Holding the Spade in
Our Empty Hands
The British
astrophysicist Stephen Hawking is a brilliant theorist and an excellent exemplar of the
Enneagram Five. You may have seen Hawking in his
guest appearance on Star Trek or in the documentary A Brief History of Time.
He's suffered from Lou Gehrig's disease since his early twenties (when he was
told he had only a few years to live). Many years later, his body has wasted away and he can move only one
finger, but with that finger he has availed himself of computer technology and written
book after book about his theories. In a poignant moment of the documentary his mother
remarked that no one should suffer this terrible disease, but if it had to be anyone it
might as well be Hawking because he has such a beautiful mind and lives there anyway.
Someone else in his place might have died within a few years, but in a way Hawking doesn't
need his body!
Fives are
extremely resourceful and the most independent of the nine Enneagram styles. Their
self-sufficiency stems from a
restriction of emotional
needs--so no one becomes indispensable to them. They're often very bright people
who channel their profound feelings through intellect. In Enneagram terms the Five's
passion is hoarding, with a fixation on detachment (keeping themselves from emotional
connection). According to Claudio Naranjo (Transformation Through Insight), the Five is
"one whose main characteristic is
non-involvement in
relations, in life and even in ongoing experience... they do not look forward to contact
with others as enriching, and therefore anticipate being depleted" -- thus the notion
of hoarding so as not to be depleted.
While this may
be a hoarding
of information, or money, or possessions (my first husband was a Five who proudly wore a
T-shirt that had been his father's in high school), it is most importantly a hoarding of
emotions.
The Five's path
of transformation is highly representative of the
shift in perspective required of us all: letting go of reliance on logic alone, realizing
intuitively the world is not as we have "known" it to be. As this shift
occurs we become aware how our attachment to knowing has led us to define ourselves
through dualistic modes of thinking ("It's either this way or that way"), and
consequently has kept us from intimacy with others, from intimacy with ourselves, and
ultimately from intimacy with the Infinite.
The
paramita ("perfection") that parallels the Five path
is generosity, giving freely of ourselves so our energy flows outward. In
Enneagram theory this requires
nonattachment,
as described by Naranjo (a Five himself) in one of his workshops:
...as in an open hand, more of an attitude of living
in the present, allowing what comes naturally, a flow between self and others in which you
receive more and give more.
A Five friend
recognized herself
in the withdrawing so typical of this style. She recalled a brunch at my
house where all three couples had recently
connected. It was near Valentine's Day, and one of the people present (a Two, the most
relational of the nine styles) suggested each couple desribe how they fell in
love. "I wanted to die!" she said.
Since then,
however, she has moved in her work from an emphasis on mental models toward
connection and affection with her clients. This has happened naturally as
she's
developed trust and intimacy with her husband. And in the process she's rediscovering her
whole Self.
If we really want to get to the bottom of life,
we must... acquire a new way of observation whereby we can escape the tyranny of logic and
the one-sidedness of our everyday phraseology. However paradoxical it may seem, Zen
insists that the spade must be held in your empty hands, that it is not the water but
the bridge that is flowing under your feet... the ordinary logical process of reasoning is
powerless to give final satisfaction to our deepest spiritual needs (D.T. Suzuki,
An
Introduction to Zen Buddhism).