Reflecting on Self and Complexity
I was listening to tapes about the Enneagram yesterday getting ready to write the PULSE POINTS book or the PULSE BEACHs book, the one about the compulsions and perspectives from the nine beachs of PULSE island. The BEACHs represent a set of beliefs, expectations, assumptions, concerns and hopes. There are nine as represented on the Enneagram. Each is a unique frame of reference for looking at the world and each provides 40 degrees of the truth, the whole truth.
Sooo for years I have understood that my home enneagram BEACH is the Excitement BEACH. I seek joy and variety. I avoid pain. I have been relatively happy with the description of that perspective and found it a good fit … for the most part. Something my mother said recently got me thinking. She was telling someone else that she never know what I was thinking all the time that I was growing up. I thought to myself “That ‘s not exactly an extrovert thing to do.”
On the Myers-Briggs I was always balanced Extroverted -Introverted, slightly E but not outrageously so. I live in my head and like to synthesize ideas as you will know if you have been reading this blog. As I listened to the description of the Five – what is called the Detachment BEACH in PULSE – I began to realize that I was more at home here. I had considered that I was moving to five because seven’s move to five when they are relaxed. It is a facet of the seven character. But more and move I see detachment, that observer status, knowledge and wisdom is what I have been seeking all along. Fun and excitement are good but I am not here to enjoy myself. I am here to learn.
Identity crisis averted. It is comfortable and it shows me why people say that studying the personality types of the Enneagram is necessary for a complete understanding of it. I have been “studying” it since 1988. I was using it to understand others and their motivation. My own motivation was right there in front of me and yet I had a distorted view of it. Instead of being an evolved citizen of the Excitement BEACH I am an excited native of the Detachment BEACH. I believe in thinking things through. I expect to gather information. I assume that everyone knows what I know and I get frustrated when they can’t read my mind. I am concerned about knowing more and sharing knowledge and I hope to know everything one day. Five.
The BEACHs swirl into a 360 degree view of the world as we get older. Our home BEACH doesn’t change. I feel today as if I just found out that I was given up at birth and the parent that I thought were mine were not. It is a little liberating because I am no longer confused about the thoughts that I had reconciled to be seven thoughts that I see now as clearly five. Weird. Things that make you go hmmm.
Anyway in PULSE it is not the BEACH you come from but the one you are on that counts and my five BEACH is very comfortable for me at the moment. What BEACH are you on these days???
