ESSENTIAL WHOLENESS - Integral Psychotherapy, Spiritual Awakening, and the Enneagram

409 Pages·2015·3.14 MB·English

by  ERIC LYLESON

ESSENTIAL
WHOLENESS
Integral Psychotherapy, Spiritual
Awakening, and the Enneagram
ERIC LYLESON
Copyright © 2015 Eric Lyleson.

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form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either
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ISBN: 978-1-4525-2820-5 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-4525-2821-2 (e)

Balboa Press rev. date: 01/18/2016
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements
Preface
Chapter 1 Being and Becoming
Chapter 2 Mapping Evolution
Chapter 3 How Living Systems Evolve
Chapter 4 The Birth to Infancy Developmental Cycle
Chapter 5 Network of PsychoLogical Domains
Chapter 6 Essential Qualities
Chapter 7 The Systemic Change Cycle
Chapter 8 The Hero’s Journey and Buddha’s Awakening
Chapter 9 Compulsions of Personality
• Personality Type NINE
• Personality Type ONE
• Personality Type TWO
• Personality Type THREE
• Personality Type FOUR
• Personality Type FIVE
• Personality Type SIX
• Personality Type SEVEN
• Personality Type EIGHT
References
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank all the people that inspired this book and helped bring it
to print. Many thanks to Lisa Peers, Shelley Kenigsberg, Anasaskia Elsom
and Richard Chambers for your assistance with the editing and your uplifting
encouragement. Thanks Eva Kiss for your assistance with the diagrams.
I feel deep appreciation for all the psychotherapists that have been inspired
by Milton Erickson, MD with whom I have been fortunate to train with:
Stephen Gilligan, Ernest Rossi, John Grinder, Bill O’Hanlon, Jeff Zeig and
John Weakland. Each in their own way instilled in me a curiosity about the
patterns that underlie effective psychotherapy and how people change.
It was in a class with Enneagram teacher Lawrence Graziose that I had my
first insight into this new understanding of the Enneagram. I am grateful to
all the great contributors to the Enneagram community whom I have trained
with and/or studied their work in depth: Helen Palmer, Russ Hudson, Don
Riso, Tom Condon, David Daniels, A. H. Almaas, and Eli Jaxon Bear. I want
to give special thanks to Eli and his wife Gangaji for also being directly
instrumental in my spiritual awakening.
I am eternally grateful for my other primary spiritual teachers Tash
Tachibana, Marianne Williamson, Lama Ole Nydahl, Lama Lobsang Tendar
and Adyashanti for helping me to awaken to my essential wholeness.
A special thanks to my friends and colleagues Rick Hanson, Peter Chown
and Lionel Davis for giving me the respected feedback needed to keep me
going in times of uncertainty.
PREFACE
Astrophysicists tell us the universe has been expanding at an accelerating
pace ever since the Big Bang. Biologists tell a long and convoluted story of
the evolution of life in which humans finally enter the scene on the last page
of the last chapter. Buddhists say that although our essential nature is eternal,
our relative nature is impermanent. Change in modern society is faster than
ever before and it is accelerating. Never before has it been so imperative for
people to know how to ride the waves of change.
As a psychotherapist, I see my role as an agent of change, as much of
human suffering comes from the inability to cope with change. My aim is to
help those suffering to cope with change and proactively make the changes
they are ready for. When I began teaching psychotherapy a little over twenty
years ago, I sensed that in order for psychotherapists to be effective agents of
transformation, it was vital to be able to describe how people change. Yet
what were the steps those wanting help needed to take to achieve change, and
how could we guide people through those steps?
My initial strategies included a four-phase model, but it became obvious it
was inadequate; that is, until I went to a weekend seminar on a modality
called the Enneagram. The teacher was giving a brief overview of the nine
personality types, elaborating number by number around a circle, when I
realized the essential qualities of each type were the qualities universally
utilized in nine phases of a cycle of change.
Since humanity is a mere thread in the web of life, the validity of this
pattern depends on it accurately describing not only how humans change, but
all living systems. I had some background in living systems models from my
training in family therapy and Systems Theory. However, these new insights
led to more extensive research into the theories of evolutionary biology. In
addition to the modern powerful scientific stories of evolution and
development, it struck me that people have been telling stories of
transformation since the advent of language.
The renowned mythologist Joseph Campbell collated many myths from
cultures around the globe in his seminal work, The Hero with a Thousand
Faces. I knew I was on to something big when the phases of personal
transformation that he refers to as the Hero’s Journey had a direct correlation
with how biologists describe the evolution of life from the most simple to the
most complex organisms.
Essential Wholeness offers a unique perspective on the Enneagram. I
present the Enneagram symbol as a model of the underlying patterns that
connect our knowledge of psychology, biology, physics, mythology and
spirituality. Unlike other books that show the Enneagram in a static two-
dimensional way, this book will broaden your perspective into an expanding
multidimensional model, much like a three-dimensional spiral. With the right
mathematics, it might be represented as a fractal.
This new perspective starts with an explanation of my understanding of
what it is to be a healthy, whole human being; a being with a full spectrum of
resources to draw upon. It shows how our personal experiences are
inextricably woven into the evolving web of life. I illuminate how the
compulsions of personality, those areas where we get stuck in maladaptive
patterns, occur simply when we aren’t embracing our essentially whole true
nature.
The life of a psychologically healthy person can be seen as a journey down
a river from the headwaters to the sea. Getting caught in the compulsions of a
personality type is like being stuck in an eddy—even a whirlpool—
somewhere along the way. For whatever reasons, people get stuck in vicious
cycles that keep them from the natural flow of growth and change.
I don’t spend much time describing the whirlpool-like compulsions of
personality, covered eloquently in other books; rather, I describe the
universal patterns of the river of life and provide strategies and guides for
how to honor them more fully.
“Science without religion is lame,” said Albert Einstein. And then added,
“Religion without science is blind.” This book draws together several major
disciplines and articulates the nine developmental phases that all living
systems go through. It draws on cutting-edge insights from evolutionary
biology, as well as chaos, self-organization and living systems theories,
whilst interweaving them with modern psychology and non-dualistic
spirituality, such as Buddhism.
Like ecology in the natural world, which recognizes the value of diversity
within a cooperative system, this new psychological paradigm helps us
integrate the vast inner diversity of perspectives and motivations that make us
human. We learn to appreciate not only the deep ecology of nature to which
we belong, but also how the threads of understanding from various
perspectives weave together in an evolving deep ecological tapestry of
human consciousness. With the massive environmental challenges that face
us, such as climate change and mass extinction of species, we can’t afford to
ignore the inter-connected circular laws of cause and effect.
The cyclical model of the Enneagram described in this book helps us
realize the environmental, sociological, psychological and spiritual
ramifications of our decisions and actions. The clear guidelines can help
people from many different walks of life learn how to live more
harmoniously with one another, themselves, and all creatures.
Essential Wholeness explores human development from biological,
psychological, sociological, narrative, mythological and spiritual perspectives
and reveals the deep underlying patterns that connect these diverse
disciplines. My approach draws on the method illuminated in the classic
Indian fable of six blind men and an elephant. When each blind man is asked
to describe a different part of the object they are near, they have only their
sense of touch with which to paint a picture. As each describes accurately
what they are feeling: a tree trunk, a rope, and so on, we gain a fuller
understanding of the ‘elephant’ from the composite picture. Similarly, as we
describe the process of life and what it is to be human from these various
perspectives, we can gain a fuller understanding of the process of being
human.
To the untrained eye, computer generated pictures may look like one-
dimensional images. However, when we focus on these images differently,
they expand into three-dimensional landscapes. If we look at the Enneagram
as a map of evolution, it allows us to see both the ecological niche of each
personality type within humanity, as well as understanding our ego-identity
and other aspects of our psyche within the wholeness of our Being.
The qualities that describe each of the personality types explained in the
Enneagram are not just the domain of individual type, or the types that are
related in some way, but together describe what it is to be a whole person.
We will discover that it is through embracing our essential wholeness, that
we embrace our holiness and more fully experience our oneness with all of
creation.
Currently the Enneagram has yet to be accepted by the academic
establishment. However, there are some eminent scholars who have been
integral to my understanding and fascination with the system. Professor
David Daniels, MD Clinical Professor at Stanford Medical School, has spent
much of his career studying and teaching it, and more recently Daniel Siegel
the renowned Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at UCLA has been pressing for
more research to be done on what millions of readers of the popular literature
have been benefitting from since the 1960s. I hope this book can help bring
the Enneagram more into the mainstream of psychology.
I am confident that after reading this book, you will gain a deeper trust in
your essential wholeness and your natural inclination to evolve over time.
CHAPTER ONE
Being and Becoming
Whether prompted by marveling at a photograph of earth from space, or
reading theories of modern physics, or even coming to understand the
wisdom of ancient traditions, more and more people are recognizing the
innate interconnectedness of all things.
Essential Wholeness presents a psychology that reflects the interdependent
nature of life. Do you wonder if humanity will survive the suicidal-like
destruction of ecosystems, or the threats posed by weapons of mass
destruction and terrorism? Western civilization has proven its cleverness to
maximize materialistic prosperity in the short-term. However, faced with
mass extinctions, erosion and degradation of the soil that feeds us, and a
society that is increasingly violent, depressed and addicted, this way of life
would appear not to be sustainable, let alone fulfilling.
If we are to create a healthier ecological, sustainable and fulfilling future,
it’s imperative we discover how to change the ways of thinking that
perpetuate problems.
We are rapidly moving from the technological/information age to the
biological age. We are learning that to survive and thrive we must honor and
harness nature’s wisdom and ability to evolve in the face of challenging and
diverse circumstances. Should we fail in learning to live harmoniously with
nature, we may very well follow in the footsteps of dinosaurs.
To live in harmony with nature, we must live in harmony with our own true
natures. If we are to live in peace with one another, we must be at peace
within ourselves. It is the role of psychotherapy to help people find this
harmony and peace so we can transform our relationships with ourselves, one
another and nature.
‘You are perfect as you are and you will never be perfect.’ Being at peace
with now and always evolving into our full potential. Reality is as it is now