Singing In Our
Chains
Oh
as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means
Time held me green and dying
Though I sang in my chains like the sea
(from
Fern Hill, by Dylan Thomas)
Enneagram
Fours represent our search
for soul. This search can become so anguished that life is lived through a veil of pain.
Dylan Thomas could sing in his chains because he also remembered being
green and carefree, famous among the barns / About the happy yard and singing
where Time let me play and be/ Golden in the mercy of his means. Fours, in
contrast, tend to remember an anguished past and to focus on their longings for the
future, which can keep them from appreciating the present.
Nicholas Cage captured this quality in an interview with
Mirabella
magazine: "I was the outsider,
the weirdo,
the kid who wasn't picked to go on the team. (Acting is) the one place where I know what
I'm meant to do." Cage felt greatly influenced by a conversation with Jim Morrison
shortly before his death "that he had never done a song that conveyed pure happiness.
It was a cautionary warning to develop that side of myself... and not just stay in the dark
side and be Angst Man."
Fours are often compassionate, a compassion forged from their empathy for
others in a painful and unjust world. One of my Four clients recalled as a child having a
club in a tree house she called "the 'Feelings' Club. You were allowed to cry
there and not be called on it." I once likened Fours at their best to the compassion
of the bodhisattva, who rejects relief from
reincarnation and returns to help free others from suffering:
The heroes and heroines of the Mahayana Buddhist tradition are the
bodhisattvas, who vow to forswear nirvana until all beings are enlightened. As the
Lotus
Sutra tells us, their compassion endows them with supra-normal senses: they can hear
the music of the spheres and understand the language of the birds. By the same token, they
hear as well all cries of distress, even to the moaning of beings in the lowest hells.
All griefs are registered and owned in the bodhisattva's deep knowledge that we are
not separate from each other (Joanna Macy, in "Despair Work," Chapter 16
of Sacred Sorrows).
It's
important to understand, however, that the bodhisattva's choice is voluntary, and not a
return engagement because of attachment to pain. Instead, their enlightenment is
manifested in equanimity.
Likewise, the path of
satori for Fours is found through
equanimity; seeing that all events are intrinsically neutral
-- instead of, through desire, grading things as "good" or "bad."
Unenlightened
Fours are attached to their pain, reflected in their fixation of
dissatisfaction. Their contribution to groups and organizations is
their ability to look at things from the outside (where they
live), and often in innovative ways. Of course
things could always be better, but there's
a time and a place for change.
This
fixation becomes a set of chains when we're always dissatisfied with how things
are.
With Fours this arises from the passion of envy and is often experienced as a
dissatisfaction with self and the ordinariness of one's life. Whenever we obsess on
being special, on feeling driven to create something unique, we're experiencing the
passion of the Four.
In
a way, even feeling sad or depressed can create a "special" identity. While any
of us can be depressed, and seriously so, the angst of the Four is experienced as a deep,
soulful sadness. In the same way that each of us has pressed on an aching tooth (to see if
it still hurts!) unawakened Fours press on their own pain. This quality brought us the
unique expression of Vincent Van Gogh. But it also keeps attachment to pain alive.
Instead of using whatever happens as an opening, Fours tend to get lost in their sad
feelings.
A
change in perspective
for Fours can result from reviewing their past history, focusing on the good things that
have also happened to them, and noticing how often they've created their own
dissatisfaction. The Buddhist way is to go even beyond that, to reach a level of
enlightened equanimity, to relate to the world directly, without judgment, without
involvement of an ego-strategy.
You only
arrive at the other shore when you finally realize that there is no other shore... we have
arrived when we realize that we were there all along. It is very paradoxical (Chogyam Trungpa,
Cutting Through
Spiritual Materialism).
We
don't try to stop being dissatisfied, we simply discover a new way to look at experience.
Then, when we can sing in our chains like the sea we come to realize even
the chains are illusory!
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