Sufi Enneagram
This is a transcendent question we must ask on the way of knowing ourselves. To connect with the true answer of who we really are, we must first know the mask that hides our Real Self.
This mask is a maze of false images and beliefs about ourselves. Until we get to know that mask, we cannot get in touch with our Identity, our Reality, the meaning of our Being.
In spirituality we talk about the duality: essence – personality, or spirit – ego. And we must understand the different origins, as our ego belongs to the earth and our spirit to the heavens. Every human being is by origin a spiritual being living in this physical world. If our identity is prior to everything we know, then we know nothing about what is real in us. Our knowledge does not go back beyond the limit of our memory. Understanding this we can glimpse the fragility of our position. What we believe to be, is an illusion, and what we really are, we do not know.
Our mind is alien to us, our thoughts are not ours and what is really ours is waiting to manifest.
Already being a child we lost contact with our Real Self. Our senses, all directed towards the outside, made us to forget the inside. In this way our ego grew, separating us from ourselves and based on a mind that doesn’t belong to us. The forgetfulness grew along with us, forgetting who we are, where we come from, and where we go.
The forgetfulness (point 9) led us to deception (point 3). When we lose contact with the real in us, a false identity took place. As we couldn’t find our being, we learned to pretend and to imitate being. We filled ourselves with images, and then the fear appeared (point 6). Fear to recognize our deception, to find ourselves empty, to lose that which we think we have, because even we do not find anything of value there, we still cling to it. Holding on to our sufferings, misery and everyday dissatisfaction.
The Enneagram is an ancient symbol unveiled by Sufism. It consists of the integration of three sacred universal laws, the law of unity, the law of three or law creation and law of seven or law of the order of manifestation. George I. Gurdjieff who received from Mawlana Abdullah ad Daghistani, master of the Naqshbandi Sufi Order, the knowledge of the nine points, was the first to introduce this wisdom in the West. He spoke about the application of this symbol saying it could be used for understanding the cosmos, as these laws are ruling every cosmos. Man is a cosmos in himself, a universe within a universe. These laws govern the cosmos within us.
Therefore Maulana Jalaluddin Rumi, a Sufi master, said, “get naked and come …”, he invites us to leave behind our ideas, prejudices, habits of the mind and body. To undress ourselves of what we are not, because we can only get rid of that which is not ours. So to know who we are, we must first know who we are not.
The Enneagram shows us that there are only 9 basic types of egos, 9 prisons for human beings according to 9 basic distortions of the emotional and mental functioning. These are the passions and fixations respectively. These arose to compensate the loss of connection to a higher power. This “neutralizing energy” coming from High, which is called Holy Idea, can only be achieved by awakening our consciousness.
As we disconnected ourselves from Love, we were overtaken by hopelessness, a deep loneliness of the one who doesn’t find himself. Our being cries out for returning … and an eternal longing lining each of our breaths. Longing to return to Love, longing to feel One …beyond all and everything.