Grey Eminence and the Sacrifice of the Personality

Following last Sunday's talk, yet another person recommended that I read Aldus Huxley's Grey Eminence. According to Alan, the recommender:

"It is a study of Father Joseph who was a monk, a mystic, and an advisor to Cardinal Richelieu during the Thirty Years war in France and persecution of miscellaneous protestants and heretics. Huxley was clearly intrigued by how a deeply religious man could have gone so far off track. He rejected the quick answer that Joseph could have just been using religion as a facade for manipulation, but looks deeper."

I read some excerpts and the material here does, indeed, resonate with the Enneagram. For instance:

"religion consists in the exact opposite of self-reliance and self-esteem -- in total self-surrender to a God... suffering himself to be experienced by those who are prepared to accept the conditions upon which that experience may be had: the sacrifice of all elements of their personality..."

and

"the real Satan is the element in every individual being which hinders that being from dying to its selfhood and becoming united with the reality from which it has been separated."

Compare these ideas to the following excerpt from the opening chapter of The Enneagram: A Journey of Self Discovery, by Maria Beesing, Robert Nogosek, and Patrick J. O'Leary:

"According to the Enneagram system, there are nine... types of human personality. Each personality type is is identified in a negative way though it also has positive characteristics. The identifying negativity stems from a specific compulsion ingrained in one's self-concept and having a great influence on one's behavior...

The journey into self offered by the Enneagram is not easy. To many it will turn out to be extremely threatening. It is unpleasant to think of one's basic personality as a 'sin type'. The compulsion serves to protect oneself and offers personal security. To seek to unveil it will be experienced as a kind of 'death' to oneself...

Through the discovery of one's Enneagram type there can be awakened a whole new sense of self-criticism. It will always give one something to repent, something to confess as sin... This self-criticism will in itself already be a basic step to that new freedom promised by the Enneagram, a freedom from being secretly led by the dark side of one's inner self.

The discovery of one's type will also point out a lack of faith on a deep level. Underlying the compulsion of each tye is a strategy for defending the self... As a strategy for self-protection it is a chosen way of 'self-salvation.' The personality has simply chosen a way to acheive security and fulfillment by its own efforts. This is, of course, a mistake. Through the discovery of one Enneagram type there can be awakened a whole new sense of needing salvation..."

Beesing, Nogosek, and O'Leary also offer this gem of insight:

"Although people are not generally proud of what they call their sins, they do tend to be proud of the compulsion characterizing their personality type. They think it makes them superior to those who do not have this compulsion."

In other words, that which we think of as our best trait is also our worst trait.

Let us return to the question of how a deeply religious Christian such as Father Joseph could be such a warmonger. (Check out this article that compares Father Joseph to Mahmoud Ahmadi-nejad.)

Huxley, in his examination of Father Joseph, discusses how nominally positive traits -- loyalty, passion, zeal, willingness to do God's will -- served evil purposes. He writes:

"Father Joseph... was intensely a patriot and a royalist. Born and brought up during the civil wars, he had conceived a veritable passion for national unity, for order and for what was then the sole guarantee of these two goods, the monarchy. This passion had been rationalized into a religious principle by means of the old crusading faith in the divine mission of France and the newly popularized doctrine of the divine right of kings... Hanotaux, the historian of Cardinal Richelieu, writes of [Father Joseph] that, 'he gave himself to two high causes, which absorbed his life, God and France, always ready to work and fight for either cause, but never separating one from the other, always responding to the call of an inner conviction, namely that France is the instrument of Providence and French greatness a providential thing.' Granted the validity of these doctrines - doctrines which he held with a burning intensity fo conviction - it was obviously Father Joseph's duty to undertake political work for king and country, when called upon to do so. It was his duty because, ex hypothesi, such political work was as truly the will of God as the work of teaching, preaching, and contemplation.

Father Josseph believed that the cause of God and the cause of France were inseparable. We must now inquire why he chose to harbor this belief... [One reason] is that the circumstances of his upbringing had created habits of thought and feeling which, in spite of his long-drawn effort to kill out the Old Adam in him, he had found it impossible to eliminate." (emphsis mine)

I diagnose a terminal case of 6-ishness.

The Power of Negative Thinking

Note: This was originally published on 12/9/07.
Every so often, someone comes along to critique the Enneagram (or, at least, an interpretation of the Enneagram) on the basis that it is too negative. One such critic is Susan Rhodes. In her article "Let's De-Pathologize the Enneagram" in the October 2006 issue of Enneagram Monthly (downloadable, for free, here), she writes, "I never liked the idea of looking at personality as a way to measure pathology. I liked looking at personality as a way to explore individual differences. That's why the MBTI appealed to me so much.
When I encountered the enneagram, I tried to use the MBTI personality descriptions as a reference point for enneagram descriptions. But I found this almost impossible to do. It wasn't because the two systems had a different number of types or even a different way of determining the types. It was because the enneagram descriptions read more like 'neurosis types' than personality types. They seemed to reflect such a pessimistic philosophy of human nature."
I have a different perspective. I am a big fan of the Myers-Briggs system, but I think the Enneagram has a huge advantage over it, precisely because of the "pessimistic philosophy" which is, indeed, present within it. Here's an apt quote from The Enneagram: A Journey of Self-Discovery, by Maria Beesing, et al, "In the beginning of this Enneagramic journey into the self what is being asked is the willingness to acknowledge oneself as a sinner. Compulsions are selfish as is typical of sin. They amount to a distortion in being as one ought to be. All the nine types are sin types... If the Enneagram is to be useful, one must discover the negativity of one's personality. Only then can one begin the process of being freed from the compulsion."
This, to me, is the brilliance of the Enneagram. First, it lures you in with what seems to be a neutral to positive description of personality. To a five, it says, Would you agree that your mind is your strongest asset? Would you agree that privacy is something that you value? To the two it says, Would you agree that your personal relationships are of utmost importance to you? Would you characterize yourself as a helpful person? And so on for all of the types.
Next, it says, okay, if you agree, with that, Five, then how about this: Here are all the ways that greed manifests itself in your life. Two, pride is killing you. And so on for each of the types. This second piece is that much harder to dismiss because the first piece was so compelling, and with true realization of the cost of sin comes the willingness to change.
I remember being in Russ Hudson's Psychic Structures and the Superego workshop , learning to meditate, learning to cultivate Presence, growing in compassion, and thinking (as a skeptic and, until recently, an atheist), If it weren't for the Enneagram's precision as a psychological descriptor, I wouldn't even be here to listen to its spiritual implications. And, oh, how I needed to be there!

The Principles of Lust

The White Stone Journal has this interesting article on the seven deadly sins. It says, in part:

"An online poll displayed the following results:
Of the seven deadly sins, this ONE is my biggest failing:
Lust 35%
Anger 18%
Pride 12%
Sloth 10%
Envy 10%
Gluttony 9%
Greed 6% "

When I read this, I began to wonder why lust was such a popular choice. I figured that, since lust is associated with sex, people think it's, well, sexy.
In Enneagrammatic terms, the sin of lust is associated with personality type 8. While this sin may play out literally as an addiction to sex, just as a 7's sin of gluttony may play out literally (I have certainly been at restaurants with many a 7 who ordered practically everything on the menu), it is more fruitful to understand both sins more metaphorically.
In Riso and Hudson's Understanding the Enneagram, lust is described thusly:

"Lustful intensity arises in response to the loss of the Virtue of Innocence. When we are relaxed, open, and present, we feel a natural vitality and experience our 'realness' and freedom directly. When we are gripped by the passion of lust, however, we attempt to gain this sense of aliveness and freedom through the intensity of our interactions with the environment and with others. We do not want to have a discussion: we want to have a discussion, or even an argument. Becoming agitated gives us a false feeling of being strong and real. But to the extent that Eights are blocked from relaxation and presence, they will need to be worked up all the time.
Thus, lustful Eights are not interested in lukewarm responses to life and particularly do not want weak responses to themselves... The more insecure Eights become, the greater their need for intensity, excess, struggle, and control. The need to assert themselves can turn into the desire to dominate their environment and the people in it. Ironically, when we have succumbed to the Passion of Lust, we are quite out of control. The objects of our lust, positive or negative, dominate and control us."

So what we have with a fixated type 8 is a character who, like the neighboring type 7 who chases more and more shallow experiences without delving into any of them deeply enough to feel "full", needs stronger and stronger stimuli in order to feel anything at all.
Not very sexy, in my opinion.