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Transcript

The Front Door Was Never Locked · Echoes & Edges

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: There's a memory I have from when I was a
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: very little girl. We lived in a place where there
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: was a little stream that ran through our backyard. It
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: was a tiny backyard. It was not like a big
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: piece of property or anything. But it was so fun.
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: And I remember lightning bugs. And I remember catching them.
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: And I remember putting them in a jar. And using
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  Speaker 1: them to light up a tent one night when my
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  Speaker 1: brother and I were camping in the backyard of our house.
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: And I remember that those fireflies were magical. Not metaphorically magical.
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  Speaker 1: Like I wasn't standing there at five years old thinking, wow,
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  Speaker 1: this is wondrous or transcendent. Or I wasn't pondering the
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  Speaker 1: meaning of beauty. They were just magical. And that little
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  Speaker 1: stream in our backyard was a grand adventure. I didn't
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  Speaker 1: need it to be anything other than what it was.
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  Speaker 1: I wasn't comparing it to some better stream somewhere else.
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  Speaker 1: I wasn't standing outside my life evaluating it. I was
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  Speaker 1: in it. I was delighted. I was curious. I was
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  Speaker 1: connected to something bigger than myself without needing to understand
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  Speaker 1: what that meant. And I think when I look back
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  Speaker 1: now that I experienced myself that way too. I wasn't
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  Speaker 1: trying to become significant. I wasn't trying to prove that
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  Speaker 1: I mattered. I wasn't trying to understand myself. I was
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: just there. And somewhere along the way, that changed for me.
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  Speaker 1: Not all at once, and not because there was one
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: terrible moment when everything fell apart. There were moments. There
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: were hurts. There were heartaches. There were things that happened
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: that shouldn't have happened, and things I needed that didn't happen.
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  Speaker 1: There was also tremendous love. Both are true. And somewhere
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: inside all of that, I began organizing my life around
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: something I couldn't have possibly put into words at the time.
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: Something is missing. Something is missing in the world. Something
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: is missing here. And eventually, something is missing in me.
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: I think that may be one of the deepest reasons
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: I eventually found my way to the Enneagram. I wanted
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  Speaker 1: to understand what was missing, or maybe I should say
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: it more simply, I wanted to feel whole again. Unbeknownst
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: to my conscious mind, I was after the magic of
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  Speaker 1: the lightning bugs all of those years. I've been working
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: with the Enneagram for about nine years, and for most
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: of those nine years, I've had my type wrong, or
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: at least I questioned and couldn't be sure. I've thought
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  Speaker 1: I was several different types. I've been professionally typed. I've
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: studied with some extraordinary Enneagram teachers. I've read and studied
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: and attended intensives and listened to panels and had conversations
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: and worked with coaches. And I kept looking. For a
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: long time, that's embarrassed me. How could somebody like me,
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  Speaker 1: who truly is intuitive, Someone who makes a living helping
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  Speaker 1: other people understand their stories, not be able to figure
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: out her own Enneagram number. But that question looks very
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: different to me now. Because I don't think I was
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  Speaker 1: actually looking for a number. I think I was looking
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  Speaker 1: for myself. At best, I was simply trying to see myself.
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: But underneath even that was another search. I was trying
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  Speaker 1: to make sense of what felt deeply missing within me.
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  Speaker 1: I thought there was some lost understanding, some piece of information,
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  Speaker 1: some explanation. And if I could just find the thing,
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  Speaker 1: the right number, the right framework, the right interpretation, the
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: right understanding of my story, then maybe everything would finally
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  Speaker 1: click into place. Maybe I would feel whole again. And
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  Speaker 1: there's something almost painfully beautiful to me now about realizing
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  Speaker 1: that even the way I searched for my Enneagram type
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  Speaker 1: was an expression of my Enneagram pattern. I was using
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  Speaker 1: the pattern I couldn't see to find the pattern I
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  Speaker 1: couldn't see. I was looking for what I was missing.
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  Speaker 1: Of course I was. I'm a four. And four attention
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  Speaker 1: is exquisitely attuned to what is missing. But here's what
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  Speaker 1: I've begun to understand. The Enneagram didn't eventually give me
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  Speaker 1: the missing piece. It helped me discover that the piece
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  Speaker 1: wasn't even missing after all. So before we go any farther,
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: let me tell you what I mean when I use
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  Speaker 1: the word Enneagram. Because we've done some strange things with
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  Speaker 1: this tool. We've made it a personality test. We've made
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  Speaker 1: it a meme. We've made it a way to explain
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  Speaker 1: why your husband doesn't put his socks in the hamper.
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  Speaker 1: We've made little lists about which type is most likely
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  Speaker 1: to do whatever. Type 8s are bossy. Type 9s are easygoing.
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  Speaker 1: Type 2s are helpful. Type 4s are dramatic. Type 7s
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  Speaker 1: are fun. and on and on. Some of that can
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: be super entertaining, and I love a good laugh, like
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  Speaker 1: I'm sure you do. Some of it may even contain
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  Speaker 1: a little truth, but that's not the Enneagram I'm interested in.
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: I'm interested in what happens underneath behavior. I'm interested in attention, interpretation, motivation.
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  Speaker 1: I'm interested in the almost instantaneous process happening inside us
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  Speaker 1: all day long. What am I noticing? What meaning am
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  Speaker 1: I assigning to what I'm noticing? And what do I
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  Speaker 1: do next because of the meaning I've assigned to it?
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  Speaker 1: That's a very different conversation from what type behaves like
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  Speaker 1: me because behavior can be produced by all kinds of things. Temperament, culture, family,
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  Speaker 1: gender expectations, religion, trauma, the profession we're in, neurodivergence, neurobiology.
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  Speaker 1: the particular experience of life we're in. And survival adaptations
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  Speaker 1: can especially complicate the picture. I know that firsthand. I
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  Speaker 1: am extraordinarily productive. I can achieve. I can perform. I
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  Speaker 1: can push through. I can look remarkably competent while doing it.
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  Speaker 1: Those behaviors can look like several different Enneagram types from
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  Speaker 1: the outside, but behavior isn't the map. The more interesting
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: question is why? Why am I pushing? What am I
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  Speaker 1: trying to secure? What am I afraid will happen if
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: I stop? What does my attention locate before I consciously
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  Speaker 1: decided what to look for? And what am I not
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  Speaker 1: seeing because my attention is somewhere else? That's where the
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  Speaker 1: Enneagram gets interesting to me because the Enneagram isn't a
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  Speaker 1: box that tells us who we are. It's a tool
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  Speaker 1: to help us notice how we've learned to organize reality
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  Speaker 1: and gives us a greater freedom to choose how we
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  Speaker 1: want to participate in it. There are three ideas I
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: want to give you that we're going to come back
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: to throughout the series. The first is what Enneagram tradition
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  Speaker 1: calls the holy idea. Then there's the wound, and then
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  Speaker 1: there's the strategy. When I talk about the holy idea,
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  Speaker 1: I'm talking about something close to to essence, the unencumbered person.
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  Speaker 1: Not a person without personality, not some personality-less spiritual soup
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  Speaker 1: where our uniqueness disappears. I don't believe that. I believe
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  Speaker 1: we come into this world with design, with temperament, with bodies,
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  Speaker 1: with particular capacities, with particular ways of experiencing beauty and
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: relationship and creation. But there is something about a very
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: young child that can give us a glimpse of what
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: I mean. Think about the laughter of a baby. There
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  Speaker 1: is something almost arresting about it. A baby isn't laughing impressively.
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  Speaker 1: They're not curating joy. They're not checking to see whether
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  Speaker 1: their laugh is appropriate. They're not wondering whether somebody else's
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  Speaker 1: laugh is better. They're just laughing or mad. When hunger comes,
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  Speaker 1: they're full of smiles when they can start smiling when
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: delight comes. When need comes, it's unremarkably edited. Then life happens.
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  Speaker 1: Parents fail their children. I failed my children. I continue
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  Speaker 1: to fail my children. And I am also a good
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  Speaker 1: enough mother. Both are true. true. Our siblings hurt us.
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  Speaker 1: Teachers misunderstand us. Religious communities fail us. Our bodies experience things.
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  Speaker 1: We encounter losses. Sometimes there is truly profound trauma. Sometimes
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: the experiences look quite ordinary from the outside and land
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  Speaker 1: profoundly inside a particular child. The point isn't blame. Blame
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: is a product of shame. The point is telling the
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  Speaker 1: truth about our stories. This happened. It affected me this way.
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  Speaker 1: And here's how I adapted. That's the wound. And then
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  Speaker 1: comes the strategy. The strategy is brilliant. I really mean brilliant.
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  Speaker 1: Parts of us begin over-functioning, other parts of us under-function.
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  Speaker 1: Our attention starts scanning for particular information. We learn ways
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  Speaker 1: of getting love or ways of staying safe, ways of
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  Speaker 1: mattering and maintaining connection. We learn how to prevent something
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  Speaker 1: painful from happening again. And eventually, Because the strategy works
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  Speaker 1: well enough often enough, we begin mistaking the strategy for identity.
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  Speaker 1: There's a family story about me that my mom has
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  Speaker 1: always told with a kind of pride. I slept through
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  Speaker 1: the night when I was nine days old and I
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  Speaker 1: woke up with a dry diaper. Later, my family used
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  Speaker 1: to joke that I had a huge holding tank, which
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  Speaker 1: was code for bladder. I could hold it forever. And
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  Speaker 1: there's another story for when I was about two years old.
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  Speaker 1: My dad was driving with me from California toward Kansas,
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  Speaker 1: and we were in the car, just the two of us,
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  Speaker 1: for hours. Apparently, I didn't need to stop to go
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  Speaker 1: to the bathroom. I was two. And for years, that
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  Speaker 1: story was essentially, look how easy she was. Look how capable.
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  Speaker 1: Look at that holding tank. Now I hear that story differently.
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  Speaker 1: I hear there was a two-year-old girl with a bladder.
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  Speaker 1: That's it. She had a body. She had needs. And
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  Speaker 1: whatever the exact circumstances were that day, she somehow learned
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  Speaker 1: something she would become remarkably good at. Hold it. I
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  Speaker 1: don't mean that as a medical explanation for everything that
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  Speaker 1: happened to my body later. I'm telling you how I
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  Speaker 1: read the story now because hold it became much larger
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  Speaker 1: than my bladder. Hold the pain. Hold the emotion. Hold
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  Speaker 1: the room. Hold the family. And for God's sake, hold
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  Speaker 1: yourself together. Don't need too much. Push through. Figure it out.
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  Speaker 1: And ideally, look reasonably good while you're doing it. That
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  Speaker 1: became one of my great adaptations, tenacity. And tenacity is
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  Speaker 1: not bad. It has gotten me through extraordinary things. But eventually,
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  Speaker 1: a capacity becomes a prison when we lose the ability
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  Speaker 1: not to use it. That's the difference I'm interested in.
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  Speaker 1: Freedom isn't losing my holding tank or my tenacity. Freedom
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  Speaker 1: is being able to say, I could push through this,
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  Speaker 1: and either I'm going to or I'm not going to,
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  Speaker 1: depending upon what my body needs. I'm listening. That's freedom.
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  Speaker 1: I have another story from third grade. First and second
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  Speaker 1: grade were fantastic. I was the teacher's pet and I
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  Speaker 1: knew it. Everybody knew it. And I didn't really suffer
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  Speaker 1: for it that I recall. I did well in school.
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  Speaker 1: Reading and writing came easily to me. I loved my friends.
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  Speaker 1: I felt connected. And then came third grade and fractions.
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  Speaker 1: I could not make sense of fractions. I also had
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  Speaker 1: a new teacher. My first and second grade teacher had
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  Speaker 1: delighted in me. My new teacher was a very fair-minded woman.
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  Speaker 1: Nobody was really her favorite. But if somebody was, it
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  Speaker 1: wasn't me. And my third grade mind put those things together.
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  Speaker 1: I couldn't do fractions and I wasn't special anymore. I
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  Speaker 1: had lost my standing. Now, I don't think my teacher
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  Speaker 1: sat down and deliberately communicated that to me. That's not
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  Speaker 1: the point. The point is what happened inside me. What
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  Speaker 1: did I notice? I noticed a loss of delight. What
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  Speaker 1: meaning did I assign to it? I'm no longer significant.
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  Speaker 1: Something is wrong with me. Something is deficient in me.
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  Speaker 1: And what did I do next? Oh my goodness, I
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: worked hard. By middle school, a 90 could feel like failure.
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  Speaker 1: I remember getting my first C in math and lying
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  Speaker 1: on my mom's bed sobbing on the phone to her
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  Speaker 1: because I believed I had failed. My mom was kind.
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  Speaker 1: She reassured me. She told me I wasn't a failure.
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  Speaker 1: And she meant it. I knew it. But reassurance could
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  Speaker 1: not reach the place that had already begun organizing around
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  Speaker 1: the wound. So I did what I knew how to do.
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  Speaker 1: I tried harder. Envy doesn't really look like envy for me.
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  Speaker 1: This is one of the reasons it took me so
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  Speaker 1: long to identify myself as a 4. I didn't identify
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  Speaker 1: with envy. In fact, I pushed hard against that word.
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  Speaker 1: I wasn't sitting around thinking, I want what she has.
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  Speaker 1: I wasn't treating people badly because I envied them. Often,
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: in fact, I befriended them. What I can see now
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: is that envy became energy. Someone was naturally brilliant in
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  Speaker 1: math and science. get smarter. Someone had beautiful clothes, find
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  Speaker 1: beautiful clothes. Someone lost weight, lose weight. Someone possessed confidence
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: or capability or significance that touched that wound in me.
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  Speaker 1: I didn't necessarily consciously think anything at all. I moved.
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  Speaker 1: I took the longing and I turned it into action.
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  Speaker 1: That distinction has become enormously important to me. Because we
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: often teach the Enneagram by describing what a passion or
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: fixation looks like from the outside. But what if the
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  Speaker 1: person has spent a lifetime adapting that passion into socially
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: rewarded behavior? What if envy looks like achievement? What if
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: fear looks like competence? What if anger looks like kindness?
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: What if sloth looks like extraordinary productivity on everyone else's behalf?
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: then we're going to miss each other and we're going
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: to miss ourselves. That's why this has to become a
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: patterns conversation rather than a behavior conversation. What attention does.
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: Here's one of the simplest examples from my marriage. My
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: husband can clean the entire kitchen. He can wash everything,
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: put things away, load the dishwasher, sweep, do all kinds
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: of work. and leave the counter unwiped. Yes, I said it.
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  Speaker 1: Guess what I see? The counter. Immediately. I don't have
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: to try to see it. My attention locates what is missing.
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  Speaker 1: And for years, that missing thing could become the whole picture.
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: The unwiped counter could obscure an entire clean kitchen. Now
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: here's where I want to be careful. Growth for me
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: does not mean pretending the counter is wiped. It isn't.
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  Speaker 1: I still see it. I always will. And honestly, I
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: will still want the counter wiped. The Enneagram isn't asking
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: me to gaslight myself and to be leaving. I don't
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: notice what I notice. It isn't teaching me that because
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: I'm a four, my perception is inherently unreliable. The question
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: is so different from that. Does what I'm noticing constitute
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: the whole truth? That's different. Can I see the unwiped
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: counter and the clean kitchen? Can I experience longing without
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: allowing longing to collapse into deficiency? Can something be missing
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: without everything becoming deficient? That's where gratitude has become enormously
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: important to me. Not gratitude as a spiritual bypass. Pretending
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: everything is fine. It's not like, You shouldn't want anything
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: because look how blessed you are. No, no, no. No,
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: not that. I have a phrase I've said to myself
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: for years. It's enough now. You've done enough. You are enough.
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: You have enough. It is enough. I didn't even know
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: I was a four when that phrase came online. And
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: now I understand what I was doing. I was teaching
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  Speaker 1: my attention to widen. The counter is real, and so
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: is the kitchen. The longing is real, and so is
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: the abundance. Healing doesn't necessarily make us want less. It
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: makes us safer with the wanting. And I think desire
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: becomes less exploitative when it isn't carrying the burden of identity.
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: Intuition as an Assignment Another part of my story is intuition.
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: I read what isn't spoken very quickly, sometimes almost instantaneously.
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: I experience people three-dimensionally. I hear what they're saying, but
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: I'm also tracking emotional information underneath the words. For a
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: long time, I thought there was something almost magical about that.
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: And in my family, there were ways that that capacity
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: became useful. I was highly attuned to the emotional relationship
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: between my parents. As a little girl, I could feel dysregulation.
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: I could feel when something wasn't being said. I could
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: feel the absence of delight. And because I was a child,
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: I didn't have adult context for any of it. So
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: I did what children do. I made meaning. Dad is
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: hurting mom. Mom needs something. Dad needs something. Something is wrong.
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: The unspoken needs to be spoken, and somehow I need
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: to help right this ship. I became, in my own language,
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: an emotional grounding rod. I would pull the emotional content
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: of the room into myself and try to regulate it.
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  Speaker 1: My intuition stopped simply being a capacity. It became an assignment.
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: And that distinction has changed my life, because today I
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: still notice all the time, I can meet somebody and
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: immediately pick up on an unspoken thread. But now I
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: can say, interesting, there's something there. And then, nothing.
• 21:23
  Speaker 2: Nothing.
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: I don't have to do anything with it. Just because
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: I perceive something doesn't make it mine. And even if
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: my perception is accurate, I don't necessarily have the context.
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: I may have a sliver. I don't have the person's
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: whole three-dimensional life. With clients where I have been invited
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: into that work, I can become curious. I can ask questions.
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: I can offer something gently. I can use my intuition
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: to help them see their own wisdom. And that's delightful.
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: My intuition is so much more playful now that it
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: isn't responsible for keeping the world turning. I sometimes call
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: what I do emotional math. Fractions, not my finest work.
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: Emotional fractions, those I can do. but it's still just math.
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: It's a capacity, a data point. It's not magic. It
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: doesn't make me any more human than anyone else, and
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: it doesn't make me responsible for anyone else's interior world.
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: I'm just a person. That may be one of the
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: most healing sentences I have ever learned to say. I'm
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: just a person. Years ago, I had a dream. I'm
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: standing in a field. It's something like a field of
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: ripe wheat, the kind of landscape that is deeply familiar
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: to me from growing up between Kansas, Nebraska, and Colorado.
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: And there's an observer me in the dream who can
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: see the back of me standing there. Everything is black
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: and white. Off to my left is a house. It's
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: far away, and the house is destroyed. The windows are
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: blown out. The front door is blown off. The roof
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: has caved in. It's completely dark. And there's this little
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: devil-like creature standing in front of the doorway. It makes
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: me afraid to go in. Far off, beyond the house,
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: is my husband. He's motioning for me to get into
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: the house, but I can't move. And then off to
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  Speaker 1: my right is our dog, Leah, a blue healer. And
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: she is running pell-mell toward me so fast that all
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: four of her paws are off the ground, straight toward me.
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: That's the dream. For a long time, I didn't know
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: what to do with it. The detail that initially caught
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: my attention was the front door. There wasn't one. And
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: years later, as I began understanding the dream as an
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: image of my interior life, I began to have language
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: for something other people had already tried to tell me.
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: I was living outside my own house, outside my own body,
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: outside myself. I could enter everybody else's emotional house. I
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: could read the room. I could anticipate. I could help.
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: I could endure. I could even make myself poised and
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: compliant and capable. But I didn't know how to reside
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: inside myself. And the irony is the house was mine
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: the entire time. That strategy eventually stops working, thank goodness.
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: There was a relationship in my life that became extraordinarily difficult.
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: I don't need to tell all of that story publicly.
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: Some stories remain ours alone. But what matters here is
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: that the role I had played for much of my
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: life stopped working. Reading, anticipating, supplying, helping, regulating, giving, trying harder,
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: trying to make peace, trying to understand, trying to be understood.
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: None of it could solve what was happening. And the
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: relationship became increasingly toxic. There came a point when I
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: was praying because I genuinely didn't know what to do.
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: I was asking God to just rescue me, pluck me
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: out of this and rescue me. And in that prayer,
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: I heard him say, this is going to be the
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: greatest gift of your life. I could not understand it
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: at that moment. I want to be very clear about
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: what I mean now when I say that a decade
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: or so later. I believe it was true. I don't
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: mean the suffering was good. I don't mean I'm glad
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: it happened. I don't mean harm becomes holy because eventually
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: we make meaning from it. That's actually spiritual bypassing. What
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: I mean was this. I wasn't abandoned to it. That
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: experience became a pivot point in my life. The very
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: strategy that had helped me survive for so long had
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: taken me as far as it could take me. And
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: what I needed wasn't to get better at the strategy.
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: I needed to come inside my own house. I needed
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: an internal front door. I needed boundaries that existed inside
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: me rather than rules I imposed outside myself. I needed
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: to discover I can trust myself. I can leave something unresolved.
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: I can even be misunderstood and disappoint someone. Someone can
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: be disappointed in me without either one of us disappearing.
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: I can perceive something without fixing it, and I can
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: love somebody without supplying what is missing in them. I
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: can need help. I can say no. I can be
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: a person. I can go to the bathroom when I
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: need to. And somehow that became the gift, not what happened.
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: What became possible afterward. And what I found inside myself
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: is the gift. Living inside my own house now looks
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: surprisingly ordinary and mundane. That's one of my favorite things
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: about it. When my body says no, I have to listen.
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: When I'm overstimulated, I take a break. I drink water.
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: I eat.
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: I go to the bathroom, even if it makes me late.
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: I tell people I need something. If I don't have
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: another hour to give, I don't give it. If I
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: don't want physical contact, I say no. If I need
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: my husband to come toward me, I ask him. Sometimes
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: I say, I don't understand. I need help. I can't
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: carry all of this. I need something from you. There
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: is tremendous humility in having needs. Not humiliation like I feared,
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: but humility. These are very different things. Humility says, of
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: course I have limitations. I am a human. I have
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: the edges of my endurance. Of course I'm going to
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: misunderstand people. Of course my intuition will sometimes be wrong.
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: And of course, I will hurt people even when my
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: intentions are good. Of course, I won't be able to
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: repair every relationship. But this isn't evidence of deficiency. It's
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: evidence of humanity. And this matters because self-trust can become
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: another hiding place if we're not careful. The Enneagram isn't
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: here to give me a sophisticated vocabulary for refusing accountability.
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: I have boundaries cannot simply mean I don't want to
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: stay in this uncomfortable conversation. That's your stuff cannot mean
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: nothing I ever do belongs to me. Sometimes my intuition
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: is wrong. Sometimes I project deficiency onto someone else. Sometimes
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: I hurt someone. Sometimes my good intentions pave the road
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: straight to relational hell. Sometimes I need to stay and apologize.
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: Sometimes I need to repair. Sometimes the discomfort is mine
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: to carry. And sometimes I need to walk away. The
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: difference now is that responsibility doesn't have to become shame.
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: I can say, I did that. That hurt you. I'm sorry.
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: I want to understand. What do I need to do
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: to repair this? Without adding, therefore I am fundamentally bad.
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: The humility of being a person has made responsibility safer too.
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: I don't have to be infallible in order to trust myself.
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: That sentence has become enormously important to me. I can
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: trust my perception without requiring myself to be infallible. And
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: you know what? The reverse is true too. I can
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: trust my perception about other people without requiring them to
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: be infallible either. I have to talk just a little
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: bit more about my little doggie from my dream. I
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: keep coming back to one image in that dream, and
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: that's her running toward me. For years, I've pondered whether
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: she was coming to protect me because she's a blue healer.
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: She was very strong, physically strong, but just her presence
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: was strong. She was the matriarch if I let her be. And,
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: you know, she might have been that. I think, you know,
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: who knows? It's my dream. I get to make whatever
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: meaning I want of it. But I don't think that
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: that's primarily what was happening. I think my mind was
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: having her run to me because I was her home.
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: She knew where home was even when I didn't. Leah
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: lived 16 glorious years. And at the end of her life,
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: she suffered terribly. And I was the one who finally
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: had to make the decision to let her die. She
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: trusted me with that. She trusted my capacity. She trusted
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: me to make the hard decisions. And there's something about
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: that image now, her running toward me with every part
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: of her body, that feels like a piece of wisdom
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: I couldn't yet receive when I had the dream. The
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: house looked destroyed. I couldn't get inside. I was terrified.
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: But something in the dream was already running home to me.
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: This is where my understanding of healing has really changed
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: over the years. For years, I used the language of
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: coming home to myself. I still like that language, and
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: I'm still using it, but I now mean something slightly
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: different by what I say, because where exactly would I
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: have gone? I'm always here. Maybe coming home isn't traveling
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: some enormous distance toward a healed version of ourselves or
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: our relationships. Maybe it isn't becoming good enough to enter
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: the house. Maybe I don't need to be stronger or
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: more spiritual, more self-aware, more intuitive, more integrated. Maybe coming
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: home is more about recognition. I am here. I have
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: always been here. And perhaps much of what we have
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: been doing is boxing shadows. The hurt is real. The
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: heartache is real. The trauma is real. The adaptation is real.
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: But because those things are immediately in front of us,
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: we organize around them. Our attention becomes captivated by the
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: shadow and eventually we become blind to the essence that
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: is already here. For me as a four, what became
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: enormous was deficiency. What's missing? What's wrong? What's absent? What's
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: not beautiful enough yet or hasn't been completed? Something else
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: disappeared into the shadow though. My efficacy, my capacity to
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: take what is actually here and create with it, my
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: ability to make beauty from available material, my capacity for delight, wonder, gratitude,
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: ordinariness of fireflies. The little stream was already enough for
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: an adventure and the lightning bugs were already magical. After
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: nine years of getting my own number wrong, why would
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: I still believe this tool has value? Because every mistype
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: taught me something. Every wrong turn showed me something. And ultimately,
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: the Enneagram did what I think a good map should do.
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: It didn't tell me who I am. It showed me
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: where I kept walking. It showed me what my attention
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: kept finding and the meaning I kept making. It showed
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: me what I did next and eventually. With a little help,
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: I could see the pattern. Not so I could condemn it.
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: Not so I could become a healthier, shinier four. Not
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: so I could finally win the Enneagram. God help us
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: all if that's the point. The purpose is choice. Awareness
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: creates the possibility of discernment. Discernment creates the possibility of choice.
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: And choice creates the possibility of freedom. Not freedom from
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: being myself. Freedom to be myself. That's what I want
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: to explore in this series. We're going to talk about
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: the nine types, but I don't particularly want to tell
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: you which type is most likely to color code their closets.
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: I want to ask different questions for each of the
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: nine ways of organizing experience. What does this person notice?
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: And importantly, what might they be seeing correctly? Because every
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: pattern begins somewhere meaningful. Then what meaning does the pattern
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: assign to what it sees? What becomes disproportionately large? What
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: disappears from view? What does the person do next? And
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: eventually what becomes available when the strategy no longer has
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: to protect identity, safety, belonging, or connection. That's where I
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: think the Enneagram becomes profoundly compassionate. Your pattern isn't evidence
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: that something is wrong with you, and it isn't your identity.
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: It's an extraordinarily intelligent organization around your experience. It helped,
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: it accomplished things, and it very likely may have protected you.
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: And it also cannot take you all the way home.
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: because it cannot manufacture what was never actually missing. So
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: before we get into the nine types, I want to
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: leave you with something to notice, not fix, notice. Sometime
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: this week, catch yourself in an ordinary moment. Maybe you're
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: irritated with your spouse, or somebody hasn't answered your text,
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: or your boss says something in a meeting and your
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: whole body contracts. Maybe you walk into your house and
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: immediately see everything that needs to be done. Maybe somebody
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: needs something from you and you're halfway to yes before
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: you even checked whether you have anything to give. Maybe
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: you feel afraid and immediately start gathering information. Maybe something
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: hurts and you're already distracting yourself from it. Don't fix it.
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: Don't type it. Don't even call it unhealthy. Just see
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: if you can get curious. What am I noticing here?
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: Then ask yourself, what meaning am I assigning to what
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: I'm noticing? And finally, ask yourself, what do I want
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: to do next because of that meaning? That's enough. You
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: don't have to distrust what you notice. You don't have
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: to assume your pattern makes your perception wrong. You don't
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: have to become suspicious of yourself. Just see if you
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: can widen the frame a little bit. Ask yourself, what
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: else is here? What belongs to me? What belongs to
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: somebody else? Is there actually something required of me right now?
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: Maybe underneath all those questions is an even gentler one.
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: What if nothing about me has to be solved before
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: I'm allowed to just be here as myself? Because the
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: great surprise of this journey for me has not been
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: discovering what number I am. I lead with type four.
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: That matters. It gives me a remarkably accurate map, but
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: four is not my identity. My identity is much simpler
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: than that. I'm a human person. a person with a bladder,
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: a person who sometimes needs help, a person who notices
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: easily what's missing or wrong, a person who can create
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: beauty from just about nothing, a person who gets things wrong,
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: who longs, who loves, who sometimes wounds, sometimes is wounded,
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: sometimes repairs, and sometimes can't. A person capable of extraordinary
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: endurance who no longer has to prove that capacity every day.
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: A person who can be disappointed. A person who can
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: disappoint you. Be misunderstood and remain intact. A person who
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: can look at what is missing without allowing it to
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: become the whole landscape. And maybe that's what the little
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: girl with the lightning bugs knew before she had language
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: for any of this. She wasn't even trying to become whole.
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: She was just participating in wholeness. She wasn't asking whether
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: the stream was enough. She was already ankle deep in
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: an adventure. She wasn't manufacturing magic. She was simply noticing it.
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: Maybe that's what our personalities have been trying so hard
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: to get us back to all along. And maybe healing
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: isn't finally becoming good enough to get there. Maybe the
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: front door was never locked. Maybe home isn't somewhere far away.
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: Maybe the invitation is simply to turn toward what has
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: been here all along and say, oh, there I am.
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: And maybe little by little, the lightning bugs come back
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: into view thank you for joining me.
• 39:34
  Speaker 2: Today If this episode resonates with you, follow or subscribe
• 39:45
  Speaker 2: to Echoes and Edges on your favorite podcast platform.
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: Leave a five-star review and share with a friend who
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: might need a gentle invitation to self-understanding. Echoes and Edges
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: is produced and edited by Stephen R. Sanders. Music promoted
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: by Envato.