Enneagram of Holy Ideas

until we directly experience spiritual transformation, we do not truly understand that this transformation involves such radical changes in our experience of ourselves and our world that it is not a matter of becoming a transformed individual; we recognize, rather, that the reality that is realized is something that cannot be limited by such notions as ‘individual’ and ‘world.’

A. H. Almaas

as we saw in the, introduction to beyond personality, the Enneagram of Fixations (the most commonly used system) reflects the deluded or egoic view of reality and expresses the loss of Being, which, in turn, is represented by the Enneagram of Holy Ideas. in this section we’ll mainly focus on the work of Almaas, interspersed with other authors.

A.H. Almaas is well known for his Diamond Approach, a contemporary spiritual path based on the unification of ancient contemplative traditions and modern depth psychology. the Diamond Approach views reality as the expression of Spirit itself, manifesting in different dimensions, ranging from absolute emptiness (its Source) to the realm of the physical, mental, and psychological (its manifestation). the deepest truth of this reality is true nature or Being itself. it is pure Spirit, ultimately the real nature of both the universe and individual beings.

our awareness comes from the dimension of pure awareness; our knowingness, and hence our mind, comes from the dimension of pure presence; and our heart comes from the dimension of pure universal love. our human and spiritual qualities come from the essential aspects [essences], and our animal characteristics come from the dimensions of vital energy and matter as they arise through the consciousness of the soul.

A. H. Almaas

the unmanifest or formless aspect of Being is utterly nondifferentiated and without qualities. it is an emptiness that holds all potential. this potential flows into manifestation, which becomes the appearance of reality. the same differentiation is described in Buddhism as ultimate reality and relative reality. ultimate reality is formless Being with all its possibility, and relative reality consists of all the forms of appearance of this Being. we’ll meet this view again in the work of Integral Theory when Ken Wilber introduces us to the great chain of Being.

true nature also has qualities, and these form the basis of the spiritual qualities that make us human. the spiritual qualities, as described in the Enneagram of Holy Ideas, are perfections into which Being can differentiate and unfold. the “flavors” or subtle qualities of these perfections are called the essences. at the same time, Being contains all these qualities, whether they are unfolded in an individual or not. as Almaas puts it: “they are not affects, images or responses, but the ontological presence of true nature itself appearing qualified with one of these perfections.” Almaas, and other writers on the Enneagram of Holy Ideas, use “soul” to describe human consciousness. the soul is an individualization of the Being that embodies true nature and the dimensions of energy and matter. this is the same view that we find in other nondual traditions, and the metaphor of the ocean and the wave is often used to describe the apparent differentiation between Being and the soul or human consciousness.

for Almaas, the process of spiritual transformation is a journey from an egoic perspective to the perspectives of the holy ideas. Almaas defines “ego” as a psychic structure based on crystallized beliefs about our identity and the world. we experience ourselves and the world through the lens of these crystallized beliefs. spiritual awakening involves connecting with those dimensions of experience that are typically obscured by the egoic structure. the process is to see the identification, recognize its projection, look for the isness of the experience (withdrawing the projection), and let go of the experience, until the identification is no longer held. for this process to happen unimpeded, the underlying experiences of basic trust and living daylight are necessary.

basic trust

the soul always develops an ego and an identification with it, due to the nature of infant helplessness, physical embodiment, and conceptual development; however, the degree of fixedness and completeness of that identification will be greatly influenced by the degree to which this state [basic trust] is present.

A. H. Almaas

when we become aware of something in the personality that causes ego contraction — in other words our reaction — it can be difficult and painful to stop the identification. we are suddenly faced with what Buddhism calls “groundlessness.” the experience of walking into someone you absolutely did not want to meet is one example of groundlessness. our reactions are deeply set patterns that informs us on how to act. it is not easy to let go of this “knowing.” when we become disillusioned the same “falling apart” happens. what we believed before no longer holds true, and our reality changes by necessity. whether groundless or disillusioned, we experience the pain of not knowing what will take the place of the old identification. for a time, we are like a stranger to ourselves. at these times we need basic trust to take us beyond the pain.

Basic Trust is not a trust in some thing, some person, or some situation, and so is not readily diminished by life circumstances. instead, it gives you an implicit orientation toward all circumstances that allows you to relax and be with them. you feel in your bones that you are and will be okay, even if the events at the moment are disappointing or painful, or even completely disastrous.

A. H. Almaas

when it is deeply present, basic trust is part of the fabric of the soul, and not something that needs to be thought about. whether we feel it or not, basic trust is attuned with the fundamental laws of reality. everyone has it to some degree. knowing that you will wake up tomorrow is one example. normally we are not even aware of this immense energy and freedom. basic trust is a soul-recognition, a connection with our essence. ego’s perspective arises from a lack of this trust, and leads to our psychology becoming one of distrust, paranoia, and fear. all of this is based on a conviction that we are not safe, and that there is nothing to hold us and take care of us in the ways that we need. this conviction forces ego to engage in all kinds of manipulations and games to get our needs met and make things work out the way we want them to, and to fit reality into our beliefs and identifications.

when we allow ourselves to surrender to pain or difficulty, we are willing to be; willing to resist attempts to change or manipulate things. when we are willing to simply be present there is a death of the old, and on a deeper level, the realization of Being. we can allow things to spontaneously develop, without trying to determine their course. we can fall apart without the need to put ourselves back together. we can be with the intensity of the moment. if we lack basic trust it is important to develop it. this means experiencing the factors that disconnect us from reality, experiencing what it is that makes us feel separate and helpless, and slowly developing the fundamental truth of unified consciousness, to the point where we can, again, rest in basic trust.

to understand basic trust in action, we need to distinguish it from ego’s tendencies of inactivity and over-activity. basic trust does not mean that we don’t act. when someone approaches you holding a knife, basic trust means trusting your impulse to run. knowing that the universe is taking care of you does not mean staying in bed all day, but rather knowing that the universe will push you to get to your business. basic trust means understanding that the universe is unfolding in an optimal way, including through us and our actions.

if we don’t have basic trust we will react to whatever arises in accordance with our expectations and our conditioning. we cannot allow ourselves to simply be present, because we want a particular outcome. basic trust is needed for us to just surrender to the reality of now. this surrender allows the natural unfolding of our being. we can allow ourselves to simply be, with great trust, accepting and trusting the silence, the beingness.

all we need to do is to quit struggling with ourselves and with reality. when it is said that suffering ceases when one is realized or enlightened, what it means is that the struggling ceases. enlightenment is not a matter of not feeling pain, but of not fighting it.

A. H. Almaas

living daylight

basic trust bestows on the soul a quality that Almaas calls Living Daylight. when our perception is subtle enough to see and feel the substance of consciousness, it presents itself as daylight: an alive, transparent consciousness. initially we may recognize it everywhere, and later we see that everything stems from it. at the most subtle level, we experience living daylight as the very substance out of which everything is made.

mind or intellect’s experience of living daylight is light and consciousness. through heart and feeling, we experience it as boundless love, and through the body we experience living daylight as pervading presence. living daylight is our first experience of the cosmos as one living organism. in the Sufi tradition it is often called “baraka,” or blessing. living daylight expresses Being’s goodness, abundance, beauty, and loving qualities.

living daylight is experienced as the origin of all states of consciousness, and basic trust is the implicit confidence in reality that results from this quality or dimension of Being. it is the trust that even if you fall you will be held, if you allow not-knowing, you will be guided, and if you don’t manipulate, you will be taken care of in a way that is appropriate for you. the more we experience this form of Being, the deeper it inspires basic trust.

many of us have not had the ideal childhood, or grown up with any form of basic trust and living daylight. and yet, we can come to provide them for ourselves. we can provide ourselves a sense of safety and security, the sense that we can count on ourselves. Almaas sees this security as essential for the state of living daylight to arise in experience. the experience of living daylight is what slowly destroys egoic hope. love is an action in the now, whereas hope holds out for a particular future. the more we let go of this egoic hope, the more ego activity ceases.

the quality of living daylight functions like a solvent, melting all boundaries. it is the specific energy required for working on the holy ideas. the ego’s sense of separateness is dissolved through love, and everyone and everything is seen as love, the manifestation of an ocean of love. this is holy omniscience.

the holding environment

for Almaas, the experience of living daylight depends on an adequate holding environment in the child’s formative years. he borrows the concept from the work of Winnicott, who describes a good holding environment as one that provides a sense of safety and security, that you can count on to take care of you. it is dependable, consistent, and attuned to the infant’s needs, providing empathically to these needs. when the child has too little sense of holding, it cannot rely on it, so it becomes apprehensive and loses a basic trust in reality.

by having to react to the loss of holding, the child is no longer simply being, and the spontaneous and natural unfoldment of the soul has been disrupted. if this reactivity becomes predominant, the child’s development will be based on that reactivity rather than on the continuity of beingness…..[development is] then founded on distrust, and so distrust is part of the basis of ego development. the child’s consciousness — her soul — internalizes the environment it is growing up in and then projects that environment back onto the world.

A. H. Almaas

the effect of the absence of living daylight in early childhood is experienced in adulthood in many ways. emotionally, it will be felt as the need for holding and the sense that no one and nothing is holding us. the feeling of the need itself may be defended against by a lack of trust that anyone will be there for us. this need for holding may be experienced as the desire to be taken care of, the need to be actually physically held, or the need for someone to see us and support us. this can lead to the physical sense that there is a kind of emptiness in the belly which makes us feel as if we are suspended in a cold and inhospitable space. this emptiness carries with it the sense that we want to be held, but nobody and nothing is holding us.

allowing ourselves to experience this absence of holding is a crucial step in reclaiming contact with the holding dimension of Being or living daylight. in the process of spiritual work, each time we allow for the sense of disintegration or fragmentation and the accompanying fear, each time we experience ourselves coming through, we feel a deeper sense of relief, of meaning, and of the strengthening of basic trust. the more experiences we have that involve dealing with painful states and memories and resolving them, allowing us to connect with various aspects of our fundamental nature, the more that sense of trust is fortified. in this way we become our unfolding.

ego development and basic distrust

the soul grows through internalizing the actions of its primary care givers. these internalized object relations pattern the experience of self, and grow into the sense of being an individual, independent person with a particular character and identity. this becomes the ground for a dualistic experience of reality. the dualistic ego is modeled on an imitation of a holy idea. the holy ideas are not virtues or concepts, but states of mind or consciousness. these states allow the soul to abide in its true nature.

parents who have never experienced their own essential qualities are not capable of providing such mirroring for their children. when an essential quality is not seen and mirrored in the child, or it is seen and devalued, the child may lose contact with it. after many losses of contact with who we are, we begin to accept ourselves to be who we are not. when any essential quality is blocked, it appears instead as a specific emotion. we consciously — later in life — have to go through the hurt at the deepest level, and feel the emptiness of the loss, so that we can glimpse the memory of what was lost. when we see-feel the essence, it can begin to flow again. as the essence recovers, the need for personality diminishes.

distrust is implicit in ego. there is a fundamental distrust of reality and others. the failure of the holding environment in childhood becomes the absence of basic trust and a disconnection from Being. the resulting reactivity is ego activity. what the Enneagram of Character Fixation describes are nine compulsive personality patterns, each arising from the overuse of either the person’s physical, emotional, or intellectual intelligence (overcompensation). each of us unconsciously creates stress or imbalance in our life through overusing our strengths in self-serving ways.

Hurley and Dobson, in their My Best Self: Using the Enneagram to Free the Soul, describe the nine forms in which this distrust presents. each point is wounded in terms of either their capacity to give and receive love, their capacity to hope in self or other, or their capacity to trust in self or other.

point one

in point one the freedom to trust others becomes wounded, and this leads to setting extraordinarily high standards for oneself and feeling wronged when others’ standards are not as high. mistrust makes the one draw inward and take on the over-responsible role of creating some good in an unmanageable world. their motto becomes: “if you can’t trust others you have to rely on yourself alone to get the job done right.” the one has a lifelong struggle with feeling unimportant, and this demands that they intensify their own response to life. as their unconscious desire to trust others is unfulfilled, they come to resent a world that forces them to make up for its lack of trustworthiness, leading to intensity and an overly serious response to life.

point two

in point two the freedom to trust ourselves is wounded, so it feels vital to try to earn others’ trust by helping them. if we don’t trust ourselves, we have to rely on others’ needs and feelings to set our agenda. point two has a lifelong struggle with feeling unlovable, combined with feeling that they cannot trust their own interior information. they take on other people’s needs as their own, and they easily create co-dependent relationships.

point three

in point three the freedom to love ourselves and others is wounded. this makes it easy to get entangled in the tension of balancing the inner (goals) and outer (activity) worlds, and losing ourselves in the process. if loving self and others is difficult, it is easier to do as much as we can and create an illusion of success. the belief that we are not able to give or receive love becomes unconsciously reflected in a multiplicity of interests, through which point three distracts themselves and others from focusing on their being aspect.

point four

in point four the freedom to hope in others is wounded. fours also tend to feel like everything depends on them. as they are inwardly certain that no one else cares about them, they focus on being different or even dramatic. their intense awareness of their own feelings, and the need to express them, leaves point four feeling that if they are not understood they are lost. this leads to the feeling that they’d need to take care of their own needs first before they find a way to be in the world. fours have a lifelong struggle with feeling unlovable that confines them to their own interior world. they believe if they search in there long enough, they’ll find the quality or talent that will make their life worthwhile.

point five

for point five, the freedom to hope in themselves is wounded, and consequently they develop the ability to depersonalize and reduce life to facts and knowledge. the five pulls back from life and relationship to conserve what little they feel they can give. fives have a lifelong struggle with feeling incapable and unworthy of their own confidence in themselves. their solution is to become an expert in the world, hoping that this will help them to avoid inner pangs of emptiness. as they secretly desire others to express confidence in them (they can’t feel it for themselves), they may take on the role of expert or come across as superior.

point six

in point six freedom to trust self and others is wounded. this leads to feelings of insecurity and the need for constant reassurance. however, even when the six receives reassurance it may not have anywhere to land, as they find it as difficult to trust others as much as they do themselves. sixes have a lifelong struggle with feeling incapable in an ever-changing environment. their wound is often unconsciously expressed as seeking reassurance, which they tend to experience as being relational or corroborative. through their social relationships they create a network of support systems that take the edge off their distrust.

point seven

in point seven the freedom to love others is wounded, leading to a perceived need to keep others at bay. sevens keep busy, running through life and looking to fill the void of having no one to love. as they find it difficult to love others, it serves them to keep others happy and entertained, and to make the best of the situation. they confine themselves to their internal world of ideas and planning, where the reality of pain can be avoided. they use their mental agility to devise solutions for others’ problems, but never dare to risk personal involvement with pain in themselves or others.

point eight

in point eight the freedom to love ourselves is wounded. eights are hard on themselves, and then on others. though the eight comes across as confident they can have a lifelong struggle with insecurity and feeling unimportant. they find introspection difficult because they don’t like what they find when they look inward. to compensate for this difficulty, the eight lives its power and influence in the external world of activity, refusing to allow others to treat them as insignificant, as that is how they treat themselves. they feel like they have to fight for justice, and become champions of justice to protect their own rights. they use their strength and energy to command respect rather than dealing with the unconscious pain of feeling unworthy of love.

point nine

in point nine the freedom to hope in self and others is wounded. this leads to a lack of self-esteem and the strategy to get along by being affable but impersonal. the nine feels caught in trying to balance inner and outer pressures. they resist the inward journey, while outwardly they are unaware that their actions make any difference to others. as they feel hopeless about themselves and others, they conclude that it is best to remain unaware of important issues and maintain a lighthearted exterior. nines have a lifelong struggle with feeling unimportant, and so often end up living in the land of inactivity. they believe they can never be personally significant to another. they choose to ignore the serious side of life, and instead find a carefree existence.

the process of the bodymind’s disconnection from its essential nature, or Being, begins very early in life. as the disconnection happens, the bodymind loses its most basic central quality: clear knowingness, clear luminous awareness. it loses its transparency, clarity, and luminosity, and becomes dull and thick. we fall asleep to our own nature of pure clarity and transparency, luminosity, and awareness. we lose our capacity to see reality as it is, and conventional thinking teaches us the reality of ego. through study, self-work, and tending to our personality, we can restore the original essential nature of pure luminosity and pure awareness.

each fixation is a delusion

each of the enneagram points has a fixated view of reality that results from the absence of the corresponding holy idea. the fixated thought perspective of the type acts like a blind spot, and the blindness is the lack of perception of the holy idea, or Being.

in the Enneagram of Holy Ideas, the ego is symbolized as a nine-headed dragon. there are nine forms of the same body of illusion. each is its own specific delusion, and yet part of the same creature. each of these convictions about reality are essentially the opposite of the holy idea, or in other words, a corrupted or unholy idea. the delusion leads to estrangement from reality; a movement away from the harmony and unity of Being. when basic trust is made explicit and part of our experience, the resulting restoration provides access to the perspective of the holy idea.

as we grow into the holy ideas we have to confront or expose our own delusions, the things we take to be true but that are not true. ego is not a lack but a distorted lens. we do not discover the holy idea, as it has always been there. however, it can only be accessed as a perspective when egoic subjectivity has been transcended.

our focus, then, is not oriented toward any particular state of consciousness, but toward correcting our deluded points of view. we are addressing our fundamental, overall view of reality — our understanding of it and our perception of it. the quality of Living Daylight is the grace or blessing needed for this process, but it is not the outcome. the outcome is a letting-go of a fixed cognitive position about reality.

A. H. Almaas

the core constellation of the fixated personality is one unified process with three facets:

1. the loss of the holy idea is the same as the loss of a holding environment and the loss of basic trust. the loss of the particular holy idea leads to its own specific delusion.
2. loss or inadequacy of the holding environment results in the specific difficulty.
3. the loss of basic trust, seen through the delusion, becomes a specific reaction.

the absence of the Holy Idea leads to a specific delusion; the loss or inadequacy of the holding environment is reflected in the specific difficulty; and the absence of basic trust is reflected in the specific reaction. so when the triad of Holy Idea, basic trust, and holding are lost, they are replaced by the egoic triad that forms the core of each ennea-type.

Ali Almaas

all the delusions are principles of the ego, as they strengthen the view of ego. the more we’re able to see through the delusion, the more our egoic sense dissolves. ego and the presence of the delusion are the same thing. as we allow ourselves to see through the specific difficulty, the delusion becomes conscious, and cannot be maintained. as the delusion dissolves, the state of the holy idea arises. this is the recognition of your essential nature, and the faith in it.

now the possibility of experiencing real holding arises, since the specific difficulty — arising from the inadequate childhood experience — is overcome. we come to realize that this natural holding is always present, and this realization brings trust, dissolving the ego’s distrust. when this happens, holy faith — a sense of safety, trust, and ease — arises.

relaxing into Being's unfoldment

to experience the states accompanying the holy ideas, we have to experience reality from a transcendent point of view, beyond ego and personality, where we can perceive the fundamentals or the essence of experience. prior to the transcendent perspective becoming available, we see from the egoic level, a level of differentiation, details, and discrimination. our preferences and judgments are fully present, and we identify with them. we see things from a particular, and thus limited, perspective.

we’ve seen that the nine delusions underlie and support the structure of the ego. most of us act in alignment with these delusions, most of the time. this, in turn, generates the nine painful states, known as the specific difficulties of the nine points. we usually try to resolve this pain through the nine specific reactions, which simply increase our defensive reactions to our experience. to put it simply, we double down on our delusion. the resolution of these reactions can only come about through taking the polar opposite approach, in other words, letting go of the delusions which underlie them. our first step, therefore, is to recognize the specific delusions in our being and behavior. in working with the holy ideas, it is also important to understand and experience the real or objective view elucidated by these ideas.

when you look at your whole life from the perspective of the objective view, you realize everything that happens is guided by an intelligence greater than your own. as long as you maintain that you want it to happen in a certain way, you are striving toward an egoically determined outcome and you remain entrenched in suffering.

Ali Almaas

point nine — holy love — reveals the heart experience of the unity of reality, and that nothing can be without or separate from that love. this perception evokes love in the human bodymind, thereby aligning it with reality, motivating it towards reality, and relaxing it into this reality. each point on the Enneagram of Holy Ideas can be seen as complementary to, and a clarification of, this central idea. each point is a discrimination of the indivisible goodness and unity of reality, of which the bodymind is an inseparable element.

we have seen how each specific delusion — reflecting the loss of the holy idea of that point — manifests in the life of the person in the experiences of the specific difficulty and the specific reaction. they are nine ways of experiencing the inadequacy of the holding environment. in some sense none of the specific difficulties can be resolved when we still have difficulty resolving the specific difficulty of point nine: feeling a sense of inferiority, shame about ourselves, and a sense that we are not lovable, or incapable of love. when we really know that we are lovable, the specific difficulties of the other eight points cannot arise.

similarly, the specific reactions cannot be resolved until we’ve resolved point nine’s specific reaction: falling asleep to our reality. this reaction forms the basis of all the other reactions, or expressions of distrust.

touching essence

we recognize and experience essence when we deeply feel the wounds of our losses in early life, when the stillness of mind becomes pervasive, and when we stop running away from pain or turning pain into a story. the essence — the Self beyond the story-self — lies in the center of the pain. when we touch this essence, it begins to flow again. it is the stuff that our soul and spiritual perception are made of.

as we stated earlier, true nature also has qualities, and these form the basis of spiritual qualities. the essences are the perfections into which Being can differentiate and unfold.

let’s remind ourselves of the essences:

when essence emerges, it transforms consciousness. a fixation is only fully grasped when we penetrate its underlying delusion. essence is the fragrance of the flower that is the holy idea. we know who we are through the perspective of the holy idea, and we feel it through the essence.

…where and when God finds you ready, he must act and overflow into you, just as when the air is clear and pure, the sun must overflow into it and cannot refrain from doing so.

Meister Eckhart

we may have glimpses of the essence in our experience, but we believe that this essence is transient, fleeting, not the stuff reality is made of. the objective view from the holy ideas is that essence is the nature of everything. Almaas reminds us to become aware and certain of this, and to be continually in touch with it, knowing that it is our true nature.

the presence of Essence with its truth, its intrinsic blissfulness, and its intelligence, is there all the time — it cannot go. if Essence is gone, you are dead. you can’t be conscious or aware without Essence.

Ali Almaas

the unfolding of essence becomes the process of living. life is no longer a string of disconnected experiences of pleasure and pain, but a flow, a stream of aliveness.

Essence is your essence, the nature of your soul. in time, the more your experience and understanding of it deepen, you recognize that it is not your essence, but the essence of everything. deeper still, you see that it is not only the essence of everything, but that Essence is the only thing that is actually present; there is nothing but Essence, in other words. then you recognize that the Holy Ideas are ultimately qualities of Essence or Being.

Ali Almaas

the holy ideas

the notion that each fixation is the result of the loss of a particular unconditioned perception of Being implies that ultimate freedom from this fixation is possible only through the experiential realization of the corresponding Holy Idea.

A. H. Almaas

Almaas describes a holy idea as a particular unconditioned, and hence objective, experiential understanding of reality. for example, from the perspective of one holy idea (point eight), reality is experienced as a nondual unity of Being, and the loss or absence of this holy idea leads to the delusion of duality, which manifests in the conviction that there are ultimately discrete objects in reality.

if we want our life path to also be our spiritual path, uncovering these holy ideas in our experience is essential, as this makes it possible to realize our essence. Almaas calls this realization the complete personal embodiment of Being, or Being through the life of an individual. this realization facilitates our becoming a complete human being, a portal through which the universe can experience itself fully.

our sense of self is transformed — not once off, but again and again — when it recognizes and becomes its essential nature: pure Being. the holy ideas are a way to contact what lies beyond personality, or the fixated structure. Claudio Naranjo — who is widely regarded as the founder of the Enneagram types system — observes that understanding our Enneagram is part of the larger work of spiritual realization. he regards the nine ego-types as expressions of the loss of Being, or our essential nature. he further regards the Enneagram’s true value as helping us to reestablish contact with Being. whereas the Ennea-types represent what we’re identified with, the holy ideas represent the move beyond this identification. in this context, “holy” does not mean the opposite of mundane, but rather the experience of reality beyond ego and personality.

each Holy Idea represents a particular direct perception of reality as a specific characteristic or face of the unobscured perception of what is. the nine Ideas, then, provide us with a comprehensive view of objective reality.

A. H. Almaas

since we are already Being, the search for Being is part of our illusion. the more we search the more we confuse ourselves with concepts. it is only when we are willing to discover the truth of this moment that we can meet reality and Being. for Eli Jaxon-Bear, the quickest way from egoic truth to ultimate truth is through not-moving. this entails recognizing the rapidity with which our mental and emotional bodies move into a particular pattern, and bringing this movement to stillness. this, in turn, brings the fixation to stillness.

you know the sprout is hidden in the seed.
we are all struggling, but how far have we gone?
lose your arrogance now and drop deep within.
Kabir

as we will see when we get into them, the holy ideas are not accessible in the egoic realm. they are very much the opposite of egoic perception. for example, type four, which is so identified with uniqueness, discovers their freedom in holy origin, which is completely beyond the opposites of unique and mundane.

Oscar Ichazo saw the development of ego as a direct result of its loss of connection with Being. when we turn away from our unity with what is, we create an illusion that we are a “something” that needs something else from outside itself in order to be complete. Ichazo defines this dependency on what is exterior to the perceived self as the ego. this ego, through its own distortion, manifests as the development of a particular delusion or incorrect view of reality, which Naranjo calls an “implicit cognitive error.”

the holy ideas are nine different perspectives of reality, seen without the filter of egoic subjectivity. these views are only possible if basic trust is deeply integrated and we already know the experience of the living daylight state. all the points are implicit in point nine — holy love — and in the Enneagram of Holy Ideas, are seen as different variations growing out of the experience of point nine.

direct awareness of reality is more fundamental than conceptual understanding. reality is the “suchness” or “isness” of Being. though we may be able to understand the holy ideas conceptually, it is only by experiencing them that realization can occur. and as with all state practices, the more we experience them, the more they shine through our perception.

a holy path

the holy path is really not a path at all. it is the willingness to not move in the face of the impulse of the fixation.

Eli Jaxon-Bear

no path can lead us to our true self, as we are already that true self. a path implies getting from one place to another, but the true self is right here, right now. Jaxon-Bear points out that what we are searching for is also that which is conducting the search. we can discover truth only in this very moment, as it is ever-present. Buddhism refers to this source of Being as the Truth Body, or dharmakaya. the true body is empty, intelligent awareness, the ground of everything.

think of a positive memory about being with another. a moment of real meeting. the facts of the situation (relative truth) may be the two people and what is going on between them. these are mere images. by contrast, the feeling it evokes in us exists as a presence all its own (essential truth). this love has an unchanging existence. it exists as a presence that has substance, energy, affect, and agency.

the only requirement is the willingness to give up everything you believe to be real, in order to discover the truth of reality. without this total willingness, success will remain elusive regardless of practices or techniques. when willingness to see the truth is present, the whole universe supports your awakening. then the Enneagram can be very powerful medicine to cure the illusionary ills of the fixated mind.

Eli Jaxon-Bear