Finding Balance: Pavan Mudiam's Path to Equanimity and Holy Origin

In this episode of The Real Enneagram, we had the pleasure of welcoming Pavan Mudiam, a former student of the Institute for Conscious Being, to discuss his journey with the Enneagram and the significance of virtues and holy ideas in his life.

Pavan shared how he was introduced to the Enneagram through his mother, Nanette, and how his initial curiosity led him to attend a transformative ICB conference at Kanuga. We explored his experience of discovering his ego type as a Four, and how this understanding has shaped his emotional landscape, particularly in relation to his virtue of equanimity and holy idea of holy origin.

Throughout our conversation, Pavan reflected on the challenges he faced, including the profound impact of losing a close friend in college. This loss served as a pivotal moment in his life, pushing him to seek deeper meaning and authenticity. He articulated how pain can be a powerful teacher, guiding him toward personal growth and a clearer understanding of his purpose.

We also discussed Pavan's marriage to Chelsea, who is also a Four, and how they navigate their relationship by balancing each other's strengths and weaknesses. Parenthood has further grounded Pavan, as he learns to embody equanimity for the sake of their daughter, Raina.

As we wrapped up, we emphasized the importance of recognizing the ongoing journey of self-discovery and the role of the Enneagram as a tool for understanding ourselves and our relationships. Pavan's insights and experiences serve as a reminder of the beauty and complexity of the human experience, and we are grateful for his willingness to share his story with us.

Thank you for tuning in to this episode, and we hope you find inspiration in Pavan's journey as much as we did!

To learn more about the Institute for Conscious Being, visit: theicb.info

Transcript

Scott:
You are now listening to The Real Enneagram, a podcast by the Institute for Conscious Being. To learn more about the Institute and its offerings, visit theicb.info. That's T-H-E I-C-B dot I-N-F-O. And now, here are your hosts, Dr. Joe Howell and Nanette Mudiam.


Nanette:
Well, welcome back to The Real Enneagram. I'm Nanette Mudiam, and I'm here with Dr. Joseph Howell.


Joe:
Hello, I'm excited to be here today, Nanette.


Nanette:
Yeah, me too. I don't know that you're allowed to say that you are about to introduce your favorite podcast guest, but if you do, then I might. Please do. Well, today, as we are on this journey with our holy ideas and virtues, a deeper dive into those, and having different ego types on the podcast we have with us, Pavan Mudiam. Pavan? Hello, great to be here. And Pavan is... Pavan is my son. So we have such a great group of students with the Institute. And for the most part, those are the people that we are reaching out to talk to, because we know that they are doing the real spiritual work. of the Enneagram, and we have former students, people who've graduated and finished, who are going to be talking with us, and then people who are still actively involved as students or staff in one capacity or another. And we definitely have fours amongst our group, but Pavan has been a student and is currently not enrolled. He's kind of in a different stage in his life. He finished the scholars. Did you finish master's too?


Pavan:
No, no, I just finished the scholars.


Joe:
Listen, if something happened though, he couldn't finish. He got married.


Nanette:
He got married, he moved away. I mean, life happens. And that brings to mind another point I thought I might make is that Many of our students are also of a certain age. We have a lot of midlife to second half of life students. But Pavan is one of those people who's one of our younger ones. So Pavan just turned 30 this year. That's right. And so it also I think we we've definitely had some younger students because sometimes people younger in life are ready to do some of that work.


Joe:
Yes. And Pavan definitely was.


Nanette:
Yeah, for sure. And so that's the first thing, Pavan, I'd like maybe you to talk about is just how you came to know about the Enneagram. I know the story, but, and Joan knows the story, but maybe for our audience, tell us the story.


Pavan:
Well, I'm really happy to be here. I've missed Dr. Joe. It's been a long time, I feel like, too long. But as far as introduction to the Enneagram, I think like many things that maybe you've experienced with your parents in your life, they start to tell you things that they think you should do. And they don't mind saying their opinion. And I want to say I was in college. I think I was in Birmingham at the time, Birmingham, Alabama. And mom, I don't know if it was, I was listening to some podcasts and she was listening to some things surrounding the Enneagram and then you started working with Dr. Joe. And then one thing kind of led to another because me and mom like to talk, me and Nanette, like to talk about, we've always liked to talk about just, I think, spiritual development. A long time it was the Bible and then other thoughts and just people we like to listen to. And she mentioned the enneagram and I said, yeah, I've been hearing about this on podcast. I've been listening to and it's fascinating to me. I would love to learn a little bit more. And then somehow you started telling me about the conference, the quarterly conference and what you were learning about there. It really just tugged at my thought and my heart. And I was like, I need to find myself around this space. And so then I just started pursuing that. And I asked you guys to let me go to a conference. Oh, and I was in North Carolina. Yeah, the Kanuga. The Kanuga. I went to Kanuga all by myself. And I was very thankful, actually, in hindsight, that my parents weren't with me for that first experience. I think it was really important for me to go and do that by myself. And I just, I had such a little journey by myself in Kanuga. Yeah, that place was so, it was just so beautiful out there, the woods and yeah, I really, it was a thin space for me and I really got to, I think, really connect with a part of me that I hadn't connected with since I was a child. So, yeah, that was where the Enneagram work really started, was in Kanuga.


Nanette:
You know, I was thinking about this morning that for a long time when we introduced this podcast, we would say the real Enneagram, a spiritual quest. And I was thinking about that in regards to you because the spiritual quest is obviously, it represents the journey that we believe the Enneagram really is from your personality to the discovery really of your soul and hopefully the embodiment of that. And that's what I knew would get you. is that idea of that of that journey. You know, I think Pavan is one of those people that I've realized that I saw his soul for a long, long time. You know, so obviously, as an egotype for Pavan's soul is at a one. And really, that's the way I related to him for a good portion of his childhood that Pavan was a do it right kind of kid. Do you remember that?


Pavan:
I remember being a do it right kind of kid.


Nanette:
Yes. Yes, I do.


Pavan:
Yeah. Until I... Until you didn't.


Nanette:
Yeah. For me, I think the first time I realized that is when I went to his... In sixth grade, I went to the teacher conference. And up to that point, Pavan had always been this stellar student, straight A's and Every teacher loved him, and I was just fully prepared to get, you know, that again. And that's not what we got.


Pavan:
But what the memory mom is talking about is where is during Kanuga. That's when I can remember. That's when I first put on my ego fully, you know, where I really embodied my ego type was that sixth grade year. That was when it happened. I mean, I was building up to that, I'm sure, up to that point, starting to like find my unique space, clothing that I liked. I started to find these different pockets of different art that I enjoyed and just made me feel different than what I had grown up with. But sixth grade, yeah, that was when I really felt like I put it. That's when you flipped. Yeah, that's when I flipped, that my ego took the driving seat and my soul took the back seat. I understand. I understand. Yeah. And that was late. Yeah, exactly. And I think that's because of the environment I grew up as a kid. I just had a safe environment to be a child for a long time. And I didn't have to protect myself so much just because I had security. That's true.


Nanette:
But man, when he put it on, he really put it on. I did. I did go hard. And this is where the language of the Enneagram can be so helpful to a family. Because when I started to understand the Enneagram, when I learned about it, and when Pavan tested and figured it out and we started kind of discussing it in our family, along with our daughter who's in egotype 1. We suddenly had a language first to relate to one another and to help us understand what we had experienced all our family life, right? Suddenly you have words to understand your experience. I realize why Pavan is so charming to the world and so melodramatic at the same time, you know, like he could have such big highs and big lows at the same time. And that really helped me to understand you in a way. I understood you were complicated, but I didn't understand why you were complicated. Yeah, I would agree with that. So I think it helped you to understand your dad and I and Jasmine, your sister as well.


Joe:
Yeah, that's true.


Nanette:
So, Paman, our real goal in this season is to talk about the virtues and the holy ideas. So, your virtue is equanimity and your holy idea is holy origin. So, I always think equanimity is such an interesting word. I always kind of equate it as balance, Joe. Do you think, is that a good definition? Yes. Yeah, okay.


Joe:
balanced emotionally.


Nanette:
Uh huh. Okay. And so talk to us about that virtue for you common. And what has meant to you to understand that?


Pavan:
Yeah, I remember, I think when I first like in Canoga, and then afterwards, I would always hear equanimity. And it was a it was a bit of a Yeah, I would say it probably actually wasn't a hard concept. It kind of made sense to me that balance has been something I've been looking for my whole life since 13 years old. It was this balance of Yeah, I was always super in love with someone all the time. Right. And I was never on the cold side. So it was either all in or it was all out. And it was either it was romantic relationships. It was my friends. I was always very unbalanced in how much I depended on my relationships. And most of the time, because I'm a subtype, one to one or sexual subtype, it was always a one relationship that I really fixated on so heavily. And so that virtue of equanimity, it was always so hard for me to achieve. And I think that's because the counter is jealousy, right? Is that right? That's my passion. Yes, envy. So that envy is, to me, is a representation of unbalance. I don't have any balance. I don't have equanimity within me. So it makes me jealous of what I see as other people having balance. And I think that was my whole college and high school career was this pursuit and not achieving it. So I think I haven't, of course, reached it. Like, I don't embody it all the time, right? I'm still very much in my ego a lot. But I do feel like there's been moments where I reach a nice level of equanimity emotionally. And I can say before I met my wife, when I was with the Institute, I think I had been going for a year or two at that point with you guys. That's actually, I reached a place where I really did feel emotionally very balanced in my life. I kind of put down my, not my adolescence, but yeah, I think I put down a lot of adolescence, like that imbalance I had where I kept pursuing a romantic relationship all the time and really investing in it, saying we're going to get married and then having a huge emotional crash. And I was tired of that. And so I kind of worked within myself to be okay with being by myself and not having to play into this romantic novel narrative with some passionate ending and just be myself. I did that for about six months and then a few weeks later, Chelsea walked into a bar and that was the woman I was going to spend the rest of my life with. I felt real equanimity during that time, I would say. Then right after I got married, I would say the equanimity went all over the place. There was no balance for a little while.


Joe:
Well, you must add that Chelsea is also an ego type.


Pavan:
Yes, my wife is also an ego type 4. So we, yeah, now it is truly something me and her work on together.


Joe:
Which is very odd because that very rarely do I find that people have long-term relationships with, you know, spousal relationships, partnerships with a person of their same egotype. But how and why does that work for you guys?


Pavan:
I think tying it to the virtue, I think we do a good job of balancing each other out. Her subtype is a self-preservation subtype and mine is like the one-to-one. And so, we really express our virtue very differently as far as hers is the balance of her surroundings and mine is the balance of our communication. So, I think we actually do a great job of complimenting each other because she makes our world so safe and then I make her feel so safe in our relationship just with the two of us. And so, I think, yeah, I think that's been something. It hasn't, of course, I mean, I think just now, we've been married four years and the waves keep coming, right? They keep coming up. But I think that's really where our superpower has been is that without that, I couldn't understand being with someone that wasn't on the same ego as me now because we share so much commonality that's so different. if that's the best way to put it. It's just no way to, it's just a gray space that we operate in and I think it helps us a lot.


Joe:
And you guys have gone on into parenthood now. Right. Tell us about that.


Pavan:
Yeah, parenthood is, um, yeah, so the way Chelsea and I, of course, came together, uh, definitely came around our child, right? That's, that's what pushed us and I think kind of grounded us a little bit, because if we would have, I think we would have been together a while without having a child, maybe more of our ego type would have come out in a kind of a clashing way. But Raina, our three-year-old daughter, she's been able, I feel like she helps ground us to monotony a little bit and routine and that it's not all about us. It's not about the two of us. It's about our child and how we can actually help her grow.


Joe:
That'll take a 4Q essence.


Pavan:
Exactly. It takes us straight to the one, right? Because we want to do things the right way. I mean, we don't want to be seen as some, you know, irresponsible parents or, you know, That's, again, that's hard for our ego. We don't want that image of that look on us, right? And while that sounds selfish in nature, I mean, we love that little girl. I mean, she's just the best portions of us that have come out and formed. And I just, her little soul, watching it develop, I think just helps us stay creative. It helps me stay grounded and patient and not get so lost in my feelings. It really does. Taking me back to equanimity, that little girl helps me stay balanced because I have to be balanced for her. I can't be off the rails. She needs some security. She needs some patience. Mom will tell you this weekend, I'm sure I haven't shown that all the time, but that's the news.


Nanette:
It's hard for anybody to be a parent of a three-year-old. I mean, three-year-olds test everyone's patience.


Pavan:
Three-year-olds are kind of mean. That's what I've been saying.


Joe:
And she's in the height of her soul child. Exactly. Which, you know, soul children aren't necessarily just man-be-man-be. Yeah, correct. I mean, they are raw emotion. Correct, yeah. Because they don't have any ego to, or not a developed ego, to put the filters on as those filters are developing. Yeah, yeah. And they get quite sophisticated at age 13. Yeah, right, but right now she's just who she is. Exactly, exactly. And your holy idea for you is what?


Pavan:
Holy origin, correct? Yeah. Can you tell us about that? Yeah, so mom, you know, mom and me were talking about this and I remember holy origin when I first heard it at I remember being a little disappointed when I heard it. Like it didn't sound that special to me. I think the sixes was like courage or what, um, you know, there was just cooler ones to me. And I was like, holy origin. Why is this? It doesn't sound that cool. But as I've explored it more in my life, I realize holy origin is my passion, right? Holy origin, the idea that we all have something special within us that is our expression into the world, right? That our soul, your soul, Dr. Joe, and mom's soul, and Scott's soul are all something really beautiful that needs to come out. And something that I've realized in my work because I work for a software company and we do grocery store software. And it is quite frankly, nothing I would have imagined myself doing my whole life. It sounds so boring to me. But why I connect to it and why I've been able to, I feel like, enjoy it is because I manage a team of people and I feel like my passion is to help them be the true whoever they're supposed to be in the world at this company. And that to me is my example of holy origin. It helps me because I understand that my team, no matter their faults or whatever, they have something really unique to bring to the company. And that my role is just to help them see that. I don't need to tell them everything they're doing wrong. I don't need to tell them everything they're doing right. I need to do it at some points. I need to do it definitely need to correct at other points, but my main passion, my main goal is to help people become who they're supposed to be, right? And so I'd say, again, maybe that sounds a bit high or a little too grandiose, but I do think that connects. And that holy origin idea is where I've started to connect to that in my work and where I see myself in the future growing up or growing into my career is that when I'm in a job interview and they ask me what my strength is, that's what I would tell them, is I can make your team work better and be a better version of themselves.


Nanette:
Wow. Yeah, that's a gift to the earth. It really is. We need all to be seen and to recognize the divinity that's in each one of us. And so that's the beautiful gift of the four who can share this with us. And Haman has always been just such an encourager. I mean, I remember going through some of my own challenges while I was raising my kids when they were young, I was a stay-at-home mom, and I went back to school, to nursing school, when Pavan was in that middle school age. And I can remember him being so sensitive to me when I really didn't think I was going to make it. He would just be very sensitive to that and would say something encouraging, which has kind of always been Pavan's gift. I sometimes say it in kind of a maybe slightly derogatory way, but I just call him a charmer. Because he is, he's by nature very charming. And you know, everyone likes to be charmed. So Pavan's been a joy to certainly raise and to be part of his life. But I definitely, if we look at the patterns of his ego and soul, you can definitely see the typical markers of the ego type 4, you know, as he kind of referred to that deep, romanticism of whoever was in his life and definitely the wallowing kind of in the past and, you know, dreaming about the future and never realizing that life is really present right now, which is, I think, part of the gift of my granddaughter Raina to their life because she grounds them in the present, that life is right now. And I would say that Pavan's life was really, really marked by a few significant tragedies, which is also very typical of the four. And that was why I was so encouraging, maybe strong-arming, maybe insistent that he learn about the Enneagram because I knew that really emotionally he was suffering over a trauma that he endured in college. Pavan, do you want to talk about that?


Pavan:
Yes, yeah, sure. Trauma and Colin. Yeah. Well, I think I did a lot of this work with you, Dr. Joe, at the conferences. But yeah, in college, I had a best friend growing up and he wasn't the best influence. But he was one of those relationships that I was alluding to earlier, that with my one-to-oneness that I would do anything and be with this man forever. He was my friend that I attached myself to very deeply and cared about. And yeah, so as we grew up, of course, in college, we were kind of going our own different ways. And sadly, he passed away when he was 21 years old. And so that was, I would say that was the first major shock point as far as in my, yeah, up to that point, I really hadn't experienced anything really like that. As I was growing up, you know, I'd lost some grandparents, but I had never had someone so close to me die so young. And really, I'm, yeah, really that experience now, I'm more thankful for that than probably anything I've experienced up to this point. Of course, I've had life experiences now, shock point still, but that shock point in particular, if you can use, I tell Chelsea this all the time, and just in our conversations, Pain is the biggest teacher than anything else in the entire world. Pain and happiness, right? They both are there. You can have the best, the most joyful moments in the world can be the biggest shock point to spur you on. But there's something about pain, and I know it's a four thing as well. that will send you upwards like nothing else will. If you use it, of course, it can spiral you straight down. And I honestly, I could have gone that direction. But again, I had supportive parents, I had supportive friends, I had very supportive family. And so when I did lose, when I did lose him, and he did pass away, I felt like after that, I started making a lot of decisions that were very, very beneficial for my life. I definitely sunk into my relationship with my college girlfriend for a while. But once I... Literally, right when it happened, I just started to feel things shift within myself and my conscious thinking of, I can't explain why he passed away. I talked to him the night before he passed away. So it was like, There was things I couldn't control, and the universe was just trying to show me something through all of that, that I think I used to really project my conscious upward. Instead of letting it sink, I used that as a push to do something with my life, I would say. And it really got me focused. So I'm so incredibly grateful for that shock point. Because without it, I wouldn't have found ICB and I wouldn't have, I wouldn't have pursued where I went in life after that, without that moment.


Nanette:
Yeah, I think, for me, I really watched that with, it was very sobering. I was very afraid for Pavan, you know, honestly, you know, Pavan and this friend had definitely dabbled in addiction and, you know, and there were concerns as a parent, as any parent has for somebody who's in adolescence and navigating into their adulthood. just trying to help them sidestep, you know, the pitfalls. And so Alec was, it was very frightening and very sobering to us as parents. And so, Obviously, we mourned that loss with Pavan, but I knew how deeply that he would take it because he's just always been not only charming, but very, very sensitive. So I knew that this would affect him in a really deep way, and that he wouldn't just move on from it. In fact, Pavan spent A year overseas after that, once he graduated from college, he went to Nepal. And while he was there, he decided to get a rather large tattoo. Did you do it at the anniversary of his death? I think it was. Right. And I said to Pavan, like, you know, I don't mind. I mean, I don't care about that tattoo. And I don't. But do you want to tell this story? Because, you know, this this tattoo is going to be something your children ask you about. You know, do you want to have do you want to keep telling this story? It's funny how the four ego really does mark itself with the narrative. Don't you think? And how important it was. And I remember Pavan just saying, like, yeah, I don't mind telling the story. I want to tell the story. And so I think that Pavan's working with the virtues and the holy idea really were the rescue for him.


Joe:
Yes, because what was happening is that you had gone to ego type two and had done what seemed like the thing to do to get your life going, which was to attach to a relationship in a not healthy way, in a symbiotic way. And when the death occurred, you were really at an existential crisis yourself because that two relationship and all of its dynamics had fed your life and had given you the authenticity that you had wanted, but it wasn't your authenticity, which is the trap of Forge, to find authenticity. And seeing you today and the years recent, knowing that I'm looking and talking to an authentic man is a wonderful thing. But the existential crisis that happens to all of us, whether we know about the Enneagram or not, I mean, the Enneagram is just a reflector of truth. It's not the truth that we follow. It is the truth that is there if we want to follow it. And therefore, you flipped and found your holy origin versus your authenticity from one very important relationship.


Pavan:
Yeah, yeah, definitely. That's a great way to put it. I was just taking it back to the holy origin and kind of my work now, right? I think I'm trying to help people recognize those moments within themselves sometimes. And I don't know if that, I believe that's my gifting to the world, is at some point waking up and recognizing and saying, hey, I had this shock point in my life. You're very clearly going through one right now. Can I tell you that if you tap into this moment, you might experience something you haven't had before? Or I can show again, if I'm not that close to them or that direct, I can at least recognize when someone's having that moment and try to support them. Right. Because I'm not I'm not in an enneagram, you know. The work lives within me. Chelsea will tell me all the time because every time we're hanging out with friends, something will come out and I'm looking through the lens, right? The lens is always on. It's just how you communicate that to people. Yeah. It's what I feel like is where I connect to the Holy Origin idea in my daily life is just trying to see it through the lens. Yeah. It's like a spectacle.


Nanette:
It's a beautiful thing. I love that Pavan was able to come to this work as a younger person. I think there, you know, we talk about sometimes the dangers of using the Enneagram as just some sort of a personality tool. And the idea that sometimes that is really what many people may be in their 20s and 30s are trying to do is just, you know, be better ego type fours. But to learn this work and recognize that there's movement, that there is a spiral, that there is, yes, a spiral down to two for Pavan, but also an opportunity to spiral up. And to recognize, you know, Joe, you and I were talking about this recently, and Pavan alluded to it this morning, that None of us are really done with our egos. It's not as like we can talk about it like this is spiritual work and somehow, you know, we're done with it. I've moved on from the ego type nine that I am and yet I can tell you quite clearly it's the ego I wear all day every day. You know, it is aspirational for most of us. But these lessons, these touch points of virtues and holy ideas, they're They're reminders, they're little words that tell us like, they're the little sign on the highway that says, this is the way to go. And it just reminds you, sometimes you get a big sign, it's a shock point. But sometimes in the day to day life, we just need, I need a little reminder that unconditional love and action are my virtues and holy ideas. And those are little reminders of what my work is. And so to see Pavan's touchpoint of holy origin and equanimity, a few weeks ago, he was worried about work and dreading it on a Monday. And I just said, well, Mondays come every seven days, you know, like just embody today, just try to be present today. It gives me language to encourage him with. I think there are so many benefits of this work, but I can say for us it has been really a benefit to our family. So, Pavan, thank you for coming here today and letting us pick your brain about what it's like to be a Boer. I'm super proud of you.


Pavan:
Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Jo. I appreciate it. Thank you.


Scott:
Thank you for listening to The Real Enneagram, a podcast by the Institute for Conscious Being. To learn more about the Institute and its offerings, visit theicb.info. That's T-H-E I-C-B dot I-N-F-O. The music for today's podcast was composed and performed by ICB faculty member Drexel Rayford.


Nanette:
Thanks for listening today. We hope you liked what you heard. If you did, please subscribe, leave a review, and share this with your friends and family.