Bridging the Gap: Reflecting on Our Series on the Holy Ideas and Virtues

In this episode of The Real Enneagram, we wrap up our series on the Holy Ideas and Virtues, reflecting on the profound insights shared by our guests over the past nine episodes. Joined by Dr. Joe Howell and Scott Smith, we delve into the concept of amnesia surrounding our holy ideas and explore why we often forget these integral aspects of our true selves.

Dr. Joe explains that the holy ideas represent the way we perceived the world as soul children, free from the constraints of our egos. However, as we grow, we often lose sight of these ideas, leading to a sense of disconnection from our essence. The ego drives us to justify our existence, creating a narrative that we must earn our place in the world. This quest for validation can lead to feelings of inadequacy and fear, as we strive to meet external expectations rather than embracing our inherent worth.

Throughout our discussion, we emphasize the importance of remembering our holy ideas and virtues as a means of healing and reconnecting with our true selves. We share personal experiences and practical practices that can help nurture these ideas, highlighting that the journey involves intentionality and self-awareness. Ultimately, we encourage our listeners to engage with their spiritual practices, as they are essential for integrating the wisdom of the Enneagram into daily life.

As we conclude this series, we express our gratitude to our guests and invite our audience to continue exploring these concepts with us at the Institute for Conscious Being. Thank you for joining us on this journey, and we look forward to our next series!

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 brought to you by the Institute for Conscious Being. I'm Nanette Mudiam, and I'm here with Dr. Joseph Howell. And we're here also with Scott Smith. Well, hello, Nanette. Hi, Scott.

Scott: Hi, Joe. Hi, Nanette. Hi, Joe. Good to be here, yes.

Nanette: You know, we are really excited because we have wrapped up an entire series on the Holy Ideas and Virtues with some outstanding people, wouldn't you say?

Joe: Absolutely.

Nanette: Yeah, we just want to say thank you so much to the guests that we've had over the last nine weeks. They share their stories in such transparency and openness with us, at times vulnerable stories. And so, I just really, really want to thank the students from the Institute for Conscious Being for being so willing to come on and share their stories with us.

Scott: Speaking as one of those students, you're welcome.

Nanette: Yes, Scott was our ego type five and we have really systematically made our way through the numbers, through the map of the Enneagram discussing the holy ideas and the virtues. And so I just wanted to, well, we all did, we all really wanted to just kind of wrap this series up and just have a general conversation with some, good questions about the holy ideas. And one of my questions I have for you, Dr. Joe, is why do we forget our holy ideas? You know, if they're so integral to our healing and who we are as humans, why are they lost?

Joe: Yeah, it's so funny because I've heard some of the great teachers talk about the amnesia of the holy idea and how it came to be. And it was very interesting that when I was first learning about holy ideas, I could remember every one of the other egotypes, but I could never remember mine. Really? Yeah, right at the beginning when I first started.

Nanette: Okay.

Joe: Of course, I know mine now if I can think of it. But the others really didn't give me any, there was no amnesia. But there was about mine, and I came to reflect upon that. And the deal is to know what the primary definition of the holy idea is. And a lot of people don't know that. In fact, they get them mixed up with the virtues. The holy idea is the way we saw and perceived the world when we were without an ego as our soul child. And the origin of that perception when we were a soul child is that we saw life out of that aspect of the divine. Okay. So all of the holy ideas are really an aspect of God, and all of them together make a 360 of major attributes of the divine. And because you and I and Scott came to this world as a soul, we each came to the world as one of the nine aspects of the divine. Therefore, we saw the world out of the lens of that aspect. And there are nine lenses, each one the holy idea. But when the amnesia comes in is that when we were soul children and we either gradually or suddenly lost our soul child because we had to look at the world through our ego's lens instead of the lens of our soul child and our perception of the aspect of God that we were created as. We forgot who we really were. We forgot our soul child. We forgot our holy idea. And that is the amnesia everyone speaks about regarding the loss of our holy idea. Does that make sense to you?

Nanette: Yeah, it does make sense experientially. I just wonder, Is it necessary? I mean, do you not get an ego if you don't forget an aspect of God? I mean, obviously we all do, so it must be necessary. It just seems, well, it seems kind of tragic, doesn't it?

Joe: Yeah, I mean, we're the little innocent child, we're the little innocent soul child. And we are told that the way we are seeing the world is not true, it's not accurate, and that we're not okay. Speaking our truth, walking around without any clothes, throwing food, calling into question why granddad has a piece of bologna on his mouth. And that little, very innocent child speaking the truth out of her or his aspect of God that he or she was created as, they have to give that up in order to get the approval of the people around them and to stop the wounding that they're getting because they're not getting the fact that they're not adhering to the expectations that others have for them.

Nanette: we find out we're not okay to be who we are.

Joe: Absolutely.

Nanette: Yeah. In fact, it makes me think of the very first time I ever heard you systematically go through the nine ego types. And you did it in a breakout session in a mental health conference that I attended as a professional nurse. And you didn't use the word ego type. You didn't use any Enneagram language in it. And yet, I went home. I remembered them. I went home and thought, you know, like the one says to the world that I'm not okay. And to be okay, I need to be right. You went through a series of how the ego types are okay. And they so struck true to me. that as I listened to you go through them, I went, no, that's not me. That's not me. That's not me. And I listened to eight types before I, when you got to the nine, I was like, oh, well, there I am finally. I thought you were going to miss me. Did you have the same experience by chance, Scott, when you heard the, I mean, you were not okay unless you knew all the answers. wasn't okay for you to be a strong ego type, or it wasn't okay for you to be an eight.

Scott: Yes, that very much resonates with me, Nanette. I was talking to you guys earlier about a memory I had when I was in kindergarten, when they told us this afternoon, we're going to learn how to read and, and it terrified me the thought that went around through my mind was, but I don't know how to read. How can I do this? And that of course completely misses the point that well that's why we're going to learn to read that's why we're going to learn things it's okay not to know everything that it's so obvious now when i say it out loud but when i when i reflect on the patterns I fall into, the way I've behaved and moved in the world, especially before I started working with the Enneagram. It's like the unspoken assumption was, well, one, it is not OK not to know everything. And lying under that, almost this idea that you don't belong here. You don't belong in this reality. You have to justify your existence and you do that by being perfectly competent and by knowing all the things you need to know. And dammit, you better not slip up because as soon as you slip up, as soon as you reveal yourself to be less than perfectly competent, you are out. And that's insane. I mean, in a way that is insane.

Nanette: But I think you speak to something that is shared by nearly all children, is that somehow we don't belong, we're not right the way we are, that we're all afraid, we're all unsure, insecure. I used to always say like, I'll feel like I've been a successful parent if my kids don't need professional counseling when they grow up. And now I realize that that was such an ignorant statement of mine, like probably every person could use some professional counseling when we grow up. Because no matter what, whether you have an ideal childhood or a traumatic one or somewhere in between, we're all processing a childhood wound. We all have something of which to recover from.

Scott: Absolutely. It's like, in our essence, we know that we deserve to exist, that we don't need to earn our existence. And in our ego, we forget that. So the ego tries to justify its existence, which is an endless task, you know, and the way it goes about it is, of course, different for each ego type. But in my case, it's impossible to know everything. And no one expects you to. So rather than engaging in the self defeating task of justifying ourselves in one way or another, how can we remember that we already deserve to exist, we don't have to justify that we belong here.

Nanette: Beautiful.

Nanette: Joe, in that vein, how does remembering the holy idea help to heal us?

Joe: The holy ideas really are just words at first. We try to commit them to memory, and then as good students, we really do learn them. But then the more that we repeat our holy idea, the more they sound like home. the more that we rest in the holy idea, the more we realize that they actually are a bridge back to the way we used to be as a soul child. They are the bridge back to our soul point. I remember my holy idea, holy strength, and holy faith. I remember the fact that as a six, I didn't want to own them because I didn't feel in my ego that I was strong or that I had enough faith. I thought, these are antithetical to who I am. And they actually are, because they are the perception that fear replaced. And fear gave me other ways of dealing with the world, like making sure I was secure, making sure that there was an alpha or authority figure who took care of me, making sure I was included in the group and did not do anything to get kicked out of it. That was a new way of living, the ego. But the old way of living, I never questioned that I had strength and faith. I remember as a sole nine, as a child, I have a lot of memories. I'm lucky to have a lot of childhood memories, pre and post wounding. And when I was a pre-wounding soul child, I was strong. I was faithful. I didn't question. I didn't self-doubt. I was feeling my oats. I was enamored of life. I was awed by it. I was excited by it. I asked questions continually. I know most children do. But I have many memories of being introduced to life by my mother and father and by animals that help me now understand that I was made of strength and faith. Never questioned it. That was the lens through which I saw the world. I felt the support of the universe. Never questioned it. But when I flipped to the ego, all of that collapsed. And the ego, like Scott said, continuously has to prop us up with its own perceptions and its own story for our life. It's just a mental structure, but we cling to it as if it is us.

Nanette: It's interesting to me that you would say that you have pre-wounded and then kind of post-wounded memories. I think many, that moment where you put the ego on, I think many of us don't have memories without an ego at all. I would say there are certainly people out there who put on an ego very, very young. I, like you, I think I have a mix of some childhood memories where I can see my soul child or how I felt as a soul child. But certainly, I was fairly young, I think, when I really put an ego on. But it is also interesting to me at what point that you, Joe, maybe personally realized how powerful it would be to re-embody this holy idea.

Joe: Well, it didn't come in one flash. It came over a series of fearful things that as a Six I had to deal with, with my newfound knowledge of the Holy Idea. So instead, when a very fearful challenge came, instead of doing what my ego wanted me to do, which was batten down the hatches, find security, don't let this thing, whatever it is, annihilate me. It was, let me try this assuming that I have strength and faith. You know, because there we are learning about the Enneagram. And I was, you know, in my 30s, 40s, and a lot of challenges in being a young professional, having two small children, being in a community as a person who had a role in organizations, etc. Scary things happen. People challenge you. I remember once that the institution that I was employed with lost their grant and my job was going to end. In my ego, I would try to find somebody to take care of me, somebody to cover me, somebody to direct me, somebody to inspire me. And with the Enneagram, I understood that the way to peace is not externally, but is internal. That the inner wisdom is what we must go to, where our holy idea is, because that is the core of our soul. And that's the thing that really flips us from living in ego back to living in our soul.

Nanette: So as you're telling that story, I'm thinking about how courageous that sounded. And that is your virtue, is courage, correct?

Nanette: Yes.

Nanette: So tell me how to differentiate between holy idea and the virtue. What is the virtue for each of the types?

Joe: Okay, well, the holy idea is the perception of the world that our essence has, that we are on a quest to re-embody and live out again as we return to our soul type. The virtue is a quality of our soul. It is a, if you will, moral attribute. And it is the opposite, direct opposite of our passion. or our vice, as the early Christian desert mothers and fathers called them, vice and virtues. And these qualities The virtues and the vices or passions tend to be at loggerheads with each other. They fight because the passion is of our ego and the virtue is of our soul. And the ego much prefers the passion because it develops that passion as a way to move in that world. For example, the passion of the six is fear. But the virtue of the six is courage. Those are direct opposites. Your virtue as a nine is diligence. The complete opposite of sloth or laziness. Your virtue is detachment, Scott, which is the complete opposite of the passion of avarice. You're able in your virtue to detach from all that you would cling to to give you meaning. In your case, a lot of knowledge, a lot of totems that represent that knowledge. But in non-attachment, you're able to move in the world in freedom from that.

Nanette: if we're honest, it seems so easy to be in our vice. I mean, it's easy. It's the slide of the arrow, right? It just doesn't take a lot of energy to be fearful, to be detached, to To be lazy. To be lazy. You notice I didn't want to call it that. I wanted to just forget that. Yeah, it's so easy to be that. And it seems like it takes some holy strength in each of us to embody that virtue. Is that in any way connected to the holy idea? How do the holy ideas and virtues interplay?

Joe: Well, the holy idea is the bridge back to our soul, and at the soul, our virtue is most pronounced.

Nanette: Okay.

Joe: Now, we can have our virtue in our ego type if we're integrated, but it comes alive at our soul type.

Nanette: Okay. So we might, I could be a healthy nine in diligent action.

Joe: Yes, you could. And a lot of people are, and wonderful nines. But when you go to three, you know the real meaning of diligence. You embody diligence at three. Because that's your soul type.

Nanette: Because unconditional love has really brought me there.

Joe: Yeah, and the way unconditional love did it is that you look at life now, not as needing to attach to other people for your self-worth, because you love yourself enough to be able to do the projects that you need to get done that give your own life significance and meaning. If you didn't do that, you would be, as an unhealthy nine, blending in with everybody else so that you would be part of energy that you didn't have to muster up.

Nanette: So, can you share with us, Joe, what are some practices that help all the ego types nurture their holy ideas?

Joe: Yes. Well, one of the biggest practices in nurturing the holy idea is intentionality when we are faced with a crossroad. I gave you an example of when I was faced with fear. You would be faced with laziness or blending in with others.

Nanette: Or inaction in general.

Joe: Yeah, inaction. Not holy, not sacred action, but inaction. Inaction, yeah. And Scott would be faced with clinging to every bit of knowledge and not wanting to share it with anybody, just keeping it in his cave. I remember a five once told me, before I knew about fives, And I was just a teenager. I said, well, can you tell me about such and such and such? And he says, well, I could. But if I did, you'd know as much as I do. And I went, well, what's wrong with that? Sounds like Sherry. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Well, hey. But that always stuck in my mind because I didn't know what that young man meant. Why would it be bad for me to know as much as he? Now I know because I know five space and it happens to be one of my two wings that I can sometimes very much be like. So that's why that young man resonated inside of me. He resonated with my ego and also with my wing.

Nanette: It was it's funny, I have had some type five friends over the years, and they always you can always feel they're a little withhold, like you can be having a great conversation. And suddenly, you know, they know something they're not telling you, and they don't want to tell you, you know, like, maybe they don't think you can, you know, you're smart enough to hang with them, or like, they need to just keep that back a little.

Joe: Well, you know, it's really, the withholding is an imitation of power. You see, in their soul at eight, and Scott can tell you this, the little soul child had a lot of power. I remember our son Ben was a soul child. And he had a very booming voice, even as a little child, and he told the truth, and he marshalled everybody to do what needed to be done. I mean, he looked beyond so much. And we didn't know what all this was about, this little boy doing this. But when he flipped to his ego, he imitated power by what he knew and withholding what he knew.

Scott: The idea there is Like if I know things that you don't know, that means that there are things that I can do for you that you can't do for yourself, which gives me power and means you need me. It means you can't kick me out of reality. And the ego fear is if I share this information, you don't need me anymore. I lose my power. Of course, that's illusory power, and that's assuming that the universe is a zero-sum game, when in reality, what you put out into the world ripples out and, you know, like a rising tide lifts all ships. But the ego doesn't know anything about that. That's the essence is purview.

Nanette: As I was saying that, I was thinking about both of you kind of being motivated by security, you know, and it clearly comes through in what you're saying. And for me, I'm motivated by control. You know, many nines who are unhealthy have no idea that they are motivated by control, but we fundamentally are in the body type. And so does our you know, either being in the mind center or in the heart center or in the body center. Does that have an underplay in our, certainly in our vices, but does it also in our holy ideas and virtues?

Joe: Well, yes, the holy ideas and virtues are the antithesis for our traps, avoidances, fixations, and passions. And just in a word, we have three centers in the Enneagram. The center at the top is the eight, nine, and one. And that's called the body center, of course. And the underlying force of that type is anger and control, as you've already spoken of today. Well, the nine deals with their anger by denying it and shutting down. and blending in with other people. The one deals with their anger by telling everybody what to do and managing it and having resentment toward those. Their anger leaks out as resentment toward those who do not adhere to their direction. And the eight just is a literal machine that issues vengeance when People don't do what they want them to do. Those are three different aspects of anger. Now, you go to the right of that and get the next center, which is the heart center. And at the heart center, you have twos, threes and fours. The issue there is love. Am I loved? And the three wants to be loved by being a winner. You know, that adage, everybody loves a winner. Yeah. Well, they take that to heart because in accomplishing, they can force people to praise, admire them. And in their perception, that means they're loved. Although, that's not always true for threes. And twos flip the other way. Instead of wanting to be loved for what they accomplish and to wow people, they formulate their love in dependent relationships. They want people to admire them and love them because of what they can do for them. Therefore, they foster dependencies, not understanding what they're doing because they're not conscious of it. This is an unhealthy ego mechanism. And the four gains love by being special, unique, somebody who is so wondrous that no one can understand them. They beg for people to understand them, but they really don't want it. Because if they had it, then they would be run of the mill. So being special marshals the thought to them that they are seen, significant, recognized, and therefore loved. Now, Scott and I are in the MIND Center, and the issue there is fear. The fear that we have is as a six in the middle of that center, the fear that we have is that we will be annihilated. We will be discounted, thrown out, destroyed, humiliated, and betrayed. But on the other hand, the five's fear is that somebody will take them for granted, will take what they know and use it for their own ill-gotten gain, will invade on their privacy, and therefore monopolize their all-important time, because time and knowledge are two sides of the same coin for the five. You can't get more knowledge unless you have time, and if somebody takes your time, you can't get more knowledge. So invasion is what they fear. and also to be deprived of their knowledge. Sevens, on the other hand, the other side of six, they fear deprivation, not of knowledge, but of pleasure. because the life force is their antidote to feeling pain, and that's their avoidance. So they need a tremendous amount of stimulation, new experiences, sometimes a lot of material, bright and shiny objects, And the overindulgence of someone who, if they stopped indulging, would have to face the pain that they are trying to anesthetize.

Nanette: So nine types all asleep to their holy idea. Until something wakes us up. Until we have some experience and very often some sort of suffering that says, this is not a way to live. Your vice isn't getting you what you want. Your drives, your passions, they're not making you secure. They're not giving you control. They're not helping your relationship. It's not. And so we get desperate enough to wake up.

Joe: And that's why in the Institute we teach, you're going to have crises, you're going to meet a nemesis, you're going to fall so far that you'll wonder if bottom hole. And this is when spiritual practice comes into play. Are you going to be able to apply your holy idea and your virtue to the exact hardship that you're going through now? And at the Institute, we share. our application of these things. Because without applying it, they're just words.

Nanette: Yeah, you're just trying to memorize them, you know, like, oh, there's that one number and there's that one word. And it's like you said, for some reason, you can't remember it because you're not yet embodying it. You're not yet applying it in a way. And I think you can know all the words you want, but until you start having some sort of spiritual practice that connects you to it. It's so funny that you said that you couldn't remember it, because for me it was the same way. And mine is like so easy. It's wholly unconditional love. It's not difficult. I think the first thing I think a type 9 sees when they see that is like, oh, well, that's generic. You know, it is probably the fact that we overuse the word love in our culture. And what does that mean? And, you know, of course, we try to love everybody because that's how you keep peace is, you know, you get along with everybody. But realizing that the person I don't love the most is me. And so what I started trying to find practical ways, and one of them is I have a recorded monologue on my voice memo of my phone that is titled, How to Love Myself. And through a study I did and a spiritual practice I did, I came up with words that I knew I needed to hear. And I listened to it for so long that I pretty much, I can recite myself, but sometimes when I know that I'm not doing very well, that spiritually I'm having some moment where I'm out of touch with my soul. It's one of the ways I practice and I will simply just press play. And I will hear myself and it will remind me that who I need to love is me. That I don't embody my holy idea without first doing that. And that, out of that is the energy of diligent action.

Joe: That's your bridge.

Nanette: Yes. Yes, my holy idea brings me to diligent action. And so, I think these are all, there is some spiritual practice that may be unique to each of the types that really helps them to, you know, bring a bridge about and to foster that bridge and to embody that virtue. But I think we all, it's not called the work for no reason. It does take action by all of us. Sometimes I think when we all start engaging with the Enneagram and we realize we have a soul child that we can embody, that we have moments where what we're most aware of is that we don't embody it. Our failure to embody it. But to me, that is progress, that you begin to at least be awake and aware that, well, for me, that I'm vegged out, that I'm checked out or lazy, or I've disengaged from some conflict, some perceived conflict. And so it does start with an awareness. Scott, I feel like you have something you want to say.

Scott: Yeah, I think it's about remembering. Like we forget the qualities of our essence. Like Guruji's self-remembering. Yeah, it's a form of self-remembering. It's about noticing things that are outside of our awareness. If the ego is a mental structure, we might also say that it's a system of patterns of behavior that we're largely unconscious to because we never consciously set these in motion. And in the embodiment workshops I do, at the beginning we'll say, you know, these practices are like sandboxes. You know, they're not about going in to get it right. It's about opportunities to notice patterns that we might not otherwise have been aware of. Because if we're not aware of them, we don't have a choice in the matter. And it's also our hope that when you notice such a pattern that you'll be able to say, isn't that interesting rather than what the hell's wrong with me? If for no other reason than because it's, you know, it's more productive, it's a more productive attitude. And I feel personally, I feel like that is all spiritual practices or opportunities. to notice patterns that we're not otherwise aware of, so that we can integrate those patterns. And, you know, we could have a whole other podcast about the relationship, how our wounding set those patterns in motion. Yes. And it's not so much about getting it right. So many people I've heard try meditating and they say, I just can't meditate. I can't sit and empty my mind for 10 minutes. I don't do it right. I mean, for one, it's not so much about emptying your mind. noticing what your mind's doing. And two, it's not about getting it right. It's about the practice. It's about noticing when your mind wanders and bringing it back. It's not unlike doing yoga or going to the gym. You don't just go to the gym once and say, I did it. I went to the gym. It's the process of doing it that bears fruit.

Nanette: Yeah, and I think that is something we do try to foster at the Institute for Conscious Being. We're fostering practices that help us reconnect with our soul child, that bring about that bridge of holy ideas.

Scott: Yeah, it's those practices that help us to, in a sense, feel into our holy ideas, to discover that they're already there and allow them to be expressed. It's, you know, it's not so much about just learning in a conceptual, abstract way what the holy idea is, and then emulating that behavior. That's still ego, you know. Right, right. You know, it might be nicer for the people around you, maybe, but you've really just built a kinder, gentler inner tyrant.

Nanette: Ah, such a great point. Such a great point. Yeah. Well, if this all sounds appealing to you, then you might need to come and study with us because this is what we do at ICB. We take these ideas and we seek to experience them in a way that is natural to our soul child. And so this is why we've spent the last 10 weeks talking about it.

Joe: Absolutely. And for those out there who want to study with us virtually or in person, go to our website, theicb.org. Yes. Theicb.org.

Nanette: Well, thank you so much. Thank you for walking out this journey with us for the last 10 weeks. If you have questions, you're also welcome to email us and we will do our best to either discuss your question here in the podcast or directly contact you. But we thank you so much for sharing this time with us and we look forward to seeing you again in future podcast series.

Scott: And special thanks to Renee, Beverly, Barrett, Pavan, Leigh Anne, Art, Valerie, and Gladys for being our most excellent guest on this season on The Virtues and Holy Ideas. 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.