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The Living Room Part 3: Where Desire and Need Both Belong · Echoes & Edges

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Welcome back to Echoes and Edges, the Broken and Beautiful podcast.
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: I'm Patria, and I'm really glad you're here. We've been
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: spending the last few episodes talking about integrity, not primarily
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: as morality or honesty, although those things certainly do matter,
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: but as integration or wholeness, the capacity or the growing
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: capacity to live in a way where more and more
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: of who we actually are can belong together. We began
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: in the courtroom, which is a place we can find
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: ourselves when another person's interpretation of us, disappointment in us,
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: or experience of us becomes a case we feel compelled
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: to answer. We begin looking for evidence. We question our motives.
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: We defend ourselves, prosecute ourselves, and sometimes do both at
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: the same time. Then we moved into the living room,
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: The living room has become an image for something very different.
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  Speaker 1: It is the place where I can remain seated in
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: my own life while still making room for you. Your
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: experience gets to matter here. You can tell me something difficult.
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: You can disagree with me. You can show me something
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: about myself I genuinely couldn't see. But neither one of
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: us has to disappear in order for the other person
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: to remain. Last time, we brought the Enneagram into this
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: conversation and asked what might make leaving our own chair
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: feel necessary in the first place. We looked at nine
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: different ways we might organize ourselves around preserving something important,
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: like being good or staying connected, having a sense of
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: our own value or making meaning out of difficulty. just
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: a matter of having resources that we might need for
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: safety or security or freedom or peace. Today, though, I
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: want to use the Enneagram again, but a little bit differently.
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: And remember with me that the Enneagram is one structure,
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: and it's just simply intended to help bring these concepts
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: personal to you. to help granulize or bring particular areas
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: of your own self and how you organize around the
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: ways that you leave yourself personally. There's lots of ways
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: that you can use to answer this question of how
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: do I do that? What's at stake for me? What
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: am I needing that causes me to kind of leave
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: myself in those circumstances? And the Enneagram is something I
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: know well, so I'm going to use it to explain
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  Speaker 1: some ideas about how that might happen for you. So
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: I want to imagine in this episode, the living room
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  Speaker 1: itself is And as I've been thinking about this episode,
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  Speaker 1: I realized I don't want to create nine pictures of
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: what a healthy living room is supposed to look like.
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  Speaker 1: That really would be far too easy and really just sterile.
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  Speaker 1: I could tell the one to tolerate mess, the two
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  Speaker 1: to stop helping everybody, and the three to quit accomplishing things,
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: the seven to sit still, blah, blah, blah. But that
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: would miss something really essential. Because integration isn't becoming the
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: opposite of ourselves. I don't think growth requires us to
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: become suspicious of the things we naturally desire simply because
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: those desires happen to resemble our Enneagram strategies. A one
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: may genuinely feel better in an orderly house. A two
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: may genuinely love hosting. A three may genuinely love accomplishing
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: something really difficult. A four may genuinely desire depth and beauty.
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: A five may genuinely need solitude. A six may genuinely
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  Speaker 1: feel better after checking the lock. A seven may genuinely
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: need adventure. An eight might genuinely prefer to take charge.
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: And a nine may genuinely not care where we go
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: for dinner. None of those things are automatically evidence of
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  Speaker 1: something terrible about you or that it's even evidence of
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  Speaker 1: you're in survival and not thriving. They're just parts of you.
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  Speaker 1: They're just ways of being. And so we just don't
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  Speaker 1: want to pathologize something. We want to normalize it. So
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  Speaker 1: I want to imagine our living rooms today as places
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  Speaker 1: where both desire and need are just available to us.
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  Speaker 1: Sometimes those things align really beautifully and sometimes they don't.
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  Speaker 1: Sometimes what I desire is exactly what I need. And
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  Speaker 1: sometimes what feels most familiar, comfortable, or compelling to me
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  Speaker 1: isn't really what my body or life or my relationships
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  Speaker 1: are asking of me at all. Perhaps the work of
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  Speaker 1: integration is not learning to distrust ourselves, but becoming sufficiently
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: present to ourselves that we can begin to tell the difference.
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  Speaker 1: So these rooms I'm about to describe are going to
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  Speaker 1: be imperfect. They are metaphor. There will be some hyperbole.
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  Speaker 1: And please don't decide that I think your Enneagram number
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  Speaker 1: determines your furniture. We're trying to make something internal concretized,
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  Speaker 1: tangible enough that we can see it and understand it
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  Speaker 1: for ourselves. The Enneagram gives us that framework for possibility.
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  Speaker 1: Your actual life will have to supply the particulars. So
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  Speaker 1: let's walk through the rooms. All right, type ones, you're up.
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  Speaker 1: And I imagine for type ones, a room where order
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  Speaker 1: and surrender can both be long. I imagine the one's
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  Speaker 1: living room as orderly. Yes, not because she's compulsively cleaning
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  Speaker 1: everything in sight. but because she may genuinely experience order
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  Speaker 1: as restful. Things make sense. The furniture belongs where it is.
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  Speaker 1: The room is cared for. There's something deeply satisfying about
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  Speaker 1: walking into a space where the environment itself communicates that
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  Speaker 1: someone has paid attention. I don't want to take that
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  Speaker 1: from the one. In fact, I think sometimes we are
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  Speaker 1: so eager to identify people's Enneagram patterns that we begin
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  Speaker 1: treating things perfectly ordinary preferences as evidence that somebody needs
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  Speaker 1: to grow. Maybe the one just likes a clean house.
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  Speaker 1: Clean the house. Beautiful. The interesting moment to me comes
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: on the night when she's exhausted. The dishes are still
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: in the sink. Someone has left shoes where they don't belong.
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  Speaker 1: There are three things she can see from the sofa
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  Speaker 1: that would take less than five minutes to fix. And
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  Speaker 1: she knows she would prefer the room after she fixed
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: them but her body is tired. What does she do
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  Speaker 1: with that information? Perhaps integration on this particular night is
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: allowing her desire for order and her need for rest
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  Speaker 1: to exist at the same time. She doesn't have to
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  Speaker 1: convince herself that the mess doesn't bother her. It does.
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  Speaker 1: She doesn't have to decide mess is somehow spiritually superior
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  Speaker 1: to order. It isn't. She simply allows another truth to
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  Speaker 1: enter the room with her. My body, my good body
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  Speaker 1: is tired. And then maybe she sits down. Maybe she
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  Speaker 1: lets the dishes remain in the sink until morning and
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  Speaker 1: discovers that the room is unfinished and she's still allowed
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  Speaker 1: to rest inside it. There will be other nights when
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  Speaker 1: cleaning the kitchen is exactly what she needs. Rest may
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  Speaker 1: actually come more easily afterward. The freedom isn't in always
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: choosing the chair. The freedom is that she can hear
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  Speaker 1: both pieces of information and choose from them. Type twos,
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  Speaker 1: I imagine a room where hospitality, offering, care and love
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  Speaker 1: and help to others, as well as receiving those things
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  Speaker 1: for yourself, can both belong equally. The twos living room
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  Speaker 1: may genuinely be full of people. I imagine food, delicious,
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  Speaker 1: comforting food, like green beans and mashed potatoes and white gravy.
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  Speaker 1: I don't know why that comes to my mind, but
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  Speaker 1: that's what I imagine with comforting food. Something warm to drink,
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  Speaker 1: maybe some hot apple cider or in the summertime, some
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: iced tea, enough blankets. The two notices that one person
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  Speaker 1: is sitting slightly outside the conversation in her living room,
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  Speaker 1: and she finds a way to bring them in without
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  Speaker 1: embarrassing them. She remembers what you told her three weeks
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  Speaker 1: ago and asks about it, and I don't want to
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  Speaker 1: take any of that away from her. It's her gift.
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  Speaker 1: Maybe she loves that, I bet she does, and feeding
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  Speaker 1: people fills her up. Maybe noticing what someone needs is
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  Speaker 1: one of the most authentic ways she expresses love. And
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  Speaker 1: that's beautiful. And she lives here too. So somewhere in
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  Speaker 1: this room, I want there to be a chair that
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  Speaker 1: belongs only to her. It's her chair. And I want
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  Speaker 1: to know whether she can sit in it before everybody
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  Speaker 1: else is settled. Maybe tonight she wants people around her,
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  Speaker 1: but she doesn't have the energy to host. Can she
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: call someone and say, would you come over? I've had
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  Speaker 1: a hard day. And when they arrive, can she let
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: them encounter the house exactly as it is? Can she
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  Speaker 1: remain seated instead of immediately getting up to offer something?
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  Speaker 1: Can she say there's stuff in the refrigerator if you're hungry?
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  Speaker 1: More importantly, can she tell the truth about why she
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  Speaker 1: asked them to come? Maybe it's, I need company tonight.
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  Speaker 1: That may be an extraordinarily vulnerable sentence for someone who
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  Speaker 1: is far more accustomed to being the company somebody else needs.
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  Speaker 1: Her desire to care for others doesn't have to disappear,
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  Speaker 1: but perhaps she gets to discover that receiving care doesn't
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  Speaker 1: put her into debt. Sometimes the two will host because
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  Speaker 1: she genuinely has something to give and sometimes she will
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  Speaker 1: let somebody else bring dinner. Both can belong in her house.
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  Speaker 1: Type three is a room I imagine where accomplishment, maybe
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  Speaker 1: even trophies or medals line the walls and at the
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  Speaker 1: same time useless pleasure is you know, like a pool
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  Speaker 1: table or a foosball table or just a TV can
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  Speaker 1: both belong equally. I imagine the three's living room looking good.
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  Speaker 1: And I'm not going to apologize for that on her behalf.
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  Speaker 1: Maybe she likes beautiful things. She's worked hard for them.
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  Speaker 1: Maybe creating a home that feels pulled together gives her
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  Speaker 1: genuine satisfaction. Beautiful. The question I'm more interested in for
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  Speaker 1: type three is, is whether everything in the room has
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  Speaker 1: to accomplish something. Is there anything here that exists simply
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  Speaker 1: because she likes it? A hobby she's terrible at? A
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  Speaker 1: book she's reading that will not make her smarter or
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  Speaker 1: better at her job? Maybe a half-finished puzzle? Something she
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  Speaker 1: made that she has no intention of selling? Something she's
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  Speaker 1: learning slowly, badly, and with absolutely no intention of becoming
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  Speaker 1: excellent at? I wonder what happens in this room when
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  Speaker 1: she spends three hours doing something and has nothing to
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  Speaker 1: show for it afterward. Because accomplishment is not the enemy.
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  Speaker 1: Some people genuinely love and are good at building things,
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  Speaker 1: achieving goals, working hard, and watching an idea become real.
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  Speaker 1: That's alive. But perhaps the three also needs experiences that
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  Speaker 1: can't be converted into evidence of her value. Maybe she
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  Speaker 1: takes a nap in the afternoon and nobody knows. Maybe
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: she changes her mind about a goal because she finally
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  Speaker 1: realizes she doesn't want it. Maybe something succeeds and she
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  Speaker 1: lets herself enjoy the success without immediately asking what comes next.
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  Speaker 1: Perhaps her living room teaches her that satisfaction and validation
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  Speaker 1: are not the same thing and there's room for both.
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  Speaker 1: She can accomplish something because she wants to. She can
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  Speaker 1: also exist without accomplishing anything at all. Type fours, I
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  Speaker 1: imagine a room where meaning and the ordinary can both belong.
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  Speaker 1: I imagine the fours living room having texture. There are
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  Speaker 1: things here with stories. There's beauty and particularity and something
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  Speaker 1: about the room that feels unmistakably personal. Maybe there's art
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  Speaker 1: that makes somebody else uncomfortable. Maybe there's an object that
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: looks insignificant until you hear where it came from. Maybe
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: the music is a little sad. Let it be sad.
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  Speaker 1: I don't want to take the depth away from the four.
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  Speaker 1: The capacity to perceive emotional nuance, meaning, beauty, and longing
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  Speaker 1: is a genuine gift. But perhaps there's also need to
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  Speaker 1: be room for Tuesday. Ordinary Tuesday. Laundry needs to be folded.
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  Speaker 1: There's a perfectly fine sandwich for lunch. Somebody sends a
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: mildly amusing text. The sun is coming through the window
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  Speaker 1: and nothing particularly profound is happening. Can that be enough?
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  Speaker 1: Maybe what the four needs sometimes isn't greater access to meaning,
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  Speaker 1: but permission for an experience not to mean very much
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  Speaker 1: at all. Sadness can sit on the sofa. Longing can
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  Speaker 1: be here. And so can contentment. So can boredom. So
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  Speaker 1: can pleasure that isn't tinged with loss. Perhaps one of
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  Speaker 1: the freedoms available in this room is discovering that ordinary
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  Speaker 1: life is not an absence of depth. Sometimes the most
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: authentic thing we can experience is simply that today was okay.
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  Speaker 1: And nothing about that makes the four less herself. For
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: type fives, I can see a room potentially where privacy
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  Speaker 1: and participation both belong. Rather than moving toward another person
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  Speaker 1: or toward an emotion, the five may move back, observe, understand, conserve, think.
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  Speaker 1: There is wisdom here too. The ability to step back
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  Speaker 1: from intensity and see what others cannot see is enormously valuable.
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  Speaker 1: We need people who don't immediately get swept into every
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  Speaker 1: emotional current moving through the room. But observation can eventually
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  Speaker 1: become distance. When relationship feels demanding, when another person's needs
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: seem endless, or when the five doesn't yet feel competent
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: enough to respond, retreat can create a sense of safety.
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: The courtroom may therefore look less like prosecution and more
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: like analysis. If I can understand this well enough, perhaps
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: I won't have to experience it quite so directly. The
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: invitation back into the living room isn't to surrender privacy
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: or become endlessly available. It is to notice when the
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: protection of your resources has become the protection of yourself
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  Speaker 1: from participation. What do I know because I have studied this?
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  Speaker 1: And what can I only know by actually being here
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: are good differentiation questions for type five. and knowing whether
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: they're in the living room or the courtroom. Sometimes integrity
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: asks us to remain in our bodies, in the conversation
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: and in relationship long enough to discover that we have
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: enough to participate, even when we don't have everything figured out.
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  Speaker 1: For the six, the courtroom metaphor may feel especially familiar
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: because courts promise something sixes deeply value, enough evidence to
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: know what is true. If I can just examine this
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: from every direction, they say to themselves, maybe I can
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: finally be certain. What did she mean when she did
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: this or said that? What did he say? Why did
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: he say it like that in particular? Am I missing something?
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: Who else should I ask? What happened last time? What
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: if I'm being naive? What if I'm overreacting or underreacting?
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: There can be tremendous intelligence in these questions, of course.
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  Speaker 1: Sixes often see contingencies that the rest of us can't.
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: They ask the second question and the third question. They
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: notice the loose stare and wonder whether someone should fix
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: it before somebody gets hurt. But discernment can become outsourcing.
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: At some point, I can gather so many opinions, so
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: much evidence, and so many possible interpretations that I become
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: less able, not more able, to hear things. What is
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: actually true for me? For the six, the living room
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: may involve discovering that certainty and self-trust are not the
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: same thing. You may not become certain. You may not
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: get enough information to eliminate risk. You may still have questions.
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: And you can still remain seated in your own chair.
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: You can seek wise counsel without handing someone else the
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: deed to the house. And I just want to say
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: for the type six, it's important to, if you're a
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: type six, to understand that your living room as a
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: type six can look very, very different from even another
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  Speaker 1: type six's living room. Some type six's courtroom is being
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: the persecutor. They become the bigger than fear and try
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: to overpower it. They can actually, if this is you,
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: you might actually find yourself trying to intimidate people or
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: places that you feel fear of, even if you don't
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: recognize the fear necessarily. Some type sixes living room just
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: looks like closed doors and, you know, very, very few
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: people that are invited into that place. Um, And that's valid.
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: And some sixes have a dependency, I might say, or
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: a need for social systems to help them feel a
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: sense of certainty. So if you're a type six, just
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: know that your living room as a type six can
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: look pretty different from other type sixes. For type sevens,
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: we come to the seven, which is the type whose
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: living room might in some ways be like the type
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: two that feels obvious, but I want to differentiate a
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: little bit that the type seven does have remarkable ability
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: to find possibility. And they actually might enter the living
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: room a little too soon at times, or they might
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: enter the courtroom completely under stress and become resentful. And
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: so there is another door for type sevens. And I,
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: this is what I really want to just talk about
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: that the living room for type sevens requires really a
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: balanced interpretation. There truly is another opportunity, another way through
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: another thing that you can try that maybe you haven't
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: even thought of yet. And for sevens, that is a
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: beautiful capacity. And a seven has to become curious about
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: the moments when possibility stops being freedom and starts becoming escape.
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: So you can hear how it becomes really important to
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: pay attention to your inner life, to your inner world,
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: much more important than outer life. Because sometimes the living
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: room contains things that I can't make more pleasant. The
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: grief is there. The limitations are there, the endings that
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: you don't like. There are situations that can't be fixed
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: by finding the next opening or possibility. There are moments
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: when the most integrated thing to do is just to
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: sit still. And sometimes the seven leaves themselves not because
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: of being afraid of another person's opinion, but because remaining
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: with themselves would require them to encounter something that they
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: want to just move past and not really face head on.
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: They can reframe very quickly. They can become useful. They
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: can create something. They can find the lesson. They can
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: make meaning. They can find the next beautiful thing. The
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: seven's courtroom can actually look a little bit like Jack
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: of all trades. Like they could be the persecutor, but
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: they also might be the victim. They also might be
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: the witness. They also might be the gallery. They also
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: might be the judge. The seven can look remarkably like
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: really any of the parts of the courtroom or the
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: people within it. But the living room takes them back
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: to themselves and asks the question, Can I stay long
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: enough with myself to find out what's really going on
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: for me, even if it hurts or even if I
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: have to feel sadness or pain? Can I allow sadness
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: to be sad without making it hopeful by paragraph three?
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: Can I encounter limitations without immediately turning it into an opportunity?
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: Can I discover what I need before I decide what
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: I'm going to do? For the Seven, staying in the
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: chair doesn't mean giving up freedom. It may mean discovering
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: a freedom large enough that means they no longer have
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: to run from anything inside their own house. For the
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: Type Eight, leaving the chair may not look anything like disappearing.
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: It may look like becoming more present, certain, forceful, ready.
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: If vulnerability has come to feel dangerous, then strength becomes
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: a remarkably effective way of remaining protected. And strength is
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: not the problem. Let's be clear about that. And I
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: want to be really careful to name that clearly for eights,
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: because strength is too often treated as something that needs
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: to be softened out of people, especially women. And that's
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: not integration, in my opinion. But strength can become armor.
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: The moment another person has had enough power to hurt
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: you or me as an aid, I may need to
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: regain an advantage of some sort. If I'm misunderstood or betrayed,
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: particularly betrayal is big for type 8s, that might take
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: you right into the courtroom. The living room asks, though,
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: of something more vulnerable from you. Can you remain powerful,
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: like having the power to affect all of those things,
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: without needing to control it? Can you tell that the
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: hurt happened to you without first making sure that everybody
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: who hurt you understood what you could do to them?
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: Can you allow someone trustworthy to see what matters enough
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: that losing it would hurt? And can strength include receptivity
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: of support? For an eight, coming into the living room
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: doesn't require becoming smaller at all. It sometimes means discovering
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: that tenderness doesn't evict strength from the room, that there's
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: enough room for both. And finally, last but not least,
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: type nine, the metaphor of leaving your chair may be
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: particularly literal because one of the ways peace can be
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: preserved is by becoming deeply attuned to what everyone else
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: wants and gradually losing contact with what you actually want,
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: not necessarily because anyone demanded it, Sometimes it happens so
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: quietly that nobody notices, including maybe especially the nine. Where
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: do you want to eat? I don't care. Does this
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: bother you? Oh, it's fine. And the trick is that
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: it probably is fine until it isn't. And the nine
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: often has a beautiful capacity to hold multiple perspectives. They
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: truly can understand why this person feels this way and
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: why that person feels another way. They can lower the
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: temperature in a room simply by refusing to make every
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: disagreement a crisis. But there is a cost when peace
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: requires absence. If your own knowing continually becomes the least
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: urgent thing in the room, eventually it can become difficult
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: to locate. So the nine's return to the living room
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: may begin with surprisingly ordinary questions such as, what do
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: I want? What do I think? And what's bothering me?
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: What matters enough that I am willing to disrupt the
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: peace to say it? And perhaps most importantly, what happens
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: if someone else doesn't like my answer? Integrity may require
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: the nine to discover that conflict doesn't necessarily mean connection
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: has failed. Sometimes disagreement is evidence that there are actually
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: two people in the room and we need both of you.
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: Now we've built this lovely metaphorical living room and eventually
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: we have to stop talking about furniture. We have to
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: live here. Real life is going to walk through the door.
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: Someone is going to send the email. Your child is
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: going to be upset with you. A friend is going
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: to become distant or you're going to make a mistake.
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: You might be misunderstood. You might gain weight or lose
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: strength or get sick. or discover that your body needs
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: something different than it did five years ago. You are
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: going to be exhausted and lonely. Something will end. Something
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: you wanted will not happen. And some old belief that
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: has been quietly living in the house for years is
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: going to wake up and start talking. You're too much.
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: Your needs are burdensome. If they're angry, you must have
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: done something wrong. You have to know before you act.
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: If you stop producing, you disappear. Nobody's coming. You have
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: to handle this yourself. If you disappoint them, you may
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: lose them. And so on and so on. That's when
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: this stops being a metaphor. In the next part of
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: the Integrity Series, I want to talk about what it
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: actually means to settle into the living room and begin
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: living there. How do we turn toward ourselves when something
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: outside of us threatens our sense of safety, security, and belonging?
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: How do we figure out what we need? Who we call?
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: What does the body need? Have we eaten? Have we slept?
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: Do we need movement or medication or medical care? Do
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: we need quiet, touch, sunlight, company? What emotion are we
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: having today? And which emotion do we habitually substitute for it?
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: What old belief has been activated? And after we have
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: listened to all of that, what is actually ours to do?
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: Sometimes the answer will be to apologize. Sometimes it'll be
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: to say no. Sometimes it will be make the appointment,
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: call a friend, tell the truth, eat lunch, go to bed.
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: And sometimes it will be to do absolutely nothing. Because
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: living in our own house doesn't mean nothing outside of
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: it can threaten us. It means we increasingly know where
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: to return when it does. For now, perhaps you can
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: spend a little time looking around your own living room.
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: Not the one I created for your Enneagram number, except
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: just as a starting point. But yours. What is yours?
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: What do you genuinely desire there? And then become curious
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: about what you need. Notice where those things align. Notice
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: where they don't. And remember that neither one needs to
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: be put on trial. They're just information. And perhaps integrity
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: begins in part with becoming someone who is willing to
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: stay long enough to listen. until next time take good
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: care of yourself If this episode resonates with you, follow
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: or subscribe to Echoes and Edges on your favorite podcast platform.
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: Leave a five-star review and share with a friend who
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: might need a gentle invitation to self-understanding. Echoes and Edges
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: is produced and edited by Stephen R. Sanders. Music promoted
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: by Envato.