Out of the Box Coaching and
Breakthroughs with the Enneagram, Mary R. Bast, Ph.D. 
Copyright © 1999. All rights reserved. Revised: January 18, 2012  

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Spirit-in-Action

What is transformation? I've been using that word to capture dramatic insights I've had, new self-discoveries that hit so hard I know I'll never be the same. Some years ago I committed to "engage in life with passion" (a counter to the Enneagram Nine's spiritual indolence). For two months after that I was full of energy, upbeat, positive, and truly engaged with my work, my relationships, and my own efforts toward personal growth. Then I fell into a deep depression.

At first I treated it like one of my usual and short-lived depressive states: yoga practices, exercising, lots of sleep, chocolate for the immediate high... Still caught up in my worldview, still not letting go. I looked for problems in my life, wondering if my Enneagram strategy to avoid conflict blocked me from seeing some relationship issues. A dear friend reflected back the problems I described, and later that evening I had a flash of awareness: I was making myself the victim in my marriage, casting my husband as the bad guy and leaving me the role of good girl. This was not an intellectual insight. I felt as if someone had picked me up in one place and put me down in another.

Accounts from people I've interviewed about their own transformation process echo Ken Wilber's description of spirit-in-action: manifesting more of itself, and realizing more of itself, at every unfolding… always completely present, but more available to itself with each evolutionary opening (A Brief History of Everything).

One person I interviewed said, "Transformation is being able to let go and accept the world as it really is, even though it's not the way I wanted it to be." "It's not a one-shot deal for me (from something to something)," said another, "but an endless evolution of consciousness."

In the context of the Enneagram, a Seven wrote, "It's an altering of my trance, which is rigid, repetitive, compulsive, and flat. As I come out of the trance I become more nuanced, flexible, spontaneous, free, and three dimensional."

Someone else wrote simply, "It's waking to Reality."

I do believe Spirit unfolds naturally, and attempts to control or force the unfolding are more of a barrier than an aid to transformation. I also believe, however, we can stay open to the process.

• We can seek awareness of the contrast between where we are and where we want to be. In Enneagram terms we can have some idea of our illusions.

• A clear and deeply felt intention is important. We don't need to know how something will happen, only to have faith it will happen.

• A state of readiness is also part of the process. Suzanne Zuercher (Enneagram Spirituality) recommends active contemplation in your daily life; she likens it to mindfulness in Buddhism.

• Finally, I believe we're invited put ourselves at the edge, to go exactly where each of us finds it to be most difficult.

Many people I've talked to have found their readiness enhanced by some form of meditation or centering prayer. A touching example comes from an Enneagram Five who's aware of his compulsion to retreat into his mind. As his example illustrates, the very process of learning to meditate will raise the resistance from the part of us that wants to keep the illusions intact:

"It was terrifying, like when I was learning how to swim. For me it was, "If I stop thinking I don't know if I will exist; it will be like going under water." It took a long, long time, and daily I would reach that point where I would think less and less, then get too scared and stop. It was very, very slow, like a person going into a swimming pool and knowing the water's cold, and dipping their toes first, and then their ankles, and then up to their knees. I finally got to the place where I wasn't thinking at all. Not at all. And it was a real place of freedom, that I could exist without thinking."