Reclaiming Space from Opportunistic Weeds

August 3rd, 2020 | 2 Comments

Lately I’ve been weeding and mulching according to the sun, working when I can have shade in the heat of the summer. By 8:30 my time’s up, and even that is pushing it. Afterwards it feels good to sit on the porch and cool off, enjoying the improving landscape as the sun lights up the yard.

When I dug out a shrub from the front yard earlier this summer, I didn’t do anything beyond smoothing the dirt to reclaim the space it left. I pulled a few weeds then looked away for a moment. Suddenly the opportunistic crabgrass had not only taken over but grew in a mound threatening to replicate the size of the bush that had been there before. Among the spreading fingers a small cranesbill geranium with pale pink flowers bloomed—who knew you were there? But the voracious weeds nearly choked it out.

Nature abhors a vacuum they say. Physicists seem to be saying there are no vacuums, really. Everything exists in a field that connects everything. But our senses recognize that creating a space invites something to fill it.

Putting things in order, clearing space, is enormously satisfying. It brings peace. Then immediately the world presses in. So we need rituals and routines for holding that space, for preventing the opportunistic weeds from taking over and choking out what would bloom there.

It was a lot of work to pull out the crabgrass and other weeds that took over that fertile patch of soil. The job would have been easier if I had jumped on it sooner, but it’s done now. I worked carefully to keep the volunteer geranium intact while I extracted the weeds from around it. This time I covered the bare ground with a layer of mulch to help keep the weeds down. I need that help to hold the space until I get other things to grow there.

Whether it’s in a garden, or on a tabletop, or between the lines of a day planner, holding space can feel unproductive. It’s the antithesis of having an agenda. And yet holding space is about the healthiest intention we can have.

It’s interesting to consider the difference between an “agenda” and an “intention.” Agenda is a kind of willfulness, the imposition of not only what, but how and when. An intention is more expansive. It names a value and leaves open how to achieve it. It’s the yutori of consciousness (yutori being a Japanese word meaning “a space of sufficiency and ease”). There are times when the focus and direction of an agenda is needed—it enabled me to do the work of clearing the weeds. At other times, intention is needed to allow room to breathe and for new life to grow. While an agenda tries to avoid surprise, intention makes space for the unexpected and creates the possibility of delight on the way to where we want to go. Intention holds things lightly.

Creating and maintaining space in our lives claims the fertile ground of our heart and soul. Staying with our creative and contemplative practices protects us from encroachments that rob us of what we need to be fully alive. We don’t have to let ourselves be overrun by crabgrass, whether it takes the form of negative thoughts from within or impositions from without.

At a time when the news feels more oppressive week by week, fear and despair (or the anger and hate that disguise them) are the weeds that can take us over if we allow it. Our lives individually and collectively are too important to allow that to happen.

We have the ability to love one another and to bring love’s healing to the world. We need space in our lives and our hearts to do that work. The gentle intention of holding space is important right now. Holding and tending our heart space, being watchful for weeds and removing them promptly, will allow beauty and healing to bloom in our hearts, our lives, and our world.

Comments (2) | Cultural Climate,Soul Tending Tags: , , , , ,

Remaking the Landscape

June 7th, 2020 | Click to Comment

I’ve known for months that a shrub in my front yard needed to be moved, but all through the fall, winter, and most of the spring, I avoided doing anything about it. It was a big project and I was focused on other things.

There was nothing wrong with the plant itself, but it was out of balance with its surroundings. It obscured the once-visible house number and blocked the roses trying to grow nearby. This happened little by little, the barely perceptible daily change imparting no sense of urgency. The encroachment grew, until a few days ago when something changed.

The tide of emotion moving through this nation and washing over me needed some kind of release. Grief and pain and anger over injustice is finally permeating our individual and collective psyche at a level we’ve never experienced before. And on that particular day, not knowing what to do about the larger picture, I found myself wrestling with the simpler task in front of me.

I cut into the ground with the tip of my shovel, making a circle wider than the reach of the shrub’s branches. I put my whole body into it, gripping the handle, foot on metal, shoving the blade into the soil with all the strength I could muster. Yet I also worked carefully. This bush was rooted in the wrong place and causing problems in the landscape, but I didn’t want to destroy it. Instead, I wanted to resituate it elsewhere.

When the underground structure was finally exposed, I was able to tip the shrub over. The root system ripped free with the sound of a thousand filaments breaking, muffled by the earth. One root, inexplicably longer and larger than the others, I had to cut with a pruner. I didn’t want to harm the plant, but I was doing violence to its intention to remain.

As I dug and sweated and pulled on those roots I held the question of where I was planted, and in what ways I might be rooted in the wrong place. I held the question of how our collective landscape needs to be remade, and what my part might be.

I continue asking, praying the question of what I can offer to support change, how I can act in a way that is compassionate and responsible. The answers take time. The questions are seeds, and I’m tending the ground where they can grow.

The shrub is doing well so far in its new location. I watch its leaves and water it well, willing it to take hold in this better place. The leaves are indicators but the important work is below ground. That’s where the hidden roots make their connection with new soil.

Beneath the ground unfolds a process that despite its familiarity remains a mystery. The seeds of questions we’re willing to ask break open, pushing new life up into the sunlight.

Susan Christerson Brown

Comments (0) | Cultural Climate,New Possibilities,Soul Tending

The Leaven All Around Us

May 13th, 2020 | Click to Comment

This morning I lifted the lid on my Dutch oven to see the most beautiful loaf of sourdough bread I’ve made yet. The reveal has some drama, and a successful result is something to celebrate. The dough has a life of its own, making each loaf turn out differently.

Sourdough loaf baked in a Dutch oven

My relationship with the starter and the process is ongoing, and includes an element of the unknown. But my understanding grows, and the quality of the bread reflects the cumulative learning with every bake.

This grand experiment began in the initial, shocking days when the pandemic overtook us and normal activities ended. In a spirit of grow-your-own self-sufficiency, I wanted to see if I could capture wild yeast from the air and make my own sourdough starter. The ingredients were flour, water, time, and attention.

It took weeks to coax a bubbling starter into being. I fed it, adjusted its diet, and found the place in my kitchen where it was happiest to live. I even gave it time on my porch when the breeze was warm, inviting more yeast to the party.

My first efforts at bread were heavy and dense—less fluffy pillow and more like memory-foam. But I kept at it. Eventually, both the starter and my ability gained strength. I’m still learning, but I’m making progress.

The loaf I made today came out high and round, golden brown, with rustic edges to the scores I slashed just before placing it in the oven. The aroma while it baked was a dark and yeasty bass note, a hint of the underworld of life not visible or commonly met in the daily round.

The leaven for this loaf was literally taken out of the air. Not thin air, but air dense with life, with wild yeast that move through the world all the time. There’s much more than the virus that moves through the spaces between us.

The cultivation of this starter is a flavorful testament to the fact that we live and move and have our being in a field, not a vacuum. The space surrounding us is rich and dense and full of life. It is not an emptiness but a connective medium. It conveys all manner of ways through which creation affects us, and we affect one another.

We are part of a larger world that exists outside our concrete perception. This greater reality reaches us, impinges on us, supports and challenges us, and works with us when we manage the skillful means and awareness to engage. This rich field—call it Energy, the Life Force, God, the Higher Mind—offers leaven for our lives.

There’s no need to procure yeast elsewhere. Everything we need to bring life to the simplest of ingredients—flour, water, salt—is right here.

Sourdough round cooling

Susan Christerson Brown

Comments (0) | Cultural Climate,Inspiration in the Everyday,Soul Tending Tags: , ,

A Word of Encouragement

March 19th, 2020 | Click to Comment

Excerpt from a letter to those whom I see in my practice. I offer it here to support and encourage others as well.

A windowsill in my office

This is a time to take especially good care of your inner life, just as you follow recommendations for staying physically healthy. Notice what’s happening inside and hold it with kindness and self-compassion. By supporting ourselves in this way we allow emotions to release, rather than have them set up camp and impede our lives. Listed at the bottom of this note are a few online resources you might find helpful in these times.

These days I’m making an effort to be aware of how I’m resisting the current circumstances of my life, and gently inviting that resistance to ease. I’m trying to cultivate the practices that help me engage with others in a calm and grounded way, and to make time and space for the things that help me feel more resourceful and present. Walking in my neighborhood, meditating, listening to music, talking with friends, digging in the dirt, reading, and writing all make a difference for me. I’m seeing how important it is to take a break from the news and allow times of quiet when I can rest, inviting a sense of the greater Presence.

I’m also holding the question of what I might be able to offer as we make the changes coming in the next few weeks and months. I trust that what we’re going through together can create space for reshaping of our culture in a positive way, and I’m curious about how I might help that happen. I’m open to experiencing this time of withdrawal as a chance to reconnect with what is most important. And at the same time, I’m appreciating my connection with others as a primary value in my life.

It’s important to remember that we are not alone. We are in this together, and I believe we are inseparable from the One for whom there are a thousand names. The sacred ground of being holds us in love and sustains us through everything that happens.

I hope you and your loved ones are well, and wish you peace as you navigate this unsettled time.

With love,

Susan

Here are the online resources I mentioned:

For those able to claim space and time at home, this is about creating a half-day retreat:

Blog: Creating a Home Retreat: Finding Freedom Wherever You Are [FREE Half Day Retreat Included]

This is a beautiful site operated by Irish Jesuits. It takes you through a prayer that changes daily:

https://www.sacredspace.ie/daily-prayer

This is a list of mindfulness and meditation apps:

https://www.healthline.com/health/mental-health/top-meditation-iphone-android-apps#buddhify

This is a nine-day course called Novena for Times of Unraveling:

https://onlineretreats.abbeyofthearts.com/courses/54/overview

These are practices for cultivating self-compassion from Kristin Neff:

https://self-compassion.org/category/exercises/

These are instructions for meditation not connected with religion:

How to Meditate

These are instructions for doing Centering Prayer:

Centering Prayer

Here’s a list of virtual museum visits:

The Ultimate Guide to Virtual Museum Resources, E-Learning, and Online Collections

If you provide your email, you can access this list of virtual gallery tours:

https://www.travelandleisure.com/attractions/museums-galleries/museums-with-virtual-tours

These are online art lessons for kids:

http://wildfreeandcrafty.com/2020/03/15/free-online-art-lessons-for-kids/?fbclid=IwAR1ifWn6WxFdQgnvaXygweQMAciYgWv-SLgF-98qmJ31MCth2TgxBdC83WI

And with your email, a sketchbook revival virtual workshop:

https://www.karenabend.com/sketchbook-revival-2020/
Comments (0) | Cultural Climate,Finding Courage,Soul Tending Tags: , , , , ,

Coronavirus and Clarity

March 10th, 2020 | 2 Comments

Everyone has moments of feeling alone, as if we’re plodding through our days disconnected from the rest of the world. But as we watch the spread of the coronavirus, evidence of our interconnectedness challenges that perspective. Perhaps in more normal times we question our role, our belonging, our place in the family of things, as the poet says. The spread of the virus says that what happens to some of us affects all of us. We’re all in this together.

To believe we are separate is to be looking at the world through a distorted lens. We are part of a greater whole. Whether hourly workers have paid sick leave affects everyone. The struggles of small businesses to stay afloat ripple through the community. The decision of whether to stay home when we’re sick affects not only those in our immediate circles, but potentially impacts other places around the world. No one is an island.

We respond to this reality, to the world and our circumstances, with either fear or love. Our choice matters. We can’t choose the emotions that arise as we see the spread of COVID-19, but we can choose the ones we live by. We can’t control events, but we decide how to meet them. Our lives and those of others are shaped by whether we act from fear or love.

I see love in how people are taking care not to spread the virus. Careful handwashing protects not only the ones doing the washing, but those with whom they come in contact. As we learn that the virus is spreading undetected among apparently healthy people, those who aren’t particularly worried about their own health do a great service to those more vulnerable when they take precautions. Love also plays a role in discerning whether to gather and how best to look after a community.

I also see love on the part of health care workers, making themselves and their facilities as ready and as safe as possible. We all take reassurance in the fact that they show up to care for those made seriously ill by this virus, as well as the other illnesses they treat every day. They strengthen our society through the courage and generosity of their work.

Certainly fear is driving behavior as well. My local grocery store displays two new signs: “No face masks” and “No hand sanitizer.” Trading in the stock market seems as panicked as the run on cleaning supplies. Fear has shown up in the senseless suspicion of Asian people, and in the desire to place blame for the outbreak. Fear can also drive us to put our heads in the sand, refusing to live in the real world, ignoring or denying the seriousness of a situation that we do not want to face. Anxiety and fear spread more easily than the virus, another reminder of our interconnectedness.

Yet we can also share a sense of calm and love with one another. Peace in the face of challenge is something we can spread through our communities. A loving presence passes easily from one person to the next, and it alleviates all sorts of suffering—our own and that of others.

Choosing love includes taking care. It means seeing as clearly as we can what is happening, and making good responsible choices about what we will do. Depending on our circumstances, love might mean showing up, or it might mean staying home.

We tend to forget, perhaps for long stretches of time, that love exists at the heart of everything. It’s like the water table deep in the ground, supporting our lives and connecting us to one another. That ever-present source of life remains available, and the more of us who can tap into it and share it, the more readily everyone can drink from its life-giving waters.

Comments (2) | Cultural Climate,Soul Tending Tags: , ,

Radical Advent: The Old King and the Voice in the Wilderness

December 10th, 2019 | Click to Comment

Fairy tales often present an aging king and the search for who will take his place. These stories remain fresh because they describe a cyclically occurring crisis in the lives of individuals and of nations.

A king who no longer has the strength to serve, in a fairy tale, represents longstanding ideals that have lost their vitality. When these guiding principles cease to inspire, they need to be reinvigorated. When they no longer spur people to offer their best, or to strive for the highest good, these crowning values need to be replaced. We need ideals with real power to remind us of what matters, and to lead us forward into life. We need inspiration that connects with our lived experience.

In fairy tales it is not the powerful or clever candidates who pass the tests to become the new ruler. It is rather the one in touch with instinctive and even naïve insight, able to stumble upon the right answer or to find help in an unlikely place, simply by following his nose. When ideals have lost their power, we lose our way. we need this kind of humble, grounded energy to gain vitality and aliveness.

Listening to the gospel reading on Sunday, I realized that this search for revitalizing energy is what John the Baptist exemplifies. He is part of the move to release what no longer inspires us, and to search for what has the vitality to replace it.

John the Baptist goes into the wilderness and lives like a wild man. He leaves civilization behind—no garments of woven cloth, no bread, no roof over his head. He wears animal skins and eats locusts and wild honey. He knows that something new is needed to bring meaning into people’s lives. He is radically open to what comes next, but does not yet know who or what it is.

John the Baptist is important in this season of Advent. His was not a quiet waiting, but an active preparation. He stirs the pot, and things begin to happen. Jesus comes to him to be baptized and then makes his own journey into the wilderness. When Jesus returns, he brings a new teaching and a new reality that changes the world.

When the old is no longer working we must face the frightening task of letting it go. It’s a time of going into the wilderness, of being willing to inhabit that vulnerable place of not knowing. We must set aside our barren practices to allow the vital life force to inhabit us again and propel us forward.

To do this wisely means being open to guidance greater than our own calculations. Instinctive energy reinvigorates, but it can also be dangerous. It is incredibly powerful, able to overrule reason. On the path forward it can be the one step back before the two steps forward. We need connection with both our highest and best ideals as well as the material realities of our lives.

John the Baptist is a shocking character. He shows up when a shock is needed to get things moving. When change is crucial but we don’t yet know what will be, we hear his voice crying in the wilderness.

When a wild man wearing animal pelts arises, change is in the wind. It’s time to answer his call and to make our own journey into the unknown. We need to listen for true wisdom and guidance, whether individually or as a nation, to find the compelling new vision that will lead us forward.  

Susan Christerson Brown

Comments (0) | Cultural Climate,New Possibilities,Seasons,Soul Tending Tags: , , , ,

Learning to Thrive

September 30th, 2019 | 1 Comment

A couple of years ago when I was visiting a friend, I confessed my ineptitude with houseplants. I didn’t understand what they needed, and it seemed like too much trouble to learn. Yet I found myself longing for green and growing life to enjoy indoors.

“You can do this,” she told me, taking up a pair of scissors. She reached into the luscious greenery trailing across her kitchen counter and snipped the end of a branching vine bearing two leaves. “Just keep it in water,” she said as she filled a clear plastic cup. “It will root. That’s it.”  

On the long drive home I carried the little starter plant in the cup holder of my car, hoping that if those simple instructions sufficed we just might have a future together.

I kept that snippet of greenery with me as I moved several times over the following months, eventually transferring it to a substantial coffee mug that wouldn’t easily spill.

Along the way this hardy little plant produced a slender new cylinder of green, much like the pale stalk from which it grew, and within a couple of days a tender leaf unfurled. Rooted only in water, it was growing. Amazing.

Once, in an efficiency apartment with almost no counter space, the heat from a burner singed one of the leaves. I felt bad about that. For almost two years, seeing the dry, brown scar along its edge brought back those cramped quarters. This plant and I had a history.

But a few weeks ago the singed leaf turned yellow and dropped, as if the vine were letting go of an old wound. Why now, I wondered. The remaining leaves stretched toward the sunlight as always, their roots resting comfortably in the only nourishment they had ever known. And I finally understood that if this tenacious plant could live and grow on nothing but water, how much better it might fare with its roots in real soil.  

The vine is thriving now. Lovely as it was before, in recent weeks it has lengthened its reach and opened new leaves. It managed to get by for a long time, but the earthy nutrients it needed have brought an abundance of life. Perhaps it will grow as full and lush as the plant it came from. Certainly it can spare the snippet I cut for starting yet another new vine.

We’re made to survive, and we can live a long time—perhaps even a lifetime—on the watery nourishment that gets us through. But what about those times of knowing that life should feel more abundant?

Things change when we put down roots in the soil of our own true heart. When we meet whatever we find there, with gentleness and compassion, our presence transforms the part of ourselves that we encounter. We touch the ground of being that supports us all.

We don’t have to wait for circumstances to get better, for issues beyond our control to resolve. The nourishing love placed in the depths of our own true heart is available right now.

Where do you find the soil that allows you to flourish?

Comments (1) | Inspiration in the Everyday,New Possibilities,Paying Attention,Soul Tending Tags: , , ,

In the Heart Space

August 1st, 2019 | Click to Comment

Sometimes the only writing I accomplish in a week happens with my writing group, when we spend a few minutes responding to a common prompt. Balance, Not About Me, and What’s Difficult were three of the possibilities to get us started last week. The writing is done quickly to get past the inner censor, and it’s infused with the energy of the conversation we’ve shared. This is what it sparked from me:

The Three of Swords from the Rider-Waite tarot deck

Not only is it not about me, I don’t even know where I am. So that’s an indication of my Enneagram type structure showing up. It means I need to go into the body, find what’s present there. And what I find is a heart that feels assaulted by the realities of this world and its leaders, by the ways people run over others, by the trauma each of us has lived through, endured, survived, and risen above. We move forward even if parts of ourselves were left behind in those devastating places, wounded and powerless, split off from the self that had to keep going.

I feel all of that as a sensation of weight and constriction in my heart. This sense of a heavy heart seems to be both for myself and for others. I asked for an open heart earlier this morning, and confessed in conversation that this is my work, my growing edge, the center of knowing I need to explore. But it hurts, and everything about me doesn’t want to hurt. I want to shut that pain down.

But I’m not able to just move on from it, and I don’t want to deaden it (mostly) because to do that is to deaden myself. So I sit here with this felt sense that sounds like a country song, like my heart was run over by a Mack truck. It brings to mind a song title, “You Done Tore My Heart Out and Stomped That Sucker Flat.” And somehow this, this makes me smile.

This calls for the laughing barrel that Maya Angelou describes, leaning into the barrel to let loose with the laughter forbidden to slaves, the laughter that says this world is f*ing crazy, these circumstances are absurd, but here we are and we’re alive. Alive! And the life showing up in us is bigger than the rules, or the hurt.

There’s a power, a life force holding all of this. Something bigger is at work. And yet my life and yours, my pain and yours, are not less than any other part of it all. I matter. So do you. I’m not separate from the flow of all that is. I’m in it.

What was God thinking, making this world with so much energy unleashed in ways that allow people to hurt each other? It’s like giving a toddler a sharp knife. Who does that? And yet here we are with our knives and our wounds, the cuts we make and the cuts we bear, the scars where we have healed, marking what we’ve learned, the compassion it has taught us, and the tender places we protect.

Hendree—my priest, my friend—says Love is All. He dwells in the heart space and he is my teacher. Maybe all heart types are my teacher. It’s the knowing that feels farthest from me. Grief at the loss of connection drives that space on the map of the Enneagram. Earning back the connection in different ways is what happens there. In my space it’s impossible to believe I can earn that connection, but maybe I can invite it.

For me, opening the heart means being undefended, allowing what messes with my sense of peace and harmony. What makes that ok is remembering and trusting that I’m held, that we’re all held, by Love bigger than anything I can try to recreate on my own.

Comments (0) | Enneagram,New Possibilities,Soul Tending Tags: , , , , , , , ,

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.

Comments (0) | Faith,New Possibilities,Paying Attention,Soul Tending Tags: , , , ,

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.

Comments (0) | Enneagram,New Possibilities,Paying Attention,Soul Tending Tags: , , ,
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »