No Self and the Enneagram

There are nine basic types of us folks in the Enneagram's approach to humanity. At the training I attended with Jan Kious last Sunday she had a chart: a circle of nine colors radiating from the center with corresponding nine numbers on the perimeter. In the center the colors came to white.

One way of thinking on this chart is that as we each work on our wholeness, first accepting how we naturally occur, then integrating healthy aspects of the other eight types - we reach the white center on the color chart.

It occurred to me yesterday that from a Buddhist point of view, the way that we realize the white wholeness is to accept and experience the interconnectedness of reality as it presents itself in all people. Realizing that the boundaries of "our self" are self-imposed, the more we open to all the folk around us that exhibit all nine types, we experience wholeness. Not only don't we exist separately, in fact, we cannot be whole in our separate selves no matter how much work we do on our "self".

Skillfully I will work to open to my full Small Self and also open to the Big Self in all others, realizing the white joy of wholeness.