Sleepers Awake! On Living a More Authentic Life
Posted On: Friday, February 8, 2013
As women, we take pride in our ability to juggle multiple roles: business person, intimate partner, mother, daughter, sister, friend. Unfortunately, by trying to be everything for everyone, we can easily get overwhelmed and completely out of touch with our bodies, hearts, and inner knowing. When I get stuck in that place, two things are happening:
1. I’m convinced that I have to keep doing what I’m doing, that it’s right and necessary. I literally can’t see any other way.
2. I am not doing a very good job at any of it, and I’m feeling increasingly anxious and irritable. I feel like “I’m not myself,” even though the patterns of my thoughts, feelings, and behavior are discouragingly familiar.
The Enneagram explains what’s actually going on: I have fallen into a trance, hypnotized by the habitual defenses of my personality type. The “real me” has been taken over by a very clever and lifelike machine running a program, utterly convinced it is exercising free will. Kind of depressing! But here’s the cool thing: if I notice this, if I drop into the present moment for even a few seconds, I’m no longer the machine. In that moment when I “wake up,” my tunnel vision is removed and more beneficial courses of action become available.
In my Enneagram classes I help people practice the following technique for waking up, regardless of your personality type– you can try it right now!
1. Sense Your Body: What sensations am I aware of right now? My breath, some tension, some pain, hunger, thirst, tiredness? Just notice whatever is true in your body right now, and don’t try to fix it. Just relax into the truth of it.
2. Expand Your Heart: What am I feeling right now? Do I feel happy and satisfied? Am I longing for something? Is there anger or grief below the surface? Usually there are a few layers of different feelings we can notice. Again, just relax into the truth of your heart in this moment, without trying to fix it. Often we feel literal pain in our hearts because we are keeping them too small. Without effort, allow your heart to expand, to grow as big as necessary to hold your inner truth.
3. Quiet Your Mind: Unless you are a practiced meditator, a direct effort to quiet the mind can be an exercise in frustration and failure. Sensing the body and expanding the heart automatically quiet the mind. It just happens. The hard part is staying with it, but our capacity develops as we learn to recognize what takes us away (the thought habits of our personality).
The Enneagram teaches that the underlying Essence of every human being is good, kind, valuable, beautiful, clear, solid, joyful, strong, and peaceful (the nine types). The reason there is such tremendous suffering in the world is that most people are still asleep, running their programs, disconnected from the truth. The desire to live a more authentic life appears at the dawn of our awakening and continues to grow over time. At the Medway Dream Factory luncheon on March 5, I will explain how each of the nine types falls under the trance of ego, and the wonderful gifts each type brings to the world when we awaken to a more authentic life.
To learn more, please click my photo to visit my website at www.enneawake.com.
