EnneaSite by David Gray

The Dragon Of The Enneagram Emerges

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The Universal Human Condition

For those following the Big Hormone Enneagram podcast series on the Bhavachakra, here’s another evolving model I’m developing.

*** This is intended as a universal model of the human condition/human mind, a way in which we all have a relationship with all six stackings (‘Realms’) at a meta-structural level.

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Video Series- Instincts, Elements, Animals, Cycles

The ecosystem I’ve introduced in the realm of the Three Instincts has proved to be an interesting angle to illuminate core aspects of what the Instincts are at a base level.

Relating the Social Instinct to Air, Self-Pres as Earth, and Sexual as Fire & Water gives new perspective on the qualities and tonalities of the Instincts, both as a means to clarify one’s own instinctual stacking for oneself and others, and to sense and experience the instincts in oneself, no matter what instinct is dominant for you.

Have a look and let me know if these ideas resonate for you.

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The Sun Dial enneagram

If you’re a listener of the Big Hormone Enneagram podcast, you may have heard me mention a Sun Dial schema that I apply to the Enneagram symbol. Per the (rough draft) graphic shown here, it’s fairly straightforward: Point 3 represents the East, 6 is the West, and 9 is midday sky. 

The Sun is, then, traveling counterclockwise on the ennea-symbol, from 3 upward to 9 and down to 6, where it then ‘submerges into night’ at enneagrammic points 5 and 4.

The line that connects 3 and 6 therefore represents the horizon line of the planet. 5 and 4 are thus Underworld dwellers or hellions or just profoundly misunderstood.

As might be apparent already, this modality applied to the symbol generates numerous insightful metaphors …some of which I’ve identified; some of which are yet crouched down in the skinny…or waiting in these long lines, number in hand, hoping for their turn. 

As you may have heard, the Sun rises in the East — at Point 3.  And from our imaginative earthly perspective, it’s thrusting upward, surging higher, rising athletically to the top, motivated to hit its peak number… the way people who are 3s can be.  This gets at another quality in Type 3 …of embodying a role as universal flag-bearer of Hope, through their active example infusing us with the feeling of ‘the dawn of a new day,’ filled with fresh possibilities and potential achievements.

3 is also the archetype for Personality in general.  And so, we ‘put on the face’ of our personality each morning, after emerging from the darkened limbo of the dream world.  It’s interesting to watch yourself become your personality as you wake up.  There’s a brief phase, there, where it could go differently. But…. we put the whole thing back together each morning, put on that old uniform, go to work – sometimes just the deadly serious work of being our personality.

The Sun travels up to the neutral of Point 9 – here it’s not East, not West.  Takes no sides in the daily debate, even as it cheekily splits the day in half.  And then, defying the workday itself, Point 9 imposes a kingly relaxation – a lunch break, right in the middle of productivity.

Sun continues around to Point 6, where it takes us all into the uncertainty and insecurity of unseeing / unknowing: darkness is creeping and night is close, we’re about to lose our sense of direction and the orienting beacon of the Sun.  Maybe the nightly stars will form up into zodiac gods to guide our fate and see us through this unnamable darkness.

So, looking at the line between 3 and 6, many or most of us generally have this idea of being ‘workers’…working from sun up to sundown. People identify with what they ‘do for a living’ (do = 3, living = 6).  For good or bad, we associate ourselves with how our vocation contributes to the greater society or nearby community, or with our work’s ability to sustain and support us and those near and dear to us. This is the universal line between 3 and 6.

Besides the patternistic rut we’re unintentionally digging in the horizontal road to work each day, we’re trudging a deep groove of Personality in the earthly horizon along this 3-6 line.  This is a very flat existence.  It’s why, however, when the camera zooms way up and out to show the big blue-green spinning planet, there’s a flutter of inspiration in our bellies at the pregnant idea of a rounder, more all-inclusive perspective for ourselves, personally, and everyone…and how wide this new holistic vision might split us open at the ‘seems,’ if we can get our harried head around it.

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book support

 

I’m focusing on my Enneagram book, and would appreciate your support and input.

I’m utilizing several new conceptual approaches to the Enneagram Types and Instincts.  Having studied and worked with the Enneagram for 30 years, as well as authoring the Enneagram website EnneaSite.com, over the last few years my thinking has landed in a vivid symbolic overlap between the Instincts (or Instinctual Variants) and a central ancient Buddhist symbol known as the Bhavachakra (or Wheel of Life).  
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At the center of this Wheel is a pig, a snake, and a rooster, chasing each other in a circle and biting each other’s tails. Traditionally, as a set of base archetypes that represent core aspects of our overall human psychological dilemma, these animals allude to ignorance/delusion (pig), aversion/hatred (snake), lust/desire/grasping (rooster).  My proposition, however, is that there’s a second layer, hidden thus far — an intuitive relationship between the characteristics of these three creatures and the typological qualities of the Instincts (Self-Preservation, Sexual, Social).

Tying in the Buddhist philosophical worldview illuminated by this Symbol and the insights into the Three Instincts that these allegorical animals represent, the suggestion here is that, at the axle of this Great Wheel, in symbolic space, we’re essentially glimpsing into the psychic source matter that forms the rut that is our personal psychology. The snake, pig, and rooster represent the primordial raw materials as well as the electricity that animates the skeletal framework of our typology and personal psychology.

Another major component in the approach I’m taking is the use of metaphorical correlations between the three instincts and the Classical Four Elements (water, earth, air, fire). 

The interest of this book is predominantly not in philosophy or the sciences, or even spirituality in any direct way, but in the archetypal forces and symbols that underlie the nine personality types and the three instincts, which are more deeply understood and accurately conceptualized through such things as the classical Elements.

Besides their traditional utility in various esoteric and scientific subjects, the Elements can be seen as animating forces that light up the human psyche – or as a bridge between the science of our biology and the abstract architecture of the psyche and personality.

Fire in the body rises in the psychological state of ‘the heat of passion,’ ‘flames of burning desire,’ etc. The existence of these figurative phrases is urging us to look at the Elements in a psychological context.

The Four Elements have been studied, symbolically utilized, considered in multiple classical contexts, including the philosophies, sciences, and esoterica of ancient Greece, Persia, Egypt, Babylon, Renaissance Europe, among others. But turning to our day-to-day connection with these energies: We speak of someone being warmhearted/coldhearted/incendiary (temperature/Fire), or entrenched/stuck/dogmatic (solidity/Earth), mercurial/flighty/footloose (mobility/Air), inconsistent/draining/juicy (fluidity/Water), etc.

I appreciate your participation in my writing process, and am looking forward to sharing previews and excerpts of the book, which are available now if you’re interested.

Many thanks,
David
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