The Sobering Up of a Seven
Carl Marsak
We do not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.
— C.G. Jung
Thank you God, for the Enneagram! Without having encountered the Enneagram, I would probably still be single, and still compulsively avoiding pain. Without the Enneagram I would not be going back to school next year. Without the Enneagram I would still be rationalizing my way through life…
Flashback—1987/88. I have just started graduate school in San Francisco, and a friend of mine is attending the Diamond Heart Training in the Bay Area. She tries to tell me about her newfound love—a mystical, magical diagram that has illuminated various parts of her psyche. She tries to introduce me to a new book on the market called simply, The Enneagram, by Helen Palmer. But I am in personal crisis, and obviously not ready to meet myself on this deep and meaningful a level. However, a seed has been sown…
Fast forward—1993. I am about to take off for a third trip to Mother India. In a bookstore in Santa Barbara, California one week before departure, the same book leaps out at me and demands my attention. So I read through it right then and there, and immediately type myself. Ouch! But I have lots of planning (7) to do by way of trip preparation, so I rationalize (7) my decision not purchase this gem, and mosey on out of this establishment.
Now it is May 1994, in Kathmandu, Nepal. I have just survived two weeks adventuring (7) in Tibet. Seriously depressed from what I have seen in the Land of the Snows (thanks to the Communist Chinese it has become, in my estimation, the world’s largest concentration camp), I hunker down in the capital of this mountain kingdom to recover my health and sanity. One day I walk into the largest bookstore in Thamel, the tourist district. There, sitting innocently in front of this wandering (7) “Dharma bum” is Claudio Naranjo’s book, Ennea-Type Structures. This time I read the whole chapter on Sevens, as well as all the other types. I feel seen by God (or at least by Claudio), and my entire psychic structure collapses in 24 hours. All the years of therapy, all the workshops and seminars, all the hours spent meditating and praying—and I am still so obvious, still so predictable, still so very neurotic. I fall into a classic Ennea-depression (clinical) for 2-3 weeks. Shocked, devastated, I wander around the famous Boudhanath Stupa telling my prayer beads and feeling like a spiritual and psychological failure, a big time fraud, a psychic con artist. Most of all, I feel exposed, naked to the world and to God. What hurts the most is not the realization of personal narcissism (which I could have told you), nor the tendencies toward irresponsibility and fraudulence—but the coming out of denial about my defense mechanism of rationalization. I realize, while sitting in a Tibetan cafe, that I have been rationalizing my rationalizations. After two more weeks I leave for Delhi slightly paranoid, for I begin to suspect that others see me differently than I having been seeing myself. I realize that I have been fooling no one all these years…no one except me, myself, and I.
Skip ahead a couple of months—July 1994, in Ladakh, India. I am still reeling from my initial encounter with the Enneagram, but wish that I had purchased more books in Kathmandu. I move into a guest house in Leh, the 12,000 ft. high capital of this ancient civilization. In the room next to me lives a woman from Berkeley who not only went to my graduate school, but is taking a long working vacation in the Himalayas, in order to prepare her notes for various courses in—you guessed it—the Enneagram. Seeing this as a sign from the Heavens above, I take practical advantage of this golden opportunity (7) to ask numerous questions about my type, and the system as a whole.
It is now November 1998, and I am married and living in Iceland with my Scandinavian wife. My Enneagram studies continue, and my library grows. Without having admitted to myself my propensity toward all of the manifestations of false personality characteristics of a Seven, I doubt that I would have had the courage (6 wing) to make a commitment to one person, or one field of study. I would not be a teacher, nor would I have been able to survive and thrive here at the Arctic Circle for three long winters, as this entails a serious confrontation with both environmental and psychic darkness.
The Work proceeds step by step, and is never easy. Yet with the ever present mirror of the Enneagram, the journey is so much richer than it would be otherwise. Again, thank you God for the Enneagram, and thank you to all of the Enneagram teachers who have taught me so much through your writings and workshops.
__________ Enneagram Monthly, Issue 46, January 1999
— C.G. Jung
Thank you God, for the Enneagram! Without having encountered the Enneagram, I would probably still be single, and still compulsively avoiding pain. Without the Enneagram I would not be going back to school next year. Without the Enneagram I would still be rationalizing my way through life…
Flashback—1987/88. I have just started graduate school in San Francisco, and a friend of mine is attending the Diamond Heart Training in the Bay Area. She tries to tell me about her newfound love—a mystical, magical diagram that has illuminated various parts of her psyche. She tries to introduce me to a new book on the market called simply, The Enneagram, by Helen Palmer. But I am in personal crisis, and obviously not ready to meet myself on this deep and meaningful a level. However, a seed has been sown…
Fast forward—1993. I am about to take off for a third trip to Mother India. In a bookstore in Santa Barbara, California one week before departure, the same book leaps out at me and demands my attention. So I read through it right then and there, and immediately type myself. Ouch! But I have lots of planning (7) to do by way of trip preparation, so I rationalize (7) my decision not purchase this gem, and mosey on out of this establishment.
Now it is May 1994, in Kathmandu, Nepal. I have just survived two weeks adventuring (7) in Tibet. Seriously depressed from what I have seen in the Land of the Snows (thanks to the Communist Chinese it has become, in my estimation, the world’s largest concentration camp), I hunker down in the capital of this mountain kingdom to recover my health and sanity. One day I walk into the largest bookstore in Thamel, the tourist district. There, sitting innocently in front of this wandering (7) “Dharma bum” is Claudio Naranjo’s book, Ennea-Type Structures. This time I read the whole chapter on Sevens, as well as all the other types. I feel seen by God (or at least by Claudio), and my entire psychic structure collapses in 24 hours. All the years of therapy, all the workshops and seminars, all the hours spent meditating and praying—and I am still so obvious, still so predictable, still so very neurotic. I fall into a classic Ennea-depression (clinical) for 2-3 weeks. Shocked, devastated, I wander around the famous Boudhanath Stupa telling my prayer beads and feeling like a spiritual and psychological failure, a big time fraud, a psychic con artist. Most of all, I feel exposed, naked to the world and to God. What hurts the most is not the realization of personal narcissism (which I could have told you), nor the tendencies toward irresponsibility and fraudulence—but the coming out of denial about my defense mechanism of rationalization. I realize, while sitting in a Tibetan cafe, that I have been rationalizing my rationalizations. After two more weeks I leave for Delhi slightly paranoid, for I begin to suspect that others see me differently than I having been seeing myself. I realize that I have been fooling no one all these years…no one except me, myself, and I.
Skip ahead a couple of months—July 1994, in Ladakh, India. I am still reeling from my initial encounter with the Enneagram, but wish that I had purchased more books in Kathmandu. I move into a guest house in Leh, the 12,000 ft. high capital of this ancient civilization. In the room next to me lives a woman from Berkeley who not only went to my graduate school, but is taking a long working vacation in the Himalayas, in order to prepare her notes for various courses in—you guessed it—the Enneagram. Seeing this as a sign from the Heavens above, I take practical advantage of this golden opportunity (7) to ask numerous questions about my type, and the system as a whole.
It is now November 1998, and I am married and living in Iceland with my Scandinavian wife. My Enneagram studies continue, and my library grows. Without having admitted to myself my propensity toward all of the manifestations of false personality characteristics of a Seven, I doubt that I would have had the courage (6 wing) to make a commitment to one person, or one field of study. I would not be a teacher, nor would I have been able to survive and thrive here at the Arctic Circle for three long winters, as this entails a serious confrontation with both environmental and psychic darkness.
The Work proceeds step by step, and is never easy. Yet with the ever present mirror of the Enneagram, the journey is so much richer than it would be otherwise. Again, thank you God for the Enneagram, and thank you to all of the Enneagram teachers who have taught me so much through your writings and workshops.
__________ Enneagram Monthly, Issue 46, January 1999