Beyond Your Type: How the Enneagram Unlocks Your Path to Growth

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Welcome to the Thrive Mindset Podcast, where manifesting your dreams isn't magic, it's momentum.
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I'm your host, Carrie Dale, entrepreneur, author, and manifestation coach.
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And I'm here to help you stop holding yourself back and start building the life you've been craving.
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Each week, I'll share real stories, practical tools, and powerful mindset shifts to help you reframe the negative.
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Embrace gratitude and take aligned action toward your goals.
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If you're ready to uplevel your life, your relationships, your success, then this is your place.
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Let's dive in.
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Welcome back to the Thrive Mindset podcast.
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I'm Carrie Dale, your host, and today I have Carl Marsak with me.
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And he has over 35 years of experience studying and teaching and writing about the Enneagram.
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And I think we're just so lucky today to have him here with us just to share a little bit of that.
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Welcome, Carl.
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Thank you.
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This is my first podcast, and I'm happy to be doing it with you.
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I'm so glad you're here.
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One of the things I truly believe is that people connect by stories.
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And so I would love to hear a little bit of your story and how the Enneagram came into your life.
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Begin at the beginning.
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Yeah.
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Um if I start right where the Enneagram came to my life, because I have some psychological and spiritual background before that, it was in 1987, and I had moved to San Francisco to go to graduate school, the California Institute of Integral Studies.
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And a friend of mine who was in one of those psychology departments had been studying with A.H.
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Almas in the Ridwon School, the Diamond Approach.
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And they had already been studying the Enneagram, even in the early to mid-80s.
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And that's where I saw my first book.
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And I saw the symbol for the first time in her apartment and her rental.
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And I immediately was attracted to the symbol.
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But I didn't do much study with it for the next few years, partially because I was just starting graduate school and I was in anthropology and I was doing other things.
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But I circled back around to it in 1983 very strongly.
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And then I was on my way back to India.
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I'd already spent better part of the year in India, 92, 93.
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I was looking for something to read.
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And I went into a Barnes and Noble in Southern California.
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And I saw Helen Palmer's first book, Daniel Graham.
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And I picked it up, started reading it in the book in the bookstore.
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And within about 10 or 15 minutes, I had looked at all nine types and had immediately tired myself.
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And I said, Oh my God.
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And I closed the book.
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I can't deal with this.
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This is too much.
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This is too revealing.
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And I literally put it back on the bookshelf, bought something else, flew back to India.
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And I spent months and months there studying Tibetan Buddhism.
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And then I went to Tibet, went overland from Tibet to Nepal.
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And I had to wait in Nepal for several weeks to renew my visa for India.
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And I went to a spiritual bookstore in Kathmandu and found an Avenue Grambook.
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And I bought it.
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And I was in a in a cafe in the middle of Kathmandu, Odanat Stupa.
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And I looked at it again and I typed myself exactly the same type.
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And it was again that mixture of elation and depression that people tend to get when they land on Titan.
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This time I had the book.
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So I kept reading and I went back to Dharamsala, where the Dalai Lama lives, where I have a place to live.
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And then I the monsoon hit, so it was like living in a shower.
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So I went overland to Western Tibet, otherwise known as Wadak.
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And of course, the Enneagram book in the chapter about sevens talks about how sevens like to have adventures and be on the move and entertain multiple things at the same time, get scattered and distracted.
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And I was doing that while I was reading the book.
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I mean, I was just traveling to all these exotic places.
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And the end of this piece of it is I ended up in a guest house in Ladakh.
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And the woman next door to me was a good friend of Helen Palmer, who later became my main teacher.
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And she was traveling around the world on a working retreat, preparing to teach any bad classes.
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And so she personally mentored me for the next month in this Ladakhie guest house.
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And that was the first part.
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The second part is I did eventually go back to California.
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And then I spent the next five or six years taking any bad workshops with various people.
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Yeah.
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And eventually I started teaching in the late 90s.
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I I find it fascinating that it scared you.
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It really well, you have to realize I'm 65 now.
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And that was when I was about 32, 33.
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And, you know, some people call the Enneagram God's Wisdom Mirror.
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I really like that term, but it's like God or the universe holds up a mirror to all of who you are.
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You know, the the high side, the positive sides, the low sides, and everything in between.
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It also holds up a mirror to your behaviors, your psychology, your spirituality, how integrated you really are, how spiritually mature and developed you really are.
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And depending on the moment and what you're what you're looking at, it can be overwhelming.
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So a lot of people, you know, sometimes according to type, push it, push it away if they even encounter it in the first place.
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But eventually, you know, if they're motivated to grow, they do have the courage to look at it.
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So yeah, well, you know, I find it fascinating.
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So for someone who has heard of the Enneagram, but doesn't really understand it, how do you explain it in a way that really matters in their day-to-day life?
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Well, you know, I looked at that, and what came to me was it really depends on the person, and it depends on their type.
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The person, where they are in their life, how evolved they are already spiritually and psychologically, their type their type structure plays a big part in it.
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So I think past a certain point, it's hard to generalize.
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I think an important the enneagram can speak to very easy, simplistic parts of who we are.
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And the Enneagram can be very complex as well.
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It can be very kind of horizontal, it can be very vertical and deep.
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And as a teacher, somebody I mean I've been teaching now 25 years or more, um, it's important to meet each person where they are.
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Some people are really ripe, and they've already been in therapy, they've been meditating, who knows what they've been doing, Buddha's practice or Synthi practice, and they're really ripe.
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And you can go quite deep quite quickly.
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You can get to the spiritual dimension, which I believe has almost certainly been first and foremost a system for spiritual development.
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And the psychology is in is enfolded within that.
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And other people, you kind of have to baby them through the process.
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And if you go too quickly or too deep, you're gonna lose them.
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They're just gonna, yeah, and then they'll use pretty much any reason to push it away.
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Oh, it's not doesn't accord with my religion, religious tradition.
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Yeah.
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Or, oh, it's just one more new age system.
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That's we get the new age excuse a lot, you know.
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It's like, oh, I tried astrology and it didn't work.
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Well, I find it fascinating too.
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I think that I've noticed some people either really know what they are, or they want to be a certain type.
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And they will say things like, I think I'm that, but but they're definitely not.
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And I I find it fascinating when when that happens because I think, why would you not just embrace what you are?
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I think that's at the beginning of the journey, that's a really important question for everybody.
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And I also think, by the way, I feel quite strongly that even for any gram teachers or people who use it in therapy or counseling, it's important to revisit it and go, you know, am I am I really a three?
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Am I really a seven or one or a two or an eight?
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And in my experience for 35 years, whenever I do work, I always say, yeah, I'm still the same type, but I I hope I'm more involved.
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I hope I'm fulfilling the promise of my type better than I did 30 or 40 years ago.
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But to answer your question or to to riff on it, depending on the person's individual psyche, they may be what we call a wannabe type, that because of their cultural background or their family background, somebody told them or intimated it would be better to be this kind of person over another kind of person.
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A lot of women growing up in the 50s and 60s or earlier, the way to be a woman in a traditional family was to be kind of a two, to be helping and giving and loving all the time, even codependent.
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You want a codependent wife, right?
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You want a stepford wife, you want a stepford wife if you're a 50s husband.
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That's part of it.
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Part of it is imprinting, or what's another word for it?
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You know, that if we have a parent who's dominant or who's troubled, who's narcissist or something, and we're heavily influenced by them, we can kind of take on their way of being as an overlay.
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Like my dad was a five.
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I'm a seven with an eight-way.
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Um social, technically, I'm a social seven with an eight-way.
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So I'm about the most expansive version of an NEM type you can get.
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My dad was a five.
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My dad was kind of the dominant figure in the family.
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He was a big brain box professor.
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Um, and he was also rather, you know, kind of on the autistic spectrum.
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And he didn't really get that other people had other ways of being atonic.
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The best way to be in our family was to be a nerd, a professor, an intellectual.
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So even though I'm not a five, I have kind of a findy overlay sometimes.
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Like right now, I'm just you know going on a rant and lecturing.
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Yeah.
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So yeah, so there's cultural influences, familial influences, and let's just face it, a lot of people just don't have much self-awareness.
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Yeah, they don't have that skill, and they also don't know what they're looking for.
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That's true.
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That actually explains a lot.
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How does knowing your Enneagram type actually change the way that you show up personally and professionally?
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When you just said exactly what you are, how does it show up for you?
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Could you tell me what you mean by showing up?
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What I mean by showing up.
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Like, how do you see it impacts the way you live day to day, I guess, is another way to say that.
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Okay, I'm assuming you mean after I've been using it for 30 years or more.
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Yeah, but I mean, even like for me, who I don't, I don't I mean, I obviously know what I am, I know that I'm a three, I I know my tendencies, but I'm just curious how because of knowing and being so clear on what you are, how you see it impact your day-to-day, I guess is another way to say it.
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I'm gonna change it a little bit that makes more sense to me, but which is how do I alter either consciously or you know, it just happens now.
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It's almost gone automatically.
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How do I how is my how do I show up now in the world differently than I did in my 20s and 30s because of knowledge at the annual?
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Yeah.
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And so I'm not a three, um, but I'm married to one.
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Uh, so I I get threeness.
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Um my first wife was a six, and yeah, I know everybody in my family, and they and they know themselves.
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So sevens have a type bias, like all the types do.
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I I see the world a lot of the time, not not every minute of the day, but a lot of the time through the veil perspective of my type structure.
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Some of my behaviors are quite wonderful and useful, and some of them are actually spiritual gifts, gifts of type, gifts of spirit.
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I have some great psychological capacities as a seven, but I also there's a low side to type seven.
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So one low side is the sevens can be very spontaneous and extemporaneous to the point of being flippant or insensitive to the environment.
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I've been teaching for over 30 years, and I've definitely had to walk back some off-color jokes that I've told in class with.
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I tend to do better one-on-one, but if I'm at a party or in a group, meeting one of my own classrooms, I have to be careful because out of all the types, I mean, think of Robin Williams, who's a classic seven.
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It doesn't take much for sevens to just remove their filter.
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And my father used to say, you know, Carl, think before you speak.
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And when I was a child or teenager, I literally had no idea what it meant.
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I like, who thinks before they speak?
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You just speak and hope that what comes out makes sense.
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Another one is to be very careful about making commitments because unlike threes or ones or some other other types, sevens can be commitment averse if they seem restrictive or scary.
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And sevens actually take commitments very seriously because it is a difficult thing.
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So, you know, before I make a commitment, I I really make sure that I can honor the commitment.
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And and if I'm not clear about that, my wife will remind me that I made the commitment when in doubt follows through.
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And that builds trust.
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That builds trust in other good qualities, you know, in community.
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So those are two examples.
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I think that's actually very insightful.
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It kind of well, it leads me most comedians are sevens and sixes.
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You know, David Lennerman, Johnny Carson, not not all comedians, but a lot of comedians are sevens and sixes.
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So learning the difference between appropriate sense of humor and inappropriate sense of humor is huge for sevens.
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Okay.
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That's good too.
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It leads me into my next thought though, which is you know, when this community really focuses on thriving and um growing and achieving goals.
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And and I'm just curious how a person, once they recognize what their type is, can use that to move them towards their goals or create like more enlightenment in their life.
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Well, that's just a small question.
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I know.
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We can easily do an entire hour just on each one of questions.
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I know.
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Well, first, of course, you know, we haven't talked about how people come to time.
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That's that's another question.
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Another thing is that yes, it is information, absolutely, and in this kind of cybernetic age, you know, we're sensitive to information and AI and all of that.
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But it's more than information because there's a feedback loop between self-awareness and what's we're being aware of, the information and wisdom.
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And so we're kind of bootstrapping ourselves up to higher levels of consciousness through self-I would say it's three things self-awareness, the desire to grow, be a better person, and the content of your awareness, which is the information and wisdom, not just of your type, but you know, all of the types.
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We know you're a three, apparently, because you that goals yourself.
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And we know the goal, goal setting, you know, discovering goals and then moving towards goals, prioritizing goals, you know, all of that is kind of bundled like Microsoft software into type three.
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We should mention that the enneagram is holographic.
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So we all have type three inside of us.
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We all need to have goals, we all need to focus on functioning inwardly and outwardly, which twos, threes, and fours you know, really about functioning quite a bit, or doing, we can say doing, but you know, functioning is a good word for it.
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So what's important is that in my experience, is then each person is still an individual, and that they they're functioning within this this operating system, we can call it your type structure and your analogram type.
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And the exploring goals, finding goals, moving towards goals has some universal aspects to it, which threes are really the experts at, but it's it's still based on the person and their type.
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And types have very different goals.
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Very different goals.
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I mean, eights might want to be strong and dominant.
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They may not care about outer success in quite the same way that a three will be.
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They certainly don't want success if they're not so powerful and in control.
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I mean, sevens want to have a joyful life, a life that has some measure of freedom and fun, and play and pleasure and all of that.
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So a seven can be, you know, rich and famous, but if they're miserable, it they they haven't achieved their top one or two goals.
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And you know, that's true all around the beginning ground.
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So there is tight bias, and I don't mean bias in a negative way, it's more like a filter or perspective on life.
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So finding your type, however you do it, like completely intuitively or mostly intellectually through reading a book or going to a website, there's different ways people come to type.
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Really is the doorway, the gateway, the jump gate into knowledge of the whole system and different levels of the system.
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So people who come to the ending ground and poo-poo it, even if they've studied it for a few weeks or months or a year or two, as a teacher, I can tell you, I can guarantee you, they haven't discovered their own type.
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Because they're they're saying, oh, it's irrelevant or it's like a weak system, you can't really learn anything from it.
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Well, it's like, well, yeah, but you haven't used the system to find out more of who you are.
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Because we can apply the Enneagram to society, to groups, and I've taught groups, I've taught work groups.
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So you can you can do practical business applications.
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But at the end of the day, as Carl Jung would tell us, it still comes back to the individual.
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You can process, you can analyze, interpret a group's dynamics endlessly.
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But if it's filled with a bunch of dysfunctional people, it's not going to go very far.
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I think honestly, you know, in a work group, it's good to work on the group and each individual simultaneously.
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You get the most mileage out of it.
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I really want to encourage everybody who comes to the Enneagram, it doesn't have to be your first day or week or month that you're working with it.
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You can read a whole Enneagram book and not come to type.
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But it is good to know that you can't really access the software and change your own software and hardware if you don't recognize yourself in the symbol.
00:19:27.519 --> 00:19:32.400
Or is there a way that you recommend people try to work through figuring out what they are?
00:19:32.720 --> 00:19:34.559
Well, I think there's worse ways.
00:19:35.599 --> 00:19:59.119
A worse way is having somebody who's sort of kind of knows the Enneagram tell you your type, or kind of like entertain themselves by wondering what types you are, and then sharing that free advice with you because people are often alone, and because the way I was trained by Helen Palmer and David Daniels in the narrative tradition is you allow people to find themselves from the inside out.
00:19:59.279 --> 00:20:00.880
You don't lay your trips on them.
00:20:00.960 --> 00:20:09.599
Even if you're pretty darn sure, like I'm pretty good at typing people, but part of the ethics of the Enneagram is you don't dump that on somebody without their permission.
00:20:09.839 --> 00:20:13.440
I don't think that long questionnaires are particularly useful most of the time.
00:20:13.599 --> 00:20:16.480
People get confused that they have to answer 100 questions.
00:20:16.640 --> 00:20:22.720
I personally like the essential Enneagram, that little book by David Daniels, Virginia Price.
00:20:22.799 --> 00:20:24.079
And it's a very short book.
00:20:24.240 --> 00:20:25.839
It only costs nine or ten dollars.
00:20:26.079 --> 00:20:29.519
And it's got nine paragraphs that relate to the nine types.
00:20:30.079 --> 00:20:38.880
And if you choose the paragraph that's most like you, because every sentence in the paragraph hangs together, right?
00:20:39.119 --> 00:20:47.279
Because there is an inner cohesiveness and coherence to the type structure, you have like an 80 to 90 percent chance of getting it right the first time.
00:20:47.839 --> 00:20:50.559
And that's always the trick, right?
00:20:51.039 --> 00:20:55.039
Yeah, well, because we're multifaceted, there's more to us than just one thing.
00:20:55.119 --> 00:21:02.799
So yeah, and I think one of the biggest blockages to working with the enneagram is narcissism.
00:21:03.519 --> 00:21:13.200
Because narcissism makes you want to see yourself as you would like to be rather than as you actually are, and as you are to other people.
00:21:13.359 --> 00:21:22.319
And there's different degrees of narcissism, and there's clinical narcissism, there's mild versions, but another way to say it is our ego gets in the way.
00:21:39.839 --> 00:21:45.359
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00:21:49.359 --> 00:21:55.279
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00:22:02.480 --> 00:22:16.400
So on the opposite spectrum of getting to your goals, how do people unintentionally hold themselves back from achieving things or hold themselves back just in general based on their type?
00:22:16.799 --> 00:22:17.279
Good question.
00:22:17.359 --> 00:22:18.799
I'm going to answer that in a second.
00:22:19.039 --> 00:22:21.279
I want to go back to the goals for one more second.
00:22:21.599 --> 00:22:21.920
Okay.
00:22:22.559 --> 00:22:35.119
Because the functioning dynamics of that corner of the Enneagram, two, threes, and fours, and especially threes, you're on the triangle, three, six, and I know those two points are so involved with these things.
00:22:35.279 --> 00:22:47.200
And because we live in American society, which is very three-ish, especially on the West Coast here, it's very important to not judge other people's goals because they have different goals.
00:22:47.599 --> 00:22:54.400
Not everybody wants to maximize or optimize the same areas of life that you do.
00:22:54.799 --> 00:22:55.359
That's true.
00:22:55.839 --> 00:22:56.000
Yeah.
00:22:56.319 --> 00:22:58.960
One of the ways we hold, there's many ways we hold ourselves back.
00:22:59.039 --> 00:23:06.880
And actually, the Enneagram, as Helen Potter would say at the beginning of the journey, we all have a basic fear according to type.
00:23:07.519 --> 00:23:11.920
And if we're not aware of it, it really can hold us back.
00:23:12.559 --> 00:23:23.519
And generally, when people are a child in their teens and 20s, maybe until their 30s, this basic fear that's kind of one of the linchpins of your type is not conscious, certainly not for very long.
00:23:23.759 --> 00:23:25.519
It often takes therapy or something.
00:23:25.680 --> 00:23:28.400
So if if you're here, choose a type at all.
00:23:29.119 --> 00:23:29.839
Choose any type.
00:23:30.160 --> 00:23:30.880
A three.
00:23:31.200 --> 00:23:33.359
So what's the basic fear of a three?
00:23:33.839 --> 00:23:34.720
Failing.
00:23:34.960 --> 00:23:35.680
Failing, right?
00:23:35.920 --> 00:23:36.640
See all right here.
00:23:37.839 --> 00:23:41.440
And the and the and those feelings of shame and unworthiness that come up with that.
00:23:41.599 --> 00:23:48.400
And what's interesting with threes, this is true for all the types in their own domain, is that the failure may not even be actual.
00:23:48.720 --> 00:23:54.079
It can be a prestige failure, a fear of failure, it can be a memory of failure.
00:23:54.319 --> 00:24:02.720
Maybe you have a real or perceived, a mad actual failure as a child or teenager, where you felt so terrible, you know, you were mortified.
00:24:02.799 --> 00:24:07.920
You know, it could have been a failure, you know, I don't know, gymnastics in high school and who knows what.
00:24:08.160 --> 00:24:12.400
Or you got stood up senior prom, right?
00:24:12.880 --> 00:24:17.200
For me as a male seven, and probably if I got stood up, it wouldn't have been that big of a deal.
00:24:17.359 --> 00:24:20.960
But imagine for like you're a female emotional type, two, three, or four.
00:24:21.119 --> 00:24:24.240
That'll be pretty mortifying, especially if other people knew about it.
00:24:24.400 --> 00:24:25.039
Yeah.
00:24:25.920 --> 00:24:37.359
So threes often, when they're younger, artificially limit themselves in certain areas of life horizontally and also sometimes vertically.
00:24:37.599 --> 00:24:40.240
Like they create their own glass ceiling.
00:24:40.319 --> 00:24:42.480
Not always, some trees just go right to the top.
00:24:42.640 --> 00:24:49.599
But it's like, let's say they've had enough success to become, I'm just making myself, Jerry, a middle-level manager at IBM or Microsoft.
00:24:49.759 --> 00:24:52.799
So they've achieved corporate success.
00:24:54.000 --> 00:25:01.759
They're given an opportunity to go a little higher, but they're not sure that they might fail and you know, Peter principal themselves out of the position.
00:25:02.480 --> 00:25:02.880
Right?
00:25:03.039 --> 00:25:03.200
Yeah.
00:25:03.440 --> 00:25:04.720
Or, you know, have a lot of people.
00:25:04.880 --> 00:25:06.240
But they hold themselves back.
00:25:06.559 --> 00:25:15.680
What tends to happen with three's is that they they hold themselves back more horizontally, that they like to be really successful in one or two areas of life.
00:25:15.839 --> 00:25:23.440
There's other areas that they know they're not that good at, and they avoid actualizing themselves because they might fail.
00:25:24.240 --> 00:25:24.480
Right.
00:25:24.640 --> 00:25:28.640
And then often in midlife, you know, maybe they get some help around that in therapy or something.
00:25:28.720 --> 00:25:31.839
Like they've been neglecting certain areas of life.
00:25:32.079 --> 00:25:32.400
Yeah.
00:25:32.640 --> 00:25:39.759
It's often relationships with trees, you know, feeling slowing down and going a little deeper emotionally and spiritually.
00:25:40.160 --> 00:25:41.440
But it could be anything.
00:25:41.599 --> 00:25:46.480
I mean, for sevens, I'll just to be fair to you, sevens are a fear type, right?
00:25:46.799 --> 00:25:53.839
And sevens often would like to do really well without doing the work.
00:25:54.400 --> 00:25:58.079
Unlike threes, you know, they don't like work challenges very much when they're younger.
00:25:58.160 --> 00:26:02.559
It's hard, they have to commit, they have to stay focused, they have to stay grounded.
00:26:03.200 --> 00:26:09.279
So that there's fear of commitment, there's fear of possible pain and limitation, which is the basic fear of a seven.
00:26:09.759 --> 00:26:11.920
So they often, you know, they limit themselves.
00:26:12.000 --> 00:26:17.519
You know, yeah, I look back on my life and I had opportunities to go to private schools or do this or do that.
00:26:17.759 --> 00:26:19.359
I was like, ah, it's just too much work.
00:26:19.519 --> 00:26:22.559
You know, I want to have freedom and fun and play and pleasure.
00:26:22.799 --> 00:26:23.440
Yeah.
00:26:23.759 --> 00:26:24.079
Yeah.
00:26:24.400 --> 00:26:26.799
But I wanted to focus on the basic fear.
00:26:27.279 --> 00:26:27.519
Yeah.
00:26:27.759 --> 00:26:35.759
I think that it's interesting because, well, we're all just we're all so different.
00:26:35.839 --> 00:26:40.079
And what you are afraid of is not at all what I was, I'm afraid of.
00:26:40.319 --> 00:26:46.720
Like commitment is something which I find fascinating because your wife is the same type as I am.
00:26:46.880 --> 00:26:57.359
And the fact that you both are so almost opposite in in that, it it leads into like, does it help you communicate better knowing your types?
00:26:58.799 --> 00:27:00.880
I'm gonna go to the negative side of that.
00:27:01.200 --> 00:27:19.039
The downside of two people, whether they're trans, co-works, or spouses, or parent child, knowing the Enneagram, is if you have that information and wisdom and you're not your best self, or you're having a bad day, you can weaponize the Enneagram against the other person.
00:27:19.279 --> 00:27:27.200
In other words, you can shame and blame and be judgmental, controlling, using the Enneagram, right?
00:27:27.599 --> 00:27:31.359
Which, you know, everybody who knows the Enneagram has done it multiple times.
00:27:31.440 --> 00:27:34.319
And it's it's it's terrible because it's a powerful tool.
00:27:34.559 --> 00:27:37.200
So we really encourage people to train well.
00:27:37.359 --> 00:27:41.759
It's one reason why we don't think that just reading books and looking at websites is enough.
00:27:41.839 --> 00:27:48.559
You actually have to be with real people and real trainings, real classes, or real individual sessions, all of which I do.
00:27:48.799 --> 00:27:49.440
Yeah.
00:27:49.920 --> 00:28:07.759
On the positive side, simply knowing that the other person, if they have a different view than you, or they have different values than you, they care about different things, doesn't mean they're stupid, crazy, immature, ignorant.
00:28:08.079 --> 00:28:17.599
All the things that the average human being, when they're stressed and they don't understand the other person or don't agree with them, we we project all that stuff.
00:28:18.319 --> 00:28:24.559
We dump negative stuff onto other people when they have a right to be a different person.
00:28:24.799 --> 00:28:26.799
So we've all done that too.
00:28:26.960 --> 00:28:27.200
Yeah.
00:28:27.359 --> 00:28:37.440
And people who know the ending gun, you know, that's part of the weaponization where you know, if Kathy gets on a role, let's say working, and and you don't want to interrupt to three unless you have to, and they're working.
00:28:37.519 --> 00:28:40.640
I mean, that's the worst thing you can do, you know.
00:28:40.799 --> 00:28:46.720
And then if I make the mistake of doing it and she says, No, I can't talk to you now, or she gets upset.
00:28:46.960 --> 00:28:49.279
If I if I just accept it, that's fine.
00:28:49.440 --> 00:28:54.880
But if I go, oh my god, you know, I'm not like that, and blah blah blah, like that's not good, right?
00:28:55.039 --> 00:28:56.960
Because I have my own things to stress me out.
00:28:57.839 --> 00:29:07.599
So I would like there's been a lot of Enneagram books focusing on therapy, emotions, and relationships.
00:29:07.759 --> 00:29:11.519
And I personally think that's one of the best applications of the Enneagram.
00:29:11.759 --> 00:29:17.119
I mean, there's even books on parenting in the Enneagram, a lot of books you know about the Enneagram in the workplace.
00:29:17.279 --> 00:29:23.519
Most of them tend to stay at the psychological or behavioral level, so they don't really address spirituality, but that's fine.
00:29:23.680 --> 00:29:34.480
You know, I would challenge all your viewers, you know, next time you know, there's somebody with a different opinion or view than you, or simply a lot of it is you just don't understand where they're coming from.
00:29:34.559 --> 00:29:36.960
Like, how could they have have that way of being?
00:29:37.279 --> 00:29:40.400
Just walk, watch where your mind tends to go, right?
00:29:40.880 --> 00:29:45.200
And and then go, you know, they're coming from a different place.
00:29:45.920 --> 00:29:46.559
Yeah.
00:29:46.880 --> 00:29:54.400
Do you think that people get caught up in putting themselves in a box because of their type?
00:29:56.160 --> 00:30:05.680
I wouldn't want to overgeneralize that because you know, if we're talking about somebody, I'm just gonna make this up in their 40s and 50s, they've had a spiritual life for two decades.
00:30:05.839 --> 00:30:12.480
They meditate, they're maybe they're a booze meditator, or they go to church every weekend and they really try to be a better person.
00:30:12.799 --> 00:30:19.039
I think they will hold their typing lightly with some compassion.
00:30:19.680 --> 00:30:22.160
They won't use it as an excuse.
00:30:22.319 --> 00:30:26.720
Oh, well, I'm I'm a five or I'm a two, which people do all the time.
00:30:27.359 --> 00:30:34.319
Um, yeah, and they they won't use it to identify even more with personality than they already do.
00:30:34.480 --> 00:30:41.680
Because one of the goals of the Enneagram, and I brought a couple of quotes from my favorite teacher, Helen Palmer, short, very short quotes so I can read them.
00:30:41.839 --> 00:30:44.640
Yeah, I use these in my classes and workshops.
00:30:44.880 --> 00:30:59.680
The idea that we each possess an essential or spiritual nature that is qualitatively different from our acquired personality, and the Enneagram type is part of your acquired personality, is basic to sacred psychology.
00:30:59.920 --> 00:31:06.480
So the Enneagram operates at the interface of spirituality or call spirituality and psychology.
00:31:06.799 --> 00:31:12.160
Put them together, you get sacred psychology or psychological dimension of spirituality.
00:31:12.799 --> 00:31:17.599
And we we do believe that there's deeper parts to who we are than our type.
00:31:17.839 --> 00:31:34.559
And if we focus overly much on the box, as you put it, then all we're doing is we'll redefine, we're make it even more supposedly real, our type structure, at the expense of what some people might call your soul, your essence, or your essential nature.
00:31:35.200 --> 00:31:40.640
Alan also says the Enneagram is one of the few personality systems that anchors type in spiritual one.
00:31:41.599 --> 00:31:46.079
The system provides a link between personality types and higher consciousness.
00:31:46.480 --> 00:31:56.720
And one of my goals for 30 years has been, as the Enneagram has become super popularized all over the world, is not to lose that link to higher consciousness.
00:31:57.039 --> 00:32:12.640
That I believe the Enneagram originally was probably part of an inner work school or mystery school, maybe several of them, and was designed to help us discover our box and then get out of the box.
00:32:13.039 --> 00:32:24.000
And she also says one more thing sacred psychology is the art of psychospiritual alchemy, it transformed the lead of the psyche into the goals of integration and higher consciousness.
00:32:24.240 --> 00:32:29.759
So there's an alchemical transmutational and transformational aspect to the symbol.
00:32:29.920 --> 00:32:38.960
And sometimes that that gets lost these days, you know, with all of these different applications, people tend to focus on the psychological dimension more than the spiritual.
00:32:39.200 --> 00:32:43.200
But past a certain point, you can't really artificially separate them.
00:32:43.359 --> 00:32:45.119
Anyway, that was a long answer to the question.
00:32:45.440 --> 00:32:46.720
No, it was great.
00:32:47.039 --> 00:32:58.079
When somebody first discovers what their type, what's one small shift that they can make in their life that will improve their life, I guess, based on their type?
00:32:58.400 --> 00:33:02.880
Well, the details of that depend on the type that they've discovered, of course.
00:33:03.119 --> 00:33:03.440
Okay.
00:33:03.839 --> 00:33:14.480
I would say, and I know that Russ Hudson and other people would say, another teacher, practice self-awareness, practice self-awareness coupled with knowledge of type.
00:33:14.720 --> 00:33:17.359
So you learn as much as you can about your type.
00:33:17.599 --> 00:33:28.400
And then where the rubber hits the road, at least at the beginning, is okay, I know that these things are running the show for me on a psychological level.
00:33:28.559 --> 00:33:30.000
I call it your problem set.
00:33:30.480 --> 00:33:32.160
You know, where do you go under stress?
00:33:32.240 --> 00:33:36.720
Well, the Innegram has a lot to say about that, but we probably would be another session for that one.
00:33:36.960 --> 00:33:39.200
So I was like, oh, I'm doing it again.
00:33:39.359 --> 00:33:44.880
And if you're lucky, you can drop it on the spot if it's if it's not healthy for you or for somebody else.
00:33:45.119 --> 00:33:47.599
Usually what happens is people keep doing it for a little while.
00:33:47.680 --> 00:33:51.359
They go, oh yeah, yeah, they get feedback from the environment.
00:33:51.599 --> 00:34:01.119
Yeah, I need to slow down and listen more, or like if you're an eight, energy is too big, too much, and other people are experiencing me as abusive, but I'm just running my big energy.
00:34:01.200 --> 00:34:11.119
Or if you're a two, you know, the helper, the giver, the server, you know, under stress, they kind of get on the go like a three, but they focus not so much on work but on relationships.
00:34:11.280 --> 00:34:26.000
So it is really true that most people come to the Enneagram to more through the psychological dimension at first, and very often through those behaviors that keep us trapped in a box, or you could call them, you know, the negative side of your time, the difficult side of your time.
00:34:26.159 --> 00:34:27.920
So you practice observing those.
00:34:28.000 --> 00:34:41.440
And the reason we start with those is because if we work through those, our spiritual faith is that what I call the goodies, psychological spiritual goodies, they start to show up once we get out of our own way.
00:34:42.880 --> 00:34:43.280
Right?
00:34:43.679 --> 00:34:48.880
I like the idea of practicing it and observing and paying attention to who you are and just noticing.
00:34:48.960 --> 00:34:49.599
I like that a lot.
00:34:49.840 --> 00:34:56.960
The genius of the Enneagram is that, see, it's pretty rare in my life that I've been a workaholic like a three.
00:34:57.199 --> 00:35:10.480
I mean, there have been a few occasions when I've waited to the last minute and I have important goals like paying my taxes or you know, finishing uh master's theses where I look like a three, like whole shit, you know, here's my goal.
00:35:10.559 --> 00:35:11.519
I've got to do this.
00:35:12.239 --> 00:35:19.679
But for me to pay attention to all of that type structure stuff that threes run, I don't get a lot of traction out of that.
00:35:19.760 --> 00:35:24.320
I don't get a lot of mileage because those things aren't running the show for me.
00:35:24.719 --> 00:35:33.440
Yeah but if I look at all the stuff that gets bundled into type seven, you know, there actually can be openings of growth.
00:35:34.480 --> 00:35:35.039
Yeah.
00:35:36.000 --> 00:35:40.320
So I think we've talked a lot about a lot of different things in regards to the Enneagram.
00:35:40.400 --> 00:35:47.599
But is there anything as we end today that you want to talk about that we haven't covered?
00:35:48.719 --> 00:35:54.320
I like to make sure to mention that we do have a website here in Southern Origin called Enneagram Origin.com.
00:35:54.559 --> 00:35:57.119
And I have a everything on the website is free.
00:35:57.360 --> 00:36:04.960
So there's a lot of extra information and I have a resources page with all my favorite books and websites.
00:36:05.360 --> 00:36:06.719
I'll make sure I link it.
00:36:07.039 --> 00:36:08.480
So here's something I want to say.
00:36:08.719 --> 00:36:15.599
When we talk about these the sacred symbol, and it is a symbol, it's not a diagram, it's it's actually originally a symbol.
00:36:15.840 --> 00:36:31.920
And then we look at the points and the and the the numbers that are on the points, which are always in the same place, and we have the names, which change a little bit depending on who's teaching it, but they all refer to traits and behaviors connected to the type or higher spiritual qualities.
00:36:32.320 --> 00:36:35.039
We often think of them as types, which they are.
00:36:35.199 --> 00:36:43.440
This is how energy gets managed into form, it creates types, form, structures that you know look like these like types.
00:36:43.599 --> 00:36:55.280
And we think of human personality, but these points are actually archetypal configurations of energy that exist outside the whole notion of human personality.
00:36:55.440 --> 00:36:59.119
When they're embodied in human beings, they become the types.
00:36:59.440 --> 00:37:10.400
But you know, we can talk about New York as being very eight-ish and Washington being very eight-ish, and you know, we've already mentioned cities, countries can have recognizable types.
00:37:10.559 --> 00:37:18.400
Of course, we're generalizing a bit, but France is very four-ish, and Switzerland's very one-ish, and Brazil's very seven-ish, Hawaii's very nine-ish.
00:37:19.039 --> 00:37:27.440
And you know, places can have so people who study the antigram, we get very sensitive intuitively to energy.
00:37:27.920 --> 00:37:33.360
High vibration energy, energy as a kind of incarnate sign of the physical plane.
00:37:33.519 --> 00:37:36.320
So when we're typing people, people ask me, well, how do you type?
00:37:36.480 --> 00:37:42.960
Well, I type kind of intellectually based on my knowledge of all the traits and behaviors and everything else that goes into somebody's time.
00:37:43.920 --> 00:37:45.519
But it's a feeling too.
00:37:45.679 --> 00:37:48.320
It's like it's intuitive.
00:37:48.480 --> 00:37:55.039
I'm working with energy, which is another reason why this cycle is always a sacred system, an esoteric system for growth.
00:37:55.920 --> 00:37:59.679
So we don't want to put the Enneagram as a whole in a box either.
00:38:00.079 --> 00:38:03.280
We don't want to say, well, the Enneagram is just about human personality type.
00:38:03.360 --> 00:38:05.199
It's about way more than that.
00:38:05.599 --> 00:38:06.639
Well, thank you.
00:38:06.800 --> 00:38:08.480
I appreciate the conversation.
00:38:08.719 --> 00:38:10.880
I appreciate all your wisdom and knowledge on this.
00:38:10.960 --> 00:38:15.119
And I I'm sure that um folks will get something out of it today.
00:38:15.440 --> 00:38:21.199
Well, and I you didn't, you were very humble, but you were our real estate agent helping us find a wonderful house there.
00:38:21.440 --> 00:38:24.719
And we still love our house, and we still appreciate being back in Ashland.
00:38:24.960 --> 00:38:28.400
Yeah, that's how I met you, and then we have other connections as well.
00:38:28.480 --> 00:38:30.880
So thank you for all the work that you do in the community.
00:38:31.199 --> 00:38:31.840
Thank you.
00:38:37.920 --> 00:38:38.480
Yeah.
00:38:38.719 --> 00:38:42.320
Every one of the people selling houses and other agents.
00:38:42.559 --> 00:38:49.760
Yeah, everybody, you know, it's very amazing to go somewhere, look around a room or something larger, and go, you know what?
00:38:49.920 --> 00:38:54.000
Every single person here has a human personality that has a type structure.
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And they're they're all just doing their thing and trying to survive and getting out and be happy.
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We want people to be happy.
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Yeah.
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Well, thank you, Carl.
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Thank you for being here.
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I appreciate it.
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Well, I hope that you enjoyed the conversation with Carl.
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And if you want to know more about the infra me, I'll just go.