I’mportant

June 29th, 2019 | Click to Comment

This morning I had coffee on my front porch—a rare pleasure that takes more time than I can usually afford. Or so I’ve long convinced myself. Apparently I believe there are more important things to do than taking in the abundance of an early summer morning. That belief has probably caused me to miss out on a lot of other good things as well.

There are so many things I can’t take time for, I tell myself all too often. I have important things to do. I’m portant. As if goodness and value is something I need to manufacture.  As if there were not something more vast and wise and powerful that wants to show up through me.

The sure sense of what’s important grows distorted when it becomes “I’m portant.” I’m portant says that that the quality of my life and of those around me is all about me—what I do, what I know, what I contribute. I’m portant is what happens when I lose connection with the source of life and instead believe everything hinges on the effort I make to be safe and worthy and loved.

“Portent” foreshadows what’s to come, and I think of “I’m portant” in that way, as if I’m the one determining what’s to come, as if I were in charge. When I’m trying to be the prime generator of my life, I lose touch with the greater reality. It’s like struggling to touch bottom when I could simply let the water hold me up. Or trading away my place in the magnificence of creation for a small world of my own making.

So I’m practicing creating some space between me and the day’s demands. I’m trying to discern the truly important priorities as opposed to the ego’s clamor of “I’m portant.” Pausing to enjoy the world helps me remember that a vast and powerful life force causes everything to unfold, including my life and work. I have a part to play, but I don’t have the job of making it happen by myself. In fact, when I act as if it’s all up to me—believing that I’m portant—I cut myself off from the flow of life that would carry me forward.

Of course, there’s the reality of everyday life to navigate. Showing up at work, getting kids to school, arriving for appointments on time is part of an orderly, responsible life. We can’t always sit on the porch. But making space within the calendars that drive us is part of a life well-lived.

We are more than our schedules and obligations. Every moment marked by the clock is also a moment that manifests what is timeless. There is a greater reality in which we live and move and have our being. In the moments when we can remember that, there is peace.

Those moments enjoying the lavender budding on new stalks, a wren hopping across the porch, and even the ubiquitous morning glory vines winding up in new places, feel a lot like vacation. I feel connected to a world that encompasses more than the current political climate, one that isn’t pitching me to buy anything.

But old patterns die hard. Part of me wants to focus on the weeds that need pulling. “I’m portant,” is the message when those weeds call to the self that is driven to be useful, to get things done, to make the place look good. Yes, there is a time for weeding. But that work can be held in a wider context, one that honors and appreciates the living, growing world.

I do better when I remember that I’m not so portant after all. My mind is clearer when I’m not trying so hard to think. My heart is more open when I bring awareness and compassion to my own limitations. I move through the world more graciously when I can relax and receive the sensory information all around.

Perhaps instead of portant, I can be present.

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Why I Work with the Enneagram

May 14th, 2019 | Click to Comment

When I began studying the Enneagram, it was to understand more about myself and others. The Enneagram is great for making sense of why we do what we do. But figuring out our type is only the beginning of what is possible. I continue working with the Enneagram because it offers a path toward transformation.

Diagram of the Enneagram

To briefly explain, the Enneagram (from the Greek ennea, meaning “nine”) names nine basic types of people, with nine different essential gifts and inherent challenges. We have access to all of these human traits, but our Enneagram type colors how we process our experience. Our type is the lens through which we view the world.

Understanding our Enneagram type makes possible a new level of self-awareness. Appreciating the basic human longings that motivate the nine Enneagram types naturally cultivates greater compassion for ourselves and others.

But it’s important to remember that our essential self has no Enneagram type. Our type is the coping mechanism we formulated long before we were conscious of what we were doing. Our type is the way we found to make our world ok when our essential well-being felt threatened. 

Our type structure helped us when we needed it. As life unfolds, the consciousness and self-awareness that makes us human also gives rise to a sense of self-doubt and disconnection. As we grow up, there comes a time when we lose our natural connection to the joy and vitality of being alive. Or to put it more poetically, we inevitably experience being expelled from the garden.

When that happens we work to overcome what we perceive as our shortcomings, and we do this in the nine basic ways named by the Enneagram. We reach for our strongest gift, believing it’s up to us to create or earn a sense of connection, safety, or worth.

Understanding our Enneagram type helps in those moments when those deeply ingrained automatic patterns show up. We begin to notice when habitual impulses try to take over, and we learn to pause. In the space created by that pause we can be more perceptive. We can consciously choose what to do. This is the path toward transcending our type structure and becoming free.  

In this way, noticing our type structure in action comes to serve as a bell of mindfulness. When we realize we’re being driven by old patterns, we can learn to respond differently. Instead of automatically following our habitual escape patterns, we cultivate the ability to stay present. In doing this we lay down new neural pathways and begin developing responses that we consciously and freely choose.

Working with our type patterns helps us to wake up. We learn to see more clearly and act more effectively. We experience how the divine life force sustains us. We learn to differentiate between our true self and our conditioned responses. We become less susceptible to toxic influences, whether in the form of external situations or internal patterns. Instead of relying on unconscious coping mechanisms we learn to be present to ourselves and to the situation as it is, and to act from a place of higher wisdom.

I haven’t mastered all of this, of course, but I’m grateful to be on the path. Working with the Enneagram has placed me into the flow of life in a way that brings a new level of beauty, meaning, and connection.

I’d love to serve as your companion as you make your own Enneagram journey. Write to me at susan@mildlymystical.com with your questions or to schedule an Enneagram typing interview. I’m happy to meet you at my office in Lexington, Kentucky or online via Zoom.

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Metanoia

April 6th, 2019 | 1 Comment

In Leonard Cohen’s dark lament for “The Future,” he returns again and again to the refrain:

When they said,

‘Repent! Repent!’

I wonder what they meant.

Cohen cared enough about language, history, religion, and culture, to understand the importance of that question. It’s a profound question, and the heart of Christianity turns on the answer.

The English word “repent” is a judgmental word. It’s a power word—an order. It wants to force us to our knees with all we’ve done wrong. It tries to bully us into submission to an outside authority—some person or institution claiming to speak for God. The word “gospel” means “good news,” but where is the good news in the demand to repent? “Repent” has sent people streaming away from that version of Christianity, often with good reason.

“Repent” is also a poor translation of the Greek word attributed to Jesus. The Greek word, rendered into a version we can read in English, is metanoia. It’s a combination of meta, meaning beyond or greater (as in metaphysics, which considers reality beyond or above physical/material existence) and a form of nous, meaning the mind. A better translation would be something like, “go into your higher mind.”

Jesus spoke Aramaic. The gospels were written in Greek. Latin was long the language of the church, which resulted in yet another translation removed from the original. All of which mean that English bibles are at best twice-removed from Jesus’ urgent message, and sometimes even more.

When Jesus returned from his forty days in the wilderness the first thing he wanted to tell people was to go into their greater mind and believe the good news. He was inviting people into a new approach to life. It doesn’t make sense that huge crowds of people would show up, curious about a message that berated them for their past shortcomings. Rather, it was his lived experience of metanoia and the possibilities it opened up that drew them to hear his teaching.

The perennial mistranslation of metanoia, persistent as dandelions in spring, was seeded into the Christian faith with the early Latin translations of the Bible. Those early church fathers rendered metanoia into the Latin paenitentia, having to do with penance. Jerome retained paenitentia in his definitive translation, leading to the English translation of “repent.”

In our time, a kinder and gentler approach to “repent” has been to see it as meaning “to turn.” The sense of “turning” comes from some of the passages of the Old Testament, or Hebrew Scriptures, where the original Hebrew was translated into the Greek metanoia. But the meaning of metanoia in those passages means a change of mind, and not turning away from sin, unless the latter meaning is carried by the context.

So even the less punitive understanding of “repent” as meaning “turn” misses the point. Metanoia is not about what you’ve done in the past. It’s about opening your mind and living from a higher perspective.  

Whenever I see the word “repent” in connection with what we’re supposed to be doing to grow in spirit, I translate it this way: Go into your higher mind. Become more connected to your Higher Self. Live from the spark of the Divine within, the wisdom that is always with you. Believe the good news—that this life is so much more than the striving ego would have us believe.

Walking that path is what the spiritual journey is all about. Living into that perspective is what faith communities help us with. Finding practices that support the journey is what we need.

I’m grateful to Fr. Hendree Harrison, rector of The Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd, for introducing me to the work of Ron Rolheiser. Rolheiser addresses the mistranslation of metanoia in this video, the first part of which you can see here.

And he contrasts metanoia with paranoia here.

This article explores the translation issues.

And this gives an overview of the history of metanoia and its translations.

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