of its unfoldment—according to the Holy Plan for how a human being develops.
We can say that the fixated mental perspective of each ennea-type is simply a blind spot, and the specific blindness is the lack of perception of the Holy Idea for that type. Thus, each fixation’s central blind spot is the absence of basic trust, which is caused by the disconnection from the basic ground of Living Daylight, experienced in a differentiated way. So the loss of basic trust is experienced by each fixation inseparably from the loss of one of the Holy Ideas.
One’s fixation, then, is due to an incorrectness or a distortion in how reality is perceived. According to the transmitted teaching of the Enneagram, this incorrect view will be corrected if you understand and experience reality through the undistorted perspective of the Holy Idea associated with your ennea-type.
From the perspective of the Diamond Approach, however, we see that basic trust needs to be re-established through contact with the quality of Living Daylight, and resulting from that, we will spontaneously experience the Holy Ideas and, therefore, see reality objectively.
As the Holy Ideas become understood, we learn to experience and live in reality, with its essential qualities and boundless dimensions. Basic trust opens the higher intellectual center, allowing us the view of the Holy Ideas, which liberates us from the delusions of ego and helps us to establish our consciousness in the unity of Being.
As we have said, it is not a matter of confronting a lack within oneself, but rather of exposing one’s delusions. A delusion is something which you take to be true but which is not true. It is a twist in your mind that distorts your perceptions. Its resolution is not a particular state of consciousness, but rather, a corrected view of reality through which all states are experienced. So working through this perceptual distortion is a matter of changing your mind, changing your perspective, changing your philosophy about reality, life, and yourself.
Each delusion is a very specific and deep belief about oneself and reality, crystallized into a conviction, which is incorrect in a specific way. So our work with the ennea-types is not a matter of going into the details of how each one operates, but rather of seeing how their cores are the result of basic delusions about reality, which can be corrected through truly understanding and perceiving the corresponding Holy Idea.
Our focus, then, is not oriented toward any particular state of consciousness, but toward correcting our deluded points of view. We are addressing our fundamental, overall view of reality—our understanding of it and our perception of it. The quality of Living Daylight is the grace or blessing needed for this process, but it is not the outcome. The outcome is a letting-go of a fixed cognitive position about reality.
The loss of the sense of holding will lead to the loss of contact with Living Daylight, and this will result in a sense of deficiency particular to each ennea-type. The absence of holding is experienced in a certain way that is determined by the particular Holy Idea that is lost, and it is then experienced as a specific painful, deficient, and difficult state we call the specific difficulty for that ennea-type. The specific delusion, the distorted view of reality resulting from the loss of the Holy Idea particular to each ennea-type, shapes the specific sense of deficiency. That sense of deficiency is the embodiment, as it were, of that conceptual formulation
The delusion also shapes how each ennea-type reacts to its specific difficulty. We have seen how the absence of holding leads to a lack of trust, which in turn causes the soul to react rather than to continue its spontaneous unfoldment, and each ennea-type has a particular way of responding to its deeply painful sense of deficiency. We call this the specific reaction of each ennea-type. Out of the interaction of the specific difficulty and the way it is responded to, which is the specific reaction, the core of each ennea-type is formed. Out of that core arise all of the emotional and behavioral patterns associated with that type.
The Holy Ideas serve as nine doorways to basic trust because if they are understood, the head center opens, Living Daylight descends into the body, and as it reaches the belly, it is integrated into the belly center as a fundamental trust in reality. While working on the Holy Ideas is a way of developing basic trust, from another perspective the Holy Ideas are basic trust maturing in the process of human development and growth.
On this essential level, the facts of your situation take on a sense of meaning, of richness and of depth, because they usher you into the realm of what truly exists, beyond the surface of things. An essential truth is not a thought, an idea, a reaction, or an action; its most important characteristic is that it is an ontological presence—it has a substantive existence. Although the relative truth of a situation can take us to the essential truth of it, the essential level is not dependent upon the situation. It is self-existing; it is its own realm existing independently of who we are and what we are doing.
When we first encounter Essence, we experience it in the dimension of form, contained within us, in other words, “There is love in my heart, will in my belly, clarity in my head,” and so on. At a deeper level, the presence of Essence expands and loses its boundaries, and we realize that it is actually boundless. This is the beginning of experiencing the formless or boundless dimensions. The first formless dimension that we usually encounter, as discussed in Part Two, is that of Living Daylight: a love that is not just within you, but is every-where—pervading everything, penetrating all boundaries.
So we have moved from the fact of what is happening to what truly exists within you, and from there to what truly exists beyond your body—what exists in the whole cosmos. In the boundless dimensions, Essence still has the quality of being a presence, a fullness, and a richness. As our experience deepens, the boundless dimensions keep revealing themselves in continuing depth, one after the other, as we penetrate deeper and deeper concepts within our mind, and these dimensions will lead us eventually to the deepest, innermost truth—absolute truth. This dimension of the Absolute is beyond all concepts, including that of existence or non-existence
The perception that Being constitutes the totality of everything is what is generally called a mystical experience. Before this, you may have spiritual experiences, but when you experience the oneness and the unity of existence, you are on the level of the mystical. In the dimension of Living Daylight, you experience that everything is made out of love. When you look around you, everything might appear, for example, to be made out of a pink and sweet diamond-like taffy substance, and be pervaded with a wonder, a beauty, and a sweetness.
Holy Truth is the perception that all these levels are actually one thing, that all the dimensions constitute a complete state of unity. In other words, all the dimensions of reality are completely inseparable from one another, and all are the same thing. This is the perception that there is absolutely no duality—either horizontally (between objects) or vertically (between dimensions). So although we experience ourselves moving progressively into deeper and deeper dimensions of reality as our inquiry becomes increasingly subtle, Holy Truth is the perception that all these dimensions exist simultaneously. They are all facets of the same reality, so the sense of a hierarchy is ultimately illusory.
In Holy Truth, the emphasis is on the unity of the universe; it is all “of the same taste,” as the Tibetan Buddhists say. With Holy Omniscience, the emphasis is on the differentiations and discriminations within that unity. So the focus here is on the various parts, in all their variety and multiplicity, that together comprise the unitive whole. To perceive reality through the facet of Holy Omniscience is like looking at a whole Persian rug, but focusing on the different designs contained within it.
You could say that Holy Truth is the experience of unity, while Holy Omniscience is the experience of oneness—the sense that everything is interconnected and not separate, that everything makes up the one reality of the living universe. Here, we are seeing all the stars, the planets, the mountains, the rivers, the animals, and the people that are part of it, without isolating them from the context of the unity, the Holy Truth.
reality keeps rolling, and with the perception of Holy Origin, we see that what appears in that unfoldment is never disconnected from Being, since it is Being. The fact that reality is appearing right now as your body or your thoughts or your environment does not mean that these things are disconnected from Being. Everything, then, is intimately and inextricably connected to Being. Being is the Holy Origin, and everything is connected to, and completely inseparable from, that Origin.
So Holy Work emphasizes the fact that there is always an unfoldment taking place, and Holy Origin emphasizes that this unfoldment is always the unfoldment of Being. So as appearance manifests, it never leaves Being, which means that you never leave Being. The interconnection of everything, including ourselves, then, is by virtue of the fact that everything has as its inner nature the reality of Being. You are connected by virtue of the fact that Being is your true reality. Just as the body is inseparable from its atoms, so appearance is inseparable from Being. There is no such thing as a body separate from its atoms; likewise, there is no world, no existence, no manifestation, no appearance separate from Being.
The Idea of Holy Origin can be formulated in many ways, depending upon the level or subtlety of realization. We have discussed what it means in a general way, and will now describe some of the different levels of its realization. The first level is perceiving it from the physical perspective, recognizing that we are connected to reality because the natural laws which operate in and through our bodies always connect us to it.
The next level deeper is the perception that everything, including oneself, originates in Being and returns to Being, that Being is the ground in which and from which everything manifests. This is the experience of seeing that there is a Source from which you come and to which you return, and that all of reality comes from and returns to this same Source. It is like perceiving that the waves arise out of the ocean and return back into it.
The third level of perception of Holy Origin is seeing that everything is nothing but Being itself differentiating, discriminating, and articulating itself into the particular phenomena of experience. So there is no separation between appearance and Source, nor is there connection between them since there are not two things that can be disconnected. This third level, that of coemergence, in which one recognizes that everything is always the Source that is appearing in various ways, is the deepest possible way of seeing Holy Origin.
What we perceive to be the Source, from which everything emanates in the second level of understanding Holy Origin, and with which everything is coemergent in the third level, goes through successive refinements. In other words, our sense of what this Source is deepens. This understanding—that Being can be perceived in subtler and subtler depths—is very specific to the Diamond Approach.
Holy Omniscience refers to the horizontal oneness, and Holy Origin refers to the vertical oneness. Holy Omniscience eliminates the sense of boundaries or separateness between things, and Holy Origin eliminates the sense of separateness between things and their source, which is Being.
Holy Omniscience tells us that all the waves on the surface of the ocean are connected, while Holy Origin tells us that the waves are part of the ocean. And the whole ocean, waves and all, is the Holy Truth. The same reality is being described, with different emphases.
Holy Origin can be experienced in many ways. The conventional way is feeling in touch with oneself. The sense that I’m connected with myself—I feel myself, I’m intimately in touch with myself, I know I am here—is one way of seeing Holy Origin. What changes is our experience of what that self is; as we have seen, what we know ourselves as becomes progressively deeper. At the beginning, you might be in touch with your body, then you are in touch with your emotions, then you are in touch with your essence, then you are in touch with the Essential Self, then you are in touch with the boundless dimensions; until at some point, you realize that to be in touch with yourself, you have to be in touch with the Absolute because you have recognized yourself as that.
This is analogous to the idea of ego death: It is not that your personality dies, but that you are experiencing yourself at a deeper level. All that has ceased is the idea that your ego identity is all that you are. Nothing dies; you are just seeing things at a different level. The Idea of Holy Origin means that you are seeing both levels at the same time—you’re looking at your hand with two lenses: One sees the hand and one sees the atoms, both at the same time.
In other words, the specific delusion of Point Four is the conviction in the concept of separate identity—that your “I” is ultimately separate, independent, different, and unique. This is the element of the ego that has to do with the feeling of identity, the sense of self, as opposed to the demarcating boundaries that are the province of Point Five. It is the sense that your identity exists on its own, separately and independently from all other people and all other things.
Holy Origin shows me that I am connected to the Holy Origin and so is everyone and everything else. While everyone and everything is an expression of the same Source, each is a unique expression of that Source. No wave is exactly like any other wave; no cloud is exactly like any other cloud. When you understand uniqueness from this perspective, you realize that uniqueness is not specialness, nor is it based on separateness. This means that whenever you believe you are original, you are merely expressing the ego identity.
So just as ego boundaries give the delusion that the autonomy of the Pearl means separateness from others, ego identity gives the delusion that the uniqueness of the Point means not only being different from others but also, and more importantly, being separate from the ground of Being.
Everyone, then, has the delusion that one’s inner nature, one’s sense of self or sense of identity, is distinct and separate, discrete and independent.
The delusion of Point Five is like believing that you are a balloon and that its boundaries define you, and the delusion of Point Four is like believing that the air inside your balloon is independent, separate, and different from the air inside other people’s balloons. My air smells and feels different. This conviction separates you in this moment from a sense of presence, which is your true center. Believing that one is a separate self with a separate identity makes the soul experience itself as disconnected, cut off from its Source.
So from the perspective of Point Four, the loss of holding will be experienced from the point of view of the delusion that there is a separate identity and center. The specific difficulty, then, is the experiential state of feeling disconnected, estranged, alienated, cast out, and abandoned. This feeling state is different from the sense of isolation, which is the specific difficulty of Point Five. The feeling here is a disconnection from oneself, from reality, from the Source. This is what gives people of this ennea-type the sense of melancholy, despair, and sadness, since the disconnection is ultimately from the Beloved, from the ultimate Source. So the state of disconnection is a painful condition in which you feel not held, but also estranged from the source of holding. It is the narcissistic difficulty, but experienced specifically as being cut off, being unreachable, or feeling that the source of holding is unreachable. So we are seeing here the particular way that the loss of holding is experienced when reflected through the facet of this particular delusion, in contrast to the sense of connection in which one feels at home, at peace with oneself, and intimate with the Beloved.
So inherent in the feeling state of disconnection and estrangement is the delusion that you are a separate self with a separate identity. This feeling of disconnection can be experienced on any level, beginning with feeling out of touch with oneself or somehow disconnected, alienated, or estranged. It can become deeper and more specific, manifesting as the sense that you have been cast out of Heaven, that what is lovable is inaccessible or unreachable, that you are alone and abandoned, lost, with no way to come into contact with what is real, or as the feeling of disconnection from your true nature, disconnected from what is real in you.
The absence of the Holy Idea also manifests as the absence of trust because the holding is lost, which leads to the absence of basic trust. So the specific reaction that results is the expression here of distrust filtered through the belief in a separate identity. It is the ego activity of control—the attempt to control one’s experience so as not to experience the feeling of disconnection. This activity of controlling basically supports the identification with the ego, which creates a fake center, to avoid experiencing the absence of a real center.
So rather than connecting us, the attempt at control ends up only supporting our sense of being an ego, someone who is cut off from what is real. This controlling of experience is in sharp contrast with the sense of complete freedom of the Source. This freedom is complete openness and flow, since at the very center of who you are, there is not a hint of control.
So the specific difficulty of disconnection and the specific reaction of control become the core of this ennea-type, formed around the seed of the delusion. Dealing with this core is usually a painful or scary process, but if we are to see through it so that this core can dissolve and we can reconnect to the Holy Idea involved, we have to go through it. Control is an expression of distrust, so if you allow yourself to lose the control, the distrust will be exposed. This distrust then needs to be explored, because its absence makes you feel frightened and therefore, having to control. As you feel and explore it, you might get in touch with the specific difficulty, and ultimately with the delusion that forms the kernel of both.
Human beings have two options: being in contact with the Source, or being in a state of disconnection from it. Being disconnected from the Source is not the loss of a luxury, of something extra—this loss lies at the very heart of human suffering because this Source constitutes your most real nature, the true center of who you are. Without it, life is deadened in all its aspects and becomes meaningless.
So the loss and the sense of feeling disconnected that is the specific difficulty for this point is a very wrenching kind of estrangement. To really get a sense of it, imagine a two- or three-year-old child who has been more or less continuously with its mother, and then is taken away from her suddenly and completely. How would this child feel? What condition would the child be in? Even if the child survives, life loses its flavor and becomes dull. There is not only emptiness but also grief and depression. So the sense of disconnection that we are discussing here is a profoundly unhappy state, in which it feels like the one you love the most is unreachable and inaccessible.
To regain the Origin is, in a sense, the process of annihilating oneself, because the very way that we think and the way that we perceive ourselves is what disconnects us. As we have seen, what disconnects us is the delusion that we are a self with a separate identity, so it doesn’t matter what we learn, what we attain, what we gain, how far we go—these things will not reconnect us. Even talking about connecting is a linguistic formulation that is not accurate, since the disconnection itself is a delusion.
If we believe that we are independent entities, we will experience ourselves as independent entities, and hence, as disconnected. So the return home to our Source is a matter of education; it is a matter of seeing through certain beliefs. But in letting them go, you are letting go of the very fabric of who you believe you are, so the process is very difficult, very subtle, and very radical.
We are using the term objective reality in contrast to subjective reality, which is reality seen through our inner mental filters that are shaped by our past conditioning. Objective reality is how things really are. Although it is possible to perceive objectively, we cannot take in the totality of reality and say anything about it; we can only point to some of its characteristics.
The Holy Ideas, then, are not really separate, but are all facets of the same perception. They are specific presentations of reality as it really is. So the objective qualities of reality in the system we are using are the Holy Ideas. We are exploring the totality of objective reality by looking at nine specific characteristics of it.
Points Eight, Nine, and One are, as we have seen, elaborations on what this cosmic reality is, what its characteristics are, and how we perceive it in terms of its existence, its truth, and its experience.
Holy Truth is like the existence of truth as one body. Holy Perfection shows that this body has an intelligence that makes it arise in such a way that its functioning is always perfect and right. Holy Love would then be like the heart of truth. When we use the word truth here, we mean the most all-encompassing truth, the truth of the totality of the wholeness of all of existence as one. This level of truth, Holy Truth, is of course, the ultimate truth sought in any spiritual search and in any spiritual tradition.
Ichazo describes Holy Love as: “The awareness that though the laws which govern reality are objective, they are not cold, because these cosmic laws inevitably lead to the creation of organic life, and Life itself, like all natural phenomena, fulfills a cosmic purpose. As soon as the mind’s word mechanism is destroyed, love, the natural condition of the mind, appears… .”
His definition implies that reality has heart, that there is some warmth in the way reality functions. This sense of heart is not actually something that reality has, like a physical heart or a specific attribute. This heartfulness is rather, a quality inherent and implicit in the very existence of truth. So when we refer here to the heart of truth, or the heart of the universe, we are referring to a certain way in which the universe can be experienced as heart.
The body of truth is reality’s very existence—the fact of this existence, its presence, its thereness, its factness. The mind of truth is the intrinsic intelligence implicit in its perfection of both presence and unfoldment. The heart of truth, then, is the aesthetic or appreciative mode that is always an intrinsic and inseparable quality of the perception and knowing of truth.
Holy Love is not the feeling of love, nor the essential aspect of love. Holy Love is a quality of existence that makes that existence lovable. Its loveliness and lovableness is what generates in our hearts sentiments of love, appreciation, value, enjoyment, pleasure, and so on. So we are talking about the quality of lovableness of reality when it is seen without distortion, rather than through the filter of the ego. In other words, Holy Love is the fact that objective reality has an intrinsic quality of being wonderful and pleasing—it is intrinsically lovable. This is Holy Love—whatever it is that makes it lovely, enjoyable, lovable, whatever it is about it that we can’t help but appreciate
When reality is fully perceived, one cannot help but enjoy and appreciate it. One cannot but respond with awe when the Holy Truth is fully apprehended, and one cannot but be full of wonder when Holy Perfection is realized. One cannot but melt in appreciative sweetness when beholding Holy Love. Holy Love brings you the experience of love, but it is not the love itself; it is something much more comprehensive. It is a quality of reality as a whole and is very difficult to fully define. We could say that Holy Love is the intrinsic quality of the reality of Being that is nonconceptual positivity. It is pure and unalloyed blissfulness. It is the value-saturated quality of truth. It is pure goodness, the Good of Plato.
When we say that Holy Love is the “nonconceptual positivity” of reality, we don’t mean that it is positive because our subjective minds respond to it positively. We mean that is how reality is, regardless of how we feel about it. What we normally describe as positive is something that we like, and what we describe as negative is something that we don’t like. However, the point about Holy Love is that when you objectively apprehend reality, when you experience and see the Holy Truth, you cannot help but feel positive toward it. In this experience, there are no positive or negative categories that your mind has divided things into. There is no polarity here; this nonconceptual positivity is beyond all polarities. The nature of reality, then, is such that the more it touches your heart, the more your heart feels happy and full, regardless of your mental judgments of good or bad.
Holy Love refers to the fact that when you really suspend all comparisons, all judgments, and all opinions, you will experience reality as an unalloyed positive value through all the sense modalities. It is pure goodness, and its expression is always goodness.
Judgment and comparison block or distort this nonconceptual mode of presencing reality, and because most people don’t believe this, it is very important to understand Holy Love. Most of us think that reality can be divided into good and bad, positive and negative, painful and pleasurable. Holy Love says no; that if we let go of our dichotomizing minds and experience things as they are—without our subjective filters—we will recognize reality’s sheer positivity, its pure delightfulness. This characteristic of reality is usually referred to as the blissful and ecstatic quality of Being, or the loving and compassionate.
Holy Love is an inseparable quality of the essential aspects, so when Essence is experienced completely, fully, and purely, it has an uplifting impact on the soul, and there is a sense of value, worth, significance, meaning, positive regard, expansion of the spirit, and an overall appreciative flavor to the experience. It makes you love and enjoy yourself and others, and life in general; it makes you love and enjoy truth and all of existence. To understand Holy Love is to be in touch with the blissful beauty of existence which is its intrinsic goodness. When the Sufis refer to God as love, they mean Holy Love rather than the affect of love, or any of the forms of love on the essential level. So when the great Sufi mystic, Rumi, describes everything in reality as good, with a loving and a lovely quality, he is speaking from Holy Love.
This intrinsic goodness of reality is part and parcel of its Being and its functioning. So to understand Holy Love means to be attuned, to be aware, to be in touch with the fact that reality has an intrinsic goodness, an inherent beauty, a delight, a blissfulness, an ecstasy that is completely inseparable from its existence and from its unfoldment. Holy Love is so inseparably a quality of existence that if you truly experience existence, you are bound to experience its intrinsic goodness. If you experience existence but do not feel the Holy Love of it, this indicates that your experience of existence is filtered through your subjectivity and is therefore incomplete. So whenever our experience of reality lacks this sense of goodness, this beauty, this value, this uplifting quality, this blissfulness, this delight, we know that we are experiencing it through the filter of the ego.
Suffering, then, is nothing but reality experienced through our subjectivity. When a person is not perceiving the Holy Ideas, he or she is experiencing some degree of suffering. From the perspective of someone who is seeing objectively, that suffering is just in the person’s mind, but as far as that person is concerned, the suffering is very real. So the one seeing objectively will naturally have compassion and a desire to help, not by alleviating the suffering, but by helping the other see correctly, because when we see correctly, our suffering disappears. Even physical pain becomes less painful if you are perceiving Holy Love, which means being in a state of bliss, because the psychological suffering that contributes so profoundly to the pain is gone. It is possible to realize Holy Love so completely that nothing can make it disappear.
The sense of reality as filled with pain and suffering, on the other hand, is dependent upon your beliefs, and while they exist as part of reality, they are incidental to it. So we are differentiating between what is fundamental and what is incidental to the nature of reality.
The perspective of Holy Love is that if you don’t try to see reality one way or another, you will discover that it is wonderful, and it will actually become wonderful. You don’t have to do anything to make it that way; it is like that on its own. All you need to do is relax. If we tighten up and get scared, things look negative and become painful.
Reality always has the quality of goodness about it; goodness is its nature. It cannot be taken away from it, just as you can’t take the quality of roundness away from an orange. Holy Love, like the other Holy Ideas, is a quality of objective reality, so it can’t be there sometimes and not at others, or in one part of reality and not in another.
The sense of goodness that we are describing is not goodness in the moral or ethical sense. It transcends moral concepts. Reality is good in the sense of how it feels and how it affects us, touching us with its blissful and ecstatic nature. This blissfulness is nothing but nonconceptual pleasure, nonconceptual goodness, nonconceptual positivity.
When we have the experience of Holy Love, we realize that this is how reality is all the time, and that our experience of reality has been incomplete. We usually have the sense that, “Oh, it is like this all the time and I didn’t even realize it!” This is a deep insight into the nature of reality, and is different from an uplifting experience.
Here, we are saying that not only is reality just one presence that is boundless and real, but that it is also positive, blissful, and wonderful. So not only is God one, but God is also wonderful and made of love. The truth, then, is loving and lovable, which is why we say in the Diamond Approach that you must love truth for its own sake. If your orientation is that you love truth so that it will change you and make you a happier person, your orientation is out of sync with how things objectively are; if you see reality as it is, you can’t help but love it.
Holy Love means that not only does this quality exist, but that it is an inseparable quality of all of existence, of everything, everywhere, and at all times.
If you can localize it in time or space, you are not seeing it as an inherent quality of reality, so understanding its nonlocatedness is an essential part of understanding Holy Love. The moment you see it present in this person and not in that person, or in this person today but not yesterday, you are not seeing Holy Love. If you do not perceive it everywhere at all times, this indicates that you are disconnected from the perception of it and you are seeing reality through your subjective filter.
Holy Love is the heart of existence, and to really experience the whole of existence as heart necessitates having nothing held back in your own heart. If there is a particular emotion that you don’t let yourself feel, whether it is love or hatred or any other emotion, that repression will act as a barrier to perceiving the Holy Love in the universe. It is difficult to perceive or even accept the Idea of Holy Love if there is any splitting, any belief in the dichotomy of good and bad within you. In terms of Holy Love, that dichotomy does not exist. What we call good and bad are surface discriminations; the inner nature of everything is good.
Experiencing the lovingness and the beauty of existence is so central to the soul’s capacity to value, that even if they experience the other Holy Ideas without experiencing Holy Love, most people don’t care about them. The attitude is, “So what if everything is one if it doesn’t feel good?” or, “So what if things are always unfolding on their own if there is no love in it?” This is why understanding Holy Love is necessary in order to integrate the other Ideas. It is a foundation, without which a person cannot really work through his or her specific difficulty.
Nonconceptual positivity means that it affects the soul directly, regardless of what your mind thinks of it, and the heart responds by feeling happy, released, and uplifted. We can call what is perceived from the perspective of Holy Love either loveliness—the sense of a lovable beauty—or lovingness—the sense that the universe has a loving quality.
If we don’t perceive this nonconceptual positivity, or if we do, but don’t believe it or take it seriously—which is to say that when Holy Love is lost to our perception or not understood—the result is the specific delusion of Point Nine. This delusion is not the belief that there is no such lovingness in existence—human beings can’t survive without some sense of love—but rather, that this lovingness is a local phenomenon, occurring at particular points of time and space.
This delusion results in the belief that love is conditional, which explains to us why we perceive it at one place and time and not at another. On the surface, we sense these wonderful, beautiful feelings sometimes and not others; some people have it, others don’t; it is present in some parts of the universe and not others. But the actual core of the delusion is that love is conditional.
The loss of the Idea of Holy Love and the difficulties in holding are colored here by the delusion of the localizability of love, resulting in the subjective state of feeling inferior. In other words, when the loving holding in the environment is lost or inadequate, a belief arises that love and lovableness are conditional
If you had retained the sense of Holy Love from childhood, you could not believe that you are not lovable, since you would still perceive that the nature of everything is intrinsically good, including you. This is why the understanding of Holy Love is the specific antidote for the belief that you’re not lovable. When you feel that you are not lovable you are believing that you don’t have inside of you anything that is wonderful, beautiful, lovable, enjoyable, or valuable; the soul feels diminished, minimized, denuded of its good qualities, and ends up feeling like an inferior soul, lacking what makes the soul good. This feeling of deficiency is a sense of being intrinsically lacking in qualities that others have
This sense of deficiency is not a sense of emptiness, the sense that a particular quality of Being is missing. It is more a deficient feeling, tone, or affect, that shapes the whole soul. This deficient tone is the sense of worthlessness, of not being good enough, or of just not being enough, along with the sense that something is not right, and a consequent loss of self-esteem. Most specifically, it is a feeling that you are intrinsically inferior, regardless of what you have, what you do, what you know, what you develop, or what or who you are. One of the associations people frequently have with this feeling is of being a second-class citizen, of being lower class or of a peasant class, and so it is directly related to social discrimination. It is a diminished sense of who you are, as if your very being, your very soul, is less than it should be, that what you are is second-class.
If you are identified with the ego and anything goes wrong, you immediately assume that it happened because what is good is not inside you.
The issue here is not disconnection from Being—that is the particular difficulty of Point Four—it is, rather, that you are not in touch with its blissfulness even as you experience it. You can be in touch with Being, but cannot feel or see its loveliness, as though the essential presence were covered by a membrane or a veil shading its ecstatic luster.
Often people have essential experiences, but because they don’t see that it is themselves that they are perceiving, they think that their teacher is transmitting the state to them, or that God is visiting them, since they feel their own nature is sinful or not holy. In these cases, they are projecting their true nature outside themselves. Sometimes, even if you do see that the Being you are experiencing is you, the lack of integration of Holy Love prevents you from experiencing this revelation as wonderful, as precious.
As long as you do not understand Holy Love, you cannot know it as the nature of yourself and of everything that exists. Instead of feeling love for yourself and enjoyment of your life, you feel low in spirit, or bored with yourself. You feel that you are not good enough. When you deeply and clearly feel this state, you feel a sense of inferiority that feels as though your very soul is inherently ugly or deformed. Like a creature frequently seen in mythology, you might even feel like a twisted animal living underground—like a troll or like Gollum in J.R.R. Tolkien’s series, Lord of the Rings—that is utterly without any redeeming qualities. Just as inferiority is always associated with ugliness and deformity, beauty and the sense of being lovable always go hand in hand.
This profound sense of deficiency and inferiority not only affects your feelings about yourself, it also has a big effect on your attitude toward your work and creativity. It disconnects you from seeing your own value, preciousness, and usefulness, and makes you believe that there is something wrong with what you do and what you produce, some imperfection that is subject to judgment and comparison.
If you don’t believe that you are intrinsically lovable, you won’t allow yourself to acknowledge your capacities and your attributes, and this not only disconnects you from your accomplishments, but also disconnects you from Essence, which leads us to the specific reaction of Point Nine.
The falling asleep is basically a giving up, a resignation, forgetting and going unconscious. Even if you had an essential experience yesterday, you don’t remember it today—it is as though it made no impression on your soul. It didn’t wake you up or change you. So regardless of what experiences you’ve had, your soul is still asleep, not awake to the objective reality of things.
Identifying with the delusion of Point Nine manifests in not seeing, realizing, or believing that you are really who you are; that you are not really Essence and Being, or even a soul. You continue to believe that reality is what the social consensus says it is: the life, world, and personality of ego.
When you continue to think, feel, and behave as if Being were not present all the time, you are expressing the distrustful belief that love is not your very nature and the nature of everything. If there is no love inside or outside, why stay awake to reality? So the resignation, the apathy, the indifference, the laziness about facing the truth (especially one’s inner truth), arise in response to the perception of a lack of love, to the lack of awareness of the beauty, wonder, bliss, and lovableness of reality, both inner and outer. When you do not treasure your existence, your life becomes a matter of merely surviving and subsisting. Life, then, is dead, superficial, mechanical, and boring because the magic of truth is not present.
So, unlike the other ennea-types who may respond to their disconnection from Being with anger or sadness, Nines respond with apathy, resignation, laziness, inertia, and a sense of stuckness. Nines are not necessarily lazy people—they can be very energetic and active in the world of conventional reality—but they neglect what is essential: Being.
Underlying this is the fear that if you wake up and find out who you really are, what you will find is that you are even more ugly than you had imagined, so it is better not to look. In other words, because you believe that you are an inferior soul, your inferiority is all you can hope to find when you seek the truth, so why bother?
However, the moment you recognize that true nature is such a beauty, such a preciousness, you will do anything for it. No sacrifice is too great to realize that beauty, that radiant, lustrous preciousness. It is difficult to convey verbally the sense of this preciousness, this beauty, and the wonder and magic of it. Physical beauty is a very pale reflection of the beauty of Being, which is the nature of your soul. If you really recognized that the truth of who you are is so beautiful, so precious, so full of value, and so magnificent, you would devote the totality of your life to it. Everything in the universe, from beginning to end, is like dust compared to this magnificence, and every action and situation is expendable for this preciousness.
We have seen how the specific delusion of this ennea-type appears in the specific difficulty of inferiority, and seen how this leads to the specific reaction of going to sleep, going unconscious. Another way of describing the reaction is that it is forgetting who you are and forgetting objective reality. This is why the particular practice needed to wake up is that of self-remembering.
Holy Love is a quality of beauty, magnificence, preciousness, and complete, intrinsic, radiant, pure, immaculate loveliness, while the state of inferiority is a feeling of ugliness and twistedness, the sense that one is a deficient and impoverished soul. This is not what is called “mystical poverty,” which is a state of feeling and emptiness that allows God to descend into you. While this sense of impoverishment in the soul—in contrast to its true richness is the central issue for ennea-type Nines, it is shared by all egos.
If the quality of Holy Love is missing in your everyday life, your activities are empty. But for the person who is convinced of his inferiority, the attitude is, “Well, at least I’m surviving.” Some comfort, some little bit of excitement, some stimulation or titillation, is available here and there. Basically, these superficial pleasures are distractions from being present with, and sensing yourself, and appear to be a better alternative than feeling as if you are a cursed soul. Therefore, distracting oneself with externals is a central and omnipresent characteristic of the ego.
If you really understand Holy Love, if you see it as a fact, you cannot believe that you or anyone else is inferior. The knowledge that the intrinsic quality of who you are is love, wonder, and preciousness, eliminates the inferiority. Even if you perceive the beauty of Holy Love but have not dealt with the inferiority, you remain identified with that inferior sense, and will explain away your perception of Holy Love as not yours, or as being somehow incidental. So if the inferiority is not worked through, your understanding of Holy Love will remain partial and distorted.
Even when we have an experience of it, we don’t let ourselves realize that this is actually the natural state for a human being and that it is possible to live in it most, if not all, of the time. The exquisiteness, refinement, beauty, warmth, and aliveness of consciousness is the Holy Love quality of our true nature. The moment you really let yourself know that this quality of consciousness is possible for you and is, in fact, your natural state, why would you strive for anything else?
And the specific reaction of sleep, apathy, and laziness is about just this task. With this reaction, it becomes more important to watch a football game than to work on oneself. It seems more exciting to watch one person bash into another one—this is a way to make us feel something through the thick skin of our consciousness. Or we want to go on a roller-coaster ride in order to feel some aliveness, or get involved in all sorts of activities and entertainments as a way of distracting ourselves from feeling what we believe is our inferiority, and from the deadness of our experience.
When we see the Holy Love quality of the nature of Being, we see its preciousness. Its radiant glory feels like a sunrise. Inferiority is the negation of this glory, and the specific reaction is an attempt to get away from that diminished sense of self. What is needed is to confront that part of our psyche rather than to run from it, so that we are not afraid to wake up to ourselves.
As long as we look for causes and solutions on this superficial level, we cannot resolve our inferiority complex. A sense of mastery and accomplishment will not resolve the issue. It may diminish it a little, but it is only a compensation. The issue is not helplessness. The resolution is a sense of preciousness and inner beauty, which, when we contact it, is so powerful and radiant that it makes all else insignificant.
To discriminate against someone is to inflict great suffering, since it touches the wound of inferiority that everyone has. It will bring up a tremendous lack of self-esteem, as well as a deep sense of shame about this painful wound within. Any discrimination of any sort—relating to another as if they are less than you—is a projection of your own sense of inferiority.
Only when we experience this naked sense of diminution does it become possible to see that it is based on the false belief that there are some places in the universe that have intrinsic goodness and some places that don’t. Without seeing this, you are operating on the unconscious belief that you are inferior and taking this belief to be reality. In this case, there is no point in becoming more conscious, so distracting oneself is the only sensible thing to do.
The Holy Idea of ennea-type Three, which we are about to explore, is particularly germane to this issue of stuckness versus continual unfoldment and realization.
It does not matter whether you like the view of reality or not. It is how things are. If you like it or don’t like it, that’s your business—it’s not the business of reality. If you don’t like how things are, the best you can do is to find out why, so that you can begin to harmonize yourself with it. Otherwise, you will suffer. This doesn’t mean reality is punishing you. It simply means that if you harmonize yourself with reality, you will experience a sense of peace and freedom, and if you don’t, you will experience discord.
Holy Law is the completely egoless perception and understanding of functioning and activity, which means the dynamic characteristics of Being. It roughly corresponds to the Fifth Awareness or Buddha in the Vajrayana Buddhist system of the Five Buddhas: the “all-accomplishing wisdom,” which is related to the action of compassion.
The Enneagram of Specific Delusions is grounded in the delusion of Point Nine: that love and goodness are local phenomena. In other words, each of the other eight delusions can be seen as based on, or arising out of, this fundamental delusion. The other delusions are Point One, reality is split between good and bad; Point Two, I have a separate personal will; Point Three, I am a separate doer; Point Four, I have a separate identity; Point Five, I am a separate self; Point Six, I have no true nature; Point Seven, I have a separate personal unfoldment; Point Eight, reality is dual and conflictual. Each of these delusions is an expression of the loss of the unity of goodness.
the specific difficulty of Point Nine: feeling a sense of inferiority, accompanied by shame about yourself, and a sense that you are not lovable. This is the basic difficulty; if you really believe that you are lovable, the specific difficulties of the other points will not appear
Point One is feeling there is something wrong with you; Point Two is feeling castrated and humiliated; Point Three is feeling helpless; Point Four is feeling abandoned by or disconnected from reality; Point Five is feeling painful isolation; Point Six is feeling fearful insecurity; Point Seven is feeling lost and not knowing what to do; Point Eight is feeling guilt and badness.
Similarly, your specific reaction cannot be worked through fully until you resolve the Point Nine reaction, which is that of falling asleep. This reaction is the basis of all of the nine reactions. Remember, the specific reactions are expressions of distrust. The basic expression of distrust is falling asleep, not being present to your experience.
Basically, the distrust makes the soul not want to be awake to how reality is. When you do not trust reality, you don’t want to see it, you don’t want to look it in the face. You don’t want to see things as they are. You want to see things in a way that will make you feel safe. You want to protect yourself from the dangers and the pains and the various difficulties because you don’t trust that reality can take care of you. You don’t trust that there is love. So unconsciousness and falling asleep is the primary foundation of all the reactions. The condition of sleep, of unconsciousness, of lack of awakening, is pervasive in all egos. It is basic to ego. Ego is an expression of a lack of direct awareness of what is. It is the expression of not seeing things as they are.
The view of objective reality of the Holy Ideas makes it possible for the soul to correct the distortions of perception that dominate the egoic view of the self and the world, thus clarifying the soul’s awareness, or “polishing the mirror” of the soul. The clear awareness of the human soul, then, perceives the objective view of the patterns of creation with an understanding of the place of the human being in this creation. This understanding awakens the soul to its own unfolding as the expression of Being, and its own participation in the greater pattern of unfolding whose nature is wholeness, dynamism, intelligence, and openness
