I'm trying to focus on what's a pre-verbal level and that So the example you just gave, if your mind starts to go to a memory or a thought, and then that can stir up defense, if it's a painful thought or a memory where there's some reactivity. That will involve the defense, but brews up into a more complicated thing so quickly. And that it's not just the defense on the subtle level, but it's thinking and all that as well. But it does, all of it involves, all the ego reaction in some way involves these nine defense mechanisms. And then I'm trying to pinpoint a level where we can see the defense itself most directly, instead of using induction to sort of figure out that it's there.

[01:18]

Last night you used a lot of words, like emotional words, more fear and anger. I presume they fit into this pattern here, the nine. Yeah. See, I'm not sure which list is showing. It's the round circle. OK. That's good. That's good. Thanks Yeah, the This diagram is called the Enneagram, and it can be used to classify all kinds of information. So this is the Enneagram of the defense mechanisms, the Enneagram of the passions in Enneagram lingo, or the Enneagram of the defilements, to use a more Buddhist term, would have at the top sloth.

[02:27]

And then one is anger, two, pride, three, deceit, four, envy, five, avarice, greed, six, fear, seven, gluttony, eight, lust. So it's the seven deadly sins plus two. People who started doing this, they took the seven deadly sins, mapped it onto the enneagram, and then asked, well, what about the two missing ones? And then they pulled in fear, which is a pretty common emotion, and deceit. Would you mind saying those one more time? Sure. Although this is standard enneagram stuff in all the books. So you want it real quick? One, anger. You and Neogram people can help me out. Three. Deceit.

[03:30]

Four. Envy. Five. Avarice. Six. Fear. Seven. Gluttony. Eight. Nine. Sloth. Any graph numbers? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then similarly, you can have the enneagram of the fixations, which are the kind of mental, like to put it in Buddhist lingo, we just did the emotional defilements, but they're what we could call them the mind, the mental defilements. And then there's the enneagram of what I call the, uh, the nine basic ignorances. There are nine forms that wrong knowing takes, and so on. So? And what are the connections, the lines that connect two or three different? Okay. This is going to get into more and more in neogram theory, so I'll give some quick answers, but if you want to get it fleshed out, it's better to

[04:36]

get one of the Enneagram books, but to do that briefly, because it's an important aspect of the Enneagram. your core type or your home base, such as in my case one, connects with lines to, or usually called arrows, to two other types. And the idea is that in stressful situations, well, some stress brings out the reaction of our type because it's a defensive structure. But at some point, if the stress is too much or where a shift takes place, in my case, one shifts to four. Four is called the stress point of one. Or two shifts to eight. Like a two, a two's busy, if you have a two friend and they're doing all kinds of nice things for you, taking care of your needs and wants, and you're not paying any attention to theirs, eventually they'll blow up on you, which is,

[05:45]

when two gets fed up and instead of doing the indirect, more manipulative way to get their needs met, they'll blow up and start demanding that you stop being so blank blank selfish and think of my needs for once. So that's one way the arrows go. The other, is sometimes called the heart point. When you're sort of okay within your type and the usual defense softens and relaxes, you can shift in another direction, such as one shifts to seven, and they connect. One goes to seven, seven goes to five, five to eight, eight to two, two to four, and four back to one. And then six goes to nine, nine to three, and three to six. So that's kind of nice for those who are sort of afraid to get stuck in one little box.

[06:55]

Though the Enneagram can't stick you in a box, it's ignorance that sticks us in boxes. But you get two other boxes to play with if you like. Would you please give kind of a brief introduction, and then since you are bringing the Buddhas into this category, looking at the rumis also. Rumi, I can't say much about because I don't really know that. introduction. So for where it's coming, this theory, where it's coming from. Okay. Um, a bit of that is murky, but one of this, the legends of the enneagram is that it was developed by

[08:02]

a group that Gurdjieff referred to as the Sarmoon Brotherhood, which is suspected to be pretty much Sufi somewhere in Central Asia, maybe Afghanistan. Gurdjieff didn't say, but reputed, but then there are some who know Islamic tradition and say it's still used in some Sufi groups. So it's believed that One of the oldest forms was this material, the enneagram was used to collect the observation of Sufi spiritual directors, to borrow the Christian term, or I guess sheiks is the Sufi, some Sufi groups call, to work with their students. And so some of this is believed to come out of the Sufis. However, there's some evidence of it in some old Eastern Orthodox writings. I don't know much.

[09:07]

That's not as clear. And which came first might be hard to prove. However, the diagram itself is even older. Versions of this go back to the Chaldeans. So as a symbol, it's really old, maybe 4,000 or 5,000 years. but its use in spiritual teaching may go back 1,500... or more years. That's not very clear. Some people are trying to dig up this information. It was introduced to the West by Gurdjieff, who grew up Eastern Orthodox, but spent a lot of time wandering in Central Asia. And so I like to think whether it was primarily Sufi or Christian or who knows what, it came from a part of the world where all the religions were interacting, including areas that for a while were Buddhist, for quite some time.

[10:20]

So I'd like to think that in this, there might be influences from India, Central Asia. Yeah. Mostly from Gorchestan, next to Gafkas and Azerbaijan. Uh-huh. Okay. So that's closer to where Gurdjieff lived. Yes. He was Russian, but he lived down in what's now... He actually was Persian at that time, because all of those countries belonged to Persia. Okay. So, and then when the Soviets took over, he migrated to France, and then that's how this was first made known in the modern West. And, but he didn't say a lot about it. He mentioned it. And then more recently, a Chilean guy named Oscar Achazo discovered it and started teaching it at the Erica Institutes down in Chile. And then a,

[11:21]

Chilean psychologist who was teaching in Berkeley at the time, Claudio Naranjo, went down there, got into it, and then started teaching it here in Berkeley. And then it got started to cross. He's a psychologist, quite brilliant one. So he started connecting it with modern Western psychology and others. picked up on that. And then the Jesuits got it and it started circulating around the world through Jesuit circles getting a Jesuit spin. And then now some Buddhists have got their hands on it and are trying to give it a Buddhist spin. So, okay? So what are the nine mental defilements? Okay. It's not really. Go ahead. Clarify. Well, I'm a one, so I'm trying to please people. I just want to give you a chance to, if you had something you plan to present during this time, it's different from what you're saying.

[12:33]

Yeah. Feel free to go back to that. Okay. That would please me. Yeah, I'll, how about I'll answer that question and then read, if you want the background in neogram material, it's in easily accessible books. So, the quick, quickly, the mental ones, one is resentment. It's a way of thinking, he did that to me, she did that to me, and that'll easily feed anger, resentment, and blaming. Two is flattery. It's a kind of thinking that's all caught up in what others want. And that supports the pride of twos. For threes, it's vanity is the name it's given, which is about So pattern of thinking, what I have to do to be successful and to make others like me. Four, melancholy.

[13:33]

It's, which I mentioned last night, it's kind of thinking, poor me, poor me type thinking. How, how come I always get the short end of the stick and etc. Five is stinginess. There's another word for it, but that's the one I remember. I usually like to find the worst possible word to find out. There are more polite words, but it's a stinginess because it's a kind of thinking. The five feels they live in a world of extremely limited resources. So they're very stingy about their own energy, their own emotions. as well as material resources. And it's not like they're completely wrong. which is true of all the types. We've got a slice of the truth, and then we get carried away with it and miss the rest of the truth. So five's a good example.

[14:36]

It's clear we have limited resources, but fives operate on that assumption all the time, even when there's abundance. Like love. Love is an abundant resource, but fives don't act that way. They parcel it out very sparingly. until they learn a little more. Six, fear and doubt. Questioning mind, doubting this, doubting that. Seven, gluttony goes with, any sevens in the room? What's seven? I am, but I don't know. I mean, I think about sevens as boredom all the time. Boredom. Mm-hm. So it's, oh good, somebody's got the book. I think seven's something like planning minder. planning. And then eight, it's vengeance.

[15:37]

The vengeful mind. How are you going to get them? Because eight see the world as, you know, they're going to get you, so you better get them first. Six is more prevent against danger. Eight, you know, get them before they get you. And nine is a kind of lazy mind. So yeah, thanks, Lori, for... That could be an example of how ones will lose track of what they thought they were going to be doing. I think it's fine to cover some of this information, but if we continue, then we won't get to the other stuff. But actually that helps a little bit because what I want to go to now is how our minds distract in meditation.

[16:42]

And one level of the distractibility are these nine thought patterns that we just described. So since we've, we've brought up the nine mental defilements, what Enneagram usually calls the nine fixations, and then the nine emotional defilements, which Enneagram calls the passions. But that's the standard Enneagram term. There is no one absolute official version of Enneagram. There are variations floating around. So one level that we can use this in our meditation is when we're distracted, one can stop and ask the question, like let's say you're a six, talked about them already, a seven.

[17:45]

What does this have to do with planning mind? It may be obvious, sometimes it's more indirect, but I would lay odds that two out of three times, if not more, the sevens are distracting themselves with some kind of planning for pleasant possibilities. Maybe because they're bored or because they're just feeling a little cramped or limited. And one can also ask, how is gluttony operating? As in the seven, you can see the mind that's just hungry for fun. You know, always kind of going about the world is like a big toy store. And don't tell us about the bad part. We don't want to really hear about that. There's just this big toy store that we're going to go around and have fun in.

[18:53]

So we can ask that question. If we know our type, then we can check that out. It won't always be that. But I find in myself that if it's not anger, then it's a more gentle, it's a more controlled. Ones are good, we don't, anger is bad, so we'll control it. So it may not come out as full, full, more anger, but it's irritation, annoyance, and the thinking often has something to do with resentment, what somebody did wrong, what somebody did to me, how I'm not to blame, they're to blame, it's not my fault. It's his fault, it's the government's fault, and so on. Right. And that's because on a deeper level you're afraid you're wrong about something.

[20:00]

So. Yeah, I'll go from I'm right to and then it's easier to bolster my rightness by finding somebody who's wrong, scapegoating somebody. Okay, so that's one level which I won't go into as much because it's the more out there or the more externalized aspect of type. which is well described in the literature. So if you get a good enneagram book, you can have that described well. And then it's a pretty straightforward matter of just, if you know your type, remember those two words and get in the habit of asking yourself, what does this have to do with, say, in the case of three, deceit and vanity? What kind of image am I trying to uphold so I look good? It doesn't matter if I am good or if I have any substance, but let's keep the good, successful image up.

[21:13]

So that's one level. Perhaps somewhat a less busy level I'd like to come at is linked to what are called the nine avoidances. One of the ways I started getting into these questions of how Enneagram applies to meditation, was talking with Helen Palmer, who's, I consider to be the leading Enneagram teacher in the, probably in the world. And, um, so she's the one I've studied Enneagram with the most. And she lives in Berkeley, by the way. And we, we spent a few times talking about the question, how do the types distract themselves in meditation?

[22:16]

And we just talked at one level of that. Now I'd like to look at it on another level or angle concerning what we distract ourselves from. these nine avoidances can be useful. Now, sometimes these nine things are present and we're reacting against them or getting away from them. Other times, as I've been emphasizing, especially last night, There might not be anything there, we're just reacting out of habit because the pattern has gotten so ingrained that we just do it. You know, the fermenting muck bubbles up again. So in the case of these nine avoidances, these are the painful triggers or the aspect of life that most is most suffering for each of the types.

[23:34]

Some of these things, some of us won't have much trouble with or much juice. But some of us, they're constantly stirring up the whole defensive structure of type, as well as the more specific defense mechanism, which is the first line of defense, the first response. So let me go through these. Some have already been touched on. Ones avoid error. This is connected with the worldview that if I'm good, they like me. If I make mistakes, they won't, and I'll be punished. And not only that, I should be punished, because that's the way the world is supposed to work. So if you see the world through that lens, error is to be avoided, such as going over and over again in your head, I'm right, I'm right, I didn't make a mistake, and then projecting that onto somebody else.

[24:44]

Even when there might not have been a mistake, but if you have a mind that's obsessed with error, you see mistakes where they don't really exist, or you interpret something as a mistake when it's just the way things went. Kus avoid dependence. Their prideful personality style and their belief is you only get what you need by giving. So if you put yourself in a position of dependence, you're never gonna get what you need. It's important to maintain your position of being the giver. And then people will have to give back. So dependence is extremely frightening for twos. Their form of control, an ego is always about control in some form.

[25:48]

Their form of control doesn't work, they think. when they're dependent on others. Of course, they lose out on a lot, too, which is the case with all the types, how we get stuck in a corner and we miss out on many things. For example, that people will just be nice to us just because it's nice to be nice. It's not a matter of this kind of trade-off of I'll give to you and you give to me. Threes avoid failure. They're the success-oriented ones who believe that they'll only be loved by accomplishing tasks that will make them look good in the eyes of others. So to fail is to be worthless and unlovable. All of these kind of boil down to a, you know, a kind of three-year-old mind to nobody will love me if I make mistakes or if I fail.

[26:53]

Four is the avoidance is ordinariness. They're the ones who idealize loved ones and interject. And their strategy to win love is to be different and special, to enhance their uniqueness. And that makes them meaningful, whereas to be ordinary means you're indistinguishable from others and there's no real meaning in one's life. And that's, um, that's how force would rather be kind of aching in sorrow than be ordinary. If any fours want to deny that, feel free. But that's my impression.

[27:56]

Pain, it's not fun, but it's at least meaningful and it can be profound and beautiful. Whereas ordinariness, no way, no way. Five, the avoidance is, I wrote, emptiness. It's like to have no energy, no resources. It's not a Buddhist emptiness. It's not chunyata. But to be caught with no resources and because they feel they're in a world that's always sucking us dry. You know, I know this one five guy who's married to a two woman and he compares her to a emotional vacuum cleaner. They have a pretty good marriage, but when he's in his five stuff, it's like she wants the emotional connection and is a little more, well, a lot more aggressive about it than him.

[28:59]

And he just feels like his feelings are just being sucked out of him. because he thinks they're a limited resource. And, you know, she sucks it out for a while and then it's going to be gone. So fives avoid this emptiness, both emotionally and even spiritually and materially. Six, the avoidance is helplessness. It's a dangerous road, folks. Things are ready to fall apart and go wrong at any moment. And if I'm helpless, I can't do anything about it. My hypervigilant, imaginative, worst case scenarios thinking and my engineering of everything so it doesn't get me will fall apart if I'm helpless. Sevens, it's limitation, pain,

[30:00]

Pain in very simple sense of physical pain, emotional pain, or being limited where you don't have choices. If you've got choices, you can always find something fun. But if you don't have a choice, that's, you're, you're trapped. Sevens, sevens will really squirm. And so for some sevens, being on the meditation cushion and not being able to go somewhere, is really, really hard. For some types, it's easy. Some of the types are quite happy to just be left alone. A five, yeah, give me a little place where nobody will bug me. But for a seven, just sitting, let alone sitting still, can be a real struggle. Which, by the way, I bring up because Meditation practice raises different challenges for these different types. And we each maybe bring certain strengths to it, but we also have our particular challenges.

[31:07]

Eights, the avoidance I mentioned earlier is weakness. Because they're ready to get you. So you got to be strong, tough, powerful to protect yourself. And nines, the avoidance is conflict and disharmony. So with that as a kind of background frame, I'd like to start reflecting. First, I'll start it off and then we can maybe get some examples from the room. But when our mind goes off or distracts in meditation, another, another hypothesis we can offer is, and then it's, it's accompanying question.

[32:10]

The hypothesis is the mind is avoiding something. Now, it may be avoiding just out of habit. as I've been saying over and over again, that there's really nothing present. The meditation in itself is okay. But out of habit, we assume that something will be going on or we project or imagine something that's not really there. So in the case of sixes, the habitual vigilance, worry and fear of a six, is they'll start to assume there's something dangerous about this. And this may not be consciously cognitive. It may not be in words. It can just be the habit. So there's, at some point, they start to distrust what's happening. can be distrusting oneself.

[33:14]

I'm not ready for this. I'm not well enough trained. I'm not psychologically balanced enough. Who knows, they'll start, you know, just pulling what ifs out of nowhere. And it's a defensive thing. It's not, it doesn't have to be real, but the mind can make it seem very real, especially the vivid six imagination. Or it can be doubts about the practice. You know, why did I get into Zen? I should do Kabbalah. That's, you know, better for me. Or Tai Chi. I need something that moves. And maybe a little martial arts on the side so I can protect myself. So some form of that will start coming up. And again, the question is, What, what is the mind avoiding? And here for six, one can look, is there some kind of helplessness thing going on?

[34:22]

Feeling helpless, which in meditation has to happen. This is the whole, this is why talking about this with meditation can be very rich because for the meditation practice to proceed, in a way we face all nine of these things. You know, or if we go to four, if you're on the, if you're meditating and you're also caught up in being special, your meditation's not gonna go very far. You know, because half of you is concerned with your specialness. And do other people notice that I'm special? Or does Mel notice? Or your, your teacher? And so, you're not really there in your, the meditation at least, fully. So, all of these need to happen for our meditation to, to go deeper.

[35:24]

But we, it's, it pushes this big button in us, whether it's the six, feeling helpless. You have to, you have to feel helpless or, a one that's afraid of making mistakes. Meditation isn't about right and wrong. It's not about getting it right or making mistakes. It's just kind of releasing into the experience with more and more awareness, clarity, focus, so that we keep learning and seeing and deepening from that. Sorry, sometimes it'll just be the habitual reactivity that assumes or starts to project the avoidance onto the meditation or perceives, experiences some aspect of the meditation through these filters.

[36:32]

So I just I should say sometimes, and this will probably be more reactive, there actually is something going on. Like let me think of another. Another example, let's take three, fear of failure or avoidance of failure. We live in a very competitive society here in America, and to some extent, there's always some competition going on in Dharma groups and Zen centers. Wherever we get together to practice, we're Americans, so there's going to be some of that, whether it's competing to look good in the teacher's eyes, or to look good in the eyes of the group, or whatever ways. So there is some reality of competitiveness in the room.

[37:35]

So for a three, there's some stuff to push those buttons that'll be going on, just because we're human beings. And similarly with the other types, With, with AIDS, for example, let me see how this would come up in a typical meditation hall. Well, there's definitely noise to react to. There's, um, there's also your medi-, well, this, this'll come more from within, but you're meditating. And then you just get a surge of energy, and you're not used to restraining that energy. So if you're an eight, when the surge of energy comes, it seems like you just have to follow it. Eights are not known for their self-restraint.

[38:36]

sevens aren't too good at that either. And so, sometimes that surge of energy will come from thinking of something or even in meditation, energy gets loosened and so on. So sometimes this will be very clear, something in the situation, external or internal, triggers it. And then, but also it can be just out of the habit. Okay, let me try to go through this a little more systematically with a few more examples. And some of this I'm partly making educated guesses, sort of using what I know of a neogram, what I know of meditation and meditators. So I'm some It may not be real clear, and part of discussing it like this is hopefully to clarify, not just each of our own situations, but those of others.

[39:43]

I think I've said enough about ones and error, so let me try twos. The two dependence thing, One of the ways I know that this will come up a lot, although this... Well, the mental habit that Tues will often fall into while meditating is they find themselves thinking a lot of what's going on with other people. That's the style that they take from ordinary life into meditation. So it's very easy for twos, especially if they know that somebody in the room is sick or is going through difficulties or is sad, it's very easy for the two to dwell on somebody else's needs, emotional needs or whatever.

[40:47]

So that's one level of distractibility. But in terms of the avoidance, let me see if I can, remember something. Sorry, I'm not good at remembering sort of consciously, but I tend to remember eventually somehow. The dependence I guess it'll show in, for meditation to happen, there's a relaxing or releasing of control, which applies to all the types. The two style of that is to release the position of superiority,

[41:50]

to release the thinking I just mentioned and I guess to sort of become dependent on the natural flow of the meditation process. That might be a good way to put it. That in the two minds you only get by giving. So meditation I think TUs really like to do meta meditation and practices where they feel they're giving or giving back. And so the avoidance can sort of slide off into or even You know you do the meditation for a while but then you start to think how wonderful to have this nice group and start to what I can give back to the group.

[42:56]

You don't want to dwell too much on what the group is giving to me. You start to appreciate that then you shift back into wanting to give. And then on a more subtle level is The twos aren't used to just letting the process flow without kind of their contribution to help it flow better. It's in some ways similar to one because they're next to each other, but the one control is to figure out the principles by which it works and make sure it's going by the rules, kind of. Um, so actually, I think that's probably fairly accurate. So the, it gets hard for us to just depend on the natural flow of, of meditation, how the relaxing process happens, has a natural progression, how joy will come out of that, how the mind can focus, and so on.

[44:09]

And then, so that can be sort of the core avoidance, and then it'll drift off into the more and more overt to behavior, the thinking, and so on. It seems to me also that on a kind of very literal level, in meditation, there's a dependence on the cushion, there's a dependence on the chair, or whatever it forms, just the room itself. So that would, if someone is averse to dependence, it seems to me that that would stir. Yeah, it could. Um, I'm two's tend to be relational. It could go that way. It would be probably we need twos to let us know where where their minds go. My I'm not sure it'll go that way because there's not a lot of emotional content in the questions that might be part of the dependence draw from where they would. Yeah. if you're going to sit. Right. And I think where their mind would go more is they're dependent on the people who have put the cushions and stuff here, that kind of connection.

[45:26]

I don't think TUs have trouble with depending on material things. It's on people. It's got the relational, emotional spin to it, I think. But I don't spend that much time in two-land, so I'm not sure. I'm more about a one-nine. Okay. Threes, I talked a bit about their image thing and failure. This one I've had some, I know, I think, by the way, threes and the type that has most trouble doing Buddhist meditation, such as Zazen, I think threes have the most trouble. And sevens probably come, come next in terms of type. That doesn't mean you can't do it if you're a three, but I've met some threes that just to sit still and kind of focus inward for five minutes felt like a huge accomplishment because I've, I've had them tell, tell me, you know, that's the first time in my life I didn't do something for five minutes.

[46:52]

They're, they're, they're described as human doings rather than human beings or they're I mean, it's a disease much of America has, but threes are very familiar with it. So, one level of distractibility is, you know, they'll be very concerned with, do I look like I'm doing it right? So, they can be easily distracted by getting the posture right. The internal aspect of meditation might be forgotten, but at least, you know, let's look good and let's have our raksha, you know, in the right place and so it looks good and so there'll be a lot of image distraction, how one looks to the others in the room. And that mirrors their habit, which is,

[47:57]

What one looks successful is more important than actually doing the job well. It's kind of embarrassing for threes to have it put that way, but we all have our embarrassing stuff. On the more subtle level, the avoidance of failure is, well, threes tend to really be terrified that they can't do it because as most of us know or all of us know, meditation isn't a task. You can call it a task, and at times it kind of works like that, but it's not a task in the usual goal-oriented way where you've got a goal to achieve, you achieve it, and you get your brownie points for doing so. Especially because threes do that for others,

[49:03]

You can't really show unless you've got some psychic friends, and even then it's iffy. You can't really show any success to others, and especially because it's not cool to go talking too much about it, especially bragging about what happened. So a lot of what threes do naturally just doesn't fit with meditation, so there's a, it just doesn't fit in their way of approaching things, so it can be quite scary that, you know, how can I be a success at this? It's a big conundrum for them, so the avoidance of failure, I think, gets triggered actually pretty easily. for a lot of threes. Fours, um, it's different.

[50:08]

Fours kind of like, generally, they're not all real introverted. Many fours are quite extroverted. But from what I hear from my four friends, they quite like having time alone to just go into their feelings and, um, Find the deep, meaningful, melancholy beauty of life and death and leaves falling out of a tree and stuff like that. It's fun. You get them going, they'll talk about it and write poems and everything. Now, whether they're meditating or not, you know, they saw this real beautiful drop of dew just coming into the zendo, and I don't know if this happens. I guess it does. They'll spend 30 minutes with the drop of dew. So, uh, because that's deeply meaningful.

[51:13]

And it is a quite emotionally rich and beautiful world. But again, it's not always zazen. Or vipassana or whatever, whatever one's doing. So the avoidance is ordinariness. Now again, I'm not sure if this is going to play out around the whole circle, but well, if your meditation object is breathing in and breathing out, There is a certain amount of variety involved, but not a lot. And it is pretty ordinary because everybody else in the room is doing it, and it's pretty hard to maintain a facade of, I breathe in a more meaningful way than anybody else.

[52:18]

By some point, the personality is just going to start avoiding the meditative process because as we go deeper into it, we more and more realize it's basically the same for everybody else. When we're on the cruder levels of personality, there is a lot more diversity, but the deeper we go, It gets more and more the same for everybody else. And that seems hard for fours. For fives, we talked about a little bit just before lunch. The avoidance is emptiness and the habit is to hold back. Again, the meditative process is naturally a kind of emptying one.

[53:26]

It's too late. Yes. The fives are trying to hide, on the other hand, often. The meditation, the whole thing is a kind of emptying. Letting all the stuff we hold on to as me, letting it out. And so that's going to pull up the five, that's going to push the five button. A six, this is kind of going to work all the way around, I think. A six, helplessness. It has a lot to do with their whole thing about trust and safety. And again, there's a dimension to meditation that's about faith and just trusting, trusting life, trusting the moment, trusting the breath, trusting Buddha nature, whatever we call these things.

[54:39]

And to trust fully is not part of the six ego structure. And so, to trust means putting yourself in a helpless position. You know, the origin of the bow, like in China, it was to bear your neck before the emperor. And if he wanted, he could chop it off. Just pull out a sword and your neck's right there. He'll, if it's your time, he'll just... that, that aspect of fully trusting or surrendering is to put oneself in a helpless position. So that'll stir up, stir up the sixth avoidance, I think. Seventh, it's limitation. Well, if your task is to keep, come back to the breathing, [...]

[55:42]

Your options are rather limited if you're going to do the practice. So the limitation is in their face more and more big time. And so the struggle, the reaction to that aids weakness or even better vulnerability. AIDS are very sensitive to this. And so I'm starting to feel that this is getting a little repetitive. I don't know if you hear it that way. But again, if you understand what we all know what vulnerability is, and for AIDS it means powerless. It's a little It's a little different than the helplessness of the six, where helplessness means you don't have anything to defend yourself with.

[56:43]

The eight, you just, you don't have, now it sounds a lot the same, but it feels different, it seems. The eight is you don't have the power to protect and to fight back. Nine, it's the avoidance is conflict. Now, how's that going to fit into this? I mean, on one level, meditation, if it's going well, there isn't conflict and there's a good feeling of harmony. So I'm not sure By the way, I kind of got into this whole thing by accident and I wasn't planning this, so this is the first time I've ever done this, so this is kind of a new exploration for me. But the nine thing, I'm not sure if there will be a ... something that feels ... Well, there will be, as long as the vestige of self is present.

[58:00]

which tends to be. As long as it seems on some level that I am meditating then there is a bit of a separation and so even in that there can feel like perhaps a very subtle level of content of conflict. And then the way that in meditation one sort of learns to loosen that sense of self. Actually, nines like to do that. They do it habitually, but they do it too much. Um, so there's probably something that in, there's the object, there's the mind, and they're still perceived. Ultimately, there's no separation, but it feels like a separation. And I'll, I'm guessing the nine will feel some conflict in that. And then in addition, there's just the habit of dispersal. Nines have a lot of trouble holding their ground or even taking their ground.

[59:07]

I think there's a Zen term like you take your seat or something. That's not a nine thing. The nine thing is you disperse, you blend, you merge. And, well, actually, here it is. If you're going to focus, you can't do that. So, the whole thing about, yeah, this, I'm sorry, this is what it'll come down to. At the whole point of being one-pointed or to really come to a point of stillness, the mind really comes together. not as a self, but just this powerful quality of awareness. And that's scary for a nine, because you're fully there. And when you're fully there, it feels like you're gonna be in conflict, you can be attacked, people will disagree with you. I mean, that's the sort of karmic residue that's piled up in the back.

[60:13]

Okay, so, um... Yes? On that nine, are you saying that if the nine looks as if they're merged with others and then they become fully present, there's a point for someone to attack them, whereas if they're generally out blended, there's no... Oh, blurry. You can't find them. You can't find them but get them. Right. That's kind of their... Now, I don't in what we're talking about in meditation, they probably aren't thinking that, but because they've gone through so much of their life. Merging and blending like a good friend of mine who grew up with parents who are constantly fighting and both recruiting him to be on their side. So he had the kind of he was always merging with both and pretending there was no conflict in that. Otherwise he would have been torn apart.

[61:16]

So he was blending or merging is the usual Enneagram term with both. So for him to become a separate being felt like then he would have been torn apart. And so to With that kind of background, it's hard to really come to a full presence within oneself. It was a comment last night about what you just said about your friend's personality. What are your thoughts about that? There are some Enneagram teachers who say that it's a developmental thing, so you kind of develop the type over time.

[62:23]

My own take is, based on a few different things that we come into the world already with a predisposition in one direction. And I link this with the defense mechanisms that was kind of were born, or maybe this starts in the womb, but when the first pain and suffering strikes, We've got one defense that's most accessible and that's what's drawn on. Probably, you know, in the early months or who knows, maybe even in the womb. Because I have Enneagram friends who are mothers and they claim that each of their kids had a different personality in the womb. And I have seen clear differences in young children.

[63:25]

And there was a monumental study done of children in New York. This was 20 years ago. And they delineated without any knowledge of the neogram nine temperaments that they found in six-month-old infants. So there is some evidence, nothing foolproof to back this up, but it seems to me there's a predisposition to use a particular defense. That's all there is at first, but then you use it once, you use it again, it gets repeated, then the whole thing starts to build up. And so a child, as they go through the whole developmental process, starts to form. You know, it starts with a seed, and then that gets formed more and more. It's generally believed that the whole personality structure isn't fully formed until maybe the mid-twenties.

[64:32]

But some obvious aspects of it may show when they're three or five or seven. Some kids it shows more clearly than others. Now that's my take on it. I can't, it's hard to verify these things. Okay. First here and then over there. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Whether I can remember how. It's not always parents. It may only be one parent or primary caregivers or a best friend from childhood or a puppy or even a doll or your G.I.

[65:37]

Joe or whatever you had. when a lot of your inner life is given over to these idealized images of loved ones, and that's done in a fairly rich emotional way, to be worthy of the love of these special beings inhabiting you. that you've sort of self-possessed yourself with. You need to be special. You need something that singles you out of the mass of humanity to get their attention and win their love. because they're so special. In your eyes, yes, they're very special, and so you've got to be special too. And yet, fours perceive themselves as being flawed.

[66:40]

You know, I would be so special and worthy of love, except for this one thing. And then, so then there's a whole thing around shame. You know, I would deserve their love except for this one little thing, which then gets magnified way out of proportion. Yes. And so you find a lot of pain in it, but yet meaning. And so you do your neurotic thing with that for a few thousand rebirths. But it's OK, the other types are just as neurotic. Four sometimes want to be the craziest out of the bunch, but they're not. Is there any evidence about that? Any statistical data? Four is the most special. OK, if you want to be special, you can have it. I have no evidence, just anecdotal.

[67:43]

We had another question in back. And I do have some stuff I want to get to, more from you. So two more questions, and then we'll... I want to flesh out what I just said in terms of the experience of some of you. You will? Okay. I guess this is what you're going to do later, but I'm sitting here thinking of how I can go against my type, not go against it, with it, because I'm a four. In the last years or so I've been trying to be able to tolerate being more ordinary. And this is very helpful, so I'll contribute a saying. No, it's hard. It's hard to tolerate that idea. And it's so helpful just to allow myself Yes, that's a part of the healing. Kind of your mantra can be, ordinary is beautiful.

[68:47]

And I do have some suggestions around this for all nine types. But since I just did a lot of talking, can any of you, especially those who know your type, relate to what I was saying about the avoidances. And could you elaborate a little bit on your own experience of it in linking up with what I was trying to get at? So we have one way and back and we have one here. Great. We've got a lot. So let's try a few. Could you tell us about... I identify with a lot of things, but I think that mostly with the poor. And I was really interested in what you said about wanting to avoid ordinariness. And I definitely can relate to that. But it doesn't take me away from meditation. It's the opposite. It very much brings me towards the desire to meditate and be a Vizendo because we're taught that our mind is ordinary, nothing special.

[69:57]

So I'm sort of questioning what you said about maybe you want it having trouble with meditation because of that attribute. Okay. So you're saying you're seeking out the zendo and the prac and zazen because it's a way to learn to be ordinary and you're enjoying that all the time? those four attributes, some of them may be pleasure and some of them may be pain, so of course it's next. Okay. Yeah. And when it's working, great. And then I'm trying to get into this so you can be more on top of it. If you do start doing this special thing, in your zazen, you can notice, and then maybe collectively, like even all the fours could get together and exchange notes, how do you relax that?

[71:03]

You write poems? Exchange poems, not notes. And when do you write these poems? Okay, well there's one example of distracting during zazen. You write, you write these wonderful poems that you won't show most people, right? Only a few. Okay. But back to, I don't know your name back there, Faith. But a question, whether you want to respond now or later, is, okay, you're finding, you're starting to come to terms or to enjoy, appreciate ordinariness in Zazen. But what are, what happens or how does it happen that sometimes You fell into the specialness thing during zazen. Are you aware of ways that that happens?

[72:09]

Maybe not all the time, but... Yes, I am aware that it happens. Could you give us an example other than poetry? Well, I definitely relate to what you said about there's just sort of this rich emotional thinking starts to come up and I find that I'm enjoying it and then not getting back to my closet. So at some point you can, sometimes you start to get more emotional about it And then the richness of the emotions starts to get more and more of the attention. Yeah. Something like that. So you're not maybe out there. You're still in here. But it's now more the emotional stuff. Is that on track? Yeah. Yeah.

[73:11]

Okay. Then what can we do about that? Any ideas? For a hint, an enneagram term from another set of things that's appropriate here is equanimity. Does that ring any bells? I know for me, to create a story around that experience or add fuel to that experience, that's when it becomes a real distraction for me.

[74:23]

I think it's funny, but to just let the emotion be ordinary. The ordinariness in a sense is the solution when that stuff happens. Yeah, that's a big part of what's meant by equanimity, that the mind is kind of stay even-minded with the emotion. They flow. Even-minded equanimity isn't a blandness. It's just if the emotion, if it's a positive emotion, you let it come however it comes. was the usual four thing is you rev it up to make it, you know, if it's going positive, make it more positive. If it's going sad, make it more sad. So instead of, you don't enrich your emotions. So that's on track with what is meant by equanimity. Just you don't fight the emotion, but you don't add to it. Okay, why don't we try another corner of the Enneagram?

[75:34]

Okay, we'll do sevens and then somebody over here. Well, I totally relate to what you were saying about the difficulties of Zazen for the seven, the feeling of limitation being really difficult for me and I've been practicing for a million years and I still have this feeling It's just so hard to, it's not even hard, it's like not a choice not to be restless. It's quite an experience that I can't, and for my life not to be restless. And so, and the planning is just very obsessive. And, you know, it comes up so quickly and then I can, you know, I can manage just tiny, tiny short of time where I'm not doing it, and then it comes back again.

[76:35]

And then, you know, I've learned to layer on a lot of other stuff on top of that, of self-judgment, and I've been doing this for so long, how can I still not be able to settle down, and everything like that. But I do a lot of planning and how I can spend a 15-minute break between 3 and 3.15 a day. And maximize it. Yeah, a few things. And have you come across ways you can work with some of those things? Well, actually, for me, it is helpful to have some kind of meditation instruction that I'm working with where I have a specific thing. Like a framework or a... No, like repeating a mantra or listening to a... Listening practice is one of the best things for me, I don't know why, but it cuts through the planning mind to just listen and try and notice every sound that's coming.

[77:42]

But also I've been, I've used different Tibetan meditation things where I'm going through a certain thing in my mind and I have a particular litany that I'm going through that's kind of allowed, so that's okay. I'm not doing my own tape, I'm running a tape that somebody else thought was useful Yeah, it could be rationalization. But it's, yeah. Well, the best thing I've found with sevens is breathe. I mean, do you breathe from the hara? Yeah. For all the head types, that makes a big difference. The head types habitually breathe up here, and there's a tightness to the chest, which actually the way of breathing tends to keep recycling the fear that underlies 5, 6, and 7.

[78:46]

The more the breathing can be relaxed, down into the belly. And this is good for all the types, except when eights, nines, and ones do it, then they space out. But for the rest of the types, it's really good to get out of either the emotions or the head stuff. So a real one thing without pushing it and feeling bad when you can't do it, the more deep, relaxed breathing. If you're a gut type, once you do that, then it's probably best to come to the nose where you've got a more sharp, precise focus. That may be true of everybody, but the gut types need to get there quicker, otherwise they're just. So a second thing for sevens is a key word is sobriety. And What I would encourage you to look at that in the seven busy mind, there's this kind of this bright gluttonous energy.

[79:57]

It's kind of glittery. This one seven friend of mine in Sacramento, she, when she was a little girl, she was everybody's little ray of sunshine, kind of. And so to kind of just soften that into a more sober, not stiff and dull, just can you tone down that energy? Not suppress it because some of that's useful, but kind of make it more sober, more grounded. Right. Now, at some level, this is it's subtle stuff. So it's just I think it's partly attitude, the attitude you bring to the meditation. So sometimes I haven't heard of it specifically with sevens, but I do know people. They can you can make that a mantra, if not sober, find some that.

[81:03]

and sort of maintains an attitude of sobriety. One that isn't that restless, busy energy, but just one that sort of helps ground it. So if, or in image some, you know, some people like think of your posture as being a mountain. or a tree putting roots deep into the earth. If something like that helps you get the sense of being grounded in more, that might help. So, what I found like sits in my mind is like constantly going, and then when I realized that, there's a lot of judgment around that. And so what I've found, there's two things I've found that's really been helpful. One is to just relax.

[82:08]

I realize that I don't relax because I'm always up here. And just to physically, sometimes I'll do like a whole body sweep, just trying to relax and be here, listening, checking in with different parts of the body. That really seems to, at least it stops this up here. It gets me more into the body. And the other piece that's been helpful is just the method to counteract that intense judgment about the fact that, I've been doing this for so long, why can't I ever get into a jhana state for God's sake? Just bring it back and say, it's kind of like the relaxation. It's okay. And then I can stay for a little bit, I think Let the body provide a container and a frame of reference.

[83:19]

That's very helpful. And then what you were saying, there's a lot of impatience in the seven mind. Not only should I be happy, I should be happy now. I shouldn't have to wait. I've been meditating three minutes. Come on. So, somehow to bring a little patience in there, but sevens believe in things being kind of instant. So, are we still on seven? Yes, one question about the pain aspect of the avoidance. Can you say a little bit about that? I'm also a seven. Sevens have low pain, low pain tolerance. low discomfort tolerance, it's too hot, it's too cold, and then it's, so any kind of physical pain or discomfort is, it doesn't have a place in my happy vision of life.

[84:27]

and emotional pain as well, which is even worse. And really, I think, I'm not sure of this, but sevens, you know, you get a little physical discomfort, they want to escape because they've associated that with the even harder to take emotional pain. So, let's do one more and then take a break. So, I don't know where I fit in this, but I do know that it's really hard to get into my hara because if I'm tripped, the asthma gets triggered with perfumes or incense. So I'm often sitting in the back with all the windows open. And I panic. And, you know, that's... Sometimes I'm able to sit with it. And if I'm able to sit in a session, I will be able to get to some sadness and emotion, and that often releases it, sometimes not.

[85:42]

And then just, you know, the tendency to want it to be over now, I mean, if I sit with it, There's always some resolution somehow. It is really hard. Yeah. I don't think asthma or allergy is type-specific. But I know my mom, who's a six, had allergies and asthma all of her life. And one summer came real close to dying. And then what? after years of the shots and all that stuff. Her doctor gave her this little tube she blows into, too. And that actually fits with what I've later learned about six breathing. The sixes, more than any other type, have a fearful kind of panicky breathing. It's short and kind of jerky. And anybody, I guarantee, if you breathe like that for five minutes, you'll start to feel terrified.

[86:54]

And there are some people that are walking around breathing like that much of the time in less or more exaggerated forms. So her little device was just to make sure she wasn't shortening the breathing so much that the body was starting to go haywire. It's called a peak flow meter. Yeah, but it's just this little plastic thing, you know, it's not a million dollar. So I thought it was brilliant, just a simple little thing, but it provides some information, which is breathe deeper. So it's related to what we just said about the hara. If you're having trouble getting down there, I suspect there'll be a lot of tension here, solar plexus. And that'll probably be, if you're a six, that'll be connected with fear. And so part of the work will be, you know, kind of giving it a trustful, loving energy.

[88:06]

Part of it is creating a feeling of safety. You know, there's a lot of things in Buddhist practice starting with, with sila, virtue, that we do so that when we meditate we, we feel safe. Part, you know, if we're not going around hurting others when we close our eyes, we don't have to worry about being jumped from behind. Sixes need to give a lot of attention to that aspect of things, to weaken the habit that it's so dangerous. And then for you, if you've become sensitive to incense or something, you know, that's even scarier because it invades your body, or it feels that way. So, um... I wonder if...

[89:18]

If you can relax, you know, it's tough because if you're feeling something, you're already tightening up in resistance. But if it's possible to relax as soon as you start to feel that, get, you know, get used to noting the signs of that, that tightening here and how the breathing sort of gets kind of, and, you know, maybe visualize a warm healing energy that you feel kind of invigorating and relaxing the tension and creating an inner space as well as around you space of safety. Perhaps you'll find you're less sensitive to whatever. Maybe you remain sensitive but you have more tolerance for it. And then can you drop the breathing more into the belly?

[90:19]

At times, yes. Thank you. And one little trick I learned from a long time ago, the lung meridian crosses, I think it's the clavicle, And there's a muscle and some tendons that cross the clavicle, the last bone here. And if you get the right spot, it hurts. If you get your thumbs in there, and the tighter your chest, the more it's going to hurt. You can dig in with your thumb and massage that. If you keep doing that for a while, your chest opens. It makes it a lot easier to breathe. Or another way of doing that is you interlock your thumbs behind your back, and then spread your fingers as wide as you can, and pull up like this, and that'll pull on that same place.

[91:24]

If you do it for a while, it's painful, but it'll start to release the whole chest area. Five minutes later, we'll probably start tightening up again, but it gives you a little opening.

[91:43]

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