Cosmic Slime Molds and Divine Connection: Insights from Scott Smith

In this episode of The Real Enneagram, we had the pleasure of turning the tables and welcoming our own Scott Smith as a guest. Scott, who is typically behind the scenes as our producer and editor, shared his personal journey with the Enneagram, particularly as a Type 5.

Scott recounted how he initially dismissed Dr. Joe Howell's book due to his narrow understanding of spirituality and his rationalistic worldview. However, after experiencing a significant period of suffering, he found himself drawn to both Joe's book, Becoming Conscious, and Philip Shepherd's Radical Wholeness. These readings opened him up to new perspectives on spirituality and self-understanding, leading him to embrace the Enneagram and TEPP (The Embodied Present Process) as tools for personal growth.

We delved into the virtues and holy ideas associated with Type 5, particularly focusing on the virtue of detachment and the holy ideas of omniscience and transparency. Dr. Joe Howell articulated how detachment is not about withdrawing, but about letting go of our attachments to ideas and concepts that can limit our understanding of reality.

Scott shared a profound experience he had during a retreat, where he practiced a meditation technique that allowed him to open to a deep sense of peace and connection to something greater than himself. This moment of grace highlighted the importance of being present and receptive, rather than chasing after spiritual experiences and ideas.

Throughout the episode, we emphasized that the qualities of peace, grace, and presence are available to everyone, regardless of their Enneagram type. We hope that Scott's journey and insights inspire our listeners to explore their own spiritual paths and recognize the potential for growth and connection in their lives.

Thank you for joining us today, and we encourage you to continue exploring the Enneagram and its transformative power. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, leave a review, and share it with your friends and family!

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, a podcast by the Institute for Conscious Being. I'm Nanette Mudiam, and I'm here with Dr. Joseph Howell. Hi, Dr. Joe. How are you today?

Joe: Fine, Nanette. How are you?

Nanette: Good. I'm glad to be with you today. Me too. And I'm super excited about our guest today. We have kind of turned the tables today on our guest, and we have here with us Scott Smith. Scott, say hello.

Scott: Hello.

Nanette: Yeah, that would be Scott, who's normally on the other side of this podcast helping us with our recording. So today, he's doing double duty, because he is ICB's own director of it. He's a staff member with the Institute, and is normally helping us with this recording and production and editing and all the things that go into making this podcast great.

Scott: That's true, Nanette. I look forward to editing this especially because I'll get to listen to my own voice a lot, which is a good spiritual practice.

Nanette: Yes. So, this is also part of Scott's spiritual practice to be our guest here today. So, we decided this season to really focus a deep dive on the holy ideas and the virtues of each type. And so, that's why we asked Scott to be here with us as our guest for being a Type 5. So, today we're going to talk a little bit more about that. But first, I'd just like Scott to tell us how he came to the Enneagram and We know kind of that our passions and our fixations and the suffering they're in, a lot of times are part of our coming to the Enneagram story. So, Scott, just share with us a few minutes about how that came about in your life.

Scott: It was maybe five or six years ago, and I knew Joe, and I'd gotten a copy of his book. And as soon as I read that it was about Christianity, I put it right back down. honestly. Okay. Because at the time, I had a very narrow idea of what Christianity was. I thought it was, you know, very conservative, fundamentalist type Tate. So, as soon as I saw it was about that, I just put it right down. I didn't think there was anything beyond the observable, beyond the material world. I was very rationalistic.

Nanette: You called yourself an atheist at the time?

Scott: Yeah, an ultra-materialist, rationalist, atheist.

Nanette: So anything that looked too spiritual was easy to reject for you?

Scott: Oh yeah, I had it figured out.

Nanette: Okay, because I don't ever read Joe's book and think about it as a Christian book per se. So you were fairly sensitive, we might say.

Scott: Yeah, just to mention Jesus at all in any context at the time. I already knew what Christianity was. I knew that it was not anything I wanted to be a part of. I was unaware of the full spectrum of expressions of Christian faith, you know, more progressive branches like I am now. So I had Joe's book and it just sort of sat around the house for a while. Later, when I was experiencing a really, really difficult time, it was right after Christmas in 2018, actually. I don't, I didn't really understand why at the time, but I just, I really hit rock bottom. Like it was a real critical mass of suffering. Each day was just worse than the last. Joe had recommended another book called Radical Wholeness by a man named Philip Shepherd. And it had also been sitting on my coffee table next to Joe's book, collecting dust. And I took a look at it and it didn't seem to mention Jesus or God. It looked kind of, well, woo-woo is what I would have said then. But I just felt so bad, I thought, what's the worst that could happen? And I started reading it and, you know, in its way, in its own language, it talked about things like our ego versus our more essential nature or what we call our soul, you know. And it talked about ideas like emergent intelligence, that a whole can be greater than the sum of its parts. It talked about ant colonies, where as an ant colony ages, it remembers things even though no individual ant, you know, lives long enough, lives as long as the colony. And then it talked about slime molds. So the amoeba, you know, amoeba are little one-celled organisms. But they can gather together in these clumps called slime molds. And the slime molds are as smart as lab mice. They can solve mazes. You know, they're intelligent, but they don't have a brain. You can't point to any part of it and say, well, gee golly, you know, that's what's organizing the slime mold. It's something that's greater than all the parts that make up the slime mold. And I don't know what it is about that, but I was driving down the road a day after I'd read that part of that book. and it hit me. What if God is a cosmic slime mold? You know, rather than this idea I thought of, this tyrant king that treats the universe like, you know, like he's its abusive boyfriend, you know, you gotta love me or else. You know, what if God is like the thought that steers everything through everything, that loves everything as parts of itself? So, somehow the humble slime mold helped me to believe in God again. helped me to understand God in a way that I never had before. And little practices in the book helped me to dip my toe into understanding that as an experience rather than just some idea in my mind. After I finished that book, I decided to try Joe's book again with a new understanding of what the, you know, words like God might mean. it allowed me to approach it with a more open mind. And I just ate it up. It just really got to me. Those two books together just made me realize that the way I had been moving in the world, the way that I understood myself to be, wasn't necessarily reality. It was an abstraction. It was something that I built up over time and had mistaken for myself. And it's that car that this old child gets into. And then he forgets that he's more than the car. So, this took place over about a month and by the time I'd finished the two books, I signed up for the very next ICB conference and the very next Philip Shepherd workshop and I just kept going.

Nanette: It's really set you on a journey and it's one that I have had the privilege of walking with you and have seen you grow and move into what Joe likes to call solality. And that's really what I want to get to today because I think I think that we have to acknowledge our own growth. And it's obvious, you know, in ways that you speak that you are an ego type 5. I mean, and we know that. We know we're not going to leave our egos behind. But we can grow and develop. We call it kind of a spiritual amalgamation, that there is that type 5 that you've always been Scott, but there is that soul at the type 8, at the soul point of 8. that we believe that you are becoming and it's so obvious if you know you. And so, thank you for sharing so transparently. Especially too, I think about a subject, I mean, to question God here in the Deep South is kind of irreverential. It takes a lot of courage to say that. And so, I appreciate your spiritual journey as well. So, thank you. Joe, I would like you to interject in here, if you could, and just talk to us about the virtue of detachment, which is the Egotypes 5's virtue, and then also our holy idea of holy omniscience and holy transparency. But, you know, as I've said to you before, detachment can seem, I mean, to me, I would say that egotype vibes kind of can be detached from the world. So explain that as a holy idea for us.

Joe: You mean the detachment as a virtue?

Nanette: Yeah. Uh-huh.

Joe: Yeah. Well, first of all, and thank you, Nanette, first of all, I just am so moved when I hear my friend Scott speak about that early pilgrimage because I have watched you, Scott, get stronger and stronger and stronger as a man. And I see that it's because of your spiritual practice of the TEPP program, Philipp Shepherd's program, and helping you go into the strength of your body and your body's intelligence. Because eight is strength, it's power. And that's where you began. But your ego is another thing. And to watch you blend your ego with the soul qualities of 0.8, it's just miraculous and wondrous. And I am so thankful that I have gotten to be your friend during this. Thank you, Joe. Thanks a lot. So, in terms of the Ego.5's virtue of detachment, it does not mean withdrawal, but it sounds like it does. Withdrawal is really not necessarily a virtue. It's not. Withdrawing is more more considered a negative thing. So what does detachment mean in terms of a virtue for the five? Well, I think Scott said it very succinctly, that Scott was attached. You, Scott, were attached to your ideas about how the world worked. And you were amassing more and more ideas to back up the assumptions of your ego in terms of the knowledge you were getting and the concepts you were comfortable with about what reality is. And a five has really good reasons. or believing what they know to be true because they can back it up with data. And you don't have to be a Rhodes Scholar. Fives are in every layer, all egotypes are in every layer of intelligence, every layer of education, of society. You know, you can have a five who's a 12-year-old in the Amazon and If he's one of the first people of the Amazon, he's probably not exposed to books, but he's still a five. How is he a five in the Amazon? He collects knowledge. he collects information. He understands things in a very pragmatic way, the inner workings of things. And he or she amasses their knowledge without books because they're in the third world. Not to say that that's not the best world to be in for some people. But the way that people look at the world is not just in the first world intelligence.

Nanette: So you don't have to have a genius IQ and be, you know, president and CEO of an IT company in order to be a Type 5.

Joe: No, you can. Yeah, you can be a utility worker. You can be a gardener, landscaper, You can be in any field or no field and you still have a conceptual perception of the world through the ego lens of five.

Nanette: But you will be seeking knowledge. Yes.

Joe: As the primary goal. And you are attached to them. Okay, okay. Because fives in the ego state not in their soul state, but in their ego state, have a sense of overwhelming emptiness.

Nanette: And they find their security, they think, in knowledge.

Joe: In knowledge. Here we are talking about it and Scott lives it.

Nanette: Is that your experience, Scott?

Scott: It just might be, Nanette.

Joe: So the deal is fives in their fixation, they're fixed on their concepts, their understandings, their knowings, their information, their observation, and also being a little bit withdrawn from other people so they can enjoy it and feel the fullness of all that without having to give it up to anybody else. Okay? Yeah. So they are attached to it. But when the five enacts their virtue of detachment, they're willing to let all that go. That works for every ego type. Whatever any of us is attached to, if it is our fixation, when we let it go, then and only then are we able to see the pathway to our soul.

Nanette: Scott, do you have an experience of a moment of detachment that you came to?

Scott: Well, I do.

Nanette: Yeah, and I don't know that the story of your own spiritual journey is not one of detachment, you know, that you started out with.

Scott: Yeah, I mean, in one sense, life is a constant process of noticing when I've started to get lost in my abstractions and my ideas when I've In TEPP we call it trampolining back into your head. And can I notice that? And as we say sometimes in the Enneagram community, can I practice the pause? Give myself a moment to get back into the rest of my body and be aware of what I'm feeling through my body. Because that's, you know, when I think of the body, I think of all three centers working in tandem, the gut, the head and the heart. When that's open, you can feel yourself as part of the whole, as part of the present. And there's something about that that locates you, that grounds you, that makes you feel like you're not alone. And that's what makes that emptiness not scary anymore. Because That emptiness, I understand it now, is a good thing. I don't always trust it or surrender to it, but it's the emptiness of a bell that lets it resonate. It's the emptiness of our being that lets us resonate to the present, bringing us to the divine. When we're trying to stuff ourselves full of stuff because we, in our ego, don't recognize the potentiality of that emptiness and we instead mistake it for a lack, it's like stuffing a bell full of cotton. And you can still hit that bell, but it's just going to dink. It's not going to resonate to the present, to the divine. It hasn't gone anywhere. You know, can we remember that? Can I remember that when I detach from it? And it's comforting. It's comforting because it's still there. Even if I can't feel it, I can trust that it's still there. Go back to my spiritual practices. Can I release to the breath? Can I let my awareness come to rest out of its agitated state? Can I become receptive to what is? rather than being all about the way I think it should be. It helps me be more present and just, so in a way, that's a constant process. I mean, that's a process for all of us in our own way, you know, however we conceptualize it or experience it, because it is very individual. I have a feeling you'd like to hear a story.

Nanette: Yeah, tell us a story.

Scott: So there's the constant in and out, you know, can I really be present on this wall? Can I be present at the grocery store? That kind of like I was talking about. Then there's also these little mountaintop experiences that can happen to us if we're willing to be receptive to them. So about nine months into my journey with the Enneagram, I got laid off from my engineering job, which I hadn't been happy at for a long time. And so, in a way, it was great. I was able to understand, at least intellectually, well, this is great. This is the universe pushing me along. But emotionally, it was turmoil. And thanks to having done the Enneagram work for a little bit, I was able to actually recognize that, that I was feeling feelings about it that needed an outlet, that needed to be grounded and integrated and not just ignored. So I was trying to find a place to go on retreat. Joe recommended this lovely monastery in Cullman, Alabama. So I went there for an individual retreat. It was very nice. the quiet, kind of being away from it all, the liturgy. There was liturgy three times a day that you could participate in that was very grounding. So one night after the liturgy, one of the sisters came and told me that the next day in the afternoon that they were going to be displaying the Blessed Sacrament for an hour of adoration, and that it was a wonderful time to sit quietly and pray or read. And I had no idea what a Blessed Sacrament or adoration was, but I understood that it was a time that you could sit quietly in community with other people, that you could sit quietly in the presence of others. So the next day I came, I was sitting there and I had a book that I was reading. It was When Things Fall Apart by Pima Chodron, the Buddhist nun. And I was reading about the practice of tonglen, which is a type of meditation. And I know there's a lot more to it than this, but the understanding I was getting of it at the time was that You'd breathe in and you'd breathe in whatever suffering you were feeling. And you'd also be breathing it in for everyone else in the world that was experiencing whatever that type of suffering was. And you'd really let yourself feel it. Like you weren't just saying, I'm breathing in my confusion or whatever. You'd open yourself up to feel all of it. And then you'd exhale relief. and you're sending the relief to everybody that was experiencing that type of suffering, whether it's anxiety, anger, shame, what have you. So I was sitting in the pew, I was reading that, and I thought, what the heck, let's try it. Because I had a weight on my shoulders from getting laid off that I knew in my mind I should feel fine about, but in my body, wasn't feeling fine about it yet. So I started breathing and really feeling all the feelings. And it was intense. And after a few breaths, on the exhale, I was hit with this profound feeling of peace and relief that just washed over me. And I felt this very intimate companionship almost as if there were hands on my shoulders. Although, if you want to maintain a strictly rationalistic interpretation of the world, you could just say that I was especially aware of the sensation of the clothes on my body, including the sweater on my shoulders. But at the time, it felt like there were hands on my shoulders. It felt like, in a way, Christ was there with me, that Christ is the Logos, you know, Christ as the thought that steers all things through all things, because that's what, that's the word that the author of the Gospel of John used when he wrote, you know, in the beginning was the word, it was in the beginning was the Logos. I mean, I can sort of feel it now when I think about it. And it was that feeling of being part of something greater and being loved by it. And, you know, words are just insufficient, really. It was just this moment of grace. And it passed, you know. And I was very quick to try to put labels on it. But I mean, you can't help that to some degree. I couldn't be telling you about it. But that's really just stuck with me. Because I didn't make that happen. It happened to me. I just had to be receptive to it. In a way that plays, that leads into my virtue of non-attachment. Because when things like that happen, I try not to hold on to them, you know, not to put it on a pedestal and say look at this thing that happened, I did it, I've arrived, or you know that means this and that's exactly what it means, because then, because when you do that then the abstraction has become more primary than the thing itself.

Nanette: You know, Scott, I think it's also a story, which I so appreciate you sharing, that also encapsulates your holy ideas. I think you just talked about omniscience and transparency. I think if I had to try to understand your experience in your holy ideas, I think your story just told it to me at that moment with the blessed sacrament. And it was an experience of actual omniscience, of transparency to the divine. What a beautiful story for someone who's not a type 5 to appreciate your experience and your spiritual journey. So thank you for that. That was beautiful.

Joe: Thank you, Nanette. Yes, I was thinking the exact same thing as I was listening to Scott's, your story, because you had all the knowledge you needed at that time because you were in all knowledge, you were in Presence. And the Holy Presence was there and you could see it because you were transparent to it because your ego filter was gone. That's it.

Scott: grace, peace, contentment, all these wonderful things. They're not things that we can go out and grab and possess. They are qualities of the present. So they're already there. You just can't feel it when our ego's in the way.

Nanette: Well, they are soul qualities, right? And they're qualities that are necessary for us all, for all ego types. And that's why, whether you're an ego type 5 listening today or not, that this podcast can resonate with you because it all comes back to presence and soul and the qualities you just mentioned of peace and grace for us all. And it's why we can be inspired by your story today.

Scott: Well, thanks, Annette. Yeah, I mean, it's less about trying to get out and acquire these things and more, how do we get out of our own way and realize they're already there? How can we resensitize to their presence and feel them informing our actions? And again, I appreciate you letting me share that story about that wonderful moment of grace, but I want the listener to know that it's not about chasing moments like that, and consciousness isn't confined to moments like that. It's available to us when we're walking in the park, when we're doing dishes, even when we're having a conversation with an individual we may find difficult in some way, perhaps especially that. For me, that is part of the detachment, is not putting those things on a pedestal and instead being present moment to moment. Can we be? What would the world be like if we could be more present to each other in business meetings and family dinners? That kind of thing. I'll ramble if you'll let me. That's the five in me.

Nanette: Yeah, but it sounds like the wisdom that the five who has done the work, the spiritual work has to offer us. And so I just really honor you for that, Scott. Thank you so much for sharing transparently with us today and in your own energy and in your own way to say exactly what it is I think we needed to hear as a deeper dive on the five.

Joe: Yeah. And, you know, being the director of IT and ICB, Scott believes in this work and also in his tap work. And to watch you go into your solality versus just your personality, it's miraculous. It's beautiful to see you.

Nanette: So I would just encourage you that I would encourage any of our listeners today that this is available to you too, that this is why we do the work, the deeper dives. It's why holy ideas and virtues are important because they're really available. They're already there and available to tap into. And we believe that it will be a blessing to your spiritual journey and hopefully to your life and to your family and to your workplace. and the world at large. So thank you so much for being with us today. Thanks again, Scott.

Scott: Thank you, Scarlett. Good to be with y'all. I mean, I'm always with y'all. Good to be behind the microphone. Wonderful.

Nanette: Thanks for inviting me. Wonderful. Thanks.

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.