The Veils Parted, then Snapped Shut!

Before I knew anything about the Enneagram I was coaching the head of a nonprofit agency in Cincinnati (let's call him "Brad"). After interviewing his staff and board members, I shared their feedback with him. The short version:

"According to your staff and members of the board, you're highly entrepreneurial, with a strong drive, and you're a masterful networker, building support for your organization's goals with the board and with influential members of the community. But your focus is perhaps too much on being 'Mr. Outside.' Your staff says you're not involved enough in the day-to-day, nuts and bolts aspects of running the organization, and they have a strong desire to build more teamwork. While consensus is a stated organizational value, they describe you as persuading people to do things your way in what is only apparently a consensus-building process."

"Why, that's exactly my profile on the Enneagram!" he replied. "Style Three." 

I was blown away by this response because, serendipitously, only the day before I'd received Helen Palmer's The Enneagram in the mail, mistakenly ordered instead of the book on genograms I was researching. Had Brad not made this connection I would have sent the book back to the publisher. Instead, I decided to read it so I could speak a language familiar to him.

That Saturday morning I sat in bed and opened Palmer's book. Her description of style Three's patterns gave me such insight into Brad's personality I decided to read more, starting with Enneagram style One, and to figure out my own. All had characteristics I could relate to, and I was beginning to give up on identifying myself. Finally, I made my way to style Nine.

As I read, I fell into an intuitive state of knowing: You're on to something big!  Every molecule of my body was tingling with the sense of veils parting, something I'd needed to know that had been standing slightly behind me, waiting to be seen. And here it was!

Underlining style Nine's mediator qualities, I thought, My whole consulting career has succeeded because of my skill in resolving other people's conflicts. I've used my gift in a positive way, but it's been reinforced so much, I've failed to look at my personal avoidance of conflict. I've been too busy helping other people not make waves! Continuing, I became excited to learn about this personality style's distractibility. This is so important to me. I'm going to go make a pot of coffee and spend the entire day reading about this wonderful system.

I wandered toward the kitchen, but in the hall on the way noticed a pile of dirty clothes I'd set out to wash, so I made a trip to the laundry room. When I returned to the hall I realized I hadn't started the coffee, but on my way to the kitchen saw the telephone and remembered I hadn't called my Mom in a week, so while the coffee was brewing I called her and we talked for almost an hour. The veil had snapped shut! 

As I sipped my third or fourth cup of coffee I walked around my condo, trying to decide what to do with the rest of the day.  

First, I'll get dressed.

There in my bedroom I saw Palmer's book lying on my bed where I'd left it more than an hour earlier, and again the veils parted.  

Not only had I been given a new vision of my gifts, I'd experienced a prime example of the ego-state that had held me captive -- distracting myself from the most important of my own agendas, to find myself behind the programmed patterns.

We'll See

"Such bad luck," said the villagers when a farmer's horse ran away.

"We'll see," replied the farmer.

When his horse returned with three other wild horses, they exclaimed "How wonderful!"

"We'll see," he said.

Then his son was thrown while trying to ride one of the untamed horses and broke his leg, The villagers, of course, offered their sympathy.

"We'll see," said the farmer.

Because of his broken leg, the son was passed by when military officials came to draft young men into the army.

Responding to the villagers' congratulations on his good fortune, the farmer replied, "We'll see."

This Taoist tale came to mind when one of my clients expressed frustration with the lack of growth in his business. "I might have to get a job," he said. "Horrible!"

His anxieties brought to mind my own concerns early in my career. Seeking a logical solution may be helpful to some, but the failure of logic can be a cue to access your intuition. Maybe you'll only feel a nudge ("Something feels right about this, though I'm not sure why"). I've learned, even with experience that seemed at the time to be a failure, how important it is to keep your vision intact. Here are several examples from my own career: 

After completing my PhD at age 42, I quit the job that had carried me through the final years of graduate school (during a decade of post-divorce single parenting) because I got angry at my boss. I naively thought I could create my own consulting business but barely managed to squeak by for almost nine months and finally reached the point where I couldn't pay the rent. I was getting desperate when a friend called. One of his former students worked for Shillito's Department Store's HR Department, and they were looking for an internal training consultant. The salary was barely a living wage, I regretted having to bypass my vision of independent consulting, but I had no other options.

We'll see.
 
Among other duties at Shillito's, I was responsible for sales training -- a real stretch for me as I was shy and extremely self-conscious in front of a group. During my time there, I also worked on a project for the Director of Executive Development from the parent company Federated Department Stores (FDS), only a block away in downtown Cincinnati. He wanted a project quicky summarized in writing and I was confident about my writing skills so I'd volunteered.

Three years into the Shillito's job, I was offered a job by a friend for twice as much as my current salary, working as an educational consultant with a software technology firm. I left Shillito's feeling somewhat disloyal, but I was barely making ends meet and couldn't turn down the extra income.

We'll see.

Three months after that, out of the blue, the FDS Director whose writing project I'd completed offered me a corporate OD job that again doubled my income. He said internal policies were such that I would not have been a candidate for that job if I hadn't left Shillito's.

In the corporate OD role, I gained experience coaching senior executives in Federated's many retail companies who were being primed for key positions in company leadership. Again, a big stretch for me, not only to overcome my shyness, but learning to deal with the resistance of executives who resented me in my corporate role. Four years later, FDS was bought in a hostile takeover and their OD department eliminated. The severance pay was enough to live on for at least six months, but I had just turned 50 years old, and didn't see any opportunities in my future. 

We'll see.

A week later the Senior Vice President of Human Resources for CSX Corporation hired me as a private consultant for senior executive development in their subsidiary companies. I negotiated a contract with CSX that took me all over the U.S., yet left time to develop other business. I would not have known how to close that deal had I not had the sales training experience. And I'd not have been approached by the CSX HR person except for my work with Federated's executive development methodology, which he'd adopted for his corporation. Again, I would be sent from a corporate office to "help" individual company executives, but I now had the training and experience to quickly develop their trust.

In the early stages of my new career as an organization consultant, a Cincinnati client introduced me to the Enneagram, which he'd learned in a spiritual retreat with Richard Rohr. Fascinated with how this model gave me useful insights into my clients' patterns, I started asking my clients if they'd "barter" a couple of hours with me--I'd work free for two hours if they'd tell me their stories and help me learn the Enneagram in depth.  I eventually taught it to all of them and their teams, taking extensive notes. This was early in the Enneagram's development beyond a small group of seekers, and no one was yet writing about its applications in business settings.

Intrigued by a request for articles on business applications from Clarence Thompson, then editor of The Enneagram Educator, I contacted him, he was interested, and my articles began appearing in The Enneagram Educator. I was exhausted from all the travel required by my coaching business and my second marriage was sinking, so I retired, started a web site, and focused on writing.

We'll see. 

When that marriage ended, I had enough retirement income to live on and was free to move to Florida to be near my family, but I was devastated emotionally and not paying attention to my investments . . . until the high-tech market crash and no more retirement income!

We'll see.

This was a few years after Coach U had become well-known, and the word "coaching" had become part of business vocabulary. In another development that would serve me well, though no effort of my own, other coaches had made coaching by phone a popular option. The Enneagram was also becoming more popular, and now I was one of the few with experience in both coaching and the Enneagram.

Meanwhile, Clarence had not only begun publishing my articles--he'd become a dear friend and eventually my co-author of Out of the Box Coaching with the Enneagram, the first Enneagram coaching book published. On the strength of our book and riding the waves of Enneagram popularity and phone coaching as an option to extensive travel, I began to build a phone coaching business, even though I was now in my mid-sixties!

I could not have predicted or planned for the wavering trajectory of disappointments and opportunities that fulfilled my vision of having my own business, but on a scale of much greater experience and learning. Nor could I have known that path would eventually lead me into happily coaching by phone with clients all over the world until I was 82 years old.

I'm now in my second year of a diagnosis of autoimmune disease that's attacked my lungs, and living quietly tethered to an oxygen tank, not knowing how long I have to live or what my quality of life will be. 

We'll see.

Embracing Pain, Overcoming Fear

Soul Collage: My Creative Self

Tonglen is a Buddhist breathing practice to overcome our fear of suffering, awaken the compassion inherent in all of us, and release the fixations of ego. Anytime you suffer, this practice will be healing. 

Even if you can't name your pain or experience it fully, you can sense it in your body. Stay in contact with that awareness and breathe in your pain with the wish to take away your fear. 

Note that you are not asking to take away your suffering, but rather your fear of suffering. Then breathe out relaxation, relief, joy. Do this for several breaths.

You can also begin the practice by taking on the pain of someone you know, breathing in the wish to take away their fear, breathing out relaxation, relief, happiness for several breaths.

Doing so, you may come face to face with your own fear, resistance, anger or any form of personal pain, often when you are feeling stuck.

Then you can change the focus and do the practice for yourself and all others like you who are feeling the same pain. I especially love this third aspect of tonglen practice, breathing in the pain of everyone in the world who suffers the same feeling, breathing out relaxation, relief, and joy. It touches me as a reminder that none of us is completely alone, that all our emotions are shared with anyone who has ever lived.

Tonglen may be a formal meditation practice. You can also use it any moment you experience pain or see others in pain. As you invite this larger view of reality, you'll begin to notice your perceptions changing. Your assumptions of how things are will not be nearly as solid as before.

The Enneagram: A Compelling Vision

Susan Olesek's TED talk on behalf of the Enneagram Prison Project (EPP), Both Sides of the Bars, is the most compelling Enneagram presentation I've ever seen, for her own transparency, for her clarity and vision, for her compelling examples, for her intelligent presentation, and most of all for the power of her presence. This is the finest example of how life-changing the Enneagram can be in the hands of someone on an authentic spiritual journey. See also this Forbes article about Olesek's work.

Breaking Up Is Hard to Do

We love our egos, don't we? We get along so well together. And what a relationship! It’s been life-long, predictable, we’re safe—more or less. 

OK, fine, we get angry, we feel hurt, we challenge our constraints but, oh, the seduction of familiarity. 

And, typical of any long-standing relationship, breaking up is difficult—no matter how strong the desire to end it.

I’ve coached many clients to observe and break free from habitual patterns. But I must admit, for them and for me, ego much prefers to wear its mask.

Years ago I was scheduled to be in a workshop where I'd be videotaped describing my lifelong change process, and one of the questions would be about Enneagram style Nine’s fundamental belief: I don't deserve to exist. Though I didn’t consciously feel this way about myself, I knew the story was in there somewhere, and spent weeks prior to the workshop being mindful of clues to that belief. Slowly, I began to see evidence.

As a small example, I became aware how fast I read, even when enjoying fiction or poetry for pleasure. I heard, as if magically radioed in from my past, Mary is such a good girl. She does exactly what she’s told and she does it quickly. I remembered being praised for how many books I could read in a week. That expanded to memories of being praised at work for how quickly I completed projects. I saw how this fed my unconscious story: If I do things quickly, people will praise me, I’ll feel worthwhile, and deserve to exist. 

But I didn’t experience the belief, it was still an idea. This continued up through and past the workshop — interesting insights, a deeper level of awareness, a new perspective on coaching clients by looking for their fundamental stories. Still, I hadn’t yet experienced the truth of my story.

Several weeks later, I received the DVD of my interview, eagerly turned it on, and boom! I saw myself as fat, old, and BLAND. I was completely crushed. I could not identify with that woman on the screen!

For a full day my ego danced around looking for ways to accept the external evidence that contradicted my self-image. I read about strategies for embracing growing old. I considered following the path of aging boomer artists Alice and Richard Matzkin (The Art of Aging: Celebrating the Authentic Aging Self) and painting a self-portrait, warts and all — still feeding the story by trying to refute it: I am worthwhile as I am! 

Then, on the second day, I experienced the fundamental story that had been deeply unconscious until that moment. I am worthless. I don't deserve to exist. I felt it down to my bones, my heart was full of shame, and I knew it to be true.

On the third day, I fell through. The phrase fell through is inadequate to capture the experience. I can, however, describe my reaction when I again viewed the DVD of my interview. I felt compassion and even delight, a feeling akin to Oh, so that’s the body and mannerisms my soul is riding in. 

Since then I've seen significant changes in myself. My defensiveness dissolves more quickly — and in a way that’s very different from tamping down feelings — a sensation of lightness, each molecule more alive. 

I’m not saying I’m transformed, of course. In the immortal words of Valentine Michael Smith from Stranger in a Strange Land, “I am only an egg.”