Out of the Box Coaching and
Breakthroughs with the Enneagram, Mary R. Bast, Ph.D. 
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Riding the Bull Home
(Interview with an Enneagram Six)

I'm collecting accounts of the change process so others can see how each of the Enneagram styles goes through increasing self-awareness and, in particular, learn from your story as a Six. What does the word "transformation" mean to you? 

To me it's in a quote from Suzanne Zuercher: "If our lives are to turn around, we need simply to acknowledge and admit our reality as it becomes known to us." I think that damn near says it all. Most of the things I've learned have been from watching and listening to myself as my life unfolds. I look at what's provocative or what I don't have answers for, and as I continue to seek and to be open, the answers become apparent. And I've concluded that if you want to know, and keep that intention open over time, and clear away the space to listen, you're going to find out. And you've got to have that space. It won't be overnight, and you may get layers and layers, and you may forget and come back. But I've not run into anything in my life where I've pushed for an answer that I haven't gotten it. I don't mean that makes me perfect, that I don't make mistakes. But answers come, and in strange places. It seems to be in fits and starts for me. You're in a workshop and suddenly some stuff you've been working on just pops up. Or you ask just the right question at just the right time and maybe a big scenario pops up. But to me that's been the basis of my learning.

I'm interested in your saying "You've got to have the space."  

I drift off. I'm just simply not that good. I lose it, find myself down on the ground, out of my tree, into my defensive mode and my angry mode, unless I have something regular that brings me back. It's almost like a compass. You pull the compass out and say, "Oh, my God, I'm off 30 degrees here. Where's North?" And then you find North and you swing back over and center yourself up again, you reconnect with whatever you've been working with. Mostly to me, when I think of tracking back on, it's simply getting in touch again with the truth about me that I know lies within. And it's being still enough and quiet enough long enough to allow that connection to be made. But it's not an ongoing thing. I find it and I lose it, and I find it and I lose it. However you've chosen to practice, it's that you practice. And I think we have to have some outside process on a regular basis. That could be an Enneagram workshop, it could be anything. But you need to go outside yourself to someone skilled in an area you're interested in, in a like-minded group of people that extends over a period of time where you come in with the notion" I am going to do some work." You listen to other people who are doing some work, and there's interplay that tills the field, cross-fertilization that helps you get to a deeper place. Something that's working like that for me really well is an Alanon group I go to once a week for an hour. It's incredibly elegant. You listen to these common, ordinary people who've got some things in their lives they're struggling with, coming out of a real place in real time, and it's impressive stuff. It has helped me to find the True North again, talking about the compass. A guy down at Gatlinburg, Peter, did a workshop on "Riding the Bull Home." It's a good calibration for me on where I am. I was on the bull one time and he was handling well. Have you ever ridden a cow? They're very different than horses; they have an incredibly smooth gait. Where I am right now is that I have the bull in view!  (laughs) 

So "riding the bull" is like "being on the path"? 

Yeah. When I'm on the bull there's nothing to track. I'm on the path and moving down the path in a very carefree sort of way. "Carefree" is an important piece of that. Anything else is looking for the path. I have spent very little time on the bull. Right now I see the path but I'm not on it. In some sense your whole life is a path, but there have been times when I was clearly looking to be on the path instead of being on the path. I'm very comfortable with where I am right now and that comfort comes from being clear about what I'm trying to do, how I'm trying to live my life, and the progress I'm making. As I've worked with riding the bull I have found, to my surprise for sure, and secondly my dismay and chagrin, it is enormously harder than I had any notion it would be. An exercise Peter gave us all to do during the workshop was to count your breaths for one hundred breaths, in breath and out breath, without an extraneous thought coming into your mind. Well, that seems so simple. It's impossible. But I've messed around with it long enough to get a glimmer that it may well be true if you control your mind, you control your life. And I guess you'd have to say, too, that if you can't control your mind you're spitting into the wind if you say you're controlling your life, because it's simply not true.    

And by "controlling" your mind you mean not having it control your thoughts. 

Yes. In other words, having a task for the mind to do all the time. I first realized there were paths when I read The Path of Least Resistance in my fifties and learned Robert Fritz's approach to Creating, that we can choose to become the creative force in our lives. The Creating orientation in its ultimate expression is that each moment, from moment to moment, I know what I'm about. I have a picture I want to create and I'm aware the action I'm taking is moving me in that direction. Now that's controlling your mind. But it occurred to me one day that I need an enormous amount of practice. I thought, "Well, let me look at some routine tasks I do in an ongoing, repetitive way," and I thought "O.K. a good one is brushing my teeth. It takes about 3 minutes max. I'll be really aware of brushing my teeth for 3 minutes." Well I might get 3 seconds! And it's truly scary to look at the degree I've not been able to control my mind. I noticed also I had perfect focus when teaching a yoga class, or teaching meditation exercises in a no-smoking class, because I was the teacher. I had absolute, impeccable focus. So clearly my mind will do what I tell it to do, if I insist it stay with it. But given any sort of opportunity, my mind seems to take off.

Have you ever thought about this in Enneagram terms? 

The enormous breakthrough in Enneagram terms was realizing I'm driven by fear. Before that, I was always aware that power was a big thing in my life, but I'd thought of it as power. And I got in touch with the fact that yeah, it was a big thing in my life, but what made it a big thing was my being driven by fear. The difference is astronomical. You're not going to learn about fear looking at power. You're going to learn about fear by looking at fear, by finding the fear within and welcoming and being open to the fear, accepting that "Yeah, that's what it is, that's how it feels." My life changed. 

So that insight for you was a transforming moment. 

No question. That was the moment. Since then I've learned much more about it, but my life has been different since that point. It opened some doors that had not been open before. It allowed me to understand what's going on with my current reality. It allowed me to understand a lot of things I could not understand before.   

Could you give an example that would help readers identify with your having gained that awareness? 

Let me talk about fear a little bit more. I think this is the absolute bottom layer of fear in my life -- and the scenario is that I'm a rabbit. Not a mouse. A rabbit. And rabbits have a lot of abilities, because they're food for many creatures and if they didn't have those abilities there wouldn't be any rabbits. The rabbit's fast, it has really good eyesight, good concealing ability, incredibly good hearing. And the rabbit operates in a limited territory -- about five acres -- but the rabbit knows those five acres. So if danger is about, the rabbit is very likely to be aware there is danger. And it knows the actions it can take to avoid the dogs. The dogs are the environment out there. What I got in touch with is that when I'm in the clutches of fear, I believe everyone out there is faster than I am, smarter than I am, stronger than I am, and has more power than I have. On any kind of level ground, where there's one-on-one competition, I'm gone! So what I have to do is manage my five acres in such a way that one-on-one can never happen. And if you look at how that's set up, the better rabbit you are, the smarter you are, the more careful and alert you are, the longer you're going to last. But inevitably at some point you're going down! That's pretty heavy duty. 

Do you find yourself, having had that awareness, at times not having the rabbit's view? 

Oh, yeah. As I look back on my life to learn about this construct, I see that in all the modeling I got from my father, and there was a huge amount because we were on a farm so we did a lot of work together, he would always say, "O.K., here's the way you do this." I remember one time we'd borrowed a horse-drawn cultivator from one of the other farmers who could afford this kind of equipment, and I'd never seen one of the damn things before. My father pulled it out to the edge of the front field, got on the thing, and drove it fifty feet, showed me how to push the pedals, said, "That's the way you do that," handed me the reins, and left. And I got the hang of it and did the rest of the field. I could give you countless other examples but all of it was demonstration. There never was a time when he said, "There's a cultivator, go look at it and see if you can figure out how it works." There never was a time when he said, "Let's sit down and talk about this and see what seems to make sense," never any notion of problem-solving, never saying "Hey, you're smart, and if you just think about it you'll come up with something that makes sense." 

So that set up the expectation, "Somebody's got to show me how." 

My whole orientation was to find out what I was supposed to be doing. Another example was when I was stationed in Korea, Officer of the Day, and was to close the Officer's Club and put the money away. I was 22 years old, a Second Lieutenant, never been over 20 miles from home. In my orders and instructions they said, "You are the Base Commander's representative. The Base Commander is the final authority on the base, and you're acting for him. At 12 o'clock you close the Officer's Club and count the money." So I went in there at 12 o'clock, told the bartender "It's 12 o'clock" and to close the bar. And he says, "Well, the Deputy Commander wants to keep the bar open another 10 or 15 minutes." I pulled my pistol out, laid it on the bar, and said, "I want the bar closed. I'll be back in 10 minutes and when I get back I expect everybody to be gone, and we'll count the money." (laughs) I came back in 10 minutes, everybody was gone. The next day the Base Commander called me over, kind of grinning, and said, "How'd things go?" I said, "They went fine." And he said, "I understand you closed the bar." I said, "Yeah, I did." He said, "Well, normally, if the Deputy wants to keep things open another 10 or 15 minutes that's probably O.K.." But it impressed the shit out of him that I closed the bar. A Second Lieutenant! If there was a clear notion of what I was supposed to do then I always did incredibly well. If I didn't know what I was supposed to do, then I did not perceive if I simply thought about it I could figure out something that would make sense. 

You are able to do that now. 

Yes, but it doesn't come easily because I still tend to have that fear. Even now, the first thing that comes to mind is, "Oh, my God!" Sometimes it stays there, but normally I can say, "Oh, well, just calm down, be patient, see what this thing looks like," and as I get more data coming in things start looking fine. But still that fear is there, and I have a predisposition to do what people ask me to do. "Can you do this?  Drop me off here?  Pick this up?" "Yeah, I'll be glad to do that." And I like the front-end about that, because I like to be helpful, I like to be optimistic. But one thing I'm concentrating on right now is not to say, "Yes, I will do that," but to give information around, "I'd really like to do that for you. Let me check and see what I have going on; and if it won't fit here, let's see if it will fit here." Not very different, but still important.  

And how is that fear-based? Is it "They won't like me if I don't say yes?" 

It's fear I'll be thrown out of the group. If I come at it from the strict fear point of view, it's also: "These people are always stronger and smarter than I am, so it makes sense to stay on their good side." But it's more of a group thing, really. Anytime I feel a little fear I try to acknowledge it. Fear grabs a whole lot of my life. I've learned to appreciate the people who like to be out there, to break the trail, and can do that and do it well. In fact, an unexpected benefit to me of knowing the truth about what's going on with me, is that life has become enormously more interesting. And the quality of my existence has deepened and gotten much richer. Before that awareness my life was simpler and a lot more level. I remember very distinctly when I'd just gotten back from Korea in 1953, in my mid-twenties. I was an Adjutant Personnel Officer, and damn good, too. I was at the top of the heap, a First Lieutenant, applied for a regular commission, went through ROTC, and didn't get approved for my regular commission. This surprised me because I'd decided to make the Air Force a career, so I thought "I've got to check this thing out." I went to see the Lieutenant Colonel who was Director of Personnel and he said, "Well, you're in a fairly soft career field. In a more critical field you wouldn't have any trouble." So I said, "Let's look at the critical fields!" And he said, "It looks like the two most critical fields available for you in the Air Force are electrical engineering and weather." Well, think about the disparity between electrical engineering and weather! I thought about it for about 5 seconds and said, "Let's go for electrical engineering." That was exactly the way I chose the remaining 25 years of my air force life. What does that have to do with creating your own life? Not much! Once I'd gotten clear that I wanted to be a regular officer, I could sure as hell have given a little bit more thought to how I wanted to approach that. Hell, I could have studied psychology. Anyway, I rolled right through, took night courses. I was shooting to get into the Institute of Technology, which is the Air Force's formal school. Right away, though, after I decided to make this change, I applied for Airborne Radio Maintenance School in Houston, and six months later I was down there. After nine months of school I came through in good shape, and that was my career field change. From there I continued to take math and other courses at Texas Tech. I applied for the Air Force Institute of Technology and got accepted and spent two years getting an electrical engineering degree. I was rolling. 

So you might question how thoughtfully you made that decision, but you had a lot of admirable capabilities. 

Yeah, I did. As I look back at my whole life, once it was clear to me what made sense and I didn't have any doubts, I could get my full energy up. And once I got in touch with the real me it was clear there was incredibly good stuff in me. That was nice to know. 

Someone pointed out to me that not all transformation is just PLOP! A lot of it's evolutionary. How did it happen for you? What triggered some of your changes? 

Well, I had always liked people. As an Adjutant Personnel Officer my job was to take care of the people in the squadron, to make sure all the people business got handled. For all the administrative, payroll, supply, barracks stuff I was the final arbiter before we went to the Captain around discipline. And that was a perfect fit for me. A much better fit than the electrical engineering stuff. I was really appreciated for it. When I left there to go to the school I'd applied for, this guy collected money as they did when an officer left, and he said, "The money just kept coming in!" It really broke me up. Those were good days. The service is a really good place for someone with my qualities at that time. They had regulations for everything. So there wasn't any question about how to do anything. It was simply a matter of reading the regulations and doing it. I never really thought about myself. I don't remember pondering any of that until I got in the Creating course in my fifties. I had these inclinations, I knew I liked being around people, working with people but most of my focus was on the work and on getting the job done. During that same time I had a fantasized conversation with my father. The scenario was this: Here's my father and here's me, and we're out working and he says, "Hey, we really do good work, don't we?" And I say, "Yeah, we really do good work." And he says, "We're really doing good work now," and I say, "Yeah, we're really doing good work now." And it went on like that, and then kind of as an aside, he'd look around and say, "But without our work, we're nothing." Now is that heavy, or what?  

You've had a number of transforming insights. You've had some slower, more evolutionary changes, too, which is reinforcing for me. I don't want readers to think they have to experience self-realization in any particular way, but my guess is that if you make yourself open to it you're going to have some of those moments. 

I think you're right. My experience says that if you really want to know, without reservation, the truth cannot be kept from you. You will find it. But I wonder what percentage of people really do want to know, with that intensity, over that period of time, and keep on wanting to know when they see some pretty heavy stuff! That's why I said to put yourself in group situations on a regular basis, even if you don't perceive, "Oh, I need to work on this." I think you need to throw yourself into the water and have a few layers unravel. And the sooner you can see, the better off you are. It's amazing to me how I was able to keep some of these things from myself. Sometimes I'm elated, and sometimes it just feels like, "Oh shit, another deep, heavy piece of work I've got to do." I get depressed about "It's still there and it's still holding me back." The thing I'm feeling good about is that I'm being pretty good to myself. I don't mean I don't track off, and get depressed, and have dreams. It's hard for me to keep the stress down sometimes. I still get caught up in worrying about my daughter, worrying about my wife, worrying about my mechanic! 

Is there anything else you wanted to talk about? 

No, it's pretty much covered. A concluding thought here is that the 12-step program helped me codify the notion of the Higher Power. It brought me to an enormously helpful realization I'd not had before, that as I look at my life as a whole, I'm clear I've mismanaged a lot of it. And I don't mean I've screwed up. I'm just saying if I had been in touch with this information stream from my Higher Power, things would have gone better, and easier, and the quality of my life would have been greatly enhanced. It helped me think in terms of not just, "I need help with this, I need help with this," but I need help! I had never really thought about my life like that. It allowed me to get to a different place around the management of my life and at the same time reinforced the notion that everyone else has their Higher Power, too, and they sure as hell don't need me to run their life! It got me down another level where I know absolutely, irrevocably that I can't be responsible for someone else's life because I don't know what's good for them. The tools I have found incredibly helpful: first, the notion of Creating in its purest form, second the Enneagram, third the DISC, and fourth the 12-step program. Each one of those those tools allows me to get a grip on some things in my life I don't think I could have gotten without that tool. Each shows you some things the others have not shown. And there are tools and tools and tools. So keep exploring, keep looking for them, keep listening to other people, find the right ones for you and use them. 

My last question you've answered implicitly: do you have a model for transformation? 

The Zuercher quote I started in with is the key. I honestly believe if anyone wants to see the truth about what's going on in their life, totally, objectively, non-judgmentally, and stay with it, their life's going to change. If I'm there waiting to see, eventually I am going to see it. 

 "If our lives are to turn around, we need simply to acknowledge and admit our reality as it becomes known to us."  - Suzanne Zuercher