Out of the Box Coaching and
 Breakthroughs with the Enneagram, Mary R. Bast, Ph.D. 
Copyright © 1999. All rights reserved. Revised: March 28, 2009 

 

A Sacred Sorrow

"Until modern times, people who became depressed were said to be afflicted with a malaise of the soul ... Following the Enlightenment, newly empowered secular thinkers founded the science of psychology, which in turn generated psychoanalysis and its credo that persistent unhappiness derives from faulty childhood learning ... A new, more integrative paradigm is beginning to emerge, one that accepts both brain chemistry and consciousness as essential features of human existence, adding an eclectic spiritual perspective ..." Prologue to Sacred Sorrows: Embracing and Transforming Depression, Edited by John E. Nelson, M.D., and Andrea Nelson, Psy.D.

In Chapter 16 of Sacred Sorrows Joanna Macy suggests that "going to pieces or falling apart is not such a bad thing":

"Indeed it is as essential to evolutionary and psychic transformations as the cracking of outgrown shells.  Polish psychiatrist Kazimierz Dabrowski calls it 'positive disintegration' ... For the individual who, in confronting current anomalies of experience, allows positive disintegration to happen, it can bring a dark night of the soul, a time of spiritual void and turbulence ... What 'disintegrates' in periods of rapid transformation is not the self, of course, but its defenses and ideas ... Our 'going to pieces,' however uncomfortable a process, can open us up to new perceptions, new data, new responses."

Contrast this with William Styron's reflections on his personal struggle with depression in Darkness Visible (a struggle characterized by an almost total lack of empathy from professionals): "men and women who have recovered from the disease -- and they are countless -- bear witness to what is probably its only saving grace: it is conquerable." I was saddened by Styron's experience, which apparently held no transformational elements for him.

My own depression, when it hit, was comparable to what has been depicted by others: a sense of emptiness when approaching activities that had been fulfilling, disorientation, feeling separate from others and from myself -- not knowing "who" I was, as I really began to see myself. Sometimes I looked in the mirror and did not even recognize my own face! There was also the clarity of no way "out," only "through," that I'd walked through the door and it wasn't possible to go back (nor would I have wanted to). Jean Shinoda Bolen, in Crossing to Avalon, describes the beginning of an experience that changed her life as "a time of liminality" (from the Latin limen, meaning threshold):

"...of passage from one part of my life to another, when I am venturing psychologically out beyond 'my known world,' heeding a call to live my life more authentically even as it puts me in conflict and uncertainty ... Jungian analyst and author Murray Stein ... aptly describes those times in our lives when we are in an 'in-between' zone, a state in which we are neither who we used to be, nor who we are becoming ... at such times we are often thin-skinned and vulnerable, which accompanies being psychologically receptive and open to new growth ... what the poet T.S. Eliot is describing when he writes of 'the point of intersection of the timeless / with time,' that place of poetic sensibility where glimpses of the eternal and ordinary perception overlap."

My first step into that space "between the worlds" was taken in the Spring of 1997, when I ended my second Naranjo workshop with a deep commitment to "engage with life fully." For the first month afterwards I did just that. Then I felt myself falling into depression of a kind different from the familiar and transitory times of feeling dispirited. It took me another month to realize that in order to really "engage" (the Nine's spiritual goal) I'd have to go through a wild and scary ride -- it was (and is) terrifying, amazing, and transforming.

My struggle to stay engaged still emerges almost daily. Riso and Hudson write about the Nine's path in this way:

"Ultimately Nines reclaim their Essential nature by confronting their Basic Fear of losing connection and by letting go of the belief that their participation in the world is unimportant -- that they do not have to 'show up.' They realize that the only way to truly achieve the unity and wholeness they seek is not by 'checking out' into the realms of the imagination but by fully engaging themselves in the present moment" (The Wisdom of the Enneagram, p. 338, emphasis added).

Once when I experienced the power of my belief that my "participation in the world is unimportant," I wrote the following to a friend who had congratulated me on "earning a first-page slot" for my Enneagram Monthly article, The Idealized Image and Stress. ("It's a fine and courageous piece, and much deserves this honor."):

"I had a bit of a revelation Tuesday about the Nine's humility and self-forgetting. I looked at my work in progress on the handout for my Enneagram Conference presentation and thought (as I did when I finished my doctoral dissertation), 'Who wrote this? It's really good!' Then I pulled together some readers' comments about my web site sent to me over the past year (none of them friends whom I could possibly construe as 'just being nice to me') -- these comments, which I read as if for the first time, were extremely complimentary. Again I found myself wondering, 'Who are they talking about?' I then became aware of a rising anxiety which held me in its grip for several hours before I could stand aside from it, center, and observe myself. Only then did I realize the anxiety was connected to these earlier events. Here I was, the Nine, saying, 'Who, me???' As I stand outside of myself and look at this response, it's sweet and a good example of the Nine's humility, but isn't it sad that I (and probably each of us) still find it hard to believe I'm worthwhile? And that I, as a Nine, can be so separate from my good work that I even find it hard to claim!"

Following the events described above I fell into a depressive state that lasted another half-day, until I picked up The Wisdom of the Enneagram and read the passage quoted above. I experienced, for the moment, that my showing up IS important, and for that moment I felt a deep and quiet joy. 

Why would any of us resist that quiet pleasure of self-discovery? William Bridges makes a key point about "what most people refer to unthinkingly as 'resistance to change'":

"...what people usually have in mind is really resistance to transition, not to change ... Change occurs when something new starts or something old stops, and it takes place at a particular point in time. But transition cannot be localized in time that way, since it is the gradual psychological process through which individuals and groups reorient themselves so that they can function and find meaning in a changed situation. Change often starts with a new beginning, but transition must start with an ending -- with people letting go of old attitudes and behaviors ... At bottom, it is a person's identity that he or she has trouble letting go of, and it is that identity that stands in the way of the change producing its desired result" (Surviving Corporate Transition, pp. 16-19).

I've read many books and articles about depression and about transformation. There are accounts from survivors of depression and references to spiritual struggles, but few personal stories of how transformation can occur during these dark times -- how people are different as a consequence of this experience that disconnects them from all that's familiar. It appears that many people who experience the pain of transition stop the process, either by taking antidepressants, being unwilling to endure the discomfort, and/or failing to recognize this could be a passage to something new -- and not just a dark and endless tunnel with no light at the end.

Based on my own experience, if you use the Enneagram beyond playing games to categorize people, you will find yourself on the path of transformation whether you expected that to happen or not. I hope to provide a guided tour of how those experiences play out for others like you, so you won't be surprised, and you won't feel alone.

Most of all, though, I'm going to disclose the nature of my own path. I've been doing some of this in other articles in the hopes of warming myself to the task. Even as I write this I fight with my idealized self-image. ("What will people think of me if they know all these secrets?") But I am going to do it because no one told me how difficult it would be when I opened the door to my essential nature behind the Nine facade. If there were models, stories, or suggestions beyond a few affirmations, then I missed them.

I am not a Catholic, so I did not originally turn to such wonderful resources as Suzanne Zuercher's Enneagram Spirituality:

"What does this surrender based on the necessity to admit our truth feel like? It is the experience of anguish, because anguish is to be aware of, to admit, what we cannot accept and embrace about ourselves ... Such pain gradually lessens as we become more humble, simply acknowledging what is so ... as Jacobi says, 'The life and insights we have missed must be made up for item by item, and this ability to live open-eyed with one's own darkness is an achievement that demands courage above everything.'"

As much as I admire Zuercher's work, however, her examples are generic and related to Christian scripture and beliefs. Riso and Hudson have broadened our perspective in The Wisdom of the Enneagram, writing that the "great religions of the world have provided a multitude of practices for personal transformation; so have modern psychology, the self-help movement, and contemporary spiritual thinkers." They also disclose, in a general way, some of their own transformation process:

"Part of our discussion had to do with whether or not we would ever see the proverbial 'light at the end of the tunnel,' since each of us was constantly going through a fair amount of pain as we uncovered layers of neurotic habits and unresolved issues from the past … Even though excavating the various strata of the psyche meant going through layers of pain and negativity, making conscious the old accumulated psychic junk that we had not wished to deal with, it would be worth it."

We do need a language for transformation that is specific to the Enneagram. We also need one that is illustrated in its process by concrete experiences of real people. I think we all need answers to these questions:

As I've been working through my own transformation process I've heard the "voices" of all nine styles. I don't think I'm crazy -- quite the opposite. As described by Caroline Myss, we invite a spiritual madness when we say, "I want to see clearly:"

"What we're born to do is to get to know our shadow side. That's the journey of becoming conscious. That's why you have to enter into yourself alone and that's where the madness starts. For the first time, you encounter the archetypal forces. What if, in fact, the journey was to enter into mystery, to leave your allegiance to order and your need to have things explained in human, logical fashion? What also feeds the foundation for madness to strike, is that you have to become separate from the world that you know.

This is a very vulnerable stage, this is where depression comes in, that first feeling of being disconnected from the human world of cause and effect that you've come to trust. When you go through your separation stage and you're in your depression, in your madness, tell yourself, 'This is what I'm supposed to do. I need to keep myself centered and endure the madness.'

(Then you begin to) know the voice of guidance. How do you expect the answer to be given to you? It's not going to come in a letter! "

(excerpts from Myss' audio tape of "Spiritual Madness:
The Journey of the Modern Mystic Through
the Dark Night of the Soul").

I've come to see the nine points as representing passions with which we all struggle, though a stronger dynamic exists for the personality fixed at that point. As a Nine, perhaps I am more likely to experience the passage that each has to take. I seem to be going through the passions/fixations in all their manifestations: vanity, envy, fear, anger, paranoia, detachment, gluttony, etc. etc. Judith Searle, in her Enneagram Monthly article, "The Gap at the Bottom of the Enneagram," refers to "the peaceable kingdom of Nine, in which much energy is devoted to denying the negative aspects of life:" 

"Most commentators on the Enneagram of personality agree that the Nine point represents a combination of the other eight fixations or styles. For Nines the combination of all eight strategies leads to a kind of immobilization that makes me think of the myriad thin strings, each in tension, that immobilize Gulliver in the land of the Lilliputians. This immobilization - in - tension serves as a living counterpoint to the immobilization-in-lack-of-tension that we see in death."

"If we say that each of the points represents a strategy and the Nine point represents a combination of these strategies, then what threat are all these defenses designed to counter? It seems to me that the gap at the bottom of the diagram must represent the void. It has been here with us all along, hiding in plain sight. Mystics, poets, novelists, psychologists and philosophers have characterized this emptiness at the heart of human existence in various ways: 'the hole,' 'existential anxiety,' 'the silence,' 'the abyss,' the 'dark night of the soul,' 'absolute zero,' 'death.' When Joseph Conrad at the end of his classic novella Heart of Darkness writes about 'the horror,' it is perhaps this vision of ultimate nothingness he has in mind." 

I've been in and out of the abyss as if I'm being batted around the Enneagram, experiencing the dark night from the perspective of all nine styles, particularly the Four, the Five, the Seven, and my own, the Nine. This has given me more empathy for the varieties of distress each type must encounter. And each point has valuable lessons:

One of the ways I've experienced a Four-like anguish is an existential angst, a mourning for all the pain and evil in the world and an attraction to "doing something about it" (e.g., volunteering to take meals to AIDS victims) without actually moving past my emotions and taking action. My own experience reflects that of one of my Four friends: when I'm in this place of mourning I avoid meditation/prayer because of the fear that if I looked for my essential Self "there might be no one home." When I can stay with this fear I remember myself, become more clear about what I value, and act accordingly.  

When my sense of desolation takes a Nine tone I feel a deep fatigue; avoiding the energy, focus, meditation/prayer that would be required to discover my true will and purpose. I'm now better able to observe my fear that if I looked, there might be "someone home" and that discovery would require action! Now when I notice myself avoiding engagement (energy, commitment) I stay with the fear, it ceases to control me, and I feel a sense of contentment and even joy. More and more I find myself committing with enthusiasm to people/projects that match my own agenda and values.

During one whole month I experienced a Five-like down time -- a retreat into intellectual safety, much reading and analysis, a strong discomfort with sharing my own deep emotions. But I experienced it from afar, observing it to exist more strongly than ever before, but at the same time separate from "me." By the end of that month I easily and generously connected with family, friends, clients and enjoyed those connections freely: sitting in the middle of friendship in a way I'd never experienced. I was not conscious of a plan to work through my feelings, but I did commit myself to staying centered and enduring the "madness." As Myss pointed out, my answer didn't come in a letter! It came in the changes I saw in myself after I "returned."

My Seven-ish "madness", when it shows, is more a manic state of avoiding deep work, a sense of unbearable pain and fear of confinement -- a fear that if I get down in there I won't "like" it and I'll never be able to find my way out. Because it is so dread-full, I bring myself out of it quickly. But the learning from this shadow work is fantastic -- this is where I hear the voices of addiction yet being separate from them. For example, I've become able to hear the ego aspect that says, "Wouldn't it be fun to stop writing and go out for a chocolate sundae; then you'll feel so much better!" Or, "Wouldn't it be fun, instead of going home and working on that project, to stop by this department store and see what's on sale!" When I can sit with the feelings and ask myself, "What do I really want?" the answer is always some version of a journey to the Soul.

Dr. Richard J. Sweeney (a Jungian analyst and former priest) has drawn parallels between Christian discernment and Jungian psychology. He proposes that "human experience becomes 'religious' when it raises the question of the ultimate meaning and purpose of life." He observes that our "recognition and appropriation of ... unconscious elements are accompanied initially by ... anxiety, sadness, and confusion" -- elements of desolation in the Christian tradition. "The experience of these 'negative' emotions," he continues, "must not lead one to shrink from the ongoing recognition and assimilation of the shadow. To do so will only frustrate the process of individuation. We must be able to trust that these emotions are the uncultivated seeds of fuller personal growth."

According to Sweeney, the "courage and strength ... tears, inspirations, and peace" associated with the experience of consolation "correlate with Jung's understanding of the psychological effects of the integration of unconscious elements -- the experience of an increase of power associated with a sense of release and healing." Sweeney describes grace as operating in each of us to "complete the Spirit-led development and integration of our natural capacities for free, enlightened decision-making ... The psychological effect of grace is directed toward the completion of personality development."

Often I find that I lack clarity of mind or experience conflicting feelings. But Clarence Thomson said to me, "I'm amazed at the intuitive intelligence of some of my Nine friends. Our culture doesn't always support this kind of intelligence, but you really have to pay attention to it. Even when, and especially when, it's hard to put into words." So I've borrowed the terms desolation and consolation as symbols of my gut sense, trusting my essential Self to guide me in my process of self-remembering, my spiritual unfolding.  

Breaking the Patterns of Depression

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