“maintain neutrality under pressure”
We include this essay on the Enneagram personality assessment because it adds to our understanding of Soul Archetypes. Specifically, Enneagram Type 5 is said to be observant, objective, insightful and visionary, among other traits. They are generally introverts who immerse themselves in their observations.
Vassily Kandinsky was “the founder of abstract painting”[i] and a Russian mystic. “He also exhibited throughout his life the behavioral traits of the Type 5 in the nine-point Enneagram personality typology.[ii]
Although Simple Reality is for everyone, it is possible that a quieter, inward-focused individual can more easily accept and internalize these principles.
In our insight below, Helen Palmer describes the Enneagram as being very, very similar to mindfulness and our Point of Power Practice which is presented in Chapter 3 of this book.
Insight # 74 comes to us from Helen Palmer. Her teaching centers on a centuries-old psychological system for identifying personality types called the Enneagram. The Enneagram has mystical origins having been brought to the West by the Armenian-Greek mystic George Gurdjieff (1872-1949) after he learned it at a Sufi ‘wisdom school’ in Afghanistan.”[iii]
“When you find yourself moving into anger or fear, the first step is just to be mindful, to observe what is happening in the moment and shift attention to the neutral place in the belly. Then you simply wait, so that your energy does not go out reactively and create its inevitable backlash consequences [a reaction]. At the very least, you convert the negative energy into a neutral place [response], which allows you to more easily see someone else’s point of view [compassion]. Eventually, when you can maintain that neutrality under pressure an experience of essence [True Self] can arise.”[iv]
__________
Additional Reading:
- Enneagram, The ABC’s of Simple Reality, Vol 1
__________
[i] Becks-Malorny, Ulrike, Wassily Kandinsky: The Journey to Abstraction. Los Angeles: Taschen, 2007, p. 7.
[ii] Henry, Roy Charles. “Vassily Kandinsky: Enneagram #5.” Who Am I? October 2013, p. 143.
[iii] Ibid.
[iv] Schwartz, Tony. What Really Matters: Searching for Wisdom in America. New York: Bantam, 1995, p. 400.
