The Enneagram and Immanence/Transcendence

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A blog-0-sphere friend and spiritual mentor recently introduced me to the enneagram, a personality-type inventory dating back to the 4^th century. Though it is initially off-putting, appearing to resemble some Face-Book contrivance in which you “fit” into some conceptual category, it is a very sophisticated and rich spiritual tool.

As a result of taking a simple test, I have learned that I am “6” with a “5” wing which reveals a lot of things about how this little whirly-gig in my head operates. For example, I am an “observer” in life, standing aloof and detached, making observations about life, including even myself. I think Emily Dickinson was one of these as evidenced in a line of her poetry when she noted, “Life is over there, on a shelf.” Emily was noting her perspective that life was, in a sense, an object on a shelf and she was studying that object as if it was a specimen in a test tube or on a laboratory table.

There is certainly a place in our world for people like this though there is always the risk of carrying the detachment to an extreme with pathological results. But the other extreme…failure to go “meta-cognitive” on life…is also pathological.

Approaching this matter as a clinician, the issue is integration of the two extremes…head and heart, thought and feeling. We are thinking beings and feeling beings but if either function becomes out of balance, problems result. And to further complicate things, when one is on either extreme the recognition that one is on the extreme is very difficult to apprehend without intervention from “out there.” By that I have reference to what Carl Jung called “einfall” (an “intrusion” perceived as from “out there”) and that W. H. Auden had in mind when he wrote, “O blessed be bleak exposure on whose sword we are pricked into coming alive.”

Religious and Spiritual Addiction

The Adventure of Life

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“Life is an adventure,” so they say. It is a commonplace that is almost banal, ranking right up there with “Today is the first day of the rest of your life.” But, I find it really is an adventure which takes place when one begins to venture beyond the narrow confines of the way one was taught to see…and feel…the world. But the real challenge lies in the very difficult task of becoming aware of this narrow prism through which one views the world, how the tyranny of assumptions shapes our fundamental perceptions of the world. And to ask one to see these premises that shapes this world view is like asking a fish to see water.

It must be noted by those of us who swim in the aether of cerebral thought that most people in the world cannot ever make this meta-cognitive leap; and for them to do so would be catastrophic for human culture. The day-to-day grind of reality depends on people who “mindlessly” go through the motions of their daily life without questioning the “basic assumptions” that I am putting on the table here. And furthermore, for me to use the term “mindless” here merits caution as I do have a contempt gene which is too often near the surface!

We are tribal creatures and the tribal rituals are easily analyzed by people like myself who have lived their whole life “off the grid” in some fashion. (I think one term for people like me is “pointy-headed pseudo-intellectuals” or perhaps more accurately “alienated.”) But we are a tribe, a global tribe composed of smaller tribes who must somehow find a way to live together with a modicum of harmony. But each tribe has an innate tendency to not see beyond the safe confines of its basic assumptions and each member of that tribe learns to drink the same “kool-aid.” That is what makes it a tribe.

But the adventure of life starts when we realize that we have “drank the kool-aid” in some fashion and are shaped by basic assumptions given to us by our culture. Then we can begin to find a bit of freedom and can begin to play with reality. Yes, we can even begin to “play with our self” (wink, wink) and with the beautiful human and natural world that we find ourselves in, a beautiful “Garden of Eden” in some sense.

However, it is scary! We are hard-wired to live within those “safe confines” and to suddenly realize we are “off the reservation” can easily be a Pyrrhic victory. To take a quantum leap here, it will ultimately bring us to the Shakespearean issue of “to be, or not to be” and can even bring one to the point of suicide. For it is gut-wrenchingly painful to realize that one does not belong to the tribe, to be deprived of that “fig-leaf,” and to stand there on that heath like King Lear, pelted by that pitiless storm, naked as a jay-bird.

This is where faith comes in for me. But the temptation here is to take one’s tribal faith, make a fanatical investment or re-investment in it, and hold on “come hell or high water.” And all fanaticism (i.e., “addiction) has its roots with this deep-seated existential loneliness. The tribal religion that my culture offered me was the Judeo-Christian tradition and I have certainly allowed it to be in my life the “opiate” that Karl Marx described. But opiate does not work for me anymore…or at least that one does not! (I do drink too much!) I find that my “tribal religion” offers symbols, stories, traditions that are very valuable as I stand here on this heath with King Lear and others and find that there is hope and even purpose. This “adventure” I am discovering now beyond those aforementioned “confines” involves death, for pushing limits always involves a death-wish of some sort but the Christian tradition teaches that death and live are intertwined and that to “die” is to “live.” To put it succinctly, there is no “life” without “death.” Oh yes, there is existence but there is no experience of human-ness, being a live body and soul for this brief moment we have in this time-space continuum. This is what Jesus meant when he told his disciples who wanted to delay going with him for to help with a burial party, “Let the dead bury the dead.”

However, here is an important point that I’ve already touched on. It is easy to interpret that quip from Jesus to mean that everyone else in the world who did not follow him was “dead” and therefore would “burn in hell one day.” That is how I was taught! But I don’t think so. Jesus was playing with words, telling his disciples that they needed to follow him and let the burial party take care of its business, that it did not need them. Jesus was saying that the rest of the world was okay and “dead” was only a metaphor to say they were not amenable to his teachings, that their role in life was to see things differently and to live different lives within “safe confines.” Jesus realized that the “adventure” I’ve described here was not for everybody but that their life also was “ok”.

Thoughts About Robin Williams, Death, and Life

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What made Robin Williams so funny was that he could play with reality. He could step into an insane perspective on the world and speak from that skewed angle on the world to poke fun at the day-to-day grind of reality that we call “normal.”

But there is a price tag for playing with reality like that. To do so, one must live beyond the safe confines of “normal” and expose oneself to all the perils that “normal” was created to keep at bay in the first place. And one of these perils is to deal with the famous observation made by Hamlet,“To be, or not to be. That is the question.”

This tragic death gives me pause for I know that I too live beyond the safe confines of “normal.” That has always been the case; but only in recent years have I found the courage to give up the desperate desire to convince others that I “think” correctly. I don’t. Never have. And never will. And I am exposed to the aforementioned perils but none of them appears to be the temptation to take my own life….or the life of anyone else! And perhaps that will be a demon I will have to face at some point but I don’t think so. I guess I have accepted death already as an intrinsic part of life and so, in some fashion, believe that I’m dead already. And once one is “dead already” there is no need to worry about death but to merely focus on life and what it presents to you in the present moment.

I think it is Ken Wilbur who has made this very point, that life and death and inextricably interwoven. And each day of our life we are often called to death, to “climb the rugged cross of the moment and let our illusions die.” (W. H. Auden) Each day of our life there are moments when we can opt to not stubbornly obey the dictates of our ego and in that moment make room for another person and/or to be “present” in the physical world. And Wilbur’s teachings presents that moment as a paradigm of death, a discipline that can prepare us for the Big Death that comes to all.

I share in our collective sadness over this tragic death. I deeply admire men and women who can think…and live…outside of the box like Williams did. They are gifts to humankind. Their ability to share a “skewed” view of the world can give us “self” awareness for a moment, a brief glimpse into our precarious grasp on our world, a grasp that we think of as our personal “reality.”

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“True Believers” and Hell

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If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro’ narrow chinks of his cavern. (William Blake, “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell”) I recently offered this quote on my Facebook page and received this response from a friend of mine, “If the doors of perception were cleansed you would have something but it would not be a human being.”

When I read this response, a light bulb immediately lit up in my heart as I realized how astute this observation was. For this “Infinite” that Blake visited from time to time…perhaps too often…is a place to merely “visit” and not a place to live. But too often when people seek this “Infinite” and either arrive there, or get close enough to it to think they have, they become so intoxicated with their “success” and delighted with the “empty world of self-relatedness” (Paul Tillich) they have found that they refuse to leave. Those who refuse to leave and return to reality…this hum-drum world which is the only world we have…cease to be human and become some kind of “other-worldly” freak. One version of this…with which I am most familiar…is the typical Christian who is so “holy” that you wanta say, “Barf me with a spoon.” These are the “true believers” that Shakespeare had in mind with this description of many believers, “With devotions visage and pious action they sugar o’er the devil himself.”

W. H. Auden brilliantly described the misfortune of one who visits this “well of life” and refuses to leave, warning that:

…if he stop an instant there,

The sky grows crimson with a curse,

The flowers change colour for the worse,

He hears behind his back the wicket

Padlock itself, from the dark thicket

The chuckle with no healthy cause,

And, helpless, sees the crooked claws

Emerging into view and groping

For handholds on the low round coping,

As Horror clambers from the well:

For he has sprung the trap of hell.

The “Gaze” Captures and Can Kill.

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The eye is powerful for it captures reality for us and the image it creates then becomes our “reality.” But the “reality” thus captured is only a snapshot and is not actually “reality.” Here is a short video clip which vividly illustrates the illusory nature of what our eyes capture. ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xr6VawX2nr4)

Now the impact of this approach is not that the “snap shots” that we live by, which compose our reality, are unimportant. We can’t live and function without this composite snapshot we carry with us each day, a template through which we see the world. But this insight does help us to see that from time to time we can back off a bit with what we “think” we see and be less certain about making pronouncements about it. In other words, we can be a little more humble.

Technically, a further qualification is in order. The “eye” actually does nothing other than take the snap shot. It is the “heart” which takes this snap shot and interprets it and it is the heart which then concretizes that image and takes it for granted…or if I might lapse poetic a moment…”for granite.” Our interpretation of reality becomes ironclad and we stop seeing…and feeling…the nuances of life. This is tantamount to saying that we become “dead.”

And here are a couple of thoughtful observations about the power of vision:

And I have known the eyes already, known them all—	55
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?	60
And how should I presume? (“The Love Song of J. Alfred Proofrock” by T. S. Eliot) And then Luce Irigaray noted:

.more than other senses, the eye objectifies and masters. it sets at a distance, maintains the distance. in our culture, the predominance of the look over smell, taste, touch, hearing, has brought about an improverishment of bodily relations…the moment domin ates the look dominates, the body loses its materiality. (Marine Lover: Of Friedrich Nietzsche)

But Faith Must be “Nuts”!

“This Spirituality Stuff is Nuts!

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“This stuff is nuts!” I would periodically make this observation with my Sunday School class when I returned to the Episcopalian church in the spring of 2011, doing so with feigned frustration Now, I did so only after they knew me well enough to know that I was not being serious, but was only reflecting the cognitive dissonance between the mature approach to spirituality the class afforded me and the very linear, legalistic spiritual mind-set that still lay in the depths of my heart.

This was not an ordinary Christian church as it permitted a Sunday School class of this sort, one which emphasized a non-dual approach to Holy Writ and the Christian tradition. Each week we would meditate for 20-30 minutes and then discuss the book we were reading at the time, each book reflecting the non-dual approach to reality/Reality. And our discussion was personal, not being a mere regurgitation of the “party-line” that the church or the Christian tradition suggested. This discussion was an open, honest exploration of spiritual teachings and the meaning they had in our day-to-day life. But, with this “non-dual” emphasis we usually waded deeply into the aether, into the nebulous dimensions of spiritual life, “wrestling with words and meanings” (T. S. Eliot) and finding that our faith in God, in the human enterprise, and with each others deepened in the process.

And, from time to time I would abruptly interject our discussion with, “This is nuts” and then share how dissonant our discussion was with my past but also how absurd it would be with most people in our community, not to mention the world. For our world is very linear and depends on our ability to mute the “non-dual” dimension of our heart and mind in our day-to-day functioning and fulfill our responsibilities in our personal and professional lives. And the people in this class were highly functional, highly educated and accomplished people who were very adept in making their way in the linear world. But their presence in this class, and their discussion of the subject matter in the class, revealed their awareness of another dimension of life that was very important to them and actually gave meaning to their day-to-day life.

This experience taught me that it is possible to live in two different worlds at once, the “common-sense” world that people take to be real as well as the spiritual world that I was facetiously describing as “nuts.” For, when we venture into the realm of the spirit, we are led beyond the pale in a certain sense, into a realm where words cannot capture the matter we purport to discuss. And this does not mean that these words are unimportant. They are. But they are a means to an end, not an end in themselves; or as the Buddhists teach, “The finger pointing to the moon is not the moon.”

Bigotry, Racism, & Extremism

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“True Believers” are always scary because they are idealogues, believing in ideas over reality. Sure, all humans have ideas and respect them as they allow us to communicate and to get things done in a group. But idealogues do not see ideas as merely a means to an end; they worship their ideas, seeing them as an end in themselves. Now they do have an hierarchy of values on this matter, having designated some ideas as “really important” and then assigned designations to them such as “god” or “truth” or “right” or as I like to sum it up, “truth, justice, and the American way.” These really big ideas are so important they will fight for them and in extremes they will kill for them and will often proudly announce they are willing to die for them.

Now I too believe in “god” and “truth” and “right” and value the American way of life. But since I’m not an ideologue…being in recovery from that malady…I see those words as being sounds we utter to refer to phenomena that lie beyond the grasp of words. “God”, for example, is a label we use to refer to that which is the Ungraspable, that dimension of life which we cannot wrap our head around but some of us feel very strongly is present…or Present…in this Mystery that we are encompassed by.

But my thought about God, as well as the rest of these thoughts and the whole of this blog posting, will be described as “straight from the pits of hell” by all idealogues as they cannot, or will not, handle ambiguity. They are horrified with the notion that life is dynamic, that there is a flow or fluidity to life as the notion threatens their illusion that they are in total control of their world. To understand this approach to life, to understand with the mind and with the heart, would require faith and there is no room in their heart for faith. Of course, they proudly announce that they have faith and they know that they that they do have faith because they know that they do. Our world has an object lesson in this blight on human consciousness with the Taliban, and now with Isis, and also the extreme right-wing of the American Republican party.

Yesterday Salon.com offered extensive excerpts from a recent book that addresses this issue with its analysis of racism and bigotry. The book is, “The Bigot: Why Prejudice Persists“ by Stephen Eric Bronner. The Salon.com excerpt is entitled, “This is your brain on racism: Inside the mind of modern bigotry” and here is the link:

http://www.salon.com/2014/07/27/this_is_your_brain_on_racism_inside_the_mind_of_modern_bigotry/

Here are some highlights in the Salon.com excerpt that I want to share:

The bigot has always felt queasy about transforming the visible, the ineffable into the discursive, and the unknown into the known. Observation and evidence, hypothesis and inference, confirmation and validation are thus selectively employed by him to justify what Cornel West has termed “the discursive exclusion” of those who are different and what they have to offer.

(The bigot) is always primarily concerned with proving what he thinks he already knows. He insists that the answers to the problems of life have been given and he resents everything that challenges inherited wisdom, parochial prejudices, and what he considers the natural order of things.

Other than his prejudices, he has no core beliefs. The bigot likes it when his interests are being served, when people of color are exploited, but he dislikes it when he feels disadvantaged.

Competition is good when it works for him. When it doesn’t, the bigot will insist that his competitors are cheating—and that they cheat because it is a trait of their ethnicity, nationality, or race.”

To summarize, the bigot is guilty of what Sartre called “bad faith.” “Bad faith” is a bogus faith in that it goes under the name “faith” but if subjected to scrutiny, is only egotism run amok, an ersatz spirituality which the Apostle Paul would have described as a, “work of the flesh.” But the bigot will not allow any questioning of his motives and in a sense has no capacity to do so for his heart has long sense been darkened by Darkness so that he sees only darkness and, of course, calls it Light. And, to employ the same circular reason offered earlier, it is then “Light” because he knows that it is “Light” whereas if he would allow that “Spirit of God” that he often purports to worship to visit his heart, he would see that he only at best sees faint glimmers of Light and can at best see “only through a glass darkly.” That experience would then allow him to tolerate more the possibility that people different than him have intrinsic dignity and deserve respect, that all of us have only a finite perspective.

To quote Goethe once again, “They call it reason, using Light celestial, just to outdo the beasts in being bestial.”

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