June 26, 2023

The soul has fun when it seeks what it yearns for. For example, it seeks closeness with God in any way possible and has fun when doing it. It’s called soul fun, which is one of the fruits of the spirit: JOY.

But sadly, the unhealthy ego blocks the soul’s quest for union with God because it thinks it has better ways to make us whole. It wants us to have complete mastery over our life story. It tricks us into believing that real fun is the enjoyment of our false selves. But this is not reality. We do not have control over anything and are not our false selves.

June 23, 2023

The mind can get tangled like a thick jungle or it can be as tranquil as a still lake. Our state of mind depends on continual readjustment of our mental activity if we want clarity and balance. Our minds perceive, judge and categorize everything and everyone all day. Then we take action according to its assessments. The problem is that the mind gets tangled and thick with its ego's wishes - its story, fears and desires that distort the mind's purity and clarity. Then we cannot readily trust our tangled mind’s opinions.

So when our mind unwittingly becomes a jungle of thoughts, eventually it's normal to live in the jungle. The only way back to peace and clarity is through the regulation of our thoughts.

June 23, 2023

There is something fun I’ve done every day for the last forty-five years: play with kids. And though at times it has been very demanding and sometimes heart-breaking, it has been pure fun for the most part. Lately, I have been reflecting on why my work with children is so much fun compared to my work with adults. And the reason is that having fun is most children’s favorite state of consciousness, which is also my favorite state.

June 21, 2023

Only our heart knows if we have successfully won over a private struggle or if it’s beaten us again. Only our heart tells us if we love ourselves and others or if self-centered habits have taken over. Only our heart knows the sincerity of the forgiveness we extend or if it was merely “the right thing to say.” Though what others think of us is important, their judgments of us are incomplete compared to our self-judgments. Others’ judgments do not have all the information to base their verdicts on, but our self-judgments have more information than anyone else.

June 19, 2023

Our egos rely on our Passions to cope with our perceived deficiencies. But as we progress in consciousness, we realize we no longer need our Passions; indeed, they bar our advancement.

Asrama is a system of stages of life elucidated in Hindu texts of the ancient and medieval eras. The first half of life has two stages. First is the stage of learning the ropes, called the student stage. In the second stage, we establish our ego identity and satisfy the temporal needs of our lives. This is called the householder stage.

But in the second half of life, things shift.

June 16, 2023

We know we are making spiritual progress when we reach the point that we see through the ego’s tricks.

We watch TV commercials featuring sleek models in beautiful clothes, perfect bodies and knock-em-dead smiles. There is possibly a castle in the background and the wind blows through her long thick hair. We might think, “What a beautiful person, on top of the world. She has it all.“ Then the male model joins her with an open shirt, shiny abs and wind-swept hair. He invites the lady into his Maserati, and off they speed on the winding roads of Monte Carlo. And we say to ourselves, “Oh my gosh, the perfect life!”

The ego is terrific at creating illusions and being taken in by illusions.

But when we are conscious, we see through false perfection.

June 16, 2023

When we think about our dilemmas, we feel anxious and our bodies naturally tighten. Whether they are recent occurrences or long-standing ones, our dilemmas can haunt us all day and awaken us in the middle of the night. We spend precious hours ruminating about these seemingly unsolvable situations.

Fortunately, there is a beautiful way we CAN approach seemingly unsolvable problems.

June 14, 2023

Being attuned to nature beckons our souls. For example, the sunset soothes, delights and inspires us. But when we look deeper into that sunset, or into anything in nature, it may offer us a teaching.

For example, Brad and Leah were watching the sunset on the coast.

June 14, 2023

"These are the times that try men's souls; the summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country, but he that stands now deserves the love and thanks of man and woman." (Thomas Paine)

In his writings, Thomas Paine (1737-1809), like most people including Thomas Jefferson, used the word "man" instead of "human." The culture was caught in patriarchy, and that state of consciousness would not be chipped away until the women's suffrage movement and the passage of the 19th Amendment in 1920. But this Reflection focuses on Thomas Paine's reference to tried (challenged) souls.

June 12, 2023

According to the Vedas, the fourth and final desire of the soul is moksha, the desire for absolute freedom from the burdens of all our limitations. Moksha is the craving for essential liberty which, in Enneagram terminology, it is called Holy Freedom. To become free is to return to the original state of our soul before the ego took over. Our original soul was our identity before the fall. Christianity, Judaism, Islam and Hinduism include the fall in their theologies. Before the fall, we were free from any trap, pride, fixation or passion.

When souls fell from heaven, they forgot their original identities and manufactured their own identity called the ego and its persona (personality). Our ego retained the memory of having experienced complete freedom but because the ego is a mental structure only, it could not reproduce the genuine freedom of our souls.

June 9, 2023

Archaeologists in South Eastern Turkey have discovered an 8th century B.C. stone slab that provides the first written evidence that people believed in a soul (World Archaeology Issue 33, Jan 6, 2009). Also, as early as the Old Kingdom (ca. 2649–2130 B.C.), Egyptian theology held that the soul has nine different parts (Arab America, Sarah P. Young, 2019). And the ancient Vedas of India, sacred Sanskrit texts, attest that as early as 3,000 BC, people believed the soul is our essence and contains various qualities. See The Four Desires: Creating a Life of Purpose, Happiness, Prosperity, and Freedom by Rod Stryker (Delacorte Press, July 2011).

Looking closely at Mr. Stryker's work and that of other scholars, the ancient Vedas have four distinct aspects of the soul, each of which carries a distinct desire. The four soul desires are dharma, artha, kama and moksha. As a part of our essence, each fulfills a specific function.

June 7, 2023

We often hear the aphorism, “Time is money.” Attributed to Benjamin Franklin (although it appeared earlier in a Whig newspaper, “The Freedom Thinker,” in 1719 before Franklin was an adult), Franklin used the phrase to encourage young people to work instead of being idle.

But the truth is that time is not money. It is a space where we can do anything, including work, play, rest, family, study, helping others, travel, etc. Therefore, we fill our time with what we consider most important. Everyone knows what is essential to them. Many feel their time is worth more when they use it to make money. But that is not true for many who consider time with family, time creating, time nurturing others and time exploring the world to name a few, to be the most essential things in their lives.

June 5, 2023

There is saying that many believe to be true: “You win some, you lose some, and some get rained out.” When the ego’s wishes come true, we win and the ego is pleased. However, many of its wishes don’t come true and it loses, leaving it sad, disappointed or even angry. When the hoped-for possibility is rained out again, the ego is hurt, disappointed or angry.

June 2, 2023

I was a student in graduate school, but before leaving home that summer, my dad and I had a few disagreements. We were not exactly estranged, but we were not talking. It felt terrible to be out of sync with my dad because he was my father who'd always loved me and done so much for me.

Yet in my struggle to individuate as a man, I had to establish boundaries he did not like. At twenty-one, I was not following his advice on some crucial decisions, so he withdrew in anger.

From my apartment at school, I called my mom long distance each week for our usual chat. It was still painful that I was not speaking with my dad. But one day in late autumn, the call to my mom was different.

May 31, 2023

There is a spot in our backyard where our dog Byron is buried. He died in 1990 at age 16. Byron had been our only "child" for seven years until Ben arrived, and they became fast friends. Shortly after that, Byron and our second child, Lauren, became very close. 

Our family was not complete without Byron; he went everywhere with us. 

When I bring myself to Byron's little grave at the bottom of our shaded yard, there's still a tug in my heart, my eyes fill with tears, and my heart swells with gratitude. Wonderful memories flood my being. For us, Byron was many qualities of the Divine all rolled into one. So in a way, he was part of the kingdom, right in our household, to love on, laugh with, sit by, walk with, run with and walk the beach with for hours. 

May 29, 2023

Soul grieving is conscious grieving. To consciously grieve is to perceive reality without the ego’s distortions. Therefore, the optimal way to consciously grieve is to embrace our Holy Idea. When we lose someone, we love, the ego submits to the soul for the grief process to proceed. Our Holy Idea is the bridge to the soul and is how we perceived the world when we were fully connected to our soul, our soul child. The following are each Ego Type’s Holy Idea in the context of their grief.

May 26, 2023

In the Spirituality of the Enneagram, our quest is to return to our soul and eventually reunite with the Divine Source. But the soul has many challenges along the way, the most difficult of which is loss and grief. The ego has its way of dealing with grief as well.

We resolve our hunger when we finally get what we long for: food. But we resolve grief very differently.

May 24, 2023

No one can type us on the Enneagram because no one can accurately tell us who we are. No other person living or dead has walked in our shoes and experienced what we have experienced.

Other people may think they know who we really are, but how could they? They are not privy to our depths. They evaluate only what they observe. However, they are not the only ones in the dark about who we are. Many times we too are unaware of who we are. How can that be?