Everything
Has Sanctity
(Interview with an
Enneagram One)
I'm collecting real-life
stories of the change process through these interviews so others
can see what it's like
for each of the Enneagram styles as they grow toward self-realization,
in the hope readers will learn from your story. To begin, what does the word "transformation" mean to you?
Transformation is an absolute change. It's not
modifying what's there, it's giving up what was, and putting the
pieces together in a completely different fashion. To me it's part of
my growth process as a person. It
means surrendering, giving up what I felt was important before,
because without the giving up there is no transformation. And
it's a journey in fits and starts. I can get bogged down. Usually,
I'm already down the road before I realize it: "Oh, that's what that was all about!" And that's one of the beauties of it:
if you function in the here-and-now you aren't cognizant
of change. We don't have to know and we really don't
know, because if we had to spend all our time thinking, "Gee,
what does this mean?" "What will happen if I do this?" then we
thwart ourselves from actually doing something. Coming into this
openness was
a revelation for me a long time ago.
How long ago was that, roughly?
Gee, I'd say less than 20, more than 10 years
ago. I can't tell you exactly when, and I really wasn't even
aware of it until my children said, "Hey, Dad, you're
different!" Then I started to reflect on it and realized that, "Yeah, I am
different." For one thing, I'm more open about
myself and more open to listening vs. pontificating.
Could you frame any of those
changes in terms of being a One?
Sure. The acceptance of less than my vision of
perfection. And with that, and probably more pertinent to
showing myself and being available, is to acknowledge the worth
of people. This goes back into my upbringing, because to do well
was expected, to excel was expected, and I never got
any strokes for excelling because it was
expected. That was not because of superior background as far as
family position or wealth. My father was a tailor and my mother a cook. I spent the first six years of my
life -- besides at home -- living with my mother in the house
where she was a domestic. I saw the fruits of success, but they weren't
mine. They were mine to enjoy to some extent as a little kid because the people my mother worked for thought I was a nice
little boy. At the same time I'd be helping my mother polish
furniture. When I was about nine years old we spent a couple of
summers in Vermont where my Mom and Dad were the summer help for a
couple of spinster sisters who ran a boarding school and whose
relatives would occasionally visit. Some of their grandkids came around that were my age. They
wanted to play and I wanted to play, but I was supposed to be
cutting grass. I was a little bit
ticked off at that, that I couldn't play with the other kids,
but at the same time I remember an off-hand comment from one
of the members of the family, "What the hell is he doing
here?" So that was a wake-up call saying, "Oh, you really
are different." That goes way back, but it's been pertinent
throughout my life. I guess it's helped my feelings of
compassion.
You started talking about making yourself more available, acknowledging the
worth of people. And going back to your childhood, I'm
gathering those were experiences where people didn't
acknowledge your worth as a human being.
It wasn't so
much me, it was the way my parents and my family were treated. I was an only child but my community around me was
mostly Slavic, Hungarian domestics. We lived in New Jersey and
worked in a town of mostly wealthy people. So we'd have a big crowd at the house on Thursdays
and Sundays, which was the day off for my relatives. The family
environment was very rich, very European. We had lots of
extended family and it was wonderful, except that my father died
when I was 12. By the time I was 14 years old my mother was deferring to
me. I was the
"man," which made me grow up real quick. Fortunately a new kid
moved into the area when I was 16 or 17 and I latched onto his father. My
friend
be off with other guys and I'd hang around
with his dad, who in retrospect
was a surrogate father. It was very helpful for me, and my mother supported it, so there wasn't any conflict.
As you look back over your life,
what do you think are the major changes?
The most significant one is allowing
myself out of my shell and consequently letting other people
in. I was very
much a child of the fifties in my marriage. I was a duty-bound
individual and I decided I'd made my bed and was going to sleep
in it. In that way I was a
good father and a good husband. But in other ways I was
probably a bad father and especially husband, because I was very
anxious to change my wife into what I thought the business
person's wife should be. I had no idea what I was talking about,
but there were examples that
appealed to me. My wife wasn't that, and she still
isn't. She outlasted me! I changed to her side of the fence.
So, what…to dress a certain way?
The
way she dressed, and her value system is so right and
it's never changed, but it wasn't the value system I saw in the
wives of my business associates, the ones who were "getting
ahead." From where I can see now, it
was superficial
nonsense, and my wife didn't want any part of it. I don't think I was a very good husband at all, but she
hung in. Our favorite saying now is, "Divorce, never;
murder, yes!" (laughter)
You were very anxious to change her, and now you're
not. Some of that is credit to her hanging in, but you're
different, too.
Well, some of that is taking the time to look at
this woman I was living with and realizing, "She's
right!" Where that fits into my own transformation I think
is coincidental. Her journey started probably 25 years
before mine did, so I'm playing real catch-up ball. Something in
me finally surrendered. But there was an interim period where it was
really rough for her, because my reaction was, "If you won't
change, to hell with you." As an example of that, I was always a sales person, and I
inherited a job from a guy who was retiring. Wanting to change
my wife had its genesis before then, but really came into focus
at that point. There
was a period of time when I seriously considered moving to the
wealthier part of town, but it never came about because
the kids were all in school and when we thought about it even
slightly seriously, we said, "Let's wait until the kids are out
of grammar school…let's wait until…" so it never came about. If
we had made the move I would have had to associate with the movers and
shakers but work on a day-to-day basis with the guys in the
mill. By keeping my distance geographically I could manage both ends very
well. But this was a time when my wife chose not to change
and I excluded her from most of my activities. I took great pains, from a business
point of view, to look at "Where could she fit?" "Where could
she be helpful?" And then slowly, over time, it was, "Where
would she enjoy being?" I was starting to consider her. And this is something I've reflected on long after the fact.
It was
a conscious change, you didn't say to yourself, "I'm too demanding and
critical, and I'm going to change that!"
Like most things that have
happened to me it's looking over my shoulder and saying, "Oh, is
that what that was all about?" I don't remember
consciously making that effort at the time. Being purposeful is not
something I've done except in the past ten years.
What triggered that?
I became President of the company I came to work
for in 1979. Then in 1989 the company we primarily represented
canceled our contract, and proceeded to hire our two best
salesmen to work for them. So that quickly, I lost 75% of my
income, which gave me food for thought. I started thinking
about where I was and what it's all about. I assumed the
"biblical sparrow" approach to life. "They're clothed and they're fed, we'll make
it." I ceased to be concerned about our financial future. My
wife probably helped save my sanity and also got me
onto a whole different track, put a different purpose into my
life: to consciously be about my own spiritual
development, my own journey. There were fits and starts, and I
don't know when the real transformation began. I know the
groundwork was being laid for a long period of time, but it took
me a hell of a long period of time to get into a posture of
surrender instead of, "Yes, but…"
Saying, "Yes, but…" has been one
aspect of
resistance to change for you. Do you happen
to remember one of the issues, one of the areas?
The one that comes to mind is the
conscious effort to be open with my wife and my kids, of being
an active participant, an active emotional participant. That
means my expression of gratitude, my expression of happiness, of
joy in them. That was foreign to them, I'm sure, because I'd never done it.
There was a little voice inside saying, "Quit
screwing around. Be real! Stop playing games and
withholding yourself."
A primary
self-development goal for Ones is to accept yourself and others as
they are. And those are the two things you've described
to me. But you don't know quite how it happened. Over time, something grew in you.
I don't think you can organize a primer and say,
"These are the steps and this is what will happen." Because you
have to surrender to your life experiences and that takes a patience that
they'll fit into the
new jigsaw puzzle you're putting together. Not having to fix everything. It will happen in
its own good time if you give it a chance.
"Surrendering" and "patience." Because so much of the
fixation of the One is having to "fix it," the only way to
transform is to surrender, to be in the here-and-now, to not have to
fix yourself. It's an interesting paradox.
To me that's the fun of it,
because it's so foreign to the way I've
approached many other things in my life. To listen, to absorb,
to give up, to have the patience to wait until a thing matures,
and then to have the pleasure of looking over your shoulder and
saying, "Oh!" And there's no end to it, it's not a finite
thing, it's constantly changing. What I thought was an "Oh!"
six months ago I may or may not think is an "Oh!" anymore. To
offer a formula for change is abhorrent to me. To offer a how-to-do book
might be fine in business practices, but it's no
way to live a life because peoples' experiences are different. Every view is
a point of view, and if I don't have a landing field to accept
what you're saying, you may as well not have said it. Or if
you've said it and it lands on the wrong landing field, I have a
completely different response from what was predicted.
For
many people there's pain in the process, and I
wonder if that's been true for you?
No, that's who I was in that time, and I'm not in
that time and place anymore. Joseph Campbell influenced a
lot of my thinking on this subject, my universal thinking, my
openness, the importance of myth and metaphor in our
lives. It's really freeing because I can accept the
universality of all life and the sanctity of all life. It put a big exclamation point, beyond what I had already come to
conclude, that my religion or my faith doesn't have a corner on
truth at all.
Looking back, then, in the way
you're
experiencing your transformation, your wife has been an
influence, and Joseph Campbell has been a theoretical
affirmation of what you came to. Are there other people,
other resources, books, workshops that have been part
of your path?
Yes, and those experiences generally were associated with
"religiosity." Workshops, retreats and so forth. I functioned
for about 25 years in the Lutheran church at the state level, with
responsibilities on the executive board of the Lutheran Church
of America. I've been privy to seven or eight national
conventions, and have seen the feet of clay and the good
stuff simultaneously. That gave me perspective. And
recently I had an atrial fibrillation, was in the hospital for cardiac conversion, which is
electric shock with paddles. I describe it as going into the hospital to get
"re-booted," like a computer. Fibrillation is when the top part of the
heart is not in synch with the bottom part of the heart. During the cardiac conversion, the cardiologist zapped me three times with the maximum
dosage. I woke up and heard the monitor and
the first words out of my mouth were, "Oh, shit!" Because I was
still fibrillating. They took me back to my room and when I was
alone I prayed. The extent of my prayer was, "What do You
want me to do with this now?" Then, believe it or not, in about
2-1/2 hours my doctors came crying into the room saying, "You've
converted!" I was back to sinus rhythm, which happens sometimes,
but in retrospect what came out of that for me was knowing it wasn't a prayer of pissing and moaning, of
"Oh, isn't this awful! You
didn't do right by me." It wasn't bargaining, it
was a sincere question of, "What am I supposed to do with
this now?" It was "How do You want me to use
this?" I sincerely asked.
For Lutherans, based on
what I've heard, prayer is a relationship. It's not about
whining, it's not about bargaining, it's not about begging, it's
about being present with the moment and inviting God to be
present with you.
It's a relationship. One of the authors I enjoy
is Andrew Greeley. He has a couple of books that are almost
like an open diary. He chats on a daily basis with God
about what he's doing. For
Lutherans, yes,
that's prayer. God loves you regardless. There's no condition in which you're not loved. Period. You
can't do anything to stop that except to say, "Go to hell"
literally, to turn your back on Him. And the only reason then
is because He can't do anything with you because there's no
relationship. If you walk away, you walk away. But as
long as you're there, we believe there is a relationship,
and the "work," whatever you want to call it, anything you do,
is not out of a sense of "ought to" or "should,"
but to say,
"Thank you."
Is there
anything else, any experiences where you've shifted into this
new place, ways in which you're different?
There's a vignette that comes to me about
this "patience" thing, since I'm a One. There was a college
reunion about twenty years ago. I didn't go, but there was
about a five-page questionnaire I filled out. On the first run-through my answers were automatic, and
there was one question very near the end, "What is the most
important thing you have learned since leaving the university?" When I re-read it I got to this question at the end and thought, "Well, I'll be damned." There were a lot of
lines to fill in, but I had put one word: "patience." That was it. I think that was a wake-up call. That was
the first time I consciously gave it any thought. I was in my fifties.
Before we end, when
you say, "The biggest thing I've learned in my life is
patience," that implies there was some impatience.
Well, I spent
forty years driving at least 30,000+ miles and I'm an aggressive
driver. By that I mean if I'm going to turn into the next
lane, instead of falling behind somebody I'll speed up and go in
front of them. And if there's someone driving like a yahoo in
front of me, I'll get in front of them
instead of having to worry about what they're going to do. So
that's a kind of impatience, yes. And I don't like people who are self-pitying,
who are phony, who are enlisting sympathy when there's nothing
sympathetic about their position. That I can do without. That
would cause me anger. When my kids said I'd changed, that
change was from being critical and not expressing
gratitude for something well done. Before, I thought, "What the hell, why not, you
should do that!" I still fall back into it. I say, "Thank
you," I do that very well, but not always expressing joy and
satisfaction in a job well done, offering encouragement. And I guess part of that
change is also the freedom of
emotion, open emotion. Showing my love, and exposing myself as well.
Thank
you. In
closing, I want to confirm that your model of transformation is
being in the here-and-now and
surrendering.
Yes, it's definitely being in the here-and-now,
it's definitely surrendering your own will, it's overcoming ego,
realizing "I am not the most important thing in the world."
Everything, the total creation, has
sanctity in its own place.
