I know my type…now what?
Knowing your Enneagram type structure is helpful, but it’s not enough. Knowing your type is the launching point for learning to know yourself better, and it is just the beginning of the road towards transformation and freedom.
When we finally land on a type structure that feels right for us, we are introduced to our fixed and deeply entrenched, unconscious patterns of behavior. We begin to become aware of who we think we need to be in order to be loved, accepted and to belong. We see what we avoid, and pursue, what we fear, and what coping mechanisms we have relied on to help us live our lives. We may even become more aware of the inner critic and its messages. This is life on auto-pilot. This is life lived from a limited ego self, also known as our limited personality or false self.
How do we break free from these patterns? How do we break free from the constricted life on “auto-pilot” to more expansiveness and flow? How do we live from more authenticity? How do we live from our True Nature?
The answer is simple, but not easy.
PRESENCE.
Learning to live in presence will bring about the freedom and transformation you are longing for. The journey is slow, very slow, and the pathway is long with lots of twists and turns. You will need a community to walk alongside you, and for companions you will need to befriend curiosity, compassion, radical self-honesty, trust and courage.
So let’s not wait another moment. In this blog post, I will start with a quick definition of what presence is followed by a few steps that explain how you can experience the quality of presence.
What is Presence?
Presence is the ability to be here and now, in this moment without attachment to the personality identity. Presence enables us to relax our automatic personality/ego patterns. Instead of responding to our experiences with automaticity, we are aware that we have “choice”. Noticing our bodily sensations, along with naming and allowing our experience, we align with reality and live in presence. When we are in presence, we are more able to function from the realm of our expansive, true self rather than our limited, ego self.
How Do I Experience Presence?
1. Begin With Noticing
Noticing is the first step in relaxing our automatic ways of being in the world; the ways we have come to believe we must “show up” in order to be safe, or to be loved, or to belong.
Bringing ourselves into contact with the experience of our breath and bodily sensations helps us to experience our physical grounding, our solidity, our essential strength.
Pause and notice what sensations you are experiencing. You might feel a tightness in your chest, or belly. You might notice that your jaw is tense, or your throat feels constricted. Turn your focus of attention towards your body and notice what is here now. Bring breath to wherever you are experiencing sensations.
Suspend all explanations for why the sensations are here. Don’t try to make meaning of your experience just yet. Simply be “with” the sensations without judgment or commentary.
2. Name What is Here
Identifying and accurately labeling our inner experience helps us to maintain a higher level of awareness. As we experience sensations in our body, and name them we are often able to access what emotion we are experiencing, and what thoughts are connected to those emotions.
3. Allow The Experience
Allowing simply means that we are “with” our experience rather than rejecting it, changing it or trying to fix it. It’s important to remember that what we resist will persist. The discomfort of our experience actually increases when we try to push it away. However, by allowing ourselves to be “with” our experience with compassion, tenderness and love, the discomfort begins to melt away. The emotional charge lessens.
4. Accept “What Is”
Noticing, naming and allowing, grows our capacity to be with our inner experience so that we can be more fully with our outer experience without resistance, reactivity or a need to control outcomes. We learn that whatever is happening in our inner and outer experience is simply “what is”. It is important to note here, that acceptance doesn’t mean I like it, or I agree with whatever is happening. It just means that I see what my reality is here. This is the way it is. When we come to a place where we have identified and named our reality, there is an alignment with truth that can bring more ease and peace in one’s life.
As we grow in our ability to accept, we begin to experience our automatic defenses of personality/ego begin to drop. We are able to just be with our experience instead of being triggered by it. We find it easier to accept our situations, ourselves and others just as they are.
5. Integration - Bringing it all together
Integration happens as we make connections of our experience. We have sensed into the different sensations, emotions, beliefs and images that are present. In the steps above, we have grounded our bodies, connected with and opened our hearts and quieted our busy, story telling minds. We have dropped into presence.
We move beyond black and white thinking by allowing Presence. Through presence we are empowered to move from a place of subjectivity or certainty to being able to observe ourselves more objectively. Through presence we can differentiate our identity from our experience. It is in this place that we can respond with choice rather than automatic patterns of behavior. As a result, we find more ease and freedom in life.
Enneagram Type + Presence = Growth, Transformation & Freedom
The Enneagram is a tool to help us know ourselves better and live from our truest selves. Knowing our Enneagram type is helpful and can result in more self-awareness, however, freeing ourselves from the deeply entrenched, unconscious patterns requires more. An ongoing practice of noticing, naming, allowing, accepting and integration can relax our automatic patterns and bring more freedom into our everyday lives.
