Beatrice Chestnut - Type 1 Enneagram Panel

[Music] so welcome back for our last panel of the day and the last panel of the body based triad type one type one type ones are sometimes called the perfectionist or the reformer this is a personality type who's very focused on making things better on they have that when they pay attention and remember where your attention goes is a big part of what defines the anagram type once pay attention to the difference between how something actually is and it's distance between where it is and how it an imperfection and the ideal so they're looking they're looking at things in terms of right and wrong in terms of good and bad in terms of how something is and how could how it could be improved or perfected and they look at themselves in this way and they look in the world in this way and others to some degree so ones are body based type sometimes ones look like head types because they can be very intellectual but as Helen Palmer once said I thought in a beautiful way the energy of one it's their body based types it comes up from the gut and it kind of gets stopped by the head it gets judged by the head is that the right thing to do wait a minute are you sure you want to do that again ones can be quite self-critical in childhood usually the pattern was that they were criticized they felt criticized from the outside world usually parents and caretakers and that was painful and so as a coping strategy they kind of take in the critical voice and monitor themselves proactively to do the right thing or to be a good boy or girl so that they don't get criticized as much or any longer now and so they sort of again we all due to ourselves what was done to us to a degree and so with the three subtypes there is a varying degree of self-criticism versus critic criticism of other self-preservation ones are the true perfectionist they are more critical of themselves and less critical of others the the one-to-one or sexual one is more critical of others and less critical of self although can still be critical itself and the social is kind of in the middle social is kind of a mixed mixed bag can be somewhat self-critical and also critical of others the we talked about anger with the other body types and once again this type is a type that is the character structure is in some ways shaped by their experience and their relationship to anger whereas Eights tend to overdo anger and and nines under due anger ones are kind of in the middle most a lot of ones especially in naive ones who haven't worked with the Enneagram you ask them if they are angry they usually say no I don't get angry very much I'm not that angry but what happens but they do often relate to feeling more repressed versions of anger like like irritation or annoyance it can leak so again remember when we don't fully we aren't fully conscious of a feeling it doesn't disappear it sort of leaks out in other forms and whereas four nines when they when they suppress or go to sleep to their anger it leaks out as passive aggressive behaviors like saying yes and then not doing it or or passive resistance stubbornness for ones it leaks out as a kind of resentment that other people aren't working as hard to get things right as they are other people maybe aren't following the rules like they are other people are doing some things that aren't so good for the environment or the people around them and that doesn't feel so good so it's a it's an irritation or a dissatisfaction that come from things not being right and and and so that that there can be a sort of a repressed version of anger there are two ones that repress anger that the self-preservation one represses it the most such that the heat of anger gets transformed into warmth so they can be very warm and friendly but inside very critical and hard on themselves socials repression repress it halfway so they can be cool very intellectual type and sexual ones tend to be the angriest one in that in this approach to the subtypes a lot of sexual ones will say it's okay to be angry whereas self-preservation ones will often feel like it's not okay to be angry you really need to put a lid on that and so again many ones won't relate to being angry but of course the path of growth for ones is to be just more aware of what kinds of things make them angry how they are when they're angry sometimes ones don't realize that other people feel criticized by them because for a-1 ones will feel like I'm just trying to help you but other people will feel like what they're saying feels critical and so that can be a blind spot for ones as well but overall ones are among probably the most well intentioned types out there the people who are trying the hardest to do things well and follow the rules for the most part and can be very hard on themselves and can suffer a bit in that they often feel like they have to suppress or repress their instincts and impulses and feelings to do it the right way to be good and from a psychological point of view one of the things when I started putting together sort of early developmental psychology ideas with the Enneagram it was interesting to me that Naranjo says that that ones are the prototype for all of us and of being anti instinctual and sort of like holding in that your instincts and your impulses like it's not okay to just do whatever you want it may not be okay to have certain impulses in certain situations and so because of this part of the rule-following part of the the wanting order and structure in the world comes about by trying to kind of find their own rhythm sometimes ones were forced to be on other people's rhythm the kind of idea that you have to do it right you have to do it this way you have to do it according to this timing and they were sort of they sort of again because their coping strategy was to try to do it right according to the messages they got all right almost conform to an outside the outside world's rhythm they also will talk about how they have they feel things very kinesthetically they sort of know when something feels right or perfect and so part of the growth is to find their own rhythm and sometimes as children they weren't allowed to just have their own rhythm and find that in a natural way according to their own timing the the example Naranjo uses is that arc typically it's the child who was forced to be potty trained before he was ready so it's like you have to do this because your parent is telling you you have to poop I mean something as natural as that instead of just allowing it to happen according to you know all kids have their own you know time table and kind of having though that be attuned to by the outside world they sort of have to they've learned that they need to almost over control even their physical expression and and be over responsible to others and to that to the world so that's a bit of an introduction to the one personality and we have three very experienced type ones here so I would really want to appreciate bill and Dale and Newt for being here Dale and Newt or old-time friends of mine from the ne Graham community and Bill is a new friend but someone who also has a lot of experience with working with his type and with the anagram so thank you all for being here today and for doing this for us so first I just have been asking people just to talk a little bit about how you found your from the Enneagram and how you see some of the basic one patterns playing out in your life what what do you see when you self observe your personality in action yes the I've been in a men's group for about 20 to 25 years something like that and one of the exercises we did was going around the group in a truth-telling circle and I think the topic of criticism came up in some sort of realm and there you know they said oh yeah well you're very critical eyes and I'm not critical you know me I'm not critical and so anyway then I started investigating the Enneagram because one of the leaders of the group said read Helens book and so I was often running on the inning around and I still I looked at this and I thought you know that's that's not me I want to be anything but a one I don't want to be a judge I don't want to be critical I don't want to be hyper and of course that should have been the clue the then I attended a number of panels and the panel's for me or the clincher because when I heard you know my words coming out of their mouths I thought all right I get it you know I'm a 1 I'll accept that and at the time I was in a relationship with a woman who also was a 1 and so that made that relationship very interesting hopefully and one thing about ones we know what's right but each of us have our own version that's right that's correct but so initially the the awareness came through a combination of truth-telling panel and relationship I'm gonna speak about how I came to the integrand a little biography by graphically I'm from a large family I am one of eight sibs with two parents I was raised by a double sex couple my dad was a very unhealthy sick spent his whole life it is three and my mother was a pretty healthy not six who spent her life in her nine I was my father's scapegoat which to translate into Enneagram language made me a candidate to be a one there's a brilliant young yin analyst named sylvia pereira who wrote a book called the scapegoat complex and she has a line in that book in which she said the escaped coding parent was seen by the child in a way the parent knew he was finally seen and he would do everything to make sure the child suffer to the same degree that being seen affected him Wow so that was how I developed my early strategy which I didn't of course know the anagram in 1948 when I was developing this characteristic in my dad's life I grew up and I entered religious life to study be a Roman Catholic priest and I spent ten years as a Jesuit and ended up in Berkeley California in the late 70s where the Enneagram had one of its original Nason tsa's was in Berkeley and there was a Jesuit named Bob Oaks who was taught by an Iran oh and others and he taught my spiritual director at the India Graham's so I was informed of the anagram in 1978 as a tool in spiritual direction and my spiritual director typed me as a six because I lived with an enormous amount of existential fear but during our year of spiritual direction to enormous life events occurred for me I quit drinking and I was a drank alcoholic Lee I quit drinking in September of 1978 and on October 4th I came out of the closet so I blew my life open a week later my spiritual director having this new experience of bills and she said oh girl you are not a sex you are one I go give me the book and I really took I was so happy to be a one because I was finally in touch with my oneness which was my true path not that it's not a complicated path it's a complicated path I just retired as a psychotherapist after practice and close to 40 years and I used the Enneagram a lot in my practice and I teach the Enneagram as a spiritual discipline at bishops ranch in Healdsburg some of you may know about Bishop's ranch I love the Enneagram I've used it in my personal life in my professional life in my social life I'm as a sexual one I'm married to a nine who wanted nothing to do with the anagram for the first 10 years of our marriage which I took great umbrage of course I typed him as a six cuz he was so filled with fear of the Enneagram until one day he took Reese on Hudson's book from my library and he surreptitiously read and he said at dinner one Agnes and I man I go okay then so that's kind of my introduction to the Enneagram I work with that kind of daily but not at the conscious level I don't have my I don't read read the books anymore I've integrated a lot but I'm so aware of my life issues that come out of this typology and I am enormously grateful for the Enneagram it's had a very large impact on my life and on the life of everyone in my life to their delight or scorned well for me it was very easy for me to identify my Enneagram type I'd been pointed at Allen Palmer's first book and classes and so on and I got a push from my therapist to go attend a class like this and so typical fashion for me I got the book and started reading before the class like I better study this you know figure out what's going on and when I came to the chapter on one it was clear to me for two reasons one is would be said there's a sense in there to describe to me how my mind works that had never occurred to me before that I see things in the world what stands out is things that are wrong or out of place or somehow off against a background perception of how things could be perfect or beautiful and it's like that's how my mind works that's how I see things that's just like how information comes to me it automatically picks up what's off here you know it's like it's not anything I have to try for it just like just like seeing and hearing it's just a sense that how it works it's like that's me and the other thing in there was I read hell it's an anger type of like I don't see that but then the fixation in system is resentment it's like ah I know resentment this is a frequent visitor all kinds of things in the world can bring up resentment for me is like this is one of my big things as a resentment and I I knew that in myself yeah I know I've I resent all kinds of things and could you give us a few examples of what might bring up resentment for you oh well endless but you know if if I'm driving and somebody does something unpleasant you know then resentment would be the normal deal and if somebody's not working as hard as I am or it doesn't do as good a job as I am more or they're taking off and having fun and I'm still working it like big resentment and it after I I went to an any gram class like this and it was amazing and most of my life I'd been interested in psychology and spiritual studies and never found anything that really got me very far anywhere but this system gave me traction and way into like how to study myself and find out how do I work it gave me enough you know a good start on this and that that I finally had something really appropriate to me to look at and you know it's a study and to learn about so that was great and it's I I threw myself into studying intagram and with great teachers and great friends and it took me a year of looking at myself really carefully and finally I could see I'm angry it took me a whole year before I could see that before that I was just like when I knew was I was tense I was uptight I was tight it's like all the time that's my normal thing and in terms of the energy and the knowledge it's like my the way I learned and the way I get energy comes from my gut my body but I tighten up just by living in the world like tighten up about everything and the energy all ends up in my head and I don't until the time I really didn't have much of a sense of my body my sensations my emotions they were all pretty repressed which my childhood my father was a very stern strict Enneagram one and he was similarly repressed and couldn't stand anger or emotions in the house or anything like that so as a child I learned to squash all of that stuff and just try to be rational and obey the rules and so on Thank You Newt do you want to say anything more about I was going to say anything more you want to say about self-criticism let's say for me the self-criticism will I have to criticize that statement just the way my mind works you know that's right you know it's like that's not exactly right for me it's like a little bit off so for me it's like if you think of growing up as a kid my father is this critical person and he's the important person in my life I want his love I want his affection I want him to like me and so what I learned to do was preemptively examine what I was doing how I was acting and to conform to what's needed what's the right way what are the rules you know just to not do something wrong and criticize myself but to be aware of like that would be wrong that would be off track and then to not go that way to go the right way so it's like almost a sense of that's danger that's not a good way you know so it's kind of it's built in there's a built-in thing that helps me avoid mistakes as opposed to and trying to avoid being wrong and then getting fierce eyes and then that's hurt right so it sounds like a lot of the tension comes from bracing against both impulses but doing it wrong or making a mistake or like really controlling yourself right the tension I agree is is the impulse to actually just kind of do you feel like doing is really dangerous because particularly in my childhood household my father was not good was almost certainly to go off this would be he'd be really angry at any kind of impulsive behavior so all that gets bottled up and changed into a different form of energy thank you do you want to say anything more about anger or self-criticism or no I'm enjoying this this is really great to be among among folks who understand me really is nice and that's been part of the journey all along self-criticism big time I'll just give you a very quick synopsis my father was born in 1879 a pioneer and the old-school way he was 60 years old 63 when I was born and spare the rod and spoil the child it was the old way of disciplining children and so I got a lot of rod and one only I learned fairly quickly that I was going to have to obey and do the right thing or I was going to get beaten and fortunately my mother he was a type one my mother was also a one German and she however decided to take over the leather a razor strap and use a brush because it didn't do as much damage but I was beaten the lawn when I was growing up but I avoided that by being a good boy I had to be a good boy and so being a good boy has been the model of my life and the inner critic that is constantly running is saying that's not right you better not do that you better not you know you just screwed up again don't do that that's the wrong thing to do so it's an ongoing very tiring existence to be in that place and so fortunately the Enneagram came along made me realize how critical I was being to a certain extent and I can say ok here come to judge and so wherever I get into a situation where I know that that it's gonna you know I'm gonna be self-critical at a big big level I can just laugh about only say okay here comes the judge again you know right there all right I get it and that that is that's helped a lot not totally but it's helped a lot and in terms of I don't know I'm glad the word about your anger what's that been for do you relate to anger and various derivatives or how does that look like for you is it most of my my life it was annoyance and irritation and frustration and so-and-so isn't doing something the right way or so on that you know such-and-such isn't right I mean this day and age if you watch the news every night you really get a good chance to be a critical one because of the sort of stuff that's going on in the world the I think that but it's as now it really is blossom into a good anger like I consider to be a good I get angry mm-hmm right you know and it's not and I to me I give myself permission to be angry because there's something to be angry about but at the same time I don't let it dominate my life either so it's a balance so I can tell what I'm gonna get angry and what's when it's gonna come up I can tell if it's gonna be appropriate angry and I can tell if I can you know just feel that and let it go but it still takes a lot of work takes a lot of effort ongoing the way the inner critic works for me it's not like I have two personalities but the inner critic is always in the background I thought when I started therapy forty years ago as a client that I would eliminate this from my life with my deep knowledge of the anagram I thought I would eliminate this from my life I haven't eliminated this from my life I carry it every day I don't know when it's going to be most vocal or most vitriolic but it's always present I'll find myself observing it a lot and it's a great gift to me but I don't have to serve it all the time I'm trapped by it before I observe him Richard Rohr calls the super-ego the devil and I love that image because I filled my super-ego is subvert in my true self working two out of the obverse desire to protect me from the world and the conundrum that creates for me is it can be dissin hardening I turned 70 recently and I thought when I was 60 I thought well when I'm 70 I'm not thinking 80 is gonna be a lot easier so I'm aware I live with this super critic at all times and it's exhausting it can reduce me I have been in the fetal position in my adult life two or three times in which my resources which I think are large and powerful were vacated from me something on anger one of the ways ones are often understood as having hidden anger and I don't see my anger readily I feel it but like you it comes out often as resentment I can be resentful over minutiae and it really is not about the other it's about the way I am treating myself that I'm judging the minutia as being less than perfect the anger and the perfectionism are twinned always with me my spouse is generous in suggesting when there may be some anger somewhere in my repertoire as a nine we do and I'm very grateful for that and I've learned to befriend my anger meaning that my anger has many good aspects I have been committed to social justice issues my whole life and my social justice commitments are deeply informed by an anger I feel about human beings treated with less dignity than they deserve and I see that all the time perhaps we all do I can only claim my own experience and I've learned to recognize that anger as a tool like Bill you're seen something you have to pay attention to this you have to deal with this in the way that I feel called to deal with that I don't have anger that lashes out I really have never had anger that lashes out lashes out at me I was gonna say was it more on you really trained to go inside because the threat with the parent as my colleagues here have suggested was you cannot lash out at the parent it's too dangerous it's it's life-threatening so you learn to take that appropriate anger at the other and hold it inside and manage it yourself even at the great cost that self management of that anger and judgment are for you you know speaking of the inner critic one time I have a good friend who's a 1 and I really love this guy he's a good friend and I would get kind of mad at his inner critic and one time he pointed out to me he said oh wait a minute he said if it weren't for my inner critic I'd be dead or in jail so and so I realized whoa like it's not so clear-cut here it's not just like an inner critic bad you know it's like okay there's it it's an inner coach it's helping you it's helping you survive and it's also at times hurting you so it sounds like part of it is getting to know the inner critic a little bit like Matt earlier and the 9 panel said he got that he needed to get to know his sleepiness getting to know the inner critic and understand how it operates for you and bring consciousness to it as opposed to doing another thing where you're making yourself bad or making some part of you bad yeah I just wanted to follow on to bill that came to mind is a example about anger after years of kind of learning about my anger and learning to be with it and just getting some experience with it then I can remember for example a time at work when I saw something was software engineering something was off and it was important and I knew how to do it in a good way and and this anger was up at like this is wrong this is bad and it's important and I just filled with energy and I just charged in and started working on this project and it was just full of energy and enthusiasm and focus and I just ripped through this project did a fabulous job it felt wonderful about it and I could tell that the anger was my gas my juice sorry what was fueling it was my faith and it was and it was being used in a really good way I was fixing an important thing in the system I felt really good about doing it yeah and I wasn't hurting anybody I wasn't criticizing anybody and it's like bad things happen in the world and it's not necessarily in devotee's 12th and it doesn't matter if it if it is it's like I don't want to fix this and there's the energy to do it it's not like oh damn I have to go do this it's like oh boy let's go yes yes and it sounds like feeling good about yourself instead of beating yourself laughing it's just a great experience this may be a good moment to say that in my in my opinion Nelson Mandela and Gandhi were once and this is an example of the way anger channeled consciously can change the world you know I think in both cases you see and there's even a quote Gandhi has that's pretty famous about anger used consciously has this incredible power and so again I think one of any things that Enneagram teaches us is the difference between sort of the downside and some of these ways that that we've heard of you all getting actually hurt by these coping strategies but also how how they sort of point to your high side is the this this way that if we bring in consciousness it shifts everything well if you can be conscious of what's happening and especially compassion I think for yourself as a wine the Tibetan understanding of the anger emotion has separates into two things one of the is the energy that's a destructive energy and the one is the constructive energy and if you can really become acquainted with your anger then you can separate those two right right right and it's often I think with one's it's being put to service and helping my both my father and my brother were a family for our once and whenever I brought something that I've written to my dad to say hey would you read this his first his first question is always can I take out my red pen and circle the typos and the mistakes because he would not be able to read it without doing that it's nice that he asks for permission and of course he's helping me at the same time and so there is a way that that he that that's that's the way the mind works so can you tell us all a little bit more about the high side or the strengths associated with the style and especially as you become conscious and myrrh move toward sort of beyond the personality but of course our high side is a reflection of our personality and also some of the particular ways you've used any Graham insights to grow any blind spots or challenges you've actually used to to develop I didn't realize that Mandela and that God knew where they are and all my South African friends agree the good domini I like that that's that's great I teachers and preachers in some ways the moral white knights of the world and you know not certainly not all moral white knights or ones but many the ability to pick up little flaws and details although it can be burdensome at the same time it can be very very helpful to others and when you're doing work that as requires awareness of detail and keeping things straight and keeping things working properly I think that benefits everyone and it feels good inside because if it's done in a way that isn't criticizing somewhere else and that ideally not dumping out yourself too much that it can create a lot of it's it's the good use of energy so it goes out there and we can solve problems we can get things done yeah there's Energy's wonderful I love the energy of that a panel I mean I was just grooving on that energy that was you know and so it is it is a way to create you know to set boundaries it's a way to set a direction it's a way to move in that direction and so all of those things of course it's the right way to do it but they all of those things are I think a positive side of the one mm-hmm I so see it being a one a lot with a gut with my god and I associate my gut deeply with intuition I've learned to trust my intuition as absolutely as I can and have since the day I got sober and came out 40 years ago and these are some of the ways that that plays in my life once I think see clearly what's in front of them they're required to see in order to stay save in order to comport themselves in a way that will not get them in trouble but the upside of seeing is they see our culture is not a seeing culture we don't look so in my work as a therapist for 40 years I think my capacity to see others was a gift to others it's a gift to me certainly it can also be a burden for others when I see them I have many experiences in life where people see seen by me and I'm kind of unaware that I have communicated that I'm seeing them it invites a certain level of trust in me and an ID a certain idealization of me or of the seer and then when the one who seen no longer wants to be seen the D idealization process begins of course I'm unaware of that until I'm on the ground but I would claim that seeing is has been an enormous gift I trust what I see in my professional life in my personal life I think my anger has been a gift to others people come into my office over 40 years without access to their anger or their sadness so their summit eyes din - what 9s were speaking against clearly today of trying to have a feeling life and the feelings that are most taboo in our culture to me are anger and sadness and their feelings they're their feelings and they're required of us to have a good life so my ability to articulate anger and powerfully sadness have been I think vital for me to feel what I'm sad about but also vital for the people I have served one anecdote my father-in-law is 93 and he he and I are dear friends he's a widower now we talk a lot we we have he caught he calls me says do you have an opening in your practice this morning I have 10 o'clock open I'll meet you at the office which is Pete's in Santa Rosa and not so long ago he said to me I want to tell you you brought much to our family and I know that and I've received much from his family but he said the greatest gift you've given Scot my husband and me is you've given us access to our anger Scott's mother and I were not capable of telling him how to have his anger and being with you it's kind of required of him that he has anger and I took that as it is kind of a a life affirmation that this anger is a good thing it's a clear thing and it's an absolutely necessary thing full lives so those are the upsides the downsides are evident all over my neurotic self the cork in my butt that's the downside it's just all but there are many upsides as I said in my opening remarks I'm very grateful to be a one or to be this person because the gift of the one is to say to me there's a passage encryption in Christian scripture in which Jesus says be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect I was raised with that I couldn't stand that but I've come to know as an adult what that invitation was perfection for you bill is to be your true self to be your true self as your only work in this exactly who you are no one has to agree with that no one has to like it though many do I'm blessed with a lot of love but your your work is to find out who you are and be that person and that to me is the clarity that I received as a one I want to expand a little bit on what you said about seeing because I think what's what set what one's gifts are it's a lot about discernment and objective analysis there's a kind of rationality that's that's again it's about seeing what's really there and not being afraid to see what's really there I think for a lot of us other types we kind of want to focus on the positive and not the negative or we want to focus on this and not that we don't want to you know experience that but one's a little bit like fours I think are kind of like okay let's be with what's really true let's let's call a spade a spade let's if there's a problem here we're gonna point to it and we're gonna describe it and so we can address it so I think there's even some I like what you said about seeing and calling something out and there's this kind of courage of just wanting because you want to improve things or address things there's a kind of willingness to to see things as they are and name them with great objectivity often I'll just I'll just add my own please it's it's annoying to me more like that than a see just like is it kinesthetic or it's it's got knowing it's instant instinctive instinct it just it's a it's a it's a knowing I mean I don't know how to describe it it's not a mental process what I thought of saying is that learning to be what any gram one is about and so on some of the things that I eventually learned that was very helpful was that being critical resentful and angry and nitpicky and all of this stuff just to see more clearly that my motivation is actually positive even though I can be a pain to myself and others that I want things to go well I want things to go smoothly I want things to be easier for everyone easy and beautiful and without a hassle you know and that's kind of my the motivation of this perfection if we can let down some of the neurotic parts it's like I want this to be an easy good life for me and for everyone so to see that like there's a positive aspect here that's that's worth nurturing right Dale can you tell the story told a great story on a panel once and I think it highlights what the difference between I think what's always good intentions and desire for positive outcome with how it can sometimes land in a different place for others you told a great story about when you were working as an engineer you were helping a junior engineer that was a real important learning experience for me you know I being in software engineering my whole life it's a it's a place where you can just be with the computer and work with something where the rules are known and it it doesn't have any feelings about them so it's a kind of a safe easy place for me to be you know having not good access to my feelings this was like really an appealing environment so years later I was a team leader and we hired a bunch of new grads out of college and I was helping coaching teaching some of these bright young people you know about software engineering as they were doing their jobs and my normal way back then someone would write some software and give it to me for inspection and I would have a red pen and a green pen and three colors I forget the three colors three different colors and like the red things are things that are just wrong it could be a misspelled word or it could be you know this software does the wrong thing years like this just doesn't work and then there are things which a different color was this could be done in a way that's simpler or more elegant or easier to understand or easier for the next engineer to understand when they come here so there's a better way to do this that would be worth doing and then the last thing is just like these are little things that would be lovely but they're not required so they were like three different levels of them color coded comments coming back and there would be the pages would just be filled with all of these colors oh my god and eventually my manager came to me and said this junior programmer she was in tears he was just heartbroken and didn't know what to do and philsed crushed she was just having a terrible time and I was shocked to hear this because for me it's like if I had gotten to the market paper that I had given to her I would have been probably upset and it's like okay I'm gonna fix this and make it perfect and the energy would come up and like fix all of these things and fix all of those things and you know I'd be engaged in wanting wanting to make my work perfect for various good and erotic reasons but to discover like I'm putting out all of these comments to teach you to be the world's best programmer and she's crushed it's like oh my god this hurts people and I really never saw that before I didn't really see it clearly like this has the beneficial intent but it couldn't really hurt people mm-hm and to learn that gave me a whole new view of what's helpful in the world instead of what's the right way you know it's nearby they're not too far away yeah right I mean but a big difference and so that led to me looking a lot at is this error just my habit of mind just my critic it just comes up and does a thing all the time and it actually doesn't matter right I mean a year or two after that my boss told me you know when you when I give you a paper to read or something and I want your feedback and comes back all marked up it's like I look for the ideas they're comments but all the typos and misspellings and bad grammar is like iced ignore all those so you get to see that a lot of it's just a waste I'm actually it doesn't make any difference you know fixing all these little things you know fix this little thing it doesn't make any difference to anybody even me it makes a difference to me but it's it's a habitual irritation with things and it would be better for me to look at my irritation and befriend my irritation defending my time trying to make the irritation happy which will never happen it's endless so to make it perfect or assert the rightness of things so my my teaching partner irani o pious has something that he says about ones that I love and this is a way of pivoting a little even more to sort of what's helped you grow at practices what experiences he says but it's tricky because for ones they're already over doing self-improvement right so if you're a coach or a therapist and you're working with a 1 you're kind of in dangerous territory because if you come on with your usual thing of ok how are we going to make you better you're sort of taking them in the wrong direction and giving them the wrong message and so it my teaching partner says is all the other types have to get better ones have to get worse they have to get more decadent they have to get bad go make some mistakes exactly and make mistakes and don't care about it you know make mistakes and see what makes them see what happens make some mistakes and see what happens so with that in mind and the idea that sometimes the growth path for ones has less to do about being better in the sense that some of this the rest of us need to be better but more to do with relaxing more taking care of yourself more having more fun maybe even stirring up a little trouble what what what examples might you have in your life of experience or practices you know they can fall in that category or not that have helped you kind of break out of this of this pattern just this habit of mind the trap door well the trap door is different that's that's so if you haven't heard of trap door ones trap door one is the one who has so much pressure on him to do himself or herself to do the right thing for so long that then engages in bad behavior on the down-low right and so an example of this might be Eliot Spitzer so some of you may know the Attorney General and governor of New York who is a crusader for you know putting white collar criminals away and prostitution and all this you know the enforcing the law and then gets caught having a long-term relationship with a prostitute right so it's like all this pressure to be good and instead of learning how to either be bad in a good way or learning to take the pressure off somehow there's a release valve that's kind of like a trapdoor that's in some ways probably relieving the pressure to be so controlled and good all the time but isn't the healthiest thing probably for him you know again whether it's the secrecy or without any value judgments the secrecy or whatever having to you know make your suit get get happy or have pleasure behind the scenes or in a way that's not that maybe he even still thinks is not okay but but again part of what you know and and part of this could be how can we support you because I think when one's grow they're amazing to be around because it's this combination of a lot of what especially I think the way bill was putting it this kind of seeing this kind of knowing this kind of supporting this bringing to bear anger in the world in ways that really help and move things and make things happen and like or that it's the force behind social causes but how do how does this also work for you you know to help you be lighter or I know humor is often something that that helps but what what what experiences and practices and things have you done to really help yourself on the growth path this is tough for a one yeah people say to me often are you happy and I think what is that what do you mean by that word yeah it's it isn't an intuitive word for me yeah yeah are you enjoying yourself I go I might be let me define enjoy [Laughter] I think ones are prone to have trapdoors I've had my trapdoors over the course of my life they're not real bad but they're real trappy they're very secretive because they are transgressive over the ideal perfect self I'll tell you the things I do that bring me enjoyment the garden running being with friends is the great elixir is being with friends I have very few one friends so I'm with all kinds of people who approach life with a lot more lightness or transgressive goodness or so I love being with friends I love movies I love music I have music on I've learned to have music on every day from shortly after I get up I start the morning with Celtic music and then I moved to a wreath in Motown in the mid day and then I have jazz at night and I do this every day to keep me off of myself because if the music's on the inner critic has less chance to invade whatever space exists between the inner critic and my true self which is some musics very important to me dancing is important to me humor you mentioned many ones have very acute humor in my they see things with such a jaundiced clarity it adds to humor in life a meditation in my spiritual path I began to read about 20 years ago I've had a spiritual practice for 50 years a daily practice but it did not include what we in this room would understand is meditation but meditation has given me space in my life and space is a a gift of joy I my inner critic for 25 minutes just loves meditation just it just loves it and I work with that every day and yet I'm drawn to go back every morning I go back to sin so I'm really grateful for meditation and for all my neo Buddhist friends who told me it was okay for me to meditate on my path I'm grateful for that I do a lot of public speaking and I get a lot of satisfaction out of public speaking and being with people sharing my journey the parts that are applicable or value for others so those are some things I do none of them are like wild I know wild and I did wild for a long time with the help of alcohol but this is a really it's a tough question it's a life question what do you do to let let it out it's it's hard but I appreciate the question thanks I think for me the my sense is that really important things for me were not mental the yoga and good yoga teacher was a big opening and important thing for me to start learning about my body and the sense8 experience and the sense that's the experience of living in a body that's dynamic and changing because I had very little awareness of that and my sense now is that's the kind of the most fundamental or important component of my makeup right so - so - through yoga - really learn the experience you know my body and myself as as as a sense eight experience not a mental experience not a thought experience was really important sitting meditation I always thought meditation was a mental training but Zen meditation anyway it's a physical practice and if you do that physical practice you learn a lot of stuff about body and sensation and what those things cause like fear and confusion and all kinds of stuff arise from the body and the sense8 experience so I think fundamentally that was the most important thing in terms of the overall learning experience for me because as long as those doors of understanding are closed life is just going to be small and limited right and along that same line about the same time that I came to the intagram my marriage of 20 plus years exploded and I was just thrown into this emotional turmoil that was so strong I couldn't repress it so suddenly I was this very emotional being like oh my god and having that crisis disaster opened me up was a great opportunity you know and with the talented therapist to learn to not be afraid of of experiencing my feelings and then being able to gradually listen to them and see what are they saying what does this mean what's what is this telling me about me and about life and how I'm responding so that was another great gift and opportunity it's like up until the first half of my life it was like television that was black and white and when I learned about the body and learned about feelings it's like oh my god it's color life is cold and three-dimensional was like oh my god right and then and then I can experience my sadness and my anger and and my care for other people as really what they are at their root it's not just an idea it's not just they should it's really it's about love was the question what brings us joy in life how do you grow through pleasure and fun and and and how do you break out of the pattern of needing to be right or good or that that can be you know a way of being too good and and and how do you break out of that as a growth for the strategy for growth as a body type I can definitely agree with everything I've heard for me dance that's been a big one I've been dancing since the 60s and when I get into dance often I just totally forget myself and admittedly it was performing dance for quite a while and so there you have to be perfect you have to know exactly what you're doing but then letting that go and then just the the cheer joy of the music and being with a partner or being with a group or whatever it is it just takes me away then so I think that's one of the biggest as a body type it fits right I mean you know I would like to go out use our bodies just being in nature walking hiking or used to do a lot of jogging until my feet decided to tell me they didn't want to do that anymore but the yeah it's all the kind of one thing that gives me an incredible amount of joy now and gets me out of myself or my grandkids and I've got two granddaughters that I love like hell two grandsons and I just love the tickets out of and so you know what I'm around them I'm not here I'm just doing whatever it is we all have to do together and so and and without judgment by golly that is kind of one of those free spaces it's a free zone I can go into and not of course then after they leave I think well I really should have played that different game I mean I really super and it's that damn should work that really gets to you all the time you know it's one way or another but yeah so we've been talking about the air Alliance today and it's no accident that the heart point the point against the arrow from one is seven right seven is the type that's most focused on pleasure that's most focused on the positive on keeping spirits up having fun different options not being limited not being constrained and so when one's can use seven as a growth strategy and it's a good thing to do after you've been working on your one patterns for a while sort of going to the high side of seven you know seeing the value in focusing on pleasure on key on on keeping your spirits up on having fun on planning for play and possibilities for fun and like looking at the world through that lens and you know keeping things really light and not being too serious all of these are ways that I think this seven the high side of seven can be a way of one's sort of balancing out their tight patterns and then once you've worked on seven they go back to one and then one stress point is four so the stress point of four is kind of like it's sort of kind of hard and not okay at first for ones to be in their feelings you know we've heard some great some great things here about how on the one hand feeling weren't okay and had to be repressed and on the other hand on the growth path it's really important to get in touch with your anger and your sadness and to have learn that that's completely okay and that that's an important part of life and so once ones can kind of get the loosen up with the seven point they can go to four and be creative without rules they can be self express in whatever way they want without having to conform to an idea of what other people might think is perfect or even maybe what they think is perfect they can get more sink more into their emotions and have that be a rich experience that enhances their their connection to themselves like it does for healthy fours and not have and and give themselves more permission to be emotional more permission to be with their pain and have that deep in their experience and make it richer and not something that they need to repress in any way or criticized inside themselves so that's a little bit about the seven and the four move and with that I want to I want to ask one before we go to questions I just want to say is there anything I haven't asked you about that you think is important for us to know about one's about you or about your experience is a one not specifically but it seems to me that one of the important things we haven't mentioned at least here is is the is the practice practice practice of looking inside calming yourself looking inside and seeing what's happening and that's just that simple practice it seems to me is the fundamental tool we all have for discovering how does this living amazing system work that really helps you just giving yourself remembering to just look inside and be with what's right there right a thousand times a day I mean it's so valuable and it's not just a mental look inside it's like at least for me it's like take a breath let your shoulders relax second B let your mind settle and then like what is this and just it's so valuable one of my one of my I was at any room teacher for a while at one of my students was in the training to learn to be a teacher he's gone through all of the training was about to go to his final training in and approval hopefully and he arrived at my door and he said I'm not a nine I'm a six this is after two years for three years of study of the intagram and all this work and he said finally I saw in my meditation in my solitude what keeps coming up it's fear and I was so used to it you just normals like the water you swim in you know the fish swims in but he says that's what keeps coming up and I finally saw it I'm a six he was must be to one piece I mentioned my own spiritual path I think having a spiritual path is a complicated thing using language is complicated on the left coast talking about a spiritual path is I think particularly difficult but my own path has been what it's been and each year I go to a monastery in northern Oregon a Trappist monastery where there are monks who don't speak and are silent and I go there for eight days every year and my spiritual path is deeply wedded with my oneness I have spent a seventy year journey trying to make myself perfect in the eyes of the divine however I understand the divine on whatever projections I make onto the divine and whatever projections I have the divine projecting back onto me all the work of my own you go and self several years ago I was in they have as endow their even though their Roman Catholic monks and there's no iconography in the zendo and it has a two-story window look into the forest it's very beautiful and I'm often the only one there and I'm there several times a day yes a meditation hall and I always have prayed to try to understand the divine within and it's been resistant to me because I have perfected myself to require myself that I be worthy of that which is a worthiness I cannot self-generate I had an experience that as we do we hear voices in our lives and I heard the voice I'm already in you and was it was no not as if it was this acceptance that my work and this is something you said struck me my work was futile and necessary at the same time I had to do that work which was a lot of psychological work but within a spiritual context and using spiritual language and spiritual traditions to come to know the deepest truth I could know so that I could learn to live out of that and the key word in that was not only I'm within you but I'm within you as you are bill that there's no more work of course there's more work but you remind me of something I work with a spiritual counselor myself and he said something to me recently that was so powerful and really shifted things for me she said you know and she was she sort of channels spirit in a way she said you know the what your what your the place your striving to be you already are enjoy paradise enjoy the paradise that you're in and it was like whoa because I at what I am was striving you know and to realize like you already cause I took that in it was like wow what a relief yeah sorry about that maybe I'm a - I can do that so I'm a little more than the enjoyment arena although I totally hear when time someone asked me about like are you happy and I like my my response was that's not really the goal but okay not exactly you know but anyway yeah so I'd like to open up for questions but first I want to ask Michael if you have any comments or questions for the panel well again it's the third extraordinary panel of the day I I love working with ones and there are four or five ones who work actively at the core of commonweal in one way or another one of our projects is entirely staffed by moms and it's three three ones working together and and I work with them it's one other person who's joined us but and it's amazing to work with three ones together I mean you know just remarkable and the work gets done it gets done beautifully there is not a lot of friction there is a strong tendency to go to infinite detail and to you know ask want to be sure that everything I get asked a lot of things you know to make sure that we're on target but I love it one month in I have some very dear friends who are ones and so two points one is I'd like to ask about which is the evolution of the inner critic / coach over time I have some friends for whom the inner critic was extremely strong when they were young and over time they found ways of working with it or managing it or became more mellow or whatever the second is that with one friend who was very focused on being perfect the the holy idea of holy perfection which is the holy idea of one which is hard for some people to imagine but imagine just for a moment that they not only are you perfect just as you are with your imperfection but the whole universe is perfect just as it is and of course that triggers us all about all the injustice --is and how can we say it's perfect but the way I understand that is that the universe is unfolding with perfect attention to natural laws you know and we on earth will learn by our ignorance of these natural laws but the fact is that if one identifies with the perfection of the universe that it that that enables all of us including ones to say you know my imperfection is part of the perfection of the universe and as a five I see myself as radically imperfect because I don't have any inner critic voice at all so that's just not happening you know I have a much easier time being radically imperfect than Donna Wanda's but I'm able to I'm a big believer in the perfection of the universe and its infinite mysterious beauty and so when I can share that with my one friend we find a meeting place so as a social sexual v particularly meeting social one friends with the resonance that takes place between social ones and social fraud I just enjoy our dialogues our interactions and the respect we both have for boundaries there's just a lot that I find really beautiful in relationship with one you want to say your subtypes I'm a sexual self pres yeah and I don't know if you guys are going by the approach I use or another approach but that just might be something to name that there are different approaches to for me the my partner and people who are close to me my friends are the most important emotional force in my life if they get messed up I am totally messed up it's like the most important thing and for self-preservation of not an issue if something is a problem there I just deal with it and it's really doesn't I don't get stirred up about it and social like for social things I feel kind of ignorant and you know not knowing how to function but it's not terribly disturbing for me either but it's the one-to-one relationships that's really powerful in my life so and when I'm talking to a group of people my experience is if I'm looking at anybody it feels like I'm talking to you I'm talking to you one person he's talking to and you're talking to I think about the way the narrative approach approaches it in terms of very much the instinctual description okay yeah could you clarify that I'm sorry just the piece about your approach in the narrative away Dale is really focusing on the idea of like his experience of really relating one to one and and that is especially the narrative school which we were both raised in very much focuses a lot on describing that like self preservation would be about like do you bring supplies on trips are you kind of worried about how cold or hot or when you're gonna eat things like that in the approach I use it's a little bit different because while some of that holds true it's mixed with the the passion and so it's more my approach is a little bit more based on subtype descriptions where those shift and change a little bit more so in my approach for instance that the the way I would describe the three one subtypes wouldn't be so much focused on like one to one relating it's more like what you do with your anger or not it's more like how much it's repressed House self-critical you are it's it's like the self-preservation one is more perfectionistic the social one is perfect and the sexual one is perfecting others and the this the self-preservation one is is more self-critical the sexual as least self-critical more critical of other people so again that's just it's the later Naranjo approached it's a little bit more of a focus on the subtype which is his kind of blending of that instinctual part with the passion and then it ends up looking a little bit different whereas a lot of people's approach is much more based on this question of when I observe myself and I more focused on sort of my one-to-one relationships even if I'm going to as Dale said very clearly I'm kind of still relating one-to-one or am i more about safety and security as a self-preservation there the different approaches kind of go more like one kind of looks at the sub type descriptions and says which one of these three and I and the other one kind of looks more at the instinct the instinct behaviors and says which one fits for me so that yeah does that mean if you kind of type your stuff under the narrative tradition approach and then we look at your subtypes the same could be could be yeah also my UI yeah it could go either way yeah it would be it might be a little bit different or it might be the same but just a different accent or something like that yeah yeah just for a second question about the durability and the vociferous of the inner critic I I believe all human beings are wounded I believe ones are wounded in a very particular way and the inner critic is designed by the ego to protect the self so initially it's a thoughtful approach of the ego one might say I think its durability is related to the structure of the trauma so if a person's initial trauma was severe the inner critic will never leave them less the severity of that original trauma be returned if the original trauma was less severe the utility of the super-ego will become it'll be observed as less important I don't really need this to function so you take someone like JC to guard the young woman who was kept captive for 17 years but I don't know her but the level of trauma I believe she experienced was somewhat beyond comprehension so she's gonna have an inner critic or someone in her situation that is going to protect her until her last breath lest she ever get near a situation that could be somewhat traumatic and her antenna her intuition will be deeply on guard at all times it doesn't mean she or us can't live a full life but there's a correlation between the original trauma and the persistence of the super egos boys right that's a good point and I would say that applies to all the types in terms of level of fixation so I've you know this is a longer story I believe we're born is our type but of course our environment plays a role in how it shapes how it shows up and I think the more the trauma the more fixated because the more defended you need to be to survive and doesn't mean that you can't still grow and change and become very very healthy but it just may take more work because that defense defensive system has needed to be so strong and rigid to protect you from the greater threat in terms of that I'm glad you brought us back to the inner critic question because and work my work with ones I find that sometimes it happens in stages where there may be a stage where it's really good for the one to befriend the inner critic it can be hard if you're it can't you almost be at war with yourself if your inner critics and they're trying to protect you but kind of hurting you and being tough on you in the name of trying to protect you going too far and because again maybe it had to be extreme to protect you but at a certain point when you're not under threat anymore it's very important for that inner critic to be able to release and not be so so tough and so so rigid and sometimes that can happen through a kind of a friending of the inner critic like my friend who said hey if I if I'd be dead or in jail if it weren't for my inner critic I respect it I can even appreciate it some some people say it's almost like an inner coach who's like trying to help you be better let's say hey you did that really well that time do it again that way next time or you didn't do it you don't want to do it that way again because he got into trouble and I think that's really important that said I think there may be a stage even beyond that where you can be too friendly with the inner critic and it can be a little bit too you know a little let let the inner critic take some liberties that it may be better for it not to take so in order it's almost like the healthy part of yourself your higher self to be able to come in and challenge it a bit sometime and be able to say something like hey lay off a little bit you know a respect what you're trying to do but you know but let's back off you know to be able to challenge the inner critic a little bit as well in the service of of taking care of yourself in almost a higher way one of the things in that regard that worked very well for me in retrospect was in therapy my therapist said you know something I would see and say that's wrong he would say try this can you say that's different and it was it was eye-opening it's like I tried it like okay that's different sounds a different feeling to it it's different and if I can frame is different then I can actually think about it well how is it different how is it working what is its aspects you know maybe there's things I never thought about it's just wrong then the story stops there you know the critic has just decided that's wrong and there's there's no more narrative and if I make it different can you can investigate it well it's different so what is this right and it's good I like that technique it's almost like sometimes you need to disrupt the one's definition system like my friend who's a one said it really helped him once in couples therapy when he and his wife we're having the same fight over and over again and finally the therapist said to him look would you rather be right or be happy and it was like wow like that again it totally it was sort of a shock to the system to say oh wow like insisting on right I could be giving up happy yeah to take the inner experience off of right wrong and put it somewhere else opened differently is there something you wanted to say to that new twice in my life had if I've had the experience of not having the inner critic and one of the times was in a therapy session in the 90s where my therapist used MDMA and so the idea of an empathic or of psychedelic or whatever it happens to be is a way out of the cage that I put myself in of course these things are transient but another time later on when I was still getting here comes the critic again I simply use the old NLP mesh method neuro linguistic programming as soon as the critic would arise within and I hear the critic and writer say no that energy hitting myself and just getting it out I killed that inner critic in about six weeks or so it stopped coming up and I discovered that's not a good thing because the inner critic gives you useful information guiding information things that you know are very useful to have in this life so they can a critics back now but at least it knows that it's got a boss yes Steve I have a question that has to do with liberation you know sorry back October we kind of punishing inner critic okay very very depressed he says I hate myself I hate myself and suddenly in that moment he said yeah there's really only one yeah and that moment it's just completely his personality as he describes it went down the drain like me water no I'd have maybe a somewhat idealized and naive idea about how possible it's it's bill you said something about you thought this would be over at a certain point and it's not and I was thinking maybe it's good that it's not here cuz you're mentioning ways in which it's good and it's not over and I really love to talk about this moment in time this incarnation this study with the Enneagram is perfect now it has a future but he doesn't have a goal it has development but it doesn't have a direction necessarily so I'm kind of between these two poles of nice credits - yeah other points say about this question of liberation and freedom and possession and the continuation of yeah yeah I like I like framing in terms of liberation you know what is liberation being to you I'm sure what your question is so let me let me just try something and maybe we'll see where we go my experience is it's a path and with with our own dedication and commitment and the support of wise teachers and why spiritual friends changes happen and that's enough [Music] I think there are epiphanies in life we have them I was on my bike in 1978 driving on Lake Michigan and I heard the words you never have to drink again I was a late-stage alcoholic daily maintenance drinker for 15 years it was lifted and it never came back I don't know why here's a moment it was a gift I used the word gift another person can explain it psychologically 20 years later I was invited to come to San Quentin by a man who ran a group of like a growth group for men who had committed murder and I had been giving a speech and this guy came up to me and he said I think you should come to work with me at San Quentin I was working in the Tenderloin running an AIDS agency for people dying and he said I think you should come to work at San Quentin I dismissed that but a year later he called me I didn't know him and he said I think you should come so I went and to get into San Quentin the inner yard you have to go through a series of doors as some of you may know and when I came through the third door into the yard I felt the only time I life I would use the word liberation I felt utterly liberated in the yard at San Quentin I've worked here for 20 years with men who have taken a human life who are among the Bodhisattvas that I have had the grace to meet in this life and every time in San Quentin every time I leave there alive and free I'm on the freeway then I'm not alive and free any longer but I'm alive and free at San Quentin which is why I go back I love the man I love the work but something happens for me there it's an epiphany I don't I don't determine that but like all of us I place myself in a place to be open to an experience that frees us of our various psychological emotional spiritual shackles so that's the only answer I can really give is that it comes but not as we would expect or plan or even desire me to say a little more like why why do you feel free like with that your life because my chest is opened up I'm allowed to be undefended I'm there for three hours with a group of about 25 men almost all men of color almost all murderers almost all men on whom mayhem was addressed as boys and in their presence I feel totally welcome as me I can't tell you much more about that I could analyze it psychologically but I what I know is the experience and it's deep in my body and it happened the moment I entered the yard I was very afraid to go there and when he said we're gonna work with men who kind of capital offense I thought this is not my path and this man came into my life and said and now he's my dear friend of Lords 20 years later it's a liberation and it is it's like pulled from without it's I can't describe it in rational terms are just a lot today talking about reason versus intuition it happens and I believe we all have these experiences and we're called to trust them and to go with them and I but all I know is that that is the place on the planet Earth where I feel liberated is inside those walls I think that's a beautiful note to end on I'll just say this I think what you remind me of Bill is that one of the things I love most about the inia Graham is that it's it can be and again it can be this unbelievable blend of the psychological and the spiritual and I think I think that growth tools are at their best when they have both aspects available sometimes you may just use the spiritual sometimes just the psychological but I think sometimes we see what happens when you don't have both available as in a lot of things where like you have these spiritual teachers big time spiritual teachers capable of a lot of spiritual capacity who then are out to be abusing people they haven't done their psychological work is usually the story similarly you can get really psychological and and and not expand as much as you might if you don't have the spiritual available time one of the things I like to vote with bill just said is it's it's in some ways he's describing a spiritual experience it since prime minister things in spiritual terms he said I could give you a psychological interpretation but there's something about I think when we have the intention to grow and when we follow a path sometimes blindly sometimes just with faith that these kinds of things beautiful things that can happen I think that's often what liberation liberation happens I think one of the great things with any gram is you can talk about it in just spiritual language in just psychological language or neither or both I think it's at its most powerful when you can use both and so I appreciate being here because I think it's a good place to bring together both but I use it in business as well and sometimes I don't use either it's just about practical practical language of being more emotionally intelligent or aware effective and things like that but so I want to stop here because this is the end of our panel time and I want to thank our ones very much I'd like to add my gratitude for the one panel and to suggest that Rumi may have had ones in mind when he wrote out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and right doing there is a field I'll meet you there when the soul lies down in that grass the world is too full to talk about I'll read that again out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and right doing there is a field I'll meet you there when the soul lies down in that grass the world is too full to talk about thank you [Applause] [Music] you you

Channel: NewSchoolCommonweal

Views: 37,433

Rating: 4.8715205 out of 5

Keywords: TNS

Id: nEtJFIPx_xM

Length: 96min 18sec (5778 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 01 2019